#81. The Puzzle of Hinduism - Dr. Feryl Badiani

Dr. Feryl Badiani, Lecturer at Sophia College, Mumbai, India and Researcher at Masaryk University, Czechia delves into the complexities of Hinduism, exploring its resilience in the face of monotheistic religions, the cultural and linguistic diversity within Hindu practices, and the role of rituals in shaping identity. Feryl shares her journey into studying Hinduism, particularly in the Marathi and Gujrati communities in India. The discussion also touches on the impact of diaspora on religious practices, the intersection of gender and religion, and some of the misconceptions surrounding Hinduism.

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welcome back to the Smooth Brain Society. Today, we'll be talking about Hinduism. uh I have a little bit of an intro to go through first, though, to our guests. So there are over 4,000 recognized religions around the world, most of which are polytheistic. However, recent history has seen a decline in polytheistic traditions, while monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam have emerged as the two largest and account for over half the world's population. Many frameworks have been developed to understand why religions grow, decline and persist, yet none fully account for the enduring case of Hinduism, a religion with over 1.3 billion followers worldwide. Dr. Feryl Badiani is an assistant professor at Sophia College for Women, Mumbai, India, but is soon moving to become a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. Her research and doctoral thesis focus on the puzzle of Hinduism, which understanding and aiming, sorry. aiming to understand how Hinduism has persisted across different linguistic communities in India. Dr. Faroo Baddiani, welcome to the Smooth Brain Society. Welcome. Wow, long time host, first time guest. Yes, you used to co-host many an episode when we did this segment called explaining atheism. A-Q-ism. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for the introduction. A few things to clarify. Yes, I may be an assistant professor right now, but there's no, there's like, that is the starting position at colleges in India. So not in India, in Mumbai University. So I'm not high up the pole. I'm pretty, down low. But yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me. Really, really excited to talk about. my research because I'm officially a doctor as of yesterday. Hey, nice. Well, big congratulations for that. um for those now that Feryl is not a co-host, she's actually a guest on the show talking about her research. We have a new co-host in Alexander Balan. Welcome, Alex, on the podcast. So Alex is a linguist, like is a language teacher, speaks multiple languages, is also a trained classical singer and is also an orthodox Christian. I don't know how relevant that is, but because we're talking about religion, um links in quite well. So you have a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu here to discuss Hinduism. How does it feel, Feryl? It feels great. It could be the start of a joke. A Christian, a Muslim and a Hindu walking door by happens. Indeed. a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim walk into a podcast. um OK, so let's so let's start with how we how we start with all our guests and you you should be used to that the other end of it. But if you could tell us a little bit about your journey, what got you interested in studying your topic and what brought you to where you are today? Well, I've grown up in Bombay, Mumbai, which is in India, uh which is predominantly a Maharashtrian state. So just for more context, think most of your listeners are not Indian, right? Well, just for like common knowledge, India is kind of divided into states and the states kind of one dominant language and kind of everyone in the state speaks that language. And with language divisions also come cultural divisions, normative divisions, religious divisions, etc. So while we may all be Hindu, one linguistic community is Hinduism is different to another linguistic community is Hinduism, etc. I grew up in Mumbai, which is a Maharashtrian state. So the dominant language is Marathi, but I was born into a Gujarati family. So I grew up observing religious differences between these two communities. quite intently and also like it's been a part of my upbringing and then and you know we prayed to like so many different gods like the Gujaratis prayed to Krishna and we have a whole different set of like festivals around specific gods that we pray to and then the Maharashis pray to a different set of gods and then they have different festivals that they prioritize etc etc and then I did my undergrad here but then I went from my masters uh to the London School of Economics where I did an elective on, I did an elective called cognition and culture, which a part of it was teaching us religion. And that's when I came across the big gods theory, which if they have seen, if anyone has seen your episode with Ayanna, she's explained that there, but roughly it speaks to the success of monotheistic religions today. your intro, said that Christianity and Islam have kind of become dominant and that is for a few reasons and that they have been culturally selected because they help us cooperate in larger societies that we live in today. So even though polytheism was dominant at the time, it didn't solve the problem of cooperating with strangers, which monotheistic religions help us kind of do today and we can come back to it. But the point is that actually, no, we should just say it now. This feels like a complete segue, but I feel like the buildup is necessary. But basically, the Big Gods theory states that religions that allow for supernatural monitoring and punishment, and they allow for cooperation amongst strangers, tend to do better and are selected for, right? That's why they survive. So if you think of Greek gods, think of like Zeus, and these other gods and how they were so easy to fool, right? Or like they were naive sometimes. Versus think of like a Christian God or like the God that is prayed to in Islam. And we believe that these almighty gods, they know everything, they know what you're doing, they know every thought that you're having, right? And any deviation from the prescribed kind of morality can come with a listed set of punishments like heaven and hell, know, ah retribution. oh So kind of internalizing these codes and learning that, if I deviate from this, I'll get punished, allows you to work with strangers, which in the past you didn't have to do because you could hide from the gods. What helped us was reputation. Like everyone kind of knows everyone. So when the group was smaller, like imagine when you lived in like a you feel like you in a village or like in a small apartment complex. You kind of know everyone living there. And so you know who's a good neighbor, who's a bad neighbor, who's likely to make noise, who's not likely to make noise. You kind of know these things. And so you can punish them yourselves. And that's why you kind of technically didn't need supernatural agents to do that for you. But as we started living in these mega societies that we live in today, it's becoming increasingly impossible to track everyone's reputation. Like how do you know who you're going to do business with is going to like cheat you or not cheat you. And that's a really, it's an incredible theory. speaks to speaks a lot to the kind why, you know, some religions are doing really well. Some religions are not doing well. It speaks so well to why some branches of Christianity have survived better than other branches of Christianity, et cetera. So it's a really great theory. And they kind of, because it's such a great theory, they were like, ah, it must explain. Hinduism and why it has survived today. Because otherwise, why would a polytheistic religion survive? Hinduism similarly has extremely naive gods. They can be fooled. There are so many stories of Shiva being fooled, et cetera, like them feeling rage and human emotions. So they were like, this theory of supernatural monitoring and punishment must apply to Hinduism. And they kind of applied this theory to Hinduism through the concept of karma. which is if you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. And