On Friday 20 Jul 2007 5:25 pm, Shyam Visweswaran wrote: > One observation is that Hinduism is often said to > be "more a way of life than a religion". I have > never been quite clear what this means. Other > religions also provide rules and percepts to live > your life by. > > Another observation is that among major > religions, Hinduism has a variety of holy books. > Wouldn't that argue for more then usual > documentation by the Hindu? Or because of the > multitude of Hindu practices and Hindu gods is > this documentation per practice or god too > little?
I believe that even the discussion of such a topic is hampered by absence of accurate and widely accepted terminology or jargon that defines the exact parameters of something. To put it very crudely, if you hear the statement "Islam and Hinduism are religions" the impression conveyed is of some similarity between the two. There is often an apple-orange comparison problem when you club two entities under the same classification. A person who has no experience or knowledge of either Islam or Hinduism is likely to imagine something broadly similar when he compares the two. And a Hindu (or a Muslim) who has very little knowledge of the other entity is likely to read the statement that both are "religions" and start thinking of the other in terms of what he knows of his own religion, and apply the standards that he has been taught to apply. That is why we seem to have this plethora of descriptive terms and adjectives that attempt at describing differences or unique selling points of each. Maybe the word "religion" should be discarded for something else. Muslims, from within Islam tend to call Islam as a way of life or a code for life.Hindus from within Hinduism tend to speak of a "dharma" or a "way of life". Perhaps a closer description would be "Hindu way of life" and an 'Islamic way of life" because both have only a small part ruled by a God or Gods - the rest is rules fro life and other bells and whistles. Adding Christianity here adds more complexity and problems. Christianity too used to be a way of life, but the politics of Christian dominated nations separated the "way of life" from "God" after much bloodshed and defined this new system as "secularism" Secularism is clearly not feasible from a strict Islamic viewpoint. From a Hindu viewpoint secularism as in "separation of religion from state" becomes impossible to implement because Hinduism defies all definitions and refuses to get pinned down as religion. The bandied about word is pluralism although I am not yet clear in my mind of all the baggage that might be carried by that word. shiv
