Is Hinduism A Religion?

When people talk about religions, they talk about Hinduism as one. This I find less than correct.

Lets look at the word itself, religion. If you ask someone to translate it to Hindi, they will say its धर्म, “dharma” (pronounced a bit like worm, please stop pronouncing it wormaa). Now if you ask someone to translate धर्म/dharma into English, they would say its “duty".

You see, we do not have a हिन्दू-धर्म/Hindu-Dharma per se. We have पिता-धर्म/father’s-duty, पुत्र-धर्म/son’s-duty and so on. Calling them religion of father and religion of son would be nonsensical. The correct translation of धर्म would be duty and not religion.

We have a philosophy. The basic philosophy is that we, each individual, has a set of duties. You are a father, a son, a husband, an employee, a teacher, a neighbour, a citizen etc etc. And with each of those roles comes duties. And the basic philosophy says your actions/ should be in accordance with your duties/कर्म/karma(pronounced not like worm-aa). If you act according to your duty, generally good things will happen to you and people around you.

You can argue this is basic common sense, and this is what I am trying to say, Hinduism, rather, हिन्दू-धर्म, is applied basic common sense. Saying you do not follow it is equivalent to saying you do not follow common sense (and take that as virtue enough to use that fact as your identity).

Rest of Hinduism is a set of lessons to help you identify your roles, and a set of duties those roles entails. Eg, it gives you a basic guideline of what you are supposed to do as a son. We have plenty of stories to reinforce this.

Now the set of roles and the duties are not meant to be fixed. On question of how to identify your duties, our texts have been vague, because no simple answer can persist across generations, leave alone ages.

People have called Hinduism an open source religion, where there is no simple prescription of what you must do, as it changes with time and place. This is not just a theory, you can travel across India, and you will see nearly every family has their own notion of what our duties should be, it varies from family to family.

Its a bit like how it should be. Today if you go across a country in Europe or America, each family has slightly different notion of what it means to be a parent. There is no common answer to this, and probably there should not be any. We do not want to live in a robotic society where everyone acts exactly like the other. Hindus just decided this long time back and codified this. This, that you must come up with your notions about what your duties are, is part of Hindu orthodoxy.

They do not leave you alone with this, they do try to assist you there. Veda and Gita for example tries to help in identifying your duties. Veda basically implied that you must take into consideration very consequence of your action, be very thoughtful about what will happen if you do or do not do something (imagine a person who decides based on pros and cons list, the “logical/rational approach”). Basically a very thought heavy approach. Gita on the other hand says you should do what you feel like (coz God is in your heart, and what you feel is coming from him etc), imagine a person who goes by gut feelings. Both are appropriate, both options are available to you. You pick on, or another or a mix of the two (which would be considered the right answer: you give heed to pros and cons, and then go by your guts).

Hinduism is about giving your duties a consideration. You follow one approach or the other, it demands you figure out your duties. And once you have some notion of what your duties are supposed to be, it expects you to follow them.

With the pluralistic view we have, we have no contention with people of other faith fundamentally. If you want to define your duties as to be not based on common sense, your own notions, and would prefer to follow a book, so be it. You chose whatever you decide to follow, and yes you are choosing that, whether it be a person of any religion, they are choosing to accept the doctrines of that religion, and once you chose your धर्म, you just make sure you कर्म/karma/actions are congruent with those duties you chose for your self.

To a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, is a Hindu. They chose a धर्म/duty, and they allow that to guide their कर्म/actions.

This whole devision in the name of which duty you pick is non sensical, like Hindu parents, and Muslim parents and Jew Parents and Buddhist parents, you would find their duties/धर्म are lot more common to each other than lets say the duties of a Hindu-employee. Let me repeat, a Jew parent’s duties are lot closer to a Muslim parent, than to a Jew-employee. Both Jew and Muslim parents take care of their kids. And Jew and Muslim employees go to work. Muslims and Jews are not different, parents and employees are.

The devision between Muslim and Jew is arbitrary, the different between a parent and an employee is significant. A Muslim parent can learn very little from a Muslim employee, but a huge deal from a Jew parent.

We live in a world of many religions. But the current divide of Hindu vs Muslim/Jew etc is arbitrary and wrong. The real divide is that of between role of parent and role of employee. Whatever the world thinks, is the right thing for to do for parents, cumulatively, should be compiled in a world wisdom about धर्म of parents, and similarly the धर्म of employee (and so on). Because after all this is what we have to do.

Be a good parent. Be a good employee. A good friend. A good human being.