THE DARK HOUR OF SECULARISM

HINDU FUNDAMENTALISM AND COLONIAL LIBERALISM IN INDIA

S.N. Balagangadhara, Jakob De Roover

Forthcoming in Making Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia,
edited by Ranjan Ghosh (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).

The relation between religion and politics remains one of the important issues of our
time. Discussions on this relation identify two poles that are regarded as opposites:
religious fundamentalism and liberal secularism. As the liberal perspective sees it, the
secular state and its principles of neutrality and toleration are antidotes to religious
nationalism and fundamentalism. Recently, however, this view has been challenged.
Several authors point out that fundamentalism and secularism are intertwined in
significant ways. 1
India offers a fascinating case in point. In the 1980s, Ashis Nandy and T.N.
Madan suggested a causal link between the elitist and statist imposition of secularism, on
the one hand, and the rise of the Hindu right and its aggression towards Muslim and
Christian minorities, on the other hand. This alleged link between secularism and
fundamentalism (or communalism as it is often called in India) has not been adequately
clarified. Its plausibility depends largely upon two beliefs: secular statecraft is
responsible for the escalation of religious strife in Indian society; and the marginalization
of religion inevitably generates a backlash. 2

Neither conceptually nor historically has satisfactory evidence been provided for
the claim that secularism and fundamentalism are two faces of the same coin. The rising
Hindu-Muslim conflict in India could have many other causes, independent of the
workings of the liberal secular state. It may as well be blamed on the failure of the Indian
state to be truly secular and neutral. 3 The question is far too important, however, to leave
the argument unexamined. If one can demonstrate that secularism gave rise to the Hindu
right in India, then our understanding of the relation between secularism and
fundamentalism may be due for revision. Some evidence is available for such a link. For
instance, it has been argued that Hindu nationalism appropriated the colonial liberal
states views of the Hindu traditions as one unified religion and Indian history as a
struggle between Hinduism and Islam. 4 Our question is: what has been the historical
relation between the secular state and religious fundamentalism in India?
I
The problem of Hindu fundamentalism is different than it is in Christianity or Islam.
Before the nineteenth century, militant traditions existed within the Hindu fold,5 but these
did not aspire to found Indian society on a set of Hindu doctrines or principles. No one
text, teaching, or body of law was considered central to all Hindu traditions.6
In fact, early modern encounters between Europe and India present a striking fact:
when Christian travellers, merchants and missionaries denounced the indigenous
traditions as false religion and preached conversion to true religion, non-Muslim and
non-Christian Indians reacted with incomprehension. They failed to grasp how one
religion could be true and others false, and how different religions could be considered as
rivals.7 To charges of falsity and idolatry, they replied that their ancestral traditions were

very old and could not therefore be false.8 Before the late eighteenth century, Hindus did
not defend their traditions in terms of doctrinal truth or texts: the tendency to provide a
foundation for ancestral practices in true scriptures was largely absent.9
The history of the Hindu right, on the contrary, reads as a quest for a common set
of principles around which all Hindus should unite. Moreover, its advocates argue that
Muslim and Christian minorities should also accept these. This movement, then, is Hindu
fundamentalist in the sense that it aspires to establish Indian society on the foundation of
supposedly Hindu principles. The content of the principles has varied over time and this
tendency is but one strand within Hindu nationalism. Still, we can isolate certain
properties that characterise this movement.
The first property lies in the pursuit of a discrete core that should unite followers
of indigenous Indian traditions (Hindutva or Hindu-ness includes Buddhist, Sikh, Jain
and tribal traditions). The main ideologue of the movement, V. D. Savarkar, identified
this core in his Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923).10 As he put it in his 1937 presidential
speech for the Hindu Mahasabha, an early Hindu nationalist organization: Hindudom is
bound and marked out as a people and a nation by themselves not only by the tie of a
common Holy Land in which their religion took birth but by the ties of a common
culture, a common language, a common history and essentially a common fatherland as
well.11
As a second property, this Hindudom was taken to give these traditions a
common identity and interests, which separated them from Muslims and Christians. The
latter were excluded from claiming themselves as Hindus, since they had extra-territorial
loyalties and lacked the true Hindu spirit. 12 This is not an ancient opposition. Medieval

Sanskrit texts, for instance, did not even identify Muslims along religious lines.13 Until
today, traditions combining Hindu and Muslim practices continue to exist throughout the
subcontinent.14 Yet the drive of Hindu fundamentalism is to create an identity that
separates Hindus from others. Religion becomes the marker of the religious
brotherhood of truly loyal Indians, as opposed to Christians and Muslims. 15
This identity has proven difficult to find: no practice or doctrine is shared by all
Hindus. Many of their attitudes are common also among Indian Muslims and Christians.
Hindu fundamentalism is unique in the sense that it cannot draw upon any dogma or holy
book. Throughout its history, it has nevertheless tried to do so.16 Noting the Christian call
for religious revival, a Hindu nationalist leader, B. S. Moonje, argued in 1944 that Hindus
must develop the boldness to strive for the revival of their religion, and that the
constitution of Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, should be based upon the Vedas as the
constitutions of the lands ofChristianity and Islam are to be based on the revival of
these religions.17 Paradoxically, Hindu fundamentalism tries to distinguish Hindu
identity from that of Muslims and Christians, while modelling itself upon Islam and
Christianity.
The third property is even more paradoxical. The lack of dogmas shared by
Hindus gives rise to the claim that they hold principles of tolerance in common. In
words spoken at a 1939 Hindu Mahasabha meeting, Hindus, by religion and culture, are
tolerant of the presence in their midst of people of other faiths.18 The principles are
variously called as Hindu tolerance, positive secularism, or equality of religions.19
These are traced to Sanskrit aphorisms, which became the teachings of Hindutva.20 Then

