Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)

by Julius Lipner

  Most modern-day educated Dalits (the ‘Untouchables’ of the past) repudiate the caste-system, yet many still call themselves ‘Hindu’. Here, in modern times, there has been a big paradox in the relationship between Dalits/‘Untouchables’ and the designation ‘Hindu’. Perceived from the outside – by the Indian Constitution and (by implication) most upper-caste groups – they have generally been regarded as Hindus, else why would the Indian Government, post-Independence, have officially resolved in 1950 that ‘henceforth, amongst Hindus no one shall be regarded as an untouchable by reason of his birth and those who have been so regarded hitherto will have the same right as other Hindus in regard to the use of public wells, public schools, public roads and all other public institutions’ (see Leslie 2003:25)? Internally, from the point of view of self-ascription, the situation is more complex. This is because the category of ‘Untouchable’ is neither monolithic nor homogeneous. It is a category that is riven by caste-inequality itself, with different caste-groupings within it free to make non-representative decisions as to how they should be designated or what they should be called. Most of these groups in India, one might say, under certain circumstances, e.g. for purposes of benefiting from affirmative Government action or being seen in a certain political light, would accept the designation ‘Hindu’, though at the same time they might well repudiate the ascription if ‘Hindu’ is understood as implying that they are innately impure, or polluting, or otherwise inferior in some way. This is the paradox. We shall return in greater depth to a consideration of the Dalits/‘Untouchables’ in Chapter 7. Finally, there are many Westernized Hindus today who openly live in direct opposition to traditional caste observances and regard caste as obsolete but who consider themselves Hindu and are regarded as such by the more ‘orthodox’ or conventional.

  In fact, in certain respects caste has had a significantly ambivalent role in traditional Hindu society. Those who have formally renounced the world (sannyasis, more correctly, saṃnyāsīs) are supposed to have transcended caste. They might have been born into the system, but as renouncers, they are reckoned to be ‘dead’ to these worldly, distinguishing features. I remember how, many years ago when I was new to the study of Hinduism, I asked a Hindu monk about the circumstances which led to his entering the monastic life. With a smile he declined to answer my question, saying, ‘That individual, with the caste and other associations which people in this world make so much of, has ceased to exist’. But renouncers are supposed to symbolize the culmination of the Hindu way of life. So in this context is caste essential to Hinduism or not?

  Further, it is well known that for hundreds of years there have been Indian Christians who have either maintained caste and have been acknowledged as such by their Hindu compatriots, or who have been involuntarily slotted into high or low positions in the caste hierarchy by Hindus. In south India, in the seventeenth century, many of the high-caste converts of the Italian Jesuit missionary, Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656), were allowed to follow traditional caste observances by the Church authorities without formally repudiating their caste allegiance, on the grounds that caste was a social and not a religious category. This experiment is often thought to have worked in that their non-convert peers did not ostracize them. If caste-practice can be perceived as only social behaviour, then such Christians can also be called Hindus. In the late nineteenth century Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861–1907), an influential Bengali-Brahmin convert to the Roman Catholic faith, devoted the last decade or so of his life to trying to show that he was both Hindu and Catholic. For him to be Hindu was to have a certain kind of cultural and intellectual orientation, not a particular set of theological beliefs (see Lipner 1999). Today in India a significant number of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, are inclined to make similar claims.12

  Further, in the considerable history of Hinduism outside India, the role of caste as potentially determinative of Hindu identity has often been, if not irrelevant, then substantially minimized. Take, for example, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius where Hinduism has been thriving for about 170 years. There are about half a million Hindus in Mauritius (about half the population). In Mauritius Hindus can be found among well-to-do as well as poorer strata of society. Further, they are influential in all the important dimensions of the country's life, not least in politics, so we are not talking about a backward or poorly represented community. Yet, while in Mauritian Hindu society caste distinctions and affiliations of a kind resembling those of the Indian subcontinent are present, they are fast dissolving in the proverbial melting-pot. For as ‘love-marriages’ rather than arranged marriages become increasingly popular among Mauritian Hindus, and economic and other criteria come more and more into play as salient markers of social status, existing caste patterns will break up and become less determinative of Hindu identity. There is evidence to show that ethnic and other groupings (e.g. Tamils as opposed to others) will supplant caste in this respect. However, there is no reason to suppose that Mauritian Hindus will not continue to value their identity as Hindus or to study the Indian origins of their culture, e.g. at school. One cannot generalize then as to how and, in important cases, whether, caste is constitutive of Hindu identity, not least in the Hindu ‘diaspora’, the spread of Hindus outside India, the ‘homeland’.

