Saturday, March 9, 2013

Religion in Bangladesh, Part II


Around nine percent of the Bangladeshi population is still Hindu. Hinduism is a vast complex which can be identified through worship and a sense of ethics, or sanctions for actions. The following elements are included:

“reincarnation”: one lived before and will live again; how one is reborn is a result of past births, of what has been.

“karma”: right action. What determines rebirth is one's action: life is a web of what one has done in the past.

“dharma”: duty, obligation (religious). A person is good if he obeys his "dharma". One knows what duty life requires because one is in his life. A person is considered good if he obeys obligations life imposes on him.

“time”: no beginning, no end. The world is an endless process of time.

“order”: universe is an ordered entity in which everything has gone wrong: people have not done their duty. Order must be restored by changing what one does in life -a person can be changed within it, but one can't change the world.

The doctrine of "karma" and the attitude of relativism are expressions of the sense of a religious hierarchy that permeates the Hindu social system and differentiates it from that of Islam.












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