Because it concedes freedom of enquiry. Because it has separated politics from religion.
Hinduism has evolved over millennia—in a period of ten thousand years. We are proud of this long experience. Vedas could be 7000-8000 years old.
Semitic faiths are historical. They are based on written records and Jewish experience.
Hinduism is pluralistic. Semitic faiths are exclusivist. Krishna says in the Gita: “All paths lead to me.” Yahweh tells the Jews: “Thou shall have no other God before me.” Yahweh is a tribal war god, not a universal god.
For more than a thousand years the Sword and the Cross ruled over the Christian world. So did the Crescent and the sword. But Hindus. turned away from politics, leaving it to the kings.
Hinduism was not “revealed”. It based on reason. It is philosophic. People of the Semitic faiths say that their faiths were given to them by the same god. If so, how is one to explain the differences? In any case, the god of the Jews was a warrior, of the Christians a pacifist and of the Muslims, again, a warrior. Lord Acton, historian, says: “The Popes were not only murderous, but they made murder the legal basis of Christianity.” This is what the religion of Jesus came to.
As a religion composed by many rishis, there is nothing sacred about the Hindu scriptures. A Hindu can accept them or reject them. Nothing can be done against him’ if he rejects the Hindu scriptures. It was death to one who rejected Christianity or Islam.
What is more, while Hindus scriptures are guides, the scriptures of the Semitic faiths are laws. They have to be obeyed.
Hindus do not have prophets. In fact, they have no intermediary between them and God. But a prophet is central to Semitic faiths. Only through the prophets can members of the Semitic faiths gain salvation. Which explains why Christ and Mohammed have become more important to their followers. It is not enough in Christianity and Islam if you are a devotee of the God, you have to be also devotee of the prophets.
Hindus have a multiplicity of gods. But they are manifestations of the Supreme God. This is no monotheism. There is no hierarchy among them.
The peoples of the Semitic faiths had many gods. They decided to worship only one. This is also not monotheism. He was only a tribal god, not a universal god. The fact is: in those days the concept of a universal god was foreign to Europe and the middle East. All these explain why there is a demand for a universal religion.
According to Ishal Upanishad, god is everywhere and this whole universe is the abode of god. This is as near to the concept of a universal god that the Hindus came to before they developed the concept of Advaita.
Hinduism is a quest. It has no final answers. It never claims, as the Semitic faiths, that it alone has the truth. Being exclusive, Semitic faiths divide mankind. As against this, Hinduism unites mankind. It has the concept of a human family. The Semitic faiths have none.
As all paths lead to God, Hinduism does not engage in proselytisation. There is one more reason why Hindus do not convert. They believe that salvation is possible only through personal effort, not by changing one’s religion. This also explains why the Hindus do not have congregational prayers.
So, Good Reader, anyone who talks of the unity of religions is trying to delude you. It is a great fallacy to say that all religions are the same. They are not. And in practice they are like chalk and cheese.
On the practice of Christianity, here is what Thomas Jefferson, author of the “The Declaration of American Independence” had to say: “…millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured and imprisoned”. This by a religion of Jesus Christ!
Numbers: This is the game played today. Numbers bring in power. Christianity and Islam are organised. Hinduism is not. Organisation means power. As Hindus are not organised, they wield no power.
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