  Now, we may ask, does one have to believe something specific to be a Hindu? We have given ample indication that one does not. What about belief in the rule of karma and rebirth? For al-Biruni this was the ‘shibboleth’ or distinctive feature of Hindu identity. To begin with, though it is undeniable that many Hindus, inside and outside India, do accept this belief, it is not specifically Hindu. Most Buddhists and Jains, and even some Christians, believe in some form of karma and rebirth, while some Hindus, especially an increasing number of Westernized Hindus, do not. We have already noted that Hinduism has to do with a way of life, not with a definite creed.

  Is this way of life equivalent, then, as one or two interpreters quoted earlier seem to claim, to what is called sanātana dharma or Vaidika dharma, i.e. the code of practice (dharma) that is eternal (sanātana) or based on the Veda (Vaidika)? Hardly. Many Hindus call themselves ‘sanātanists’, those who follow the eternal dharma. But we shall see that it is far from clear what this eternal dharma is. We have noted that Hinduism is a dynamic, living phenomenon (or rather a macro-reality of organically united micro-realities, analogous to an ancient banyan) whose strength lies in its ability to adapt to circumstances while it maintains strands of continuity with the past. But one cannot trace this continuity in an essentialist manner, as if there is a substantial core that remains untouched. Hinduism is a continuity of vital elements whose composition varies as a function of the different living centres that constitute it not only in the diaspora but perhaps more importantly in India itself. These vital elements cannot be isolated in terms of a static essence. The elements composing one person's or group's eternal dharma may differ significantly from those of other people or groups. Yet both are Hindus. And who is to say which perception of eternal dharma is normative or ‘prototypical’, and in which respects? Besides, the expression ‘eternal dharma’, though perhaps comforting in a world of constant flux, seems to imply that this ‘way of life’ cannot or should not undergo change. In that case, where does reformist Hinduism – with which Hindu history is replete – fit in? And how must we regard the shifts in, or new interpretations of, dharma that the multitude of little and great reformers of Hinduism have proposed over time? The conclusion is to say that ‘sanātanist’ is a prescriptive rather than a descriptive term: it is to say what one believes Hindu dharma should be rather than what Hindu dharma is. It is to say that one does not wish to belong to particular reform movements in Hinduism, or perhaps to say that one should belong to this rather than to that reform movement, since the former has captured what the latter has not, the ‘eternal essence’ of Hinduism. It is a declaration of intent, and a rather tendentious one at that.

  Similar comments apply to the de
scription of Hinduism as the Vaidika dharma or ‘Vedic way of life’. First, this description implies that Hinduism is necessarily religious. We have challenged this; one can be Hindu without being religious in any conventional or institutional sense of the term. To be a Hindu is to be culturally, rather than religiously, characterized in some way. Second, a great many Hindus down the centuries have in some way repudiated or bypassed the Veda in living their lives. A great many Hindus have been, and are, quite unfamiliar with these sacred utterances;they have never had a copy of the Veda at home or read from it (as Christians and Muslims might do from the Bible or Koran, respectively). This does not mean that their whole life's orientation cannot be traced to the Veda or that it does not in some way derive from it. But it does put the Veda in perspective.

