[Advaita-l] mleccha-s not eligible to take Hinduism??

[S L Shivashankar]

Dear Bhaskarji
Pranams,

Good to hear from you again! Thank you for your kind words.



> Why I am getting this doubt  is, sometime back, I had asked a question to
> well respected scholar in this list with regard to upanayana saMskAra to
> one of the ligAyat boys whose father is ligAyat but mother is smArta
> brAhmin (love marriage!!:-)) who wants to get upanayana saMskAra done to
> her son!!  The answer from that scholar & also from Mattur pundits
> (including my guruji ) was strict 'NO'.
>
> But again, after reading all these explanations from the replies, I am
> getting an impression that  upanayana saMskAra can be done, as a special
> case,  to the sincere adhyAtama student/sAdhaka who wants to do his
> sAdhana in veda mArga.  But there is no provision as such to do conversion
> in general & upanayana saMskAra in particular to the person from 'outside'
> (outside the caste of brAhmaNa but within Hindu fold or a Westerner)  who
> wants to lead a normal (loukika) life of a Hindu brAhmaNa.
>


I think you have made a very good point here. All the special cases I know
of (including myself, I dare to say) are due to sadhana/spritual reasons
alone, namely "to the sincere adhyAtama student/sAdhaka who wants to do his
sAdhana in veda mArga", as you beautifully puts it. The guru have
considered the Westerner suitable for such a sadhana. However, I don´t know
of any case when a Westerner has been given upanayanam just in order "to
lead a normal (loukika) life of a Hindu brAhmaNa." Probably Arya Samaj
would agree to perform upanyanam also for the reason of just living a
normal brahmana life, but that´s another story.

Warmest regards
Shivashankar