This influence of Islam led many Hindus to prefer the formless ( nirguni, nirakar) divine, over divinity with form ( saguni, sakar). Their raid on temples, which was for political reasons and economic loot (temples were repositories of great wealth), was justified by stating it was an exercise against infidel idolatry. Before the British, it was the Muslim rulers of India who frowned upon idol worship. The tension between giving God form and stripping God of any form is an ancient one. However, many Hindu traditionalists rejected this idea. That idol worship is a later-day corruption. And so many Hindu reformers went to the extent of saying that “true” Hinduism, in its pristine form (by which they meant Vedas), had no idols. In the 19th century, as the British became masters of India, Hindus were pressurised to defend the practice of idol worship. This question is rooted in Abrahamic myth that frowns upon God being given any form, and the Biblical condemnation of idolatry as indicative of a false religion. Why not ? Who said how a Hindu or any human is supposed to worship the divine? Who made these rules? We can access this limitlessness through the limitation of artificial and natural forms, even using icons … that the ignorant contemptuously refer to as idolatry. Hindu sages knew that the divine is infinite potential and has infinite expressions.
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