Originally published: MAY 28, 2026
This series is a response to this post by the Centre for Studies in Hindu Conservatism (CSHC). I highly recommend reading it to get tapped into what the Indian leftist intelligentsia has been doing. By request from Omar-ji, I am cross-posting it here.
Introduction
I will admit, when I first saw the Substack notification pop up that the Centre for Studies in Hindu Conservatism (CSHC) had posted an essay called “How Mythological Fiction is Quietly Dismantling Hindu Values”, I was greatly looking forward to reading it. I went into it thinking that it would be rip into the works of authors like Amish Tripathi, of the Shiva Trilogy. Instead, I found quite the opposite opinion on his writings.
“A crucial clarification is that this article is not an attack on creative liberty. There are several contemporary works on Hindu theology that engage with these traditions from within the framework of Dharma itself. For instance, Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy reimagines Shiva as a mortal and writes on his journey of becoming deified. This is imaginative fiction that does not claim to correct theology. Left-Liberal worldview, however, views religion as something evil and interprets it accordingly.”
Before I go any further, let me make a few things clear. I have no enmity with the writers of the essay to which I write this answer. I have never spoken to or met them, nor have I ever read any of their writings before. Any harshness in my words should be taken as naught but a gentle hand suggesting that they take stock of other worthwhile targets.
1. Fixing The Bow
The bow the writers of the CSHC seek to aim — rightly so — at leftist re-interpreters of Hindu texts is flawed. In their words, “When Marx called religion ‘the opium of the masses,’ he meant religious ideas sedate the working class, making them accept suffering as divine will rather than recognizing exploitation.”
I hate to be put into the position of trying to defend or explain Marx, but that is not what he was saying.
Here is the full passage from the ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ (1844), written by Karl Marx as an introduction to an unpublished manuscript and published in Marx’s journal, Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher (italics in original):
“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aromais religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expressionof real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
It is rather clear from reading this passage with awareness of the greater context behind it (a critique of Hegel, whose philosophy of dialectics Marx claimed to have raised from its upside-down, spirtualistic orientation and set right-side up, reoriented towards a materialist dialectic) that Marx actually credits religion with giving humans a sense of dignity, albeit external to themselves, and offering the masses a means of pain relief as well as a legitimate expression of and succor from pain, although these are abstracted from (his conception of) reality, whose necessity will be dissolved as soon as the material conditions under which the faithful suffer also disappear. If we read further into the text this becomes all the more apparent:
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”
And, while his language is universalist in tone, Marx was, I think, more focused on the conditions of the bourgeois, industrial capitalist civilization of which he was a part. It also mirrors the historical ubiquity of opium itself, however. Andrew McKinnon, a sociologist of religion and senior lecturer on sociology at the University of Aberdeen, says in the footnotes of his piece in the journal Critical Sociology, ‘Reading “Opium of the People”: Expression, Protest and the Dialectics of Religion’ (2005) that the primary point of context in this article analyzing Marx’s idea of opium was 19th Century Britain because:
“Britain is important for a number of reasons. First, our understanding of opium comes from later moments in the history of opium there (the movement to ban opium emerged here). Secondly, throughout the 19th Century, Britain played a central role in the production and distribution of opium on a global scale, it was also an important producer of Opium meanings, consumed throughout the rest of the continent (Butel 1995). Finally, when Marx (and Engels) discuss opium, most of their discussions deal with the English context.” (p. 16-17)
And in Britain, at that time, opium in the form of laudanum was widely available for sale, both legally and otherwise, and present in many homes — a clear parallel to the ubiquity of religiosity in that society. Furthermore, as McKinnon points out, opium had many legitimate, medicinal uses for which it was sold at that time — uses for which even Marx availed himself of the substance — pain relief, yes, but also the only prescription for fatigue, depression, sleeplessness, rheumatism, women’s ailments, fevers, diabetes, pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis, diarrhea, dysentery, and cholera (p. 18). Even if opium didn’t actually heal one of these illnesses, it nevertheless allowed one to deal with the pain they caused and keep on living.
McKinnon also notes that there was another polarity to the connotation opium held in the minds of 19th Century Britons, namely that of economic imperialism as this was when the ‘Opium Wars’ took place. At the same time, several of the literati indulged in its recreational use and even produced conspicuously self-reflective works regarding it. He sums it up best when he says:
“Opium had a complex history in the 19th century, and yet when we, early 21st century readers encounter “opium of the people,” we read it in a straightforward, literal, (and uniformly negative) manner that is alien to his time. In other words, we read opium as people who have learned to think about opium in a world after the prohibitions against opium use have become naturalized. By drawing a parallel between religion and opium, Marx alludes to all of the mid-19th century connotations that opium would have had for his readers. Any reading of “Towards a Critique” must deal with the complexity and ambivalence of this metaphor.” (p. 21)
The “dialectic logic” with which Marx treats religion — at once an “expression of” and “protest against” real suffering is shown in their synchronicity and in a relation of mutual influence, even if one of these sides has been predominant historically (p. 24). As such, McKinnon argues, Marx’s use of the term opium should be seen as the final step in the dialectic between expression and protest, comparing opium as a historical product arising from the capitalist economic process and commoditization of religion as the feudal medieval world order receded (again, in Western and Northern Europe).
