Hinduism and the Concept of the Universal Family

Consider the following data.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna says, expressing his divinity, "I am the universal father, mother, granter of all, grandfather, object of knowledge, purifier, holy syllable OM, threefold sacred lore. I am the way, sustainer, lord, witness, shelter, refuge, friend, source, dissolution, stability, treasure, and unchanging seed. I am heat that withholds and sends down the rains; I am immortality and death; both being and nonbeing am I" (IX. 17-19). These conceptions and images of Deity could be multiplied by citing other passages. Consider the import of the parental terms. It is common to say that Hindu tradition accepts a myriad of divine "names and forms," while refusing to absolutize any of them, since none of them is capable of expressing the transcendent Absolute that is the source of these equally acceptable and equally limited conceptions and images. This theology of the use of words for God has been appropriated by other traditions that emphasize the mystery of God and the need to guard against patriarchal associations in religious language.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna is reluctant to take up his responsibilities as a warrior because he recognizes kinsmen on the other side. "Arjuna saw them standing there: fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, and friends. He surveyed his elders and companions in both armies, all his kinsmen assembled together" (I. 26-27). Those who read the Gita symbolically as offering teachings for everyone on the battlefield of life may appropriate the scripture in accord with of concept of the kinship of humankind.

The Gita in chapter 17 distinguishes sharply between two classes of human beings: the divine and the demonic. This distinction affects their future--the one advancing in the direction of liberation and everlasting union with God, the other reincarnating in lower forms, commensurate with a life devoted to desire and greed. The atman or eternal, divine self within each of them, however, is equal. The first group live illumined by that light; the second live in such a way that that light is obscured.

There are Hindu traditions stemming from the Aryan invasion and the early doctrine of the four varnas (colors) or classes in society (and from the later Code of Manu and its doctrine of castes): there are many social groups which each play a key role in the organic web of society by performing certain required tasks. Each caste is also regarded as superior or inferior to others. Even though the caste system has been outlawed in India, and even though advanced teachers for generations have stood beyond it, social tradition persists; and caste continues to occasion injustice as judged from more equalitarian perspectives. When the sense of caste is strong, the sense of the kinship of humankind tends to be eclipsed, at least in practice. When the sense of human kinship is strong, the regard for caste is withdrawn or placed in the background.

Rabindranath Tagore, in "A Vision of India's History," says that there have been two main types of leadership in India's history, each with an essential function to perform, each predominant at times. The first type of leadership is conservative--that of the Brahmin priests. They function to preserve the awareness of the metaphysical depth and purity of the source of tradition. When this type degenerates, the miseries of formalistic, ritualistic religion and the miseries of the caste system result. The second type of leadership is liberal, arising from the warriors, who have from time to time reached across all boundaries in a heartfelt spirit of brotherhood. During the time of India's struggle for independence, when there was some tendency to have an excessively political conception of the many-sided struggle involved, Tagore wrote:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening through and action--

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

"The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. The horizon is fiercely naked--not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.

Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.

But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.

Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of the mother on the day of the father's wrath."

Rabindranath Tagore, A Tagore Reader, ed., Amiya Chakravarty. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, p. 300.

Note, last, the following comment on Gandhi's language of brotherhood.

"Although there are references to a primal progenitor in the Hindu scriptures, e.g., in the Gita, the concept of the Fatherhood of God cannot be said by any means to be a central one in Hinduism. Sonship, of course, could be derived, logically, from the concept of a mother goddess, a concept which is present in folk traditions in several parts of the country. In fact, however, this derivation has not been made. When Gandhi speaks, as he often does, of all men as brothers, the implication which comes naturally in Judeo-Semitic traditions that God is the divine Father cannot be taken as read. The image of brotherhood itself is not free of overtones if one thinks of Cain and Abel. We need to look elsewhere for the source of the brotherhood idea. The words for 'brother' and 'sister' are added as a matter of course to the names of those who are addressed in Gujarati conversation, and all over India there are parallel honorific terms indicating relationship which enter into ordinary usage without any theological resonance coming in. That God can appear in various forms is something that the Hindu takes in his stride. The question that the Hindu asks is, 'What is special about this particular name?' If we drop the word 'sonship' and retain the notion of 'divinity' this will be an attribute that, potentially, cannot be denied of any man. Hindus will say, and Gandhi speaks for them, that we all share a common humanity and as such share a divinity which is yet to be 'realised' or brought to full consciousness." Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi's Religious Thought (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 44-45.