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The Hindu View Of Life
The Hindu View Of Life
The Hindu View Of Life
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The Hindu View Of Life

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A timeless treatise on what constitutes the Hindu way of life Religion in India can appear to be a confusing tangle of myths, with many different gods and goddesses worshipped in countless forms.This complexity stems from a love of story-telling, as much as anything else, but it is only the surface expression of Indian faith. Beneath can be found a system of unifying beliefs that have guided the lives of ordinary families for generations. Here, one of the most profound philosophers of India explains these and other related concepts intrinsic to the Hindu philosophy of life.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherElement
Release dateAug 1, 2015
ISBN9789351360452
The Hindu View Of Life
Author

S. Radhakrishnan

Professor S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was a prominent philosopher, author and educationalist. He was equally at home in the European and Asiatic traditions of thought, and devoted an immense amount of energy to interpreting Indian religion, culture and philosophy for the rest of the world. He was a visiting professor at many foreign universities, and served as India's Ambassador Extraordinary to the USSR from 1949 to 1952. He was elected to the office of vice-president of India in 1957. He became the President of India in 1962 and held this rank until 1967, when he retired from public life. He wrote a number of books for readers the world over. Some of his outstanding works are The Hindu View of Life, An Idealist View of Life and Indian Philosophy, Vols I and II. He dedicated this translation to Mahatma Gandhi.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did I enjoyed it. It was a wonderful commentary on Indian society, and written in a way that was very readable. I enjoyed both the direct and indirect commentary that the author made on the culture of India.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Chinese Premier is planning a visit to India to investigate how entrepreneurship works there. In a series of letters, Balram Halwai, a poor man from "The Darkness" describes the system. Perpetual servitude is the rule in India, where millions of impoverished people of "The Darkness" are trapped. The analogy of the white tiger at the zoo demonstrates that imprisonment. Balram takes matters into his own hands eventually creating his own "startup". Is socialism on the way? Has entrepreneurship succeeded? Or has Balram just joined the bosses. This excellent novel, winner of the Booker prize in 2008, is by turns ribald, funny and yet ultimately disheartening. The reader cheers for the amenable Balram but there is no way out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hoo boy ... this is a fascinating and terrifying look at exploitation. The rich exploiting the poor, the poor exploiting the poor, exploitation of children, women, family, the environment. Everyone is looking for an angle and anyone who isn't quick on the uptake is mowed down (sometimes literally). This is life in the darkness. You can take the kid out of the darkness but you can never get the darkness out of the kid. Having recently read William Dalrymple's "City of Djinns", which is a nonfiction account of the life and times of the city of Delhi circa early 80's, the contrast is stark. Where his Delhi and environs is relatively benign, Adiga's Delhi of the millennium is a malignant cancer growing exponentially and consuming the souls, conscience, humanity, and morals of the rich and poor alike. It's a train wreck and I couldn't look away. This story hums right along without judgment and leaves you reeling and questioning. A frequent refrain in the story is "What a fucking joke." Doesn't apply to the book, but it sure does fit in the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    You will laugh out loud more than once while reading this sardonic epistolary novel about contemporary India. The White Tiger is our main character and the letter writer who is writing a series of letters to the Chinese Premier on the occasion of a Chinese trade visit. He endeavors to explain the new economy and Indian entrepreneurialism with insouciant glee.

    It's his Horatio Alger story - but far different from any such story in America, as hard work is not rewarded. Corruption rules the economy in many ways and it's fitting, then, that his path to success took a detour into criminality. In essence, it's the main character's how to win friends and influence people - through corruption.

