hinduwoman

To bring up Savarkar again, he pointed out that all nations are based on a certain degree of exclusiveness --- the Others are not us.
My personal belief is that nationalism is tribalism writ large, and in Indian context it is casteism in a larger context. Not caste precisely but castes do share many of the features of a nation --- exclusive membership, but new blood allowed under special dispension, endogamy, common cultural traits, common gods, common history, common myth of origin.


Hinduttva as a force I believe would disappear when Hinduism is no longer seen as being beseiged by Islam and Christianity.

Gandhi does have valid achievements, but the problem is what is morality exactly? ahimsa is moral, but (Savarkar again) in certain circumstances it is positively immoral.

Amit Misra

victorialis wrote:
In the interest of scholarship, however, it becomes important to define what one is talking about. It then becomes necessary to say whether one is treating humans in the aggregate, and if so, as an aggregate defined by certain boundaries (e.g. atheists / tories / hindus); or whether one is discussing a single person (e.g. Gandhi as a political figure). This is one of the constraints of scholarship: to negotiate between the Scylla of reductionism and the Charybdis of over-generalisation.
Scholarship, of course, is not the be-all and end-all of human activity. Only, it should not come under the thrall of politics if it has to retain any of its self-respect. Scholarly attempts at categotrization of "hindus" should be welcome rather than suspect. Let has have the people who study "hindus" come out with opinions, so that those of umbrella organisations claiming to speak for "hindus" can be evaluated. The scholarly opinion might reasonably be expected to be free from the biases that motivate political activity to appropriate phenomena such as "living hinduism" (hinduwoman's first post).
This is all the more urgent, since political "hindus" have, of late, declared a Goebbelsian war on scholarship-- in the sciences as well as humanities--that needs to be fought on all fronts.

hinduwoman

Victorialis, apropos our discussion of modes of relgious worship: I often feel that Hindu modes of worship produce more intense emotional response. This is perhaps why atheism is less prevelant in Hinduism, and why deconverted atheists still retain ties with it.

For example I find hymns like these very moving: (free translatuions) ,

I am dyed in the colour of my love, Rana*
I am dyed in the colour of my love.
I do not care what you think,
I do not care what anyone says
I will follow my beloved
Wherever he goes
I am dark for my lover is dark
I have left hearth and home for his sake
I am dyed Rana, in the colour of my love.

*Rana --- poetess' husband and king.

I have not stolen any butter ma,
The other women are lying.
They are all jealous of you and me.
The older boys are bullies they put butter on my mouth
See how small I am,
How can I climb so high?
I am a good boy mother
I have not stolen any butter.
Then did Yosada* laugh and taking the Omnipotent on her lap
Smother Him with kisses.

Yosada --- foster mother of Krishna.


Or the loss when the daughter is lost finally in the deity:

Whom have you brought home my husband,
Whom have you brought back?
My Uma lisped when she tried to talk
She stumbled clutching my robe
My darling is soft and golden
This woman stands ten armed , beweaponed
At her tread the earth shakes,
The gods kneel before her offering homage
If she is my daughter why is she so terrible?


I might be prejudiced but I don't think Abrahamic religions have such deeply intimate relationship with their gods.

victorialis

I am sorry for taking so long to reply. This is a very enjoyable conversation and have been thinking about it for these several days I've been away.

hinduwoman, the hymns you posted reminded me of my favorite judeo-christian scripture: the Song of Solomon (http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/B...f_Solomon.html). I am unaware of anything even remotely similar in other Judaic writings or in the Quran. The sacred feminine is largely a matter of silence in the Judaic tradition, and if Islam includes a sacred feminine, I haven't detected it.

There have been Christian mystics who approach this kind of devotion/adoration. I'm thinking in particular of Julian of Norwich, a contemplative nun who proposed an image of Jesus as Mother. But she's a far cry from mainstream Christianity.

It's interesting that Bible-studying Christians of my acquaintance have had very little to say about the Song of Solomon (also known as the Song of Songs). Those I've asked have confined themselves to stating that the SoS is merely an extended metaphor for the union of Christ with his Church: they don't want to hear what other meanings might be found in it. Such reticence supports your contention that Abrahamics don't have deeply intimate relationships with their gods. There's a little more to the story, but I think you're still on target with that idea.

