My intent of writing this blog is not for the traditional scholar who studies the texts for much of his childhood and youth. This is meant to be a chat with my now grown-up kids. And I was quick to realize that they are really not interested in it. At least not yet. But there will come a time to understand it.
Let me start by saying that there is no such thing as "Hinduism". It is a convenient term coined by British colonial missionaries in the early 19th century to identify Indians who were neither Christian nor Muslim. A term for the "others". And it was the British colonials who perpetuated "Hinduism" as a religion.
Not surprisingly, even most Hindu believe that it is a religion.
Things are changing though. Whether the Modi government is to be credited for this resurgence is debatable, as his government has, unlike previous governments, only stopped damaging Hindu interests, whereas all previous governments deliberately made minority appeasement a policy guideline. My own reason is that the Hindu of this ancient land have been under constant attack. And I don't mean in the history of this land for the past thousand years. It has been under systematic attack by a large number of forces inimical to India's long term interests, including many that are home grown though funded from overseas. In fact, the fastest rising business in India is Organized Disruption, posing as a political uprising or even a Citizens Movement.
My own interest in the topic came about quite by chance, when I watched a professor of Elon University in the USA give a lecture on Hinduism to a forum on World Religions. This was on YouTube, of course!
What he had to say about my faith fascinated me, just as he struggled for the right words to describe it. In fact, it was his struggle to articulate the tenets of a "foreign faith" to an audience, probably largely ignorant of anything outside of Christianity, is what really caught my imagination. And I knew then, that I had to find the truth for myself.
I did what most technically qualified but ignorant Hindu do in this day and age. I googled "Hinduism". And Wikipedia helped me understand that Hinduism is the world's "third largest religion".
What does the records of colonial Britain reveal? This is best highlighted by the entry against the subject "Hinduism" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
New research has also revealed a method of obtaining precise dating of the texts using internal evidence within the texts themselves. For example, an interesting and almost casual conversation between a sage and a king in the Itihasa ["history"] text of the Mahabharata. The conversation itself took place just before the great war of Kurukshetra:
Now here's the fact. The Arundhati and Vashistha did not refer to the Sage and his wife, it referred to the constellation known as Saptarsi (Seven Sages, or the Big Dipper, Great Bear), specifically the twin stars Mizar and Alcor. Today, and with reference to the celestial meridian, Mizar is definitely ahead of Alcor, though most people won't even realize that the star is really a twin. Using sophisticated astronomical software, researchers were able to bracket the period in which such a sighting was possible. The dates we between 11091 BCE and 4508 BCE. So whatever the colonial or Western Indology estimates were for this "epic" (or "mythology" as the West prefers), the war of the Mahabharata would have occurred sometime between these two years. In fact, the war happened (as per the prevalent Gregorian calendar) in Oct, 5561 BCE. And it made extensive use of massed armies with chariots, horses and even elephants. But more on this later.
I was convinced by this time that the colonial narratives, and the works of Western Indologists based on colonial narratives, were almost invariably wrong. In fact, they were party to a systematic attempt by the colonials to downplay and even deliberately misrepresent everything about the ancient Indian civilization and its people "savage, primitive and incapable of civilization". Maybe the colonials, groomed in the narratives of their time, had reason to misrepresent India and the Hindu in particular. After all, it would have been difficult to justify the colonization of a country that was in fact a far more advanced and ancient civilization and the roots of all humanity. But it doesn't reveal why the bias against the Hindu civilization continues.
What I have found after months of research is that the conspiracy to downplay the antiquity of the Hindu civilization and the profundity of its ancient philosophy and texts was far wider than I had initially expected. Many involved were our own countrymen, Indians. In fact, it demolishes the carefully constructed image of almost all the "founding fathers", the various stakeholders of the freedom movement, and the politics of this country for nearly 70 years after independence.
I needed to not only understand "Hinduism", I would also need to simultaneously unravel the threads of history. The quantum of misrepresentations and its insidious character was truly astounding.
