prasad1
Active member
A good Hindu, by the limited definition of the fringe, must shun ‘alien’ influences – whether of language, dress or events identified with the Western world, including a certain date in the Gregorian calendar identified with going on dates. This definition is then disingenuously sought to be extended into private spheres and personal freedoms. Such a worldview seeks to put the Hindu creative brilliance in jail as it were, a central prison that attempts to shape Hindu uniformity to assume the uniformity of the other, to prove its ultimate superiority by beating ‘rival’ faiths at their own game.
The political class that is the fountainhead of this vocal fringe – just as it is at the helm of the cultural mainstream – must stop to reflect why such a constricted world view will not find expansion of space, and sooner rather than later prove self-defeating. And if the political class pauses long enough, it will find a certain subtlety – the Hindu’s famed capacity to draw in and hold on to soft distinctions that carry multitudes in harmony – and civilisational creativity are far more
definitive markers of India, that is Bharat, than any attempts to redefine it.
The Hindu concerns himself with questions far subtler than the manner of his dressing, his language, his eating preferences – he knows relishing kebabs doesn’t make him some sort of a Hindu kafir.
He doesn’t or wouldn’t shun say the English language to think only in Hindi, but would be deeply interested in learning Sanskrit to read the Upanishads and absorb from the source. Just as he would be wanting to learn French or Latin to collect and assimilate other wisdoms from their sources. Hinduism absorbs from multiple sources; in its search for verities, it stops at nothing. As S Radhakrishnan said, what is built forever is forever building.
Over centuries, Semitic themes and traditions have become our touchstones, our stock-in-trade. God-giving-religion-to-humankind has become a cultural universal. Indian traditions absorb all these and more, and for a direct experience of such assimilative processes, all one has to do is experience the Kumbh. This great tradition reveals best, Hinduism’s containing contradictions and carrying multitudes. Hinduism is grand unification of knowledge, which is fundamentally beyond logic or any configuration of god; it can’t be defined if it can’t be given a form; and, therefore, Vivekananda said that he is a voice without a form, which made him describe the Upanishads as Vedanta, which is the end of knowledge itself, leaving one only with stirrings of an awareness of what needs to be done with that knowledge: to serve humanity as one’s larger self.
The political class that is the fountainhead of this vocal fringe – just as it is at the helm of the cultural mainstream – must stop to reflect why such a constricted world view will not find expansion of space, and sooner rather than later prove self-defeating. And if the political class pauses long enough, it will find a certain subtlety – the Hindu’s famed capacity to draw in and hold on to soft distinctions that carry multitudes in harmony – and civilisational creativity are far more
definitive markers of India, that is Bharat, than any attempts to redefine it.
The Hindu concerns himself with questions far subtler than the manner of his dressing, his language, his eating preferences – he knows relishing kebabs doesn’t make him some sort of a Hindu kafir.
He doesn’t or wouldn’t shun say the English language to think only in Hindi, but would be deeply interested in learning Sanskrit to read the Upanishads and absorb from the source. Just as he would be wanting to learn French or Latin to collect and assimilate other wisdoms from their sources. Hinduism absorbs from multiple sources; in its search for verities, it stops at nothing. As S Radhakrishnan said, what is built forever is forever building.
Over centuries, Semitic themes and traditions have become our touchstones, our stock-in-trade. God-giving-religion-to-humankind has become a cultural universal. Indian traditions absorb all these and more, and for a direct experience of such assimilative processes, all one has to do is experience the Kumbh. This great tradition reveals best, Hinduism’s containing contradictions and carrying multitudes. Hinduism is grand unification of knowledge, which is fundamentally beyond logic or any configuration of god; it can’t be defined if it can’t be given a form; and, therefore, Vivekananda said that he is a voice without a form, which made him describe the Upanishads as Vedanta, which is the end of knowledge itself, leaving one only with stirrings of an awareness of what needs to be done with that knowledge: to serve humanity as one’s larger self.