Question

Over its long history, Hinduism has demonstrated remarkable religious tolerance and flexibility, even to the point of advocating polytheism, monotheism, and monism all within a single religion. What are the implications of having such a flexible religious system? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Minimum one and a half (1 ½) pages

Answer 1

The Hinduism is a religion that is very flexible, very tolerant, and it has managed to exist for several thousands years now. The reason why this religion is like this is that its foundations are based on the merging of two totally different religions. The Hinduism is a mixture of the beliefs of the Dravidians that were one of the first inhabitants of India, and the beliefs of the Aryan people that migrated from Central Asia and integrated into the society. The two groups engaged into sharing of ideas and mutual assimilation, resulting in the rise of the Hinduism, and the caste system with it. Being a religion that has roots in two totally different ancient cultures had made the religion very tolerant to regional and local variations being implemented into it. It can be said that one of the implications of this is that the Hinduism, apart from its basis, has thousands of different variations among its followers. Some variations occur in certain regions, some even on local level, or even in a single village. Over time this can cause problems because the variations of it may start to diverge too much and the religion to split up. On the positive side, it seems that this way of practicing the Hinduism had not actually created any problems throughout its existence, thus for several thousands of years. It seems that the religions is so open to implementing new things in it,and the people to modify it as they feel, that no inner-religious conflicts occur because of it. A disadvantage may be that the Hinduism may lose its core over time, resulting in confusion among its followers.