The best books on Hinduism

I’ve asked you to recommend the best books on Hinduism, but before we get to the books it would be helpful to have a definition. Although Hinduism is famously hard to pin down, can you try to summarise its core tenets or principles?

Before I answer that question, I want to say that I always use Hinduism in the plural. The way I like to teach my students about Hinduism is I write Hindu(ism)(s) because the diversity within the tradition, within the religion, can be almost unrecognisable if you just travel a few miles, let alone when we look at its transmission history globally.

We don’t have a founder in this religion, which makes it so exciting and, at the same time, confusing. We can do a dotted line history connection to the geographical region where the Indus Valley civilisation flourished back in about 2000-1500 BCE, and even before that, but it is not a straight, bold line. Hinduism is one of the oldest and one of the newest religions at the same time, because Hindu identity is still forming — we are still defining it. The absence of a founder and the absence of a singular body that may sit and decide “This is Hindu, this is not Hindu” is still forming.

While there is a wide, diverse understanding of the religion, there are four things that almost all Hindus would agree upon, and that would be dharma, karma, samsara, and moksha. In this sequence, I intentionally put dharma first because it doesn’t matter if you are an atheist Hindu, if you are an agnostic Hindu, if you are a pluralist Hindu, a monotheistic Hindu, a pantheistic Hindu, so on and so forth — you will think about dharma. Dharma is our rightful duty, our moral duty, our duty as a human, as a citizen, our duties in the context of the stages of life. Hinduism, therefore, is best understood as an orthoprax religion and not as an orthodox religion.

You have already pointed to many interesting avenues for discussion, but before we explore them, can you tell me about the significance of the period around 1850 CE in terms of our perception of Hinduism?

This is when Hinduism truly becomes –ism. By the time we come to 1850 CE, the Mughal Empire had ruled for three hundred plus years, and by 1857, the informal colonial rule was transformed into a formalised colony. The term Hindu was used by the Mughals for non-Muslims for taxation purposes, which meant Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs were labelled as Hindus. The British Empire used the term Hindoo to identify the people of this newly formed colony. So, we can see that the term was already in use in a very diverse sense.

This is also the beginning of a period of time where a lot of texts are getting translated into English. But when we are translating texts, we sometimes miss the essence of a word, the classic lexical gap. For example, the term dukkha in Buddhism gets translated into suffering. But dukkha is not pain in that way. It is a far deeper and richer philosophical category and a concept. Another example I can think of is terms like deva or ishvara. They get translated as God or Lord. When we do so, we very quickly arrive at the Abrahamic religious understanding of a singular God. That is why I put (ism) in parentheses, and another (s) after that.

That brings us to your first book recommendation, An Introduction to Hinduism by Gavin Flood, Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford. He takes issue with the use of the word “faith” as a synonym for religion. Do you agree that that kind of vocabulary is inadequate with reference to Hinduism?

I completely agree. The term that they look at is shraddha, which is devotion. Is it the same “faith” as understood in the Abrahamic religion? No, because in Hindu tradition, ritual is very closely integrated with devotion. Devotion is very closely integrated with the way we access or think about other worlds in which the divine world is one.

Can you tell me a bit more about this book and why you picked it?

What Gavin Flood does really well is he lays out this landscape in the least biased way. I don’t think anyone is a hundred percent unbiased, but Gavin Flood’s book does a really good job of laying out this complex history, the interconnectedness with different periods, different empires, and different needs of the society. And it gives us the storyline where we can very clearly see what’s also going on in the society at that time, and how the religion was responding to what was happening in the society.

He argues that Hinduism is not a category in the classical sense, it’s not that something either belongs or does not belong — it has fuzzy edges. Can you talk a bit about that?

I use the phrase “socio-cultural-DNA.” One of the things in the socio-cultural-DNA of a Hindu is that of being very comfortable with fuzzy boundaries, being very comfortable with not having an answer, to thrive in the chaos, to be okay with asking, do we have thirty thousand deities, or do we have one? Do we believe in reincarnation, or do we not? Our DNA, in many ways, is constructed to live with that ambiguity, in not having an answer. So, absolutely, I agree with Flood. It is not a category.

Let’s move on to your second book, Hinduism by Vasudha Narayanan, Professor at the University of Florida and a former President of the American Academy of Religion.

Vasudha’s book is a very short book, and it is magical. She does a fantastic job of using these broad brush strokes to help explain Hindu traditions, that is, from the Indus Valley civilisation to the concept of time. She writes this complex history in very simple terms. It is one of my favourite books for people who are possibly reading about Hinduism for the first time, because every chapter sets the stage for a deep dive. Not everybody wants to do a PhD in Hinduism, and not everybody wants to read a thousand pages, but a majority want to read something that is accurate. She’s a brilliant scholar. She identifies as a Hindu, so it brings her into the scholar-practitioner category. People can read this book on an airplane, and when they land, they can go through the world and not say anything silly.