it's kind of like this supernatural force of justice, which gives you the punishment you deserve, which is believed to allow for cooperation in large group societies. And my thing is, of course, that is true. I am not denying that that is not true, but I felt that that was a very incomplete picture of Hinduism. cannot be the only reason that Hinduism is doing so well, because then it doesn't explain why is it that we are not monotheistic ourselves or maybe only worshipping karma or maybe just one God. Why is it that we still pray to so many different versions of God, you know, or so many different of powers of or just of different gods, know, and why is it that sometimes different communities pray to different of powers of the same God? So the avatar of Krishna that maybe my family prays to would be very different to the avatar of Krishna that another family that is in another linguistic community prays to. these are like, this theory just felt a little incomplete, though highly true in terms of why Hinduism has survived, but incomplete. And that was where my question started. And that is what I kind of wanted to investigate, which is how is it that Hinduism as a polytheistic religion has survived when other polytheistic religions are not as popular anymore as they probably once were. And also, I just say it's not, we're not trying. It's not it's not because of the lack of trying. It's not like we didn't have Islamic rulers. It's not like we weren't exposed to Islam. If Islam was more adaptive, it should have been selected for more than Hinduism. It's not like we weren't exposed to Christianity through colonizers, but it still wasn't selected for it. There are many historical explanations and that when the colonizers came, they came with the intention of trade and not with the intention of spreading the religion. Of course, that is true. But still somehow, in my opinion, if it was far more adaptive than Hinduism, it should have stuck on. But it hasn't. And the polytheistic flavor has stayed quite strongly. And so my question is, why? We know Catholicism, a lot of it, when they became, when Catholicism spread in Rome. they kind of integrated the local gods into becoming saints. But we didn't have a similar structure. Our gods have stayed on as maybe gods. And so, well, that is my question, know? Like, why? What is the role of these thousands of deities that still exist? Yeah, sorry, that was quite a rant. No, it was very, very informative. uh I guess the one sort of thing is, I know this might not be your area of immediate expertise, but according to the theory, there's things like Shantoism and other sort polytheistic religions, folk religions, which I don't know if they've reduced, but I don't... But I think they still have sort of persisted, right? They haven't necessarily gone down. would similar sort of things apply to them? Or is Hinduism sort of the reason you're looking at it more, not just personal, but because it's so much larger than anything else? So the answer for me, the answer to that question is that I don't know about Shantoism any more than anyone else does. So maybe what they know is already true. I have nothing to comment on, nothing new, no novel insight to add. Also no particular question that seems like, ah, that's unanswered. Whereas Hinduism I know from within, it's something that I've embodied as I've grown up, you know. actively participate in every festival and like these prayers at home, everything so that when I was exposed to what people were, what researchers have written about Hinduism, I had so many questions. And so that's why I kind of focused on Hinduism. There was actually no other thought in mind. There was no other religion in that moment that I wanted to study at all. Fair enough. So I just had a curiosity because you mentioned at some point astrology. As a Christian, can give a little bit of a, I can open a small parentheses and say that uh from our perspective, astrology is not accepted. So it's kind of like considered witchcraft. And if you practice astrology, if you believe in it, you are basically, you're going to hell to keep it short. So I was wondering, yeah. I heard something of like you studying the stars and like the gods. We don't study the stars. Okay. Okay, so maybe I... we don't study the stars. But I did mention Christianity in the context of the saints were initially Roman gods, so many of them. Yeah, yeah. And also about that, do you feel like the idea that the Christians, we have like patron saints, so for example, a family can like pray to one saint for, in order to keep that family safe, do you feel like in Hinduism, there's the equivalent of like patron saints? Yeah, yeah, that's such a great question. That is something that I absolutely studied and I make references to. correct me if I'm wrong, but patron saints are ones that look after individual families. I see. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's absolutely correct. Yeah, mean, great, but I don't want to get that wrong. in Hinduism, or not again, I can't, I don't want to make blanket statements because like I said, Hinduism is very, very different across different communities. So, so on, on, on a broader level, especially in the Gujarati and Maharashtrian community, communities which have been communities that I have studied. We have something called a Kuldev. Kuld means family and dev means God. So literally a God of the family. And I make so many references in the end to how... the way Hinduism functions is actually the way even these big monotheistic religions are functioning. Like no monotheistic religion is as unified as everyone is making it seem. There are so many like sects in each of these monotheistic religions, right? Like even in a smaller religion like Judaism, there is, and smaller I mean in population size, there are still sects of like the different kind of Jews that there are. And it's because everyone, every group of people start to have different needs. And we kind of, we adapt religion and religion adapts to the needs of these specific communities. And so in fact, if we were to take some lessons away from my study and to look at other religions, the same answer as to why we have so many different gods, in Hinduism would answer why there are so many different saints in Catholicism, why people end up worshipping two different kinds of sects, maybe why in Islam people end up praying to one leader over another leader. There are many similarities and many parallels to draw. So yeah, I think that was a fantastic question and very relevant to what I've studied. I think the only statement I would change for Islam is not necessarily praying to a leader, but like to like follow the leader is probably a probably a better better connotation because between Sunniism, Shiaism and then all the others because they pray to one. yeah, it's more like the following of the caliphs are and like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, No, no, no. But did your Judaism example made me think of an interesting question which I had so Judaism for example is not just a religion but is also quite linked to ethnicity um to a large extent. uh Is Hinduism the same in the sense that it's do they sort of link it to ethnically being Indian or ethnically being Gujarati Marathi whatever is there that sort of thing or is it sort of like is this sort of like anybody can adopt it kind of thing it's that's another excellent question and an excellent probe. I would say it is very ethnically linked. So the gods that you pray to actually become symbols of your identity. They just become an extension of the community that you belong to. So in many ways, one can argue that, uh In India or in Hinduism, are two main large groupings of people or the two main ways in which you can divide people. One is the language that they speak. Two is the caste that they belong to. I argue that the language that one speaks is the first layer of division followed by caste. Some can argue that people in the Brahmin caste and so which is the highest caste and the lowest class caste are closer to each other in a given linguistic community than two Brahmins are to each other in different linguistic communities. So uh is that clear? Does that make sense? I