--> Skip to main content


Modern Values and Hindu Religion

Modern values like social equality, democracy, feminism, science and technology, rationality, and environment protection might be modern for many societies around the world but Hindus were practicing these values from time immemorial and all Holy Scriptures associated with Hindu religion  pronounce these values repeatedly. Prakash Jain in an article titled Modernity and Hinduism argues so-called modern values were already imbibed in the Hindu culture.
Some excerpts
The inscriptions on the walls of the Sundaravarada temple in Uthiramerur near Kanchipuram show how democracy was practiced 1000 years ago. History Professor Steve Muhlberger at Nipissing University has painstakingly shown several evidences of republic forms of government in ancient India. And, according to Professor Arvind Sharma, republicanism was as prominent a form of government as monarchy in the sixth century B.C.E. in India.
Hindu culture has the reverential concepts to worship natural powers and animals, modernity, while ridiculing such notions, claims to champion the cause of ecology. It is sad that the cultural values to regard the rivers as mothers, land as mother, cow as mother and trees as divine are ridiculed or rejected today in the name of modernity. Didn't these notions already combine eco-friendliness with popular culture?