The emotional intensity of some Christian worship is easily underestimated if you've not been in the same room with it. Some churches are quite dull -- not all of them. The exceptions stand in stark contrast to the sort of cool, contained social atmosphere that obtains in secular society.

Experienced against the background of a skeptical/cynical rationalist culture, the collision of emotion with the sacred is rather explosive in its effect upon susceptible persons. Growing up, I watched literally hundreds of schoolmates, friends and neighbors go through this. Most of them came out the other end of the experience in something like 18 months. Some never emerged.

Such a religious experience, when genuine and not simulated, is invasive in every way -- a personal crisis -- and that's as it should be. One should accept no less. For that reason, I understand why many new Christians happily obey when their church tells them they need constant, close spiritual supervision; they're being subtly encouraged to fear being alone with their god any more than they must (without proper training, at least). Who knows what might happen?

This closely supervised and orchestrated spirituality -- which I must admit I find bizarre -- makes the whole affair look rather packaged and bureaucratic, like a group holiday, and not very personal or authentic. Yet, from the vantage point of a guest in various churches (where I lived, it was impossible to avoid being invited) and living/working in communities with heavy concentrations of believers, I have observed some quite extraordinary behaviour in people of all ages and all walks of life. These people would not break so consistently with the broader social norms without some motivation. Whether the motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic, I cannot say.

It is a unique sensation to be completely surrounded by such strange behaviour, such raw, studied holiness, in the midst of a modern city of ten million people, and to be aware that one is not participating, is not affected, and is never going to be affected. It's like being in a movie, and being the only one who knows it's a movie.

Some congregations I've visited go to such extremes of ecstatic behaviour that the individual believer would probably not be willing to risk engaging in certain standard practices outside the church (e.g.: handling poisonous snakes, or spontaneously falling down on the ground). But as supervised group experiences, these practices pass as both safe and sacred.

The many personal experiences that have been recounted to me, all seem to conform to a prescribed pattern. I expect that those experiences which do not conform to the pattern remain private. Where I lived, private ecstasy was heavily frowned upon as being either delusion or the sin of pride.... which is probably why there have not been more Julians. I think she spent her life immured in a cell.

And I think your conclusion about Abrahamic spiritual intimacy is quite close to the truth of the matter, as regards Christianity -- because however many individual exceptions there may be, they are never mainstreamed. Islam does not seem to differ much from this, except in one significant respect: its ecstatics are more likely to be violent than reclusive. Judaism seems to have more of an honored place for the emotions in its scheme of things, but Judaic mysticism is so vast in scope, we could almost make up our own in the sea of it.

hinduwoman

A Hindu scholar argued that Christian God is violent and cruel, and that is why a devout Christian is called 'god-fearing' instead of god-loving. Good point, I think!
In Christianity and Islam God is always an authority figure. In Hinduism I find the gods to be more human and under the authority of humans. For example, in one temple (I forgot where) the temple of child Krishna had a hole in its roof. Apparently the head priest was a very strict person who would not let the child Krishna out of his sanctum. So one day when he was away the god came out and played with neighbourhood children. But the priest caught him and spanked him. Krishna threw a tantrum and that is how the roof got a hole. But apparently he was too afraid of the priest to do anything to him.
In one version when Shiva came to be married to Parvati, Parvati's mother was deeply shocked at finding a son-in-law who is halfnaked, wearing snakes and escorted by drunkards. So she chased him away wielding a broom refusing to let the marriage ceremony begin. The thought of the LORD running hell-for-leather with an enraged mother in law in hot pursuit beating him with a broom makes a mockery of the concept of Godhead, but it makes the God more accessible and understandable to his worshippers. That is why missionaries had such a hard time converting Hindus --- who wants to leave such gods for a bad-tempered one?
Again personal bias maybe, but if I have to accept a god then it is better to have gods that are afraid of human beings than someone who sends down floods and plagues.

and that is how the biography, real or made-up, of Hindu saints read. Each of them becomes insane in their devotion and left off normal life.

victorialis

hinduwoman, you're right about the perception of the Judeo-Christian god. He is an authority figure; I suspect he was designed that way on purpose, at a specific point in the human timeline, to modify the concept of deity and compensate for the ambiguity inherent in dharma and tao.

