Skip to main content

Why religion should be tamed



While reading Shashi Tharoor’s latest book, Why I am a Hindu, I got stuck at a quote from Swami Vivekananda. “Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognised it,” goes the quote from a speech delivered by the great Hindu in Chicago. “Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to compel society to adopt them.” Swami Vivekananda then went on to compare religious teachings to a coat. Truth is like a coat of a fixed size for most religions. The size is fixed by the Rabbi or Pope or Mullah or Godman. Whoever you are, you have to wear that coat. Never mind the hilarious look it may give you because it just doesn’t suit you. You have to wear it if you want to belong to this religion. The meaning of religion is accepting the given truths blindly. Don’t question. Don’t dispute. Don’t doubt. Just accept. Accept what is shoved down your throat.

“The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols – so many pegs to hang spiritual ideas on.” Swami Vivekananda told his American “Sisters and brothers.” [Yes, he addressed them as Sisters and brothers, giving prominence to women long before the West thought of doing it.]

The Hindu can cut the cloth and stitch the coat that suits him. In other words, the Hindu can worship any god. She can worship Rama or Ravana. He can worship Durga or Mahishasura. She can worship Jesus or Allah. Hinduism is all about liberating people to their own gods and not at all about enslaving them to a monolithic creed as most other religions do.

No wonder the Americans sat down and listened to Swami Vivekananda with admiration. The British were later stupefied by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of tolerance and non-violence. The Swami and the Mahatma are the real spirits of Hinduism. What do we find today, however?

Hollow speeches. Empty promises. Hatred. Violence. Mounting discontent. And glittering dresses, foreign trips with a retinue of chefs topped with the usual logorrhoea.

Can we not change this?

Download this free ebook here




Comments

  1. UnknownMay 23, 2018 at 11:00 PM

    Did not understand swami s words.a Hindu doesn't worship ravana

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 24, 2018 at 6:45 AM

      "Ravana is also worshiped by Hindus in some part of the India, Sri Lanka and Bali (Indonesia.)[4][5][6] He is considered to be the most revered devotee of Shiva. Images of Ravana are seen associated with Shiva at some places. He also appears in Buddhist Mahayana text Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and Buddhist Ramayanas and Jatakas, as well as in Jain Ramayanas."

      That's from Wikipedia. Well, Vivekananda didn't use all those names; I did, having understood the Swami's spirit.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more