Right here is now not a book of Hindu catechism as it might well appear within the first few pages. Nor, is it a highfalutin reiteration of the shapely suggestions of Hinduism as talked about in various texts. Rajmohan Gandhi is asking a moderately straightforward and blunt question: What’s it to be a Hindu? That is, what is the stance that a Hindu would possibly well moreover honest peaceable adopt in the direction of other human beings? What are the Hindu’s sense of values that impact his/her outlook and behavior? Even though he raises prickly complications, Gandhi is now not enticing in any fierce polemic. He is grappling with the factual question of what it design to be a Hindu. It’s miles a matter that he’s asking himself as effectively as asking other Hindus. With out pronouncing so, Gandhi makes it certain that to be Hindu in a society, whether in India or in a international nation, is a political question.
One amongst the complications that he grapples with is that of what characterises Hinduism. He draws a parallel with the most often felt sentiment about Christian’s charity, or a Muslim’s faith or a Sikh ‘langar’, which defines a quality. What’s the typical that defines the Hindu is the one which troubles Gandhi. He writes, “We focus on of a Hindu temple, a Hindu locality, a Hindu college, a Hindu political rating collectively. Or of the Hindu neighborhood. Not most often of a Hindu gesture.” He concedes that on event the phrase ‘Hindu stoicism’ is weak. It’s straightforward to quarrel with Gandhi for being too straightforward, and even being simplistic. But it is handiest when Hindus confront the classic questions about themselves that one comes upon the reality.
He parts out the distress that a Hindu faces. He parts out that Hindu folks cease now not elevate their younger folks on the root of concepts and precepts talked about within the Upanishads. He parts to the exact home: Ninety nine per cent of Hindus cease now not know Sanskrit and the Hindu texts are all in Sanskrit. Citing the mighty-flaunted phrase ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’, Gandhi remarks in a tone of unmistakable irony, “While this frail Hindu insight is amazingly linked at this stage of our world’s budge, no person would possibly well moreover honest peaceable faux that Hindu folks had been raising their younger folks on that insight, or on the pair of words that summarise it.”
He devotes a chapter to Mahatma Gandhi’s Hinduism, and he says he’s doing so on memoir of he has studied the Mahatma intently and now not on memoir of “other Hindu thinkers are much less essential”. However the point of curiosity on the Mahatma’s Hinduism suits in with Gandhi’s theme within the book: What’s it to be a Hindu? That is, to be Hindu within the public arena, and in one’s interactions, pondering and one’s dealings with other human beings. You are now not Hindu in a cloister but on this planet.
End You Know Your Hinduism?
By Rajmohan Gandhi
Aleph
pp. 160; Rs 499
