Despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism (of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitations), I am happy to describe myself as a believing Hindu: not just because it is the faith into which I was born, but for a string of other reasons, though faith requires no reason. The best way to describe Hinduism is to say what it is not. For how do you describe a ‘teaching’ that encompasses all possibilities and all of eternity, refusing to describe the infinite in finite terms ? That describes all of life and all thought as both illusion and reality at the same time. There is no science , no thought, no possibility that Hindu thought does not embrace.
Europeans invented the word religion only in the 19th century. Defining the truth of any religion is tough. More so in Hinduism, than Islam, as Hinduism has no clearly identifiable ‘go-to’ holy book such as the Quran. So how does one define Hinduism? Must one define Hinduism at all? Isn’t the strength of Hinduism that it needs to be discovered rather than defined? Sadly, modern scholarship is designed around definitions. And different people are defining Hinduism differently, from American academicians to Indian politicians, from Brahmin clergy to Dalit revolutionaries. Each has an agenda.
So to those people that ask why we cannot declare India a Hindu state I ask them to understand and trace back to what a Hindu state is ? And they will soon realize they are looking for an identity. And the very basis of Hinduism negates the idea of identity. For it is a search for ourselves beyond that which is called ‘Identity’.
Which begs the question, why we cannot accept our identity as just Indian !!
( Painting by Deepak Banerjee)
Alekhya Talapatra 