It’s surprising that pagan religions of Europe have disappeared, but polytheistic religions of Asia (especially India) survived and are still widely followed there. Why?
It’s surprising that pagan religions of Europe have disappeared, but polytheistic religions of Asia (especially India) survived and are still widely followed there. Why?
“Hinduism” as a religion erases the unique folk identities in India. It is a lazy, colonialist way to group an entire subcontinent with a stereotypical, uniform religion.
Religious syncretism in India is a very visible and real thing - not just for “Hinduism”, but also other religions in India. Casteism, on the other hand, is a effect of Brahminism - meaning that not every place in India has the codified chaturvarna (quad-caste) system - especially in the South of India, where’s there’s an incomplete caste system, comprising of Brahmin-Shudra inside, and Dalit/Tribal outside, as opposed to the Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra inside and Dalit/Tribal outside classification. In fact, there have been multiple anti-casteist movement before, like the Nath (started from my mother land), Lingayat movement (in mainland Karnataka), the Bhakti movement (somewhere in Tamil Nadu), the Adi-Dharma (in Punjab) and the Arya Samaj movement (around colonial era in Bengal) - there’s more of them, but I can only remember these.
Not really - there were repeated Islamic invasions aimed to chip the wealth. Religious conversion, however, was a secondary thought. Matter of fact, there was no need for Muslims to convert Hindus in central India, because rulers did not act over religion, but over power. Many Muslim leaders in the North of India had Hindu officials in their court, they also married and did not convert their wives to Muslim, and vice versa. In fact, there’s also a case of a homosexual Muslim ruler called Alauddin Khilji, who had a relationship with his slave Mallik Kafur. Mubarak Shah, son of Alauddin Khilji, also had a male lover called Khusrau Khan. In fact, it was also advantageous for the Muslims to impose jizyah and kharaj tax.
In the place that I am from, which is the south of India, there’s a temple that is often visited by Muslims, which would probably be frowned upon by Muslims from Arab. In fact, these Muslims also take part in animistic rituals - remember how I said that “Hinduism” is a colonialist term? Yes, Tulu-folkism is what is practiced in my motherland, and Brahmins have no control over these rituals - it is the tribal groups Koragas, who organize prayers for the Shudra groups in Tulu Nadu. In the north of India, Sufism, which is a type of mystical Islamism, is the very opposite of radical Islam, and in fact, was open to the idea of “many paths, one Gods”.
Great information. I made a very general analysis, with the aim of covering the majority of territories and populations, not of exhausting every local specificity. Hinduism is not a uniform religion, as i said, but a very diverse one. But still, there are common traits that unify the vast majority of Indians that makes the situation very different (less diverse) compared to the historical European polytheism. The vast majority of Hindus believe that religious knowledge and rituals must be studied and performed by a specific social group, the brahmin caste. Or will you tell me that a random foreigner or a Dalit can enter any temple in north or south india, study sanskrit and rituals, and start preaching and performing rituals ? Not by a long shot. Hinduism and local religions have a diversity of holy texts, but the important aspect is that in each tradition and place there is a good degree of codification and formalization: at least one set of written (fixed) texts that people will adhere for doctrine and rituals, not for instance an exclusively oral tradition that changes radically in each house of worship, over time, and over the next village (old polytheism). This is stuff that only a developed urban civilization makes, that makes a religion have more ‘capital’ so to speak (to spread and be reproduced over time).
The muslim rulers also did not immediately convert everyone to islam in the conquests over persia to north africa, but due to the characteristics of traditional polytheism (along with the conquests and violence), Islam converted and spread over time, including to places christianity had not reached (like interior Egypt). This did not happen with indian religions because of the higher degree of formalisation and codification, that allowed it to at least keep up ideas and rituals with a more equal power degree in syncretisms.
Sabarimala?
No, this temple is in Tulu Nadu. Since you’re a Malayali, you must know about Bappa Beary, a Muslim trader from Kerala?
The temple built by him is called the Bappanadu temple. It is not only a Hindu temple, but also a Tulu folk-religion temple for Koragajja (Koraga + ajja), and also a Durga temple, I think. Bappa’s descendants are still invited to the ceremony, even to this day.
I know that Tulu Nadu is now a bastion for the BJP/Bajrang Dal/RSS ecosystem thanks to sanskritisation, but this was not the case 40 years ago.
About Sabarimala, I don’t remember properly, but our family head was supposed to refrain from eating meat, wear a black lungi and plan a long-distance pilgrimage to Sabarimala to pay visit to the celibate God Ayyappa. I’ve been told that he had a lowly birth, and that Brahmins are trying to appropriate this God too - this information might be incorrect though.