Both adherents of the faith and those who study it describe Hinduism as a way of life. Thus, they implicitly contrast Hinduism to religions that appear to be primarily located in spaces and times set apart from the everyday—such as “church on Sunday.” Although Hindus have magnificent sacred architecture and a vital tradition of calendrical festivals, the “way of life” description means that religious attitudes and acts permeate ordinary places, times, and activities. For example, bathing, dressing, cooking, eating, disposing of leftovers, and washing the dishes may all be subject to ritual prescriptions in Hindu households. Motivations for such ritualized actions are ascribed to considerations of purity and auspiciousness—an interest that is often linked to maintaining status in a hierarchical social system.
When Hindus interact with deities, considerations of purity may or may not be important. In some Vaishnava traditions, for example, one must remain in a relatively pure state in order to be fit to worship. A Brahman priest of a Krishna temple in the Vallabha sect might refuse food and water from the hands of non-Brahmans, not to show he is better than they are but because his work in the temple demands that he maintain such boundaries. Should he inadvertently lower his own ritual purity, he might displease or offend the deity with whom he is in regular contact, which could threaten human well-being in general.
Vaishnava traditions, however, include an alternative perspective that is conveyed in a well-known tale about Rama. This tale, frequently portrayed in poetry and art, tells of an outcaste tribal woman named Shabari who meets Rama in the forest. Her simple-hearted love for him is so great that she offers him wild berries, which are all she has. She bites each one first to test its sweetness before giving it to her lord, and in so doing she contaminates the berries with saliva, a major source of pollution. Although the berries are highly unacceptable according to the standards of ritual purity, Rama accepts them and eats them blissfully. The message is that the polluted offerings of a lowborn person given to God with a heart full of love are far more pleasing than any ritually pure gift from a less-devout being. Purity of heart, therefore, is more important than bodily purity.
The capacity to see both sides of most matters—cognitive flexibility rather than dogmatic fixity—is one of the most important characteristics of practical Hinduism, which lacks dogma altogether. In this regard, persistent continuities with Hinduism’s ancient roots in Vedic traditions can be discerned. The elaborate sacrificial rituals of Vedic religion have often been described as being focused on obtaining the goods of life—neatly summarized as prosperity, health, and progeny—from divine powers through exacting ritual behaviours. However, in the Upanishads, the last of the Vedic texts, voices emerge that care for neither the rituals nor their promised fruits but are concerned above all with learning the nature of ultimate reality and how the human soul may recognize that indescribable essence in itself. One quest never supplants the other. In Hinduism today there exists, on the one hand, faith in the efficacy of ritual and desire for its worldly fruits and, on the other, disregard for all external practices and material results. Farmers consistently deride the notion that sins are washed away in the waters of sacred rivers, yet they spend small fortunes to travel to and bathe in them. Devotion
Devotion (bhakti) effectively spans and reconciles the seemingly disparate aims of obtaining aid in solving worldly problems and locating one’s soul in relation to divinity. It is the prime religious attitude in much of Hindu life. The term bhakti is derived from a root that literally means “having a share”; devotion unites without totally merging the identities of worshipers and deities. While some traditions of bhakti radically speak out against ritual, devotion in ordinary life is usually embedded in worship, vows, and pilgrimages—three major elements within practical Hinduism.
Theistic devotion presents itself as an easy path, obliterating the need for expensive sacrificial rituals, difficult ascetic practices, and scriptural knowledge. All of these are understood as restricted to high-caste males, and in practice specifically to the rich, the spiritually gifted, or the learned. But bhakti is for all human beings, regardless of their rank, gender, or talent. Any person’s chosen deity may help him obtain life’s rewards or avoid its disasters. At the same time, such a chosen deity may be the subject of pure, unmotivated devotional love, recollected in a few moments of morning meditation, in prayers uttered before a shrine, or in the lighting of incense. Deities
As one Hindu author Sitansu Chakravarti helpfully explains in Hinduism: A Way of Life (1991),
Hinduism is a monotheistic religion which believes that God manifests Himself or Herself in several forms. One is supposed to worship the form that is most appealing to the individual without being disrespectful to other forms of worship.
Although the specific details of ritual action and the names and appearances of deities vary vastly across the subcontinent, commonalities in ritual structure and attitude override the great diversity of ritual practices and associated mythic tales. Whether offering soaked raw chickpeas to Shiva’s agent Bhairuji in Rajasthan, for example, or offering a goat to the Goddess in Bengal, Hindus approach deities through similarly structured actions. These are just as pan-Hindu as the eternal Vedas or the three important deities—Shiva, Vishnu, and the Devi, whose forms and names vary widely but are nonetheless recognizable to Hindus throughout the world.
Ethnographies of rural Hindu practices reveal a wide variety of human relationships with multiple divine beings. These relationships are based not only on family and community affiliations but also on individual life experiences, so that individuals and families often develop idiosyncratic religiosities while remaining well within the range of normative patterns. A household of Gujars (a community associated with herding, dairy production, and agriculture) in a Rajasthani village presents one representative example. This family is particularly devoted to two deities from whom they believe they have received special blessings: Dev Narayan, a regional hero considered to be an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, and Sundar Mata (“Beautiful Mother”), a local goddess, or village mother.
Dev Narayan is worshipped at multiple sites throughout Rajasthan. However, each of his shrines—in Puvali, in Banjari, and so forth—has its own identity. This particular family lives a short walk from Puvali’s Dev Narayan, but they believe that the more remote Banjari’s Dev Narayan—located near their ancestral home—has blessed two generations with long-awaited sons. They go weekly for darshan (divine vision of a deity’s image) to Puvali’s Dev Narayan, as it is convenient. But when the time comes to hold a major feast of thanksgiving to the deity who granted their prayers, they go to a great deal of extra trouble and added expense to hold this feast at the more remote place of Banjari. If questioned, the adults in this family would state conclusively that there is no difference between the two places and moreover that God is ultimately singular and to be found nowhere on the face of the earth but rather in one’s own body and heart. An everyday Hinduism embedded in materiality motivates the distinction between Banjari and Puvali, while a Hinduism that dissolves differences and seeks transcendent unity denies it. Most persons live their lives holding and moving between both these orientations.