feel like it. Okay, So m and so what we're seeing is that the first division of Hinduism in India, if we argue that linguistic division is the first division. or if we agree upon it, of course there would be people who disagree, if we agree that linguistic communities are the first divide, then religion splits or Hinduism splits at the level of linguistic communities first. uh And maybe to answer that question, let me give you a little bit of an insight towards what I found, and that will answer your question. So I found that the religion that is practiced in a given community is very unique to that given community. And it is linked to the way in which that community makes money. So Gujaratis, they pray to Krishna. Krishna is this morally ambiguous God who is known for strategy and decision making. There's an incredible story of him in the Mahabharata where he was approached by members of, there was a civil war going on between two brothers. Both sides of the brothers kind of came to ask him for something and he did and he handled, you he gave. both of them something, even though he had a clear preference for who should win. know, and Gujaratis are a business community. run, they kind of are, they are a very strong economic force in the country. Sahar knows that all too well. He makes way too many jokes about this with me because I'm a Gujarati. You know, we're stingy, we're cunning, whatever you want to call it, in whatever way. Krishna kind of adapts well because it allows you to navigate these difficult decisions you have to make. his morally gray ideologies really support, really support, you know, the business making endeavor of the Gujarati community. What's also important is that good. the Gujarati community, passed down businesses between male heirs, basically. Now women are starting to enter the field, but not really. And if you look at stories of Krishna, it's really about like these gopis, these like cow herders and their wives and everyone, like these women surrounding him and devoting themselves to him. And then if you look at the ritualistic prayer that we do, we pray to baby. We dress him, we bathe him, we put him in new clothes, et cetera, et cetera. That is like, and it's mostly done by women and it keeps women in the house. And what it does is that it allows the Gujarati business communities to signal how traditional they are, how rule following they are. And so they use religion as a way to get other people in the trade network to trust them. And so who they pray to becomes like a symbol of their ethnicity, of their linguistic community background, if that answers your question. Very similarly for the Maharashtrian community, they make money through salaried employment. In urban areas, of course, there's a big population of Maharashtrians who are farmers. I'm talking about people who are in urban areas. They really prioritize education. Education is the way to get ahead. And so the way they do that is that they predominantly pray to Ganesha, who is the God of knowledge, God of removing obstacles, et cetera, which aligns to the normative expectation of their economic background. And because of this, a lot of women are working. Like Maharashtra has some of the highest female literacy rates in the country, highest employment rates in the country, female employment rates in the country. And so, gods are then used as symbols of linguistic community background and origin. So it is, religion is highly ethnically bound in Hinduism, just as it is in Judaism. Of course you can externally learn it, but these are all socialized codes You are taught this since you were really, really young. And unless you're born into this community, you won't realize how these gods are acting as symbols of your own identity and your own linguistic community background. No, that was very well circled around too because I was wondering for a second where you were going with it first. Yeah, I just had to give all that background to be like, but it does make sense. And just to like add to it a little bit, like I did, I was working as a field manager in Mauritius. Okay. And I saw the weirdest thing. I was so perplexed by it when I was in Mauritius. So Mauritius has a very big Indian expat community there. A lot of them were taken as indentured laborers ah a long time ago. very broadly, you will find three linguistic communities in three Hindu linguistic communities in Mauritius. You'll find the, they call the Hindus, but they are from Northern India. They are from Bihar. They speak Hindi in that space. You, they pray to Shiva. You'll find the Maharashtra and the Marathis. They pray to Ganesha and then the Tamilians and they pray to Kartikey. Mind you that Ganesha and Kartikeya or Ganesha and Kartikeya another name for Kartikeya is Murugan which is the predominant name that they use in Mauritius. They are brothers and they are both sons of Shiva. Okay. However, however. People there will not identify as Hindus. Hindus are the Hindi speaking people from Bihar Marathis will call themselves Marathis and not Hindus. Tamilians will call themselves Tamilians and not Hindus. Even though they're praying to the same pantheon, even though they're literally praying to like the brother and father of each other, each other communities, whatever, religious, whatever. I forgot my sentence structure as I was saying it. But I found it really interesting. But what they're doing is that they're using these gods as a way to symbolize how they are different from each other. Because they all speak the same language now. They all speak Creole there. They have not retained their linguistic, their mother tongue anymore. So they are kind of signaling their ethnic background through these gods by not calling themselves Hindus because Hindus are only the Hindi speaking people. which is really interesting. Yeah, that's incredibly fascinating. So you said that since they are in Mauritius they speak Creole. Does it kind of sort of influence the way they see religion if they speak a different language? Another really good question. um Maybe, but I think mostly it comes from uh the socialized religion. How they are, like specifically like the Priyata, Shiva, Ganesha, Murugan is very socialized. But to answer your question, because the Creole there, of course, it's a pidgin language of French, but there were a lot of African slaves in Mauritius as well. big mixing of culture of like Indian culture as well as African culture. And that has obviously led to the formation of Creole. So I don't know the direction of causality if it is language that has shaped it or what. But I was having a really interesting conversation with this. We had a research assistant there, name is Pushkar, he's really lovely. And also when I was there, all of them, like he's a Hindu, he's a Hindi speaking, his background is Bihar. in this speaking, but obviously in Mauritius, they're called the Hindus. And when I went to his house, they like really venerated their ancestors, but not one specific ancestor. Like, of course we bow down to our ancestors, but very specific, like my dead grandparents or something like that. They very vaguely pray to their ancestors. You know, we, We believe that our ancestors will protect us. We need to feed the ancestors. We need to give water to the ancestors. There's a lot of focus on ancestors, ancestral worship. But I was really surprised by it. And that is why I had a problem with, which will be a hot take later, which is why are you studying Hinduism in Mauritius? Which is not wrong, but they're getting a very specific strand of Hinduism. Right. Because this ancestral worship I haven't seen here in India. And my theory is that it's things that they have taken on from the African, what do you say, companions and African nation state members. Because I mean, obviously, don't know. mean, African has a very broad term. actually don't know where in Africa these slaves came from. And obviously, Again, my references are only coming from pop culture because I know so little of African cultures and how they worship their deities because again, it's so varied. So I don't know. simply a speculation or a hypothesis. I have no evidence for this. But I suspect that this is coming from religion adapting to the very specific cultural