Let me start by saying that there is no such thing as "Hinduism". It is a convenient term coined by British colonial missionaries in the early 19th century to identify Indians who were neither Christian nor Muslim. A term for the "others". And it was the British colonials who perpetuated "Hinduism" as a religion.
Not surprisingly, even most Hindu believe that it is a religion.
Things are changing though. Whether the Modi government is to be credited for this resurgence is debatable, as his government has, unlike previous governments, only stopped damaging Hindu interests, whereas all previous governments deliberately made minority appeasement a policy guideline. My own reason is that the Hindu of this ancient land have been under constant attack. And I don't mean in the history of this land for the past thousand years. It has been under systematic attack by a large number of forces inimical to India's long term interests, including many that are home grown though funded from overseas. In fact, the fastest rising business in India is Organized Disruption, posing as a political uprising or even a Citizens Movement.
My own interest in the topic came about quite by chance, when I watched a professor of Elon University in the USA give a lecture on Hinduism to a forum on World Religions. This was on YouTube, of course!
What he had to say about my faith fascinated me, just as he struggled for the right words to describe it. In fact, it was his struggle to articulate the tenets of a "foreign faith" to an audience, probably largely ignorant of anything outside of Christianity, is what really caught my imagination. And I knew then, that I had to find the truth for myself.
I did what most technically qualified but ignorant Hindu do in this day and age. I googled "Hinduism". And Wikipedia helped me understand that Hinduism is the world's "third largest religion".
It is an Indian religion or dharma, or way of life, widely practiced in the Indian subcontinent and parts of Southeast Asia. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some practitioners and scholars refer to it as Sanatana Dharma, "the eternal tradition", or the "eternal way", beyond human history.Here the description "religion or dharma", appears to suggest that religion and dharma are essentially the same thing, which I discovered is wrong. "Way of life" is also widely used, albeit to let people know that it is not a religion but a "way of life"! And this is reasonable, though not accurate. I also liked the bias in the assertion that Hinduism has been merely "called the oldest religion", not "is the oldest" religion, the mother philosophy that contributed to the development of all of the worlds great religions. Even "Sanatana Dharma" is not merely a scholarly way to refer to Hinduism, it is the term used by several traditions of the Hindu, though not universally. And calling Sanatana Dharma "the eternal tradition", or "the eternal way" is reasonable as, like gravity, it derives from an abstraction of some universally discernable principles, though using the phrase "beyond human history" does make one raise an eyebrow and convey an entirely wrong impression of something pre-historic, as the idea of history as a record is a western concept. Indian traditions, though far older than any the world has known, never had a system of recording history merely as a record. Any record, even an historical record, had to have immediate utility. In fact, immediate and eternal utility.
Scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion of synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no founder. This "Hindu synthesis" started to develop between 500 BCE and 300 BCE, after the end of the Vedic period (1500 to 500 BCE), and flourished in the medieval period, with the decline of Buddhism in India.The first sentence is largely true. Then the description immediately attempts to mitigate its antiquity by suggesting a "synthesis" as well as the western historical timeline construct of "periods" of time. This attempt to date the texts has been ongoing since the early colonial period, when it was blasphemy to suggest dates in antiquity older than the Biblical year of creation, namely 4004 BCE, as the most famous case of Brydone's Lava in the late 18th century highlights.
Patrick Brydone (1773) observing lava flows from Etna was told by a local historian that it took about 2000 years for the lava to be covered by a layer of soil. In digging a pit 7 layers of lava flows were discovered putting Etna's age at 14000 years.
