A couple of years ago, a Muslim friend explained Islam to me: La Islame illabil jama; la jame illabil amira; la amire illabil itah. This is Arabic for ‘‘There is no Islam without a congregation; there is no congregation without a leader; there is no leader without obedience (to the will of Allah as expressed in the Koran Sharif).’’ Naturally, this set one thinking about the concept of obedience in other faiths. The Ten Commandments are a clear set of Thou-shalt-nots to Moses from Yahweh, God of the Jews, which is also upheld in Christianity. Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs have their own set of Do’s and Don’ts, where belief is expressed as lifestyle choices. For instance, Ahimsa, the principle of non-violence, translates into a strict vegetarian diet.I could not quite crack Hinduism, though. The Vedic ban applies only to beef, as far as modern lifestyles go. Modern Hindus seem game for anything otherwise and we all know Hindus who eat beef when abroad and quietly switch to shuddh shakahari when conservative elders come sniffing suspiciously around. Does that mean they’re rotten Hindus and traitors to the faith? Most of them would indignantly deny it. “I don’t need rules to make me a Hindu!” they’d blaze, if questioned by curious or interested others. Some Hindus have a second home in another faith, but they remain ‘‘Hindu’’ without needing to make affidavits. The gurdwara is particularly dear because of Hindus’ visceral attachment to the Gurus, indeed Hindu parents encourage their children to make obeisance there.The point about obedience came back recently when a Hindu spiritual leader was scheduled to visit a Muslim country and his publicists got busy with faxes and phones. In the meanwhile, the embassy of that country in New Delhi got in touch with this newspaper to check him out: would he “promote Hinduism” out there? They were told that there was no motive, since there’s no conversion. You’re born one. That’s it. If you choose to “leave”, you probably have good reason. Nobody excommunicates you.Maria Couto’s beautiful book on Goa tells you poignantly about entire Hindu villages taking a survival decision at the time of the Portuguese and evolving into an amalgam of old culture and new faith. A frank, bold new book on Indian Christians (Viking) by two Jesuit priests also speaks of how the Church gradually permitted local cultures into the formalities of faith, making Christianity in India a deep spiritual experience of Jesus without denying the reality of one’s soil and skin. Faith without too many rules? It’s entirely possible. Many social regulations can become outmoded with time. ‘‘Obedience’’ is surely not to the outward form but to the Love within. Irony: is this why the faith of ‘‘idolators’’ survived the centuries?
