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I
A Pluralistic Hinduism
Before we address the
issues concerned, there is a need to appreciate that there is a difference
in which religion is looked at in the Hindu and Christian viewpoint. For
a Hindu, religion is not a mere ritual, but a philosophy of life. We know
that Hinduism does not have a book, a prophet, or a centralised hierarchy.
The correct description of Hinduism is Sanatan Dharma. While Sanatan
has an English equivalent, meaning eternal, translating Dharma as religion
is not proper.
Dharma encompasses religion. Confusion prevails when
Dharma is equated with religion.
Hinduism has a religious
connotation in the Western sense, as well as a philosophical connotation
in the Eastern sense. Hinduism believes in pluralism - that is there are
multiple paths to salvation and one chooses the path that one thinks is
valid for oneself. This is the hallmark of its tolerance. Its ethos is
expressed in the shloka
Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudda Vadanti, which
is best translated as follows: "There is an eternal Truth, but there are
many ways to achieve it." While a Hindu may vigorously argue about the
merit of his/her way to achieve the Truth, he/she will accept that another
person may have a different way which is better situated to that individual.
Hindus consider that the belief that one is in sole possession of the Truth
is an impediment to enlightenment. It is even regarded as being arrogant.
Christianity believes
in exclusivism. It says that Christ in the only Son of God, and was sent
to this world to lead the people to Him. Upon the death of Christ, this
task was given to the Church set up in the name of Christ. The present
inheritors of Christ are the Popes, the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests,
etc. Furthermore, Christianity believes that Christ has commanded his followers
that it is their duty to convert others to their system. Many have interpreted
this command to imply that one could use physical violence as a means to
achieve the objective.
Christianity divides
the world into believers and non-believers, with the former going to heaven,
and the latter to that place where one is eternally barbecued! Moreover,
the believers do not go to heaven on their own merit, but only on the intervention
of Christ. It is the priests in the parish who is supposed to have a line
to Christ. The request for forgiveness of any sin that is committed by
a Christian is to be conveyed through the priest. Under the circumstances,
the priest has a tremendous amount of influence over the laity, since he
is supposed to intercede between man and god.
Shri S Radhakrishnan,
one of the famous philosophers of this century, said:
Christian theology
becomes relevant only for those who share or accept a particular kind of
spiritual experience, and these are tempted to dismiss other experiences
as illusory and other scriptures as imperfect. Hinduism has not betrayed
into this situation on account of its adherence to fact.... When the Hindu
found that different people aimed at and achieved God-realisation in different
ways, he generously recognised them all and justified their place in the
course of history. (The Hindu View of Life, Harper Collins, Delhi
1973, p 16.)
The pluralistic philosophy
of Hinduism has enabled it to absorb and nurture various diverse systems
of beliefs. Many have evolved from this land, to address a particular situation
that developed. In other cases, one or more individual put forward a set
of propositions which is supposed to elevate the person to a higher spiritual
plane. All these philosophies worked within the milieu of the cultural
Hinduism, and never tiled to denigrate the people and their philosophy.
Hinduism has the unique
history of not persecuting the Jews and permitting the Zoroastrians to
maintain their own religion, when both the groups had to flee their original
lands due to religious persecution. Swami Vivekanand has captured the essence
of this record when he said:
Three religions
now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric
- Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They all received tremendous shocks,
and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while
Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of
birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that
remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose
in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations,
but like the waters of the sea-shore in a tremendous earthquake it receded
only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood, a thousand
times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects
were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the
mother faith. (Paper on Hinduism, World Parliament of Religions, September
19, 1893.)
Hinduism is a dynamic philosophy,
ever reforming ever progressing. It has attracted thinking people in all
times. Even those with very little Hindu background have been attracted
to the philosophy. Many who started their study of Hinduism with an intention
of damning it have come to be amongst its greatest admirers. Hinduism encourages
people to think for themselves, and so has developed a scientific temperament.
According to Prof Klaus Klostermaier, a teacher of comparative religions
at a university in Canada, this is what has attracted many thinking people.
He says:
Hinduism will
spread not so much through the gurus and swamis, who attract certain
number of people looking for a new commitment and a quasi-monastic life-style,
but it will spread mainly through the work of intellectuals and writers,
who have found certain Hindu ideas convincing and who identify them with
their personal beliefs. A fair number of leading physicists and biologists
have found parallels between modem science and Hindu ideas. An increasing
number of creative scientists will come from a Hindu background and will
consciously and unconsciously blend their scientific and their religious
ideas. All of us may be already much more Hindu than we think. (A Survey
of Hinduism, p 414. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd, Delhi.)
It is not the intention
of the Hindutvavadis to project that everything in Hinduism is perfect,
and that there are no bad practices. However, these are issues internal
to Hinduism, and it is a tradition of the philosophy to make the necessary
reforms. This has made Hinduism resiliant and is today the oldest surviving
civilisation in the world. Such reforms are effective when they come from
within. External forces can at best be a catalyst. Often, the motive of
the external input could be suspect. Abbe Dubois, a French Roman Catholic
missionary operating in India in the early 1800s, wrote:
"On their arrival
in (India, the missionaries) continue to look at (Indians) with European
eyes, and European prejudices, and to act accordingly; but finding themselves
disappointed in all their attempts to make an impression upon them on the
score of religion or otherwise, they, in their fiery zeal, or rather in
their despair, avenge themselves by lavishing every kind of abuse and insult
not only on their religion, but also on their institutions, both public
and private, sacred and profane." (Letters on the State of Christianity
in India, Asian Educational Services, Delhi, 1995, pp 148-9.)