What does the records of colonial Britain reveal? This is best highlighted by the entry against the subject "Hinduism" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Hinduism, major world religion originating on the Indian subcontinent and comprising several and varied systems of philosophy, belief, and ritual. Although the name Hinduism is relatively new, having been coined by British writers in the first decades of the 19th century, it refers to a rich cumulative tradition of texts and practices, some of which date to the 2nd millennium BCE or possibly earlier. If the Indus valley civilization (3rd–2nd millennium BCE) was the earliest source of these traditions, as some scholars hold, then Hinduism is the oldest living religion on Earth. Its many sacred texts in Sanskrit and vernacular languages served as a vehicle for spreading the religion to other parts of the world, though ritual and the visual and performing arts also played a significant role in its transmission. From about the 4th century CE, Hinduism had a dominant presence in Southeast Asia, one that would last for more than 1,000 years.The descriptions of "Hinduism" in the Encyclopedia Britannica have been changing over time. The colonial narrative most dominant was to suggest that "Hinduism" did not originate in India but was brought by "Aryan invaders" [Aryan Invasion Theory], along with horse, chariots and the "Vedic religion", that "was eventually superseded by Hinduism" [Encyclopedia Britannica]. This narrative has been modified almost continuously since as new evidence killed off any possibility of an invasion. The latest evidence from the field of genetics could suggest that migrations did happen, but in a Westward direction, and out of India, after the settlements on the Indus River destabilized at the end of the last Ice Age [11,000 BCE], one that gave rise to all of the worlds great known civilizations.
New research has also revealed a method of obtaining precise dating of the texts using internal evidence within the texts themselves. For example, an interesting and almost casual conversation between a sage and a king in the Itihasa ["history"] text of the Mahabharata. The conversation itself took place just before the great war of Kurukshetra:
That Arundati is walking ahead of Vashishta indicates that this is a very inauspicious time for the Kuru dynasty. [Vyasa to Dhritarastra in Mahabharata]This was the great Sage Vyasa in a conversation with the Kuru King Dhritarastra, just before the war. And you would be tempted to think that this is innocent enough, so why would it be significant? After all, in the culture of the time, the wife usually walks abreast or even a few paces behind the husband, but the occasional breach of culture would hardly merit a thought?
Now here's the fact. The Arundhati and Vashistha did not refer to the Sage and his wife, it referred to the constellation known as Saptarsi (Seven Sages, or the Big Dipper, Great Bear), specifically the twin stars Mizar and Alcor. Today, and with reference to the celestial meridian, Mizar is definitely ahead of Alcor, though most people won't even realize that the star is really a twin. Using sophisticated astronomical software, researchers were able to bracket the period in which such a sighting was possible. The dates we between 11091 BCE and 4508 BCE. So whatever the colonial or Western Indology estimates were for this "epic" (or "mythology" as the West prefers), the war of the Mahabharata would have occurred sometime between these two years. In fact, the war happened (as per the prevalent Gregorian calendar) in Oct, 5561 BCE. And it made extensive use of massed armies with chariots, horses and even elephants. But more on this later.
I was convinced by this time that the colonial narratives, and the works of Western Indologists based on colonial narratives, were almost invariably wrong. In fact, they were party to a systematic attempt by the colonials to downplay and even deliberately misrepresent everything about the ancient Indian civilization and its people "savage, primitive and incapable of civilization". Maybe the colonials, groomed in the narratives of their time, had reason to misrepresent India and the Hindu in particular. After all, it would have been difficult to justify the colonization of a country that was in fact a far more advanced and ancient civilization and the roots of all humanity. But it doesn't reveal why the bias against the Hindu civilization continues.
What I have found after months of research is that the conspiracy to downplay the antiquity of the Hindu civilization and the profundity of its ancient philosophy and texts was far wider than I had initially expected. Many involved were our own countrymen, Indians. In fact, it demolishes the carefully constructed image of almost all the "founding fathers", the various stakeholders of the freedom movement, and the politics of this country for nearly 70 years after independence.
I needed to not only understand "Hinduism", I would also need to simultaneously unravel the threads of history. The quantum of misrepresentations and its insidious character was truly astounding.
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