Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a weekly newsletter for the modern and curious Hindu, featuring highlights around: religious texts, practice, history, politics, people, and ways to better our engagement and personal progress.
We’ll be experimenting a bit with the style and format over the coming weeks.
To read previous issues, click this link.
Forward widely and have your friends, family, and congregants sign up here!
Text Resource: Ramayana Website
As we highlighted in our Week 44 segment on “Stories”, it is important as Hindus to pass to future generations and our peers the important stories of our tradition. “Read Ramayana” is a website that easily facilitates doing that. They send out a weekly overview of slokas from the Ramayana, available in multiple languages. There is a social element to their service and opportunities for volunteering.
To sign up, please visit: https://readramayana.org/?p=signup
Hinduphobia Highlight: The Indian State
Pagan religions (of which many consider Hinduism one or at least akin to one) are religions of praxis; practice, ritual, and conduct are more important to practicioners than theology. Events of chief importance in these societies are festivals; they bring the community together to celebrate the Gods. The most famous pagan religion after Hinduism is likely the ancient Greco-Roman Religion. As Rome turned to Christianity in the 4th century, Christian emperors (especially Theodosius I) passed various restrictions meant to stop ceremonies and sacrifices at temples. As newer generations of Christianized Romans ascended to levers of power, the noose was tightened on the Roman religion, and within a generation the Roman religion had largely given way to Christianity. These topics are dealt with in great detail in an engrossing book called “The Final Pagan Generation” by Edward J. Watts. Hindupost has a great book review here, but we highly encourage readers to read the full book.
As we highlighted in Week 2 (“The Battle for Pashubali”), various governments and courts in India routinely interfere in existing Hindu traditions. With Deepavali/Diwali on the horizon, the annual “Firecracker pollution” canard rears its ugly head. Bollywood stars trot out fake history about firecrackers not being a historical part of Diwali (See TrueIndology debunking a Juhi Chawla video here), pseudo-environmentalists come out of the woodwork, and Hindus get on the defensive. Bans have been placed on firecrackers in earlier years and are shown to have no effect on air pollution during Diwali time; instead the real culprits are crop burning, industrial pollution, and vehicle traffic. For Hindi speakers, below is a great video defending the firecracker practice of Diwali.
So what is at stake? Much like the twilight of the Roman Empire, there has been significant government intervention in Hindu festivals in India. Every restriction or action to dampen the celebration is a cut on Hinduism, and much like the Romans during the late 4th century CE, Hindus think that their religion can survive through passivity and being a read-only culture (see Week 42). Wrong. Hinduism survives through regular practice and conscious transmission of religious practice and identity. Festivals are key to this, and make sure to celebrate Deepavali/Diwali with full gusto this month!
