Posted on 12/25/2012 2:53:08 PM PST by entropy12
India, the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, marks the birth of Jesus with a national holiday.
Indians call Christmas bara din, or the Big Day.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Many Christians actually preserve their cast system practice even after being converted to Christianity. So not sure how exactly it’s is an attack on cast system.
Lot of “lowest cast” members convert under material enticement, and then reconvert back to their original religion. Easy come, easy go.
The caste system is integral to Hinduism, its polygamy. So the analogy of keeping caste is analogous to a person converting to Christianity but keeping his national customs, which might include some rituals relating to the tribal god. As far as material enticement, many A Christian lad or lass goes to college and there gives up his/her faith in order to fit into the secular world he/she finds him/herself. Much of India was converted to Islam in order to avoid the tax. Edmund Burke’s Anglo-Irish father raised him as Protestant so he would not be barred from the public service.
You don’t need to tell me about Hinduism. And no, cast system is not “integral” to Hinduism. In fact it’s got nothing to do with Hinduism. And how exactly is cast system, polygamy? I didn’t quit get that part.
The analogy of a Christian lad going to college and becoming secular “to fit in” isn’t anywhere even close to a Hindu lower cast temporarily playing Christian to get freebies and then going back to his original religion.
Secondly less then a 1/4th of India converted to Islam under intense persecution and genocide not to skip taxes. Catch up on some history.
Lastly your post still doesn’t explain how it’s an attack on cast system.
Hindus are more peaceful then most other religions, including Christianity. They turn violent only when people try to screw with their religion. It’s simple deal, if you don’t want any trouble with Hindus don’t eff with their religion. Christian missionaries often make the mistake of forgetting that lesson, something that even Muslims don’t dare to forget.
Check post #24
Well, Hinduism is more like the polytheism of the Roman world than like Islam or Christianity. I am not sure what you mean by “screwing with their religion.” They in fact have many religions.
I am not sure how you separate the caste system from Hindu polytheism. I don’t being that a particular caste will follow a particular god or philosophy, but India is divided into many nations, so to speak, in ways more complex than Europe, and religious opinion is equally complex. But diversity does not mean that toleration, as we understand the term, is the order of the day. There is a pecking order.
You have no idea about Hinduism or anything you are talking about. You are blathering nonsense.
“I am not sure how you separate the caste system from Hindu polytheism. “
I think you are not sure about anything you are talking about. Firstly Hinduism is nothing like Roman polytheism. Secondly different casts don’t have different Gods, you could say different regions have different Gods but its more complicated then that. Thirdly, cast as referenced in Hindu religious texts has a completely different context and connotation to what is commonly practiced as a form of discrimination which we know as cast system.
Hinduism, with warts and all, has been much less violent and much more tolerant then any western civilization/ religion especially Christianity. And the enormous diversity within Hinduism is a major reason why there is no one single dominant group, sect or faction that can lay righteous claim to that religion or seek to enforce it through violence as we have seen happening with Christianity and Islam all throughout history.
History bares testimony to the tolerance of Hindus. Zoroastrians escaped the Islamic persecution in Iran and fled to India, not Europe. The lost tribe of the Jews fled Middle East to seek shelter in India sometime around 8th century BC. Even early Christians fled persecution in a Syria and Eastern Roman Empire to settle in southern coast of India. You never heard about people fleeing persecution in India to settle elsewhere.
Rest my case.
you are correct. But don’t get any Hindu talking about Moslems — 1000 years of Moslems persecuting, slaughtering, raping hindus leads to a lot of bad blood...
there has been Hindu violence against Christians, but these are sporadic, and soundly condemned by even ultra-Hindu fanatics. The guy who killed the Christian missionary was given the (rare in INdia) death sentence
The lowest castes convert to Christianity yes, but most convert to Buddhism -- see Babasaheb Ambedkar
in the case of Orissa it was a combination of many things -- India has a "reservation" system -- their version of affirmative action
This was initially only for the lowest castes, the Scheduled Caste and for the tribal aborigine peoples, the Scheduled tribes
But in the 90s this was extended to various other groups (OBCs) and caused chaos because various groups called themselves OBCs to get the reservation of seats in colleges and govt jobs
What happened in Orissa is that the lowest caste converted to Christianity but, BUT, more importatntly they found the number of seats available to them reduced by the OBCS.