She discusses the epic narratives, The Mahabharata and The Ramayana. Can you talk a bit about their significance in Hinduism?

The epics have an enormous role to play. If I have to trace what truly defines the socio-cultural DNA of Hindus, I will go to the epics and not to the Vedas, because the Vedas are so specialised. The two epics are fascinating. They’re very long, and they’re very complex. Authorship is debatable because we know that they were written over several centuries.

And transmitted mainly in the form of oral storytelling?

Even today, the oral transmission is the most fascinating part of these two epics. If we look at the first text, Ramayana, most people know the Valmiki version. And why is that? I believe it is largely due to the comic books that were written by Amar Chitra Katha and then the famous television series Ramayan, based on Valmiki’s Ramayana. Most Hindus are shocked when I say there are more than three hundred versions of the Ramayana. When there are more than three hundred versions, many things can change. Who is a hero, who is a villain? Who is whose daughter, who is whose father?

How I understand Ramayana is turning back to where we began: for a Hindu, dharma is very important. What is my duty? For me to understand my duty in the context of oral history, a story needs to be told. And for a story to be told, there has to be an “ultra-ideal.” So, what does an ideal son do? What is an ideal father? What is an ideal mother? How does an ideal wife behave? How does an ideal brother function? What are the signs of an ideal devotee? So we have a hyper-ideal projection on one side in the story, and because it’s a story, and because it’s oral history, and it needs to be performed, we need an ultra-villain character as well.

Everything in terms of human persona is in these extremes that are portrayed in the story. Somewhere in this extreme, as a listener, as a receiver of the story, we will by default start identifying with these characters and thinking about where I am in the storyline. That is the power of the story. Even today, Ramayana is performed during Navratri in many parts of the world, including the UK, the US, and pretty much globally.

How do I understand Mahabharata? The Mahabharata is telling us about the complexity of living this life, living the life of the dharma, making tough choices, choices that — on the face of it — will look like I’m going against my dharma. And we know that if I go against my dharma, my karma is absolutely messed up. If my karma is messed up, my rebirth is messed up, the chain is gone. So now, what does it look like when I’m going to live this dharma life? What does every day look like? Am I a perfect being? Absolutely not. I say this all the time. I love shoes; I have a shoe problem. If I have to live a dharma life, an ideal life, and have a shoe problem, how do I put these two together as a Hindu?

Mahabharata is that story. It is a plot that, when you start absorbing it, you have to pause and take breaths because it is now portraying human complexity in great detail. The most well-known version is the one by Vyasa. One of the chapters in The Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita. This is the chapter between the prince and his charioteer, who will then reveal himself as the incarnation of Vishnu. In this chapter, we find the prince asking, “How can I kill my own cousins? How can I go to battle with my own family? How is this dharma?” In this case, Vishnu, who is understood as a god, will reveal himself and then preach.

Your next pick is The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger, who is a translator from Sanskrit and Professor Emerita of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Why are you recommending this book?

This is a fairly controversial book. Penguin, for the first time in history, actually agreed to withdraw and destroyed the copies of the book in India. There is a deep political pushback against this book. I picked it because when we talk about Hindu traditions, what a lot of people do not recognise is that the transmission histories with regards to texts, in a two-thousand-plus years of written history starting from 200 BCE, was written by men, consumed by men, and it becomes a very male-dominated, patriarchal-dominated religion.

In the Indian subcontinent, in documented early history, we find women present in the landscape of religion, as ritual specialists or religious leaders. But by the time we come to a text called Manusmṛti, or The Laws of Manu, we find that women have gone from the forefront to behind the screen. They are not chanting the Vedas; they are not being taught the Vedas. In fact, The Laws of Manu says that if a woman accidentally hears the Vedic chanting, hot molten glass should be poured into her ears. So we have moved significantly from women having a place in the religion to women now being really behind the walls. Wendy Doniger talks about what this history of Hinduism looks like if you were to look at it through the lens of women. Is it the same story?

The other thing that she talks about is the caste system. How does Hindu tradition look from the eyes and the experience of lower castes? That’s the reason why I bring it up, because we tend not to include them in this complex history, which should be understood as histories. We tend to lean towards telling a story that is male-dominated and high caste leaning.

You mentioned earlier that Hindu identity is still forming. There is growing Hindu nationalism, and more Hindus are living outside of South and Southeast Asia. Can you talk a bit about how Hinduism is changing?

