An average, devout Hindu knows next to nothing about Hinduism while his Muslim or Christian counterparts know enough to defend their respective faiths. And so the average devout Hindu does one of these two:
- Feels ashamed and/or scared to admit in public that he is a Hindu
- Gets extremely defensive instead of using knowledge and cold reasoning to defend an attack on Hinduism
You can cite historical attacks, mental and colonial slavery and a thousand other things to explain this. While all of them are true, after numerous repititions, they begin to sound like excuses. The place to start if you want to really defend Hinduism is to equip yourself with knowledge and be battle-ready always. And the time to start is now.
Thursday, 3. June 2010 - 8:53 PM | 28 comments »
Preface
One of the more unfortunate but widespread phenomena today with regard to Hinduism is that we now need to produce elaborate evidence for things accepted as evident truths just thirty or forty years ago. In other words, writing defenses instead of doing original, constructive work. Yet the devil must be given its due lest it unleash more mischief upon us.
I admit I was surprised by some of the responses I received for my piece about what I called the Yoga Disease. A common refrain in my comment space and elsewhere on the Internet is that Yoga is almost always equated to Asana, Pranayama, and meditation (Dhyana) and never as a separate system of philosophy. The glittering empires of most of the 5-star Yoga gurus today would instantly come crashing down if they acknowledged this because it would mean admitting that Yoga forms one of the Six Darshanas (or revelations or systems) of Hindu philosophical thought.
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Categories: Commentary, Indian Philosophy