We Are All Hindus Now -- Newsweek

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<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Aug 18 2009, 09:36 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Aug 18 2009, 09:36 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I think its a lashback at post Modernism which is moving them away from Christianism and close to paganism without Gods. They want to be Hindus without the Gods and Godesses.
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Ramana, all these definitions and terms like enlightenment, secular humanism, post modernism rarely embody universal values. For example enlightenment is a word that meant being against the Church . But the same buggers when the talked about India would sit there and applaud when the british authorites engineered the greatest famine in human history in 1770 (see the description by Robert fisk.

Alll the while they kept silent while the slave trade was going on with the full sanction of the Church. Compared to these horrendous criminal enterprises intellectual property theft (par to fthe story in my nex tbook)was a far more enlightened form of larceny. I just dont buy these facile generalizations anymore. MOst of these theories are rationalizations to explain away the massive greed and rapacity of the occidental during the years that they committed massive genocide against native peoples. Words like Enlightenment have a grotesque Orwellian ring about them.

I am reproducing below my initial take on this news item
Reggie i have seen the euphoria arising out of this article by Lisa Miller, and i have received this notification from at least a dozen different sources in the last few days , a Euphoria i might add that clearly indicates that the Indics are by no stretch of the imagination worthy enough to call themselves the successors of Chanakya and that evokes the emotional impulses in the Hindu resulting in such inanities as the Hindi Chini bhai bhai. This is what i wrote to Siaram who was the first to send me this article.

There has always been a small segment of the American population that has been drawn by the precepts that are embeded in the sanatana dharma. Among such votaries i count Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, the author who wrote Little Men and Little Women. But even as they were drawn by Vedantic Hindu precepts , they tried to distance themselves from an overt display of their faith by calling themselves Transcendentalists. Now transcendentalists is a long word and the hope was that most people would not recognize its meaning.So they were as reluctant to come out of the closet, as were Homosexuals till a decede ago I merely tell this story to illustrate the fact that some things never change and baldly stating we are all Hindus while tolerating the excesses that were heaped on the Hindus by the state of California is typical of the 'know nothng, hear nothing and see nothing attitude. I would have believed this artice to a greater degree had i been hearing from Joe six pack defending the Hindu from the "cows , caste and curry" type of characterization.that is even today commonplace. I have heard very few Americans defend Hinduism and to that extent I would not make too much of this article .
I would be curious about reactions to my take on this,especially from those who dont agree with me with the accompanying rationale as to why they feel so. For instance ,am i wrong in taking a jaded view of what may be a genuine turnaround in American public opinion
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On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Reggie Sinha wrote:

We are all Hindus now!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.



The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it.


Reggie Sinha
Om shanti, shanti, shanti!




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पुराणमितिव्रुत्तमाख्यायिकोदाहरणं धर्मार्थशास्त्रं चेतीतिहासः।
Kosla Vepa
Indic studies Foundation