Is Hinduism a Pagan Religion?

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Mar 12, 2013, 3:42:53 PM3/12/13

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Is Hinduism a Pagan Religion?

By Arvind Sharma,
Birks Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University
Huffington Post
February 3, 2012

Some American law-makers recently characterized Hinduism
as pagan. This raises the question: is Hinduism a pagan
religion?

The Abrahamic religious traditions, as Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam are collectively called,
associate paganism with the worship of many gods, and
their many idols. The former is condemned as polytheism
and the latter as idolatry; and the two are viewed as
inextricably intertwined forms of worship, which has been
superseded in the aniconic monotheism and which these
religions self-consciously uphold and propagate.

Hinduism at first blush appears to conform to paganism.
It seems to worship many gods and seems to do so by
worshipping different images. It thus comes across as
polytheistic and idolatrous and therefore pagan. This
perception fuels the missionary zeal of the Abrahamic
religions to destroy such paganism.

There is only one problem with this scenario. It is based
on a false presumption. It is true that there are many
gods in Hinduism and that it abounds in image worship,
but while these various gods are considered different
gods in paganism as traditionally represented, in
Hinduism they represent the various forms of the one and
same God. Thus a plurality of gods does not denote
polytheism in Hinduism but rather the plurality of the
forms in which the same one God might appear. A new word
such as polyformism may have to be coined, or an older
word polymorphism may have to be invoked, to be set
beside polytheism, to provide the corrective. The Hindu
situation is characterized not by polytheism but what
might be called at best "apparent polytheism," because
the reality underlying all the different gods is the
reality of one God. Hence, ironically, the situation
could also in a sense be described as one of "apparent
monotheism," in the sense that the one God appears in
various forms.

Similarly, the various images of the various gods also
reflect the same point. Any of the many forms, in which
God might be seen as appearing, can be visually
represented in Hinduism, as a way of focusing the mind on
God. This should not be taken for some new-fangled
apologetic exegetical sleight of hand performed by modern
Hinduism. When the 17th century French traveler, Francois
Bernier, was shocked by what he saw of Hinduism, this is
how the pandits of Banaras explained the situation to
him: "We have indeed in our temples a great variety of
images. ...To all these images we pay great honour;
prostrating our bodies, and presenting to them, with much
ceremony, flowers, rice, scented oil, saffron, and other
similar articles. Yet we do not believe that these
statues are themselves Brahma or Vishnu; but merely their
images and representations. We show them deference only
for the sake of the deity whom they represent, and when
we pray it is not to the statue, but to that deity.
Images are admitted in our temples because we conceive
that prayers are offered up with more devotion when there
is something before the eyes that fixes the mind, but in
fact we acknowledge that God alone is absolute, that He
only is the omnipotent Lord.'"

The explanation may not have convinced Bernier but Hindus
apparently have no difficulty with it. Sometimes
Abrahamic parents wonder whether this plurality does not
end up leaving the Hindus confused, and particularly
their children. For the Hindus, however, such plurality
does not create any confusion of identity, no more than
several pictures of us in our album, taken at different
stages of our life and in different forms and dresses,
causes us to become confused about our identity.

Thus no matter how paganesque Hinduism might appear, it
is not pagan in the sense attributed to the word by
Abrahamic religions. As a well-known scholar of Hinduism,
who was also a missionary in India for a while, Klaus K.
Klostermaier observes: "Many Hindu homes are lavishly
decorated with color prints of a great many Hindu gods
and goddesses, often joined by the gods and goddesses of
other religions and the pictures of contemporary heroes.
Thus side by side with Siva and Vi??u and Devi one can
see Jesus and Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha and Jina
Mahavira, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and many
others. But if questioned about the many gods even the
illiterate villager will answer: bhagvan ek hai -- the
Lord is One. He may not be able to figure out in
theological terms how the many gods and the one God hang
together and he may not be sure about the hierarchy
obtaining among the many manifestations, but he does know
that ultimately there is only One and that the many
somehow merge into the One."

This then is the great difference between Hinduism and
the Abrahamic religions. Monotheism in Abrahamic
religions represents the denial of gods in God, while the
monotheism of Hinduism represents the affirmation of gods
in God. Failure to recognize this tempts the followers of
Abrahamic religions into branding Hinduism as pagan.

This Blogger's books:

A Guide to Hindu Spirituality (Perennial Philosophy)
by Arvind Sharma

Modern Hindu Thought: An Introduction
by Arvind Sharma

Hinduism , Hindu Pagan , Hinduism Idolatry , Hinduism
Pagan , Hinduism Pagan Religion , Hinduism Polytheism ,
Is Hinduism a Pagan Religion , Is Hinduism Pagan ,
Religion News

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Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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Sir Fred M. McNeill

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Mar 12, 2013, 4:22:13 PM3/12/13

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ALL religions are pagan. 'Humans' need their hubris boosting
and meaning giving stories. They ALL need these because
of their legacy 'hunter-gatherer' brain and because they are
independent information structures. Religions offer these
needed stories.

BTW it is time for some new stories. The 'old' ones
are too pagan. 'Reality' is weird and mysterious enough
to allow all kinds of stories that meet 'human' constraints.

'We' also need to experience what the ETs have
confabulated.

Giovanna Stefani