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Still remember the day I "came out" as atheist in my Hindu family and they just shrugged it off as if it was no big deal. I even had an angry 'neo-atheist' phase for a couple of years before realizing that Hinduism just sort of accepted Atheism at face value.
My mom was like, "I need you to visit for festivals, be a good person and just join your hands with the family every once in a while. You can talk to whoever you like in your own head, just don't get angry when I ask my Ganpati to bring you good luck." Hell, I thought my dad was irreligious my whole life, until my mom told me he was deeply religious, but he did not feel worthy of praying to ask a God for good luck ! Turns out he'd pray by himself daily, just in non-visible spaces.
Hinduism is funny that way. It's lack of scripture allows it to be something and nothing at the same time. Yet, when it is around, you can tell. If a group of heterogenous people strongly self-identify under a common umbrella of Hinduism, then who am I to disagree ?
This is an unfair accusation, because it quietly defines religion from an Abrahmic lens. Being culturally religious is what Hinduism is all about. Both Dharma and Karma are defined within a localized context of your profession, family & conditions. So, it is hard to have any uniform optics for Hinduism. If a person lives a Dharmic life with an awareness of Karma, then they're Hindu. Even if it has no ties to a specific God.
Yes, I understand that this means a person who performs Hindu actions with Hindu intentions, will be Hindu irrespective of which religion they follow. Hinduism doesn't require mutual exclusivity in tribal associations. As the head of the RSS (India's largest political Hindu organization) says, "If you are born in India, you're Hindu. You can be a Muslim-Hindu, Christian-Hindu or an Atheist-Hindu. Just gotta align your intentions and actions. A lot of spiritual atheist rationalists appear pretty Hindu to me.
I've been an atheist since the age of 5, I've only prayed earnestly once in my life, and that's to Krishna when my mom was pregnant because I was looking forward to a baby brother.
With how he turned out, I immediately turned atheist /s. (Still love him tho, even if his ADHD is even worse than mine)
My parents are mildly religious, they observe most festivals, visit temples on vacation, and idly contemplate going on pilgrimage to those random ass holy shrines up in the Himalayas (it would probably kill their backs).
Even then, when religion simply didn't take in me, because even at that age I could see that no religion was a remotely good fit for both the world around me and the behavior of its denizens, they never forced me to pray, at most I was dragged along to a bunch of temples and forced to sit glumly during some festivals until I got a little older and refused to attend whatsoever.
Nobody forced me to practise, nor did they care particularly much.
Most Hindus I've met have been entirely chill about it too, nobody has tried to proselytize to me, or made my life difficult in any way.
I'm not aware of any major religion that's more cool with atheism, barring perhaps Buddhism, but that's just a distant cousin.
Does Taoism or Confucianism work, if either count as religions?
I suppose they do, but even if I write a Cultivation novel, I'm no expert on either!
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