background of Mauritius. And so I think, of course, the language that they're speaking, which is creating a shared entity and a shared identity, is also probably allowing for an exchange of ideas and religious ideas that somewhere is perhaps shaping the way in which they're practicing their religion, which is very unique to their cultural context, which we don't see here as much. Can I spend into like a second question? In Hinduism, there's such a thing as like the Day of the Dead, like it's a specific dedicated day where you're like, let's say worship your like ancestors, you have altars, you sort of eat in their name, something like that. I'm speaking from like more like the Christian perspective, so like Orthodox Catholic where we like share food in the name of the people that we have lost. I personally haven't heard of it, but that is not to say that it probably doesn't exist. It probably does exist. I just did a quick Google and it's called Fitru Paksha, where you involve, offer some food and water to the ancestors. It happens during, it's a 16 day period of honoring the ancestors. So it definitely exists, but it's not something that I have witnessed myself. But it could be simply like a communal difference thing. Like I said, Hinduism is so varied and different communities practice it so differently. And it varies even at the familial level. So it probably, from a simple Google search, it does exist. Mm-hmm. But what's interesting is that we don't venerate our ancestors every day of the year. They have a literal shrine for the ancestors in their house that they pray to every day. that was the difference that struck to me. But I hope that answered your question. Yeah, it did it. Thank you. I mean, the influence of other regions on religion is very interesting because not just within India, but do you think I know you stayed in the UK for a bit. Do you think sort of practices of Hinduism, what you've seen, are slightly different? Although I guess the people moving over here has been more recent, hasn't only been like five, the past five, six generations. Do you think you have you seen any differences between India and how you grew up versus Hinduism practices? here. did in that, but this speaks more to like psychology of the diaspora, where I found that Hindu practices in the diaspora community is far stronger and far more rigid than they were in India. It's almost like because they have to hold on to this identity, that they are very scared to move away from it and let it get bastardized in any way by any other external influence. Whereas in India, you find that the practice of it is far more fluid, far more subject to change. And this comes from the way I celebrate in Navratri, which is this nine day festival for Gujaratis. I Navratri is a nine day festival that celebrates Durga killing this demon. And different communities celebrate it differently. For the Gujaratis, we dance. We dance, like in the evening, it's like a party. for nine days. You go, you dress up, you go, you dance, you do like these folk dances called Garba. Traditionally, you form concentric circles around the deity and you dance kind of around her. What's happening now in Bombay is that you just break into your smaller circles and you do your own thing and you're dancing to Bollywood, et cetera, et cetera. But both in Wellington and in London, but it was far more rigid in London, people were like every concentric circle kind of did the same thing. Like they did the same step. Like, okay, if it's one clap. uh then everyone will do one clap. Then if it's two claps, then everyone will do two claps. And it's just so much more rigid and structured than it is in India. Like even in Wellington, like inside the, different concentric circles can do different kinds of dances. It was a lot more fluid than what I witnessed in the UK. And my theory is that it's the diaspora culture wanting to hold on to uh religiosity, you know, because if it changes, then you can say, oh, we're like giving up our culture or letting go of our culture. don't in India, you don't really have that kind of as strongly. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. Of course it does in terms of like the whole Hindu Khatre Mein, which is the Hindus are in danger, political narrative that is being evoked right now. So of course that fear exists, but that is the difference that I um observed. I noticed a really interesting difference. Maybe you can shed light on it, I, terms of differences in the Islamic communities, okay. I was watching Lazawal Ishq. For anyone wondering what is Lazawal Ishq? It's Pakistani love island. It's incredible. Can I just say so myself? It is so unhinged. They are fighting about food like all the time. But one of the fights that they had was about someone calling some restaurant or some behavior, Patani, which is not the dominant strand of Islam, I guess, in Pakistan. I didn't know that. So when they had that fight, I had to rewind it like five times to understand what they were fighting about. So when I did Google, I found that in Pakistan, Pathans are more like tribalistic in nature, whereas the Sufi-Sindhi Muslims are more like modern, more eloquent, more whatever, well-off, et cetera. And so you see these divisions even in Islam within Pakistan. So maybe you want to comment on what you think is happening or what that is. No, I think it's very similar to what you mentioned with Hinduism, that idea of first the external idea for like expats if you're of sort of like losing your traditions. I feel one thing which I've noticed considering being a Muslim from India, sort of cultural practices between Muslims and Hindus within Hyderabad are probably way more similar than like Muslim from, say, Egypt or something like this. The cultural differences, although you probably we're both Muslims are quite broad or really stark. But even without that, now, when you go and see like Indian Muslims here or Pakistani Muslims, I think like Indians and Pakistanis aren't very different. don't know. People might have different opinions. But eh like you said with the Patani's, like it's a link of religion, but it's also that tribal cultural ethnic sort of divide which they have their own sort of traditions. They have their own sort of practices. which I mean, like we were talking about Gujaratis when you were saying, they're cunning. They have their own stereotypes in the same vein. There's also things between lineage differences. So Muslims who sort of are considered to have come over from either the Middle East or Iran, they consider themselves higher or different to like Indian Muslims who might have been converts from not just from Islamic rule, but even from when Islam first came to India. well before Islamic rule when it came through Kerala ages ago through traders and things. So there's also those kind of historical divides. And yeah, I think I'm going on like multiple tangents through things linking back to how I see the similarities within culture and within a religion as well. You might be praying to the same God, unlike Hinduism with his different deities, but within the practices itself and the social hierarchies which form. And then when you leave the country, how you want to maintain those traditions, and sometimes they're way more rigid than Hyderabadi Muslims in UK or New Zealand might be way more rigid than Hyderabadi Muslims in Hyderabad. um So it's quite. Yeah. anything? Do you remember Hugh? oh What was his name? We interviewed him. Hugh Turpin talking about Catholicism in Ireland and how American Irish are more Irish and Catholic than the Catholics in Ireland themselves. eh idea. It's same idea. It's more diasporic culture. Hmm. Yeah. So, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I touch a question on what you guys discussed? you, from my perspective, you are saying that the diaspora is religious, maybe even more religious than the people inside the country. Am I correct? I don't know if they're cognitively more religious, but they seem to be behaviorally more religious. They're like practicing the rituals with so much more rigidity than like people in the home countries are. Like there's a lot more like fluidity, a way to like, um like the rituals, let me put it better this way. To me, what I