These days one can never say what is right and what is wrong. Everything depends on the context and it is like Rahul Gandhi’s damning the ordinance on convicted legislators. There is an endless argument going on, on why he said what he said and when and how, but in the end, the general opinion – at least among the public – has been that he has served his country, but not his party. The other day, a point was made by one high up in the Catholic hierarchy that it was not quite acceptable for the Church to see a Catholic ‘christened’ with a ‘Hindu’ name. A ‘Hindu’ name? There is no such thing as a ‘Hindu’ name. For that matter, it is important to point out that there is no such thing as a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Parsi name. There are Sanskrit names. Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramic, Latin, Arab, Persian and Chinese names.
Names cannot be associated with religions. There surely was a Krishna (meaning dark blue) before the arrival of Bhagwan Shri Krishna, Peter and Paul, before Christ’s disciples were born and to say that no Catholic should bear a ‘Hindu’ name makes no meaning. Names should have nothing to do with religion. Names reflect a culture and it is wrong to mix up culture with religion. As Major Archbishop Cyril Mar Basilio, while serving as the chairman of a Catholic Bishop’s Conference, once maintained, Indian Christians are Indians by birth, Hindus by culture and Christians by faith.
One named Kamalnayan, for instance, can be as good a Christian as any similarly named Hindun can be. But there are small-minded people. What is pleasant to note these days is that many Catholics are resorting to Sanskrit names and are even accepting their ancestral Hindu identities, like Lobo Prabhu or D’souza Kamath. That indicates they want to get accepted within the larger Hindu community, which, happily, they are. But there is nothing special about it. In Indonesia, for instance, we have had Muslim leaders like Sukarno and Suharto and even Sastramidjojo (Shastra+amita+Vijaya in Bhasha Indonesia) and this is common. They are just as Muslim as any Muslim elsewhere can be, even if Wahabis may object to it.
The point was well made recently by one Tarek Fatah, described as “a secular Muslim anti-Islamist activist,’ who had the dubious distinction of being jailed by every dictator of Pakistan and was finally compelled to leave Pakistan and has finally ended up in Canada. In an interview to ‘Bharatiya Pragna’ (June 2013), he had pointed out the Muslim anomaly (he calls it Islamo-Fascist) that feeds on what he called the “culture of victimhood.” Asked Fateh: “Why would Muslim parents not name their children after indigenous Indian names? Why do they constantly have to borrow from the Arabs or the Persian?”
There was a time when the Catholic hierarchy was against the practice of yoga and I remember how a Catholic priest and a friend of mine, who was popularising yoga in churches and had a large number of devotees, including a few other priests and nuns was shunned. The belief, obviously, was that yoga is ‘Hindu’ and teaching yoga to Christians was, to say the least, unfair. At the same time, we now find nuns wearing saffron saris, having given up the old Europeanised wear, which easily identified them as true-blue Catholics. Protestant Christians, happily have no such inhibitions.
But what has now become a cause for argument in a Christian village not far from Ranchi, is a statue portraying Virgin Mary in a sari! The statue shows Mother Mary in a white sari with a red border, her hair in a bun, wearing bangles on wrists, carrying the Infant Jesus, as a tribal woman would. Is that right? Sculpting Mary like an Indian tribal or a Hindu? It seems various tribal organisations in Bihar have taken out tallies in June on grounds that if Virgin Mary is shown wearing a sari, the time might come when Christian tribals might want to get re-converted to Hinduism. Now Virgin Mary surely is not of European origin. She is from Israel in the Middle East and there are reports that Jesus Christ himself had spent some time in India, especially in Kashmir and that the Church has no right to make Virgin Mary ‘European’ in style. But one can be sure that if Mary is depicted wearing a sari, Hindus would feel more empathetic towards Christianity, which today has clear and distinct European overtones.
The point is that religion should not be associated with one geographic region. But to get back to yoga. Would it come as a surprise to learn that yoga is gaining immense popularity in, of all countries, Uzbekistan, a cent per cent Muslim country? An article in The Asian Age (September 23) claims that Uzbekistanis regard yoga, “not as a physical exercise only, but accepted as a way of life.” One understands that.
What attracts Uzbekis to Yoga? An Indian official in Tashkent is quoted as saying that Uzbekis think it is “a stress-buster”. But the important thing is that in a totally Islamic world, yoga has become acceptable, especially among women, who, in one yoga class, constitute 80 per cent of the 282-strong attendees. Support is given to them by the local Indian Cultural Centre, renamed as Lal Bahadur Shastri Centre for Indian Culture. Perhaps people elsewhere in the world – especially in Europe – should take note of this.
Yoga is by no stretch of imagination ‘Hindu’; besides, ‘Hindusim’ is not a proselytising religion, but one respecting all religions. St Mary is respected and honoured as the ‘Mother’ and that is as it should be. True religion is that which lets one dress whichever way one wants to, or carries whatever identity one opts for. Today, the young Hindu female dresses in a style far-removed from the ‘bara–hathi’ sari of another age. Would she be less Hindu for all that? Is anyone ostracised for turning ‘modern’?
Yes, there are a few who feel upset with ‘modernisation’ but the world keeps moving on; in the end it is reflective of the Marxist concept of: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, which goes on unrelentingly, not just in India but all over the world, to the point that one American weekly, commenting on the way Hinduism is getting noticed and even acceptible in the US (Newsweek, August15, 2009) was to run a cover story saying, “Now We Are All Hindus!”
M. V. Kamath
