Does Hinduism Exist?

(a) Which evidence (what kind of evidence) could prove the existence of Hinduism?

(b) Idem. for the non-existence of Hinduism.

I think these issues are far too important to allow for their dissipation as debating points. If we could arrive at something approximating a consensus, we will have made a substantial headway. At the least, we can critically read the material on Hinduism with our answers to these questions.

I suggest we begin with (a). To start the ball rolling, I will mention some possible kinds of evidence and formulate my problems with each of these possibilities. Anyone who feels inclined is welcome to join the building of the list at any point in time and add or delete depending on the arguments.

1. Many (most, majority of the) Hindus believe in the existence of such an entity.

Problem: We have known any number of instances where people have entertained false beliefs. Also, the existence of some phenomenon does not require that people believe in its existence. The conjunction of these two makes the beliefs (at best) weak evidence for the existence claim.

2. The above argument does not apply to social reality. The existence of a social or cultural phenomenon requires that we believe in its existence. For instance, if none believed in untouchability, it would cease to exist.

Problem: one will have to show that the existence of Hinduism is something like untouchability and not, say, something like inflation or economic crises.

3. Many people from other times and places have registered the use of the word ‘Hinduism’ among Indians.

Problem: Apart from a similar objection to (1), there is a weightier matter. None could have registered such a use because it is an English word and of recent origin.

4. If not ‘Hinduism’, its equivalent has been registered.

Problem: one has to demonstrate the equivalence first.

5. ‘Hindu’ (Yin Du for instance) is used by the Indians from a very early period.

Problem: It is not clear whether the word refers to a people, a region or something else. However, using the word ‘Hindu’ is not sufficient: one must derive this word from ‘Hinduism’. That is, the usage must say that one is a Hindu because one belongs to Hinduism. Only then will the use become evidence. Then problems (1), (3) and (4) return with a vengeance.

6. People have been studying it, talking about it.

Problem: So did people talk about witches, their alleged intercourse with the Devil and Phlogiston. This is a variant of problem (1).

7. It unifies the Indian culture (or at least some part of it).

Problem: while that could be the case, what evidence is there to accept that Hinduism is responsible for it? This answer presupposes as true what it tries to prove.

8. Most of us can make a list of things we intuitively associate with the phenomenon of Hinduism.

Problem: what happens when intuitions conflict? The first problem also recurs.

9. Both we, our grandmothers and, say, Shankaracharya would agree with a minimal list.

Problem: this shows that there is ‘something’ we all agree upon. How does this provide evidence for Hinduism? Problems (8) and (1) recur.

10. There are university courses, PhD programs and writers of repute writing on it.

Problem: Similar things can be said of proof for the existence of God, parapsychology, and creationism.

11. American Hindus passionately believe in Hinduism.

Problem: This could be traced to the impact of the Semitic religions on the American culture and the impact of the latter upon the Indians in America.

12. Hindutva would not be possible without Hinduism.

Problem: Presupposes as true what requires proving. The burden of proof is the other way: one has to show that Hindutva comes into being because of Hinduism.

Which facts are relevant? Hipkapi and Hinduism

1. Many facts are interconnected within a culture. (The same applies to Nature too.) Some hypothesis or another notices some of these facts as facts, and it is able to provide an explanation (using the term ‘explanation’ rather loosely) for them. This explanation helps us understand the phenomenon (means merely the appearance) in question because the theory or hypothesis under discussion is able to show what that interconnection between the sets of facts is. (That is, it tells us of the pattern that unifies these facts into a whole of some sort.)

2. Which facts are relevant? This question cannot be answered in the absence of a theory (or hypothesis). So, for instance, when Arun comes up with a set of facts (practices) he is saying that the facts he notices are relevant to the issue of deciding what ‘Hinduism’ is. His non-exhaustive list looks like this: “the various ceremonies that mark the transitions in life; the patterns (not the particulars) of festivals, fasts, temples & shrines, household puja, pilgrimage, the epics, Puranas, trinity, concept of avataar, etc.,etc.” In other words, these facts (not others like the structure of latrines, the use of spices in cooking, wearing saris, etc) are considered relevant to deciding the question. That he selects only some common facts and not others as relevant facts to discuss the nature of Hinduism suggests that he is working with an (implicit or explicit) hypothesis about what Hinduism is. This is an obvious conclusion: as facts, each fact is as important and as relevant as any other fact. Only a hypothesis can assign weights and relevance to the facts. If he were to have no hypothesis about what Hinduism is, he would simply wave his hands in the direction of India and say that “all the facts” of the culture have a pattern behind them (which has not hitherto been investigated) and that pattern is Hinduism.

