WHAT IS HINDUISM?
but many Hindus recognise that the cultural rigidification
of hostility and discrimination between castes severely
weakened Indian culture – leading to the growth of class
division and exploitation, making India less unified in the
face of invasion, and making the lowest castes vulnerable to
conversion – something no less true today.
The ancient Hindu economy and Hindu theology
Marx’s analysis of the economic nature of the ‘Asiatic
Mode of Production’ both reflects and explains the
essential nature and origins of Hindu theology as a religion
of unity or non-duality, not in the form of monotheism but
rather a religious monism rooted in a state governed
amalgam of autonomous communities or communes.
“Only in so far as the individual is a member – in the literal
and figurative sense – of such a community, does he regard
himself as an owner or possessor. In reality, appropriation by
means of the process of labour takes place under these
preconditions, which are not the product of labour but appears
as its natural or divine preconditions.”
“... the all-embracing unity which stands above all these small
common bodies may appear as the higher or sole proprietor,
the real communities only as hereditary possessors. Since the
unity is the real owner, and the real precondition of
common ownership, it is perfectly possible for it to appear