Where Hinduism And The Abrahamic Religions Agree And Disagree

As an amateur student of comparative religion, I see a striking point of convergence and one of divergence between the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) on the one side, and Hinduism on the other.

The Abrahamic religions may have their internal differences, but they agree on one point. They all worship the "God of Abraham", who is invisible, formless, all-pervasive, all-knowing and all-powerful.

From their perspective, Hinduism is the polar opposite, because it is polytheistic and idolatrous. These acts are considered grave sins in their philosophy.

However, it may surprise many people belonging to the Abrahamic religions to know that Hinduism too has the concept of an invisible, formless, all-pervasive, all-knowing and all-powerful entity called Brahman (pronounced bruh-muhn, and not to be confused with either the Creator deity (Brahma) of the cosmic creator-preserver-destroyer trinity, or the priestly caste of brahmans (pronounced braa-muhN)).

There is a tiny difference in the way Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions view this formless entity. Hinduism ascribes no gender to the Brahman, while the Abrahamic ones are emphatic that the God of Abraham is a "He".

Setting aside that one difference, there is a surprising convergence in the two theological schools, i.e., that there is one invisible, formless, all-pervasive, all-knowing and all-powerful entity that is responsible for all of Creation.

Now comes the difference between the two theological schools.

The Abrahamic schools consider the worship of any deity other than this formless one as a grave sin. Any other deity is considered a "false god", or worse, a creation of the Devil meant to lead humans astray. Worship of idols is also considered a grave sin.

These are the very first two commandments of the ten enshrined in Judaism and Christianity.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"

These rules seem consistent with the view that God is formless.

How then does Hinduism reconcile the two concepts of a single formless being and the worship of multiple deities and idols?

Simple. Hinduism considers these practices to be harmless, not sins.

Hindu philosophy says that any prayer directed at any deity or idol ultimately finds its way to the supreme consciousness or Brahman. Hence, although these deities and idols are not the Brahman, they are just aids to make an abstract concept more concrete for ordinary people.

To take an analogy from computing, all programs are ultimately ones and zeroes. However, it's hard for programmers to code in ones and zeroes, so they code in "higher-level languages" that are more understandable, and compilers then convert these programs into ones and zeroes. All IT professionals know that what computers execute is a sequence of ones and zeroes, but they also accept that coding in a higher-level language is not a grave sin, but a welcome aid.

So that's the core point on which the Abrahamic religions and Hinduism agree - that there is only one formless entity that has created the Universe.

And the core point on which the two schools disagree is whether the worship of other deities and idols is a grave sin, or just a harmless and indeed useful aid to make the abstract more concrete for those who wish to pray.

This is an example of what can only be seen in a Hindu context - an image containing Muslim, Hindu and Christian icons in one. This would be anathema to Muslims and Christians, but is acceptable to the Hindu philosophy. It's all Brahman behind the images, anyway.

As an IT professional (not as a former Hindu!), I find the approach of Hinduism pragmatic, while the approach of the Abrahamic religions seems needlessly harsh.

A related post is about the parallels between the Abrahamic religions and Hinduism's Dvaita school: "An Indian Contribution To Philosophy"

Why Hinduism Is Philosophically Superior To Christianity

[Disclaimer: I'm an atheist, not a believer in any religion. However, I'm an eager student of comparative religion, and I like to understand the philosophical standpoints of different religions, as well as the possible psychology of their thinkers and rule-makers. I also tend to play provocateur in religious debates. I have a number of uncomfortable questions to ask of believing Hindus. However, this particular post is aimed at evangelical Christians, to challenge their smug assumption that their faith is superior to the pagan/heathen beliefs of Hinduism.]

Let's examine some of the core beliefs of Hinduism and Christianity from a philosophical standpoint, and see which appeals to us as the superior approach.

