Do you have to be Indian to be Hindu?

I came across this in a comparitive religions textbook and another yoga instructor also confirmed it, but I just dont really understand why only one nationality is included. For instance I'm on a path to devote myself to Ganesha because I simply love him, and to me there is nothing more powerful than the mantra Aum Sumukhaya Namah however I kind of feel excluded that my love is not worth as much as anothers because I'm American. Can anyone shed any light on this? Also is there anything in the Vedas that could support this idea?

 

What is a Hindu? The word was coined by westerners to denote the inhabitants of India. The correct term is Sanatana Dharma - the eternal law or teaching.
It's certainly possible for anyone who is sincere to follow this Dharma. And some western people, eg. Mother Mira Alfassa (Sweet Mother), Sri Krishnaprem and others, have attained the highest heights of Yoga.
No doubt some Hindu traditionalists would say you have to be an Indian - but they don't have a very high degree of enlightenment, and the motivation for saying it may well be more to do with prejudice than anything in the teachings.

In the end, are these labels that important?

 

do you have to be an indian to be a hindu? actually, very few to hardly none native americans have become hindus but many many cowboys or gopas were close associates of krishna so i would say hinduism is more for cowboys than indians

 

Well...I should hope not...or I'd be SOL....heheheh. But in all my experience, no. In fact...I have been nothing but welcomed into the Indian community when I have attended Hindu functions. It really shouldn't matter anyway. People are people in the end....

and lol@Molly...that is cute. hehehe...

 

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati strongly defeated the philosophical arguments used by "Caste Brahmins" to exclude lower Indian classes from spiritual training and initiation. Per the wish and direct instruction of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta, Srila Prabhupada dedicated his life to the worldwide propagation of sanatana-dharma. Their mutual preceptor, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur, envisioned the day when Indians, Europeans, Americans, Asians, and all other peoples would take part in sankirtana, or congregational chanting of Hare Krishna. Bhaktivinode Thakur, in his work Hari-nama Cintamani, "The Jewel of the Holy Name", stated that to criticize a sadhu...spiritually advanced person...on the basis of any bodily characteristic whatsoever amounts to sadhu-ninda, a very serious offense in the practice of chanting the Hare Krishna mantra.

 

Last year I was working at the Big Green Gathering - a big festival here in England (not a rock fest, but based on environmental/spiritual etc things) and ISKCON had a sizeable set-up there, distributing prasada (free food) and books etc, and holding Kirtana.
I quite naturally couldn't resist the Kirtana - and it was good. There were many different people - only one Indian face amongst them, all singing 'Hare Krishna' and evidently getting something from it. So Srila Bhaktivinoda's vision is being realized. And I'm sure each one who was present in the Kirtanas will have taken home with them 'something'. A seed perhaps.

Just incidentally, I'll tell you of a little trip I had with those devotees at the fest.
I arrived too late to get any of the morning prasada - porridge - but when I approached the devotee who was dishing it out, he said "Oh - you're lucky! Krishna must be pleased with you! The last bit of prasada is the best - more highly charged with spiritual energy - devotees will squabble to get it"
We then began to talk for some time, during which I saw another devotee come and scoop out that tiny bit of pooridge remaining in the pot and take it away to eat! Ah well, I thought. I didn't get a meal. But I dipped my finger in, and managed to scrape a little from the side of the pot, just as it was being taken away to be washed. So, I did get the last bit!

Jaya Sri Krishna!

 

I'm glad to hear you had such a good recent experience with ISKCON!

 

yes, bhaktisiddhanta and bhaktivedanta, besides being very pro westerners into vedic traditions, considered the term "hindu" to be a muslim misnomer derived from those who lived east of river sindhu

 

In my "previous life" as an architect, I was asked to join some prominent Indian congregational members of the local ISKCON temple in planning for exterior design and structural improvements, remodeling, etc. They were extremely clannish and literally ignored me, even though I could have made meaningful contributions to the process because of my profession and experience. Anyway, I dropped away quietly and they handled it. That's the only negative experience I've ever directly had with Indian people...Indians at the local HK temple are generally very nice and the Indian devotees are especially sweet-natured.