    This book has angered many in India for its unflattering picture of a country run by corruption and dependent on servitude. This makes it sound political and the corruption and poverty could make it sound grim, but it's not. There is such wit and humor and the main character has so much joy in life that the book is fun to read - and fascinating as well.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Pearl Ruled--Didn't like the narrator on audio.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This debut novel about India's caste system was an excellent read. The writing is funny, clever and very memorable. The narrator's voice is very believable and makes this book a very pleasurable read and a page-turner. It is a philosophical story that covers a lot of social issues and insights about modern India and the human condition. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in India and its politics, social system and beliefs.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The white tiger is the rarest of beasts, and that is how Balram Halwai regards himself. Raised by his tradition-bound family for a life of docile servitude, Munna (which means "boy"), as he is dubbed by his parents (in school he is randomly given the name Balram as a matter of convenience), grows up in undistinguished poverty in the Darkness--the poor part of India--which exists in perpetual enslavement to the Light--the wealthy part of India. But Balram is different, because he is unable to accept that serving the needs of a master is the only option that life holds out to him. After much scheming and sacrifice Balram achieves the success he covets, but success comes at huge cost, as we learn in his boisterous, high-octane narrative. The novel is framed as a letter that Balram is writing to the Premier of China, who is about to embark on a diplomatic mission to India in order to strengthen economic ties between the two nations. Balram wants the Chinese premier to know exactly what challenges he faces when doing business with his country, and his confessional narrative spares himself and India nothing. This is a country that depends for its survival on the vast majority remaining ignorant and impoverished, in order to provide an infinite supply of cheap labour for the rich minority. Corruption is endemic--no level of government can function without it. But Aravind Adiga's hero is smart enough to know that he cannot change anything. Balram learns that the trick to success is to become part of the system and turn it to his advantage, and to do this one must be ruthless and unsentimental. This is India as westerners rarely see it in fiction. In Balram's world there are no budding romances, no pretty faces warmed by the evening sun. In The White Tiger people are often unattractive, the streets are strewn with garbage, the walls are crawling with roaches, and servants are expected to serve jail time for their masters' misdeeds. It adds up to a scathing indictment of a society that does nothing for most of its citizens and yet expects them to carry the load. Adiga’s novel is more than just audacious. It is filled with bitter irony and black comedy, hilarious and horrifying in equal measure. Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aaaah! Great book! Energetic. He escaped by playing their rules but on their turf.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book is the story of modern India as told by a Bangalore entrepreneur in a series of letters he is writing to the Chinese premier. The premier will be visiting India soon and the letters are meant to be a guide to India. We learn that India is a country where the top 10% of the population oppresses and humiliates the other 90% and virtuous behavior is never rewarded. The book is deeply cynical and full of black humor.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great, easy read. I wouldn't read it as a factual telling of India anymore than the Godfather tells the average American's story. But it gives you some idea and is a very good story. Maybe 8-10 hours total reading, tops.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Really liked they way this book started off. It's a nice read on probably the `real' India. The last few chapters it went a bit boring however and I could actually start to predict what would happen next (even though I'm really bad at that normally :-)).

    Anyway, after all it's a very nice book if you want to get to know more about India, the way it is and not the way it gets portrayed to you.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was hugely entertaining. It paints a really rich picture of life in India, the struggle of the poor, the caste system and much more. However, at no point did this book feel like a study of Indian society- I found the narrator of the story absolutely hilarious. I was not expecting this book to be so funny.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Balram Halwai comes from “The Darkness”, a rural and impoverished area of India. Through an interesting series of circumstances he finds himself working in Delhi as the driver for a rich landlord. As the years go by Balram learns much through his experiences and is always a keen observer of life around him, so that by the end of the book he has established himself as a successful entrepreneur. Learning of an impending visit to India by the Chinese Premier, Balram is compelled to write him a series of letters informing him (forewarning him?) of what he might expect during his visit.

