SmartSurat  #  Hinduism

Accommodation

It is the accommodation of new and different beliefs and practices alongside established patterns of religion which is perhaps the most important factor informing the multiplicity and diversity of religious expressions which make up what we call Hinduism today. And such accommodation has a long history, stretching back through the centuries to pre-Harappan times. It has been facilitated somewhat by a mainly village culture, and, also, by the sheer size of area over which Hinduism has been and is evident. The usual picture of inter-village and tribal warfare which has characterized the early stages of some religions seems to be mainly absent from the Indian scene. This ability to accommodate new beliefs and practices displays a remarkable tolerance for the viewpoint of others. This is not to say that resistance has always been absent. Certainly the influence of immigrant religion such as the Aryan or Muslim incursions in India met with resistance, and southern India, in particular, resisted Aryanization. Notably the Buddha came from the Sakya kingdom of north-east India where there was marked resentment of the rigid Brahmanism of Hinduism and of the class system it promulgated. This was an area where people were sufficiently independent and unorthodox to be less likely to accept established traditions. But in the main, Hindus are tolerant enough to put pictures of the leaders and founders of faiths other than their own in their temples, and to allow the rise of new deities, new temples, new shrines, when a new expression of their religion emerges.      Yet despite the diversity which such accommodation has allowed there is a very profound underlying unity in the concept of the manifestation of all existence from one, ultimate, Ground of all Being. The apparent diversity of belief and practice serves to allow an approach to divinity in whatever way suits individual evolution and the recognition of this fact, alongside the notion that the One, Brahman, can take a multiplicity of forms, supplies a certain unity to the apparent surface diversity.