IMO, western peoples found this ambiguity and elusiveness unbearable, and therefore propounded their own god-concept to eliminate existential tension. The "one God" (Jehovah or Allah) became a specific and exclusive locus of justice, like a tribal elder or a local warlord. In order to serve that purpose satisfactorily, the god had to be of a nature far removed from the human: he had to be perfect, awesome, incorruptible, and singular.

Under the auspices of such a god, whatever parts of life are perceived as irreconcilable and/or unjust can be subsumed into the realm of divine mystery, thus relieving humans of any final responsibility for understanding or resolving such matters. That's the nature of a Christian (not Jewish) relationship with the Old-Testament Jehovah, and AFAIK, Allah is received pretty much the same way. Allah and Jehovah are both designed as ultimate authorities/arbiters, absolute lawgivers and long-term world-protectors. The Judaic tradition has found a more active role for human intellect with regard to the interpretation of the given laws, but the Muslim, Jew and Christian all share the obligation of obedience/submission to an authoritarian god.

It's quite telling, with regard to the success of Christianity, that so much of historical Christian experience reflects the god of the Old Testament -- the sender of floods and plagues you've referred to, the one who says "Vengeance is mine."

It's telling because for Christians, the New Testament is supposed to have superseded the paradigm of the Old Testament. The old covenant was the Law (the will of god, to be obeyed); the new covenant, represented by the appearance of Christ ("the only begotten son of God") was supposed to change the relationship between humans and scary old Jehovah, whose laws were just too tough for people to obey as they should.

The new covenant was supposed to effect a reconciliation that would enable humans to experience the god of love instead of the god of vengeance: "He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins" (1 John 4:10, NASB). Those sins were failures of obedience, and the propitiation was supposed to serve as Jehovah's blanket forgiveness of inevitable sin -- Jehovah's remission of vengeance.

The mystery of this propitiation (in which the god, not the worshipper, offers the sacrifice) and the possibilities that it opens up have not penetrated collective Christian consciousness very deeply these 2K years. History shows quite clearly that western consciousness still bears the deep imprint of the old god of vengeance. I suggest the following historical explanation.

When Christianity became the state religion of the Romans, its character was permanently changed (some say: wrecked). You can see how easily the god of vengeance could retain a secure place in a religion that was specifically adapted to be conferred wholesale upon the Roman legions by the Emperor Constantine. "Christian soldiers," as the old hymn goes, have been "marching off to war" ever since.

This continual marching off to war could be interpreted as the best imaginable evidence that Christianity was never meant to be a mass religion. War, one might think, could not possibly have less to do with Christ.

But not all Christians want to shoulder the burden of interpretation when confronted with some of Jesus' statements -- like "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34, NASB) Some Christians would rather be told what such things properly mean, and let the responsibility rest with someone other than themselves. The abrahamic tradition of obedience/submission fully supports this tendency -- as no major current of eastern thought ever would.

By their very nature, the teachings of Jesus do not lend themselves to mass application; they are designed for individuals, and two millennia later, they only work for individuals. They are a natural outgrowth of the western mystery tradition. But left in that form (i.e., had they not been co-opted by Rome and popularized by Paul), they would probably have been lost completely, like the other mystery religions in the region.

hinduwoman

Maybe this authority figure is also responsible for a rigid scripture that cannot be changed. If God changes his rules every now and then then the Church loses its power base.
But in Hinduism Dharma is a fluid concept. It had no organized church and so no one felt impelled to insist on one unalterable scripture. On the contrary, it is held that different yugas(ages) have different scriptures send down, because laws must change to suit new circumstances.

organized Church vs a loose flexible arrangement.

victorialis

The problem is that any scripture is necessarily received wisdom. Monotheism cannot escape this condition by being monotheistic.