What the authors of the CSHC article speak of — the framing of religious narratives and ordinances as mere power plays — is what McKinnon would lump under “traditional Marxian analyses of religion” (p. 29). As such, they cannot be faulted for this idea, as it is an all too common one, even among leftists. This, McKinnon argues, is an abstract theory of religion, however, divorced from the material conditions in which religions operate in the world. What the authors of the CSHC article are talking about, I think, is a later development which seems to have been less of a focus in the writings of Marx himself (especially when one takes into consideration the fact that the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher was co-published with another thinker with whom he later had a disagreement, which contributed to there only ever being one issue ever published) than in those of his readers many decades hence. In particular, it is the critical theorists or those whom some might call ‘Cultural Marxists’ that are most likely to analyze religion in this way, with strongly cynical exegeses.
From what I know, at least in the Western academic tradition, especially in America, the academic left shifted from critiquing material phenomena to critiquing culture, possibly as a result of the sidelining of continental philosophy in universities, as David McKerracher of Theory Underground suggests in his recent piece ‘Socioanalyzing Analytic Philosophy’ (April 29, 2026), which led thinkers in that tradition to migrate into the humanities, where, in later generations, that philosophical blood would thin and harden into shibboleths of jargon. As McKerracher puts it:
“Critical theory, which began in Frankfurt with Adorno and Horkheimer doing rigorous work on the culture industry, became in American literature and gender-studies departments a loose grab-bag of jargon serving whatever identitarian project was fashionable. The vocabulary survived and the discipline did not. Nobody was holding these students to the standards Adorno held himself to. The jargon became a credential, and the credential became a political weapon.”
Still, as McKinnon said, this seems to be a common line of thought across traditional ‘Marxians’ as well, so it may well be that the Indian literati that the CSHC authors mention — Ranganayakamma, Neelakantan, Sawant, Kane, Patel, Divakaruni, Kumari — consider themselves orthodx Marxists or some other stripe of leftist. Without a deep dive into their backgrounds and biographies it’s hard to tell.
Interesting read. I did take a look at the post you mentioned.
I think its quite OK to engage in historical fiction like an Amish Tripathi or a Shivaji Savant. I give Mrituyunjay a 5 star. Having read it in the original language makes a difference compared to the translation.
Amish’s attempt is to make Hindu gods and their stories more accessible to the population. It appears to have worked and I myself did not find it unappealing in the way he’s woven his stories.
Not everybody reads such books with an intent to become either a complete seeker or an atheist. The interpretation of the Upanishads and the Gita by different serious authors might be more for the philosophical ones. The ones who wish to pan these texts will do so independent of reading historical fiction anyway.
I haven’t read Mrityunjay, but I’m not sure whether it’ll really be that interesting. I read the novel on Karna by Ranjit Desai and don’t remember feeling particularly impressed by it, but as you say, reading it in the original language probably does make a fair bit of difference.
That said, I don’t think euhemerism is ever an innocent choice because no pious mind would ever even consider the Gods as mere humans. But, we’ll get to Tripathi in part two and we’ll see exactly why he isn’t innocent in the least. There’s a vast difference between historical fiction, even with fantastical or mythical elements to it, and a complete rewriting of the tales of the Gods to fit modern, liberal sensibilities — exactly the crime the leftist authors the CSHC mentions are guilty of.
I don’t really think the notion of a personal god holds as tight a grip on South Asia as it did in places like Europe and the Middle East. Historically, a sizeable chunk of religions didn’t seem to care much about the existence or influence of an all-powerful being. Buddhists and Jains straight don’t believe in a higher almighty creator, and they tend to outright object to such an opinion.
The Hindu school of Mimamsa (school of Hermeneutics) valued ritual observations and discussion of Dharma to the extent that there were branches that didn’t believe in the gods’ existence. By most metrics, this school was one of the most orthodox ones that adhered to traditionalist values much longer than others. Other groups like the Nyaya (logic) cared more for logic, the Vaykarna (linguistic school) cared for words more, and even Shankara’s Advaita cared more for scholasticism rather than devotionalism within a system that can work without a deity.