1. The notion of Individual Accountability versus that of Collective Punishment

If I commit a crime, who should be punished for it? Me, or my family members? It's a no-brainer that I alone am accountable for my actions, not my family, and certainly not any descendents of mine who weren't even born at the time I committed the crime.

As a topical example, Israel's recent actions in Gaza violate the UN Charter of Human Rights, because it has chosen to punish the entire civilian population of Gaza (including innocent infants) in retaliation for the actions of Hamas. Collective Punishment is not justice. In fact, it is itself a crime.

The Hindu notion of Karma is all about individual accountability. According to this belief, the Cosmos rewards and punishes individuals for their actions. Karma is even believed to follow individuals across multiple lifetimes. Unexplained and undeserved strokes of good and bad fortune are explained as the possible results of actions in past lives. Regardless of the validity of this belief, the philosophical underpinning of this is the notion of individual accountability. One's actions do not result in reward or punishment to others, not even to members of one's immediate family. The fruits of action attach solely to the individual alone.

Any karma you earn through your actions sticks to you through death and rebirth

Contrast that with the fundamental Christian notion of Original Sin. The basic nature of man is believed to be that of a sinner. And what is that sin that attaches to every human being who is born? It's the "Original Sin" that was committed by Adam and Eve, from whom all humans are believed to be descended. All humans are therefore condemned to go to Hell for this sin committed by their distant ancestors. It is only thanks to the substitutional atonement of Jesus Christ that we have a way to escape this punishment. Christ died for our sins. If we accept Christ as our saviour, then we are spared the punishment of Hell, else we will be made to suffer for the sins committed by someone else.

Bad news. We're all born sinners - according to Christianity

The Hindu notion of Karma illustrates its underlying philosophy of Individual Accountability, where each person is rewarded or punished based on their actions alone. The Christian notion of Original Sin represents its philosophy of Collective Punishment, where all of us are to be punished for the actions of someone else. Which of these would you consider the superior concept?

2. "The punishment should fit the crime"

If I commit a murder, I could go to jail for 30 years (or be executed in countries that have not outlawed the death penalty). If I steal something, I may go to jail for a few months. If I steal a loaf of bread because my family is starving, I may be tasked with a few weeks of community service or even let off altogether with just a warning. Such a system of justice seems inherently fair. In Les Miserables, the protagonist steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family, and is sentenced to jail for an inordinately long period. Virtually everyone sees this as grossly unfair. We humans inherently accept the principle that a punishment should fit the crime.

The Hindu notion of Karma is proportional. If I do something good, the Cosmos rewards me in equal measure. Likewise if I do something bad. If I poke someone, I'm likely to get a similar poke in return. Karmic retribution for a poke is unlikely to be the massacre of my entire family. Karma is believed to be proportionate in its rewards and punishments.

Once again, there is no evidence at all that Karma is real or that it works in this manner. However, the common belief among Hindus is that this is how Karma works, and hence proportionality is one of the attributes of Karma from a philosophical standpoint.

The Cosmos does unto you what you do unto others, neither more nor less

What is the Christian reward for goodness or its punishment for evil? An Eternity in Heaven or Hell. An Eternity in Heaven isn't terribly controversial, but an Eternity in Hell could be. Consider how long "Eternity" is. An individual's lifetime, in comparison, is finite. Even if a person commits heinous crimes every waking moment of their lives from the time they're a toddler until they die, the crimes they can commit in their lifetime are necessarily finite in nature. Punishment of an infinite duration is way out of proportion to the crimes anyone could possibly manage to commit over their entire, finite lifetime. Add to this the "Original Sin" of Adam and Eve if you will. Was their act so evil that they deserved an Eternity in Hell? A loving parent, which is what God is supposed to be, would have let them off with a slap on the wrist.

The Fall Into Hell by Dieric Bouts

Viewed from the perspective of proportionality, the Hindu notion of Karmic retribution is fairer because it tends to fit the crime. The Christian notion of an Eternity in Hell is way, way out of proportion to any possible set of crimes an individual could commit, not to mention crimes that they did not themselves commit!

