Religious Freedom

This is the second part from a speech before a Seminar on Religious Freedom, held on July 11, 1978, in New Delhi, at the request of eighty-five Unitarian Christians from the U.S.A. and Europe on a visit to India. The author was requested to present the Hindu point of view.

Pluralism is like plants in a garden

In a garden, different plants, trees and fruits have their own seasons, their own rhythm and their own requirements. They have their own alloted share of sunshine, air and water and they grow to their own potential size. The gardener does not try to prescribe one season or one rhythm or one pace for all of them. He tries to serve them according to their own requirements. And that is enough. If he imposed his own ideas on them, he should destory them. Only in service according to the laws of nature, there is colour and variety, life and nourishment for us all.

Spiritual life is a Pilgrimage

The spiritual life is a pilgrimage which is joined by different persons, coming from different directions, along different routes, passing through different terrains, using different modes of sensibilities, and bringing with them for an offering their different life-experiences. They sing and praise Him in different idioms, using different images, metaphors and symbols. The wise say : Do not fight about the symbols and images. Look behind at the heart which is one.

The basis of Hindu Psyche – a Deeper Truth

The Hindu psyche has been shaped by this kind of religious teaching and intuition. This approach has strengthened the roots of religious tolerance amongst the Hindus. Religious tolerance and religious freedom are great liberal and humanist truths which have their roots in the still deeper truths of the Spirit and the Self-truths which lie beyond man’s ordinary reason, and also beyond his ordinary religiosity; even beyond certain especial beliefs by which certain religions lay great store, or certain strong emotions which they inculcate, or certain obsessive roles which they assign to themselves.

Need to examine and compare the Scriptures

Hinduism is different not only from West’s materialism in its two varieties, liberal and communist, but it also differs in some important ways from some other religions and religious value systems, particularly those of Semitic origin. Here we are referring to Christianity and Islam.

As a way of life which emphasizes spiritual values, Hinduism has several points of contact with cultures that take into account this dimension. In fact, there is quite a strong movement amongst men of goodwill all over the world which says that all religions hold the same truth and all scriptures preach the same thing. They cull passages from different scriptures and prove their point. This is a noble and well-intentioned thought and effort. In a world suffering from so much unnecessary conflict, the truth of unity and harmony has to be emphasized. If a man is the same in his more common sensibilities, he must also be the same in his spiritual ones. If he laughs when he is tickled and pained when he is pricked, he must also be filled with a sense of awe, wonder and holiness in the presence of the profundities and mysteries of life.

But this viewpoint is not equally shared by all. While this truth comes naturally to a Hindu or a Buddhist, it is denied both in theory as well as in practice by Christianity and Islam. They believe that not only are they different, but they are also superior. From the start, they believed that the Gods they worshipped were superior to the Gods of their neighbours, and their religion was invested with truth while others wallowed in falsities. One of the results of this attitude was that they developed along missionary and crusading lines. Their God-given task has been to teach the principles of a true religion to a benighted world of idolators, pagans, infidels and devil-worshippers.

This viewpoint may have lost its appeal in certain sections influenced by new trends in thought towards more universalism, but it is still quite popular with the organized churches.

Look at the way Christianity and Islam are working in Asian and African countries and draw your conclusions. The more naked methods of good old days have become somewhat outdated, and therefore undergone some modifications, but the old mind is still very much there, and the new methods adopted are not less single-minded, tricky and subversive. We must not forget this fact.

There is also another point of a more philosophical import. Even if we admit a fundamental unity between different religions, the differences too cannot be denied and they have to be accounted for. For example, if you study carefully different scriptures like the Upanishads and the Gita on the one hand and the Bible and the Quran on the other, you find great differences of approach, ethos, and temperament. Many times, you feel that these differences are more than differences of idiom and treatment. In fact, you feel that the very worlds of the two scriptures are different. Therefore, to treat these differences and to try to understand them is not without its intellectual and spiritual interest. In fact, to overlook them or slur over them would be an act of intellectual shoddiness.

Difference in Scriptures

Read from this angle, we find that the two scriptures are very different in their atmosphere.

