Android Open Source Yoga Hindu

Hinduism, the Open Source Faith

As a Computer Scientist and being brought up as a Hindu I believe I can put the two unrelated subjects together to explain the beauty of Hinduism. This article is not intended to preach however it is more of an analogy.

Android Open Source Yoga Hindu
Open Source Google Android™ analogy of being Hindu

I am a programmer and whilst being in this field of work in this day and age, I deal with many open source softwares such as Magento, Android™, WordPress, Linux and OpenOffice to say the few. The meaning of open source softwares is that it allows ‘users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software’. Open source software is proving to be the largest source of technical innovation providing opportunity to the least established of developers make something great or be part of something big.

If we take Google’s Android operating system as an example, it is open source. Many manufacturers of mobile handsets are using the Android operating system as the system to drive their hardware simply because it has been developed to be easily customisable and has no licensing issues to adhere with which makes the handset cheaper as the manufacturers didn’t have to put as much time into developing the operating system for the handset. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG are some of the companies which use Android and each of these companies have customised Android UI to make it look like what they think is the right way it should look like. HTC with HTC Sense, Samsung with Touchwiz, Motorola with Motoblur, LG with their own look however each of these still lie on the fundamental Android System.

In a similar way, we can take Hinduism (Sanathan Dharma) to be equivalent of the Android operating system and we can take the other faiths with have been derived from Sanathan Dharma such as Buddhism, Jainism, etc. Hinduism comes with its free will – the ability to make the faith how you like it and you will be seen as a Hindu if you are ethical. Hinduism isn’t a book-bound faith where we are required to follow a set of instructions from the book to be a follower of Sanathan Dharma. You can also be an athiest and a Hindu! (but that’s another blog post)

As we know, not every phone is actually an Android phone. We also have the likes of Blackberry which runs on RIM’s own Blackberry operating system which no other manufacturer are allowed to use and similarly the Apple iPhone which runs on Apple’s iOS and no other manufacturer can use their operating system to run their device. Without naming any other faiths – they don’t really come as open source as Hinduism – they tend to be rather closed book religions where the holy books are more instruction oriented and they have to be followed otherwise you are not seen to be part of that faith.

With Apple iOS (unless jailbroken), you are stuck with the UI (user interface) that has been provided to you and you are governed by Apple as to what you can and can’t do with the phone. This is rather similar to many faiths out there. With Android you can do whatever you want with your phone and however you want, as long as your phone still works. Same with Sanathan Dharma, as long as you are ethical with what you do, you can do whatever you wish! I update my phone every couple of weeks and it feels like I have got myself a brand new phone every time!

I use the mobile phone analogy as I believe it is what most people are able to relate to however I can use Linux or any other open source software as an analogy to make the same point.

I hope this article wasn’t too confusing for you and that it helps clear a few misconceptions about Hinduism. Should you have any constructive comments or questions then please pop it in the box below.

Peace!

Portions of the image used are modifications based on work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.


Posted

in

, , , ,

by

Comments

4 responses to “Hinduism, the Open Source Faith”

  1. Ankit Upadhyay avatar
    Ankit Upadhyay

    Raj,

    Wonderful attempt for making comparision to make an analogy. However, don’t you think that using Open Source licensing model as an argument doesn’t quite potrait the openness of Sanatan Dharma.

    You mentioned “The meaning of open source softwares is that it allows ‘users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software’”, but I don’t think this still matches vast openness of Sanatan Dharma.

    I think we can take Science as a whole and use that as an analogy with Sanatan Dharma. Perhaps that might come close provide any similarities.

    1. Raj Chevli avatar

      Ankit,

      Thank you! As I said, it is more of an analogy. Using science is a too much of a broad subject to use as an analogy and generally people are more aware of these open source technological changes happening around the world therefore people are more likely to relates to it, specifically Android OS. You do say it that Open Source doesn’t match the vast openness of Sanathan Dharma however you have not provided your reasons as to why it doesn’t.

      The meaning of open source softwares is that it allows ‘users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software’

      This merely represents that Hinduism changes with the times and adapts to various situations and cultures hence why Hinduism is the longest known faith. Also where other faiths have been derived from Sanathan Dharma.

      If you can find a way to use Science as an analogy, I’d be more than happy to read the comment or even a blog post from yourself on this subject.

  2. Krishan Mistry avatar
    Krishan Mistry

    Pretty nice article about the relationship between Comp Sci and Open Source software

  3. Ritika Upadhyay avatar

    To draw parallels between computing and faith is unusual.
    At the end of the day, I believe this is what Sanatan Dharma is; to have the freedom to adapt, change, modify, adopt.
    I’m really curious about the atheism and Hinduism bit.
    Looking forward to a post on it 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.