Discovering I'm a Hindu

“How many of you want to be like Gideon?” asked our Moral Instruction teacher. The lady, a native of Chennai and staunch Catholic, had just told our class the story of Gideon, whose main achievement, she said, was that he destroyed the idols of his family’s gods. The hands of all shot up, except the Sikh students. She nodded approvingly.

I wont go into the details of how my grandmother shooed me out of the puja room because I hadn’t removed my shoes, and afterthoughts that came to a fourth grade student. But the upshot was that I didn’t emulate the Old Testament saint or prophet or whatever. But I did become a foe of “idolatry” which apparently was a grave sin, which got the invisible God up there somewhere mad enough to visit some awful punishment. One was also supposed to fall on one’s knees and beg for things from that short tempered God, the kind of guy who created man and woman and then booted them out from Eden for plucking and eating one fruit. And the stories of miracles worked by Jesus, even after his death on a cross. We did puzzle over why an execution device could be holy, but chalo, chalta hai.

Long story short, I left the Christian school by class nine halfway brainwashed to the desert religion.

My next school was a Kendriya Vidyalaya where the morning prayer began with a couple of shlokas (Om sahna bhavatu sahnou bhunaktu... etc) but no religious brainwashing other then the official line: all religions are same. Presenting Gandhi as some sort of god did jar somewhat, but we were in the classes where one starts getting wild and rebellious and so we just let it pass with sneers and wise-guy comments.

Gradually Christian indoctrination started wearing out, helped not a little by my voracious appetite to read. Our small family business subscribed to a number of journals and magazines, the RSS’s weekly Organiser being one, and daily Motherland being another. These two publications put some things in perspective. One, the missionaries were hell-bent on converting the Indians and stirring up trouble in the North East. Two, the Indira Gandhi dispensation was incredibly corrupt and using “Secularism” as a counter to the opposition party which posed any significant threat, the Jan Sangh. This was painted as a Hindu party because of its RSS ideological links. The stick of Indira Gandhi’s phony secularism (and Muslim vote bank politics) was used in season and out by a captive All India Radio and a fawning press, to denigrate the “Hindu Right” as something evil. For a teen the forbidden becomes a dare – come on, let’s do it.

I wasn’t blind to the corruption, inefficiency and shortages, which were a hallmark of Indira’s rule. Due to the corrupt gang which was ruling us I fell in with the opposition guys, who were of course the RSS/Jan Sanghis. Not a party member, mind. No sticking posters or shouting slogans. Just friendly to the like minded crowd. Gradually the simple line of reasoning became: Against corruption -> With the opposition -> With the Jan Sanghis -> With the RSS ideology -> Hindu ideology. I got the idea that, amongst all living creatures, only humans can be conciously evil; a snale bites because nature made it so, but a criminal is a criminal by choice; and to be really evil uses an ideology as cover.

But still I prided in identifying myself as an atheist. “One religion bad, so all are bad”.

Came the Emergency and of course a youth won’t accept such hogwash. The attitude hardened. I lived in those days in a room in a factory in the outskirts of Dehradun. As our family was anti-Congress, my little residence became a safe house for RSS men on the run. A known RSS guy would escort some stranger after dark. No names, no questions. The guest would get a bed in a room next to the cubbyhole housing the telex machine (being disturbed by the clattering of the telex at unexpected times). Some would stay a couple of days with the curtains drawn, receiving mysterious visitors after dark and talking in low voices. The Emergency seemed never-ending and I wished these guys would start something violent instead of holding useless meetings. I said so and was rewarded with badly printed underground newsletters. These were some relief, not least because AIR and Doordarshan’s propaganda was getting increasingly irritating. At least the Sanghis and Akalis were the good guys, holding protests, as I learned from the underground papers. So I got put off by the sarkari "secularism".

Still I kept Hinduism at a nodding distance. I was Not a Desert cult follower, was Not a Lefty follower, having seen the damage they had done to my country. But nothing positive. Such it remained for decades. Communist terror waned in most parts of the world but Islamic terror replaced it, underlining my belief that ideology sucks. The Gita’s lesson looked relevant, though; evil has to be fought.

Then one day, quite recently, I stumbled across a blog by a German, Maria Wirth. She saw a lot in India and Hinduism which we all see but fail to notice. She puts it very simply and clearly.

Memories of Hindu thought which I’d read came back and I reasoned thus (which may sound silly or wrong, but that’s my imperfect understanding): the entire cosmos is a form of Shakti or energy (matter and energy are interchangeable). The life forms, earth, planets, stars, myself, everything was a part of a regulated whole. We give Shakti various names, various forms. What caused this we call Brahma. For all I know Brahma is just the laws of physics which may still not be fully understood as yet. Religion is NOT Dharma. Sanatana is not at the superficial level. It awakens to a state of awareness and consciousness. Most forms of the divine, even if benign, are seen  with at least one weapon. One must be strong, kind and aware.

So I am now a Hindu on my own terms. We are all interlinked. Duty has to be done. Evil has to be fought. Good or bad karma will catch up. There’s nothing to be apologetic about being a Hindu. Leaving aside rituals, the essence is common sense.