observed, is that rituals seem to be evolving far faster in the home countries of the religion than they do in the non-home countries or the away countries of the religion. But I don't know if cognitively attracts, I just know behaviorally, this is what is happening. Hmm, it makes sense because if you if we look into like the media like the media that Hollywood puts out not the media that comes from India when they like showing people who have Hinduism as their religion and talking about like a Marvel TV show I don't remember exactly the name but it was like a very popular Marvel TV show that came out with like a girl she was like a superhero and uh Her family they were very much all day every day wearing like the traditional clothes their house was very traditional She was wearing American clothes and she was stigmatized by her own family for not wearing her traditional clothes more and she increasingly became more American and the family wanted to relocate back to India to kind of reintegrate and be where they feel more comfortable. then the girl was American basically, so she couldn't do it. So that was also kind of tying into it. Is the Hollywood media... perpetuating the idea that the diaspora is respecting, like they're keeping up the traditions more than maybe in India. Maybe. mean, the first generation definitely, like the first generation migrants definitely are. And then to a degree second, I feel like the second generation migrants are like in such like in a state of like dissonance being pulled between two very different cultures, both kind of hating one the other from the inside, like, you know, Americans being like, immigrants, Indians, power blind, and Indians being like. the loss of our culture, white people don't respect culture, etc. I feel like it's a, I feel like for them, it's like really sometimes a behavioral decision they have to make to be aligned to one or the other. It's a very interesting, um especially like in America where tolerance is decreasing pretty rapidly. I feel like it becomes a behavioral choice. Do you want to assimilate or no? And then if you don't assimilate you're at the you suffer being discriminated against. But when I met a bunch of people in the UK, met a lot of people my age. were very like, you know, when I went, I carried a lot of internalized racism. And so I never want to tell people I was from India. It's far different now, obviously I've grown up, I've learned to accept everything, but I would never want to tell people I was from India. So I would just tell people I was from Bombay, not even Mumbai, Bombay. uh And I met so many uh locals, Indians, but locals, who were very proud of their Gujarati identity. And they celebrated these festivals with far more enthusiasm than I did. And it was so baffling to me because in Bombay, don't meet, I mean, of my class and caste background. You don't meet people who are very religious anymore. So I was very confused and perplexed by it. I don't study diaspora uh enough to know what are the mechanisms that are going on in their religious decision-making, but it is a very pertinent question. And the way diaspora behaves is and should be treated distinctly to how non-diaspora behave and practice religion. And I do agree with that point. quite a bit. Right, right. If I may be allowed to maybe sort of like open up their parentheses and ask a question. um I think I was thinking maybe when like people come and visit India and they like see maybe they like stumble upon like a festival they've never heard of. How can they like comfortably integrate and is there such a thing as like maybe like an uncomfortableness coming from like the locals to kind of sort of like integrate the tourists as they like are just there. This is beyond my field of expertise, so I wouldn't know. In terms of like religious knowledge, I can tell you that you can't really convert to Hinduism. Right, right, right. You can't, and if you do, you would automatically be considered of the lowest caste, or you'd be outside of the caste system, basically, because you need to be born into given caste systems, which is very inherently a part of being Hindu. And you can't let any outsider claim to be a part of any other caste hierarchy because that threatens to dilute the power that certain castes consolidate. And so... non-Hindus will always be outsiders. But that again depends on where you are. Like if you're in Bombay, people like we, because it's such like a melting pot of cultures where everyone comes here for work, we celebrate every single festival that there is as insiders and outsiders. So there is a greater level of comfort for other people to integrate because of the given heterogeneity of the city. But if you go to like a tier two city in Gujarat, which has only Gujarati speaking people. And you try to assimilate into the festivals, it would be harder, right? Because it's such a homogenous space. Right. I mean, I guess from a tourism aspect, everybody loves like people are very welcoming. I'll put it that way. Like this is I guess for Feryl Feryl was speaking more to like the integration if you want to be part of sort of like the culture tradition. white tourist, you'll be fine. If you're a black tourist, not so fine. no. oh Indians are still deeply racist, like Mahatma Gandhi was so racist. This is true. This is facts. Let's I wanted to talk to you about some of the specifics of your study ah or studies um regarding like regarding your journey. you sort of found sort of these differences in how they revere various Hinduism, you revere various deities in different cultures based based on not just the linguistic aspect, but they also fit your lifestyle preferences, like the education or sort of in business and blah, blah, blah. So what was sort of like the process of going over this? Because I guess from the outside you could in theory, not, well, you're still being an insider, but from a research perspective, you could just make this theory up, saying like, these people study, they pray to the God of knowledge. This links up quite well, but I'm assuming... like there's more evidence to back this up than just that. Yeah, for sure. That's a great question and I'm happy to dive into the details. oh well, let me specify a little bit more. I've taken a cultural evolutionary perspective, which is the idea that cultural systems and cultural artifacts kind of adapt to the environment that one is in. oh systems that kind of persevere, we can make. a large assumption that to a degree they may be adaptive or at least are causing no net harm. So the question was, why is it that these, so I started with the question that is then why is it that these gods or these different iterations of the same gods have survived? Are they adaptive in some way or not? And first I thought, um I started with the hypothesis, which is that these gods are perhaps supporting the local economic structure of each community. But like I said, Krishna is supporting the Gujarati economic style of doing trade or the dominant economic niche of doing trade. So roughly that was my assumption is that the gods that people will pray to will to a degree be adaptive to their socio-economic niche or their very specific socio-economic culture. But what the socio-economic culture is in Gujarat is different to the socio-economic culture in the socio-economic space in Maharashtra. And so I was like, And I know these gods are different. I had this external knowledge that it kind of seems to map onto each other. Let's investigate if the strews, this is just my hunch. And then I had read a bunch of work by Benjamin Poroszki where he did this in the Tuva Republic in Siberia, where he found that gods, were these like land, there were these like local spirits that they prayed to, prayed to. Initially, the spirits that they prayed to, the shrines were placed on land borders because their role was believed to be handling land related dispute, preventing people from trespassing, very specific concerns related to land. And over time, when these Cuban people were asked more recently, what do you think makes these gods angry? What do you think makes these gods upset? They said very little. local problems like littering and alcohol abuse because milk fermentation has become a very relevant