Hinduism

Hinduism

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“Namaste”

(Greetings)

Born in India, but proud to be an American citizen I was only 7 when I came to this country. Raised as a Methodist and brought up with Christian beliefs and an Indian culture I still remember all the wonderful diversity my native land offers.

A nation of contrasts, India contains both developed industrial structure and an impoverished majority living traditional lives, seemingly untouched by the 20th century. Its population is the world’s second largest after China’s and still increasing by 2 percent a year. The nation’s cultural diversity and remnant caste system, may explain why family planning has been less successful than in China, where the centralized government has more power to enforce its policies. India’s efforts also have been hampered by such factors as high rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, low status of women, conflict between castes and religious groups, inconsistent government policy, poor internal communications, and, of course poverty (National Geographic Vol.174, No.6, December 1988, p. 930).

I remember as a little girl in India when I would hear people shout Jai Hind, “Long Live India!” Today’s India’s population has grown well over a billion. The people in India live in a country one-third the size of the U.S., who speak more than a thousand languages and dialects, and who support more than 20 political parties in the world’s biggest and perhaps boldest experiment in democracy (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 7).

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Relics unearthed the Indus Valley prove that a distinctive Indian culture existed there at least 5,000 years ago. Over the centuries, waves of invaders: Aryans, Greeks, Turks, Mongols from Central Asia, Persians, and Afghans swept into the subcontinent, each to leave its mark and be absorbed in turn. Modern India, still reflecting these influences, preserves a heritage that gave the world its “Arabic” numerals and the first cotton textiles. From Indian sages came Hinduism and Buddhism, which clam nearly half a billion followers (National Geographic Vol. 123, No. 5, p 655).

By the mid-1800s Indians were chafing under Britain’s imperial yoke, although their resistance lacked unity and direction. Not until Mohandas Gandhi assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1920 did the drive for independence become a truly mass movement (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 18).

Mohandas Gandhi, a man of religion. His title Mahatma means “great soul,” disagreed on what values should shape a new nation (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 19).

What sort of nation should an independent India become? Some Muslims considered life amid the Hindus intolerable and demanded a separate Islamic state (the future Pakistan). The British agreed to partition, but Gandhi warned, “You will have to divide my body before your divide India.” Six months after Prim Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed independence in August 1947. India became Independent on August 14, 1947 and Pakistan gained their Independence on August 15, 1947. A Hindu extremist, angry about Gandhi’s support of Muslims, shot and killed him. Nehru’s daughter, Indria Gandhi, served as prim minister for 16 years; in 1984 she too was

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assassinated. Her son, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was killed by a terrorist in 1991 (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 18).

The historic site to which I find myself returning at least once a visit is not a ruin at all but the flower-filled garden in which Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. Few bother to visit to nowadays. The old man is till revered as the Father of the Nation, but even before his death many of his most powerful political supporters had declared impractical his vision of an agrarian, nonviolent India, free of Western Influence (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 54).

The only sound in the garden is the raucous calling of crows from the branches of the old trees that shade the empty lawn. Footprints carved from red sandstone mark out the path Gandhi followed toward the platform where he meant to hold his daily prayer meeting shortly before sundown, and a pillar garlanded with marigolds stands at the spot at which he fell. It is inscribed with his last words, “He Ram-O God.” Gandhi was murdered by a fanatic fellow Hindu for urging fair treatment for Muslims, a martyr to the ideal of secular India in which all faiths would be treated equally (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 54).

For all its new found modernism India remains steeped in religion. The pious cacophony I hear from my window each dawn attests to that. First comes chanting from a Sikh gurdwara, which is soon partly drowned out by the sound of temple bells and the voice of a priest offering prayers from a Hindu temple dedicated to Siva. Then, louder than the rest, comes the wobbly tenor of a Muslim muezzin, proclaiming the greatness of Allah from a mosque (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 54).

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The overwhelming majority of India’s 950 million people are Hindus, but the country is also home to over a hundred million Muslims (only Indonesia and Pakistan have more), over 20 million Christians (more than the population of many European countries), 18 million Sikhs, 7.5 million Buddhists, 4 million Jains, and countless adherents of other faiths (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 54).

Indian nationalists charged that the British held onto their power by a deliberate policy of “divide and rule,” the cynical playing off of one religious group against another. If so, that lesson is clearly not lost on their successors (National Geographic Vol. 191, No. 5 May 1997, p. 55).

In village India, where people still know one another as individuals, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs coexist peacefully enough. But in crowded, anonymous cities like Delhi, the capital, religious resentments seethe beneath the surface, ripe for exploitation by