In this kind of setting, people seeing god as mere humans wouldn’t mean as much in contrast to a Christian or Islamic setting, where the need for an almighty god sits at the centre of their entire theological system. Furthermore, most Western religions tend to centre their doctrine around a principal specific theological text, i.e., the Quran or Bible, or Torah. So writing fiction about these works would be more impactful and produce an expansive response.
In South Asia, sectarian groups are more defined by specific work intrinsic to their school. Like Adavaita has the Brahma Sutra, the Nyayas have the Nyaya Sutra, etc. Furthermore, there are many renderings of different religious stories that vary from one community to another based on their own sectarian and historical traditions. None of this includes an entire history of retellings by different writers that produce different interpretations. Bhavabhuti wrote a play about Rama that divinely represented him, while Dinaga’s play Kundamala presents Rama as a human king with a less flattering image. In the end, people’s belief or disbelief in Rama didn’t change, and they held onto their version of god. People will simply read and dismiss these liberal interpretations in the same manner as they did with past tellings.
this is a very high signal comment
The notion of a personal god is precisely what the Ishta Devata is. It is a remarkably strong concept in Hinduism. The Advaita school of Adi Shankara seeks to reach the formless ultimate divine but even it acknowledges the concept of an Ishta devata as a stepping stone in that direction. Since the divine is ultimately formless and devoid of all concepts. Hinduism is therefore remarkably liberal in how one selects or even visualizes an Ishta devata since all form ultimately comes from the formless only. Another way to think of the Ishta devata is this: One concept that helps you eventually get past all concepts. Finally, even this one concept dies and liberation is attained.
It is indeed, it is a far more sophisticated concept compared to the personal God of the Abrahamics (no offense intended).
It’s a lot more complicated, actually. To understand Shankara and Advaita, you need to understand Nagarjuna alongside his Madhyamaka philosophy. Basically, the Buddhists believed that the phenomena in the world are interconnected/dependent on each other using the term Pratityasamutpada. Nagarjuna argued that since everything is dependent on one another, it is hard to prove the existence of anything, and hence everything is empty. For example, if I were to point at a tree and say that it has always existed there, then I would need to find the time when it was planted there as a seed. When I prove the seed was planted, then someone can ask, ” Well, how do you know the seed was real?” and I would be forced to further look back to prove its existence. Every time I come close to proving things, I am forced to further prove the source of those things since the world is interconnected. Hence, everything is empty, even emptiness itself, and there is nothing at the end of cycles of skepticism.
Shankara looked at all this, and he deeply disagreed. He argued that everything, no matter how interconnected, would inevitably have a source from which it originates; one that is completely independent and the source of everything being dependent on it. This is Brahman, an unchanging and absolute reality that is the source of everything, but it’s god since that would be Ishvara. Shankara then argues that the self is a part of this absolute reality and is nothing but an illusion. He argues that people lack or have faulty information (Avidya) taught to them, which causes them to believe in the false sense of reality caused by Maya.
In fact, there are three levels of reality: Absolute (Objective), Empirical (Subjective), and False reality. The Absolute reality that is the Brahman represents the unchanging truth that remains the same, i.e., objective truth. The empirical reality represents our personal interpretation of the absolute truth (usually influenced by Maya/illusion and, by extension, Avidya), which is subjective and ever-changing. The false reality is exactly that, a fake truth, things like dreams. Shankara’s solution to transcend the self and obtain oneness with the universe was basically to study ancient texts using the Hermeneutics (the study of interpretations).
The purpose that God, as in Ishavara, serves in this system is to initiate the creation of the material world via dreaming since Brahman is formless and, by extension, cannot “make” the world directly. This isn’t unique to him; a European philosopher also argued that god dreamed up the world when dealing with the question about does reality exists. An important point that should be obvious would be that god isn’t the centre of this system, rather he simply exists to serve a specific role and the main pathway to liberation. Even Ishvara (basically where Ishta Deva fits) itself is, in some essence, an illusion itself since only the formless reality that is Brahman can be real. Ishtadeva, or the more realistic term “Kuladeva” (clan god since they tend to be the same in most cases), merely exists to help people on the journey; it in itself isn’t completely necessary. Side note, Advaita is a branch of Mimamsa, the school of Hermeneutics that had people both support and disagree with the notion of the gods’ existence.
Now, all of this is theoretical, but the same things exist on a cultural level in South Asia in the sense that people are orthopraxic rather than orthodox. Culturally, religion seems to be treated as an unchangeable aspect of oneself, like race or caste, and things like conversion are seen as aberrations. On top of that, people oppose atheism more so for their rejection of a religious identity itself rather than a rejection of god itself. Like you’re going to pray anymore or question the elder or important religious figures in our society. Religion is seen as an obligation and ritual that needs to be completed to play one’s part in society. In this view, atheism involves you failing to complete those obligations to society by completing your ritual duty to the world around you, similar to the Mimamsa view, honestly.
