Talk:Saguṇa Brahmaṇ As Mūrti:Idolatry in Other Religions and in Nirguṇa Hindu traditions

By Sri Vishal Agarwal

Idolatry means worshipping the created, in lieu of the Creator Bhagavān. ‘Idols’ are likened to ‘false Bhagavāns’ by Abrahamic religions. The Muslims go to the extent of believing that it is a great virtue to destroy idols and temples housing them. However, as we will see below, use of images for worship or mortal human teachers as a proxy for a personal Bhagavān exists in all religions, even in those that swear against idol worship.

A Hindu scholar therefore argues – The use of images is part of an artistic approach and rendering of our relationship to the Divine. For this, sculpture uses statues, painting uses colored surfaces, music uses sound, and poetry uses verbal images. To deny these things as idolatry is only to banish art from our relationship with the Divine. For this reason, aniconic traditions have generally remained artistically sterile. Where for example can we find great religious sculpture or painting among orthodox Muslims or Protestants? Both the Bible and the Koran, though they reject graven images, abound with poetic images, which are responsible for much of the beauty of these books. If a poetic image is acceptable, why not a formal image? Is not a picture worth a thousand words? Why is a poetic form of art allowed as religious but not a plastic form like painting and sculpture? In fact it could be argued that the literalism of certain religious traditions in worshipping their books has only occurred because they deny the use of images. The book becomes a substitute image to fill that aspect of universal aspiration which requires an object to worship.

There are many great teachers and Truth cannot be limited to a single person, however great he or she may be. To insist that Bhagavān has only one Son or that he has a final prophet is itself a form of idolatry – an attempt to limit Ultimate Reality to what is only an appearance in time and space… Hindu Dharm holds that the individual, you or I, is the most important thing. The teacher is only an aid and a guide to our own Self-realization.Hindu Dharm does not sacrifice the sacred nature of the individual for any prophet or savior, however great, but directs each one of us to our own Self-Realization as the highest goal.

Exclusivism in religious belief – that our Bhagavān, savior or holy book alone is true – is itself idolatry, the limitation of truth to a form or construct in the realm of time and space. Unless we transcend the idolatry of dogmatism and exclusivism in religion, it is not spirituality we are following but some divisive creed which breeds conflict and can never lead us to peace.

Hindu View of Christian Idolatry: In Christianity, idolatry is defined as worshipping anything that is created in lieu of the Creator Bhagavān. The name ‘Christianity’ itself derives from the found Jesus Christ, who is believed by all Christians to be the unique son of Bhagavān. It is very difficult to conceive of a formless, invisible Bhagavān as a personal Divine Being. All Abrahamic religions overcome this limitation by believing in Prophets, or individuals who were chosen by Bhagavān to be his mouthpieces. This itself is idolatry, because these prophets are revered and worshipped very similar to Idols. A Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox Church is full of images of Saints, Jesus, Mary and so on with their own associated rituals and paraphernalia.

Iconography Across Faiths: Images as Mediums of Devotion

A saint for fishermen, a saint for blacksmiths and even a saint who can help the worshipper find a suitable saint that can help the worshipper in his specific request. Catholics worship numerous other objects like sacred relics, crucifixes etc., and like to draw a distinction between their sacred icons and the idols or false-Bhagavāns of others. But this semantic jugglery does not hide the fact that Christianity in general and Catholicism in Even Protestant Christians therefore accuse Catholics of indulging in idolatry! All Christians worship Jesus Christ and it is devotion to him, and his name more than that of Bhagavān that inspires respect and reverence in their minds. Catholics worship angels and saints in addition to Bhagavān. There are saints for every specific request. There is a particular does use these ‘icons’ in the same way that Hindus use their ‘idols.’

Hindu View of Islamic Idolatry: All Muslims face the Kaaba mosque during their prayers. The Kaaba is a cubical structure claimed to be the first mosque on earth. Muslims also kiss a rock embedded in the wall of Kaaba as a holy object, because it is said to have fallen from heaven with Adam. If Bhagavān is everywhere, why should Muslims face in one particular direction? The fundamental belief of Islam is that “There is no Bhagavān but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet.” This belief itself makes Allah subservient to Muhammad because one cannot be Muslim unless he believes in Muhammad as a Prophet. An average Muslim may somehow digest an insult to Allah but will never tolerate any insult towards his idol, Prophet Muhammad.

The Ka‘bah: A Sacred Symbol Without Images

Much like an idol, Muslims have a lot of ritualistic practices concerning their holy book, the Koran. The book is always held in one’s right hand, it is always kept above all books in one’s home and so on. In addition, Muslims believe in supernatural beings like Jinns and Angels, and many Muslims also worship at the graves of their saints believing that the souls of these saints will give blessings to the worshipper. Overall however, Islam theoretically rejects any whiff of idolatry.