    This book was nothing short of amazing. Not the first book (nor the last, no doubt) to tackle the topic of social inequality but Balram’s voice is fresh and honest, with the ability to be humorous and dark, sarcastic and heartwarming. Although he is telling us his life story the reader cannot help but feel that even he is astounded as his life unfolds. Admittedly this book will not be to everyone’s taste, but if you don’t give it a chance you will be missing out on some excellent story-telling and some bright insights to life (I wanted to take notes). Well deserving of its Man-Booker Prize nomination.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning novel is a very dark, satiric portrayal of class differences in India. The story is told by the character of Balram Halwai as he writes seven long letters to the visiting premier of China. Ostensibly his letters are in answer to a call for entrepreneurial achievement in India but, in a mordantly bitter tone they actually allow Balram to describe how he climbed from a poverty stricken village boy to a wealthy business owner and the letters become a confession of sorts. As Balram moves from village tea shop boy (as his family heritage dictates) to driver for wealthy American-educated Mister Ashok and his wife, Pinky Madam in Delhi, he is exposed to the ever increasing divide between the haves and have-nots of his country. Corruption and self-serving greed permeate every level of society. On one level Balram’s boss is well-meaning and only behaving toward his staff as every other privileged person around him does -- perhaps even better than most. But insincere inclusion, “you are part of the family, Balram,” and patronization only increase Balram’s resentment until the day he takes his fate into his own hands. The ending of the book leaves Balram’s moral character up for debate as he takes on the errors of others, but still feels little regret for his own choices. Adiga is masterful at creating images of a society on the brink of breaking through the third world ceiling, capturing the contrast of supermalls and street beggars, and the desperation of grasping for more at every level.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an excellent book. The characters are believable. The story is intelligent and the humour is funny as well as telling. This is definitely an enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read it on the way back home from India, after a shocking three-month travel experience in the sub-continent. I found it a honest story of what India really is today. The author captures the sad feelings of corruption and injustice which propel Indian's booming economy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The White Tiger is a story filled with the truths of corruption and limitations in India. Adiga's story puts the reader into the life of the lower class population and gives some understanding of what it's like to be held down by society. I enjoyed the book enough to plan to read his other works.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very interesting read!! A subtitle to this book might have been---"a guide to entrepreneurship in India." or "how the chicken flew the coop!" A clever presentation of the Indian culture and how it is changing from a bottom-up perspective. This novel, along with "The Life of Pi" both present a complex Indian culture which is rapidly emerging as one of the world's great economic powers. Animals are intelligently used in the imagery of both of these novels. I enjoyed it immensely!!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rags to riches in modern day India. fabulous construction of letters to Chinese dignatory about to visit Bangalore. . Best book this year detailing the rise from the rooster cage by crime and corruption, yet laden with a great deal of almost cynical humour.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nice. Compelling. A bit twee, to be honest. I was really surprised when it received Booker attention. Thought it more of a book to read on the Tube.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For me at least this is quite a hard book to review as it is a book about a murderer and as such I feel that I should hate him but in the end I cannot bring myself to do so. This book is so different from the world of 'God of Small Things' with no saris, weddings etc to be seen. It tells of the real underbelly of Indian society where the caste system still lives and breathes, where the poor are deprived education, sanitation and anything but a life of servitude and continued poverty. The book also speaks of the corruption within the society it is set.Balram is the son of a poor rickshaw puller but has ideas above his station and wants to break out of the 'chicken coop' and sample the things that the rich take for granted but can he do this without committing a heinous crime and with it sacrificing his whole family. In the end he has to murder his employer to get what he wants and I found it hard to blame him.I visited India some years ago and was able to recognise at least some of the things that he desribes, at least from a tourist point of view, and given that the author comes from a very different, a privaleged, background in which he went to all the best schools I feel that he covers the subject matter extremely well indeed. I also liked the way that the book was writen in letters to the Chinese Premier prior to a state visit. Would definately reccommend this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The novel chronicles, in letter-form, the story of a lower caste Indian who remakes himself into a successful entrepreneur in modern day India. The premise is an exciting one as the reader anticipates the journey that surely such a transformation evokes in psychological and literal terms. Granted, at a mere 288 pages in length, the reader should not expect an epic, nonetheless one cannot help feel disappointed, in the end, that the descriptive prose lacks immediacy and does not evoke enough of the time and place. This may be due to the author’s inability to transcend his own native sensibilities or; more fully engage readers in more than the most dramatic scenes (such as the passage where Balram, the protagonist, has a "dialogue" with the city.) Thus, the reader is left to take full measure of Balram’s hard-won freedom and shifting attitudes with an objective eye but little of the sympathy that would have been engendered from a more engaging text.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great book. I couldn't put it down. Intense, funny, psychologically complex, socially relevant.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Frightening book of a man's "rise" in India. It is also wry and disturbing and amoral and clever by turns. And I'm still not sure if I would recommend it or even read another book by this author. The fact that (spoiler alert) there are three killings in the story (2 vehicular, one premeditated murder) and the story deals with how the people responsible go about getting away with it...that just disturbs me. (I will say that the situation on India appears to be very dire.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An excellent novel that explores the plight of the poor in modern-day India.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I ended up enjoying this odd little tale quite a bit. I think for a reader to fall for it, you have to like the protagonist, Balram. I really did. He's a character of great fiction, kind, hateful, confused and steadfast, all in one body. He is a fascinating character who shows us a new India (juxtaposed to the old) that seems a bit different than the traditional caste view we usually see. In this book, the poor really can rise out of poverty, entrepeneurs as he describes himself. That said, to rise out of poverty comes with and for a hefty price. Balram commits some horrific acts, yet finds a way to justitfy much of it and get away with it. He never once flinches from reality and just admits that some people can, and do, get away with murder ~ as long as they know how to play the game. I'm not sure how accurrate it is, but this is an interesting view of Dehli, Bangalore and village life in India. I am not sure I learned all that much useful, but this was a very entertaining, easy read. My only complaints are that the form of writing to China's prime minister is a bit goofy; and the writing is pretty sophmoric at times. However, I figure some of that adds credibility to the narrarator.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Quite surprisingly mundane for a book that covers so many facets of life within the caste system in modern India and with a brutal murder as its central point.
    I certainly learnt quite a lot about India in the present day, and the book was well paced throughout.
    But overall too many clichés and undeveloped/unexplained and ultimately pointless themes and tropes are introduced to very limited effect. And what appears to be the author’s central purpose and the framework upon which the story is presented (comparing India with China in their race to be like and overtake ‘the West’) is also not fully explored and the narrative aspect of this is left without resolution.
    I would have enjoyed this book so much more if it had been more efficiently edited or if the author had just finished it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this well enough. It was intelligent, well-plotted, engaging. There was a bleak humour to it. I appreciated the simmering anger and cynicism of the main character, but I didn't like him, and so I couldn't fully sympathise with him. He was no better in the end than the people he claimed to despise. I suppose it's a cautionary tale about how corruption pays dividends when the system within which you live is built on corruption.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The White Tiger tells a story of India's poor. The narrator is an entrepreneur, a self made man. He is writing a journal to the premier of China. The two countries that he feels are rising economic forces are India and China. The white man is on his way out. It also is the story of man who evolves from a good person to a man that can turn his back on his family and even to murdering his boss and feel justified in his choices.

