Hinduism Articles

Published on 16th December, 2017, on www.dailyo.in This question is rooted in Abrahamic myth that frowns upon God being given any form, and the Biblical condemnation of idolatry as indicative of a false religion. In the 19th century, as the British became masters of India, Hindus were pressurised to defend the practice of idol worship. And so many Hindu reformers went to the extent of saying that “true” Hinduism, in its pristine form (by which they meant Vedas), had no idols. That idol worship is a later-day corruption. However, many Hindu traditionalists rejected this idea. The tension between giving God form and stripping God of any form is an ancient one. Before the British, it was the Muslim rulers of India who frowned upon idol worship. Their raid on temples, which was mainly for political reasons and economic loot (temples were repositories of great wealth), was justified by stating it was an exercise against infidel idolatry. This influence of Islam led many Hindus to

Don’t Blame The God Particle | Published on 21st December, 2017, in Outlook | Devdutt Pattanaik It is an old trick of a new religion. Discredit old religions. That is what followers of atheism and rationality (terms often used synonymously) do, although they would be furious at the suggestion that they follow a religion. And so you often hear them say, ‘God, hence religion, is the cause of most wars in the world. Rem­ove God and you will have peace.’ When you point out that the World Wars of the 20th century were not based on religion, they will promp­tly tell you to shut up. God as an idea is a relatively recent one in human history. Especially as a unitary idea. It became popular around the Mediterranean when the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity 1,700 years ago, and Islam rose in Arabia 1,400 years ago. Before that, the idea of one God was restricted to the tribes of Israel, who did not exert much influence in global affairs. Of course, one can argue that t

Listening to the Buddha’s hands | Published on 31st December, 2017, in Mid-day | Devdutt Pattanaik In the early days of Buddhism, Buddha was represented by a symbol: a footprint or a wheel or a pot or a tree. Later, less than 2,000 years ago, we see the earliest images of the Buddha in the Gandhara region (modern Pakistan and Afghanistan) as a Greek god. Simultaneously, Buddha images started appearing in the Gangetic plains around Mathura, where red stone was used. Unlike the Gandharan Buddha, where the shoulders were covered with cloth, in Mathura, the upper garment was draped only over the left shoulder, suggesting the influence of the Brahmin thread that hung over the left shoulder. In Mathura, Buddha was made to sit on a lotus, with a serpent behind him. Since then, Buddha images have been crafted around the world, from Central Asia to China, to South East Asia. While, to the untrained eye, all Buddha images look similar, with languid eyes and long ears, a sensitive eye w