Am I a Progressive Hindu? 

October 31, 2022 HfHR

Is there even such a thing and other scary thoughts on Halloween!

By Padmini Gamzeh, HfHR

Something there is that doesn’t love institutionalized religion; and makes the rational mind run away from it, to misappropriate Robert Frost.

What is it that then lures some of us back to a grounded sense of a spiritual identity as we grow older? Is religion indeed an addiction that’s hard to crack, this opium of the masses that Marx warned us all about?

Navel-gazing or omphaloskepsis is the contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation (Wiki)

I grew up in a somewhat orthodox south Indian Hindu household in Madras/Chennai, with all the trappings and markers of caste privilege made to seem like universal/acceptable norms. I used to be somewhat religious in high school – by which I mean I enjoyed going to the local temple fairly regularly, happily accompanied family on weekend trips to temple towns like Thanjavur, Tirupati and Madurai, and looked forward to religious festivals and rituals, if for nothing else but gustatory reasons. As a foodie, I was always glad that the way to religion was through the stomach!

The entrenched patriarchy and casteism of Hindu cultural practices and the arbitrary gendered segregation irritated me and put me on a more atheistic trajectory during my college years and well into my 30s. At the same time, these years also fostered in me an intellectual and philosophical affinity for the transformative tenets of Sufi Islam, Bhakti poetry, liberation theology, and Zen Buddhism.

As I grew older, I tried to incorporate a syncretic practice. If fusion cuisines, fashion, or architecture can be celebrated as cultural milestones, why can’t a synergistic practice of the best of different religions be a way out of turning against all institutionalized religions? After all, if one thing all religions have in common, it is a vein of misogyny, and the irreverent feminist in me found all of them somewhat oppressive anyway. So why not choose the best from each, and have a smorgasbord, feminist spiritual praxis?

More recently, the pandemic in 2020 found me in quarantine mode with my parents in India. For the first time in over 25 years I was spending serious, uninterrupted time in our apartment together. Our daily routine soon comprised trying to pray our way out of a misinformation-ridden pandemic; this in turn morphed into a fun, spiritual project together – chanting the Lalita Sahasranamam or the 1000 names of the Goddess. A prayer that I eventually ended up learning by rote, while also feeling intensely guilty about how much of a caste-based framework I was allowing to seep back into my life.

As I grew older, I have begun to grapple more intimately with my own personal and political connection with Hinduism: can I truly be an anti-caste advocate and ally, and have a spiritual practice that incorporates some (anti-caste) aspects of Hinduism? Is that being a hypocrite? What about the millions of caste-oppressed people who also practise their own version of Hinduism and celebrate festivals? Are any of us authentic allies to anything?

For the last 15 years, I’ve been working and organizing transnationally in left, progressive social justice spaces in the US and India. I am appalled that I only got to seriously read and engage with the writings of anti-caste intellectuals like Ambedkar, Periyar, and Phule, by working with Dalit feminists. During this time, the casual casteism in South Asian American community spaces in the guise of being caste-blind, eventually gave way to woke virtue signaling on social media. This in turn has given one more axe for the Hindu fundamentalist right to grind, and to audaciously call it “Hinduphobia.” Such extreme pendulumic frameworks have only made any critical discussions around a progressive Hinduism an ill-fated argument that quickly spirals into purity politics and identity bashing.

But the nine months of this pandemic-time routine has birthed in my mindspace, an idea of a customized, progressive Hinduism that could perhaps work for me, with all my political and personal beliefs. And contend with the larger question: can progressive Hinduism even exist? This thought experiment, I figured, is something I could explore, while also working alongside my colleagues at Hindus for Human Rights to challenge and overturn Hindu fundamentalism. And as long as I can live with a possible scary answer of “no” to this post’s titular question, I am willing to continue my spiritual gamble as a somewhat problematic, unabashedly anti-caste ally.