Ancedotally, I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian family, and I still remember some of the things that people told me about my very religious great-grandfather. He hated atheism since that is what the communists believe in, and he was staunchly anti-communist. Still, he hated people who were too religious or zealous since that was socially inappropriate. The one thing that never showed up was belief in god being a main sticking point; rather, it was mostly the loss of social image due to failure to complete ritual obligations or a lack of a moral since atheists lack an ethical framework like one that religion gives. Mind you, they were Christian, so they should care about belief in god more so than other groups, but even they were more concerned with Orthopraxy rather than Orthodoxy.
Welcome back Fly Die and great comment.
Yeah, I was busy for the last few weeks. Quite frankly, I somewhat stepped out after that weird fertility and women’s role discussion from last time. Also, it got unnaturally quiet here over the last few days, which was weird considering the endless arguments that always happen here.
That is a very accurate take!
I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate statement when we can clearly point to
‘proto-Bhakti’ tendencies in the Veda Saṃhitā itself and historical and archaeological data show pretty explicit evidence of what we would consider part of the Bhakti tradition today, from the trinity of Vāsudeva, Saṃkarṣaṇa, & Ekānaṁśā, or the five heroes of the Vṛṣṇis (Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s tribe) — Vāsudeva, Saṃkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, Samba, & Aniruddha — out of whom, four are mentioned as the four plenary expansions (Vyūha-avatāras) of the Primordial Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa in texts like the Lakṣmī Tantra, one of the Pāñcarātra texts belonging to some of the earliest Vaiṣṇava traditions, to the discovery of Heliodorus’ Garuḍa-pillar, which records what can only be understood as a statement of intense personal devotion to a personal Deity (“The God of Gods, Vāsudeva”) and mentions three steps, a deed for which Śri Viṣṇu is oft acclaimed in the Vedic texts.
I don’t deny that there were and still are several impersonalist schools of Hindu praxis or schools that did may not have taken a hard stance on the question, what to speak of the nāstikas (even though much of their own success inside and outside of the Indian Subcontinent can be owed precisely to their appropriation of the kind of ‘personal devotion’ which their religions supposedly abjured). But, their existence is by no means a way to negate or delete the theistic and devotional schools, especially when the latest developments of these traditions occurred parallel to, in dialogue with, and even within the devotional schools.
Re literature: I think there is a big difference between a character acting like a human and actually being a mere human. My (admittedly brief) overview of the Kundamāla does not seem to suggest that the author of this text, whether he was the famous Buddhist theologian or not, held the latter position.
I wasn’t trying to deny the essence of Bhakti being a major movement in South Asia, but there was a difference in devotionalism that existed before the Bhakti movement. See, most of the deities that you mentioned in the above list, like the Vrishni heroes, Narayana, etc were commonplace in the ancient work; none of them were ever worshiped in the sense of Bhakti. There was a degree of animism at play here since a significant portion of deities were often worshipped as forests, hills, trees, snakes, and other forms. Some of these deities were worshipped as great warriors who were diefied overtime and might have some ancestral connection.
To explain this form of devotion, I think it would be useful to examine the Graha fertility gods of the Kushan Empire, especially the god Mahasena. During that time, a lot of children who were born used to die during or after childbirth, and people couldn’t find a clear explanation for these phenomena due to a lack of advanced medicine. People gradually started to believe that there were these deities known as Graha who would “Steal” children after childbirth or cause diseases. To prevent theft, most people would offer sacrifices and pray to these gods to prevent them from stealing children. None of these people looked at these through a personalized devotional sense; rather, they were given respect and feared at the same time. Eventually, some of these gods’ roles shifted over time, and people stopped praying to them since they could no longer get fertility requirements from these gods. Similar things existed in Rome, China, and other places as well.
Personal devotionalism to a deity isn’t always the same as praying to a god; oftentimes, the historical meaning changes depending on social settings. There is a reason why the Bhakti movement, Christianization of Europe, and the rise of Islam are significant, since they emphasized a form of religious devotion that was heavily personalized and deviated from historical practices before their time. Devotionalism in a deeply personalized sense wasn’t something that organically exists, but rather it is something that forms or is invented over time. It applies everywhere, including places like Greece or Rome. This is kinda why many religions that don’t have personal devotionalism have gradually adopted it as their underlying societies and their cultures shifted to favor devotionalism. Society can shift in a different direction tomorrow, and devotionalism may be replaced with something else, or a different religious organization and theology may outright emerge. What religions mean to us today doesn’t have to align with what it means to people in a decade, a century, or a millennium, since these are ever-evolving ideas.
