Hinduism - As I Understand

As the title of the blog rightly says, this article is about Hinduism as I personally understand it after reading few religious books and browsing the internet about this religion. My journey on this religious quest started while reading the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi titled ‘My Experiments with Truth’. In his book, Gandhi remarks ‘When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad-Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies -- and my life has been full of external tragedies -- and if they have left no visible or indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad-Gita’. If a man of his stature makes such a significant comment on Bhagavad-Gita, it must be truly great and I then decided that it would be the next book I would read.

I bought a book titled ‘Bhagavad Gita’ by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 2^nd President of India. I read the book from cover to cover with a lot of patience and an open mind to assimilate as much information as I could understand. But I was not satisfied. I did not understand much. Most importantly, I could not get the answer to my first question ‘What is Hinduism?’. Because of this, I was not able to appreciate the timeless wisdom of the Gita

It dawned on me then that I should blog (share) the knowledge I have gained through my reading and analysis in the form of questions and answers rather than in prose form about Hinduism which is already available in the books and also in the internet. Some of the questions are very fundamental and as followers of Hinduism, we must know the answers to them to appreciate its greatness.


In my blogs to come, I will answer the following questions

1.       What is Hinduism?

2.       What is “Brahman”? How is this God different from Lord Vishnu, Lord Siva and the other Gods?

3.       It is impossible for me to leave this material world to become a sage or a sanyāsi and seek ‘True Happiness’. Are there other ways to reach my destiny?

4.       Holy Bible is to Christianity, Holy Quran is to Islam but what religious texts are for Hinduism?

5.       Who gave us these religious texts?

6.       What are Veda and Vedanta?

7.       Are Vedas relevant today?

8.       Hinduism is called the mother of all religions. What makes it so special?