Vivekananda Centre UK
LONDON, ENGLAND, December 5, 2005: Jay Lakhani of the Vivekananda Centre sends the following report:
We are happy with the way the BBC is beginning to portray Hinduism. For example, in its introduction to Hinduism on its Religion-Online website until last week it introduced Hinduism in this negative manner: “It is not a single unified religion and has no founder, single teacher, nor prophets. Hindus believe in a universal soul or God called Brahman.” We requested the BBC to alter this introduction and they heeded our advice. The introduction now reads, “Hinduism originated over 3,000 years ago. Hinduism claims to have many founders, teachers and prophets who claim first hand experience of God. When Hindus promote the idea of spirituality as a principle rather than a personality they call it Brahman.”
This evening the first of a series of three documentaries based on Prof. Winston’s book “Story of God” was shown on BBC 1 TV. We had been asked to contribute some thoughts on Hinduism. As the documentary was following Prof. Winston’s own understanding of Hinduism, only those parts that fitted with the format of the film were used, but that was not too bad. Prof. Winston began by talking of the Aryan invasion (even the BBC website now agrees that this theory is seriously flawed) but despite this we managed to present three key aspects of Hinduism that are normally not visible in such documentaries:
1. Hinduism is a gloriously pluralistic religion that accommodates every individual to progress spiritually in a manner that suits his or her needs. This is called Spiritual democracy. (Religious Pluralism)
2. Icons and images used by Hinduism in temples are doorways to the infinite. Images are tools used by Hindus to plug themselves into spirituality. (Hindus do not worship idols, they use images to worship the infinite God).
3. The comprehensive definition of God in Hinduism is Brahman. It is Brahman that manifests itself as this universe and becomes more clearly visible in all living things and becomes most transparently visible as mankind. Like the same sun shining on the crest of every wave, the same God shines in all of us. We are essentially God. (Emphasizing Spiritual humanism in contrast to materialistic humanism).
In this program we were forced to plug in snippets of Hinduism to fit in with the format of a documentary presenting the views of a Jewish scholar. That is really not fair. We have been asking the BBC to allow us to produce and edit a documentary that allows us Hindus to present many of the dynamic aspects of Hinduism in a format that will do justice to Hinduism and let us refresh the message of spirituality for the modern world. We are hopeful that this will come to fruition in the near future.