“there was a difference in devotionalism that existed before the Bhakti movement”
Sure? I don’t think I would disagree with this outright. Everything in the world is always in flux, no matter how fast or slow. Is it possible that Bhakti takes different forms in different times? Sure. But they are part of the same flow of desire, regardless of how they are actualized. Personalized devotion is absolutely part of the Vedic religion, even if it is highly formalized and ritualist at the same time. The Aśvins, for example, are constantly appealed to in precisely the same way that one would pray to a devotional Deity, for rescue from hardships. One myth especially stands out as representative of the continuity between the Vedic and Contemporary periods. Namely, the rescue of Bhujyu, who was lost at sea and brought back from the realms of the ancestors — feats for which Śrī Kṛṣṇa is more often remembered in the present day.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa & Śrī Rāma are referred to in various texts and steersman or boatmen who carry one across the sea of being. The Aśvins are also givers of rain to thirsting rishis — precisely what Śrī Kṛṣṇa does for Uttanka.
Bhakti is by no means comparable to Islam and Christianity in their relationship with what came before — in part because Bhakti was what came before to begin with. The “Bhakti Movement” is not the be all-end all of Bhakti itself, even if it is the most impactful on contemporary Hindu religion.
No, the notion that the things of Vedic religion are the same as bhaktism isn’t accurate if you consider the actual historical and social reality of the times. The Vedic priests did not think of their gods in the personalized manner that you are imagining here. Their gods weren’t representations of naturalistic forces in nature, but rather highly personalized transcendental beings that maintain an emotional relationship with their followers. If you asked a Vedic priest if Surya was real, then he would be confused since he would point to the literal sun and say that it exists. People made offerings in a ritualistic manner since they wanted something in return, like rain from Indra, fertile soil from Bhumidevi, and even the Ashvins were given offerings since they were associated with equestrianism, cattle rearing, and medicine (albeit later on), things important for people back then. If people felt that god at hand can’t provide these things, then they would simply move as they did Skanda when he lost his fertility aspects.
Mind you, the ordinary people centred their worship around Nagas, Yakshas, hills, rivers, and other things. Nagas were worshipped since snakes appeared during good harvests, as the plentiful monsoon that provided crop yields made a moist environment for snakes to appear. Most of these beings were anthropomorphic representations of natural phenomena, who were given offerings to achieve personal goals. Inevitably, not all these offerings seem to have worked or provided satisfying results since things like the horse sacrifice fell out of popularity even with the Gupta Empire’s attempted revival efforts. The weakening of these practices, one could argue, created skepticism about deities to begin with, as can be seen in contemporary places like Rome or Egypt. Every major school of thought during this period had shown skepticism, suggesting that these questions were quite commonplace.
Another element here would be the fact that people can make offerings or complete a ritual, but that doesn’t automatically mean people believe. Japanese and Chinese visit shrines or practice religious superstitions, yet all of them are atheists who don’t believe in religion or even possess a personalized devotional connection to a higher god. They make offerings due to tradition, superstition, or personal belief in such ideas, even if they reject the notion of god. Everything is kinda transactional; you either get the result of an offering or you move on to the next being that might give you something.
Later devotionals centred on aspects of Hinduism (Bhakti), Christianity, and Islam have different conceptions of personal worship. There is a more intimate relationship between the deity and followers that transcends the transactional nature of the older one. People earnestly follow the values of their sect and are willing to make sacrifices even when they don’t yield personal benefits. Today, a Tamil person may pray to Murugan not for his fertility or war attributes, but simply due to their having a deeper and personal connection to their god. The best example would be to simply compare the Yakshi, who are often feared and propitiated to prevent horrific accidents, vs Durga with her deep-seated maternalism and close personal connection to her followers; clearly, they are different. The personalized devotional of the present is different from the animistic, transactional, ritualistic worship of the past, where there is a clear indication that people seem to have had a falling out with these practices quite extensively, resulting in atheistic thought.
As a side note, the main reasons for the overlap between Vedic and Hindu elements are two. Firstly, Hinduism as an organized religion started to consolidate itself around 350 BCE due to complete social shifts resulting in the absorption of Buddhist, Jain, Ajavika, Vedic, and other schools of thought, in addition to local regional deities like Nagas or Yakshas. This resulted in many beings becoming incarnates or extensions of larger denominational beings like Shiva, Vishnu, or Devi. A good example is Surya, whose entire sun cult was absorbed into Vaishnavism under the concept of Surya Narayana. Similar things happened to other Vedic gods such as the Ashvins, Varuna, Mitra, etc.