3. If you were to presuppose some commonsense idea about the concept of religion, his selection makes sense. However, if you use, say, the concepts of ‘laukika’ or ‘paramaaarthika’ or ‘adhyaatmika’ then the choice of these facts are not self-evident. One has to justify why a festival is not ‘laukika’ but ‘paramarthika’; whether pilgrimage is really in the best interests of ‘adhyaatmika’ and so on. Using the word ‘Dharma’ makes the choice of facts in this list even more non-obvious: ‘Is going to pilgrimage a dharma?’ Is believing in puranas a Dharma?’ and so on. However, if we reformulate, say, the previous question, it makes sense: ‘do puranas talk about Dharma?’ It shows that using the notion of Dharma in this context is a matter of some complexity and not self-evident. However this problem is not manifest if we use the word ‘religion’: Is believing in Puranas religious? Is pilgrimage a religious act? And so on. In other words, the obviousness of the facts is absent when we use concepts from the Indian traditions. However, this obviousness is present if we work with some or another commonsense concept of religion and the idea that Hinduism is a religion.

4. That Arun also thinks this way is evidenced in his reaction to my ‘hipkapi’ examples. Even though most of the facts I cite are biological, he said that the facts were unrelated to each other. Why did he say this? My argument was that ‘hipkapi’ is the common pattern unifying these facts. However, ‘hipkapi’ did not explain anything; it was merely a name. On the other hand, to use Arun’s argument, there could be a pattern behind the hipkapi facts; none has investigated them hitherto. Why did he dismiss it so easily? The answer is obvious: names do not explain anything.

5. I confront the same situation with respect to Hinduism. It is just a name at the moment (in Arun’s argument). He puts together some facts (hipkapi facts), says that the pattern unifying them is ‘Hinduism’ (or hipkapi), and that no one has investigated whether there is a pattern behind them (hipkapi pattern).

6. However, the difference between Hipkapi and Hinduism, in our present context, is this. The very facts that Arun uses are used to suggest the existence of a religion called ‘Hinduism’. Arun appears to consent to one aspect of the argument: there is Hniduism, and these facts are facts of Hinduism. The only issue is what is Hinduism if it is not a religion? This question already presupposes the truth of what requires to be proved: that the facts that Arun talks about are (some of the relevant) facts that settle the issue. Such an assumption points in the direction of a hypothesis.

7. In other words, Arun has to show that the structure of the latrines in India (for instance) is less relevant to settling the issue of the existence of Hinduism than, say, pilgrimages. Why cannot I say that the proof that British constructed ‘Hinduism’ is provided by the fact of Indians driving on the left-side of the road?

This entire post makes the following simple point. In choosing some facts as relevant facts, one uses a hypothesis. Facts, to put it even more simply, are facts of a theory. The existence question of Hinduism can be solved only in the presence of a hypothesis (explicit or implicit) about what that entity is. If we are not careful, we merely take over the commonsense conception of religion to identify Hinduism, even if we explicitly say that it is not a religion.

Perhaps, Arun can come up with a positive argument why he thinks that there is an entity called Hinduism. It is not sufficient to say that there could be pattern behind some arbitrary list of facts and that one would like to call that pattern Hinduism. If one does that, all one says is that Hinduism is hipkapi.

Check Does Hinduism Exist?

‘Hinduism’ and hipkapi: an Imaginary entity –S.N. Balagangadhara

1. What did the theory of gravitation do? Apart from describing the fall of bodies on earth, it also tied the motion of planets and the ebb and tide in the sea to each other. This theory allowed us to predict the motion of the planets and helped us discover a new planet in the solar system. In other words, it provided a theory that unified phenomena. Until that stage, we did not know that these three phenomena were linked together, and we had independent explanations for each of them. This is one of the things that a theory does: it identifies the phenomena that belong together.

2. The issue before us is this: when the west (let us stick to the west for the time being) unified some phenomena into something they thought was a religion and called it ‘Hinduism’, were they guided here by a theory (i.e. a theology) as well? If yes, the first question is this: did this theory tie certain practices and beliefs together into a phenomenon (called ‘Hinduism’) that do not belong together, or did they merely describe a unitary phenomenon in a wrong way? That is to say, is the ‘Hinduism’ that we know through a standard text book story made into a something (a unified phenomenon) through the use of theology? Or, did the west merely describe ‘Hinduism’ wrongly, namely, as a religion?

Notice though that by suggesting that Hinduism does not exist, one is not saying that those beliefs and practices that went into constructing this unity do not exist. What one is denying is that these beliefs and practices (taken together) constitute a phenomenon called ‘Hinduism’.