Hajar al-Aswad: Sacred Stone in Islam

Due to this rigidity, Muslims have frequently destroyed the ‘houses of idols’ belonging to other religions in displays of intolerance and bigotry. Literally thousands of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples have been and are being destroyed by Muslims since the inception of Islam, and the same happened to Zoroastrian fire temples, and numerous churches and synagogues.

Devout Muslims regard ‘idolators’ like Hindus as inferior and sinful humans who can be persecuted and oppressed on this earth, and are destined for everlasting hell after their deaths. All these values run counter to a pluralistic worldview. In Islam as well as in Christianity, those who are not of their faith are tormented till eternity in an everlasting hell, which is a chamber of torture built by Bhagavān.

Whereas in Hindu dharm, even the greatest sinner is eventually saved by Viṣṇu or Śiva and granted then mokṣa. Almost two-thirds of the Koran deals with the curses on infidels, their base nature, Bhagavān’s curses on them and how they will suffer in hell-fire along with the stones (idols) that they worshipped. People would prefer to worship these ‘idols’ of Viṣṇu and Śiva who have more compassion than a divinity that is vindictive towards those who do not worship him.

Hindu View of Sikh Idolatry: The first Sikh Guru Nānak rejected several Hindu practices like pilgrimages, worship of vigrahas, worshipping in temples, taking dips in sacred rivers and so on. His argument was that Bhagavān is formless, eternal, unborn and infinite and therefore all these Hindu forms of worshipping Him are futile and are insulting to the majesty of Bhagavān.

Guru Granth Sahib: The Living Guru in Sikhism

However, the third Guru Amar Dās reinstated some Hindu practices. Starting from him, Sikh Gurus progressively created Sikh places of pilgrimages. The 10th Guru said that after him, their sacred text – the Ādi Granth, would be the next Guru till perpetuity. Since then, the Sikhs have been ritually worshipping copies of their scripture as a living Guru that is placed on a throne, worshipped, fanned, fed, put to sleep, woken up with music and so on, exactly in the manner of a Hindu vigraha.

During winter, it is wrapped in blankets and electric heaters are placed nearby. In summer, the room containing it is air-conditioned. Cloth coverings are used to cover it. Some people even massage the legs of the stool on which the Granth is placed. While reading from the Granth, the reciter has to be ritually pure.

Worn out copies of the Granth are sent to a specific location in the Punjab where they are cremated with the performance of funeral ceremony and procession. The ashes of the cremated Granth are then scattered in a tributary of the Beas river. When the Sikhs worship Bhagavān as ‘Waheguru’, they are reminded not only of Bhagavān, but also of the 10 human Gurus.

Sikhs are at pains to explain that this is not idolatry because the Granth is not the Deity and what they honor is the word in the Granth. But if the Guru can take the form of the Granth, why can’t the Omnipresent Bhagavān manifest through a fraction of His power for the convenience of the worshipper? Therefore, some could argue that Sikhism also practices idolatry in its own way.

Sikhs claim that they reject idolatry but like all other nirguṇa traditions (Hindu or non-Hindu), they have substituted it with what others might perceive as Gurudom and bibliolatry.

Even as early as 1912, a scholar remarked, There is no doubt that the enlightened section of the community bow before their sacred book in the same way as the best of idols was ever worshipped by the most idolatrous of Hindus.

Numerous other facts indicate how the ‘physical’ version of the Granth is revered by the Sikhs. Its pages are individually referred to as ‘Aṅg’ or ‘parts’ (of the body), e.g., page 1100 is ‘Aṅg 1100’. For this reason, damage to the Granth and tearing off its portions is considered an utmost sacrilege.

In the early 20th century, some Nāmdhārī Sikhs initiated the practice of reciting the text from unbound, loose leaves like the Hindu Paṇḍits. The practice caught on, causing a huge furor in the larger Sikh community perhaps because it was perceived as dismemberment of the body of the Guru. Therefore, the Nāmdhārīs gave up this practice in February 1941.

In fact, there was an initial resistance even to reciting the text from digital versions. In the Gurudvārās however, the leading reciter will always read directly from the hardbound Granth even if the congregation follows the text displayed on flat screen monitors.

Moreover, the Ādi Granth itself celebrates episodes from the Śāstras that assume the forms of Brahman. For example, the Gajendra Mokṣa episode in which Viṣṇu saves an elephant from the clutches of death, or the Kubjikā episode in which Kṛṣṇa delivers a lady of the same name. The names Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Viṣṇu, Nārāyaṇa and so on occur thousands of times in their entire scripture, and even though Sikh translators uniformly translate them as ‘Bhagavān’ in their English translations, the context often makes it clear that the Hindu Deva-s are being referred to.

When the Sikhs worship Bhagavān as ‘Waheguru’, they are reminded not only of Bhagavān, but also of the 10 human Gurus. And tradition records of the activities of Sikh Gurus maintained in Haridvāra, Prayāgrāj, Kurukṣetra and other holy Hindu places demonstrate (in the form of notes written in the writings of Gurus themselves) that the Gurus regarded Nainā Devī as their family Deity and performed Hindu ceremonies in Her name.

