HINDUISM AND SANATANA DHARMA

Can We Look Up to a Religion from as Backward Country as India?

Many religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, originated in cultures which were not materially affluent. Most of the great founders of important religious movements were poor or gave up their wealth. Note the examples in this regard of Buddha, Christ, and Gandhi.

Hinduism has been criticized as a religion because of the poverty of modern India. Such thinking equates the truth of religion with wealth, which is not a matter of religion at all. It also judges human spiritual aspiration and its social expression according to a particular period of human history. There were periods when Hindus were wealthier than Christians, as during the Middle Ages. Does this mean that Hinduism was then the true religion and then ceased to be so when Hindus lost their wealth? What kind of religion would that be?

No religion teaches that wealth and spirituality are the same, or that the spiritual development of a person is indicated by how much money or property he or she may possess. Yet this is what we do on a social level when we judge the religions of countries by their current economic status. Just as wealth in an individual is no necessary guarantee or indication of spirituality, so it is with countries. Such concepts only show how deeply we are attached to the outer world and its possessions. It is not surprising that our religions are more economic interests than spiritual paths. True religion is based upon renunciation, which is renunciation of attachment to name, fame and possession.

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