Sanathana Dharma - will this continue its record of longivity?

[calypsodc]

Re: Sanathana Dharma - will this continue its record of longivity?

@smooth_guy

Few years back there was video that I saw in which a Indian intellectual was asked why India was concurred over and over in the known history of the region from people from all sides, Central Asia to Persia to Greeks to Afghans and many others. And he answered articulately that Indian (people living in the region not current day Indian) are very welcoming and flexible people I don’t know exactly what it means. But it sounded funny to me, the way he defended the long history of defeats and living under foreign rulers.

For Hinduism, I find the same logic for its long survival. People, characters and stories, came, added up and it moved on. There are not structural boundaries in the belief system (and it was not meant to be in Sanathana Dharma). So this very flexibility had gone into the general population’s mentality as well. There are some complexities that are emerging in modern days where people (like always had in last 2500 years) getting inspired by the foreign cultures and values, heavily under inferior complex (check Nandita Daas’s movement over Dark skin and the shocking stats she has brought attention to), men are getting out of control with the new wave of cultural influences (see the burning issue of rapes). Since there is no certain boundaries in the religion, all the restrictions are mainly cultural. If its not the political atmosphere of the region (neighboring Muslim countries), more people would convert to religion of the people they admire or find fascinating (Christianity is on top in this case) or go athiest. Time will tell how Hinduism survives (and it will, to strive in the regional pressure) in the centuries ahead. May be we will see some reform movement to keep it relevant and protect the national interests (denouncing some practices as it happened with Satti in 19th century) and some people clinging to the established practices. As it happened over the thousand years with Jewish, whose majority were orthodox for religious purposes and had no political agenda for centuries, but there were always a very small faction that had deep political agenda. The later group were known as Zionists, and today majority of Jewish support that ideology.

One thing is for sure from my above opinion, India as a country is emerging economically and go head to head with China and even US in next 3 decades as a super power with strong say on international level. This will further nourish Hinduism for centuries, with an added pride (had been a rare phenomenon for its followers in its history) and some reformed form will also surfaced (again its totally acceptable due to flexibility, but could be difficult due to extremism that is increasing). Both Christianity and Hinduism (religion wise) have somewhat more adaptability while Judaism and Islam are having hard time naturally to counter the modernism that is sweeping the globe.

A nice and refreshing POV