3. The attitude towards Knowledge

Unlike Christianity, Hinduism does not see the basic nature of a human being as that of a sinner. Rather, it sees a human being as one trapped in ignorance and delusion. The purpose of human existence is to seek liberation for the atma (soul). Liberation is attained through enlightenment, and such enlightenment may take many lifetimes (rebirths), since the soul "grows" with each experience. When a person (finally) attains enlightenment, they realise that their consciousness is not an individual one, but part of the Supreme Consciousness, and they then attain liberation from the cycle of births and deaths by having their consciousness merge with the Supreme.

The Hindu concept of enlightenment, or the attainment of Oneness with the Supreme Consciousness

The Hindu attitude towards Knowledge is therefore positive. Humans are encouraged to seek knowledge and truth.

Furthermore, they are advised not to accept even the word of a guru as gospel truth, but to question, challenge and debate every claim until they are satisfied of its validity. The Hindu attitude towards knowledge is not just positive, but also scientific because of its encouragement of skepticism and debate. Indeed, open debates between religious denominations were common in ancient India.

The famous philosophical debate between Shankaracharya and Mandana Mishra that illustrated not just the prevalent non-dogmatic attitude to knowledge, but also the intellectual honesty of the judge, who was Mandana Mishra's wife, yet ruled that her husband had lost the debate

[Important note: The historicity of Shankaracharya is in doubt. Some accounts place him as early as the 5th century BCE, while others place him around the 8th century CE, which is quite a broad interval of time. Also, it's not clear whether the debate with Mandana Mishra ever took place. However, when discussing philosophical differences between religions, the factual accuracy of events is not as important as whether these are commonly accepted or not. The fact that the idea of debate is popularly accepted indicates that Hinduism as a philosophy is OK with heterodox views.]

Let's turn now to Christianity. What was the "Original Sin" of Adam and Eve? One could say it was disobedience towards God. But what was their specific act of disobedience? What Adam and Eve did was eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge! Mind you, it was not an apple, as some children's books portray it. Christian scripture is astonishingly candid in using the allegory of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. That's quite a startling admission of Christianity's negative attitude towards Knowledge - on two counts. One, that Adam and Eve were punished for seeking Knowledge by being expelled from Paradise, and further, all their descendents, even those then unborn, were cursed with an out-of-proportion Collective Punishment of an Eternity in Hell. Two, that they were expected to accept the word of God unquestioningly, and their curiosity or skepticism was not encouraged but punished.

"You want knowledge? Get out! This is a garden, not a library."

The concept of heterodoxy in Christianity has a bloody history. Catholics and Protestants in Europe slaughtered each other for centuries instead of engaging in debate. The Christian attitude towards knowledge was therefore not marked by enquiry and debate, but blind and dogmatic faith. The notorious reaction of the Church to Galileo and Darwin hardly needs mentioning.

St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, a painting by François Dubois on the French wars of religion

Yet again, the Hindu philosophy appears superior to the Christian one, this time through its attitude towards Knowledge in general, and specifically the encouragement to question received wisdom and to discover truth for oneself.

4. The attitude towards Diversity of Thought

Every modern corporation today has an "Inclusion and Diversity" initiative. Furthermore, the notion of diversity is claimed to be more than just the superficial diversity of gender, national origin, ethnicity or religion, but diversity of thought. (Whether diversity of thought is genuinely encouraged is doubtful, though. The Ukraine and Gaza crises have shown that people with views out of line with that of the Western establishment are summarily "cancelled", deplatformed and demonetised.)

Be that as it may, the more enlightened sections of modern society have begun to grudgingly accept that people around the world have diverse views, and that it is not desirable to impose a single viewpoint upon everyone. Diversity of thought is viewed as a strength, in that it helps to overcome "groupthink" and suboptimal decision-making. Mutual respect, as opposed to the condescending concept of "tolerance", is beginning to be appreciated as a healthier attitude in a diverse world.