Hindutva comes down to Hindu-essence. When we talk about Hindu-essence, we very quickly arrive at Hindu identity. If I were to put it very simply, it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The role of Hindutva, or the Hindu fundamental movement, is best understood by mapping the history of the nation of India. India became a nation in 1947. From 1947 to the 1970s, we are looking at basic existence. There are wars between India and Pakistan (in this period, Bangladesh comes into existence), there’s abject poverty, and the education divide is very stark. People are struggling. Next, we enter the 1980s, where the prime minister back then, Narasimha Rao, opened the economy to private funding. With years of private sector and a greater degree of political stability, by the time we arrive at the mid-1990s, we now have a middle class.

There are private sector jobs and better social mobility. As society develops, as the economy gets stronger, we now come to a period where there is a very large population who are no longer seeing themselves as less than someone else, say in the modern West. Their needs are met. And when that happens, people ask about identity. Today, for very complex reasons — political, social, economic, cultural — Hindu identity is getting conflated with Indian identity, and that is very problematic and challenging.

What does that mean for a Hindu in, say, Nepal or Indonesia?

Exactly, how does that work? Or Hindus in Ghana? What is happening is that with an approximate eighty percent plus Hindu population in India out of 1.4 billion, clubbed with social media and global boundary blurring, you can be a Hindu in Ghana, or you are a Hindu in Indonesia, or a Hindu in Nepal; we are not realising that Hindu identity is being defined, possibly, by fundamental Hindu groups. That is extremely alarming, because we are forcing an identity onto a religion that never had a founder and had diverse ways of thinking and being. For example, will we now say that most Hindus should become vegetarians? Should we be dressing a certain way? Should we be wearing something similar to a cross so that we can be recognised as Hindus? Who gets to decide this? That’s the challenge. I hope we can keep the diversity.

Your next book recommendation is Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India by Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University, and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal for her work on religious pluralism in the United States. Can you tell me a bit about this book?

This is a short book, and Diana Eck does a beautiful job. She talks about sighting the deity. This is not about just going to the temple; this is about the deity visiting with you. And how do I explain the concept of divine visitation, if you’re not in the space where visitation is sought by the devotee in an active sense of the way? I just cannot explain the importance, the essence, the depth of Hindu devotion, or a Hindu’s relationship to the divine, unless we have visited and collectively been in a ritual space.

Can you elaborate on what you mentioned at the beginning about Hinduism being an orthoprax rather than an orthodox religion? Several of the books we have discussed emphasise that practice takes precedence over belief, that Hinduism is less about doctrine and more about experience through rituals, festivals and stories.

To visit a Hindu temple during peak festival times is important to understand what we mean when we say it’s an orthoprax religion. It is extremely important to embody the space, to embody the ritual, the devotion, even if you’re not necessarily partaking in the ritual, but to be present.

The one thing that everybody knows about Hinduism is the profusion of gods and goddesses, but you also mentioned the possibility of being an atheist Hindu, or a monotheistic Hindu or a pantheistic Hindu. And you talked of how a Hindu doesn’t necessarily need clarity about whether there are thirty thousand gods or one. Do you agree with Eck that Hinduism is a vision of divine supremacy that is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic?

I hesitate to say it’s not polytheistic because, unfortunately, our culture today looks at religious space in a very binary form. We have this tendency to put religious beliefs in boxes, and Hindu tradition cannot be put in a box. As soon as I say it is not polytheistic, I can bet that people will land on monotheism, even though I never said it’s monotheistic. These boxes apply possibly very well to some other religious traditions, but do not truly do justice to Hindu traditions. So it’s okay to live termless. Why do we have to define? Why can we not have a wordless category that allows for greater inclusivity?

There is no clarification that will answer and satisfy everybody’s relationship to the divine, but here is how I see it. If we go with the dotted line history, with the Indus Valley civilisation, there is some continuity. When we look at the Vedic period, the Vedas were composed sometime in 1500-1200 BCE, we find nature being personified as the divine. We have a deity for storms, Rudra. We have the sun as Surya, the moon as Chandra, the dawn as Usha, Vāc, who will then become the goddess of speech, so on and so forth.

Next, we come to the Upanishadic period. In this, the physical body gets questioned. Here we’ll start thinking about “Where is the sun in my body? Where is the moon in my body?” If I’m saying I am a representation of the divine and the world is divine, then where are the mountains? Where are the rivers? Over a period of time, Rudra will be understood as Shiva. If we look at Shiva’s name, there are more than twenty different names for the same divine being or energy. We have an organic understanding of the divine and divine representations.

Additionally, we have to consider the importance of mythology.  There are mother goddesses, trees that are sacred trees, animals have a place with the divine, and all this starts to come into the trope of what is understood as divine and sacred.

Finally, we have to consider the representation of the divine. Everyone has a right to see the divine in their eyes. If I were to take Shiva as the example again, he looks so very different from region to region, because people are now starting to depict him in the ways that they look, after all, the divine is me. If it’s me, and if I have to draw and my only access point is the people around me who have a similar nose structure, a similar eye structure, I’m going to portray Shiva in that fashion. That is what brings us to several forms of divine beings. And within a single divine being, we can have lots of different imagery, different names, and different understandings.

