How can such a religion lend itself to fundamentalism? Large, eclectic, agglomerative, the Hinduism that I know understands that faith is a matter of hearts and minds, not of bricks and stone. "Build Ram in your heart," the Hindu is enjoined; and if Ram is in your heart, it will little matter where else he is, or is not.
It is odd to read today of "Hindu fundamentalism," because Hinduism is a
religion without fundamentals: no organized church, no compulsory beliefs or
rites of worship, no single sacred book. The name itself denotes something
less, and more, than a set of theological beliefs. In many
languages--French and Persian among them--the world for "Indian" is "Hindu."
Originally, Hindu simply meant the people beyond the river Sindhu, or
Indus. But, the Indus is now in Islamic Pakistan; Indus and the world
Hindu did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners
gave Indians a term for self-definition.
Hinduism is thus the name others applied to the indigenous religion of
India. It embraces an eclectic range of doctrines and practices, from
pantheism to agnosticism and from faith in reincarnation to belief in the
caste system. But none of these constitutes an obligatory credo for a
Hindu; there are no compulsory dogmas.
I grew up in a Hindu household. Our home (and my father moved a dozen
times in his working life) always had a prayer room, where paintings and
portraits of assorted divinities jostled for shelf and wall space with
fading photographs of departed ancestors, all stained by ash scattered from
the incense burned daily by my devout parents. Every morning, after his
bath, my father would stand in front of the prayer room wrapped in his
towel, his wet hair still uncombed, and chant his Sanskrit mantras. But he
never obliged me to join him; he exemplified the Hindu idea that religion is
an intensely personal matter, that prayer is between you and whatever image
of your maker you choose to worship. In the Indian way, I was to find my
own truth.