One of Hinduism's fundamental beliefs is that "all paths lead to the truth", and this is borne out by the fact that Hindu evangelism and conversion to Hinduism are rarely observed in society. (Hindu evangelism is mainly seen in the Hare Krishna movement, which seems to be predominantly composed of Western people who were formerly Christian, and who perhaps therefore carry forward their old attitude of "my way is superior to yours" even after adopting a religion that explicitly rejects that notion! Rituals to convert non-Hindus to Hinduism are also a recent phenomenon. The 19th century Hindu monk, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founded the Arya Samaj and invented conversion rituals as a response to the Christian evangelism and conversion efforts that he witnessed.)

Hindu Philosophy as stated in the Rig Veda - "ekam sat vipraa bahudhaa vadanti - The truth is one but the wise speak of it in many ways", an expression of respect for other viewpoints

The Abrahamic religions (not just Christianity) are notorious for their attitude of supremacism. Christianity and Islam are proselytising religions that do not accept the equal validity of other religions, but look down on them as inferior beliefs. Judaism may not have a strong tradition of conversion, but this is not out of a sense of mutual respect for other religions, but rather from the notion of Jews being the "Chosen People". Judaism therefore lacks even the condescending desire to share one's spiritual superiority with others!

The difference in attitudes towards non-belief is also striking. Atheism is considered part of the accepted schools of thought within Hinduism, with the atheistic thinker Charvaka being one of Hinduism's respected saints. Non-belief in God is considered sinful in Christianity, and indeed in the entire Abrahamic tradition.

Once again, it is Hinduism that exhibits the more philosophically evolved attitude of respect for diversity of thought, compared to Christianity (or indeed, any religion in the Abrahamic family).

5. The notion of Cosmic Time

The Christian view of Time is linear. "In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth." And we will all spend an Eternity either in Heaven or in Hell. That's it. A definite beginning, and no end.

The Christian theological concept of Cosmic Time, from the moment of Creation to an Eternity in Heaven or Hell

By contrast, the Hindu concept of Time is cyclical. The Universe, i.e., all of Creation, is created, lasts for a while, then undergoes dissolution. Rinse and repeat. There is no end to this cycle of creation and dissolution.

The Hindu Trinity of a Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Shiva) keeps the Universe going forever

Of course, there is no evidence for the validity of either hypothesis. However, from a purely philosophical standpoint, the Hindu concept of a continuously repeating lifecycle of Creation is more sophisticated than the simplistic, linear one in the Christian tradition.

6. Objective Truth and the entire edifice of Western civilisation

This point is not strictly about Christianity. It's about Western thinking in general, and I have written about it in detail earlier. The entire edifice of modern Western thought, i.e., what is referred to as "scientific", "rationalistic" or "evidence-based" knowledge, rests upon a fundamental premise, that there is something called Objective Truth.

But what if there is none? An early Indic philosophy (not necessarily Hindu in a religious sense) called Samkhya claims that there can be no Objective Truth because the Observer is an inextricable part of the Universe that they claim to be observing. This means that any observation is subjective.

Is this just an academic hypothesis? Well, the famous Observer Effect from the Double-Slit Experiment raises tantalising questions. If an Observer can change the nature of a phenomenon by the very fact of their presence, then this supports the hypothesis that there may be no Objective Reality.

Summary

It's clear from the above examples that Hinduism as a collection of philosophical thoughts is too sophisticated to be dismissed as a primitive or "heathen" belief system. Indeed, Christian theological concepts seem amateurish compared to their Hindu counterparts.

Let me emphasise once again that this is not a theological debate over which set of beliefs is superior. My personal position is that all religions are fairytales and that humans need to rise above blind belief in religious scripture, or indeed, even non-denominational "spirituality", which is also just "woo". However, when we dig a level deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of various religions, there is a difference in the sophistication of concepts that are found in each. This post is a collection of my impressions on whatever I have gathered about Hinduism and Christianity.