You have touched on the Vedas a couple of times. Can you briefly explain what they are?

The Vedas are understood as shruti texts. Shruti is translated, loosely, as something that is heard. The epics that we spoke about are understood as smriti, something that is transmitted from memory. So the divine world transmitted these texts, which were heard by some higher beings. One part of the Vedas is all about the rituals; they document how the rituals need to be performed. This is what, in many ways, Gavin Flood, Diana Eck, and Vasudha Narayanan are talking about in their books. And then there is another part in the Vedas that gives us the personification of nature. What very soon happens with the Vedas is that the ritual spins on its own, and the philosophy spins on its own, and the deities or the nature gods that were somewhere in the mix, they become a third category. Even today, if you want to be a Vedic practitioner, it is oral history. The Vedas are supposed to be chanted in a particular meter, which you must learn, and so they continue to be the centre of ritual specialists. The philosophy would spin as the Upanishads, and the nature beings would develop into a wide range of deities.

We have come to your final book recommendation, Handbook of Hindu Mythology by George M. Williams, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at California State University, Chico. Can you introduce it?

The ivory tower of Hindu tradition, which largely came from scholarship back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, had this tendency to define Hinduism only through the lens of Sanskrit texts. A lot of the vernacular texts were rejected or not looked into. Given that the religion is truly the social, cultural religion that lives in the bodies of Hindus, we need to study Hinduisms also through the lens of mythology, of folklore, because that’s where we get this fabric of Hinduism, where we truly get the essence. The mythological stories and the folklore bring forth the diversity that we know for Hinduism. So if you want to get a sense of Hinduism, we must include women, we must include the stories of people from other castes, we must also look at mythology and the stories that come through the land, so to speak. These are stories that are being narrated by a grandmother to her grandchild as bedtime stories. And in these stories is dharma. In these stories is where we return to the duties of a Hindu. And it is in these stories that the essence of who Hindus are, or should be, resides.

Would you like to talk a bit about your own experience of being initiated into the Kāmākhyā lineage as a child, and what it means for you, personally, to be a Hindu?

I was initiated into a particular lineage at the age of eight. When I was born, the predictions made in the astrological chart were that I would become a guru and that I would have my own temple. Now I believe I am an excellent negotiator, and I also truly believe that the divine play has been written for us. We come with a play, but we can negotiate and tweak the role. So instead of a temple, I asked for a university. Instead of devotees, I asked for students. So that is why I was initiated.

I was a practitioner for the longest time. I returned to studying my own tradition as part of my PhD, so I only became a scholar of my own tradition in the last fifteen years or so. Up until then, I was a pure practitioner; by this, I mean I never really critically looked at my lineage, let alone read about it critically. That is part of my story, and I own the story. I identify very loudly and clearly that I’m a practitioner-scholar. It raises a lot of questions for many people, but I say that’s a them problem, not a me problem.

Being a Hindu, it’s me, it’s my identity, it’s my existence. Every DNA cell of my body is a Hindu body. So the way I breathe, the way I live, the way I think, the way I move around in this world is from the Hindu dharma that is my righteous duty. I don’t worry about karma, because I genuinely believe that if I do my duties right, everything else will be taken care of. And as I said, I have a shoe problem, so I’m not getting moksha anyway. I can only try so much in this lifetime and hope for a worthy return.

Do you want to introduce your recently published book?

I am so happy with it and the way it came out, the colour looks so pretty. It is called The Serpent’s Tale: Kuṇḍalinī, Yoga, and the History of an Experience. The comma between Kuṇḍalinī and Yoga is very important. I had never heard of Kundalini for the twenty-five years that I was a pure practitioner, but when I became a scholar and came to the United States, everybody spoke about Kundalini.

The co-author, Anya Foxen, and I start with problematising the very term, Kundalini. What is Kundalini — is it an energy, is it the divine energy present in us? The book traces a history from early 600 CE texts all the way to social media. We look at how Kundalini becomes a product in the marketplace where different gurus are competing with one another. In short, the book documents the experience of the experiencer and seeks to present a history with ultra-fuzzy boundaries.

Is there anything else that you want to say to conclude?

The only thing I would like to say is that if and when our readers are meeting a Hindu, don’t be shy about asking questions, and don’t assume. For example, it frustrates me when people assume that I’m a vegetarian because I’m a Hindu. I want to eat the meat that you’re eating. Yes, I won’t eat the beef, but I do want to eat the fish. My request to our readers would be, if you meet someone who is a Hindu, just go ask questions. I don’t think any question, when asked from the right place in the heart, is ever offensive.