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but I am comfortable with this ‘cultural’ and ‘geographical’ Hinduism that anchors me to my ancestral past.
As a Hindu I can claim adherence to a religion without an established church or priestly papacy, a religion whose rituals and customs I am free to reject, a religion that does not oblige me to demonstrate my faith by any visible sign, by subsuming my identity in any collectivity, not even by a specific day or time or frequency of worship. (There is no Hindu Pope, no Hindu Vatican, no Hindu catechism, not even a Hindu Sunday.) As a Hindu I follow a faith that offers a veritable smorgasbord of options to the worshipper of divinities to adore and to pray to, of rituals to observe (or not), of
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And while I am, paradoxically, listing my ‘reasons’ for a faith beyond understanding, let me cite the clincher: above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a ‘true path’ that they have missed. This dogma lies at the core of the ‘Semitic faiths’, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
so that as Hinduism spread, it accommodated earlier forms of worship rather than overthrowing them. Similarly many tribes revered animals, but instead of disrespecting them, Hinduism absorbed the animals too, by making them the companions or vehicles (vahanas) of the gods. So Vedic gods found themselves riding a lion, mounting a peacock, reclining on a swan, or sitting on a bull. It was part of the agglomerative nature of Hinduism that it neither rejected nor dismissed the faiths it encountered, but sought to bring them into the fold in this way.
Hinduism did not stop with the absorption of earlier animist or tribal religions. It accepted the precepts of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, treating his followers as a special sect of Hindus rather than as a separate faith. When Buddhism sought to reform Hinduism, Hinduism turned around and sought to absorb it too, by including the Buddha as a reincarnation of Vishnu and his agnostic teachings as merely a nastika form of the mother faith. As a result Buddhism has hardly any strength or presence in the land of its birth, having been absorbed and overtaken by the religion it sought to
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Dr Radhakrishnan put it best: to him, Hinduism is ‘not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spiritual thought and realization.’ The spiritual leader Dada Vaswani calls Hinduism variously ‘a fellowship of faiths’, ‘a federation of philosophies’, and ‘a league of religions’. Note the plural in that last word.
Every Hindu may not be conscious of the finer points of his faith, but he has been raised in the tradition of its assumptions and doctrines, even when these have not been explained to him. His Hinduism may be a Hinduism of habit rather than a Hinduism of learning, but it is a lived Hinduism for all that.
Atma Shatakam (The Song of the Self): I am not the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor the material of the mind; I am not the body, nor the changes of the body; I am not the senses of hearing, taste, smell, or sight, Nor am I the ether, the earth, the fire, the air; I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute—
I am Shiva, I am Shiva. (Shivoham, Shivoham). I am not the Prâna, nor the five vital airs; I am not the materials of the body, nor the five sheaths; Neither am I the organs of action, nor the object of the senses; I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute— I am Shiva, I am Shiva. (Shivoham, Shivoham). I have neither aversion nor attachment, neither greed nor delusion; Neither egotism nor envy, neither Dharma nor Moksha; I am neither desire nor objects of desire; I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute— I am Shiva, I am Shiva. (Shivoham, Shivoham). I am
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Nor temple nor worship, nor pilgrimage nor scriptures, Neither the act of enjoying, the enjoyable nor the enjoyer; I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute— I am Shiva, I am Shiva. (Shivoham, Shivoham). I have neither death nor fear of death, nor caste; Nor was I ever born, nor had I parents, friends, and relations; I have neither Guru, nor disciple; I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute— I am Shiva, I am Shiva. (Shivoham, Shivoham). I am untouched by the senses, I am neither Mukti nor knowable; I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond
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But it would take a Vivekananda, not a Roy, to preach, seven decades later, a robust, modernist and universalist Hinduism, anchored in its own precepts, that could look the rest of the world’s religions in the eye and oblige them to blink.
One can see Ramakrishna as the exemplar of bhakti yoga, Vivekananda as the very model of karma yoga, and Ramana Maharishi as that of jnana yoga. His key question to aid the attainment of self-realization was ‘Who am I?’ Am I the body, the mind, the senses?
“Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.” Thus sang the Rishis of the Veda.’
“Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth; but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward—love unselfishly for love’s sake.”’
One of his more famous exhortations to young Indians came from his lectures in Raja Yoga, in which he memorably said, ‘Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life—think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is the way great