3. Let me provide an imaginary example and draw an analogy. Imagine someone coming to earth and noticing the following phenomena: grass is green, milk turns sour, birds fly and some flowers put out a fragrant smell. He is convinced that these are organically related to each other and sees ‘hipkapi’ in them. The presence of hipkapi not only explains the above phenomena are but also how they are related to each other. To those who doubt the existence of hipkapi, he draws their attention to its visible manifestation: the tigers eating the gazelle, dogs chasing the cats, and the massive size of the elephants. Each of these is a fact, as everyone can see it. But, of course, neither severally nor individually do they tell us anything about hipkapi. When more like him come to earth and reiterate the presence of hipkapi, other conditions permitting, hipkapi not only becomes a synonym for these (which?) phenomena but also turns out to be their explanation. Thereafter, to ask what hipkapi is, or even how it explains, is an expression of one’s idiocy: does not everyone see hipkapi, this self-explanatory thing?

This is what the Europeans did. The puja in the temples, the sandhyavandanam of the Brahmins, the Sahasranamams, etc. became organic parts of the Indian religion. Purushasukta was the cosmogenic explanation of the caste system, and untouchability its outward manifestation. Dharma and adharma were the Sanskrit names for ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the Indian deities were much like their Greek counterparts. To the missionaries, we were the idolaters; to the emasculated liberal, we are mere polytheists. In the analogy I have used, the visitor ‘constructs’ the hipkapi. To him, it becomes an experiential entity. He talks about this experiential entity, as his fellow-beings do, in a systematic way. The facts exist; does the hipkapi exist? This is the issue. Puja in the temples, the sandhyavandanam of the Brahmins, the Sahasranamams, the Purushasukta, our notions of dharma and adharma, etc. all exist. Does their existence tell us that ‘Hinduism’ also exists? Are they organic parts of a phenomenon called ‘Hinduism’, even if that phenomenon is not a religion?

4. In other words, I am not suggesting that the west provided a false description of the social and cultural reality in India. But the unity they created by tying these things together is the problem: this unity is a unity for them. They had to create such a unified phenomenon because of their theology. They could not understand us otherwise. In discussions about ‘Hinduism’, this is the problem. Is ‘hipkapi’ a unified phenomenon or an imaginary entity? Is ‘Hinduism’ a unified phenomenon or an imaginary entity?

5. The majority opinion on this issue is clear. ‘Hinduism’ exists, but it has not been accurately described. One might want to call it ‘religion’, the other might say that it is more accurate to speak of ‘Hinduisms’ (and not in the singular)… and so on. The post-colonials are willing to concede the ‘construction’ of Hinduism, but suggest that this construction ‘exists’ now. In the strict minority of one, what I am saying is that this unity is not a unity within the Indian culture.

6. Am I suggesting then that these phenomena are unrelated to each other? Or am I merely suggesting that they have a different relationship to each other? Irrespective of my answers to these questions, the claim holds: Hinduism, the phenomenon constructed by the West, is an experiential entity only to the West and not to us. In this sense, Hinduism is not a part of the Indian culture. It has no existence outside of the western experience of India.

7. Now comes the really interesting issue. Could we provide a different description of the Indian culture? Would such a description tell us what exists in India, and which of the above are related to each other and explain how they are related to each other? Yes, I believe, we can. But the absolute presupposition for that the current framework (which we have imbibed through the western scholarship) is completely left behind. Not only do I believe that a different description is possible but also that it will be cognitively superior to the majority view.

8. My article ‘How to speak for the Indian traditions?’ begins to lay the groundwork for such an endeavor. See whether it is a more interesting attempt or not.

Ontological and epistemological commitments of ‘Hinduism’—S.N.Balagangadhara

1. The English word ‘Hinduism’ not only carries multiple meanings it also appears to refer to many different things. If the context of the discussion were to help us disambiguate the reference of this word, it might not pose many problems for a serious discussion. Unfortunately, the context itself gets muddled. Each understands the question ‘Does Hinduism Exist?’ in a different fashion. As though this is not enough, this confusion enters into other areas as well: witness the challenge for people to prove that Sikhism does not exist. The prima facie evidence seems to be the following: the word ‘Hinduism’ seems to carry many different kinds of (ontological) commitments (i.e. when we use the word, we seem to make assumptions about the kind of entities that exist in the world), many different epistemological positions (i.e. how can either know or not know what that word refers to).

2. One of the interesting strategies used in scientific discussions to circumvent this problem, especially when a rival theory enters the fray, is to undertake a linguistic reform. The word ‘Oxygen’ replaced ‘phlogiston’ because the latter word carried too much of baggage. There many ways to undertake a linguistic reform. For instance, the members of this board could restrict the meaning and reference of the word ‘Hinduism’: “that which exists in India”. If we use the word thus, of course, no one denies that Hinduism exists. Or again, we could say “that which is common to many different groups in India and to Indians elsewhere”. Ascertaining the scope of this word might be difficult, but we could get along.

