What does it mean to be a Hindu?

This was one of the questions lingering in my mind as I set off for a 15-day Interfaith yatra organized by FURHHDL (For the Universal Responsibility of His Holiness Dalai Lama). This organization works to promote interfaith harmony and exchanges. This yatra was one such initiative for the cause.

On the very first day, we met Mehmood, a corporate professional who also doubles up as a teacher of Islamic concepts and teachings. He stressed how it was very important for the Muslims to come for namaaz. Nothwithstanding what you are doing and where you are, once the azaan is called, Muslims rush to the mosque for namaaz. What struck me in this particular religious exercise was that how it was afterall more social than religious. Such religious gathering not only promoted a bit of spirituality in every attendant of the mosque, but also promoted brotherhood and familiarity among the fellow Muslims. The same can be told for the Christians visiting the Friday mass or the Sikhs visiting the Gurudwaras. What about the Hindus!? Well, we visit it mostly for a puja, and social interactions are not always common in the temples.

When at Krishnamurthy foundation, one of the teachers asked a Buddhist monk to start a session with a prayer, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the prayer he chose quite randomly was well known not only to his fellow monks and nuns, but also to the other Tibetian college-students who were part of the group. And how reverently they sang it! Slowly it became a kind of ritual in our trip. We often used to sing the prayers before the meals.

A few days later while having lunch in a Jain ashram, our group leader Thupten asked if I could start off one of the meal with a short prayer. I was taken aback and promptly expressed ignorance of any such prayer! Did I even know a prayer completely? Or even if I knew, will any of my fellow Hindus know the same prayer to join in? Probably not. What about the prayers I learnt in school? Well, forgotten for the most part and anyways it only stroked school memories and not any iota of spirituality as I never explored their meanings. I wondered for a billion Hindus residing in our planet, what connects us all?

We saw Sikh children as young as four year olds attending summer camp to learn about their religion and Guru Granth Sahib. The Muslim children have summer camps as well as after-school centers where they are given the wisdom of Koran. My Christian friends can sing tons of hymns and prayers celebrating Christ and they have been doing so since childhood. But what about me? Or the countless fellow Hindus whom I have grown up with. We may not be able to quote a line from Gita, let alone singing hyms in praise of God!

Hindus have probably had one of the richest spiritual heritage; hidden in the Vedas, Upanishads and the multitude of other sacred books and epics. To be fair and honest, many diverse faiths, religion and culture have gestated in these wisdoms. And how proud we are in our culture, mytholgy and sacred texts!  But we need to slowly move beyond such cursory tributes to our ancient wisdom and start bringing those ‘hidden’ wisdom to the main fold. And this does not mean running to the next ‘baba’ or ‘guru’ for a day of being preached at, but to take the ownership of finding the ancient knowledge on our own volition. As the famous philosopher J.Krishnamurty said ‘Truth is a pathless land’ and given the infinite scale of wisdom we inherit, we must tread it on our own.