Week 198: Positive vs Oppositional Religion, Sita Ram Goel, Aesthetic!
09/30/2023 - Modern Hindu Content
Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: a discussion on Positive vs Oppositional religion, a tribute to Sita Ram Goel, and an aesthetic!
Praxis Highlight: Positive vs Oppositional Religion
A lot of discourse on Hinduism, especially among the “WhatsApp Uncle” crowd around Hinduism tends to glorify Hinduism purely in its opposition to Islam.
The below tweets, concerning the topic of pashubali (ritual animal sacrifice sanctioned by the Vedas), show one element of frustration with this crowd. Reminder that we covered pashubali in Week 2 and Week 141. Hindu critics of pashubali often compare it to the Islamic festival of “Bakri Eid” or Eid al-Adha, which involves large, often public animal slaughter. Combined with many Hindu sects being vegetarian, one will often find Hindus spouting Jain-influenced nonsense like “ahimsa is our religion” or “no God demands blood” or the most relevant “we are not Muslim to sacrifice animals”.
However, animal sacrifice is far from the only topic where this rears its head. Discussions of modest dress, alcohol consumption, of fealty to religious texts, and more spark comparisons to Islam immediately from this crowd. This is a friendly reminder that marking Hinduism solely as an “Anti-Islam religion”, and affirming only the Hindu practices and worldviews which contradict Islamic ones, is not a healthy way of practicing the religion. It makes Islam the center of one’s worldview.
Instead, what we try to do with the publication, and what we encourage Hindus to do, is to affirm and educate themselves on their own traditions, texts, and beliefs. Being a Hindu should involve understanding the sacredness of the Vedas, of understanding reincarnation, of finding paths to moksha, and of developing bhakti (this is not a complete list). Every Hindu practice should be affirmed or discarded on its own merits, based on fealty to Hindu texts, and commentaries made by learned gurus.
History Highlight: A Tribute to Sita Ram Goel
Aesthetic: Ganesh Chaturthi