1. The scriptures of Semitic inspiration are hortative, admonitory; they urge, they reprove, they enjoin, they warn, they even enforce. There is a note of feverishness in them. But the atmosphere of the Hindu scriptures is unhurried, relaxed and expositional.

2. The first variety seems to goad you; the second one to lead you step by step.

3. The first one is passionate, zealous; the second one calm and detached.

4. The first one plays on your hopes and fears; it threatens you with a hell and promises you a paradise; while the second one aims at opening up your understanding.

There are other differences along the same line.

5. The Hindu approach is speculative, pluralistic, introvert; the Christian and the Islamic approach is extrovert, monolithic, dramatic and spectacular. There is Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit, the Devil and the Original Sin. Then the only God sends his only Son and he pays the ransom for the original transgression with his blood. Then there is a final Day of Judgment and a throne surrounded by angels. On this day, some are saved but many more are damned.

These differences are not merely differences of idioms and expressions. They are of a more fundamental nature. They arise because the two scriptures deal with two different though not unconnected subjects. The Upanishads and the Gita are mystical works taking for granted the ethical background; the Bible and the Quran, both in their own ways, deal after a fashion with moral edification that can point to the next initial step on the mystical path to those who are ready to take it. This difference leads to other differences even in such fundamental concepts as God, man, mankind, fellow- creation, ethics, revelation.

God and Ethics

In a predominantly mystical approach, God is the innermost truth of one’s own being; ethical action is its natural expression; higher truth is revealed to one who sincerely invokes it. In this approach, therefore, God is the inner controller, ethical life is natural and spontaneous, truth is experiential, and revelation is open to all. But in scriptures where mysticism is rudimentary, the ethics too is not much developed. God is conceived externally; ethics are commandments and injunctions from an external authority; moral laws are matters of exhortation and warnings. Here one’s obligations do not extend beyond one’s brothers in faith. In this approach, truth is credal, revelation exclusive, and salvation belongs only to the elect. It is also indirect, and takes place only through a particular individual.

Faith and Reason

There are other differences and other ways of expressing them.

1. Christianity and Islam are religions of faith; Hinduism and its powerful offshoot, Buddhism, are religions of wisdom, gnosis, prajna.

2. The former deal with intensities of feelings, the latter aim at awakening the mind.

3. The former are based on a passionate idea, the latter on self-naughting.

4. The former emphasize faith with a strong tendency to deny philosophy and reason; the latter emphasize understanding – they do not deny faith but they give due place to reason and philosophy.

There is nothing wrong with faith. It has its place and utility in spiritual life. It provides certainty in the midst of uncertainty; a cozy niche in a strange, wide world; a place of rest for the wandering mind. Therefore, something like Christianity and Islam have a natural appeal and have their utility in the spiritual economy. There is also a type of mind to which nothing else would suit.

But there are others to whom faith alone is not enough. They seek wider pastures of the soul. Such people have to go over to buddhi, or what the Greeks called nous, universal or Divine reason. But this buddhi is very different from the ordinary reasoning mind that we generally know, the mind whose seeing is partial and uncertain, which is painfully trying to put two and two together, and which is a slave to a hundred desires, passions and preferences. True buddhi is direct in its seeing, spontaneous and free in its operation; it reflects reality as it is in its essence and universality.

In mystic tradition, faith and reason are united in a happy marriage. But when they stand apart, they fall both in worth and status. Faith lacking in philosophy becomes narrow, ignorant and intolerant; philosophy without faith ends in mere doubts and denials and makes a man footloose, spiritually speaking. Such philosophy is not wisdom or prajna of Yoga, but merely prajnavada, pretence to wisdom. This kind of philosophy lacks discrimination, will, strength, purpose. It becomes blind. It entertains every idea as equally valid without looking into its heart. It admits every claim or pretence backed by sufficient force. It cowers before any fanatic creed. It happened with the pagan religions of Greece and Rome; it happened and is still happening with Hinduism; on another level, it is happening with the democratic world. Liberal forces are in retreat before the onslaught of fanatic ideologies.

(Courtesy : voibooks.bitbucket.io)

God is the inner controller, ethical life is natural and spontaneous, truth is experiential, and revelation is open to all !