Secondly, the Mahabharata, Harivamsa, and Ramayana (all codified around the same time) borrowed a lot of archetypes and stories from the Vedas until they were refitted within this new theological system. For example, it was believed that the battle of the ten kings from the Rig Veda was an inspiration for the great war in the Mahabharata. Another thing would be the fact that many Vedic stories appear in an altered version as they changed over time. You see a similar pattern with the tale of Vikramaditya that morphs over time as newer elements are added, losing the original context. The same applies to the Bhugju story since it shifted over time or was modified to align with new theological sensibilities.
Also, I should point this out, the Vedas have sections about Atheism and Agnosticism just as much as it has things about devotionalism. So even the Vedic people were Skeptical about their own religious practices since the very beginning.
This should be a post.
I’m largely in agreement.
“No, the notion that the things of Vedic religion are the same as bhaktism”
I did not say that. I specifically said that they probably did not take the same form in the past as it did in Medieval India or as it does now. My statement was that “they are part of the same flow of desire, regardless of how they are actualized.”
“The Vedic priests did not think of their gods in the personalized manner that you are imagining here. Their gods weren’t representations of naturalistic forces in nature, but rather highly personalized transcendental beings that maintain an emotional relationship with their followers.”
I’m a little confused by what you’re trying to say here. First you say the Brahmanas did not think of the Devas as personalized beings then you say they did. I never said anything about the Gods being naturalistic forces. We were talking about the Gods being humans (supposedly).
“People made offerings in a ritualistic manner since they wanted something in return”
Which is still considered a valid, albeit lesser mode of religiosity according to the Bhagavad Gītā. As Śrī Kṛṣṇa says:
RE: Local deities — this was a normal thing across the world, and the worship of Snakes in connection to fertility is also found across several Indo-European cultures, including Indian, Greek, and Germanic ones.
“yet all of them are atheists who don’t believe in religion”
This is literally an oxymoron. They might not be confessionally religious like Abraham’s, but like pagans everywhere, including Hindus, their religiosity is inherent in their deeds. You’re using a very Eurocentric definition of what it means to be religious to discredit East Asian pagans, which is all the more ironic when one becomes aware of the fact that the worship of Mazu in the Sinosphere has been increasing over the last few decades to the point that the CCP is running religious tourism programs for Taiwanese devotees — and the Taiwanese are actually going to China.
“Later devotionals centred on aspects of Hinduism (Bhakti), Christianity, and Islam have different conceptions of personal worship”
You’re again conflating Hindu Bhakti with the Abrahamic religions when they are not equivalent and are only somewhat comparable. Rasa is another concept that stems from Vedic texts like the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, is closely connected to Śrī Viṣṇu, and is a key term in many schools of Vaiṣṇava Vedānta. The sheer depth and breadth of personal relationships that the individual Self can have with the Deity are unparalleled by any of the Abrahamic religions, and they just as ritualistic and liturgical as they are “devotional”. Furthermore, Bhakti is a Yoga. It is a systematic process for establishing a relationship with the Deity. It’s not just mere emotionalism or personal worship.
“The best example would be to simply compare the Yakshi, who are often feared and propitiated to prevent horrific accidents, vs Durga with her deep-seated maternalism and close personal connection to her followers; clearly, they are different.”
These are quite explicit features of Christian and Muslim devotionalism — less so of Bhakti.
“As a side note, the main reasons for the overlap between Vedic and Hindu elements are two. Firstly, Hinduism as an organized religion started to consolidate itself around 350 BCE due to complete social shifts resulting in the absorption of Buddhist, Jain, Ajavika, Vedic, and other schools of thought, in addition to local regional deities like Nagas or Yakshas. This resulted in many beings becoming incarnates or extensions of larger denominational beings like Shiva, Vishnu, or Devi. A good example is Surya, whose entire sun cult was absorbed into Vaishnavism under the concept of Surya Narayana. Similar things happened to other Vedic gods such as the Ashvins, Varuna, Mitra, etc.”
