Religion, Hinduism Is Somewhat Unique in That

¶ … religion, Hinduism is somewhat unique in that it does not revolve around a specific, singular point of origin, belief system, or scripture. Indeed, it appears to have spontaneously evolved along with the cultures in India. The people of India are united by means of their food, customs, work, language, and beliefs. All these aspects are known as the "life of the people," and is fundamentally integrated with the Hindu belief system. According to Fisher (2005, p.

69), the term "Hinduism" was in fact propagated not by the Indians themselves, but by British colonialists, who used the term as a category for the purpose of census-taking. Informally, foreigners used the term to refer to people living in the Indus River region. Today, adherents to Hinduism prefer the term "Sanatana Dharma." Sanatana, according to Fisher, means eternal or ageless, and Dharma to the various elements under the term "religion." These include elements such as duty, natural law, social welfare, ethics, health, and transcendental realization.

What unifies Hinduism is therefore not so much a central deity, scripture, or history, but rather the needs and fundamental way of life of the people among which it arose. It is as much integrated with the Indian culture as their concrete way of living. Location is also an important element in unifying Hinduism. While the religion has spread throughout the world, India is its unifying region of origin. Hinduism and India are inextricably linked by a long history of evolution and life.

Indeed, according to the BBC (2004), the earliest evidence of Hinduism in India can be traced back as far as 3000 BCE. Considering the above, it can therefore be said that there are three main unifying elements in the Hindu religion: the life of the people, location, and time. The very way of life of the Indian people unifies the religion, its origin in India and its age, all serve as factors that make Hinduism not only unique, but also relevant to the culture of its origin. 2.

As seen above, one of the unifying factors of Hinduism is its country of origin, India. It did not however develop in isolation, and many cultural and social elements influenced it over its years of evolution. At the beginning of the eighth century for example, Muslims entered and took over several areas of the country, and sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought Buddhism and Jainism (Fisher, 2005, p.106). Islam, Buddhism and Jainism existed together relatively peacefully in the country.

Concomitantly, trading also resulted in the export of Sanatana Dharma to countries such as Java and Bali. These locations have modified the religion according to their lives and needs, and it survives in this form today. The Mogul Empire in India collapsed during the 19th century, after which the Europeans entered, with the British ultimately taking over in 1857 (Fisher, 2005, p. 106). This in turn brought Christian missionaries, who further influenced and modified the Hindu way of life.

Widow burning and the caste system were for example seen as abuses from the British point-of-view, and these were modified accordingly. In addition, British teachers told Indians that Hinduism was not viable on either an intellectual or ethical basis. This influenced some to abandon their traditional faith in favor of Christianity (Fisher, 2005, p. 107). In response, leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi arose to lead the further evolution of Hindu practice. Gandhi encouraged his people towards non-violent resistance and grassroots nationalism combined with an awareness of spiritual truth.

By combining these diverse elements, Mahatma Gandhi became renowned not only in his own country, but across the world for his unconventional approach to oppression. Today, Hinduism not only survives, but thrives across the world. It has taken many different forms according to the cultures in which the religion is adopted, but remains as one of the most widely popular religions in the world today. 3. According to Fisher (2005, p. 97), spiritual realization, also known as spiritual liberation, takes at least one lifetime, and possibly many.

This is the process of both physical and spiritual growth that allows the individual to attain cosmic consciousness. In this, the individual reaches a level of maturity that allows him or her to leave the earthly life for good, and enter eternal cosmic bliss. Physical birth provides the human being with an opportunity to become spiritually perfect. According to Fisher (2005, p. 98), spiritual education and therefore the path towards spiritual liberation was only available to upper-caste males in the past.

Beginning with an initiation ceremony, a Brahmin male's lifespan could be divided into four periods: the.