In recent times I have
realised that several people feel obliged to apologise; apologise for being
Hindu, apologise for a ‘Hindu’ party winning the elections, updating status
messages on facebook or tweeting that while they may be called Hindu, they
should not be mistaken to be fundamentalists. ‘I am not a religious Hindu. I am
secular!’
I was raised in a Tamil Brahmin household. I remember
spending my afternoons hearing tales from the Siva Puranam, the Ramayana and
the Mahabharatha from my grandmother. I remember learning to draw a 18-pulli Kolam, making strings of mango
leaves for festivals, learning Carnatic music and bharathanatyam, making a
compulsory visit to the puja room after a bath every morning. As a young child,
the stories of Parvati or Rama were fascinating, festivals were a lot of fun, rituals
were intriguing and practices were just that- a way of living.
In my growing up years I asked a lot of questions- why do we
do this? How will it matter if I don’t do this? Why am I not allowed to do
this? How will this help me? Many of these questions stemmed from smirks and ridicule
around me. ‘You are not coming because you have to visit the temple? How lame!’
or ‘Why should you have a bath so early in the morning? You guys have too many
rules.’ Unfortunately, apart from all the fascinating mythology, my knowledge
of my own religion was so little that it was no trouble getting cornered into embarrassment.
I stopped wearing a bindi, I took more pride in my knowledge of Wordsworth than
my knowledge of the Tirukkural, cut my hair and grew my nails. My own apology
for being Hindu began at teenage.
A chance project during my graduate student days on the
science (by our modern definition) of ancient customs around the world was
suddenly the moment when I turned around to look at Hinduism again, more
objectively and with lesser arrogance. What came off the project were seemingly
convincing answers to many of the questions that I was asked by scornful peers.
But there were several more questions – my own- that were now looking to be
answered.
What led me to discover answers to these questions was something
that had always been a part of my life. Dance-
Bharatanatyam, drew me back in – not to the superficial ritualistic ways that
seemed to stifle me but to the philosophy behind these ways of worship. The
abstract nature of the philosophy was so mind boggling and yet the finite,
colourful forms, sculptures, rituals and practices that were built to visualise
this profound philosophy seemed so simple. As I danced and gathered information
from family, artists, teachers, scholars, books and lectures, I saw through what
seemed to be mere rituals to a Dharma that was deeply rooted in seeking
knowledge and understanding existence, the same thing several physicists around
the world work on every day.
What also became obvious was that patriarchy and chauvinism
had slowly but surely ensured that rituals and scriptures were manipulated to
place power in the hands of the patriarch and only these twisted rituals of
oppression, casteist and otherwise, however inconvenient, survived the
centuries. What we are unfortunately left with today are ignorant men (unfortunately
powerful by brute) justifying abuse and oppression in the name of religious
beliefs, women justifying these men because their once immense power of
knowledge has been replaced by a meek hunger for power over other women. With
the essence of learning being replaced by a life of unfounded rules and
fanaticism, we stand embarrassed by this public persona of the religion. And by
proclaiming our Hinduism, we fear to be placed in the same bracket as these
insane chauvinists and self-proclaimed ‘protectors’ of the religion. By openly
admitting our religious identity, we fear further mockery by non-Hindus, by
radical feminists and atheists. And so for the sake of convenience, we remain
closet Hindus at best.
While several of us have shunned our religious identity, it
is time to stand back and objectively look at the origins – the very roots of
our cultural identity. Chauvinism, not just in the Hindu context but in
cultures around the world, has been the demon- It’s time he was vanquished. It
is time we shunned those practices that are mere tools of oppression and learnt
the tenets of the religion that never decried any gender pure or impure. Caste is
in the mind- not a weapon of the so-called upper castes. The Vedas are gems of
wisdom, not the sole property of the male gender. As educated individuals, it
is time we did not stagnate at the rituals and learnt to evolve towards the
philosophy. Our current definitions of science and religion have led us to draw
a distinct line between the two. Rather inconveniently (!),
Hinduism is both. It holds within its
scriptures matters of intellectual query, a religion of philosophy, science and
faith. It is time we realised this and made attempts to study it.
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