Sotto Voce: Who is a Hindu?

Rohit Viswanath

Whenever our family visited our native place in Kerala, we never missed a chance to visit the famous Sri Krishna temple of Guruvayur. Being a religious family, it was a trip that everyone looked forward to. The hours of waiting and the serpentine queues leading to the temple never demoralised us.

And as we approached the entrance to the temple, it was impossible to miss the forceful board at the gates, which proclaimed, ‘Non-Hindus not allowed’. As a little child, I innocently asked my mother, "Who is a Hindu?" She only brushed my question aside and gave some vague answers. She said, "Those who believed in the supremacy of the Vedas are Hindus".

I wasn’t convinced. I asked her, "Is Krishna of Guruvayur a Hindu?" And she retorted, "How can you be so ridiculous. Of course, he is a Hindu!" And when I asked her if he ever claimed so in the Bhagavad Gita, she did not have any answer. That incident only left me confused regarding my own religious identity. When my grandmother told me stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas, I would disturb her time and again with my doubts. I would stop her and ask if any of the characters in them claimed to be Hindus.

Being devoutly religious, she had immense faith in Rama and Krishna. My doubts would make her extremely wild and she would abruptly stop the story and walk away muttering something angrily. After a long while she would shout from the other room, "How dare you question the genuineness of my Gods. You will surely face their wrath".

My doubts were not cleared until I entered the 6th standard. It was then that I learnt at school how the early migrants had settled on the banks of the great Sindhu. And how since the Persians did not have the consonant ‘Ha’ in their language, these people of the Sindhu, became Hindus for the Persians. And finally Hindu became Indus further west, from which the name India is derived. But did this knowledge really clear my doubts? Perhaps not.

Hindus are actually those who live on the banks of the Indus. Since India was partitioned, the Indus mostly flows through Pakistan. By this virtue, aren’t the people of Pakistan those that have better claim to be Hindus? The temple authorities strangely haven’t perhaps reflected on this. They might take note of this history and put up a suitably different injunction outside the temple gates.

(This shows the condition and ignorance of Hindus .The definition of the word Hindu goes, ‘Heenan gunaan dooshayati eti Hindu.’ In other words, the one who increases his sattva component and destroys his raj and tama components is a Hindu.It is due to lack of knowledge about their religion (Dharma Shikshan). that Hindus are in such a state.For this every Hindu must take Dharma Shikshan. – Editor)

Related HJS Section
>Learn Hinduism