3. However, the problem is that when we enter the intellectual arena, our definition of the word is not the only one floating around. So, either we have such discussions (such a discussion appears interminable) each time, or we go for some other term which does not create confusions and muddles because it carries unidentified ontological and epistemological commitments.

4. When I say that “Hinduism is an imaginary entity“, I mean the following (as I have repeatedly said in ‘The Heathen…’): If the word ‘Hinduism’ is said to refer to a religion, and the claim is that such a religion exists (say, in India), then such a claim is false. In order to defend my position, I do not depend on my pet definition of the word ‘Hinduism’ but on a hypothesis about what religion is, how to study it scientifically and so on. On the basis of this hypothesis, I enumerate the sociological conditions that are absolutely essential for the propagation of religion and show that they are systematically absent in India. I also show that a closer (and more detailed) study would also allow us to argue that it is metaphysically impossible that religion could exist in India.

5. In the same book, I address myself to the intuition that religion is somehow responsible for either the emergence of a culture or for its identity. My hypothesis suggests that this intuition is true for the western culture but that human history is not European history writ large. Even here, the way I make this intuition come out ‘true’ is to show that societies and cultures do not come into being because some groups have a religion (the empirical history of religions shows that religions divide people more often than it unites them) or because some people practice some or another set of rituals. I speak in terms of configurations of learning and what brings them into existence.

6. The usefulness of a linguistic reform should be ascertained by looking at the advantages it brings. (In my book, I do not indulge in linguistic reform concerning the word ‘Hinduism’ but in formulating a set of hypothesis about religion, culture and configurations of learning. These hypotheses can be tested, rejected, improved upon, etc. on theoretical and empirical grounds.) I suggest that we better look at the Indian culture in terms of a configuration of learning that brings forth practical knowledge. (I need to correct you here: the ritualization of daily life in Asia is an evidence for the claim that Ritual plays the role in Asia that Religion plays regarding the West. I do not substitute ‘ritualized culture’ for ‘Hinduism’.)

7. In the context of my theory, one cannot formulate the question ‘If Hinduism is not a religion, what else is it?’ (That is because, I have avoided defining the word ‘Hinduism’ and my hypothesis works at a very different level. I speak of ‘Religion’ that develops a configuration of learning. So, if we write a history of the Western Culture, only then do we need to look at Christianity as a religion.) You could, of course, raise it as an issue in order to understand the import of my theory. (Or you could raise it to ask the question, ‘How do we write a history of India, or Asia?’)

8. Let me repeat. I am not replacing the word ‘Hinduism’ with the word ‘culture’ (Indian, Asian, ritualized or whatever else). I formulate a hypothesis, which differentiates the Indian (or Asian) culture from the Western culture. Zillions of new questions come into being because of this hypothesis. I do not have answers to all, or even to most of them. For instance, since writing ‘The heathen…’, I have taken the first step in beginning to theorize about the nature of Indian traditions; about how we could start making sense of the ‘Indianness’ (I do not like to use this word, but I cannot think of better one) of the Indian traditions. I have some understanding of the nature of Indian ethics and how it is different from the structure of Western ethics. I have some idea too why we have such great difficulties in either understanding or testing the kind of hypothesis I formulate, etc. But these are all mere steps in the direction of a goal, which no one individual or even one generation can reach.

9. One says: “if one abandons the notion of a something (not religion) called Hinduism, I think it is difficult to understand connections between say, a Vedicist and a Sikh or a Jain or a Buddhist monk.” The proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say. May be you are right; then again, maybe you are not. So far I have been able to make better sense of what unites the kind of people you mention without using the word ‘Hinduism’ or any of its dominant meanings. Not only that. My hypothesis is cognitively superior to every other ‘theory’ in the market place that does use some or another meaning of the word ‘Hinduism’. So far, I have dispensed with the word ‘Hinduism’ itself: I am using words like ‘experiential knowledge’, ‘practical or performative knowledge’ (no doubt, I will need to coin more new words) to build a testable hypothesis about the Indian culture. All I do observe is that those millions of writers who do use the word ‘Hinduism’ are not able to generate any kind of a hypothesis that can be tested. These writers stretch over three centuries and embrace intellectuals from both the West and the East. Of course, observing their failure does not mean that they will also continue to fail. But this possibility does not bother me. I have multiple criteria of scientificity and rationality to guide me in my endeavor. Let us see where my search takes me. I know where their search has so far taken them.