On December 24th, right after breakfast, one of my old time college friends Amit (name changed) called and started laughing in his peculiar way, as I picked up the phone. Obviously I asked \u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another college friend of ours, Sumit (name changed), typical nice Desi boy, who came to America about 15 years ago had a sent a picture of himself dressed as Santa Claus to his mailing list. A common Christian friend, who received the over-enthusiastic Christmas wishes, called Amit to understand why would Sumit do so, when he\u2019s not Christian? She could not figure out, how a non-Christian is so enthusiastic about the festival. She was honestly CONFUSED.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our conversation swung between inside jokes of friends and extracting humor out of people\u2019s silly behavior in cross-culture interactions. Later, I thought to do an experiment on Facebook to see how people would react if I say that \u201cHindus wishing Merry Christmas to each other is a silly behavior\u201d and I spiced it up with some straight shooting words \u201cstupid behavior, colonized mindset.\u201d Just so happened, my wife (who\u2019s out of town right now) posted a similar note on her Facebook profile. The interactions with our friends, gave very good insights into minds of a variety of folks from close friends to casual acquaintances\u2026 which is pretty good representation of mainstream Hindu mindset, at least the urban Hindu mindset. I called a couple of friends in India to check on how\u2019s the Christmas celebrations there, and brainstormed on Hindus\u2019 enthusiasm for Christmas. As I was thinking through this seemingly mundane Facebook social experiment, insights into current Hindu mindset were not pleasing \u2013 hence this article. I hope to trigger some introspection among some \u201cthinking Hindus.\u201d While the analysis started with the topic Christmas Enthusiasm among Hindus and it ended up being a survey report on current state of mainstream urban Hindu mindset. Enjoy, critique and expand on it for your own good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here it goes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BASIC KNOWLEDGE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE CURRENT TIMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll make arguments later in the article based on some basics (really basics) about Hinduism\/ Sanatan Dharma, and what a world aware person should know in the current times of globalization. In my view, here are the minimum 3 things every educated Hindu should understand:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using these above mentioned requirements, think about yourself, the people around you and quality of Hindu institutions you\u2019ve interacted with!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although I haven\u2019t answered here explicitly, but you might have caught that \u201cDharma\u201d and \u201cReligion\u201d don\u2019t mean the same thing. Also, you better know which team you are in, even if you have no desire to play a socially important role. You may very well be an atheist, all I\u2019m saying is that be actively conscious of it for your own sake, and the for the sake of your family. In some way, everyone has to deal with these issues, sooner or later. You may very well choose to be a spectator, as opposed to being an active player in this game of inter-religion influence. But if someone doesn\u2019t have the essential understanding I\u2019ve highlighted above, in my view he\/she is not well qualified for inter-culture interactions. Even among Hindus they should not be allowed to have a significant voice. It\u2019s like blind leading the blind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coming back to this week\u2019s example\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n EXTRACTS FROM FACEBOOK INTERACTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In my Facebook post I provided the context of friends Amit-Sumit and essentially mentioned that if it\u2019s only among Hindus you are stupid and colonized to celebrate Christmas enthusiastically. My wife\u2019s post essentially said, I\u2019m a Hindu and I celebrate Diwali, Holi etc. I\u2019m not a Christian and don\u2019t celebrate Christmas, so dear Hindus please don\u2019t wish me Merry Christmas. We clarified that it\u2019s about defending our tradition, at least in our own home, and not about encroaching the competitor\u2019s turf, let alone hating other religion, which no true Hindu would do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m sharing some extracts and my counter arguments\/concern with our friends\u2019 thoughts and arguments. Obviously, the reason for this is to trigger introspection among our community and learn as much as we can. I agree, many of our friends wrote comments casually. I see the casual communication as good, because it is more candid, and it shows what\u2019s in the subconscious mind. Note that, these comments are from our \u201cfriends and family\u201d who tried to be nice and polite and are just having a healthy conversation. Imagine the conversation if it included strangers and adversaries! Remember, requirement # 3 above\u2026 it\u2019s a competitive marketplace!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll make one or two comments in terms of my \u201cconcerns\u201d to friends\u2019 arguments and collectively these concerns should worry anyone who cares about future of Hinduism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To my friends whose comments I\u2019m borrowing: My \u201cconcerns\u201d are not a response to you. I\u2019m only using your thoughts to build a collective list of issues for our community at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I loved the profiles of the people who shared these thoughts. We had engagement from urban friends in India, non-religious patriotic friends, first and second generation NRIs in North America etc. While nuances of responses by segmenting participants are interesting, I\u2019ll skip them, as it\u2019s already a long enough article. Most of these participants could very well become Hindu leaders, if they decided to. They have material success and have formal academic credentials, what else you need to be a Hindu leader today? This should be scary for the well-wishers of Dharma\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n My final \u201cCONCERN\u201d is that people who were defending Christianity were pretty loud, and Dharmic team members were either subtle and many invisible. Some of them communicated via private emails. I\u2019d say: come out folks, we need active voices as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KEY LEARNINGS<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the concerns list, let me leave you with three overarching key learnings from this analysis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You test these learnings for yourself and for the people around