Readers Write In #786: There is more to Hinduism than what meets the eye

By Wise Ass Fool

MIND BLOWN BY VOLGA MUDHAL GANGAI VARAI (VMGV)

As a loud, proud and oftentimes obnoxious (hindsight is 20-20) atheist, I picked up Volga Mudhal Gangai Varai (VMGV) by Rahul Sankrityayan. It is an anthology of 20 stories chronicling the migration of tribes all the way from, as the title suggests, the shores of Volga River in Russia to the banks of Ganges in India, over a period of more than two millennia.

Each story gives us a glimpse of how the tribes, as they migrated, evolved from a matriarchal to patriarchal to monarchical to feudal system. In a few of these stories, we get brave protagonists who stand up and fight against the tyrannies of their time. We see some of them being a beacon of reason, sowing the seeds of rational thinking and wokeness in the subsequent generation. In other stories, we witness real historical villains like figures who conspire to create hierarchical systems to oppress the people, and exercise their power over them. These villains also wield religion as a powerful weapon to entrench casteism, racism, and sexism. We also see certain historical characters with so much clout that they simply become Gods after a few generations of passed down oral history.

As a leftist and an atheist, who thinks that all religious rituals are mere drudgery, this book resonated with me a lot. I felt like I took a peek behind the curtains of the birth of Indian civilization, philosophy, religion and economics. My skepticism about religions consolidated further, convincing me more than ever that religion is nothing but a tool brandished by the wealthy upper ruling class to oppress the downtrodden en masse.

The ultimate freedom a man can achieve is when he renounces his religion.

I’m free. Or am I really?

FAST FORWARD TO HINDU GNANA MARABIL AARU DHARISANANGAL (HGMAD)

My friend, Jeeva recommended the book Hindu Gnana Marabil Aaru Dharisanangal to me, and I must confess that I only reluctantly picked it up.

To be honest, I picked this book with my logical reasoning setting on my brain turned to 11, and skepticism dialed up to 13. Jeyamohan, the author of this book, actually to my surprise, asks the reader to keep these settings intact, while he showcases the six basic Indian/Hindu philosophical schools of thoughts.

They are 1.⁠ ⁠Sangiyam 2.⁠ ⁠Yogam 3.⁠ ⁠Nyayam 4.⁠ ⁠Vaiseshigam 5.⁠ ⁠Poorva Meemamsam 6.⁠ ⁠Vedantam (Uthara Meemamsam)

If you think that this is already soaked in the juice of religious jargon and reeks of culty funk, I can’t really disagree with you because that’s sort of what I thought of, when I was reading the initial chapters of the book. But, I had faith in Jeyamohan, because I have read some of his books and seen his interviews, so I was quite familiar with his rational sensibilities.

There are various ways to get well versed in the philosophies of Hinduism. One can go to temples, and perform elaborate worship rituals. This is actually the Poorva Meemamsam way. Jeyamohan is very straight forward in telling us straight away that Poorva Meemamsam is not the right way to learn the Hindu religion. This can easily be confirmed by looking at the real world around us. We see a lot of religious folks who practically live in temples, harboring the most fundamental views of religion. Jeyamohan stresses the fact that Hinduism is a blend of Hindu philosophies grounded in materialism and various worship methods. The very best way to learn about intellectual foundations of Hindu philosophy is to simply read about it, while actively avoiding the ritualistic aspects. This book is a perfect starting point to anyone interested in Hindu philosophy. Jeyamohan even argues that understanding Indian philosophy is paramount to understanding the Indian social structures.

Before diving in, a quick explanation: philosophy and vision are essentially a compilation of all rational arguments and discussions. When a philosophy can be extrapolated and applied across various fields of knowledge, it evolves into a vision (தரிசனம்).

1.⁠ ⁠SANGIYAM

Everything we see and experience around us is Nature. Nature is the basis of the consciousness that we experience. According to Sangiyam, there are three gunams that Nature is made of. They are Sathuva Gunam (good, positive), Rajo Gunam (activity) and Damo Gunam (bad, negative). These three gunams are never in equilibrium – when one of the gunams go up, the other two go down, and so on and so forth. The cosmic dance of these three gunams perpetually vying to rise above the others is the forward flow of time, the very reality we experience. It takes three to do this heavenly tango, which spawned light and sound, further leading to the birth of eyes and ears as a means to experience Nature. Consciousness is simply a byproduct of the disturbance in the equilibrium of these three gunams.

