Vishwa swa dharm surye paho!

I must have read ‘Pasay-Daan’ atleast thousand times in my life till now! I first heard of it in primary school as every Marathi child of my age does and read and re-read it- initially just for I was instructed to do so… n then, when I grew older, I read it for I found the language difficult. It was a linguistic challenge then. I swam in the ocean of self realization again and again until my linguistic thrust was quenched. And during the process I happened to understand the important part of Hindu philosophy accidentally!! Yes, almost accidentally, for I had no intention to think about Hinduism in particular. I was never a follower of any religion! I am not a follower of any religion even now though I love and am habituated to rituals of Hindu religion as a part of normal life and follow those whenever possible. But now I have insight about the religion in which I grew and now I can correlate it all clearly!

Pasay Daan means Prasad. Jyaneshwar asked for God’s blessings at the end of Jyaneshwari. He started with ‘Duritan che timir jao’…. The very first line demanded disappearance of darkness of troubles and the second line followed- Vishwa swa dharm surye paho!!! May the world see the bright sun of own religion!

Once, when I was singing it to myself at night, when I suddenly realized that this is the only religious poem which demands ‘swa dharma surya’! It does not demand the expansion of Hindu religion and its sole presence on the earth. It is open for co-existence. It does not demand transformation!! This was a big discovery!! Then I realized that Hindu religion does not have any religious ritual to convert an individual. One needs to be born as a Hindu to be Hindu. This religion has chaos of gods and goddesses and everyone has freedom to follow one of them or even to generate new one!! This religion sees God in ‘Murti’s- sculptures, human beings, animals, nonliving things like chairs, tables and rocks! This religion sings prayers of apologies for hitting the Earth by feet!!!!

Is it because this religion has understood the facts and truths behind existence of religions?? Religions are the major by products of culture and evolution. It is major by product of science, relentless efforts to find answers to questions- ‘why’ ‘when’ ‘how’ ‘where’!! formed by early cultures and distorted to extreme extent by later cultures…

But if Hindus know the nature of religion and nature of God- as Jyaneshwari describes it perfectly in the words- ‘adhya’, ‘swa sanvedya’ and ‘aatm roop’- then what is the justification for ‘Manusmriti’? Was it another distortion of rational distribution of work…??? Does it lessen the unique beauty of Hinduism? To what extent??