The fallacy of Hinduism:
As promised here is my explanation as to why Hinduism is a fallacy and can never serve as a unifying force in India, or anywhere else. As we all know that the term ‘Hinduism’ as a religious label was not in use before the British. The term ‘Hindus’ was used by the Arab invaders to refer to the people of India. It literally means the people of the Indus river and is used as an us and them type of divider. The Arabs made no distinction between Buddhists, Sikhs, Shivaists, Shaktas, Vedantins, to them they were all one people, the Indian people. They had no interest in knowing the differences, because they essentially saw them all as infidels(Infidels) that needed to be destroyed.
The British were scientific people, they were indeed interested in the differences between the various grouping that existed in India. They studied and classified accordingly identifying one set of groupings made of diverse groupings(Vaishnavas, Shaktas, Shivaists, Vedantins) as followers of Vedas, and another set of more identifiable groups like Buddhists and Jains who were not followers of the Vedas. This classification has been historically contentious though and revised again and again. Initially, the Sikhs were considered Hindus, but later due to political interests, they were separated from the Hindus. There are still Sikhs today that identify as Sikh Hindus. The Shivaists and Shaktas are another contentious group, because while they recognize the Vedas as an authority, they actually consider another set of scriptures known as the Agamas as their highest authority and the Agamas are all in the form of spoken dialogue between Lord Shiva and his consort or his disciples. They differ markedly from the Vedas, and consider modern followers even consider it a separate religion. The situation is similar to how Christians accept the Torah as the Old Testimant, but give more importance to the Gospels as the New Testimant.
The Vaishnavists do not oppose the Vedas in principle, but have elevated non Vedic-texts texts like the Bhagvad Gita and the Bhagvata Purana to the same status. In doing so like the Shivaists and Shaktas, they do relegate the Vedas to the status of an Old Testimant and recognize the Gita and the Bhagvata Purana as a New testimant. Historically, only the Vedas were considered revelation(Sruti) and every other text was considered written by men. However, later texts that were written by men(like the Gita and Puranas) were elevated to the status of Revelations due to their popularity.
Another grouping called the Samkhya-Yogis, though considered followers of the Vedas, only accept the Vedas in lip service, but place the highest authority on personal revelation(like the Risis of the Vedas initially had their own revelation) The views of Samkhya-Yogis are actually antithetical to the original Vedic religion, because they reject the existence of Brahman. The Samkhya Yogis are obviously not an organized religion, because it is based on ones personal religion.
Effectively Hinduism is a classification made of separate religions, rather than separate denominations of one religion. Tantra formed of Shivaists and Shaktas; Vaishnavas; Samkhya-Yogis and finally Smarta- Vedantists. Each group is formed of various denominations(Samapradayas) which have their own clergy and power structure. Thus it is absolute nonsense that a master religion called Hinduism exists. The type of 18th-19th century thinking that lead to this classification, was the same thinking that lead to the classification of master-races like Aryans, Nordics, Hyperboreans. They are purely fictitious and fallacious categories, created out of bad thinking.
The ground reality is the people of India had several different religions, not just one master religion. The fallacy of Hinduism can be demonstrated with the following illustration: Suppose one goes to America for the first time and then tries to classify their religion. We find various groups exist in America today Christianity, New-age, Yoga, Tantra, Judaism, Islam, Vaishnavism, Sikhism, Shaktism, Wicca, Buddhism. They end up with the following categories:
Category 1: Christianity, Islam and Judaism
Category 2: Vaishnavism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Shivaism, Shaktism, Tantra and Yoga
Category 3: New age and Wicca
We can now see the obvious problem here: Christianity, Islam and Judaism are definitely not the same religion. If you ask a Christian and Jew whether they are the same religion as Islam, they will outright deny it. If you ask a Muslim if he is the same religion as a Christian and a Jew, they would outright deny it. This is because each has a very strong religious identity. Similarly, if you ask a Sikh if he is the same religion as Vaishnavism, Shivaism and Shaktism, they will outright deny it. Thus the term Hinduism only serves as a theoretical category for scholars of religion to identify and classify which stream a religion belongs to. It is not a religion itself and serves no practical significance.
If we started calling the categories above a religion in itself, then category 1 may well be called Abrahamism. No such religion exists, and if it did exist, it would be an impractical religion. Hence, why the religion of Hinduism does not exist either and is impractical as a religion.
So Hinduism as a religion is obviously a fallacy. But this does not mean we reject Hinduism completely, because if we look closer we will find that Hinduism does indeed refer to something - but it definitely is no religion. In the next post I will discuss how Hinduism points to the wider religion of Santana dharma.