Also, converting to Christianity for many means access to better education so they were better primed for the reservations. So many of the members of this SC classified themselves as ST (tribal) to get the ST seats. The tribals of course didn't like this -- note that they were/are animists
So this was politicised....
A Hindu holy man was killed by communists and this ignited the Hindu-Christian violence
Only later did the Communists acknowledge that THEY killed the Hindu man...
Saraswati was killed by a communist.
Hinduism is not a religion but a meta-religion, a group of religious ideas
Modern-day hindusim does not resemble Vedic hinduism -- no one worships Indra or Varuna and the Ashwamedha horse sacrifice is practically unheard of
Hinduism changed from the meat (even beef) eating Vedics to a pacifist version post Buddhism, to then ejecting much of the plurality of Aryanic gods in favor of the Hindu "trinity" or trilok -- Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma
Now it is henotheistic with the concept of Ishwara
Even the caste system was not as inflexible in Vedic times -- Vishwamitra was not a Brahmin and neither were many "sants"
Removing the caste system -- as the King of Trivandrum did in the late 1800s is not a "killer" for Hinduism.
sorry ravager, but saying the caste system has got “nothing” to do with Hinduism is incorrect — Mani and the Brahmins coming from his head and the Shudras from his feet is part of Hindu mythology
The original Indo-european religion seems to have had two families of gods -- either inchaote or personalized gods
In the most primitive like the Baltic or Slavic or Germanic the two families of gods remained -- the Aesir and the Vanir in the Nordic legends
the more "advanced" ones put around a lot of philosophy around it -- and that was in the Indo-Iranic religions. The Indic i.e. the Vedic religion had the Asuras and the Devas -- in the earliest Veda, the Rig Veda from 2000 BC, the early gods like Varuna and Agni were called Asuras, but by the 900s Asuras were brought down to the level of "bad guys" -- not demons yet, but "sueprnatural beings who were bad not evil" -- the gods were hardly "good" either. In the Avestani, Irani world the opposite happened - the Daevas were reduced to hearth gods of the home and the Ahuras (since the "S" in Indic becomes "H" in Avestani Irani) were elevated until Zoroaster came and elevated one of the Ahuras -- Ahura Mazda to the top
In the Greek world they combined this with the Semitic god stories and you have one "family", the Olympians overthrowing another, the Titans
The Roman religion was also highly primitive -- the daevas and asuras were gods of the hearth (deva, deus, divius, divine..) that never progressed into higher philosophy unlike the Greeks or Iranis or Indians
Back to indian and you see a notable change after 700 BC when Jainism arises to 300 BC when Buddhism arises -- the old Vedic ways are thrown aside and replaced with a deeper philosophy
But Buddhism and Jainism had a tendency to stagnate thought and that's what happened after hinduism absorbed these.
India stayed running in place until the Moslems invaded
But Christianity came first in 40 AD with St. Thomas and the Asura-Deva angle got another jolt with the Asuras reduced to demons. At the same time the Dravidian gods of Shiva and Vishnu came to the fore and Vishhu absorbed many local gods and heroes to be Vishnu of the 11 incarnations.
Hindus now became almost monotheistic with the increasing separation into Vaishnavites, Shaivites etc. focusing on one god as THE god with others as emanations.
Thank you for your splendid comments.
Like you said, I have never seen in my 20 years growing up in India, Hindu mobs attacking Christians or even Muslims, UNPROVOKED. Christian missionaries arrived in 1st century and were successful in converting millions of Hindu’s to Christianity because it was mostly a peaceful process.
There is perhaps less religious violence PER CAPITA in India than other places such as Ireland, middle-east, former Soviet satellites, etc when you consider there are many millions of people of various religions living there.
“A Hindu holy man was killed by communists”
Wait, not so fast.
The connection between Maoist and Christian missionaries is actually very well known and in some cases in India that distinction between Maoist and Christians kinda gets very blurry. I have a feeling you are already aware of that fact which you may have overlooked in your haste to shift the blame from the Christians.
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