By: Kalavai Venkat
The scholar and friend Arunagiri Aru gave me a few books written by the Native American chiefs Ohiyesa, Seattle, Red Jacket, and Joseph, and asked me to write my perspective of their writings. I will eventually get to writing it! However, there is a common strand of thought in their writings which I wanted to share with you.
Apart from openly rejecting Christianity and Jesus, these chiefs fondly recount many a Native American rite. One such rite requires them to wake up early in the morning, go to the river before sunrise, and offer ablutions to nature. The entire rite is a personal affair and is accompanied by sacred chants.
Why do I mention about it here? Here is the reason.
Many well-meaning but westernized Hindus are dismissive of rituals and refer to rituals pejoratively. They often contrast rituals with Hindu philosophy and lament that many Hindus are lost in rituals and are ignorant of our philosophical systems. I take the opposite stance on this.
Rites are at the very core of Hindu existence whereas philosophies are peripheral. One may call it by any name such as samskara but that is what defines Hindu identity. Every Hindu follows a set of rites from garba dana to pitr karma which are passed on as family traditions from one generation to another. This is complemented by customs which are highly localized. In the case of my family, the family deity is a King Cobra whose abode is maintained by a priest from a Scheduled Caste. We would invariably perform mundan ceremony for young children at a couple of temples in Tamilnadu. These would not ever change. My family may not share these traditions even with other Brahmin families from my own state.
Even our festivals are localized and the degree of sanctity we attach to those varies by location. Walking on fire rituals were a natural part of the setting in which I grew up whereas a Brahmin from Punjab may’ve not even witnessed one.
In contrast, philosophies are a luxury and speculative. Those are what Hindus dabble with in their spare time. I do not mean to be insulting to the various acharyas and philosophers who propounded these systems over the millennia. Be it Sankara, Ramanuja, Narayana Guru, Aurobindo, Vivekananda, and many other great thinkers, I have immense respect for all of them. However, adherence to any of the philosophical systems they propounded has never been a core part of my family’s, or any Hindu family’s, existence.
Rituals are not something we should be ashamed of. Instead, we should be proud of those. Hinduism is a rare religion which instills a spirit of indebtedness in the practitioner. We are born with an obligation to fulfill. We owe a debt to our family, nature, ecosystem, flora and fauna, ancestors, and progeny. We all have a duty to leave this world in a better shape than the one in which we inherited it. Many a rite is an expression of this indebtedness. That is why we make offerings to ancestors and animals alike.
We Hindus share this spirit of indebtedness with many other ancient cultures such as Native Americans which is why I started this post alluding to those. The benefits of such rites are obvious. They make us perceive our ecosystem as sacred and hence conserve it.
However, the benefits go beyond the obvious too. The moment you inculcate a sense of indebtedness, you let go off the sense of entitlement. You stop thinking that you’re a chosen people or that god created the world, so you could turn into a greedy predator. Instead, you begin to experience interconnectedness with your entire ecosystem. This is precisely why a Hindu would immerse oneself in the freezing waters of Alaknanda without worrying about hypothermia. Or walk through a rugged terrain to the abode of Ayyappa without caring for physical comforts.
Such rites and traditions induce brain plasticity without us even realizing it. One feels a sense of elation after performing the rites or pilgrimage. They even induce a variant of folie à deux. The person that walked by your side may have looked different, spoken a different language, or hailed from a different socio-economic stratum. However, by the time the pilgrimage is over, you find that your mental map had been rearranged. You feel much closer to this person than with a Wall Street banker with whom you had interacted in the preceding years. You begin to appreciate things in a deeper manner. The celluloid model clad in DKNY now looks superficial and unworthy of a second glance. Instead, you begin to feel that you connect better with the girl next door who performed the rites with utter devotion.
There is a good reason why Hindu tradition imposed many ritualistic constraints. Observant Hindus would desist from eating meat or even onion and garlic during various occasions. One would be amazed that they just do not crave for these things during the phases of abstinence. What is happening? They effortlessly slide into the sattvic mode. It is a mode they could return to whenever they chose.
Rituals are a form of tapasya. They induce the sadhaka to experience the sacred in a very personal way. This is what makes Hinduism very special.
You cannot mobilize all Hindus under one roof and make them uncritically nod their heads in agreement in the pews to the ignorant calls from the pulpit. Rituals provide a path for diversity which can be sought from within. Rituals are not something to be ashamed of. They are, rather, something one should be proud of.