The term and concept of Hinduism was coined only in recent times. Otherwise, there was really no such thing. The word “Hindu” essentially comes from the word Sindhu. Anyone who is born in the land of Sindhu is a Hindu. It is a cultural and geographic identity. It is like saying “I am an Indian” but it is a more ancient identity than being an Indian. “Indian” is only about seventy years old, but this is an identity that we have always lived with. Being a Hindu does not mean having a particular belief system. Basically, the whole culture was oriented towards realizing one’s full potential. Whatever you did in this culture was Hindu. There is no particular god or ideology that you can call as the Hindu way of life. You can be a Hindu irrespective of whether you worship a man-god or a woman-god, whether you worship a cow or a tree. If you don’t worship anything you can still be a Hindu. It is only recently and due to external influences that this geographical and cultural identity has attempted to transform itself into a religious identity called Hinduism. Hindu was never an “ism”, and the attempt to organize it as a religion is still not successful because the Hindu way of life which is referred to as Sanatana Dharma or universal law is all-inclusive in nature and does not exclude anything. The Hindu way of life is not an organized belief system but a science of salvation. There is no belief system to the Hindu way of life. Someone believes in God, someone else can choose not to believe in God. Everybody can have their own way of worship and way to salvation. If there are five people in your family, each one can worship the God of their choice, or not worship anything, and still be a good Hindu. So you are a Hindu irrespective of what you believe or don’t believe. At the same time, there was a common line running through all these. In this culture, the only goal in human life is liberation or mukti. Liberation from the very process of life, from everything that you know as limitations and to go beyond that. God is not held as the ultimate thing, God is seen as one of the stepping stones. This is a Godless but a devout nation in the sense that there is no concretized idea of God. When I say Godless, we need to understand that this is the only culture that has given humans the freedom not just to make a choice of Gods, but to create the sort of God that you can relate to. You can worship a rock, a cow, your mother – you can worship whatever you feel like – because this is a culture where we have always known that God is our making. Everywhere else people believe “God created us.” Here we know we created god so we take total freedom to create whatever kind of god we can relate to. People worshiped whatever aspect of life they related to most, and that was perfectly fine. If you explore mysticism in India, it is absolutely incredible and this has been possible because it does not come from a belief system. It happens as a scientific means to explore dimensions beyond the physical. India is not a study, but a phenomenon of possibilities, though a cauldron of multiple cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic soup. It is all held together by a single thread of seeking. The tremendous longing has been nurtured into the peoples of the land, the longing to be free. Free from the very process of life and death. India cannot be studied, at the least one must soak it in, or at best must dissolve. This is the only way. It cannot be studied, western analysis of India is too off the mark, as symptomatic analysis of Bharat will only lead to very grossly misunderstood conclusions of a nation that revels and thrives in a chaos that is organic and exuberant. This most ancient of nations upon this earth is not built upon a set of principles or beliefs or ambitions of its citizenry. It is a nation of seekers, seeking not wealth or wellbeing, but liberation, not of economic or political kind, but the ultimate liberation.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:41:07 +0000
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