In short therefore, Sikhism also practices idolatry in its own way. It has replaced idolatry with bibliolatry or ‘but-parastī’ with ‘book-parastī’.

Idolatry in Nirguṇa Hindu Traditions: Interestingly,do not admit or worship sākāra Brahman have developed practices similar to worship of a Deity with a form to fulfill the basic human need of a visible and tangible symbol of the formless Divinity.

In ancient India, the Sāṅkhya tradition raised the founder of their school, Sage Kapila, to a divine status. Quotations from now lost Sāṅkhyan scriptures claim that Kapila was a manifestation of Divinity, or that he was created at the very beginning of the creation as the first Guru of humanity. In more recent times, the followers of Sant Kabīr have divinized him and some Kabīrpanthīs treat him as a manifestation of none other than Brahman.

In yogic traditions that focus on meditation on the formless ātman, the supreme importance of and reverence for the Guru at par with that for Brahman is well known.

Much like in the Sikh tradition, the ‘Ek Śaraṇa Nāma Dharm’ tradition in Assam founded by Śaṅkaradeva (a senior contemporary of Guru Nānak) does not encourage worship of mūrti-s, but nevertheless advocates bibliolatry – As regards the worship of idols, Śaṅkaradeva does not seem to have put much importance on them. While initiating or ordaining neophytes, he always made them prostrate before a holy book placed on the altar. Biographies do not testify to the existence of any image in the religious establishments of Śaṅkaradeva. At the initial stage of his movement at Bardowā, he is said to have installed an idol of Madana Gopāla with a view to attracting the Brāhmaṇas of the locality. But afterwards he did not encourage idol-worship.

According to Bardowā-Gurucarita and Śaṅkara-carita by Rāma Caraṇa, Śaṅkara at the time of his last departure to Cooch Behar advised Mādhava to look for him in the pages of his Kīrtana and Daśama. The Kathāguru-Carita, a prose biographical work on the lives of the saints narrates that Mādhava advised his disciples to regard Kīrtana and Daśama as representatives of Śaṅkara and the Ratnāvalī and Nāma Ghoṣā as his own. Perhaps on the strength of these utterances of the first two Gurus, the above holy books were raised to the status of pre-eminence and they took the place of the idol or the Deity. The seat on which these holy books are kept is known as the guru-āsana and all religious functions are held before this holy seat. Thus, Mādhavadeva raised the status of the holy scriptures composed by the Guru and himself by making them symbols of Godhead as well as their own selves.

All these examples show that classical mainstream Hindu dharm has been very honest to itself, and completely non-hypocritical in recognizing the simple fact that the average human being does need the support of visible symbols to reach the invisible final goal. And it has likened these dual modes of worship of Brahman (as formless and with forms) as a license allowed by Brahman out of compassion for embodied human beings.

Universality of Idol Worship The fact remains that idol worship is present in all religious and spiritual traditions to some extent.

As a modern Hindu saint says, …Idol-worship is not peculiar to Hindu Dharm. Christians worship the Cross. They have the image of the Cross in their mind. The Mohammedans keep the image of the Kaaba stone when they kneel and do prayers. The people of the whole world, say a few Yogīs and Vedāntins, are all worshippers of idols. They keep some image or the other in the mind.

The mental image is also a form of idol. The difference is not one of kind but only one of degree. All worshippers, however intellectual they may be, generate a form in the mind and make the mind dwell on that image.

Everyone is an idol worshipper. Pictures, drawings, etc., are only forms of pratimā or the idol. A gross mind needs a concrete symbol as a prop or ālambana and a subtle mind requires an abstract symbol. Even a Vedāntin has the symbol OM for fixing the wandering mind. It is not only the pictures or images in stone and in wood that are idols, but dialectics and leaders also become idols. So, why condemn idolatory?

Those who condemn idol worship dogmatically are often hypocrites and conceited. As Svāmī Śivānanda says, However intellectual one may be, he cannot concentrate without the help of some symbol in the beginning. An intellectual and learned person, on account of his pride and vanity only says: 'I do not like a mūrti. I do not wish to concentrate on a form.' He cannot concentrate on the formless one. He thinks that people will laugh at him when they come to know that he is meditating on a form. He never does any meditation on the formless one. He simply talks and argues and poses. He wastes his life in unnecessary discussions only. An ounce of practice is better than tons of theories. Intellect is a hindrance in the vast majority of intellectual persons. They say that the existence of Brahman is a guess-work, samādhi is a bluff of the mind and Self-realization is an imagination of the Vedāntins. Deluded souls! They are steeped in ignorance. They are carried away by their secular knowledge which is mere husk when compared to the Knowledge of the Self. There is no hope of salvation for such people. First, their wrong saṃskāra-s should be flushed by good saṃskāra-s through satsaṅga. Then only they will realize their mistakes. May the Bhagavān bestow on them clear understanding and thirsting for real knowledge!