This historical overview completely ignores these tendencies within the Vedic texts themselves:
– “indram mitraṃ varuṇam agnim āhur atho divyaḥ sa suparṇo garutmān | ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanty agniṃ yamam mātariśvānam āhuḥ” (RV 1.164.46)
— Deity: Sũrya
— Sāyaṇa’s commentary: “Here, the Sun: Sun is assumed; Nirukta assumes the Agni: Agni is all the divinities (Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 2.3)”
– “There are three deities only,’ say the etymologists: (1) Agni, whose sphere is earth; (2) Vāyu or Indra, whose sphere is atmosphere; (3) the sun, whose sphere is heaven.” (Nirukta)
– “…Agni is all the deities, since it is in Agni that offering is made to all the deities. Moreover Agni is the lower half, and Viṣṇu is the upper half of the sacrifice…” (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 3.1.3.1)
– “yajño vai viṣṇuḥ” (Taittiriya Samhita 1.7.4) – i.e., Viṣṇu is the be-all-end-all of all Vedic religion
“As a side note, the main reasons for the overlap between Vedic and Hindu elements are two…many beings becoming incarnates or extensions of larger denominational beings like Shiva, Vishnu, or Devi. A good example is Surya, whose entire sun cult was absorbed into Vaishnavism under the concept of Surya Narayana. Similar things happened to other Vedic gods such as the Ashvins, Varuna, Mitra, etc.”
This is clever. But it’s also totally false. As I showed above, Sūrya is already equated to at least one other Āditya in the Vedic era — Indra, and as the closest and most easily perceived of them by common Men, was an obvious choice to serve as their archetype; And Viṣṇu, whose three steps are in a sense even more obvious as Morning, Midday, and Night also makes sense as the larger “container” for their family. But we don’t even have to make these guesses. Viṣṇu is explicitly stated to be the origin of the Sun in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (14.1.1) when it details the primordial yajña of the Devas:
“For example, it was believed that the battle of the ten kings from the Rig Veda was an inspiration for the great war in the Mahabharata.”
Believed by whom? On what basis? Because we can see from the texts themselves that the Mahābhārata was clearly a yajña. Furthermore, the themes in the Kuru War hardly correlate to those of the War of the 10 Kings. This sounds a bit like they just picked the one obvious instance of the war in the Vedas and decided that since the most famous war in Indian myth is that of the Mahābhārata, the latter must obviously be based on the former. Strife between kin is an IE legendary and mythical motif seen in the Celtic and Germanic branches, both pre and post-Christianization. And far be it from me to harp on someone misspelling a Sanskrit name when typing in English, but calling him “Bhugju” (sic) and offering no evidence of a rebuttal to my argument about the continuity of themes from Vedas to Itihāsas beyond “stuff changed so it’s not the same” is like denying object permanence because something vanishes for a split-second when you blink your eyes and, in that moment, moves a little because of the wind blowing it.
“Also, I should point this out, the Vedas have sections about Atheism and Agnosticism just as much as it has things about devotionalism. So even the Vedic people were Skeptical about their own religious practices since the very beginning.”
I really hope this is not about the Nāsadiīya Sūktam. I keep hearing people repeat this claim but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any evidence for it other than the NS.
This should be its own post 🙂
Had no idea who the goddess Mazu was; interesting that she was Fujianese.
A good post is how paganism or Dharma fuses nations by co-opting the local pantheon whereas Abrahamic religions need to homogenise belief
There’s a good video about this by Religion for Breakfast that I watched a few years ago that you might like too: https://youtu.be/ktO4QuIyHyI?si=i1IKBpaSACqRBz1R
in a way the popularisation may help since it is a counterbalance say to the Greek or Roman mythological landscape.
presumably most kids worldwide know about Western deities, who are no longer worshipped, as opposed to the living Hindu deities..
I get your point but I think there are much better ways to do this that don’t involve calling the Gods human. There’s a lot of potential for fiction set in the periods between the major texts. Maybe one day I’ll get around to being able to write something myself.
Not sure about your comment on euhemerism. Strictly speaking, in Hinduism, gods were humans who discovered their inherent godliness through painstaking personal penance and thus saw through the illusion that this world of maya is. They may be deified and their forms may evolve over time, some of these forms purely fictional, but ultimately gods were humans who transcended their human state and discovered the divinity within. They also transcend the endless cycle of birth and death and therefore become immortal.
+1
Where are you getting this idea from?
The Gods are Gods and not human. Vaiṣṇava texts treat other Devas and Devīs as expansions of Hari & Śrī, or sometimes even of just Śrī Herself, as in the Lakṣmī Tantra.
What idea are you referring to? The underlying one to my comment? Which was that the purpose of human life is to transcend the human state and attain godhead? And the Jeevatma that attains the godhead is no longer the same but the param atma itself now mainfest inside the same human form?
I’m referring specifically to the idea that the Gods — the Devas, specifically the Vedic and Puranic ones — “were humans”, as you said. The fundamental premise of the argument is flawed because Māyā isn’t illusion — it’s creative potency. Use of the word as a technical term that gets translated to mean illusion is downstream of Advaita Vedānta, and especially Western translations of its texts.
I started reading Ranjit Desai’s Karna, but left it halfway because neither the writing style nor the prose appealed to me.