  Having said this, we must acknowledge the immense and pervasive importance of the Veda in the history of Hinduism. Most Hindus are religious, and a great many religious Hindus at least implicitly acknowledge the authority of the Veda in orienting their lives, although, as will become clearer in the course of this book, the relationships between their lives and what passes for Vedic content are often complex and obscure. There is point in saying, as one modern commentator has done, that acceptance of the authority of the Veda often amounts to ‘no more than a declaration that someone considers himself [or herself] a Hindu’ (Brockington 1981:5). But, as we have noted, many Hindus also challenge the authority of the Veda and in the process give these scriptures a high profile. So, positively or negatively, the Veda stands out in the history of Hinduism.

  In the light of what has been said, let us return to the relationship between Hinduism and other longstanding Indian religions such as Buddhism and Jainism. Today, it is customary to distinguish between the religion(s) of the Hindus (‘Hinduism’) and those of the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs (or ‘Buddhism’, ‘Jainism’ and ‘Sikhism’). We have already seen how these abstractions can be misleading, though once we guard against this, then for reasons of convenience we may speak of the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Thus this is a book on Hinduism and not on Jainism. But distinguishing in this way between Indian traditions is fairly recent and is bound up not only with Western preconceptions about the nature of religion in general, and of religion in India in particular, but also with the political awareness that has arisen in India in the aftermath of Westernization.

  In fact, it was chiefly in the nineteenth century, especially in Bengal – the bridgehead of Hindu and British interaction – that more or less systematic attempts were made by both British and Hindu writers to articulate what ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Hinduness’ (hindutva in Sanskrit) might be. In the process they helped create new realities for their readers. There were a number of different motives underlying these creations. Some British (and continental European) propagandists, whether philosophers, missionaries or administrators, guided by their understanding of Christianity as the normative religion, wished to cast the religion of the Hindus, for purposes of accessibility or domination, in the same mould. So they invented a Hinduism they could deal with or control, and in comparing it with their Christianities often showed up this ‘Hinduism’ in a poor light: Christianity had a founder, they said, but ‘Hinduism’ did not, so ‘Hinduism’ was deficient and ‘incoherent’; the founder of Christianity displayed certain moral qualities, they continued, but leading figures across a range of Hindu denominations (e.g. Kṛşņa, Rāma) did not, or at least did not do so in the same way, so these figures were immoral or ethically inferior; the Abrahamic faiths were monotheistic (according to a certain notion of monotheism), but Hinduism was ‘polytheistic’ or perhaps worse, ‘monistic’ (that is, it maintained that all reality is essentially one, so that there is no true, lasting distinction between a creator God and his creation); Christianity was imbued with the supremacy of Greek and Latin cultures and their superior languages (not to mention English), whereas ‘Hinduism’ was underpinned by a defunct language – Sanskrit – and its numerous derived and undeveloped, vernacular tongues, so ‘Hinduism’ was not a religion worth committing to. In some cases, it was contended that Christianity could accommodate scientific progress whilst Hinduism was essentially a mythological and therefore backward faith. In all of these instances, it served to make of ‘Hinduism’ a uniform, monolithic entity, sometimes assimilating the traditions of the Buddhists, Jains, etc, and sometimes keeping these faiths apart for divisive reasons.

  Hindus too played similar games for ideological ends. Smarting under the humiliations of a colonial regime, they wished to show that their tradition and its leading figures were equally coherent, moral, developed, progressive – in fact, in many cases more so: Christ was a good man, no doubt, but as a celibate he lacked the fullness of human experience, while both Rāma and Kṛşņa had wives and so a more enriching understanding of what it is to be human;Christianity and Western culture might have been more receptive to science but this made them materialistic, whereas Hinduism was more deeply spiritual, and so on and so forth. In the build-up to Indian Independence and just after, Hindu leaders were keen to assimilate Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs into the fold of Hinduism so as to propagate a more unified polity worthy of self-rule (Gandhi was one such exponent13), though Indian Muslims and Christians posed a problem in this regard. In post-colonial times, as new ideas of religious, linguistic and ethnic identities developed in India, objections to such attempts at assimilation hardened, giving rise amongst Sikhs, Buddhists and others to the desire to initiate movements for separate states, homelands or other forms of exclusive recognition in the subcontinent.

