What is Hinduism? It’s all about swimming in ocean of life, Rahul writes

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in an opinion column for a daily, has described a Hindu as a “person who has the courage to overcome her own fear so that she may observe the ocean” of life.

Starting with his definition of life, the MP has stated in the piece in The Indian Express that it is like a “vast ocean of joy, love, and fear”. While the ocean can give birth to love, connection, and happiness, there is also the fear of death, hunger, loss, pain, insignificance, and failure.

He goes on to describe Hinduism as the means that let us “mitigate and understand our relationship with our fears”. He says it would be a misunderstanding of Hinduism to consider it a set of cultural norms. It cannot be bound to a particular nation or geography either, because that would limit its scope. According to Gandhi, Hinduism is a “path towards the realisation of truth”. It “belongs to no one”, and yet, it is “open to anyone who chooses to walk on it”.

“Love, compassion, respect”

A Hindu looks at oneself and everyone else with love, compassion and respect, reaches out and protects those who are struggling, looking at their worries “through the prisms of truth and non-violence”, the Congress leader has written. Dharma is the “action and duty to defend others, especially the weak”.

According to Rahul, a Hindu has the courage to embrace her fears and look at it as a “friend” that “guides her through life” instead of allowing it to turn her into a “vehicle for anger, hatred or violence”. A true Hindu also knows that knowledge is not her sole property and that it “springs from the collective will of the ocean” of life.

A true Hindu is curious and “never closes her mind to understanding”; is humble and always “ready to listen and learn”. At the same time, “she loves all living beings” and “loves, respects and accepts all paths others choose “to navigate and understand the ocean”.