The way I see it, these adaptations give people something they can relate to in a good manner. The epics that we have listened to as children will always form the foundation to decide whether these newer rewritings should be taken as fiction or in a more serious vein. In fact my appreciation for Rama and Sita was the result of having read articles attacking him for having abandoned her while pregnant and her seeming acceptance of it. Superficially this may even seem true, until you delve into the layered argument of Raj Dharma and Dharma towards your wife. Both of them made certain decisions that ended up in consequences that neither wanted. They were hamstrung by the situation and their own positions as king and queen.
That’s interesting. I’d be interested in hearing more about your journey wrt to that.
excellent piece – interesting had no idea how widespread opium use was among the intellectual classes (why should we assume the past was ever different in terms of hedonistic elites).
also brings to mind the phrase “religion is an opium of the masses.”
Yes, this first part was meant primarily as a discussion on that phrase and a brief outline of Marx’s ideas on religion precisely because the authors I was responding to used that phrase in their essay and were calling out leftist anti-Hindu authors. I wanted people to understand what Marx’s actual meaning was and how he really thought, in contrast with, say, later Critical Theorists or Indian Communists.
if the modern folk narrative deviates too much from the original, the main stream will push back as it happened in case of dev dutt pattanayak. he has gone completely woke and left of jnu.
Very good observation. I got put off his interpretations.
I don’t really think he is that particularly left-leaning; he does come off as being mostly center-left and a liberal rather than a progressive. I have seen most people on the left criticize him for his sanitization of indian history and religion, which adds up since the left generally tends to be skeptical of religion and he tends to hold onto religion more strongly. At the same time, I have seen people on the right criticize him for not adhering to the scriptures correctly or for making wild interpretations. I think he is closer to the centre rather than the left or right since neither seems to particularly like him.
From my perspective, I find him to be a generic liberal rather than far left, mind you only know him through his works, and I don’t engage with anything related to him on social media or anywhere else. From my memories, I found his works to be relatively unacademic or extremely surface-level with a somewhat modernist interpretation of traditional works without an underlying understanding of the deeper meanings. I don’t know how his works are in recent times since I quite frankly stopped reading most non-academic renderings of history and religion since I find them to be more uninteresting and dry in comparison to their original, which was quite nuanced compared to what most people think. I mean, I don’t like Romila Thapar, Majumdar, Sarkar, or Audrey Truschke either, since they have become outdated, so I wouldn’t engage with Devdutt Pattanaik.
Surprised that like the present day ambedkarites and periarists, he ascribes every seemingly wrong to Brahmins and Sanskrit etc.
I mean, I think even a standard liberal is already a far-left radical, so his only ‘saving grace’, so to speak, is that he’s less of one than the actual Marxists, but like with Tripathi (albeit more so in Pattnaik’s case), therein lies the rub. They don’t want to annihilate the Hindu Dharma — they want to reshape it in their ideals’ image.
I don’t really think in terms of left wing, right wing, liberal, or radical anymore. Very few people in this day and age seem to adhere to any ideological beliefs. Some communists pray, capitalists who want more state intervention, and religious nationalists who don’t believe in god. Followed by everyone calling each other radical, while the ground level results suggest general populations shifting between centre right and centre left.
The historical reasons why most left-leaning and right-leaning groups conflict all the time stem from an underlying difference in how they view philosophical materialism. Left-leaning groups value materialism and prioritize socioeconomic explanations that often look at religion, class, caste, and every category through an economic as well as socio-political perspective. Oftentimes, they see ideas such as religion as instruments that maintain socioeconomic conditions, which doesn’t in and of itself mean they have to oppose it. Many communists and socialists do end up either re-introducing or forming new religions and categories to replace the old, insofar as it follows their material interests. The right naturally does the opposite since they oppose the material view and aims to preserve the pre-existing structure until it evolves to meet the new conditions. One wants change, and the other wants preservation, but the population remains forever in the middle, slightly swaying in one direction or another.
In terms of religion, its biggest threat comes from people simply losing a sense of belief as they further understand the world they live in. I remember this one guy who started as a deeply conservative catholic, who gradually lost his belief and then proceeded to go down the far ight pathway. At some point, he swung back in the opposite direction and ironically regained his religion. The one thing he stated, however, was the fact that he no longer feels religious, but he still identifies with catholicism. Mind you, he remained on the right side of the spectrum and barely swung the other way. Religious belief doesn’t really correlate with personal politics as people often think; right-leaning people can be atheists, and left-leaning people can be religious. The biggest problem for religion is people losing their sense of belief in a way that it never returns.
Yeah, I’ve seen some of his posts on Facebook and he really seems to have gone off his rocker.