Invitation to World Religions

150  CHAPTER 4  Hinduism

ecological well-being of the world. For example, far beyond merely restricting them- selves to a vegetarian diet, Hindu ascetics eat hardly anything at all and, it might be said, “tread lightly” through life, thus avoiding inflicting harm on the natural world. To borrow from modern parlance, the carbon footprint of the Hindu re- nouncer is virtually zero. Bhakti marga, the Hindu path of devotion, to which the Bhagavad Gita gives a certain pride of place, has also contributed to the modern upsurge of interest in Hindu environmentalism. In fact, teachings set forth in the Bhagavad Gita contain foundational tenets on which this environmentalism is based. 14 In the Gita , Krishna reveals himself as being Brahman, the supreme, unitary reality and ground of all existence. The natural world is both completely dependent upon and permeated by Brahman—reverence for which naturally involves reverence for the natural world. As we have observed, Hindus revere specific natural entities—rivers, mountains, the earth, the sun, and certain trees and animals—as manifestations of Brahman. Means of revering these entities amount to acts of love and adoration—in other words, again in modern parlance, environmental activism.

HINDUI SM IN THE TWENT Y-F I RST CENTURY

There are nearly 1.2 billion Hindus in the world today, which makes Hinduism the world’s third largest religion, behind only Christianity and Islam. 15 More than 1 billion Hindus live in India, where Hindus comprise about 80 per- cent of the population. There are nearly 29 million Hindus in Nepal, where with about 81 percent of the population, Hin- duism is also by far the majority religion. Other countries with large Hindu populations in- clude (all figures are approxi- mate) Bangladesh (13 million), Indonesia (4.2 million), Paki- stan (4 million), and Sri Lanka

(3 million). There are about 2.5 million Hindus in the United States, making it the country with the seventh largest Hindu population. 16 At the current juncture, the future of Hinduism seems more than ever inextricably tied to politics and, in particu- lar, to the fortunes of the BJP. Encouraged by the BJP and other nationalist groups and political parties, some of to- day’s Hindus see Hinduism as monolithic, homogeneous, and impermeable, closed off from what they perceive as the cor- rupting influences of the West and foreign religions. At the

same time, an emerging global movement is seeking to tran- scend traditional boundaries to better serve the needs of an increasingly diverse Hindu community. Hinduism has always displayed a unique abil- ity in the face of changing con- ditions to sustain ancient traditions within new and ever- changing contexts. How this ability will manifest itself in the future remains to be seen, but it seems certain that the efforts of both Hindu tradi- tionalists and progressives will ensure the continuing vibrancy of one of the world’s oldest religions.

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