ON BEING A HINDU. SIMPLY.

A short introduction to the Hindu

religion

Part 1: God

Sengamalam

 Author
First edition 2014

Published by
Sanghamitra
sangha0mitra@yahoo.co.uk

Foreword

I have found it easy to be a Hindu. You can believe in

God without engaging in any form of worship, or you
can be indifferent to the existence of a supernatural
being as such. You can worship a personal God in
the form of an idol, pray to a picture, or simply
perceive the presence of the divine as an abstract
entity anywhere and everywhere. You can go out and
seek a place of worship, or find God within your own
heart.

There are canonical texts, yes, but you can

be a Hindu, even a devout Hindu, without ever

getting to know what they really say!

Though I have been a Hindu for the half a

century since I was born, religion has not been the
default marker of my identity, much less so caste,
community and other such classifications that are
commonly associated with the Hindu religion.

confess I like the traditional way of life, prefer it even.

But that is because experience has shown me that
many aspects of it are worth preserving and passing
on: they are often simple good sense, and are
sustainable.

The

food

eat,

most

cultural

observances at home, many of the stories in my

head, and several of the songs in my heart are all
received bits and pieces of the milieu in which I was
born and live. Despite this deep familiarity, however,
I can only describe my relationship with my religion
as placid, at best. Like most things familiar, I have
taken my religion for granted. If yet I make bold to
write this essay, it is because I have felt compelled to
by a series of recent events: An occidental scholar
plays footsie with bizarre theories in the guise of
writing an alternative history of the Hindu religion;

she gets away with it because self-styled guardians of

the Hindu faith who drag the books publisher to
court agree, eventually, for an out-of-court settlement
to ban the book in India instead of ensuring a public
hearing in court about the Hindu faith and limits to
free speech. And the intelligentsia, which is quick to
denounce the Hindu right, not only reneges on its
responsibility to provide a scholarly critique of the
provocative piece of prose that was taken to court,
but also shows a singular lack of zeal in facilitating
open-minded discourse and debate on the Hindu
religion in a manner that is accessible and intelligible
to the lay person, in other words someone like me, for
whom religion is dynamic a part of everyday life
and not an esoteric externality that can be dissected
from a distance.
Is it ignorance of languages such as Sanskrit
and Tamil languages of the literature that Hindu
religion has amassed over the duration of its long
history which prevents academic commitment to
such dialogue from public fora? Or is it an awkward

attempt to avoid being seen as conflating religion and

philosophy, or conceding secular space to iffy
matters?

Should the people of a land where the

Hindu religion is practiced by millions remain

indifferent while their religion is allowed to become a
mere contrivance for vested interests to use in any
manner that suits them? Doesnt it deserve more?
We are talking here about a benign faith that has
lived through subjugation, re-inventing itself with
remarkable

chutzpah,

and

an

active,

working

philosophy that retains its links to pre-history.

In one mythological tale, Vedam or the Vedas
as

they

are

known,

which,

etymologically,

is

synchronous with Knowledge, appeals to be saved

from those who are small-minded those who will
misuse Knowledge to deceive. While I can do nothing
to take on the architects of my angst, I can share a
small slice of the Hindu religion as it is practiced by
millions of ordinary people like me. For cradling me
in

comfort

through

the

years,

quietly

and

unobtrusively working to choreograph my life as I

muddle my way through it, I owe my religion this.

God

When I was two or three years old my mother told me

a simple story, which I think was my first formal
introduction to God. The story went like this:
Once upon a time, in a remote village on the
edge of a thick forest, there lived a little boy and his
mother in a small hut. The boys father had died and
the mother had to work very hard to eke out a living.
In due course, the boy became old enough to go to
school. But he was scared to go as it meant walking
several kilometres through a thick forest. The little

boy begs his mother to come with him. However, as

she had to work every day from early in the morning
till late in the evening, she could not take her son to
school at all, and so the days pass.
One night, the mother tells the little boy the
story of Lord Krishna and persuades him to go to
school from the next day. All you have to do is to call
Krishna if youre frightened and the Lord will come
running, she says, reassuring her son, cradling his
head on her bosom.
Next morning, the little boy wakes up early
and gets ready to go to school.

He sings a merry

song and walks through the forest. He isnt scared at

all as daylight streams through the thick canopy,
patterning the path in gold and grey.

But in the

evening, as he makes his way home from school, the

forest is full of dark shadows and the little boy is very
scared to walk alone.

He remembers his mothers

advice, and calls out loudly to Krishna.

A young cowherd appears and asks, Why did

you call me?
The little boy is puzzled, and replies that he
was actually calling the Lord Krishna because he was
scared to walk alone through the dark forest, all the
way to his village.
The cowherd laughs and says, My name is
also Krishna. Ill come with you, and holds out his
hand to the boy.
The duo walks through the forest, chatting
gaily till they reach the forest fringe.

Call me

whenever you want, and Ill come, the cowherd tells

the little boy when dropping him off at the edge of his
village.
Every evening, on his way home from school,
the boy cries out, Krishna! Krishna! and the
cowherd unfailingly turns up and keeps the boy
company till they reach the village.

After several days, the mother, who is very

happy to see her son going to school regularly, tells
him he is a brave boy for going through the forest all
alone. The little boy then tells his mother about his
young friend.

The mother wants to thank the

cowherd who has been accompanying her son all the

way through the forest, and comes one evening to
meet him at the forest fringe. The moment he sees
her, the cowherd disappears.

The mother realizes

that it was indeed Lord Krishna himself who had

been coming to her sons help in the guise of a
cowherd.

