The Impact of Hinduism on Modern India (61475)
To write about the impact of Hinduism on the India of today is to be beset by numerous difficulties - of definition, of historical interpretation, of cultural perspective
- and to be struck most of all by the amazing complexity of beliefs and practices that have been included under that ethnic/religious rubric.
What is Hinduism? As Marty Pat Fisher puts it (2002):
ôIn the Indian subcontinent there has developed a complex variety of religious paths. Some of these are relatively unified religious systems, such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Most of the other Indian religious ways have been categorized together as if they were a single tradition named æHinduismÆ. This term does not appear in any of the old texts. It is derived from a name applied by foreigners
to the people living in the region of the Indus River and introduced in the Nineteenth Century under colonial British rule as a category for census-takingö.
She goes on to add that the spiritual expressions of what she says is better termed Sanatana Dharma (æeternal religionÆ) ôrange from extreme asceticism to extreme
sensuality, from the heights of personal devotion to a deity to the heights of abstract philosophy, from metaphysical proclamations of the oneness behind the material world
to worship of images representing a multiplicity of deitiesö - 333 million, to be exact (ibid.).
She suggests that a historical view of the infinite branchings of these beliefs can help clarify their origins and complexity, but warns that in the rural areas
where most Indians still live the old and new coexist in a hodge-podge of syncretic cultural practices.
India is today the second most populous country in the world after China with a population over a billion people, and is the seventh largest in land area (Wikipedia
2005). It has spawned at least four world religions, a mosaic of ethnic groups, a...