Hinduism’s starting point is neither God nor the Creation (the universe, the world). It is the simple but inexhaustible question: Who am I? Before going further, it should be emphasized that the form and the logic of this question are profoundly different from a question that has often engaged the modern philosophical anthropologist, though apparently the two refer to the same problem. When the philosophical anthropologist asks, “What is man?” the form of the question carries no hint of the fact that it is one radically different from any other question he might ask and answer. He is asking essentially a question about something objectively given, out there, with which he accidentally happens to be identical. (It is remarkable that their notions of engagement and personal commitment notwithstanding. existentialists, with rare exceptions, ask only the latter question.) The philosophical anthropologist, therefore, is not logically bound by the answer, for he is not logically implicated in the question, any more than a playwright is part of the play. The question could possibly be asked by Martians or moon-dwellers-by suprahumans, or perhaps. unknown to us, by infrahumans. The question implies a gap between the noetic and the ontic level and leaves it open even after it has been answered.

On the other hand, the Hindu question (autological question, Who am I?) is possible only from a plane on which the noetic and the ontic level, knowledge and life, theory and practice, thought and action, form a unity. It follows, therefore, that whoever asks this question is logically bound by the answer or more correctly, by the question itself, for there may be no intelligible answer, or the questioner may fail to get one that satisfies him. Hinduism does not require anyone to ask this question, but if I do ask it and it makes sense to me, I am bound to go on asking it until I find the answer or fail to find one; it is, however, not a question which I can drop at any time of my life.

An analysis of this question will lead us into practically all the essential principles of society. Let us see this very briefly. The first thing to note is that the initial answer takes the form: I am not-A, not-X and so on this being the schematization of our experiential response: I am not-you, not-he, not-she, not-it. From this point, inquiry can take one of the two courses: either I seek a positive answer and try to arrive at my uniqueness; or I transform the initial negative answer into a positive one by concluding that the relationships, I-you, I-he, I-it, together constitute myself.

Dialectically, however, I must advance beyond this latter position, for one’s fundamental identity cannot be wholly constituted by one’s relationships to something (somebody) else whose own identity is relative to oneself. The same point would emerge if 1 pursue the other line of inquiry. I cannot find my uniqueness without going beyond all attributions and specifications which are necessarily relative. In a word, the “I” cannot be identified with either the existent or the non-existent and hence must be sought beyond all pairs of opposites.

The well-known Hindu doctrine of Māyā does not deny or assert the reality or unreality of anything, but dialectically implies a Beyond, an identity of both reality and unreality. Hence, deliverance is from the pair of opposites, from time to Eternity-but this too is only a manner of speaking: for the Hindu dialectic does not permit the ascription of reality to any pair, and precisely that would be implied in calling any one side of the pair unreal. There is no bondage and hence no deliverance that is the well-known suggestion. This hardly makes sense, but it is exactly as it should be: for the answer to the question (Who am I?) can only lie in its utter dissolution, since it cannot be known without being it: I cannot know who I am without being this knowledge. Thus, the Hindu question, Who am I? is not only a thoroughly personal one; it is also an intimate and totally demanding question: for to ask it is to commit oneself wholly. It is a personal and intensely active question because one has to pursue it relentlessly, no matter what happens-and yet one is “free” to ask or not to ask it. However, at another level it is an impersonal question, because to ask and pursue it is to go beyond one’s personality and individuality it is an all-transcending question. And yet the consequences of this question are not simply all-negating. for its direct existential form requires that one must become that which one transcends. Born in a ready-made network of relations and roles, I find ready answers to my question, Who am I?: I am a son, a brother, a student, a husband, a citizen, and so on. But if I have understood the question, I will immediately see that I cannot be just a son, etc. and nothing else that I cannot be wholly identical with the diversity of roles I inherit (or “choose”) and play. I have to play them; nonetheless, I have to pass beyond these roles: for I am not simply a summation of my roles (a point emphasized by Mead also through his distinction between the “I” and the “me”). This is also the point where the so-called world-renouncing and life-negating aspect of Hinduism comes in; we say, “so-called” because in the final analysis Hinduism neither affirms nor denies: its final suggestion is to go beyond both. This dialectic transcends ab initio the whole problem of the relation between the individual and society as also that of social obligation. For the Hindu, fulfilling traditional roles with all one’s intelligence and ability is simply the existential mode of asking and understanding the question, Who am I? and of advancing towards its answer.

A highly important merit of the dialectic of the question in its autological form is its power to preclude altogether many seductive but superficial answers such, for instance, as the following: “Before everything else I am myself” (with all its tortured declensions); “I am man”; “I am my freedom”. Pseudo-solutions like these are precluded by the very syntax of Hindu autology. On a careful analysis, such solutions will be easily seen to be answers to the anthropological and not to the autological question. For these answers really beg the question and they do nothing to bridge the gap between knowledge and life. On the other hand, it is of the essence of the autological question that all seeking for and steps towards its answers are actional steps towards Self-realization. True, once one has arrived at a final solution or dissolution of the question-and but a moment may be enough for it-one is no longer a son, a father, this or that-the Hindu tradition allows for and recognizes this in the concept of the Siddha. But before one has realized one’s Self, and one’s freedom, by self-naughting, one has to become what one essentially is-not, that is, a father, a friend, and so on. For dialectical implications are not like deductive results: Man is X, I am a man, therefore, I am X. Deductive conclusions make sense even without personal realization. Dialectical conclusions and implications, on the other hand, are direct: I am X. So, if I am not X (that is, do not become X), I am not X. It is plain that such results can make no sense outside the context of personal realization. As has been already remarked, the syntax of the crucial Hindu (autological) question entails a complete, all-inclusive, absolute involvement of the Hindu. Sociologists have always noted this characteristic of Hinduism with the observation that the Hindu religion regulates and permeates the everyday life of the Hindu from its most important to its most trivial detail. There is, therefore, a fundamental sense in which Hinduism and Hindu society are inseparable. Unless very highly spiritual already, I cannot be a Hindu if I have no Hindu society to live in.

Prof. A.K. Saran

Reference: This write-up is taken from the article “Religion and Society: The Hindu View”, published in the book “Hinduism in Contemporary India” published by Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies Sarnath, Varanasi.