Confused Hindus

We Hindus have very weird notions about our own way of life. I shall say we are more confused than we think we are. When people ask us about our religion, we say we are Hindus. It’s quite strange because Puran-Itihaas or Veda doesn’t have nomenclature called Hindu. What we follow is Sanatan Dharma. And, it’s more of way of life than religion. The definition of Dharma is way different than the myopic way the term religion is defined in English or in western world. The word religion is more related to Abrahamic religion and to define our way of lie as ‘religion’ is something like confining the vast and elaborately ornate nature of Sanatan Dharma into a narrow and fanatic mindset. But it seems that living in the world designed by westerners and for westerners, we have to define ourselves as Hindus.

Going into more deep self-defining traits, we can either say that we are more ‘spiritualistic’ Hindu in philosophy i.e. absolutely non-political and non-confrontational or otherwise, try to project the nature of Hinduism as cohesive political unit more akin to deal with the contemporary challenges faced by Hinduism.

Both of the above mentioned ways are correct in certain way. Sanatan Dharma is omnibus of host of the rituals, practices, festivals across the length and breadth of Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia.

But at the same time we are under attack from the Abrahamic religion for last thousand years. And, it doesn’t help much in the modern age as their expansion continue albeit in more sophisticated way. If we want to defend ourselves from getting extinct then we need to figure out who we are and what we stand for. Are we spiritualistic and don’t actually need to defend ourselves actively? Or we need to form cohesive political unit (which we failed to form in last thousand years !) and be more aggressive about defining out culture ?

General populace is wary to define themselves as a Hindu in political sense because to do so immediately put you in the comparison with Talibans. We in India follow extremely weird form of secularism. Actually, we as Sanatan Dharmis are secular by nature but in the contemporary period secularism stands more for minority appeasement and that too at the cost of weakening of our own culture.

People who say that they are spiritualistic know very little about Sanatan Dharma. What ever they know is mostly fed to them through communists and pseudo westerner’s beaks. Obviously, what is fed to us under the guise of modernism is totally crap and biased. It’s pity that we lost the touch to Sanskrit and there by, distanced ourselves from our literature. Without the proper knowledge, these people either out rightly reject and ridicule our heritage and traditions as too ‘conservative and as ‘out of time’ or be defensive about it. They basically like to cover their timidity and pitiable brains by bull shitting about the ‘liberal’ and ‘encompassing’ nature of Sanatan Dharma. The passivity with which they detach themselves from furthering the development of Dharma is surely recipe for degradation and decay

Unfortunately, the conservative Hindu nationalist suffer from the same dementia. Their gung-ho attitude towards solving the problems faced by Hinduism borderlines the day-dreaming. The root cause is lack of knowledge too. We don’t learn the real history in our class. We can’t read out classic texts. For that we depend on English interpretations penned by a foreigner. These people stick to the traditions with literal meaning without understanding the logic and scientific base behind it. When in doubt, rather than finding the truth, these people are content in exhorting the greatness of our ancestors. There by not only insulting the greatness of our heritage but they basically seal the doors for any necessary development. Their constant efforts to fit the current volatile situation in the historical format, makes it harder for them to rejuvenate themselves for the new challenges by shaking off the burden of illustrious past.

I guess, being spiritualistic or being combative can’t be different spectrums of Hinduism. It has to be two sides of the same coin. We need knowledge about our history as well as philosophy in order to gain the strength from within. We don’t need to echo our ancestors , rather, we need to understand, re-interpret and revise the traditions according to the contemporary period. If we are keeping up with the changing times then we don’t need to be defensive about it. Our ancestors were quite advanced and most of the traditions have strong logical base. We need to be innovators in every possible sense rather than imitators.

But without such cohesive efforts that is, by either showing cockiness in ridiculing our culture or being too stubborn in regards to our traditions, our culture is surely going to decay slowly. We were saved from Islamic as well as Christian conquest by the combination of Bhakti and Shakti movements in the medieval period. If we don’t further our struggle in the modern times then there is no second chance in the nature.