 

It was good until I got into a discussion with a couple of devotees on the last day of the fest. I mentioned that I like Sri Ramakrishna - this provoked a denunciation of him as a fake - 'a foolish impersonalist' - something I find very hard to accept as being inspired by anything but ignorance. Ramakrishna continually urged people to turn to God, and said Bhakti is the easiest path - thanks to him, countless others have been inspired to take to a spiritual path. Just to completely dismiss him because he was of a different line of yoga seems very narrow minded to me.
Not that I think ISKCON devotees would need to study Ramakrishna in depth - but just to acknowledge his greatness would be something. Or criticize from an informed position at least.

So it was good as long as it was chanting Hare Krishna, not so good when it came to talking philosophy.

 

Bill, I've also been there on the receiving end...I was very shocked when a devotee used the same terminology to describe Paramahansa Yogananda...but that was 30+ years ago...you might think things would change a little.

This is an aspect of ISKCON that has always irritated me...describing outsiders as "karmis", "foolish mayavadis" and "foolish impersonalists". It does nothing but create an us-and-them mentality and more material designations. Better to ask everyone to join in the kirtan and take prasadam, while refraining from ill-informed criticism and attacks on the paths of others.

I know that Prabhupada was often very critical of "impersonalists", but he was directing his criticism toward those that were popularizing the notion that "we are all actually God, just in illusion" or that one can "become God again" through yogic practices. His standard replies to assertions such as these might be "Well, if you are God, then show me your Universal Form", or "If you are God, why are you in illusion in the first place?" SP always spoke from the position of Krishna das...servant of Krishna.

 

If you are, you are a Hindu.

 

i prefer the "hindoo" variant of spelling

 

Heh, sometimes its better to forgive and forget, and concentrate more on God and less on what God is, we are all sophomores anyway.

 

group humility?

 

We don't have sophomores in the UK. Only in the USA I think do you find them.

 

Technically if you're not born into a hindu family then you have no caste and therefore can't join as it were, but most ashrams in India will take westerners who want to study Hinduism. For westerners hinduism can seem very attractive and it has some great concepts and I find it a very interesting religion, but if you were born in India at the wrong end of the caste spectrum you mightn't think it was so great.

 

If you visited the UK and spent your time hanging out with afluent middle class people you might think it was a nice place, with a liberal culture and plenty of personal freedom etc. If you visited an inner city housing estate where there's a 40% unemployment rate, piles of rubbish in the streets which are the territory of often violent gangs of drug dealers and muggers, you might get a different impression. You might think that nearly 2,000 years of Christianity, and being among the world's richest nations doesn't really count for much at all.
It's the same in the US isn't it?
India too has its problems. The caste system being one. But in fact, it is an abuse of the original concept on which it is based, which simply says that people fall into different categories, and it's better to follow a path in life suited to one's abilities, needs etc.

 

The USA is a great place in many ways and a very nasty one in others.

When we visited London in 1998, the express train from Gatwick stopped for a train change... unexpectedly for us...at a track repair site in one of those housing estate areas that you describe, Bill. We waited in whipping cold wind for 20 min. or so until another train came along...it gave us a good taste of the local flavor.

Hey, we're 5,000 years into the Kali-yuga.

The caste system is a perversion of the varnashrama-dharma system, which you just summed up. This was a big issue for Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati...high-caste Brahmins wanted to keep advanced spiritual training and initiation a province of their caste, and Srila B argued that this was a material concept and opened the doors to everyone.

 

I think that probably applies all over the world - most societies have their 'underclass'. Things here were better up to the 80's, when Mrs.Thatcher began to dismantle the positive social measures put in place by the Labour govt. of 1945. These days, over here it's becoming much more sharply divided between the haves and have nots.