Hindus And Neo-Paganism

December 5, 2000

The late Ram Swarup (1920-98), definitely the most important Hindu

philosopher of independent India's first half-century, liked to point

out that other cultures had traditions similar to Hinduism before

Christianity or Islam wiped them out. As he put it in his path-breaking

study of polytheism, 'The Word as Revelation' (1980):

'There was a time when the old Pagan Gods were pretty fulfilling and

they inspired the best of men and women to acts of greatness, love,

nobility, sacrifice and heroism. It is, therefore, a good thing to turn

to them in thought and pay them our homage. We know pilgrimage, as

ordinarily understood, as wayfaring to visit a shrine or a holy place.

But there can also be a pilgrimage in time and we can journey back and

make our offerings of the heart to those Names and Forms and Forces

which once incarnated and expressed man's higher life. (...) The peoples

of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Germany and the Scandinavian countries are no

less ancient than the peoples of India; but they lost their Gods, and

therefore they lost their sense of historical continuity and identity.

(...) What is true of Europe is also true of Africa and South America.

The countries of these continents have recently gained political freedom

of a sort, but (...) if they wish to rise in a deeper sense, they must

recover their soul, their Gods (...) If they do enough self-churning,

then their own Gods will put forth new meanings in response to their new

needs. (...) If there is sufficient aspiration, invoking and soliciting,

there is no doubt that even Gods apparently lost could come back again.

They are there all the time.' (p.131-133)

(continued)

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