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Comments by my friend Seshadri Kumar, a fellow ex-Hindu atheist (with minor edits of typos, and my observations in italics):

1. Individual responsibility vs collective punishment. While I understand where you are going with this, the reality is that Hinduism also has collective punishment. That's why we do shraddha. You are supposed to do a ritual every amavasai (new moon day, pronounced "amaavaasai" in Tamil) for the welfare of the spirits of your ancestors. This, incidentally, was the reason the sage Agastya decided to marry. He was walking one day and saw several sages hanging upside down and crying in pain. He asked them why they were in this state. They told him they were his ancestors and [that they were] suffering because he had not married and produced a child. This is the reason I flatly refuse to do rituals for my parents. I did the bare minimum for my mother so her relatives would not be offended. When she was alive, I made a deal with her that the only religious ritual I would do was my dad's annual shraddha, and that too, a highly abbreviated, 15 minute version. (Fair point. However, there is a spectrum of belief among Hindus, and the less ritualistic do not worry too much about this.)

2. The punishment should fit the crime. Not really. You should read the Garuda Purana. The punishments described in it are horrific. Again, this is related to funeral ceremonies. Traditionally, priests read out the Garuda Purana to the relatives of the dead to scare them into paying huge sums of money so that appropriate rituals are done, including gifting of cows and gold to Brahmins, to prevent horrible tortures from being inflicted on their loved ones. (The Garuda Purana is a little-known text that is only cited at the time of funerals, for the reasons you describe. It's probably a self-serving invention of priests, as you say. However, this isn't an everyday text for Hindus, so I would argue that it isn't that relevant.)

3. The attitude towards knowledge. What you have described is all fine in theory, but the idea that it will take several lifetimes offers zero hope to those born in low castes. In fact, knowledge was explicitly denied to those born as Shudras and Dalits because they were supposed to have been born with dark, tamasic (pronounced "taamasik") souls, and so any knowledge given to them would only be misused for evil purposes. (True.) All the stuff you have described is only for privileged Brahmins. Also, you talk about how even the guru can be challenged by the disciple, but that's certainly not the case anywhere in India. Teachers do not like to be challenged, and that comes from Hindu culture. There was one chap who was working in Silicon Valley and decided to chuck it all to learn Hindustani music from a guru. The first thing his guru said was that you should never challenge the guru, accept everything he says, etc. (You're right in that in practice, gurus generally take offence at being challenged. The better ones take challenges in the right spirit. Vivekananda once followed Ramakrishna Paramahamsa at night to check if he was going to visit his wife, and the man just chuckled and said, "That's right, test your guru at every turn." That behaviour aligns with the philosophy. 99% of gurus probably wouldn't respond that positively.)

4. Hinduism's attitude towards conversion is largely because of the caste system. If you convert someone, which varNa (caste) are you going to put them in? And, historically, for more than 2000 years, Hinduism did not encounter foreign religions in any significant number, until the arrival of Christianity and Islam, and their initial response was like that of the Jews - we are the superior religion, you are "mlecchas" (outcastes, untouchables). Hinduism had so many adherents, they weren't interested in conversions. They took pains to kick people out when they didn't like them. (Yes, caste is a practical reason why conversion to Hinduism wouldn't work.)

5. Why is cyclic time any better than linear time? (Not "better", just more sophisticated. Linear time is like a story made up by a 6 year old, while cyclic time is like a story made up by a 12 year old. Both fairytales of course, but one is slightly more sophisticated than the other.)

6. Careful with your arguments about objective truth. A lot of [Hindu propagandists] use exactly this to justify anything under the sun. Especially the Advaita guys. All nonsense. (Any point made can be subverted and misused. I can't refrain from talking about this just because it could be used to justify random stuff.)

