Saturday 29 November 2008

Hare Krishna!


"Sometimes Indians both inside and outside of India think that we are preaching the Hindu religion, but actually we are not. People should not think that we are preaching a sectarian religion. No. We are simply preaching how to love God. We are giving a spiritual culture that can solve all the problems of life, and therefore it is being accepted all over the world."

Srila Prabhupada
The Science of Self-realization


I am rereading The Science of Self-realization after first picking it up when I was at primary school (I was far too young to appreciate the importance of the writings). This quote really jumped out at me as I'd forgotten that even the term "Hindu" never appears in Vedic literature. Hindu has been introduced by Muslims; there is a river called Sindhu bordering north western India, and since Muslims there could not pronounce Sindhu properly, they instead called both the river and inhabitants of the surrounding land Hindu. Therefore Hindu is a name given by the Muslims and to call a vast range of people with different beliefs under one name is not relevant anymore.

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