Survival of the Tolerant—Hinduism

Hinduism has always fascinated people across the world, only religion whose date of origin is absolutely open for anyones guess, some theologists dated the origin of Hinduism as about 3400BC, some say it dates more then 5000 BC, astonishing as such an old religion still thriving and more and more people in the world are being attracted towards it.

The reason behind the success of the Hinduism lies in its ethos of acceptance of every kind or nature of person, it values all the philosophies and forces none.

Here is my Summarisation of the essence hinduism:

1. Believe in God ! – Aastik – Accepted.
2. Don’t believe in God ! – you are Accepted as a Nastik.
3. You want to worship idols- please go ahead you are a Murti Pujak.
4. You don’t want to worship idols – no problem you can focus on Nirguna Brahmin
5. You want to criticise some thing in our religion, come forward, we are logical, Nyaya, Tarka etc are core elements of Hindu schools.
6. You want to accept beliefs as it is, most welcome please go ahead with it.
7. You want to start your journey by reading Bhagwat Gita – Sure!
8. You want to start your journey by reading Upanishads – Go ahead.
9. You want to start your journey by reading Purana- Be my guest.
10. You just don’t like reading Puranas or other books, no problem my dear, go by Bhakti tradition.
11. You don’t like the idea of Bhakti ! No Problem do your karma, be a karma yogi.
12. You want to enjoy life, very good, no problem at all, this is Charvaka Philosophy.
13. You want to abstain from all the enjoyment of life and find God, Jai Ho! be an ascetic.
14. You don’t like the concept of God, you believe in nature only- Welcome (Prakriti or nature is worthy of worship).
15. You believe in one God or supreme energy Superb! follow Advait philosophy.
16. You want a guru go ahead obtain Gyaan.
17. You don’t want a guru …Help yourself! meditate, study!
18. You Believe in Female energy! Shakti is worshipped.
19. You believe every human being is equal, you are awesome, come on lets celebrate Hinduism “Vasudev Kutumbakam” (the world is a family).
20. You don’t have time to celebrate a festival, don’t worry, one more festival is coming, there are multiple festivals every single day of the year.
21. You are a working person, don’t have time for religion, its ok you will still be a Hindu.
22.  You like to go to temples, devotion is loved.
23. You don’t like to go to temples, no problem you are still a Hindu.
24. You know that Hinduism is a way of life with considerable freedoms.
25. You believe that evert thing has god in it, so you worship your mother, father, guru, tree, river, Prani-Matra, Earth, Universe!
26. And if you don’t believe everything has GOD in it – No Problem we respect your view point.
27. “Sarv Jana Sukhino Bhavantu” (May you all happily).

This is exactly the essence of Hinduism, all inclusive, that is why it has withstood the test of time inspite of repeated onslaught both from within and outside, and assimilated every good aspect from everything. That is why it is eternal! There is a shloka in Rigveda, the first book ever known to mankind which depicts the Hindu Philosophy in a nutshell “Ano bhadrah krathavo yanthu vishwathah” let the knowledge come to us from every direction.

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Politics of Religion

Only thing common in every religion is love and compassion…be it Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or Christianity, the foundation of every religion is peace and justice. Religion gave legitimacy to the union of man and woman, laid the foundation of family, we learnt to remember our ancestors, thus laying the foundation of our modern society. Religion served and helped humanity to modernise and grow.

But now, all the major wars across the world are being fought in the name of God, religion being used as a tool of oppression and persecution, innocent men women and children being slaughtered, its abominable to see how priests abused hundreds and thousands of children in France, or how some mullahs banned the education for girls in Afghanistan, it breaks my heart, kids in there teens waging war in the name of religion and killing innocent men women and children of different religion, it filled my heart with disgust,

The important question is that who should be blamed for it? is it the religion itself that’s driving people monster, can religion which carved the fundamentals of our civilisation become the ultimate destroyer of it, where people would consider it as a valid excuse to kill other human being each other.all I see and so the important question is that where dose it all go wrong?

I may have understood the problem, which lies in the ethos of every religion (almost), which is that the disciple or the believer must surrender to the god, must abnegate logic and follow every instruction verbatim, he must obey the instructions given by the monks or the priests or the mulla, and each one of them started interpreting it, in a way that suits them. And then came the politics of religion, and the politics became the religion.

It was easy for the power mongers to exploit the vulnerable class, which eventually constitutes the majority in almost all the religions and countries, they understood the fact that people are more concerned not about the life but the life after death, the idea that every human being exists  on this planet to serve a greater purpose and a greater being, and they bow down to that Fictitious being.

Politics successfully exploited the situation, the Mulla military alliance successfully defeated the soviets in Afghanistan, after the USA, Pakistan became the torchbearer of international jihad and wedged proxy war to snatch Kashmir from India, which is still going on, the body count is close to tens of thousands of innocent people, US paid a heavy price for its ignorance when 9/11 happened, for the first time the USA was attacked on his own soil. Along came ISIS, midivil islamic monstrosity which appealed to a handful of young men and women across the globe, which basically said that its Ok to kill an infidel or a person of different faith, they infected horrors to the innocent people which is beyond comprehension.

Rather than understanding the real problem, West responded by painting the billions of muslims as ISIS supporters, innocent muslims in the west and east faced discrimination for no fault of there.

US used Mullas to drive away USSR from Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan was depicted as a holy war, hundreds and thousands of uneducated muslim youth joined it and defeated the Russians, once the the objective was achieved, the USA left the region to its fait, which created the monsters like Osama.

With great power comes great responsibility, this famous line from Toby Maguire’s Spiderman is true to the essence, and if the responsibility isn’t taken by the one with power, he too will pay a great price.

I can conclude that basically like any lie which is spread to achieve a political Goal, Religious extremism is pure politics, its spread to win wars, and to weaken a country by igniting civil wars, people who became a participant in these sinister conspiracies are mostly uneducated and extreme poor, they are those who have left all hopes in this world, and there only hope is life after death.

The only vaccine for this pandemic is education, If the USA would have spent 2% of the money it spent on war in Afghanistan, world would have seen a reincarnation of the old Afghanistan, and complete eradication of the Taliban.