Book preview

The Hindu View Of Life - S. Radhakrishnan

CHAPTER I

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: ITS NATURE AND CONTENT

At the outset, one is confronted by the difficulty of defining what Hinduism is. To many it seems to be a name without any content. Is it a museum of beliefs, a medley of rites, or a mere map, a geographical expression? Its content, if it has any, has altered from age to age, from community to community. The ease with which Hinduism has steadily absorbed the customs and ideas of peoples with whom it has come into contact is as great as the difficulty we feel in finding a common feature binding together its different forms. But, if there is not a unity of spirit binding its different expressions and linking up the different periods of its history into one organic whole, it will not be possible to account for the achievements of Hinduism. The dictum that, if we leave aside the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin, has become a commonplace with us. But it is not altogether true. Half the world moves on independent foundations which Hinduism supplied. China and Japan, Tibet and Siam, Burma and Ceylon look to India as their spiritual home. The civilization itself has not been a short-lived one. Its historic records date back for over four thousand years, and even then it had reached a stage of civilization which has continued its unbroken, though at times slow and almost static course, until the present day. It has stood the stress and strain of more than four or five millenniums of spiritual thought and experience. Though peoples of different races and cultures have been pouring into India from the dawn of history, Hinduism has been able to maintain its supremacy, and even the proselytizing creeds backed by political power have not been able to coerce the large majority of Indians to their views. The Hindu culture possesses some vitality which seems to be denied to some other more forceful currents. It is no more necessary to dissect Hinduism than to open a tree to see whether the sap still runs.

The Hindu civilization is so called, since its original founders or earliest followers occupied the territory drained by the Sindhu (the Indus) river system corresponding to the North-West Frontier province and the Punjab. This is recorded in the Ṛg Veda, the oldest of the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures which give their name to this period of Indian history. The people on the Indian side of the Sindhu were called Hindu by the Persian and the later western invaders. From the Punjab, the civilization flowed over into the valley of the Ganges where it met with numerous cults of primitive tribes. In its southward march the Aryan culture got into touch with the Dravidian and ultimately dominated it, though undergoing some modification from its influence. As the civilization extended over the whole of India, it suffered many changes, but it kept up its continuity with the old Vedic type developed on the banks of the Sindhu. The term ‘Hindu’ had originally a territorial and not a credal significance. It implied residence in a well-defined geographical area. Aboriginal tribes, savage and half-civilized people, the cultured Dravidians and the Vedic Aryans were all Hindus as they were the sons of the same mother. The Hindu thinkers reckoned with the striking fact that the men and women dwelling in India belonged to different communities, worshipped different gods, and practised different rites.¹

