Prefer being called an henotheist than an omnist

 
I am an Hindu. Devotion, in perspective, is about believing and praying a supreme being, without disturbing, troubling others and demeaning the other faiths. I am an Hindu, I pray for Markandeya, I pray for Vinayaka, I pray for Shiva, I pray for Yellamma, I pray for Durgamma and I pray of number of Hindu gods and goddesses. And I don’t pray for Allah or Jesus or any other gods of other religions. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t judge people who follow other faiths. I respect the other faiths and people belong to other faiths. The Constitution itself says, everyone is entitled to pray for whoever god they want to and there’s no legal limit in that. In addition, I believe that my Hinduism doesn’t just lay principles and norms to practice but also gives me a freedom to be a Hindu in my own way. Hinduism is open to interpretations by anyone, and is open to anyone to follow, in the way, they intend to choose their way. Some people take pride in saying that they follow every religion. I have nothing against them. India has always been a place, where all types of religions and beliefs were welcomed and the people of India made themselves available to all kinds of transformations. To be very honest, I exalt to repeat the words enunciated by Swamy Vivekananda in 1893 at Chicago’s Parliament of World Religions— “I am proud to belong to a religion, which taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.” In other words, I would like to call myself as henothesit than to an omnist. I don’t pray for Allah, but that doesn’t mean that I hate Muslims. I don’t pray for Jesus, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect Christian practices.

Atheism has evolved as an anti-religion ideology. With respect to India, it has been anti-Hinduism. As a matter of fact, I don’t worry about anyone being atheist. Because I am even proud to say that the roots for atheism lie in India itself, in the form of Buddhism. Hinduism is so welcoming that, some of the scholars of it even included Buddha as one of the dasavathara (10 incarnations). A couple of months, I was talking to a friend named Udeep, who doesn’t seem to be much of a religious person. But I also believe that he isn’t an atheist either. So he actually shared an interesting and insightful perspective regarding atheism. He says “Atheism is super fine. No worries if you don’t believe in any god. It’s completely up to you. But the problem with some atheists is, they question and judge people who are religious. Atheists don’t need to engage in anti-religious talks and debates.” Not just atheists, any person either religious or not can question and judge an act, which is superstitious and hurting anyone. Other than that, you don’t have any goddamn right to question any religious practice. A religious person possess the same right as an atheist does, when it comes to choices and opinions. I personally believe that, atheist don’t even need to question idolatries because as Swami Vivekananda said ‘Idolatry is an attempt of underdeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths.’ There’s nothing wrong in being an atheist but for that you don’t need to be obscene to any religion.