Like Sashi Tharoor writes in his book "Why i am a Hindu", i also was born to a Hindu family and started calling myself Hindu all along till my 'schoolgirl atheist phase'. I called myself Hindu just because i was introduced the concept of temple, prayer, a few chanting and few more this and that by my parents, which i believed is all about being a Hindu is. Then just like the most of us i also went through the phase when the schoolboy starts believing that science is real and is against spirituality. Fortunately i came across 'Swami Vivekanada's philosophy' that science and spirituality exists parallelly. Influenced by that philosophy i came to realize that how important the concept is, one can not understand spirituality without the help of science, or to be more accurate, only science can help us understand spirituality. I was told that there's a heaven somewhere beyond those clouds, now science tells me that there's a space and there's a possibility of existence of things which now seems unreal, like a parallel world or like a multiverse and many more which is unknown to human kind till the date. If there's any heaven, which in my vision is a collection of countless energies(which people call soul) at some place, only science can help us get any near of that truth, only the existence another dimension can explain all the 'angel and devil/good and evil'. So my point is, that science and spirituality completes each other.
Why i suddenly started talking about science under the title of 'Hinduism'? I am not a scholar in any religion or in Hinduism so all that i am talking about is just my view on my believe. I do not have the knowledge about each any every religion but i know this much that Hinduism is a believe which have science embedded in it. No other believes that i have came across till the date has this much of science involved in it (pardon my lack of knowledge in Buddhism). If i allow my literature imagination, i see a few 'better than normal human beings' grouping together and having a discussion on spirituality and the ways it can be made understandable to normal human beings with the help of science. I hear them stating the core purpose, which is "the way of life". Why to bother about spirituality at the first place...and the answer is, to live your life in a certain way. Now comes the understatement which is "freedom to believe in your way of life", i know not of any other believes which gives you the freedom to choose if you wanna believe in god or not if you wanna belong to any religion or not. So rather then just accepting anything, you can actually use your reasonings, and finally choose the way you want to live your life. Based on this soul purpose, they then built the whole structure of Hinduism. Now when i said 'one have the right to choose the religion they want to belong in' what did i mean? I simply mean that "Hinduism" is a believe and not a religion, and "Hindu is a religion" derived from that believe. So, as a Hindu i am free to choose in which source of energy i want to put my faith in, and that is the god i can worship, maybe that is the reason we have so many gods in our religion, god of money, god of rain, god of intelligence, and the list goes on and on. What if i as a Hindu want to put my faith in Jesus then? I can simply convert, i am no longer a "Hindu" by religion (because the two religions have their own different set of believes), but i can still be a "Hinduism" believer. Now again, what is the need of that? i am now a Christen simple right? What if I do believe that Jesus is the son of god, but my reasoning tells me that Adam and Eve were not the first creation of the god because dinosaurs extinct way before any human even came to existence (this is just an example, i am not here to deny anything of any religion). So as a Hinduism believer i can say that i am a Christen by religion and have my own set of believe in science as well. The only problem here is not all the religion accepts that, i will not be called a Christen until i believe in every word written in the Bible, but Hinduism never bound itself saying one has to belong in any religion, one can just be a believer, a believer who believes in the way he choose to live his life. 'Hinduism' is like an umbrella, and 'Hindu religion' is the handle which holds the most of it.
I do not know if i am qualified enough to be called a Hindu, as there are many things that i do not agree with, just for an example- the hierarchy of caste. But i can proudly say that i am a Hinduism believer. I do not have all the knowledge of Vedas and Upanishads but with the little that i know i can say that Hinduism suggests scientific approach towards daily life and gives you the freedom to believe in your way of life. I can say that i do not belong to any religion and just a believer but that would be wrong as well. I believe in one supreme source of energy which i call "Shiva"(I don't mind people calling him/her/it with another name.), and i love most of the Hindu religious approaches as well, mostly because of the scientifically explained reason behind them. Just as Shashi Tharoor writes it may be simply because of the geographical belonging. So after some analysis i can say that i am a Hindu by religion and a Hinduism believer.
All that i said is my personal conclusion with what i came to know till the date. I may be wrong, and with time i may change my perception as well, but at least for now i have a clear understanding that why i call myself a Hindu and a Hinduism believer. I felt to write this article because there are many people who just belong to a certain religion and say that they know all about their religion and god. It is actually funny that how people claim to know what is impossible to know in one entire human life. Studying the papers and knowing the rules is not "understanding", one need to analyze, raise questions and then finally conclude their understandings. If there is any god, trust me a mere human who can't even understand another dimension, simply do not possess the capability to understand the god. At least a normal human like me can never know it all, all i can do is try to get as near as i can to the truth.
