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Hinduism: Modern Hinduism
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Today Hinduism is growing from strength to strength. Many of its features and practices are appealing to the intellectual minds of the modern age who are in search of true answers to the problems of mental balance, peace and inner harmony amidst the increasing pressures of hectic modern life. Many in the western worlds are attracted to its concepts of karma and reincarnation, as well as its emphasis on inner purity, detachment, devotion and surrender to God as the means to attain inner peace.
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The modern period of Hinduism started at the beginning of 19th century. The many new cultural factors brought by the British to India have created a revival of Hinduism, so that generating change and transformation. There were movements of socio-spiritual nature like Brahmo Samaj started by Ram Mohan Roy in 1828. Later on another revivalist movement was Arya Samaj founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875. Influent personalities were ... Mme Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, the founders of The Theosophical Society. Well known representatives of Hinduism from this period were Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his disciple Swami Vivekananda, also Sarada Devi the embodiment of the Mother Goddess.
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Modern Hinduism grew out of the religion described in the Vedas. The earliest of these, the Rigveda centres on worship of the gods Indra and Agni, and on the Soma ritual. The Ashvamedha was the most important sacrifice described in the Yajurveda, possibly performed for the last time by Samudragupta in the 4th century. The age and origins of the Vedas themselves are disputed, but it is clear that they were transmitted orally for several millennia. They show strong similarities to the language and religion of the Avesta, which are sometimes traced back to either the influence of the 3rd millennium BC Indus Valley Civilization, or to a 2nd millennium BC Indo-Iranian migration, or to a combination of these.
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The modern period of Hinduism was, and continues to be, heavily influenced by its increasing contact with Western cultures. From the middle of the ninteenth century to the middleof the twentieth century, England provided a substantial background for the major developments of this period through its political and economic domination. With the arrival of Western powers in the eighteenth century, Westerners and Hindus alike began to express criticism towards the Hindu traditions. Hinduism... experienced a revival in the nineteenth century as a result of twomovements driven to maintain the core essentials of Hinduism while doing away with unwanted and criticized excess. 22
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Hinduism can better be described than defined. It is less a religion than a religious culture, and less creedal than ethical or racial, which historically identified the people living in a particular region, namely, beyond the Indus River, which runs in a south-western direction from the present State of Kashmir to the Pakistan city of Karachi. The correlative words Hindustan, Hindi, and the modernized India have the same origin.
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Enlightened Hindus of modern times have made attempts to institute a reform in Hinduism by rejecting all idolatrous and immoral rites, and by setting up a purely monotheistic form of worship. Of these, the earliest and most noted was the so-called Brahmá Samaj (Congregation of Brahmá), founded in Calcutta in 1828, by the learned Rammohun Roy. He tried to combine a Unitarian form of Christianity with the Brahmin conception of the supreme personal God. After his death in 1833, differences of view as to the nature of God, the authority of the Vedas, and the obligation of caste-customs caused the society to split up into a number of small congregations. At present there are more than a hundred independent theistic congregations in India. Some, like the Arya Samaj, rest on the sole authority of the Vedas.
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Modern Hinduism