From: mukesh@foundation.HQ.Ileaf.COM (Mukesh Prasad)
Subject: Re: What Is Hindu Fundamentalism?
Status: OR
To: editor@rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu
Originator: editor@rbhatnagar
Organization: Univ of Cincinnati
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 16:07:18 GMT
Return-Path: <leafusa!foundation.HQ.Ileaf.COM!mukesh@uunet.UU.NET>

In response to the questions, here is one viewpoint:
----------------------------------------------------

Hinduism is actually not one religion, but a large
number of co-operating religions.  Some Hindus are
worshippers of "Krishn" and consider "BhagwadGita" to
be their holy text, others worship "Ram" and have
the "Ramayan" as the holy text, still others
worship Shiv and have a "Shiv Gita" to follow.  In
addition, there are the early religious texts
such as Vedas and Vedantas.

Some of these early texts have simple poems of
offerings to various powers of nature and human
deities.  More interesting of these early texts
discuss various philosophical viewpoints.  A philosophy
is called a "Vad" in Sanskrit.  For instance,
"DwaitVad" is the philosophy of duality.
"ADwaitVad" is the philosophy that all is one.

Within the context of these philosophical
textbooks, "Brahm" (not to be confused
with the deity "Brahma") is the word denoting
one of the more sublime concepts of Hinduism.
Brahm is "Nirguna", i.e. without any
properties whatsoever. (Even the property of a
name, is apparently nothing but an unavoidable
artifact of communication -- same with
the property of "Nirguna"ness.)  It would
be an extremely high degree of poetic license
to show "Brahm" as a man with a flowing beard,
or any kind of "thing" for that matter -- so much
so that it is not done.

Brahm is considered the source of all properties,
and is thus also viewed as the prime motivating
power of the universe.  However, one of the
discussions on Brahm concludes "Aham Brahmsmi"
or "I am Brahm" -- declaring the duality of
motivator/motivated to be a created illusion.

The vaious deities, such as Krishn, Ram,
Shiv, Vishnu ...  exist within such
philosophical frameworks.  For very highly
philosophical individuals, all of
these deities are property-full ("Saguna") aspects
of the same property-less concept.  The masses
are told that even though they may
choose to worship the deity they prefer,
the other deities are also versions of
that same deity they worship, and should
be accorded due respect.

It all works, more or less.  There is
never any question of (too much) strife
within the family because the father worships
Ram but the son has decided to change
religions and worship Krishn instead.

However, all the religions which co-exist
in this way are very old.  The newer
Indian religions of Islam and Christianity
are not accomodated within these frameworks -- perhaps
because there hasn't been enough time, but perhaps
also because it is not clear that they would prefer
to be included thus.

However, the lay Hindus are usually not overly
concerned with which deity they happen
to offer prayers to.  A power of nature
is a power of nature, and that is that.
It does not feel strange to hear a young
Hindu lady, living in areas of high
Christian concentration, offering prayers
to St. Jude asking her wishes to be
fulfilled.  Nor would it feel stange
to hear a young Christian, living amongst
Hindus, deciding the Hindu goddess Durga was
her best bet for asking for fulfillment
of some cherished desire.

There is an exception to this slow intermingling
of religions -- lay Hindus do not, these
days, pray to Islam.  Supposedly Hindu-Muslim
relations were much better earlier, and there
exists religious literature from a few
centuries ago praying both to "Ram" and
"Rahim" in the same sentence.  But today,
there is much bad blood between Hinduism
and Islam, and tolerance is low.

With all this, there are some rules
of behavior which have become common
to all Hinduism.  Not eating the meat
of cows is one of these rules, apparently
very new but very strictly followed.
It is also common to all Hinduism to
consider vegetarianism a virtue.  Rituals
of life are also more or less the same,
differing somewhat by area.  So are
social rules of class and caste (which
are actually somewhat orthogonal to
the religious beliefs and philosophy).

Hindu Fundamentalism is very real, and is
not so much religious as militant.  A
Hindu Fundamentalist is not driven
by religious reasons, but by seeing
the newer religions, particularly Islam,
as a threat.  The assasination of Gandhi
was driven by this same sense of being threatened,
since Gandhi emphasized the tolerant aspects
of Hinduism and preached unity and goodwill
between religions.  This was seen by
the Hindu Fundamentalist community as
aiding and abetting the enemy, hence
the murder.

Modern religious strifes, e.g. the recent
demolishion of an unused mosque (of historical
importance to the Muslims), are
driven by a combination of actually
religious people wanting to go on
with their religious life, the threatened
(and not particularly religious) Hindu
Fundamentalist looking for any kind of a
fundamentalist cause, as well as the
followers of Gandhi and the admirers
of the spirit of tolerance, wanting the sense
of tolerance to prevail.

Finally, Hinduism is very complex, being
the result of lots of philosophical debates
over very long periods of time, as well
as mergings of religions.  The thing to
remember is that when descriptions of
Hinduism conflict, it is not because
one or the other of them is wrong.  It
is because the describers are like the
blind men who touched an elephant
and then were trying to describe the
elephant ("an elephant is like a wall"
from the person who felt the side, "no,
no, like a pillar", from the one who
felt the trunk, "it is a hard, pointed
weapon" from the one who got the
tusk...)

 /Mukesh

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