On Sunday 05 Aug 2007 1:31 am, Madhu Menon wrote: > There are also the "Hinduism is a way of life" people who tell me that I > can be a Hindu despite my atheism, but I've never been able to get a > straight answer from anyone about what exactly that way of life entails.
Nobody seems to have an answer, but in this connection I have found a couple of passages in a book that I just finished reading yesterday that are somewhat revealing about the "Hindu", even if derogatory. The book is "The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition" by Narendra Singh Sarila. I quote from this book: Page 365 (chapter 13) "Until the early part of the twentieth century, Indian belonging to the Hindu faith, on returning home from journey's abroad, were required to take a dip in the holy Ganga as part of a purification ritual.. If contact with the outside world was shunned to such a great extent, how could they be expected to know much about other people: their customs and cultures; their politics and passions and their strengths and weaknesses? In the nineteenth century, and English observer described the character of the Hindus as a mixture of 'arrogance, political blindness...and misplaced generosity So far as politics goes they were novices and unfit to preserve their liberties'" Page 415 (Postscript) "...Western social mores helped foster among the individualistic Hindus a greater sense of responsibility for society and feeling of brotherhood among them. Shashi Tharoor, the writer, speaking of Hindus has asked: How can the followers of a faith without any fundamentals become fundamentalists? But lack of parameters and a sense of social responsibility can also lead to intolerance as well as to parochialism" shiv
