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One of Dharma's roles on campus is to provide a forum to discuss issues pertinent to Hindus. In the past, we have addressed issues such as social justice in Hinduism, the caste system, neo-vedanta, Hinduism and sexuality, and many others as part of our monthly forums. The forum dicussions this year will be led by our forum chair, Gokul Madhavan, and will focus on the following question: "What does it mean to be a Hindu?". Each month, we will ask a specific question that will shape our discussions with the ultimate goal of defining the elusive Hindu identity. Before each forum, we will post the discussion outline here for your perusal, and after each forum, we will post a summary of the main topics or questions we successfully addressed. If you have any questions, or would like to get involved as part of our Forum Sub-Committee, please contact Gokul Madhavan at gmadhav@fas.harvard.edu. If you would like to continue a dicussion topic online, please feel free to subscribe to Dharma-Open, where you can post your views on not only forum topics but also other topics pertinent to Hindus both in the United States and abroad. Please visit http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/dharma-open and fill out the form. Thanks!
Discussion Handouts
What does it mean to be a Hindu? Debate was lively and multifaceted, with many students coming up with extremely interesting ideas and proposals to answer the question. The first was to restrict the scope of the question to Hindu individuals in America, and most students agreed that being described as Hindu in America is primarily a social activity --- people need to visit temples and take part in Hindu cultural activities in order to be considered Hindu by others. At the same time, there was also the consensus that Hinduism, at a deeper and more philosophical level, is not so much about society as it is about each individual choosing that path that he or she is most comfortable with. Such paths could include devotion, rigorous self-study, or social service, or just about anything else that give the individual a sense of connectedness with the Cosmos. There is no particular form of God or divinity that one needs to believe in in order to be considered a Hindu. The problem that this gives rise to is the fact that, under this rule, many devout followers of other religions would automatically get classified as Hindu, even if they wouldn't describe themselves thus. One way to deal with this, then, is to consider only those people Hindu who affirm themselves as such. People also brought up the idea that perhaps some sort of affiliation to the Vedas is necessary in order to be a Hindu. This proposition is an extremely interesting one, since the Vedas play almost no role whatsoever in the daily life of the vast majority of Hindus; social customs and mythological tales play a far more important role in guiding Hindus. However, these tales ultimately derive their authority from the Vedas, and thus connect those ancient texts with modern Hindu life. The interesting counter-argument to that point is that people often treasure these stories for their intrinsic values almost as much as for relating the Vedas to modern life. Further, given the temporal and cultural remoteness of the Vedas from modern Hindu life, the Vedas would have to be so heavily reinterpreted to be of value in modern times that they would lose most of their original meaning. Is there then no answer to the question this forum tried to answer? We felt at the end of the discussion that the only way to reconcile all these counterpoints is by defining an individual as Hindu solely on the basis of self-affirmation. It was felt by many that coming up with an idea of what Hinduism is would automatically create an idea of what Hinduism is not, and the boundaries that divide those who are considered Hindu from those who are not would be so arbitrary as to be useless. In the end, as Hindu philosophers would perhaps argue, the label by which one is described by society matters a lot less than the actual path one chooses to live by; when the Ultimate Truth that all religions pursue is the same, why restrain oneself using human labels? |
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