On 8/4/07, shiv sastry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Saturday 04 Aug 2007 6:04 am, Charles Haynes wrote: > > If I say I don't believe in dharma, reincarnation, karma or in any > > gods can I be a Hindu? At what point does "Hindu" become so watered > > down as to be useless as a description? At what point does it become a > > distinction without a difference? > > IMO A lot depends on the society of your birth. You can believe whetever you > like but if you are surrounded by a family of practicing Hindus (your own > family that is - not just any family) - then that family will lay claim on > you as being Hindu. The family of a beef-eating person of Hindu origin who > takes pains to distance himself from karma, dharma, pharma, sharma or > whatever, is still flaunted as a "progressive and modern" Hindu.
Ah, this seems very much akin to the Jewish notion of "culturally jewish" versus "practicing Jew." If you are born of Jewish parents (in particular a Jewish mother) and raised among Jews, you're jewish in sense 1 no matter what religion you may or may not practice. There's very much the sense that "jewishness" is a culture and a society as well as a religion. So I can see that someone born into a Hindu family in a Hindu society will be considered Hindu - culturally if not religiously. But that raises the next question - just how "sticky" is that cultural Hinduism? If that person rejects their Hinduism, moves out of Hindu society, and raises their children without Hindu traditions, are their children Hindu? For how many generations? Conversely, is someone NOT raised in Hindu society or by Hindus who converts to Hindu religious practice considered a Hindu? If not, if a couple does this, and raises their children in Hindu society, as practicing Hindus, will their children be accepted as Hindus? To what degree does caste still play a role? The children of "converts" will forever be outside the caste system, no? Can they ever "really" be Hindus? > It is not easy to escape the clutches of Hinduism despite having the most non > Hindu views and beliefs. The point may be that its not YOU personally that > has a say, but what society thinks of you and how it treats you is equally > important. If society thinks you are Hindu then you are caught. You can spend > your life denying Hinduism but your denial will be laughed off. "Black > sheep", rebels and deniers are all considered par for the course and almost > nothing will kick a person out of Hinduism. The surest way to get out is to > become a proselytizing convert to Islam or Christianity - but that might not > be enough. Even then he will be called a Hindu convert and will have to be > sure that he follows his holy book well or else he will be described as a > half-Hindu. But this begs the question - who gets to decide "who is a Hindu" and who is not? If someone says they are not a Hindu, but some Hindus say they are and others say they are not, who is to say if they are Hindu or not? Is it not that no matter what, if you are born of Hindu parents you are forever Hindu (by the terms of Hinduism) and even if you become proselytizing convert you're just being particularly bad at following dharma and even the children of such a person are still Hindu and on and on unto the last generation? > Hinduism may well be a state of being that is intimately linked up with place, > family and circumstances of birth. However Hinduism has defaulted to accept > any belief that does not dogmatically claim to be a particular faith. ... and even some who do, no? Don't some Hindus claim that Buddhists are Hindu even in the face of dogmatic claims by Buddhists otherwise? > You > will find Hindus pointing at virtually anything (eg something plucked out of > South America) and claiming that it is a Hindu belief. Anything is allowed. > Nothing is dismissed as totally alien by all Hindus. There is always some > Hindu group who will accept the weirdest practices (is necrophilia and > necrophagia good enough?) as a "legitimate Hindu practice". Isn't the perceived "weirdness" your own personal cultural conditioning? Isn't "weird" just another way of saying "something I'm not used to or comfortable with?" The only alternative objective definition would seem to be "something unusual or rare" in which case every religion will have weird practices as a matter of course. Certainly symbolic necrophagia and cannibalism are central to Christianity, and explicitly ordered by God. If it's believed and practiced that widely, how weird can it be? -- Charles