problem in the Toovan Republic, very specific. And so you kind of see that the way people perceive gods and the minds of these gods and the concerns of these gods and evolve to match the local needs of the community. And so I was like, maybe that's exactly what's happening with Hindu gods. the morality and the minds of these Hindu gods must be very specific to the communities in which they are venerated. So the way I started was I did exactly what Benjamin Porzicki did. I kind of literally took his questions and asked them to Gujaratis and Maharashtrians, which was like, firstly, tell me who are the gods that you pray to, who are the dominant gods in your community and your family and for yourself. Now, tell me maybe five things that makes each of these gods angry. Yeah, I took three gods and I was like, tell me what are five things that makes this god angry? What are five things that makes this god upset? What are five things that makes this god happy? And you know what was so similar is that everyone struggled to answer this question. Like they just didn't want to answer it. They didn't have an answer for it. If I pushed them, the answers were very basic and very similar, like corruption and like stealing and theft and hurting someone. only when I pushed them to answer this question. was like, please answer this question. They're like, if you say so, but otherwise they would be like, don't really think of gods this way. We don't really think of what they're concerned about. And so that's when I realized that the moral concerns of Hindu gods is not something that's pertinent to the followers. But then people were kind of insistent that these gods were different. and they represented different things, know, like Hanuman represents strength and, you know, Krishna shows us the way and Ganesha is the god of wisdom and the god of, you know, like he removes obstacles, such specific niches, but still the way they thought and how they thought what would make these gods angry was the same or similar. You know, ideally it should be different. Like maybe I thought. Say, Ganesha is the god of education, so he should get more angry if someone doesn't want to study or is lazy with studying. He also just cared about, don't hurt people, don't steal, don't do this. Maybe one very specific one, like, don't waste food because he likes to eat food. So that was very interesting to me, you know, and I was like, what is going on? And firstly, I thought I had picked a completely rubbish research project because it just didn't track. I just didn't realize that I was so focused on how their modalities were so similar that I didn't catch on to the distinctiveness of each God. uh So then at the end of this study, I came up with a hypothesis after I started focusing on the distinctiveness that maybe Hindu gods are acting as role models in a given community where they're helping and representing the important norms of that community. Right? So Krishna is embodying moral grayness. He's also embodying patriarchy. And the reason that he's maybe embodying it is because it helps people in trade. people have either come up with these conceptions of Krishna or these conceptions of Krishna have led to this cultural economic background of the Gujarati community. But either way, it's cyclical now, right? The way you think of Krishna kind of reinforces the based background of the Gujarati community. And then it goes in a loop and a loop and a loop and a loop. And so that's how I came up with this kind of like hypothesis. I called it a theory, but I was saying I don't have enough quantitative evidence for to call it a theory. What I did then, my second study, I did a vignette related experiment where I modeled some stories based on either Ganesha or Krishna. Right? So Krishna related stories is where people chose enterprise, money over family. Ganesha related background, Ganesha related stories were ones where they chose, where they actively chose family and studying over risk-related business decisions. And I saw how much people agreed to it, how much they agreed to the protagonist's decisions from different communities. Statistically, didn't get any statistically significant difference. the Gujaratis and Maharashtrians were pretty much agreeing similarly to different vignettes. of it is because it's a polytheistic religion. You're not just praying to Krishna, not praying to Kanisha. You'll find Kanisha, there's a Kanisha in my house as well, right next to Krishna. So it's not that cleanly cut. But a part of it is because Gujarati women were disagreeing with Uzrahi men. Mmm. And so that was masking the difference. If I just looked at Gujaratis as a whole and Maharashtrians as a whole, you weren't getting much significant difference. But Gujarati women, because they are not allowed to work, they agreed with the Maharashtrian protagonists far more than the Gujarati men did. Does that make sense? oh So Gujarati men agreed with Krishna based decisions far more than they agreed with Ganesha based decisions. But Maharashtrian men women and Gujarati women agreed with Krishna based decisions a lot more. And then we did like a manipulation check where we're like, which God does the story remind you of? And these Krishna based vignettes reminded people of Krishna more than Ganesha and these Ganesha based vignettes reminded people of Ganesha more than Krishna. So that kind of track, you know, like people are able to see these gods in human decision making already. Then I took, and I could see these gender based differences already. And so what I did was in my third study, took few data of like 25,000 people and I correlated closeness to Krishna with patriarchy. One, we found that Gujaratis pray to feel closer to Krishna way more than they feel close to Ganesha. Gujaratis are also far more patriarchal than the Maharashtrians are. We also found that those who pray to Krishna across the country are also likely to be far more patriarchal than those who pray to Ganesha and those who pray to Lakshmi have an inverse relationship with patriarchy. towards this idea that gods are modeling norms. Mm-hmm. And they're modeling these norms that are very specific to the community. I guess a follow-up question, guess it's more of a theory is if Gujarati women do not prefer like, so do not agree with the vignettes and do not necessarily prefer the patriarchal structure which praying to Krishna provides in general in the community then why isn't there a higher reverence to say Ganesha or in general what excellent question. It's because of the rituals associated to Krishna. Is it okay if I move my camera? Just give me a second. uh Let me, let me, instead of describing it to you, let me show it to you. Can you see my temple? Can you, where is it? Can you see it? Can you see this God here? This one? Yeah. That's baby Krishna. Okay. If I take it away, you'll be able to see. Can you see how he's Yeah. How he's adorned with jewelry, et cetera. My family, my, my family, which is a nuclear family doesn't do it as much, but my grandmother also has Bal Krishna at her house. I should probably sit down so it looks more professional, but my grandmother also has a Bal Krishna in her house. This is a baby version of Krishna. They, venerate him. They treat him like a child. My grandmother spends two, three hours praying to him. But prayer is not just reciting prayers. It's waking him up, bathing him, dressing him up, putting this jewelry on him, making sure that there is water for him, making sure that there is food for him, there are toys for him. In some places that I went, people had a mosquito netted bed. for this almighty God, you know? It's doing nothing, but it is allowing women. And there's nothing that says that only women should be doing it. But when I went and did ethnographic research, it was mostly women doing it, or retired men. Mm-hmm. Yeah? But what this ritual does, it really allows them to embody and internalize this patriarchy. Mm-hmm. They did not agree with Krishna in the vignette. They didn't agree with the risk, prone-ness of Krishna because they're taught to value family over enterprise because they're not allowed to work or they're not allowed to as much as encouraged to, in some cases allowed to work. And so this is very strongly connected to my postdoc where we're focusing on how ritual behavior when internalized impact the decisions that you make. You're in these, this ritual is keeping women at home, is allowing them to make this decision of kind of adhering to patriarchal structures. Does that make sense? If this is something that you're socialized into from a very young age, the rituals associated with these gods allow you to rehearse these norms to an extent where they become embedded. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I also think this gives sort of a little bit of empowerment. You like you have control of doing these things, like you're in charge of making sure baby Krishna is like dressed, faith, the entire process. And within that, you feel sort of a responsibility within the religion and that sort of idea giving importance to it. Or am I just making this up, being like this could also be a reason why you maintain patriarchy because of the because of the empowerment it gives you within the religion itself think the latter, where it's it is allowed, it's making you feel empowered to keep these patriarchal structures in place. Let me contrast it with the Maharashtrian daily prayer ritual. It's five minutes long. You In many cases, they don't even actively pray. Maybe they just light a dia and they go. They are all working professionals. like, they don't have time for these elaborate rituals. And so that's what's happening. Does that make sense? So your rituals are really allowing you to embody these norms that then reinforce these structures or these local niches or these local socioeconomic niches that are in play. Of course, I have to caveat it again that I speak only from my experience with the Gujarati and Maharashtrian community. Maybe religious structures don't keep in place economic structures in other linguistic communities. But I think that they are keeping in place some structures that are important in those communities. Maybe not economic, but something else. I don't know. worth investigating. I just haven't. Can you leave any of these concepts or can you switch between the two? between being two different gods. Yes. Yes, you can. And again, this is why Hinduism is polytheistic. Just because someone prays to Krishna doesn't mean you won't pray to any other God. Let me take you back to my little temple here. It's important because I feel like this is what will... Look at the number of different gods that are here. We have Lakshmi, have uh Saraswati, have Dattatreya. No, that's Hanuman. Sorry, got confused with the heads. have Hanuman, we have... No, that's not... I'll tell you that's Lakshmi Saraswati, I'm sorry. And we have Ganpati here. And then we have a Shiva Parvati thing going on here. There are like so many gods. And just because we pray to one more strongly doesn't mean we don't revere another. It's just who's... Who's prayed to more dominantly than someone else? But let me give you an example. Like I can pray to Krishna all I want. I could be faithful to Krishna all I want, but maybe before an exam, people will still pray to Ganesha because he's still the God of knowledge and remove him obstacles. But before an exam, you'll just be like, my God, Ganesha, please. In that moment, you won't pray to Krishna. It can be very, it's very situationally specific. You know what I mean? Yep, yep, yep, yep. What about the leaving part? Can you like stop being part of any of these? I mean, nothing is dominant. Sorry, that was Lakshmi, not Saraswati. I know that now. I would have known from all the money coming out of her hands. Is the goddess of wealth. Can you leave? I mean, yeah, like one can leave any religion they want. Nobody's stopping you. But it's socialized. You're socialized into religion. Yeah, so kind of sort of there are no like consequences. They're not like the family is gonna like push you away and sort of Maybe, ah again, very varied. Like some spaces don't have that. Some spaces do have that. uh Like my family is quite not religious. My mom, dad, brother and I are not religious. I mean, they are, but in different degrees. And we don't care, but it's because, and I have a whole paper on atheism that's come out of this research. It really depends on the amount of socialization you've had. how much ritual exposure you've had, and the amount of secular education that you've been exposed to, along with your caste background. These three things play a huge role in the kind of non-religious beliefs that you're likely to show. Is there any western influence into the predominance of wanting to be atheist? Yeah, secular education, number one. That's one of the greater exposure to secular education, which includes Western ideas and Western ideologies. The greater decline in religiosity is predicted, but this is kind of across the globe. Do you see any consequences, direct consequences in the society because of atheism? Is it like talked about it in like the media, the televisions are talking about it? Just a curiosity. I haven't, I personally haven't observed anything or any particular consequences of not being religious, but you have to take what I say with a grain of salt. come from, I live in Mumbai, like in Mumbai because it's so heterogeneous, nobody cares. Mm-hmm, I see. I mean, there's the thing which you mentioned at the very start of a little bit of ah the same sentiment, the political sentiment of Hinduism is under threat kind of thing. So I feel I feel because of it, they can be if your family believes that then there might be more of a risk or like a social risk of leaving Hinduism there or. agree, actually, now I remember. So when I was doing research in Gujarat, everyone said that they were very religious. And one person who was just a little less religious was very scared to say it in front of his family. uh Not for social isolation, but like he just didn't want to disrespect normative sentiments. And it's not like he didn't believe in God, but he just, so I asked them like, How much do you think religion influences your daily life? Or how much do you believe in religion? And then he was like, I believe in religion like 70%. And he felt really guilty for not believing in it 100%. But like I said, it's really determined by how much religious socialization you've had. The Gujaratis are exposed to very, very elaborate rituals from the get go. Like I said, like I told you about the Sringar ceremony of baby Krishna. Because it's so elaborate, it kind of comes into the concept of creds. which is something else that has been discussed on this podcast, think with Hugh Turpin himself um or with Ayanna, but these are called credibility enhancing displays. It's where you put your money where your mouth is or you put your mouth where your money is. You perform, you actually show that you care. show, like you walk the walk, you don't just talk the talk. It's a way of finding out who doesn't really believe. And when you see people investing so much time, money, energy into these rituals, you believe that, they must be true. And they must lead to something. And so the more you're exposed to it, the more you're likely to believe in religion. In Gujarat, because these credits are so high, because of these intense daily rituals, A lot of people are very religious. In Maharashtra, because prayers are so quick, you see a very different religious landscape and a lot more religious diversity, including people who are not religious in Maharashtra. Right. I think I have just one more question. um And that relates again, I guess, a little bit to how we spoke about men and women. then the sort of concept of, I know you've gotten to praying to multiple gods, but the sort of concept of um considering, let's say, Ganesha, the most important or the most prayed to say in the Maharashtrian community. What about business owners in the Maharashtrian community? a community is not just business or just education or just one thing or the other. Do they sort of mold the God to fit their place in society? Or do they change their prayers based on their position in society? Great question. I only met like one or two Maharashtrian business people. This is not to say that Maharashtrians don't have business people. They do. uh I just didn't meet as many as I met in Gujarat. Like all the men I met