Judaism has no problem with this. Active scriptural scholarship is at the heart of Judaism: the practice of studying, interpreting and arguing scripture is honoured as both fountainhead and bulwark of Judaic culture. The Law is a living thing, for them, a thing in which they participate; it rests upon the changeless idea that "the Lord our God is One." This is a lot closer to the Hindu model than the Christian approach; there are many strands of Judaism.

Presumably the same processes occur in the madrasa that occur in the shul: experts interpret the scriptures for contemporary application in the community.

Among Christians (and apparently now also among fundamentalist Muslims), it's always been the worshippers, not the god, who are most interested in the concept of an unchanging scripture -- therein lies the safety of an extremely simple relationship to godhead.

Yet, among Christians, it is the worshippers themselves who continually intervene in the matter by dividing and multiplying the material. The New Covenant makes this inevitable by liberating the believer from obligation to the Law (and to priests). The believer then has to make his/her own interpretation, and will eventually do so, deliberately or otherwise, consciously or not.

It was Christian priests, and not the separate, objectified Jehovah (the God beyond us, the God who we are not), who decided in the first place which books belonged in the bible and which would be excluded. Hence, the big flap over the Dead Sea Scrolls. If these editorial priests were not also worshippers, neither were they the god -- which was the whole point of the Christians' Protestant Reformation. I gather that the same idea was behind the differentiation of Shia and Sunni Muslims -- the rejection of priests as intercessors, as necesary middlemen.

It is therefore profoundly ironic that after all the blood and turmoil it took to liberate Christian Protestants from being "priest-ridden," some descendants of these Protestants now wish to insist that their Bible is an unchanged document direct from the One God. Without centuries of priests to preserve, translate, interpret and edit the material, there would certainly be no bible for them to study today -- or to revise and retranslate yet again for distribution to people who "need saving."

At the first bible website listed on my google search (www.gospelcom.net), there are 16 different searchable versions of the bible in english alone. The same site also offers facilities for translation into 28 additional languages. To my mind, that website alone therefore offers 448 distinct bibles.

The bible has never been a static document. It is as dynamic and fluid as the scriptures of other traditions. I can't imagine how the quran and hadith could have escaped the same reality, and I don't see this as a weakness; there are as many worlds, as many realities (and as many gods), as there are viewpoints, and they all demonstrably exist within a unity.

The unity is as perceptible as the individual wishes it to be. We see what we expect to see, what we're capable of seeing. When I read the Bhagavad Gita in english, how much nuance am I missing? I can't know; I have to stipulate that some of the content may be lost to me. That still leaves a stunning abundance of content to be enjoyed from a competent translation.

I hope I am not boring you too much. I'm trying to give general background for why the popular abrahamic sociological/religious mindset finds Hinduism so baffling, and doesn't always regard it as religion, but "a way of life."

Hinduism is perhaps too mature and inclusive for a safety-minded believer in a culture that fears "God the Father." Multiplicity is indisputably part of the Creation, and the coexistence of multiplicity with unity does not sit comfortably with western ideas of sin, perfectability and a simple linear view of time.

Hinduism makes no attempt at mass uniformity -- none at all -- while popular Christianity seems interested, ultimately, in little else. Liberation, it seems, is a bit horrifying to popular Christianity. With uniformity as its governing idea (everyone being remade in the image of Christ), popular Christianity is bound to find Hinduism quite mind-boggling.

How could so much variety be righteous? Both Christian and Muslim might ask: Is not the path of righteousness much too narrow for that?

Maybe so. And maybe the narrow path of righteousness, like human beings, is also multiple.

hinduwoman

Christianity and Islam is basically simplistic. But the more devout want to make them even more simplistic and so periodically go into bouts of returning to the roots, to 'pure' Islam or Christianity --- that causes hell lot of trouble. Because of course what is 'pure' anyway?

The very fact that in spite of being monotheists both religions split up into so many various groups with each group claming the others are not muslims/ Christians should tell them that pluralism is inevitable.

hinduwoman

Christian missionaries are a disturbed bunch, cannot leave others alone --- http://www.bethanynorth.com/profiles...e/30hindu.html
The very fabric of India and of Hinduism is entwined with powers that withstand the Truth and it is time they bow the knee to the Lord Jesus!


Definitely hysteria and fear.