The Significance of the Hindu Doctrine of Ishtadeva for Understanding Religious Pluralism

The World Council of Churches invited a number of guests of other faiths to participate in its Eighth Assembly, which took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1998. Our main participation was in the Padare (a Shona word for “meeting place”). These were workshop-like gatherings in which we addressed and discussed various themes. At one of the Padare sessions, with the intriguing title, “My God, Your God, Our God, No God,” Prof. Wesley Ariarajah, during the question time, asked me about the relevance of the Hindu doctrine of the “ishtadeva” for our understanding of religious pluralism. I cannot recall the brief answer that I gave to his question, but I remember not feeling contented with my response, and his question has remained with me ever since. The ishtadeva teaching plays an important role in most Hindu discussions of religious pluralism, and it is used as an interpretative lens for understanding religious differences. It may have significance, beyond the Hindu tradition, for our understanding of and response to religious pluralism. The nature and presuppositions of the doctrine of the ishtadeva are not usually critically assessed, and this may be a good opportunity to do this evaluation.

To begin with the term itself, “ishtadeva” is Sanskrit for “chosen God.” Choice, of course, cannot be exercised when alternatives are absent. The ishtadeva doctrine is meaningful in the Indian context where religious pluralism has had a long history and where different God-forms were available for choosing. From among these, a person chooses one that becomes one’s ishtadeva. The most popular ishtadevas today include Shiva, Vishnu (especially in one of Vishnu’s human incarnations such as Rama and Krishna), and the Mother Goddess in one of her many forms such as Kali or Durga.

There is no doubt that, at various times in the history of Hinduism, the various ishtadevas were perceived as different and competing deities and their worshipers as rival communities. Many of the myths connected with Vishnu or Shiva seek to demonstrate the superior power of one over the other, and there are still particular traditions within Hinduism in which such rivalry persists, with one ishtadeva subordinated to another. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, a modern Vaishnava movement, advocates the supremacy of Vishnu above all other deities. Although it may be impossible to trace the history of the ishtadeva doctrine, it appears to me that the doctrine is a response to sectarian rivalries about the true God. While one could subscribe to the doctrine of the ishtadeva, admit some kind of reality of other deities, and make all of them subordinate to one’s own, this would be contrary to the spirit that underlines the teaching about the ishtadeva.

The ishtadeva doctrine developed in a context where different religious and cultural communities existed, each with its own distinctive images, doctrines, and ways of worshiping God. As these communities interacted and grew in awareness of each other, there was a movement from the more sectarian viewpoints that either accepted the reality of the other’s God and hierarchically subordinated it to one’s own or that understood one’s God as true and the other’s as false and nonexistent. The doctrine, in fact, suggests a rejection of the real existence of many Gods and the position that the absolute is One. At the same time, the doctrine presupposes that this One God is imagined, named, and worshiped in different ways and that human beings are choosing from among the many names and images of the One.

Ariarajah, in his book, The Bible and People of Other Faiths, recounted a contemporary encounter and predicament that may replicate the ancient context in which the doctrine of the ishtadeva arose. Ariarajah, serving as a Christian pastor at that time in the town of Kandy in Sri Lanka, summarized his conversation with one of his students about her attendance at a Hindu festival on the university campus. “We usually do not go to the festival,” said the student, “because we do not...