For anyone curious about specifics, apparently Ramaswamy adheres to the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism which can be presented as a kind of monotheism as it asserts that only Brahman (the supreme absolute reality) is truly real, while the individual self (Atman) is identical to Brahman. The matter gets more complicated when one looks deeper into the topic though.
TLDR: Vivek Ramaswamy's Hinduism is squarely Vaishnavite (i.e. upholding Vishnu as the supreme deity)
and aligned with the philosophical school of Advaita Vedanta. He's a privileged Desi SOB who's flat-out admitting he's part of a Hindu tradition that's squarely for the privileged intellectual elites,
not the common man.
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"Vedanta" in this context applies to
commentaries about the Upanishads, the final sections of the four Vedas, which themselves, are commentaries of the first three layers of each of the four Vedas. It's also very much a Vaishnavite affair because Shaivite Hindus don't universally uphold the Vedas as authoritative (indeed "Shiva" is not explicitly mentioned in the Vedas but "Rudra" is; scholars in the premodern past and our modern present have been arguing about whether or not Rudra is Shiva for centuries JFYI). Specifically, we have three "major" schools (there are many more, but this is the tripartite division most commonly upheld in secular scholarship):
Advaita Vedanta (non-dual Vedanta)
Vishishtadvaita Vedanta (qualified non-dual Vedanta)
Dvaita Vedanta (strictly dualistic Vedanta)
Advaita Vedanta is highly "intellectual," if you will. Basically, there is only Brahman, the true reality that undergirds all of existence. All the multiplicity we see in the world around us, from an Advaita lens, is Maya (illusory). Vishishtadvaita Vedanta emerged as a reaction
to Advaita Vedanta because of one critical shortcoming: if all multiplicity is Maya and all that undergirds reality is indeed Brahman, then what's the point of bhakti (re: devotional practices like singing bhajjan/hymns, let alone any other type of religious ceremony)? Vishishtadvaita Vedanta is
qualified insofar as saying "yes, Brahman undergirds all existence and the multiplicity we see is Maya on some level. But bhakti still has a purpose insofar as deepening one's relationship
to Brahman. Then we have Dvaita Vedanta saying "you guys are fucking stupid. There's a clear division between atman and Brahman, so the true order of existence is strictly dualistic." That's the condensed version with tons of nuance stripped out for the sake of
not writing a comparative religion paper.
It also bears mentioning that Advaita Vedanta is
not monotheism from an Abrahamic lens in the slightest. Rather, it's
much closer to a panentheistic monism (i.e. everything, everyone, and everywhere is one given thing be it God, Shiva, Brahman, or $insert_thing_here). It's also a
static form of panentheistic monism. Shaivite Hinduism, specifically its Kashmiri variant, is parallel to Advaita Vedanta but it diverges insofar as upholding
Shiva as the true nature of reality, and eschewing a static universe altogether for one of cosmic dynamism. Not to mention that other dharmic religions (i.e. Buddhism, Sikhism) approach the panentheistic monism paradigm through parallel yet wholly distinct trains of thought, and they err on cosmic dynamism too.
Circling back to Vivek Ramaswamy: I would like to point out that it ain't just young white people in Ohio who hate his guts. Despite all the memes of izzat floating around, Vivek Ramaswamy himself is highly polarising
within Desi circles. Your average BJP-aligned Indian-American Vaishnavite Hindu will probably support him, no questions asked. Yet Indian Americans who are, themselves, a diverse cavalcade (i.e. Shaivite Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, even the few Christian groups that exist both within and outside of South India) fucking hate his guts because Vivek Ramaswamy embodies the
worst stereotypes of Indians abroad: the flatterer with no fixed principles who has nary a devotional bone in his body because faith was rationalised and intellectualised away.
No one gives a shit about the pagans because a pagan's a pagan at the end of the day. Having said that: you'd be
blown away by the internal diversity among heathens. Anyway, that's all I have to say at the moment. Do as you will with this information, or tell me to piss off.
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