It seems like I have been talking about Hinduism for a long time now, but I still don't necessarily understand it. I know that's normal, but I want to be able to have a stronger grasp of it be fore I go to the field. I was sitting in my anthropology of development class the other day, and my professor said that before we go into a community and build rapport and seek to build friendships, we must first know and understand the religion. This hit me strongly because I know that with what I want to study, I need to be able to see how the religion of the women, impacts their lives and their daily actions.
On Wednesday, we were able to talk more about Hinduism, and I liked that Jay said "Hinduism is the driving force in India". This personified Hinduism a little bit better for me and I was able to actually picture it better in my mind, when in the past, it had been just abstract and mystical. Knowing that this religion really is the force behind the actions of the people, really helped me see why they may behave a certain way.
It was interesting to note that colonialism actually brought unification among the people of India, especially when it came to religion. I read a passage in this book called "India: an anthropological perspective", where I learned that the unification of Indians was something extremely important to the people. Although India itself has various official languages, religions, ethnicities and other traditional values, there is also an underlying unity that they all share, and Hinduism provides for this unity. This unity is also illustrated in the way that villages are cohesive or the opposite. There is also something else I read in that same book that illustrates this unity. There is no sense of privacy, and this is because the culture is very collective, and not individualistic. I know that I will be seeing a lot of this in the village, as I see women and neighbors working and talking together. Also, as I observe the family dynamics of the host family that I will be staying with.
I think that perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Hinduism, is the many contradictions that are in it. Again, in the book, I read that one of the things that Indians don't understand about Westerners, is their lack of ability to comprehend the many paradoxical concepts of Indian culture. I thought that was so interesting, because contradictions are something that is not very common in an organized religion, like Mormonism. However, I think that being able to embrace these contradictions, instead of puzzling them out, will help me better understand the women better, and will give me greater insight into the things that the women say and try to illustrate to me, as they tell me about their self-perceptions.
Religion is extremely important in many cultures, but I think that Hinduism is the underlying thread of the large tapestry of diversity that India exhibits. I am looking forward to seeing the different patterns of religious habits in the lives of the women and how they affect how these women act, say and feel.
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