[If you liked this post, you may find these interesting too:
The Three Hinduisms
Fixing The Symbolism Of The Dashaavataar Mythology]

A Layered Framework To Understand Religion-Based Terror

I was shocked to hear the news of a Hindu man in Rajasthan who hacked a Muslim man to death and set him alight, all the while having the deed and his aggrieved justifications recorded on camera. It was difficult to watch, but also too fascinating to ignore from a psychological angle. The reasoning the man gave was outlandish. He accused his victim of conducting a "love jihad" (a peculiarly patriarchal term of outrage applied to instances of Hindu women marrying Muslim men and converting to Islam). He said he had committed the murder "for the sake of our Hindu faith".

Viewer discretion advised, even though the gory parts are blurred out

The justification that he did it for the faith was the most striking to me.

I have heard this kind of argument before, especially the oft-repeated scaremongering propaganda that "Muslims will outnumber Hindus in India in a generation". I had demolished this latter canard quite simply and comprehensively, using nothing more than a spreadsheet and census data of the last four decades. However, variants of this inexplicable majoritarian insecurity keep surfacing and never seem to die.

I had to create a joker meme to express my incredulity at the skewed priorities I was seeing

When I posted about this latest outrage and called it "Hindu terror", a couple of my Hindu friends protested. The gist of their protest was that Hindu scripture and Hindu spiritual leaders have never called for the killing of people of other faiths, and therefore any reasons claimed by the murderer were to be treated as entirely personal. It was not to be called "Hindu" terror in spite of his claim that he did it out of a desire to defend the Hindu faith; it was just a murder carried out for personal reasons.

They had a point in that Islamist killers often point to some verse or the other in the Quran to justify their acts, but there is probably no verse in any Hindu religious text that calls for violence against Muslims or people of any other faith.

But their argument didn't completely convince me either.

I am not a believing Hindu. I consider religion to be nothing more than ideology, which is a set of ideas that possesses a person's mind, and which need not make any sense to a rationalist, or even be internally consistent. Ideology can come from a variety of sources. Looking for motive purely in scripture or in a narrow school of doctrine is naive, because the links from a person's ideology to religious scripture are not always straightforward. It's important to examine the murderous ideology and see where it is derived from.

I was gratified at one level to see that even my Hindu friends did not condone the murder itself. They were just extremely uncomfortable with my associating the murder with Hinduism, even though the murderer had explicitly made that link himself! So was I really justified in calling this an act of "Hindu terror"?

This post is my systematic attempt to deconstruct the elements of religion-based ideologies with a view to understanding their role in instigating acts of terror.

Let's first establish and agree that a negative ideology can instigate a person into committing acts of violence against others.

A positive ideology, on the other hand, can make a person more amenable to peaceful coexistence with others.

When looking at the role of religion in creating either a positive or negative ideology in the mind of a person, it's important to recognise at least three paths from scripture to the mind.

The simplistic view is that a person is directly influenced by what is written in scripture. Of course, since everything is subjective and amenable to interpretation, even a person reading a scriptural text all by themselves, without external influences, is still subject to the interpretation offered by their own mind.

In practice, scripture is almost always interpreted for believers by intermediaries such as clerics and accepted spiritual leaders.

Therefore, the clergy has a crucial role to play in interpreting scripture and creating an ideology in a believer's mind. We have seen for ourselves the practical difference between a positive ideology and a negative ideology in countless cases.

At this juncture, a number of Hindus may interject to argue that this is true only of the Abrahamic religions, since Abrahamic texts are known to be exclusivist and intolerant of other faiths, often exhorting their believers to engage in acts of violence against unbelievers. Hindu scriptures do not call for such violence against unbelievers, and therefore there is no question of Hindu scripture being used to provide a credible basis for such violence.

While this is a valid argument, we are talking about ideology as a general phenomenon, and its roots need not be scripture alone but other social or political entities that are associated with the religion in some way.

