09-26-2006, 06:07 AM
I posted the following in the BJP's future thread:
There is something here that we <b>have</b> to understand.
1. Typically, the way we have been informed by education is that Hindus are approximately 75-80% of India's population.
However, religious Hindus are less than a majority in India. I don't think they form even a plurality. That should be our working assumption.
Most urban people have very little connection to either the Hindu understanding of God and life, or the normal detail of day-to-day Hindu ritual. And, as people migrate to urban areas, this number will increase.
I think we should start with the following number: <b>the percentage of lay religious Hindus in India is about 25% of the population, or less.</b>
2. Of the remaining, most adults have kept religion very far away from their ordinary lives - except marriage and the death ceremonies, no actual Hindu ceremony is performed for/by these people. Celebrating Diwali with firecrackers does not count. In effect, since most adults have kept their lives and their children away from actual religious activity, the children grow up without any emotional investment in the faith of their forefathers. They find the marriage ceremonies weird and hugely inconvenient, and the death ceremonies very traumatizing - because they don't know the significance of either. Even these ceremonies they see less and less of, because they have smaller families. So, really, in most cases, the first person to actually have a long talk with them about God, is usually a missionary.
3. Education in Convent schools: Education in convent schools causes two problems:
a) The student's dominant view of religion comes from Christianity. As if, that were the default religion of the world. His understanding of Christianity is usually much better than his understanding of Hinduism. (it was true, atleast then, in my case). And his understanding of Christianity and its traditions comes from those <i>uniquely equipped to teach it, the trained corps of missionaries</i>. He becomes used to seeing these people as naturally deserving respect, and as fundamentally good people. And this attitude of respect to these missionaries will naturally meet with approval from his parents.
b) Even if he doesn't convert, he develops a broad-mindedness to the concept of religion that is debilitating to Hinduism. He sees all religions as the same, except that he sees Christianity as fashionable and as the "in" thing. I will talk about this broad-mindedness in my next point.
4. For a religion to survive as a living and vibrant tradition, it requires a certain level of narrow-mindedness in its adherents. Usually, the ultra-modern set make a fetish of their broad-mindedness. This makes sense, in a way. A broad-minded person is likely to flourish in a globalized world, but not the ideas he is so broad-minded about. A good example are the Parsis. Most Parsis are urbane, tolerant and broad-minded. They have done very well for themselves. On the other hand, their religion in India is close to extinction. So, one must be broad-minded about most other things, but not about the things that one values - in this case, Hinduism and the Hindu lifestyle.
A true, traditional Hindu should be narrow-minded - in the sense that he dismisses other religions completely, is intolerant of Islam and Christianity, and is openly hostile to its proselytizers. This does not mean that he has to react violently, but he should be so hostile that a missionary should find it an unpleasant experience to meet with him.
A good example is a religious Muslim. He is pretty narrow-minded. He will normally do slightly less well in life than a "broad-minded Hindu", but his religion is likely to be the one that will survive any civilizational conflict. A jihadi is extremely narrow-minded, so the ideology of Jihad has a distinct likelihood of being destroyed, but not the religion of Islam - and that is because of the religious Muslim, who is consistently more narrow-minded than most religious people.
Also, perhaps, having family friends among members of other religions is not a good idea. An adult may feel free to have friends among Muslims or Christians, but a watching child may get the idea that mixing with people belonging to other religions is just fine, and they are just like us. This tends to give the wrong sort of ideas to young children. So, limiting one's contact to members of one's own community, especially at home, is a good idea. Leave "inter-religious dialogue" to those who have the time, inclination and maturity to do a good job.
There is something here that we <b>have</b> to understand.
1. Typically, the way we have been informed by education is that Hindus are approximately 75-80% of India's population.
However, religious Hindus are less than a majority in India. I don't think they form even a plurality. That should be our working assumption.
Most urban people have very little connection to either the Hindu understanding of God and life, or the normal detail of day-to-day Hindu ritual. And, as people migrate to urban areas, this number will increase.
I think we should start with the following number: <b>the percentage of lay religious Hindus in India is about 25% of the population, or less.</b>
2. Of the remaining, most adults have kept religion very far away from their ordinary lives - except marriage and the death ceremonies, no actual Hindu ceremony is performed for/by these people. Celebrating Diwali with firecrackers does not count. In effect, since most adults have kept their lives and their children away from actual religious activity, the children grow up without any emotional investment in the faith of their forefathers. They find the marriage ceremonies weird and hugely inconvenient, and the death ceremonies very traumatizing - because they don't know the significance of either. Even these ceremonies they see less and less of, because they have smaller families. So, really, in most cases, the first person to actually have a long talk with them about God, is usually a missionary.
3. Education in Convent schools: Education in convent schools causes two problems:
a) The student's dominant view of religion comes from Christianity. As if, that were the default religion of the world. His understanding of Christianity is usually much better than his understanding of Hinduism. (it was true, atleast then, in my case). And his understanding of Christianity and its traditions comes from those <i>uniquely equipped to teach it, the trained corps of missionaries</i>. He becomes used to seeing these people as naturally deserving respect, and as fundamentally good people. And this attitude of respect to these missionaries will naturally meet with approval from his parents.
b) Even if he doesn't convert, he develops a broad-mindedness to the concept of religion that is debilitating to Hinduism. He sees all religions as the same, except that he sees Christianity as fashionable and as the "in" thing. I will talk about this broad-mindedness in my next point.
4. For a religion to survive as a living and vibrant tradition, it requires a certain level of narrow-mindedness in its adherents. Usually, the ultra-modern set make a fetish of their broad-mindedness. This makes sense, in a way. A broad-minded person is likely to flourish in a globalized world, but not the ideas he is so broad-minded about. A good example are the Parsis. Most Parsis are urbane, tolerant and broad-minded. They have done very well for themselves. On the other hand, their religion in India is close to extinction. So, one must be broad-minded about most other things, but not about the things that one values - in this case, Hinduism and the Hindu lifestyle.
A true, traditional Hindu should be narrow-minded - in the sense that he dismisses other religions completely, is intolerant of Islam and Christianity, and is openly hostile to its proselytizers. This does not mean that he has to react violently, but he should be so hostile that a missionary should find it an unpleasant experience to meet with him.
A good example is a religious Muslim. He is pretty narrow-minded. He will normally do slightly less well in life than a "broad-minded Hindu", but his religion is likely to be the one that will survive any civilizational conflict. A jihadi is extremely narrow-minded, so the ideology of Jihad has a distinct likelihood of being destroyed, but not the religion of Islam - and that is because of the religious Muslim, who is consistently more narrow-minded than most religious people.
Also, perhaps, having family friends among members of other religions is not a good idea. An adult may feel free to have friends among Muslims or Christians, but a watching child may get the idea that mixing with people belonging to other religions is just fine, and they are just like us. This tends to give the wrong sort of ideas to young children. So, limiting one's contact to members of one's own community, especially at home, is a good idea. Leave "inter-religious dialogue" to those who have the time, inclination and maturity to do a good job.