From this point, Sangiyam makes an assumption that there could be a point in time when all the three gunams were in equilibrium. A time when time simply did not flow from one moment to the next. A time when time as we know it simply did not exist. If this sounds awfully similar to the Big Bang theory, you are bang on target. The Big Bang theory, as we all know, proposes that the universe began as a single, extremely dense and hot point, called a singularity, which then rapidly expanded and cooled, creating all the matter and space we observe today. This bang is also when the scientists say that time originated.

Sangiyam does not stop here, and further postulates that these three gunams will eventually reach equilibrium once again, thus bringing time to a standstill once more.

The main shortcoming of Sangiyam is it does not sufficiently explain the initial cause for the birth of time, as it did the effects of it. If we follow the chain of events backwards from now until the beginning of time (when the three gunams were in tranquility), Sangiyam has no answer for the initial cause which created the fallout between the three gunams. Sangiyam argues that this very first cause (மூல காரணம்) has to be material, because as we can observe in nature that only material can beget material, thus staunchly placing itself as a material based philosophy – as opposed to spiritualists who claimed that this initial cause is the doings of a greater being. The spiritualists questions such as “What is the initial cause?”, “When will the three gunams be in balance again?” were unanswered by Sangiyam for a long time.

Further interpretations of Sangiyam tries to address this shortcoming by introducing a concept called Purushan or Brammam. Purushan can be described as the self, or the collective self. The collective self does not have a start or an end, has no tangibility, and is omnipresent. This dualistic approach placed Purushan as a being that is outside of the realms of Nature, but perpetually observant of it. If there is heat, then Purushan is the one experiencing the heat. If there is no Purushan, does the heat really exist? If a thing exists that cannot be experienced or known by any being, does that thing truly exist? Thus, Nature and Purushan have been posited to coexist, and at the same time cannot exist without one another.

2.⁠ ⁠YOGAM

Yogam school of Hindu philosophy, grew as a branch of Sangiyam, agreed on a lot of things that Sangiyam had to say. Yogam claims that the Purushan has to have been in its purest form when Nature was at equilibrium. The need for the birth of Yogam is simply to experience the purest form of Purushan, thus also experiencing the tranquil Nature which once had no disturbance. We are all representatives of the Purushan. How can we experience this unruffled serene Nature ourselves? By becoming the best purest form of Purushan ourselves. Just like the trisected Nature, our mind is also never at ease. It is constantly being torn apart by worldly desires and worries. When one can conquer the wavering mind, tame it, exercise total control over his senses and thoughts, one becomes the Purushan, and only then one can experience the purest form of Nature. The Asanas (Yogasanas), Dhyanam (Meditation) that are very popular in the western world, started as a way to practice Yogam.

The key idea of Yogam is meditative concentration. By focusing on a single point–a dancing flame of a lit candle, a deity or even a bottle of Coca-Cola. It does not matter. The more we concentrate our consciousness on this center, the center expands and starts to fill the entirety of the consciousness. Once the consciousness is fully filled, the center becomes the consciousness. In the end, that too disappears. This is Samadhi, in which the self disappears truly; The consciousness is in its purest form here, and is one with nature. Singularity.

The influence of Yogam can be found in other religions like Sufism, a branch of Islam, which emphasizes the direct experience of God through practices like meditation. Yogam is not so much a philosophy, let alone a religious one, but simply a way of life to be the best version of oneself.

3.⁠ ⁠VAISESHIGAM

Vaiseshigam is an empirical school of thought, which accepts only direct observation and inference as the ways to achieve knowledge. Vaiseshigam is path breaking in the sense that is one of the earliest philosophies to espouse Atomism–an idea that proposes that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components called Atoms. Although we now know that atoms can be further divided into protons, electrons and neutrons, it is a great feat to have theorized the idea of atoms way back in the 3rd century BCE.