While the scriptures themselves may not exhort believers into any kind of action, there could be self-styled defenders of the faith who create a sense of imperative action through a specialised ideology that claims to have its roots in scripture, but which in reality is a distinct ideology in itself. What matters is the perceived legitimacy of the new ideology in terms of its basis in religion. If the ideology is more and more widely perceived to be related to the religion, then the difference between the ideology and the religion becomes more and more academic.

With the two Abrahamic religions, ideology is directly related to scripture, with interpretation playing a key role in the formation of the ultimate ideology that influences a believer's mind.

This is what the ideological model of Islam looks like:

(Click to expand)

There is a scriptural basis for intolerance in Islam, and there is simultaneously scriptural basis for tolerance. It is a genuine contradiction, and the contradiction is resolved one way or the other depending on interpretation. Thus, the term "jihad" could be interpreted either literally as violence against unbelievers, or as an internal spiritual struggle. Believers in each ideology claim to be the correct interpreters of their scripture, and consider the other group to be misled.

The model is more interesting in the case of Christianity, since scripture itself is divided into two texts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is very similar to the Quran in the vehemence of its language and degree of intolerance for various groups of people and acts. The New Testament, the chronicle of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, is much less violent. Interestingly, the New Testament asserts itself to be in complete alignment with the doctrine of the Old.

(Click to expand)

Extreme punishment for minor transgressions, of the kind encountered in the Quran, is also found in the Old Testament, but no modern interpretation of Christianity gives this any credence, even though there is no formal repudiation of these verses either. There are, however, other examples of intolerance, such as the injunctions against homosexuality, which continue to divide believing Christians. Hence Christianity too exhibits a striking dichotomy in ideology in spite of basic scriptural unity.

Hinduism is perhaps the most interesting model of the three.

(Click to expand)

Hindu scripture is remarkably diverse, with many different texts considered to be sacred and authoritative. The illustration above deliberately draws upon a spectrum of scriptural texts. Traditionally, the variety of opinions in the scriptures has been interpreted in two broad ways. Socially, a rigid hierarchy and pervasively observed rules have controlled diversity in often oppressive ways. Philosophically, there has been a degree of mutual respect and tolerance for other viewpoints (sampradayas). There have been debates between competing schools of thought, but violence as witnessed in Europe between Catholics and Protestant, for example, has been historically rare.

Sometimes, there have been creative reinterpretations of the faith itself, when placed under pressure from materially more powerful external viewpoints (e.g., the 19th century reinvention of Hinduism by Swami Vivekananda and Dayananda Saraswati on account of pressure from British sociologists as well as missionaries).

With Hinduism though, modern interpretations have added a layer of complexity to the traditional ones, in the form of new ideologies. Marxism, Feminism and Liberal Humanism are a group of ideologies that challenge the traditional orthodox Hindu social order as being fundamentally unfair. Concurrently, perhaps as a reaction to reform, the ideology of Hindu Nationalism (or Hindutva) has arisen to defend the old order from perceived attack.

There are thus two distinct Hindu ideologies. One of these successfully combines the native Hindu tradition of philosophical tolerance with the modern sensibility of egalitarianism. The other, equally successfully, combines the negative elements of social orthodoxy and majoritarian insecurity. The latter is increasingly seen in Indian society and mirrors the rise of the BJP in Indian politics. It is this ideology that is responsible for instigating violence against religious minorities.

It is clear from these models that at a general level, acts of terror are driven by ideology. Ideology may have its roots in religious scripture and interpretations thereof, but it could also be influenced by socio-political organisations and movements that only bear a tenuous relationship to religion. Regardless, if these socio-political organisations and movements are widely acknowledged to be legitimate spokespeople for the religion, then any acts of terror instigated by their ideology must be laid at the door of the religion.

Much as my Hindu friends might protest the term "Hindu terror", it is an inescapable conclusion that the terror ideology of the Hindutva organisations is related to Hinduism to the extent that they are considered legitimate representatives of Hinduism. Hindu terror is therefore regrettably real.