While global warming affects everyone in many ways, it is expected to particularly hit Hindus and the practice of Hinduism. Many Hindu places of worship will be devastated by climate change. Pilgrimage sites high up in the Himalayas such as Amarnath, Kedarnath and Badrinath will no longer exist – the ice Shiva lingam in Amarnath was reported to have completely melted in 2007, and now requires artificial cooling. And Gangotri, the glacial source of the Ganga, is receding to higher altitudes and in the worst case might disappear completely sometime this century. The Himalayan glaciers melting will result in our sacred rivers, such as the Ganga, becoming minor seasonal rivers or, at worst, drying up altogether. The consequences of such changes for the 400 million people that live in the Indo-Gangetic plains (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hindus, and who constitute 40% of the world’s Hindus) will be unthinkable. The Indian government seems oblivious to these dire predictions, and is instead taking the lead in questioning climate research in order to escape making any commitments at Copenhagen.

The response to global warming seems to be primarily a practical matter with no obvious role for religion. So it might seem strange to ask what Hinduism has to say about dealing with climate change. However, Hinduism in many ways anticipates and warns against the problems that arise from living a careless, unsustainable lifestyle. Meat production for instance is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases – beef in particular. The Vedic texts place great value on simple living and suggest small, self-sustaining farming communities as the ideal communities to live in. They also warn that moving away from such simple communities will have harmful effects on nature and on society. In the Mahabharata, there are references to floods, earthquakes and drought as being nature’s “revolt” against the greed and selfishness of King Duryodhana and his brothers. Harmony with nature is emphasized throughout – in the worship of rivers as sacred, in the use of only completely natural ingredients in pujas and other ceremonies, and in the construction of temples and homes in ways to maximize ventilation and sunlight without the need for artificial temperature control or lighting.

This advice inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who took it to heart and abandoned his westernized lifestyle to build his own self-sustaining ashram in Gujarat. Just before his assassination, Mahatma Gandhi suggested that everyone in the world should just walk away from technology – walk away from the world’s factories, chemical plants, oil fields, and return to the simple life of farming and self-sustaining communities. Asked whether he realistically expected humans to abandon all the comforts provided by modern technology, Gandhi replied that at some point in the future humankind will not have a choice. We will have to pick between our comforts and our continued existence. He famously said, “Nature has enough for every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed.” Addressing Indians in particular, he warned “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialization like the west. If our nation took to similar exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” 60 years later the environmental impact of 300 million Americans is clear; and as 1.2 billion Indians and 1.4 billion Chinese begin adopting that lifestyle, it really does seem that we will “strip the world bare like locusts.”

Gandhi’s suggested remedy sounds just as ridiculous now as it did when he first made it, and is often used to show that Gandhi had a lunatic side to him. However, if 200 years of industrialization comes at the cost of mass famine, contaminated groundwater, weapons of mass destruction, dry rivers, sinking countries, and a planet whose climate and natural cycles are dangerously out of control, then maybe Gandhi was not such a lunatic after all. If the leaders at Copenhagen fail to reach an agreement and we continue to destroy our planet, historians of the future will look back and see Gandhi not as a fool but as a visionary – the one sane voice that saw that this grand project of industrialization was an idea destined to end badly, and that the simple Vedic lifestyle might be the only truly sustainable one. Let us hope that this future will not come to pass.

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To me, thanksgiving always raised some issues. Most important, there is the issue of whether to eat turkey or not. My family has always been vegetarian. When I first moved to the US in 1999 (in high school), I was trying hard to fit in. Everyone was nice and friendly, and eager to introduce the new Indian kid to American culture. I enjoyed making friends and the attention – until Thanksgiving. Naturally, everyone insisted that I should eat turkey and “be American.” I tried to tell them that I was vegetarian, but there was significant pressure to taste some turkey and partake in this great American tradition.

That raised (and continues to raise) an important question in my mind — which one of my two identities takes precedence, the Hindu identity or the American identity? Now of course there’s a third identity, the Indian one – but as we do in math, lets make a simplifying assumption and ignore that. When the Hindu identity conflicts with the American one, which one “wins”? Ideally they wouldn’t, but every Thanksgiving Day I’m reminded that the world isn’t ideal. One can argue that in the specific case of Thanksgiving, one can give thanks without eating a turkey. But that dodges the issue of which identity takes precedence.

One can easily imagine more complicated scenarios – what if protecting American lives required attacking (and perhaps destroying) a Hindu sacred shrine? What if American actions around the world were detrimental to the lives of fellow Hindus living overseas, but crucial to protecting American lives? Which side would we, as American Hindus, take? We are fortunate to live in a world where we do not need to make such choices; some other religious communities are not so fortunate. And perhaps these would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, but it still raises an issue that I never really resolved for myself satisfactorily.

