The Wicked Atheists Perspective: Hindude

Followers of what seems to be the world's coolest religion are never as cool as their faith can make them. I am of course talking about the Hindu faith. A cultural Hindu( as opposed to a religious god-fearing one) I have every right to call it that. Limitless possibilities- 33 million gods and counting, 3000 years of history, no great mass exterminations(except the BJP inspired carnages in modern times), no defined "way of life", no defined holy books, nothing too sacred( not even the Holy Cow), no forbidden fruit, no original sin, no guilt, an "everything goes" attitude. A belief system with no bars, it would seem the ultimate spiritual destination- simply by the oodles of joie de vivre and tolerance the followers seem to exude. Sadly, they rarely do ( which is why an unbeliever like me has to take up computer and screen and compose this hopefully more balanced ode.)

A little background on why my mind started whirring in this direction-( hey even the Constitution of India needs a preamble). I was watching the Colbert Report ( yes I am addicted) last night and came across this rerun of a few minutes of Dr Uma Mysorekar with the Colbert. And felt she made a very poor case defining Hinduism, even if this was self-worshipping(self-declared) Stephen she was talking to.

One festival, Deepawali and she does not think it is commercialized-has she ever BEEN to India during October? Or March or in January or in August? Just one festival? What about Holi and Sankranti and Ugadi and Pongal and Durga Pooja and Navratri and Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi and Karva Chauth and whatever else. And these are very mainstream- in that everyone has heard of them. We are not even going to delve into Kaale Kauvva and Phool dayi and the Nanda Devi mela, which she or more than 895 million of other Hindus do not even know exist. And they are as Christmas as any thing can be. With presents and good rich oily food and sweets and songs and what have you not. And this apart from looking as if she had dug out her sari and shawl from some steamer trunk nor combed her hair.

Uncombed hair notwithstanding , Hinduism is so strange and deep and complex- in its philosophy and amazing absorbtive capacity(I am doing a PhD in management, hence the jargon) that it is impossible to define. Also blanket statements do not work for it. At best they can only represent some small group. Unfortunately, it is small groups only that try hard to impose their way of thinking of the majority.

Take the absorption for instance. Even if you are a very devout practicing Hindu, chances are you have never heard of Golu Devta. ( yup I lived almost under the mountain where the temple is in Ghorakhaal). Nor are likely to. Yet he, along with his 33 million and counting divine compatriots are as much part of the belief system under the umbrella Hinduism. And the reason is rather simple. Hinduism is more porous than a sponge- possibly a tactic developed in the ancient days when tribes attacked one another and tried to enforce their invisible sky fairy beliefs on the vanquished. The vanquished most probably loving their particular sky fairy more just made room for the new sky fairy- after all in a world of uncertainty- rain, disease, drought, famine and what not two invisible sky fairies could do a better job at protection than one. ( Disclaimer: I am only speculating here, I assume this is what happened). So the Buddha became the ninth avatar of Vishnu ( Dasavatharam is not only the latest Kamal Haasan starrer). Of course there is stiff competition between various claiming to be divine people for the tenth spot ( Srimataji, Puttuparthi Sai baba among others), but that is neither here or there. I personally bet that the position will be filled by the one who manages to most successfully dupe the largest number of people and establish something that lasts beyond being a rather scary cult with details of child abuse.

Also there is a process of evolution. New gods and goddesses are born, they change form they are recycled- what else explains the resurgence in the Vedic way of life. There is a great deal of influence from the media- how else could a deity like the Santoshi Maata have evolved- it was a 1975 film that did it. There are deities for every reason, for every season- for every one. Small pox has a goddess, as do a host of other things. They are divine, semi-human, fully non-human, what does it matter? A pantheon as populous as the populace it presides over.

And then there are no prescribed religions texts. The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas , the great Epics are only part of the vast resource of stories, tales, myths that oral lore abounds with. Indeed it is quite possible to spend a lifetime growing up with a set of stories about a very "Hindu" observance and not knowing the other stories another "Hindu" listens to about the same thing.( My husband grew up listening to the vanquishing of Narakasura as the rationale for Deepawali, I with Rama's return to Ayodhyaya. Not that Deepawali is very "Hindu" in itself)

The name Hindu in itself is strange. It just refers to everyone on the other side of the Indus- inspired by people who ventured to the Indian-subcontinent side of the Hindukush. It just means the people of India. Not followers of a particular faith.

Vegetarianism as a tenet is also a misnomer. A majority of Indians are vegetarians, revering the Holy cow- but it is more of a Buddhist and Jain practice that was absorbed into the way of life- rather than being a commandment. The holy cow is not a purely Hindu development either. In fact some say it came about as late as the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries( the not eating of it, not the cow).Clearly beef burgers are not sufficient to un-Hindu-ify one.

The gods, aah a delightful lot. With stories and intrigues that rival the Greek myths in their absolute appeal. I am inclined to think that the Greek myths as also the Hindu legends must have had some idea- cross fertilization( look how close some of the stories are- see how the Alepheus Aretheusa myth is almost exactly like the story of the Chandrabhaga and the sun god). And of course there is the divine dude Krishna- with his antics and affairs, his skullduggery and wisdom, playfulness and seriousness- a lovely heady mix of everything that seems to define life in its several facets. Not at all like the one-dimensional form the standardization seems to reduce him and the others into. Several arms, several heads, eyes, teeth- with their animal mounts- they are the beautiful creations of several imaginations (some extremely wild- now did you really think Ganesha had an elephant head and he rode a mouse).

There is no defined way of life. No taboos, no serious eat this, wear that's- the ones that have crept in are more local custom reified as tradition, rather than religious dictate. The golden rule is there, but it is more a universal human thing, not a particularly Hindu moral.

And there is the "anything goes" attitude. Indeed there is hardly a term for a belief in god, the term Astika refers to a belief in the Vedas, not god. Schools in this tradition have had strong atheist leanings. And it again points to the very large mélange of views, values, faiths that Hinduism includes in itself. Culturally very rich- reflecting of a couple of millennia of the history of the Indian subcontinent and beyond- of its traditions and rituals, of coexistence- at most times peaceful- assimilation and growth. Something which its followers seem not to have inculcated even one bit. Where did the holier-than-thou attitude develop? The sanctimonious – my spirituality is better than one that you have. What made the people as a whole so following of cultural tradition that the very curses of casteism became part of religion- discrimination sactified by divine will. How did assimilation, peaceful coexistence become a militant in your face thing( read up any thing on Hindutva)? Twin banes of low education and poverty are very responsible for that. And just when the very essence of the non-religion passed, so did its meaning.

Along with the teleserial standardization has developed a strangely uneducated kind of faith developing personal superstition into rites and rituals of something which is far more broadminded than the non-humorous proponents are. Something which prevents people from even looking deeper into the rich plurality of what they claim they follow.