We know Hinduism as the third largest religion on earth. But already here we are wrong in a certain way, because as a unified and closed religious system it was initially only interpreted by Europeans. So there is no such thing as one Hinduism.
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Hinduism – The European Invention
Of all the systems that we call religions, Hinduism has an incomparable diversity that is so astonishing that no customs, rituals, beliefs or the like can be found that all Hindus adhere to. In India, where Hinduism localizes its origin, religious beliefs and rituals can differ extremely from village to village without causing conflicts [1, p.10].
Hinduism is not a tube religion: There is no historical personality who brought it into being, not even a single scripture that is binding on everyone and everyone, and no uniform conception of God. For this reason it was interpreted early in Indological research [2] that the term Hinduism summarizes a group of religions that are related to one another but quite different.
The Indologist Peter Schreiner [3] emphasizes that the name Hinduism did not come from the Indians themselves, but was a European invention that can only be recognized by the word formation with the ending ›-ism‹. In traditional India there was no distinction between Hindu and Indian! We will see in a moment that it was only the differentiation of religious terminology introduced by Europeans that produced a doctrine called Hindu.
Hinduism as something uniform is initially a European invention, because there was no uniform religion, but (only) the most diverse and diverse forms of Indian religiosity and ways of salvation that have developed over time on the Indian subcontinent [1, p. 12].
Hinduism as a unified religion is nothing but a European misunderstanding. It doesn’t exist en bloc.
On the concept of religion
We would think that the expression ›religion‹ occurs in all cultures and is accordingly ancient – but that is not the case. The word religion has its roots in Latin and only found its way into German and other European languages in modern times – in the first half of the 16th century [4].
In this sense, religion means Christianity – the term stands in a strict European context and describes a social issue that can be distinguished from other areas such as politics, economics or education.
So when we speak of religion as a system, we have to note that this differentiation between religion on the one hand and society on the other is only typical of the European way of thinking and therefore does not have to apply elsewhere. The following is important for an initial understanding of Hinduism:
The term religion did not exist in India, and Hinduism could only be seen as a construct through European glasses. It was only when an educated upper class, which only oriented itself towards Europe, adopted this misunderstanding, called itself Hindus and began to differentiate between religion and society, that Hinduism began to differentiate itself as a religion in India. [1, p.28]
For this reason the professor of Indology Heinrich von Stietencron explains the fact:
Today we know, even without wanting to admit this, that Hinduism is nothing but an orchid bred by European science. It is far too beautiful to be pulled up, but it remains a test-tube plant: it does not exist in nature [5].
Indian culture and society
In traditional Indian society one could not separate religion from this, in fact one could not even identify anything religious. Andreas Becke describes this very aptly using a typical scene: in the ghats of Benares there are bathers, people muttering mantras, while on the bank some practice yoga and not far away corpses are burned. So what is religious and what can be understood as a completely normal non-religious practice?
Religion had its original security in society itself. Not that all action was ever qualified as religious. Neither social communication nor the nature around it had ever been fully and clearly sacralized. At least in their foundations, religion and society could not be distinguished from one another [6].
The wedge between religion and society, that is, between faith and life, was only struck by European philosophy during the Enlightenment. This does not do justice to the many Hindu ways of life, because that’s what it’s all about: it is a way of life, not a teaching!
Faith rotten to stupidity
If we differentiate between faith and life, we have to let faith degenerate into an empty vessel that is based only on confessional narrow-mindedness and meaningless formulaic sermon – life, the spirit, all the energy has been pushed out of faith!
So it is with the Christian faith, or actually with every branch of faith in the light of modern times. In Hindu India, however, it has always been the case that what we commonly call religion must not be based on dogmas, beliefs and dull orthodoxy, but solely on right behavior (orthopraxia) [3].
In the course of modernization and mechanization emanating from Europe, Indian society is also changing more and more. In the big cities you can now – similar to the European attitude – differentiate between faith and life. The difference between Hindu and Indian has also long been established. The following applies to modern neo-Induism:
The now differentiated Hinduism as a religious system is an empty vessel that is filled with entirely different or mutually contradicting contents from the Indian cultural tradition by the so-called neo-Hindu representatives. [see: 1, p.29]
The origin of Hinduism
Since we have now dealt with some critical aspects of prehistory and have thus opposed an initial understanding of Hinduism, we can now approach the actual characteristics of this ‘religion’.
In the first paragraphs of this article I have already mentioned that the whole Hindu tradition derives its essence from the multiplicity of its individual parts and not from a coherent unity.
For this reason, it is by no means easy to state mandatory characteristics of the Hindu faith (in the sense of a doctrine) that apply to all. However, this fact alone is the first characteristic that we should remember well. Hinduism is a unity in diversity that is full of contradictions.
In India, this diversity and contradiction does not bother anyone, yes, it is not even noticeable! Rather, it is again the Europeans who ask about the uniformity of teaching in Hinduism and value consistency in theory, while they overlook the fact that this difference is lived in practice in Hinduism. In the Christian West, a religion is expected to have coherent dogmatics. That theologians have been trying for two millennia to develop these for Christianity is all too easy to overlook [1, p.29].
Where does the word Hindu come from?
Both terms, Hindu and Indian, come from Persian, where they both denote the Indus river in the singular and the people living on the Indus in the plural. When the first Arab Muslims invaded the Indus valley in the 8th century AD, they used the word Hindu in the sense of non-Muslim, which gave the word a religious meaning for the first time [1, p.11f.].
The colonial era then brought European merchants to India from the 16th century onwards, who adopted the term Muslims and came to the conclusion that they were members of a religious form. A short time later they invented the word Hinduism based on the designation common in Europe for teaching systems, buildings of thought or attitudes towards life (see -ism).
In today’s religious studies, Hinduism is simply defined as what it is not: i.e. not Buddhism, not Islam, not Christianity, not Sikhism, not Jainism and so on. There are other criteria for being a Hindu, such as “being born a Hindu”, as advocated by Gandhi, but these are generally becoming less important (except for fundamentalists).
Historical beginning and classification
It is not for nothing that Hinduism is called the oldest religion in the world – its origin lies in uncertainty. For a long time the history of India began with the immigration of nomadic cattle herders who called themselves Arya (›the noble ones‹) [1, p.31].
According to popular opinion, this Indo-European ethnic group of the Arya first migrated to the Iranian highlands and then to the Ganges plain, where they settled down, from around the second half of the 2nd millennium BC.
However, this widespread theory is now considered refuted. The beginning of Indian culture and thus also of Hinduism can be found in one of the oldest high cultures of mankind, which probably goes back to the 3rd or 4th BC.
This fact became evident during archaeological excavations in the Indus Valley, during which the huge cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa were discovered. Both sites are located in today’s Pakistan and are a full 640 kilometers apart, but show such similarities that historians certainly speak of a unified culture.
This decisive discovery illustrates that the previously assumed origin of the Hindu foundations through the immigration of the Aryans and displacement of the Dravids (South Indian population) does not have its starting point in this thesis alone. Although the Aryan tribes play an extremely important role in Hinduism through their testimony to the Vedas, there was a cultural foundation that should not be suppressed before them, which clearly influenced them.