As if this were not enough, outsiders have been pouring into the country from the beginning of its history, and some have made for themselves a home in India and thus increased the difficulty of the problem. How was Hindu society built up out of material so diverse, so little susceptible in many cases to assimilation, and scattered across a huge continent measuring nearly two thousand miles from north to south and eighteen hundred miles from west to east? It cannot be denied that in a few centuries the spirit of cultural unity spread through a large part of the land, and racial stocks of varying levels of culture became steeped in a common atmosphere. The differences among the sects of the Hindus are more or less on the surface, and the Hindus as such remain a distinct cultural unit, with a common history, a common literature and a common civilization. Mr Vincent Smith observes, ‘India beyond all doubt possesses a deep underlying fundamental unity, far more profound than that produced either by geographical isolation or by political superiority. That unity transcends the innumerable diversities of blood, colour, language, dress, manners, and sect.’² In this task of welding together heterogeneous elements and enabling them to live in peace and order, Hinduism has had to adopt her own measures with little or no historic wisdom to guide and support her. The world is now full of racial, cultural and religious misunderstandings. We are groping in a timid and tentative way for some device which would save us from our suicidal conflicts. Perhaps the Hindu way of approach to the problem of religious conflicts may not be without its lessons for us.

The Hindu attitude to religion is interesting. While fixed intellectual beliefs mark off one religion from another, Hinduism sets itself no such limits. Intellect is subordinated to intuition, dogma to experience, outer expression to inward realization. Religion is not the acceptance of academic abstractions or the celebration of ceremonies, but a kind of life or experience. It is insight into the nature of reality (darśana), or experience of reality (anubhava). This experience is not an emotional thrill, or a subjective fancy, but is the response of the whole personality, the integrated self to the central reality. Religion is a specific attitude of the self, itself and no other, though it is mixed up generally with intellectual views, aesthetic forms, and moral valuations.

Religious experience is of a self-certifying character. It is svatassiddha. It carries its own credentials. But the religious seer is compelled to justify his inmost convictions in a way that satisfies the thought of the age. If there is not this intellectual confirmation, the seer’s attitude is one of trust. Religion rests on faith in this sense of the term. The mechanical faith which depends on authority and wishes to enjoy the consolations of religion without the labour of being religious is quite different from the religious faith which has its roots in experience. Wesley asks, ‘What is faith?’ and answers, ‘Not an opinion nor any number of opinions put together, be they ever so true. It is the vision of the soul, that power by which spiritual things are apprehended, just as material things are apprehended by the physical senses.’ Blind belief in dogma is not the faith which saves. It is an unfortunate legacy of the course which Christian theology has followed in Europe that faith has come to connote a mechanical adherence to authority. If we take faith in the proper sense of trust or spiritual conviction, religion is faith or intuition. We call it faith simply because spiritual perception, like other kinds of perception, is liable to error and requires the testing processes of logical thought. But, like all perception, religious intuition is that which thought has to start from and to which it has to return. In order to be able to say that religious experience reveals reality, in order to be able to transform religious certitude into logical certainty, we are obliged to give an intellectual account of the experience. Hindu thought has no mistrust of reason. There can be no final breach between the two powers of the human mind, reason and intuition. Beliefs that foster and promote the spiritual life of the soul must be in accordance with the nature and the laws of the world of reality with which it is their aim to bring us into harmony. The chief sacred scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, register the intuitions of the perfected souls.³ They are not so much dogmatic dicta as transcripts from life. They record the spiritual experiences of souls strongly endowed with the sense for reality. They are held to be authoritative on the ground that they express the experiences of the experts in the field of religion. If the utterances of the Vedas were uninformed by spiritual insight, they would have no claim to our belief. The truths revealed in the Vedas are capable of being re-experienced on compliance with ascertained conditions. We can discriminate between the genuine and the spurious in religious experience, not only by means of logic but also through life. By experimenting with different religious conceptions and relating them with the rest of our life, we can know the sound from the unsound.

The Vedas bring together the different ways in which the religious-minded of that age experienced reality and describe the general principles of religious knowledge and growth. As the experiences themselves are of a varied character, so their records are many-sided (viśvatomukham) or ‘suggestive of many interpretations’ (anekārthatām).

It is essential to every religion that its heritage should be treated

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