V V Ganeshananthan

Hinduism is not unique in falling outside of the polytheistic/monotheistic binary model that most people and textbooks use. Hinduism is unique, at least in the scope of my own knowledge about religion, in the way it presents its “monotheistic” and “polytheistic” facets. One enfolds the other. A prayer directed to Ganesh often asks for welcome — at other times, it requests blessings on studies. A Hindu separates out parts of God for different purposes.

Unlike virtually any other mainstream religion in the world, Hinduism remains attached to an active mythology. Why are we telling stories about Shiva, his consort Parvati, and their two sons, Ganesh and Murugan? What about the hosts of minor demons, gods, and goddesses? A Hindu in northern India might worship a household god of whom a Sri Lankan Hindu knows nothing. But in Hinduism as I understand it, it does not matter. Those gods are really two manifestations of the same thing, and the plane upon which those gods, like the Greek gods, enact human-like drama and make human-like mistakes, is a different plane than from the one on which we worship. Those planes intersect — in the language of math, they skew. This multiplicity of truth is a pillar of the Hinduism I know. Just as, throughout life, we discover parts of ourselves we had not known, we discover more faces of God. Just as a mother is also a daughter, God will exist both in one face and beyond that face. A Hindu praying for something specific underlines the request by directing it to the facet of the deity whose business that is. My God has different faces. He has the ability to be both One and Many. — Beliefnet.com, concluded