The Disambiguation of Hinduism – 1

We count Hinduism as one of the major religions of the World. I call myself a Hindu, millions call themselves Hindus. But is it like that? What is Hinduism? The Oxford dictionary reads Hinduism as ”a major religious and cultural tradition of the Indian subcontinent, including belief in reincarnation and the worship of a large number of gods and goddesses.” None of the religious texts that we have contain the word Hindu in them. The so called Hinduism is a way of life. It does not contain any word like other religion. We do not have any word like Christian words of “non – believer and pagan” or the Islamic word “Kafir”. The word for religion which we use today is “Dharma”. Irrespective of the way we use it now, the in real sense means what is good, what is just and “Adharma” means wrong – doings, evil, and the preserver of the earth – Vishnu reincarnates himself so that Dharma can triumph over Adharma. Now how did it get mixed with religion, has to be researched. The compilation of the various customs and traditions that we now call Hinduism never considered another religion. Neither there was something like the Crusades, Holocaust nor do have the concept of “Jihad”. Maybe that is the reason we were ruled over by others for more than 2500 years. Starting with the Greeks, then by the Muslims conquerors and then by the British. It would have really have helped had we got something like “Jihad”. However that is what the striking difference between Hinduism and other religions. We embrace everybody. We do not forcibly convert anybody to our religion or for that matter we even do not know how to convert from someone from some other faith to Hinduism. However I have no idea why some of our temples put up a board on their entrances “Only Hindus allowed inside the temple premises”. Sometimes I wonder how they check it.

The word Hindu came from “Sindhu” – the Indus River which the poor chaps from Macedonia who came with Alexander to conquer the World could not pronounce properly. For them it was Indus and so the place “Indica” and the people they met after it “Hindus”. It wasn’t even used up untill the Muslim conquerors came to India in 7 centuries after the birth of Christ. The people beyond the great river Sindhu were vaguely following a similar kind of practice for their day to day life. This is what Hinduism is. It is a way of living life, the way to conduct oneself. There is no Hindu equivalent of Bible or Quran; however we have texts which are known as the Vedas, Upanishads, Shastras, and Puranas and epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The count of these texts will go to thousands. These books lay down guidelines for all aspects of leading life in “Dharma”. They give the detailed directives of what a son, daughter, husband, wife or a ruler should or should not do. They explain how to live a life in a healthy way and a way that is good for the society as a whole; they even teach how to have sex. Now all these were based on scientific facts, if we take each directive and analyze there is scientific (modern science) principle behind each of them. I will explain some of these in some other blog.