{"id":414,"date":"2024-05-22T14:20:37","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T18:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/dharmicmeanderings\/?p=414"},"modified":"2024-05-24T10:35:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T14:35:01","slug":"hindu-kinda-sorta-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/dharmicmeanderings\/2024\/05\/hindu-kinda-sorta-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hindu…Kinda Sorta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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So many Westerners are drawn to the vitality of kirtan\u2013communal chanting of the Divine Names<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Suppose you had a new acquaintance, and you asked her to join you for some weekend activity. And say that she responds enthusiastically, as long as it works within her schedule. She tells you that she\u2019ll be in church on Friday evening for a Novena, then back again on Saturday afternoon for Confession. And of course, Sunday there is Mass. You might at that moment say you didn\u2019t realize she was Catholic. Naturally, she will confirm her spiritual identity. Of course, she is Catholic.<\/p>\n
Now, you have another new friend whom you invite to lunch. But he politely declines, informing you that since it is Ramadan, he must forego any midday meal. However, he is thrilled to invite you to join him for Iftar, the ceremonial fast-breaking meal after sundown. This might lead you to surmise that he\u2019s Muslim. I can\u2019t imagine him agreeing to be anything else. But soon after this, you run into someone who studies the Bhagavad Gita, meditates with a Sanskrit mantra, is a disciple of a guru, chants bhajans and may even have replaced his or her birth name with Ram or Radhika. However, if you were to assume they were Hindu, you might not be correct. Yes, everything I just mentioned has all the markings of a Hindu; but there is a very good chance that this person might deny the label of \u201cHindu\u201d or any other religious category. Perhaps they are comfortable with identifying as \u201cSpiritual But Not Religious\u201d or something quasi-Hindu such as \u201cYogi\u201d or \u201cVedantist.\u201d<\/p>\n
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WHAT\u2019S IN A NAME?<\/h4>\n
I\u2019ll say from the start that I have no desire to criticize anyone for how they identify religiously. My goal here is to understand the reasons for distancing oneself from Hinduism while embracing some of the most important elements of the tradition. And for our purposes here, I will focus specifically on those who are ethnically non-Indian (or non-Nepali, non-Balinese, etc.). The population in question is typically of European or African ancestry. It is true that there are South Asians who also distance themselves from The H Word, but that is a matter for a different time.While reasons for this are manifold, I suspect the main one is that the word Hindu <\/em>is so heavily tied to an ethnicity and culture quite foreign to most Westerners. An educated guess suggests that perhaps upwards of 98 or 99% of all Hindus are of South Asian extraction. And up until relatively recently, Hindu was used interchangeably with Indian since another name for India was Hindustan.<\/p>\n
The other major religions are much more diverse in their ethnicity. There are a couple of very good reasons for this, and both are quite noble. Some expansion into Southeast Asia centuries ago did happen, but Indian culture did not engage in colonization as we have come to know it. They did not usurp cultures, dethrone rulers and establish states servile to an emperor. Sure, there were wars between Indian kingdoms, but they more or less kept things \u201call in the family.\u201d The other reason is that there is no Great Commission (Gospel of Mark Ch. XVI v.15-18) in Hinduism that compels devotees to convert foreign populations.<\/p>\n
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