kabir

[Koenraad Elst]

Rajesh Kochhar <rkk at NISTADS.RES.IN> on 20 mei 2000 wrote:


> Hinduism is an undefined religion. It has no founder,no book, no
> commandments,no organized church.Therefore any reaction to Hinduism that
> arises cannot be disowned by Hinduism itself. In this respect Hinduism is
> like a mathematical group. In a mathematical group,when a ( permissible)
> operation is performed on a member, the result is yet another member.
>  The question is not whether Kabir is to be recognized as a Hindu or not.
The
> question is whether Hinduism can disown what Kabir said. The answer is No.
> More generally because of the above cosiderations, the relationship
between
> Hinduism and (other)Indian-born religions remains asymmetrical.  They can
> disown Hinduism but not vice versa.

This is an important contribution toward resolving all these unpleasant
quarrels about whether Sikhs or Jains or Buddhists are Hindus.  To put it in
language which in this circle only Prof. Kochhar would understand: the
introduction of non-symmetry here is as brilliant as the non-commutativity
of multiplication in the quaternion group.

Dr. K. Elst