  But these are ‘modern’ developments in the search for Hindu and other identity. In premodern times it was not, and could not, be so. In those times people we describe as Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, etc. today tended not to make distinctions among themselves on the grounds adopted currently. This is because the term ‘Hindu’ hadn't developed in the way it is understood today. The ‘Hindus’, ‘Buddhists’, ‘Jains’, even ‘Sikhs’ of today, all felt a common identity in premodern times that made them members of the same ethno-cultural family in the context of which they grouped themselves around certain teachings and practices.14 They did not feel impelled to hive off in terms of ethnic, territorial and/or political criteria as is the case today. Followers of the Gods Vişņu and Śiva divided into denominations amongst themselves, and argued with worshippers of Goddess-religions, all of whom may have quarrelled with the adherents of one or other of the Buddhist or Jain traditions, but there was no attempt to standardize belief and practice among those we call ‘Hindus’ today in terms of a generic identity. The following example, taken from a story in the Kāśī Khaņḍa of the Skanda Purāa, which was mainly compiled probably by the thirteenth century C.E., will illustrate this (see Eck 1983:147ff).

  God Śiva and his wife Pārvatī wanted to take up residence in Benares (also known as Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi – see map), beautiful as a lotus, luminous as the sun, foremost city in the whole world. The problem was that Śiva himself had agreed to allow a powerful ascetic, Divodāsa, to rule Benares. Without Divodāsa's consent or fall from power, Śiva could not move into the city as ruler. For his part, Divodāsa, by his firm adherence to dharma, had established so impregnable a reign that Śiva decided that Divodāsa could be toppled only by a stratagem that exploited some chink in his dharmic armour. So he sent various devas (celestial beings) and other associates to Benares to spy on Divodāsa, and if possible, detect some dharmic flaw. Many went on this errand – Sūrya, the sun, who could see everything, at least during the day; Lord Brahmā, the fashioner of the world, who presumably had inside-knowledge about all beings; numerous yoginīs (sorceresses) and gaņas (Śiva's dwarfish henchmen) – all to no avail. Indeed, having failed in their task, they added insult to injury by staying on in Benares, entranced by the city's charms. Finally, Śiva sent Vişņu.

  Vişņu transformed himself into a Buddhist monk. His consort, Śrī, took the form of a Buddhist nun, and their great bird-companion,
Garuḍa, assumed the shape of the monk's disciple. The three of them preached Buddhist teachings in the city, and the trick worked. Among other things, the ‘Buddhists’ preached that the world had no maker, that the killing of animals for sacrifice was wrong, and that caste distinctions were unacceptable.

  Hearing these teachings, which were contrary to the dharma of castes, the citizens began to go astray ... Soon everything was awry; the breakdown of order and of caste had begun ... These Buddhists had successfully cracked the perfect dharma of the kingdom. Divodāsa's power began to fade and his dissatisfaction with the kingship began to increase.

  (Eck 1983:154–5)

  Eventually Divodāsa abandoned Benares, allowing Śiva entry.

  This story teaches the supremacy of Śiva over Vişņu (who resorted to trickery to do Śiva's bidding), that Benares is really Śiva's city, that caste (which Buddhists repudiate) is a mainstay of right order, as well as general anti-Buddhist sentiment. This is one way in which myths can convey more or less subtle messages, and Hinduism is bursting to the seams with myth as a vehicle of teaching. But from the point of view of our present discussion, note that distinctions are made not according to ethnic or generic criteria between ‘Hindus’ and others, but on grounds of teachings and practices. The Buddhists preach a message that overturns traditional caste and sacrificial practices. In short, they do not follow Vedic dharma. That is why Buddhists are to be kept at arm's length. The contrast here is between Vedic and anti-Vedic dharma, not between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Buddhist’. This distinction had not yet been drawn, though a step in this direction had occurred by apparently referring to the Buddhists (the bauddhas) as a distinct group. But even here, in the original cultural–geographical sense of ‘Hindu’ discussed at the beginning of the chapter, those who supported the Buddhist dharma and those who supported the Vedic dharma could all be known equally as ‘Hindus’.