Deconstructing Hinduism – 1

Hinduism it is claimed is an ancient religion by many educated Hindus today. Most of them, borrow their ideas from Vivekanand or Jaggi or even from Nithyananda or some liberal Hindu voices like Arun Shourie, Rajiv Malhotra, Sashi Tharoor and the likes, some of whom, are part of the Hindutva ideology and the respective organizations and parties.

Since Hinduism by definition includes everything from atheism to polytheism to monotheism, we have to be careful and deal with it in a logical way, based on evidence and truth, all of which are weak points of Hinduism.

My earliest exposure to Hindu animosity to Christianity came when I was a student in a Catholic school. I was around 13 or 14 years old. There was a campus crusade team which visited us from the US and they shared the gospel, and asked students to make a commitment to Jesus. Most of these students were Hindus and most of them lifted their hands. Whether they were aware of it or not, they became Christians that day, if that was a sincere prayer and they left their Hindu faith. Since none of the latter happened, the former was just a prayer they made without understanding the implications of ‘The Four Spiritual laws’. There was no follow up and they remained Hindus, and remain so till now.

The next day, my biology teacher Mr. Pan came to class and started with a vitriolic attack on Christianity, attacking everything from Genesis chapter 1 to Virgin birth. I was one of the few Christians who attended the class and very upset with the whole tirade. Even though I forgot the incident, the arguments he made stuck in my head. They were of course weak arguments and totally devoid of fact or reason. It is the sort of thing that lowly educated and people untrained in philosophy or people who have not understood Christianity make.

He of course said that Hinduism is scientific and based on evolution and the proof of that was the different avatars of Vishnu which show evolution.

Second was his case against creation that since Adam lost one of his ribs, which was made into Eve, we should not be having that rib. But since we have all the ribs, Eve was not obviously made from Adam’s rib.

Third he attacked the virgin birth and claimed that it impossible to have child without a sperm and ovum coming together, with the act of sexual intercourse, there it is a fishy affair and made a big joke out of it. Nobody in Christianity claimed virgin birth is a natural event, it has always been considered as a miracle or a supernatural event.

A few years ago, I heard Mr. Pan passed away due to Renal failure. Even though he made these arguments, I did not have personal animosity towards him and we were on good terms as I was a good student.

That was the first real taste of what a Hindu thought about Christianity.

The second came from my Uncle, my mother’s brother. My mother was a convert from Hinduism and his brother, still a Hindu once told me, how people in western Churches have stopped celebrating Christmas and now it is called X- mas instead. That was his way of expressing why he was not a Christian.

Third came when I was visiting a Hindu family friend’s home. They were Brahmins and that day, they had a Bible in hand. They said Genesis 1 is obviously wrong and how they cannot be deceived by these writings.

Fourth came from a Hindu teacher who was visited by a door knocking missionary and he said, he did not allow that Christian to ‘brainwash’ him.

Fifth, I came to share the Gospel with a close Hindu friend and during the discussion, it he started saying how beautiful the face of Hindu god murugan is. At that instance, I said that it is just a painting and not the real picture of murugan. He was startled and said, “Yes, I never thought about it that way”. He later on rejected the Gospel because his parents would reject him, in case he became a follower of Jesus and he was also not willing to bear the cost of discipleship after he read the book, “Man in the mirror”.

Later after the internet became to be used widely, I started discussing and debating on internet with Hindus and many of them thought they know about Christianity just because they attended a Christian school or college and they expressed their ignorance which led them to compose a bunch of straw-man arguments.

In the year 2009, I was working in a Christian mission hospital, where I was able to share the Gospel with a lot of Hindus. There I heard the myriad reasons why they are not able to come out of Hinduism. Most of them were pragmatic, like ostracism or rejection by close relatives for breaking caste etc. Few of them were based on ignorance and theories like abiogenesis. They just wanted to maintain the status quo and not disturb the peace and quiet of their community and family life.

Another strange phenomenon also occurred there. Many Hindu girls became Christians while they were studying nursing there and many of them reverted to Hinduism after finishing the course or got married to the person of their parent’s choice and reverted to Hinduism. I even took bible studies for a group of girls, few of whom also reverted to Hinduism after they finished the course or after marriage. For these girls Jesus was another god and if it was not convenient they were willing to stop worshiping him and worship their caste gods, as each caste had their separate gods. This phenomenon is very common, especially after emotional conversions or even when the conversion happens after receiving a healing. Many revert back, because of social pressure, family pressures as these individuals are not free but bound by caste mentality and the consequences of breaking caste. Individuals are not free especially in a rural Hindu community and society to make independent decisions, even very personal ones like marriage. Individual rights is an alien and foreign idea to them, and so is equality.