you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I should mention that it\u2019s not all negative; friends who are anchored in Dharma shared very good information on the topic. For example, someone exposed how Lord Krishna is decorated as Santa Clause, a video of temple celebrating Christmas, someone shared specifics on Joshua Project (http:\/\/www.joshuaproject.net<\/a>) and an associated multimedia company (www.createinternational.com\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n IN CONCLUSION\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generalizing\u2026Hindu community is not ready to defend their heritage in the current times of globalization! Yes, we are way behind the competition in terms of organizing ourselves and we have a long way to go. While this is not a pleasant thought, in past few years, I\u2019m seeing an undercurrent of Dharmic people waking up and taking stock of the situation. I\u2019m lucky to know some of the thought leaders in the field of comparative religion. Shri Rajiv Malhotra (www.rajivmalhotra.com<\/a>) is my favorite and most of the analysis in this article is based on the knowledge I\u2019ve acquired working with him. Anyone who has genuine interest in the subject of comparative religions must read his book \u201cBeing Different,\u201d a summary of which is available on Rajiv Malhotra\u2019s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Author: Sunil Sheoran<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Published: December 28, 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On December 24th, right after breakfast, one of my old time college friends Amit (name changed) called and started laughing in his peculiar way, as I picked up the phone. 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CONCERN: Avoiding the issue of substance, and trivialize by humor\/ teasing. Also, reconfirms the mindset that we all just vent out emotionally, so it discourages a solemn conversation. It\u2019s like we did not change our religion, so let\u2019s be complacent in competitive marketplace. Also laziness: Take it easy\/ \u201cChalta Hai\u201d attitude<\/li>
CONCERN: Person is clueless about competitiveness among religions and still confident of his opinion. Does a competitor exist? Has he thought about what a competitor would do in what situation?\u2026just clueless<\/li>
CONCERN: It\u2019s not about \u201cindividuals,\u201d there are good people in every religion. It\u2019s about philosophy, and about institutional strategies to gain market share. Friends participating in other friends\u2019 rituals is NOT the issue. Gurpurab anyway is a Dharmic tradition, and within Dharmic traditions, we should encourage cooperation, not competitiveness\u2026Shows lack of understanding on the three requirements mentioned above.<\/li>
CONCERN: Assumes I\u2019m a backward thinking person who wants to live in some fixed historical time. Can we Hindus answer today, how do we advance\/ become modern (make progress in Hindu way), without westernizing?<\/li>
CONCERN: Represents lack of understanding the 3 requirements above and shows laziness in thinking, copy\/paste of a slogan sentence. Unable to grasp point of \u201cHindus brainwashed to celebrate a competitor\u2019s festival, even when competitor is not working on it with direct involvement.\u201d<\/li>
CONCERN: Most people I\u2019ve talked are unclear on the basic words \u201cDharma,\u201d \u201creligion\u201d, \u201cspiritual\u201d in the context of comparative religion. Another example copy\/paste of slogan sentence\u2026 without thinking.<\/li>
CONCERN: This is a valid point, Christmas has huge cultural value in North America and religious aspect just gets sneaked in. It is harder to grasp \u201cexpansion\u201d when religion is wrapped in commercial & cultural aspects. In India a significant amount of money is being spent to build this wave. We are half way (don\u2019t take literally) in digestion process and completely unaware. Obviously, many of us don\u2019t even know that, the digestion doesn\u2019t happen instantly, it may be a multi-generation process. (Consult the book Being Different for details of digestion)<\/li>
CONCERN: Mindset to live in \u201cfairy land\/ goodie-goodie world\u201d and staying disconnected from competitive marketplace. Unless we anchor our kids solidly in our own tradition, why would they not get digested?<\/li>
CONCERN: This is a good one. I know for a fact that Arsh Vidya Gurukulam believes in being a traditional Hindu and resists digestion. Here the concern is about the transfer of context and using the words of a credible source with completely opposite intent.<\/li>
CONCERN: This is a good one, because an elderly grandma is saying that. The root of this issue of dissociating from our heritage started with prior generations. The big damage happened with colonization during British time. So it\u2019s important to understand the importance of \u201cunlearning\u201d and \u201ccleaning the collectively polluted mind\u201d we\u2019ve built in about 200 years.<\/li>
CONCERN: The problem in not in infancy, it has already become big enough and is growing rapidly. Come to metros and validate!!!<\/li>
CONCERN: Many of us honestly believe that \u201cHinduism\u201d has too many bad things in it (while we have hard time finding anything bad in competitors), so no pride, no commitment, even no reason to defend it.<\/li>
CONCERN: We start preaching on the subject that we are not experts. We don\u2019t even recognize that \u201ccomparative religions\u201d is a body of knowledge; which requires study like engineering or medicine and then practice for a few years, before you can start playing in field against competitors with sophisticated plans. Otherwise forget about winning; today, most Hindu \u201cleaders\u201d just run away when tough issues come up in competitive marketplace.<\/li>
CONCERN: Yes, we have been around for centuries. But you assume that our ancestors were complacent and silly like today\u2019s Hindu community. Our significant cultural degradation has happened with British intervention and thereafter. Think, how much we\u2019ve lost, both in hard power as well as soft power since then.<\/li>
CONCERN: If Hinduism is nothing concrete \u2013 \u201ca religion\u201d so there\u2019s nothing to defend. If you don\u2019t have a tangible\/ well-defined item, it\u2019s easier to take it apart. A dangerous thought \u2013 when we say \u201cHinduism is a way of life & culture, not a religion\u201d; better way to say is: We are a way of life AND a religion \u2013 something very clearly defined, which needed to be preserved and defended.<\/li>
CONCERN: Both these thoughts are common copy\/paste slogans among Hindus. Yes, we believe that the world is a family & wish good things for all. Remember though, Kauravas & Pandavas were also a family\u2026 and you know what Bhagwan Krishna taught Arjun\u2026Fight! Yes, we love all & hate none, but that doesn\u2019t relieve us of our own Purusharth\/ Swadharma.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n