Essay on the Social Significance of Cults in India.
The term cult may widely refer to a religious group with relatively few adherents whose beliefs or practices are regarded by others as strange or sinister.
The term cult in origin simply denotes “religious practice”. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of 20th century, especially since the 1980s and as a result of the anti-cult movement, which uses the term in reference to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and possibly dangerous.
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The popular, derogatory sense of the term has no currency in academic study of religions, where “cults” are subsumed under the neutral label of “new religious movement”, while academic sociology has partly adopted the popular meaning of the term
It is significant that, although various sects of Hinduism follow their own sets of literature, most of the Hindus recognize the sacredness of Vedas – the oldest text of Hinduism. “Vedism was almost entirely concerned with the cult of fire sacrifice (Yajna) and the continual regeneration of the universe that resulted from it. By means of the correspondences that linked the ritual to both the macrocosms and the microcosms, the sacrificer simultaneously contributed to the welfare of the transcendental order and furthered his own interest.
These correspondences were explored in the philosophical Vedic texts, the Upanisads in which search for the knowledge that would liberate man from repeated death led to the earliest formulations of Hinduism”. The chief Vedic Gods are Brahma the creator.
Vishnu the protector God of extension and the major deities of Hinduism have many forms based on distinctive mythology. For example, “Vishnu has a number of incarnations, the chief of which are Rama (man), Krishna (man). The idea behind the many forms is that God periodically allows himself to be reborn on earth, to overcome evil and restore righteousness.