Not long after she told me this story, my mother gave

me the image of a deity to play with.

This tiny,

upright

fashioned

figure

of

the

Lord

Ganesha

intricately in brittle plastic was to be my personal

God. I kept him through my childhood, fitting him
diagonally into a soft plastic soap dish, also pink,

lined with a soft cotton cloth, with a folded silk piece

for a head-rest.

The soap dish would be stood up

vertically on its edge every morning, and laid flat on

its side every night. I enjoyed the ritual of waking
up God and putting him to sleep. I believed that just
as Lord Krishna unfailingly turned up to help the
boy, my Ganesha too would always be there for me.
A child has several sadnesses and anxieties
which elders cannot always appreciate or do not
always have the time to attend to: friends and
siblings can be mean, parents can fall sick, teachers
can be unfair, and a child may have moral dilemmas
that cannot be shared.

At all such times I would

turn to my Ganesha.

He became my friend, a

repository of my secrets. And, every time, I felt better

after sharing with him my fears and sorrows. As I
grew

into

adolescence,

my

Diary

became

my

confidante and my toy Ganesha became a treasured

memory.

But God, in the abstract, had already

become a very strong source of strength.

I have

always been sure he will be there for me, whenever I

need him.
As a child I also learnt, from stories heard and
read, that God takes various forms: poor and rich,
dwarf and giant, child, woman, man, reptiles,
simians, and animals aquatic, land or air-borne or a
combination of these.

I also learnt to regard as

sacred books, tools and implements, in fact all things

in Nature both in their anthropomorphized forms
and in the abstract. For instance, God, I was told, is
present in books, in the words the books contain,
and in the knowledge the words contain; God is
present too in the ground beneath our feet and
hence we ask the earths forgiveness before we step
on it every morning; in the trees and plants and
hence we do not pluck the leaves wantonly or pinch
flowers except when needed; in the water and hence
we do not defile her by spitting or urinating in water
bodies; in everyone and everything in fact, and so we
seek to thank for being allowed to plough a field,
sculpt a stone, strike a ball, pound some flour, and

also to be pardoned when we hit, kick, bang, pummel

or punch a fellow creature.
As I grew from adolescence and into college, I
understood that not everyone shared my simple
notion of God.

But my faith was deep-rooted: God

could come in any shape; he could take a human

form or be available to us as a brittle piece of pink
plastic; and no ones God is any lesser than
anothers.

Like in most Hindu households, we

venerated a cornucopia of deities, including those of

antithetical religions. Thus, idols in various shapes
and sizes, made of materials that ranged from clay to
precious metals, framed pictures, and calendar
sheets of Muslim and Parsi saints sat choc-a-bloc
with images of Jesus Christ and Mother Mary of
Velankanni in that corner of our house which was
allotted for worship.

Decades later, when I was

exposed to the poems of the Tamil Bhakti saints (the

Azhwars), I understood that Hindu literature of yore
is suffused with the same message: Nammazhwar,
the pre-eminent saint of the Sri Vaishnava sect, in

his composition, Tiruvaimozhi, asserts that God,

whom he describes as both that repository of
goodness higher than which there is none, and that
which cleanses the mired mind and allows the
goodness to reveal itself is amenable for conception
by each individual in the manner that occurs to
them'.

No ones God is inferior to anothers, the

saint-poet asserts, and each ones God becomes

available for discovery as conceived [1.1.1, 1.1.2, and
1.1.5]. The Bhagavad Gita also alludes to the
spontaneity of the act of worship by asserting that
God

becomes

available

to

whoever

desires

to

faithfully worship any particular form, whichever one

it is [7.21].
As I walk into the sunset of my life, I am
grateful to the Hindu ethos that celebrates the utter
simplicity of God who inheres in and subsumes
everything and everyone. He is present in all things
big and small from a mammoth column that holds
up a palace to a speck of dust that flies past, as
Prahlada tells an incensed Hiranyakashipu who is

thirsting for a duel with the invisible God in the

popular story of a demon and his divine son.
God permeates every particle in every nook,
and stands as a symbol of unification assimilating
in himself everything, everywhere (Tiruvaimozhi,
1.1.10)

says

Nammazhwar,

making

the

metaphysical divine so easily available for those who

seek it in the material world. He and She and It, and
that and this and everything that you can think of,
or cannot, is God, proclaims Nammazhwar and
marvels at those who doubt: for them, where and
what can God, ubiquitous though he is, ever be? For
those who believe, he is so accessible. Where is he
not? But even he who is so much within our grasp
becomes such an enigma to the sceptic!
Every street corner temple, every composers
signature deity, every potters clay idol, calendar-art
and computer graphic is a recognition of the
extremely subjective nature of an individuals notion
of, need for, and relationship with the divine. To my

mind, the Hindu believes that God is one but his

forms many.

Three hundred and thirty million is

only a symbolic figure for the number of gods a

Hindu may worship. The religion allows for limitless
expansion to accommodate the aspirations and
imaginings of the devout.
pantheon.

It is not a pagans

It is the latitude of laissez-faire that

recognizes that each individual can have their own

notion of the supernatural.

And no one persons

conception can be thought to be any less than

anyone elses.
The sun is a favourite motif to explain the
Hindu notion of a single, universal God who can yet
be so personalised. Just as the Sun is one for all the
world, and yet rises at different times in different
regions, and is viewed differently by different people
so too is God one, though his forms are many.

Forthcoming topics in the series

God and the Seeker of God

The Hindu Ethos
Hymns and Prayers
Myths, Mythologies and Parables