in Gujarat had a business of their own. Like they run a small shop. They don't need to have employees, but it's their own business. oh The numbers were far lower in maharashtra but those that I did meet did show a reverence for the way Gujaratis behaved. But I didn't see any difference in the way that they were practicing religion themselves. But they were reverential towards the Gujarati businessmen and their way of doing business. So maybe they learned from a different community instead of gods. But uh I don't know enough to be able to comment on that. I like to give a very funny example of me and my now boyfriend, my now new boyfriend. eh So I just got my PhD, right? And I go around telling my family and they don't care. They just not able to understand or grasp, oh like if it's a big deal or no. Like when I came back, my parents were like, Sorry to tell you, Feryl but you're 30 and you're hardly making any money. And I was like, okay, but I have this amazing degree. And they were like, okay. And when I finished my masters and I wanted to get this, you know, this kind of well-paying job, my mom very scandalously told me that, you know, Feryl, why would you choose slavery when you can run your own business? my now boyfriend's parents, he has his own business and he has a graphic designer, he has his own company where they do design work. And he initially had a job but he hated it and he wanted to quit and start his own business, which he now has one. But when he was about to start, before he started his parents were like, why do want to do a business? Why don't you work for a little bit and get some more job experience? They really were shunning him. They were like, no, no, no, no. completely different approaches. You know, so, I don't know. That is very interesting. It's too funny. was curious since our country has like many like patron saints and many saints to celebrate. Do you guys have like national holidays where everything is like closed and you just stay home and chill? We definitely have way too many holidays, which I'm not complaining about, but we do. Right. Yeah, I mean, I can never speak to it, right? School was great. The number of holidays we got for every Hindu, Christian, Muslim festival. And then also you had... we have holidays for Eid. We just had like a three week holiday for Diwali. We're gonna have a holiday, we're gonna break for Christmas now. There'll be Parsi New Year, there'll be some other new year that'll happen soon. are, I love that Eid happens so frequently. There are like at least four Eids in a year, am I right? I mean, there's two big ones, but then there's other smaller ones which they tend to give holidays for. It depends based on who. there's the two big ones, which definitely you will. then depending on like the school, the university, the whatever, they might give like there's two others which you might get it for as well. So yeah. good. Very exciting. It's great to be a teacher in this space. Okay, what Okay, final question from me then. This is one which Beth started and I really like it. It's so if you were given, let's say the ethics board has gone on holiday and you've been given 10 15 billion pounds, how much ever you want an unlimited amount of funds, what would be your dream research project to do? God, I would want to start my own religion. Yes, firstly, one, become a cult leader. Two, my biggest critique, which, my God, I got literally like railed for this during my defense. You can't establish causality of like, if gods are like influencing norms or if, you know, the norms are influencing the gods and the stereotypes about the gods. And the thing is, there's no actual way. of deciding causality of what is determining who and the shape of what. So I would love to have like a nascent like commune and then one by one introduce a different set of gods to them and then see if that is shaping their behavior, you know, which I can't do in any other way. Like I can, but you have to be so creative for it. But if I was given millions and gazillions of dollars, I'll just start my own cult and have my own role models and my own gods. will also be a millionaire myself while doing this. Convert $15 million to $30 million to a billion dollars and then my parents will be so proud of me. I mean, what is a cult if not just a business? OK, on that lovely, lovely note, thank you, Feryl, for coming on. OK, fine. I was going to record them after, but we can record them now if you want. OK. a hot take later. We can do a hot take later. Whatever you want. My hot take, my hot take is that, which is very similar, but my hot take is that people should just do research in the places they are from and give voices to people to do research where they are from. I find nothing more irritating than to be preached at. You know, and who did their PhD in New Zealand studying Hinduism. They give me money. I'm sorry, India has no money. You should give me money. That's what I mean. Give me money. My parents will be so proud of me. Two birds with one stone. I do like the hot take. It's very annoying when people from other cultures come say, oh, this is the... But it has to come with a lot of collaboration and a lot of economic gain for the host countries as well. And this is true for me as well. I'm a little culture vulture in that I have gone and taken from the Gujarati and Maharashtrian communities. I've not given anything back. I'm still finding out ways to do it. I don't think there is a perfect way to do this. I don't know how to give back to these communities. And money is not really... always a way to do this because it isn't. But I feel like I wish I knew how to uplift my participants just as much as their research is uplifting me in my career. But at least I belong to these communities, so I feel a lot less guilty. Now imagine you go to a completely different community. You take from them and give nothing in return. I feel like I mean, I know there isn't a right way to do this, but I think it should be something that we start thinking about a lot more actively. No, that's very good. That's a very good point. Okay. give me money. I mean, we spoke about religion a lot. Another thing, I guess, which I can ask you is, are there any sort of misconceptions about Hinduism or for what you've learned from your research, which you think people should know about? No, like I said, it wasn't they weren't misconceptions. What they had researched was done well. You know, I was wrong when I thought they had not researched it well. What they have researched like the role of karma still stands. The reason people don't think about the morality of gods is because karma is really taking care of this moral aspect of supernatural monitoring and punishment. So they weren't wrong. It was just incomplete. You know, but I do. I do get a little like, not upset, but just a little like, you know, like this, you know, when like you're just appropriating Hindu symbols, not that it matters because it has become a very hegemonic religion recently. So I don't care for it anymore. But I just feel like, yeah, I just get annoyed when I see like, ohm tattoos on white people. I just can't help myself. I just can't. I just can't. Does it hurt? Does it hurt that they co-opted the swastika? Yeah, when I was in Israel, I shouldn't, but this was like way ago. I was like 2019 before everything happened. I wouldn't, you know, go there again or do research there again. I was pretty naive, but I was 21. I went there to do some research. Um, I was living with, you know, an incredible host family. mean, they were really nice to me. I don't know what their beliefs are about Palestine right now, but, uh, And they were really upset that I said that we still use the swastika. And I am like, that's not my problem that it was taken from us. You cannot be policing me on my own culture. Not that they were policing me, but I felt the rage. was like, that's insane. How can you be saying that to me? Yeah. OK. Now, awesome. So on those hot takes, on those misconceptions, on everything we have learned, thank you so much, Feryl for coming on, talking about your work. Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being here. Thank you and thank you everybody for listening. And until next time, take care. Cool. Bye.