Many western thinkers still wrongly believe and claim that Greeks were the first to come up with Atomism, but Jeyamohan says that it has been professed by the Hindu thinkers long before the Greeks.

4.⁠ ⁠NYAYAM

Nyayam, companion school of thought to Vaiseshigam, says that the main cause of human suffering is the lack of knowledge of the functioning of Nature. Nyayam aims at understanding nature, and gaining knowledge through observation, logic, verifiable and repeatable experiments. Knowledge is simply seen as the treatment to the worldly suffering, and attain Moksham which is the Hindu concept of full removal of ignorance.

Buddhism is closely related to Vaiseshigam and Nyayam, and also built upon these two philosophies. The key difference between Buddhism and Vaiseshigam/Nyayam is that Buddhism renounces the idea of the self (Purushan), taking a non-dualistic approach.

5.⁠ ⁠POORVA MEEMAMSAM

With Poorva Meemamsam, we enter into the canonical side of the Hindu philosophies. Canonism is a characteristic of Semitic religions, Christianity and Islam. We cannot call any of the Hindu philosophies as fully canonical, because there is no one book or one philosopher whose thoughts and ideas are the center of the religion.

The Vedas, that were once sidelined during the rise of Buddhism and Asceticism, began to have a period of renaissance because of the Guptas. Vedas were widely read by the Brahmins during the coronation of the kings along with elaborate rituals of worship. The meaning behind the words of Vedas took a backseat, and the aesthetics of the rituals were given foremost importance. The Vedas were not open to interpretation, and were asked to be followed blindly, as they were set in stone. The religious rituals became the absolute duty of a Brahmin. The absolute duty of God is to answer this ritual. Thus, Vedas were placed on a pedestal where it can even order God to be receptive to these rituals. One can even pinpoint this moment in history as the beginning of stagnation in the growth of Hindu philosophy, and devolution of it into a fundamental form of religion. The form of Hinduism that is being followed currently is a variant of Meemamsam.

6.⁠ ⁠VEDANTAM or UTHARA MEEMAMSAM

Vedantam simply means the conclusion of the Vedas. The main philosophies of Vedantam are built upon what’s found in Upanishads. The purpose of Vedantam is fully attributed to the search and the attainment of the Brammam. Vedantam and Poorva Meemamsam are similar because they both have Vedas at their core, but differ because Vedantam did not agree upon the rituals described in the Vedas, but only accepts the idea of pursuit of knowledge. The main tenet of Vedantam is Advaita which declares that Nature and the Observer (Purush) are one and the same–nondualism.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Frankly speaking, my earlier mindblow from VMGV was negated and re blown several magnitudes in order of the first one by HGMAD. I can see a bit more clearly as to why VMGV can be considered a bit too simplistic. Rahul Sankrityayan resorts to pointing fingers simply at the historical figures, and claims that they were a part of this huge conspiratorial cabal of upper class, wealthy (mostly) men of power who intentionally created a system rife with inequality and injustice. The analysis here is simply only skin deep.

Jeyamohan, instead, tries to apply historical materialism and arrives at a much more nuanced and mature perspective on the Hindu religion. He claims that they were a product of their times, and the whole thing is not a conspiracy of any sort. All these historical figures were only engaging in a philosophical power play with each other.

It is unscientific to dismiss all the spiritualistic idealistic concepts and religious notions of the Middle Ages as superstitious and reactionary, for, every ideology is brought forth by a particular historical situation. The scientific approach is to study every religious system or ideology in the context of the prevailing conditions, observing how they evolved or reacted to the situation which brought it forth. Hinduism was bound by the limitations of feudalism, but this does not mean that all medieval ideas served the interests of the feudal lords.

Religion, famously in the words of Marx, “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of the soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”. This is oftentimes quoted, mislabelled, in my opinion, as a critique on religion. While it is true that religion can be used as a tool for social control, this critique of religion by Marx is aimed more at the prevailing social conditions that pushes people towards fundamental religion as a solace of hope.

My biggest takeaway from this book is to never reject any philosophy at its face value. One can only reject it, after thoroughly studying and reasoning with it critically. Remember, you can know, understand or agree with a philosophy, not absolutely, but relative to what you already know, understand or believe in.