HINDUISM IN THEORY & PRACTICE
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| Introduction |
The following are the excepts and a brief summary from the book “Idol worship Vs God Worship” written by Mr. Mohammad Imaran. The author had a good of visiting India in Mid 1978 which gave him the opportunity to see the things from himself.
The term “Hinduism” (or its earlier form, “Brahmanism”) defies any simple definition. It has an amazing capacity to include within it various contradictory and conflicting beliefs and practices. Pantheism, polytheism, theism, and atheism have been accepted and tolerated in the household of Hinduism. In a sense, Hinduism is nothing more than a generic term for a family of diverse religious tendencies from magical superstitious animism to lofty, abstract philosophical systems, almost all of which accept the authority of the Vedas (sacred Scriptures) and the religiously sanctioned system of social stratification.
Hinduism thus, is the most un-definable religion in the world. Indeed it is more of social order than a religion in the strict sense of the world. It is sometimes said that Hinduism is a storehouse of all kinds of religious experiments rather than a single religion. In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru (Former Prime Minister of India)s
“Hinduism, as a faith, is vague, amorphous, many-sided, all things to all men. It is hardly possible to define it, or indeed to say definitely whether it is a religion or not, in the usual sense of the word. In its present form, and even in the past, it embraces many beliefs and practices, from the highest to the lowest, often opposed to or contradicting each other”
The late Prime Minister of India was not the only person to have felt bewildered by the great variety of beliefs and practices that exist in Hinduism. Many historians of religious culture have failed to find any principle of unity in all this diversity. The name “Hindu” originally had geographic significance, being a corrupt form of “Sindhu”, a region watered by the river Indus. As a matter of fact, India and Hinduism are the result of many ethnic and cultural strains. Its origin is obscure and its development exceedingly complex.