As for my Thanksgiving quandry in high school — I dodged the problem by telling my high school friends that I would try turkey at home on the actual day of Thanksgiving, with my family, in accordance with the proper tradition. But of course it didn’t happen – we ended up eating dal, curry and yogurt like we did on any other day.

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This is my first Swadharma post, so I’ll keep it a bit short. On Saturday, we had an Intercollegiate Hindu students’ retreat at Harvard. In attendance were people from MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Wellesley, Northeastern and the New England College of Optometry. Several interesting topics relevant to modern American Hindus were discussed — one topic that particularly interested me was whether the values of Hinduism conflict with the values of liberal college campuses.

To be able to answer that question, we first need to define what a “liberal college campus” is. We all agreed that a liberal college campus is one that is accepting, has a great deal of diversity with regards to cultures, ethnicities and opinions. It is a place where individuals can be exposed to the interests and ideas of others without feeling any compulsion to accept them. It is a place where being a minority has no negative consequences, and every individual is free to pursue his/her own interests, acquire new ones and discard old ones. Defined in that broad and general way, Hinduism is perfectly in accordance with the values of a liberal campus. Within Hinduism, you can worship one God, many Gods, one of many Gods, be vegetarian or not, go to temple or not, meditate or not, and so on.

However, once we get past the generalities and start talking about specific details, the picture becomes a little murkier. First, there are the two issues that define the liberal movement in America in our time — gay marriage and abortion. Does Hinduism sanction gay marriage? Does it sanction abortion? Traditional Indian society has frowned upon both, but that might be more a cultural phenomenon than religious. I cannot think of any specific examples in the texts where they are explicitly allowed or prohibited. So Hinduism seems to be silent on both issues. Unlike the monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not provide a rigid set of rules to follow, but rather a set of principles that must inform our decisions. It provides some guidelines, but does not – and nor does it claim to – provide specific answers to every question that might arise. Thus to demand to find every answer we seek in scripture – as we are used to hearing from the followers of Abrahamic religions – does not make sense in the Hindu context, since Hinduism does not seek to be that kind of a religion.

The second and much bigger conflict with liberal values is the caste system. Core to liberalism is the idea that all people are equal, and that with equal effort under equal circumstances, all will achieve the same amount and are entitled to the same reward. Caste as it is practiced in India clearly stands in direct contradiction to this ideal. So does the existence of caste mean that Hinduism is an illiberal religion? There are 3 ways to answer this charge.

1) Caste is a social phenomenon, not a religious one: Caste is found among Jains, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims throughout the subcontinent. Some would counter this argument by saying that Hinduism is the “originator” of caste, and what is found among followers of other religions is just a leftover from a time when their ancestors were Hindu. I personally think that’s not true – Hinduism itself became infected with caste, but the origin lies in Indian society and not Hinduism.

2) Caste as originally conceived was not a discriminatory system: A passage in the Rig Veda stating that the Brahmins emerged from the mouth of the Purusha, the Kshatriyas from the arms, the Vaishyas from the thighs and the Shudras from the feet is widely cited as the “source” of caste discrimination. To me that argument sounds unconvincing, since nowhere is it implied that the feet are less important to the body than the mouth. On the other hand, it seems to suggest that the various castes are all essential for society to function as a coherent system.

3) Caste was not always so rigid: I’m not an expert at this topic, but M. S. Srinivasan’s work on “Sanskritization” whereby entire castes could move up and down the ladder by the acquisition wealth, education and the mannerisms of upper castes shows that this in fact was the case. Furthermore, caste has become more important in India since the 1990s, since belonging to the right caste can mean getting political favors and largesse. Prior to the politicization of caste, it was not quite the explosive issue it is now.

Overall, I think the question is hard to answer because Hinduism and Indian society have always been inseparable. The principles of Hinduism have mostly been interpreted through the prism of Indian society, and Indian society has been far from perfect. As I said previously, Hinduism does not provide a rigid set of rules to follow, but rather a set of principles that must inform our decisions. It provides some guidelines, but does not – and nor does it claim to - provide specific answers to every question that might arise. But a religion that gives some interpretive freedom to its followers will always stand the risk of being interpreted incorrectly. That interpretive freedom in the hands of illiberal people with their own agendas (whether it be landowners in Bihar or semi-literate villagers competing for the same resources) naturally leads the religion to be interpreted in an illiberal way. This places an especially great burden on those of us who seek to make Hinduism a positive force in the world to make informed interpretations and challenge those who seek to use our religion as a justification for their own narrow-mindedness.

Ultimately, we have to realize that our Creator might have given us scripture — but we have also been given the power to think rationally. If He had intended to provide us with all the answers in scripture, He would not have bothered with bestowing us with rationality. The key to addressing these complex issues is to use the principles provided by scripture to inform our rational thinking, and use our rational thinking to interpret scripture. In other words, use both of Gods gifts instead of entirely substituting one for the other.

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