Who are we?

There has been a recent change in central leadership of India. With the change in leadership, a new debate (an unfortunate, but not surprising one) has begun. People have started to comment on the uprising of Hindu right in India. This got me thinking. Thinking, not to take this debate further and not even about participating in the debate.

My thoughts were about a more fundamental question, or rather “The” fundamental question here.

Who is a Hindu?

Simple isn’t it? A follower of Hinduism is a Hindu?

But then what is Hinduism?

Let me explain. E.g. Christianity is a religion which in a broader sense follows the teachings of Jesus Christ through his voice – The Bible. Similarly, Islam is a religion which follows the teachings of the Prophet via the Holy Quran.

But what about Hinduism? Whose teachings do we follow? There is no such central book. There are various books. Geeta, the most famous book of Hindu religion was, and is, not the most revered book of most of the Hindu’s even today. It gained fame only when it was praised by various westerners about its contents on ways to live life. There are various other books of Hindu religion. But there is no one guiding light like The Bible, Quran or Sri Guru Granth Sahib.

Taking the same thought further, all the Hindus unlike all other religions across the world, do not worship one God. Yes, we do believe that we all are part of one greater being, but there are worshippers of Vishnu, Shiva, Devi and ……….. (Take your pick from the 33 crore God figures).

So theologically, Hinduism cannot be defined at par with other religions.

So does the answer lie somewhere else?

Let us look at the word “Hindu”. Hindu is not how we are defined in any of our religious books. Our ancient ancestors never called themselves as Hindus. We were Aryas, Dasyus, Dravids etc. but never Hindus. Hindu as a word has foreign origins. People from Greece and other ancient civilizations called the people living beyond River Indus (Sindhu) as Hindus. This is from where the word Hindu has derived.

So the origin of this word has nothing to do with religion, but with the geographical area. (It is befitting that many religious texts of our religion forbid crossing the seas.)

However this presents another problem. By the time, the word Hindu would have been used, other religions like Buddhism & Jainism had already started to evolve in India (some would claim that Christianity had also found its roots by then, but it is a different story altogether). So going by the earlier definition, anyone living in Indian subcontinent was called Hindu.

But then Hindu is being used to describe a religion and if I stick to this particular definition, then I would have to call all residents of India as Hindus and then the main stream media and many secular people will question my secular credentials and consider me as khaki-nikkar wala.

Actually the usage of word Hindu in India may have actually started with the introduction of Islamic religion in India. The Islamic invaders might have started to describe the natives as Hindus. Thus it might have actually started to differentiate between the believers and non-believers of Islam. So that is just to differentiate and thus does not answer the question – How can we define Hindu religion?

Supreme Court tried to define us and in simple words, simply said - Those who do not belong to Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and other religions are Hindus.

Yeah, right.

So the basic question still remains the same – What do me or a Tam Brahm or a Bengali or an Adivasi from Jharkhand share to be called as Hindus?

We do not worship the same God, we do not follow the same lifestyle, our religious texts are different, even our customs are different.

So what/ who are we?

Or does the answer lie in the statement – “Every Hindu hole has at least two exits”. i.e. everything in Hinduism has more than one answer to it and does that mean even its definition and existence?