Hindu history has streams
of examples of people who have done yeoman service to reduce the evils
that have crept in all ages. Yet, many evils do remain. But these have
nothing to do with the philosophy of Hinduism. Other reasons have contributed
to it. The fact that Hinduism is the oldest surviving civilisation must
wake up the detractors to its essential greatness that has been attested
by many modem thinkers. Shri Arnold Toynbee said:
"Today we are
still living in this transitional chapter of world's history but it is
already becoming clear that the chapter which had a western beginning,
will have an Indian ending, if it is not to end in self destruction of
the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the
only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way - Emperor Asoka's and
Mahatma Gandhi's principal of non-violence and Sri Ramakrishna's testimony
of religions." (Foreword to 'India's contribution to world thought and
culture', 1970.)
In a pluralistic Hinduism,
religious minorities need not have any fear. At the same time, there has
to be responsibility of these other religions to respect the Hindu civilisation,
and not to provoke it. Hindus have resisted the attacks that have been
mounted not only on the land, but also the culture. Hindu tolerance should
not be confused with cowardice, lack of self-confidence, or weakness of
faith. The Jews have been grateful to the Hindus for the exemplary way
they were treated in this land.
The so-called
Cochin Jews of what today is the Indian state of Kerala and the Bene Israel
of Maharashtra are remarkable and specially worthy of note because, unlike
Jews in the most other parts of the world, they were allowed to live in
peace and harmony in India for many centuries.... Of particular interest
to students of Jewish history, there is not only the impressive fact that
Indian Jews were never victimised by anti-Semitism but also that there
existed for centuries on the Indian soil in Kerala the rare phenomenon
of a privileged, highly honoured, respected and largely autonomous Jewish
community, and of the Bene Israel whose origins might conceivably go back
to the lost tribes of Israel. ("India's Bene Israel", Shirley Berry Isenberg.)
The Zoroastrians had to
flee their homeland due to religious persecution. They landed on the West
Coast of India, in what is now the state of Gujarat. The Hindu King of
Sanjan, Jadi Rana, allowed them to settle in his land provided they accepted
the following five conditions
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The Parsees' high priest
would have to explain their religion to the King.
-
The Parsees would have
to give up their native Persian language and take on the language of India.
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The women should exchange
their traditional Persian garb with the customary dress of the country.
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The men should lay down
their weapons.
-
The Parsees should hold
their wedding processions only in the dark.
(The Parsees
in India, Eckehard Kulke, Vikas Publishing, Delhi, 1979, p 28.)
The objective of these
conditions is that the Parsees would be socially and culturally assimilated
with the rest of the people, even while being completely free to maintain
and practice their own religion. Shri Kulke goes on to say, "Five years
after their settlement in Sanjan, the Parsees built at this site their
first fire temple (Atash-Behram) on Indian soil, which was to shelter from
then on their holy fire rescued from Iran. With this, the Parsees had a
new religious centre which contributed to their close attachment to their
newly chosen homeland." The holy place of pilgrimage for the Parsees is
in a Hindu land, and not in Iran.
The Christians who came
here in 4th century from Syria due to religious persecution from their
co-religionists, were also the recipients of the tolerance of the Hindus.
Shri E.R.Hambye said,
Being a minority
in a closed milieu and not always well-trained and instructed, it is remarkable
that (the Syrian Christians) kept the faith together with their social
status. (The Syrian Christians in India, Clergy Monthly, vol 16,
nr 10, 1952, p 386.)
This was possible because
the Syrian Christians reciprocated the kindness shown to them by the Hindus.
Shri Duncan B Forrester said,
The Syrian
Christians, like the Jews of Cochin and the Bene Israel of Bombay, survived
and indeed flourished because they accepted the social system within which
they found themselves and observed its norms. (Caste and Christianity:
Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India,
London, Curzon Press, 1979, p 100.)
Shri S Radhakrishnan
said,
The famous Kottayam
plates of Sthanuravi (ninth century AD) and the Cochin plates of Vijayaragadeva
bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the Hindu kings not only tolerated
Christianity but granted special concessions to the professors of that
faith. (The Hindu View of life, Harper Collins, Delhi 1973, p 41.)
On the other hand, Christianity
has not accepted other religions within its midst except on its own terms.
In the aftermath of the Satanic Verses controversy, Shri Clifford Longley,
who advises Prince Charles of the United Kingdom on Islam, said, "The very
presence of Muslims in Britain can only he on terms which are acceptable
to the majority." He also said, "Every other religious minority in Britain
has eventually found that the only way of securing its position is by compromise."
(The Times, London, July 8, 1989.)
Prof. Imtiaz Ahmad,
of Jawharlal Nehru University, explains the way minorities should be accommodative.
He says,
While members
of all the minority groups must have a collective right to preserve and
practice their own culture and religion, they must also acquaint themselves
with and show respect to the culture and traditions of the majority.....
Group rights cannot prejudice the enjoyment by all persons of universal
human rights and fundamental freedoms. Group rights cannot also be used
to engage in racial or ethnic discrimination or incitement to hatred of
other groups. Nor can group rights be used to challenge the sovereign equality,
territorial integrity and political independence of States. (Limit to group
claims, The Hindu, Nov 27, 1996.)
The Hindus have more than
adequately established that they will bend over backwards to accommodate
reasonable requests of other religions. The Hindus are justly proud of
this record, which cannot by matched by another other surviving religions
or philosophies. In contrast, the record of Christianity in this respect
is dismal, to say the least. Even when compromises were offered, it is
only recently that Christians accepted non-Christians amongst their midst.
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