An email reply to a friend on a mailing list when he was talking about how Democracy took root in India because of the spirit of free inquiry and debate in Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism, yes, but not Hinduism. Here is what I wrote back to him.
Actually, I am not that impressed by that Amartya Sen argument either. What free debate and inquiry? The examples he quotes are not appropriate at all.
We do not debate. Period. We do not have a concept of itjihad or interpretation related to a baseline. We do not have debates because our religion/philosophy is highly stylised and individualist. We also have the concept of destiny and the concept of maya. Between these two, what debates are we talking about? If we were indeed good at debates, then by process of elimination, there would be a single variant of Hinduism. The fact that we don't means that we did not have a debate. We simply do not have a civilisational history of open debates between intellectuals as you would see in Christianity or Islam. We let different strands be, you want to worship Vishnu? sure, I am going to worship that stone as a representation of ...., duality of life? i am going to write a hymn and sing. If you dont like it, do write your own. The flip side of this was the richness of thought, very wide and very deep strands of widely different philosophy but no debate. So Hinduism is more like a very thick cylinder of multiple strands which thickens and grows as time passes unlike say Islam which is more like an inverted pyramid which keeps on wanting to return to the point but keeps on splitting and dividing and growing into an even bigger base.
The other factor to consider is that Hinduism's development was always very tightly connected with the state. An independent theological or even philosophical framework never arose like we have seen in the monastery system of Buddhism and Christianity or the madrassah system of Islam. The funding for the intelligentsia and theologians (as opposed to temple dwelling priests) almost always came from the king. And that constraints thinking. Examples of kings who encouraged debate are extremely rare. The Muslims, Christians and Buddhists did not rely on their funding on the kings, more on trade or proletariat funding, hence were able to debate, discuss and have heretical thoughts! :)
As for Democracy, the very fact of maya and destiny means that democracy took easy root. Mind you, if tomorrow another political system came, that will also take root. Simply because we work on 2 different planes of existence. Another reason why Hinduism survived the arrival of Islam and Christianity and will keep on surviving. Which is also why I hate this tendency of people to start defining what Hinduism is and what the rituals should be or what traditions are right....
ah! well, some idle imaginings on a Friday!
have a nice weekend folks
Cheers
bd
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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