they are invoked to contrast Hindu identity to the fanatic theocratic nature of its rivals,
Islam and Christianity.21
Subsequently, these principles are imposed on Muslims and Christians: In Indian
thought, identity of underlying reality permits variety of surface custom or even
philosophical view. But the difference or diversity or variety should not oppose the
underlying reality. Difference should realise its common root in the identity. 22 Therefore,
religions can be accepted only in so far as they conform to this underlying identity. This
inspires legal measures against proselytization, a practice regarded as a violation of
religious equality. It is argued that Muslims should rewrite the Koran to accommodate the
equality of religions and that Christians should Indianise their churches. 23 Made into a
principle, Hindu tolerance becomes a ground for intolerance towards Islam and
Christianity.
A historical explanation of Hindu fundamentalism needs to account for the
emergence of this paradox. How did the inclination to found the Hindu traditions in a
common core of principles come into being? Why did followers of these traditions begin
to perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions with incompatible doctrines, if this
experience was largely absent before the late eighteenth century? These are the puzzles
we will set out to solve.
II
We will outline the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism in terms of three historical and
conceptual moments. The first is a moment of radical transformation: the attempt to
transform the Hindu traditions and their variety of practices, attitudes and stories into a
set of scripturally sanctioned doctrines. We suggest that the colonial state and its

principles of religious toleration and neutrality were central forces behind this moment of
transformation.
When the East India Company became a governing power in Bengal, critical
policy decisions had to be made. What should be the stance of the colonial state towards
native beliefs and practices? In 1793, it was decided that the laws of the Koran and the
Shaster would be preserved in civil and religious usages.24 Time and again, colonial
officials stated that it is a fundamental principle of the British government, to allow the
most complete toleration in matters of religion, to all classes of its native subjects.25
Once the Bengal government faced shocking practices such as child sacrifice and widow
burning, its first step was to decide whether or not such practices were founded in the
religious opinions of the Hindoos and grounded in any precept of their law. 26 The
pundits or Hindu scholars employed at colonial courts were asked to give judgment on
such issues. If they came to the conclusion that a practice had scriptural foundations, then
the colonial state ought to tolerate it.
For instance, a Bengal court case concerned a Muslim who had buried his leprous
mother-in-law alive, after she had requested him to burn her. The court stated that, while
this Muslim should be convicted, in the case of a Hindu indicted for a similar offence, the
judgment of the pundits showed that the prisoner was justified by the ordinances of the
Hindoo faith in assisting at the suicide of a leper. As a judge had remarked in an earlier
case: I am assured, that in the case of Hindoos it is countenanced and enjoined by their
religion. Pundits quoted the Brahma Poorana to show that the act was indeed
sanctioned by the Shaster.27 Consequently, the state ought to allow it among Hindus.

Perhaps the most shocking custom was that of offering human sacrifice to the
Ganges, where they are devoured by the sharks. A similar debate ensued here. It was
decided that the practice could not be stopped among the aged and infirm, since it was
considered by Hindus instrumental to their happiness in a future state of existence and
sanctioned by express tenets in their most sacred books. Where it concerned children,
however, officials found that the custom stands not either on the prescriptive laws of
antiquity, or on any tenet of the Shanscrit. Consequently, an 1802 law declared any
person guilty of murder, who assisted in forcing any individual to be a victim of this
superstition.28 Of female infanticide, it was similarly concluded that it has not the
sanction of any religion, or of any law and could therefore be eradicated.29
However, in the case of a widow, who was at her own request, buried alive with
her deceased husband, the judgment was different:
It appearing from the answer of the punditsthat the practice in question is
authorized by the Shasters, I am directed to communicate to you the opinion of
the court that no prosecution should be instituted against the persons who may
have been concerned in the interment of the woman; provided however, of
course, that those persons are of the Hindoo persuasion, and not otherwise.30
The decision was negative for women of the joogee cast who have buried themselves
alive with their husbands, because from the answer of the pundit of this court on the
subject, it appeared that this sacrifice is not tolerated by the Shaster.31
The debate on the toleration of sati or widow-burning revolved around the same
issue of scriptural sanctions. 32 Later in the century, the same question would be raised

about other customs, such as hook-swinging, which was abolished given the absence of
textual justification. 33
This policy of the colonial state introduced the tendency to found practices in
scriptures and doctrines. It involved almost a coercive mechanism to this effect. Indians
were informed by the government that their practices would be allowed, if they could
prove that these had doctrinal foundations. Hence, not only the pundits in the courts but
also Hindus in society set out on a mission to find scriptural sanctions for several
practices. This turned into a systematic strategy to defend the validity of ancestral
traditions.
III
In a second moment, this transformation altered the pattern of dissent and agreement
within the Hindu traditions. Its impact is clearest in the writings of Raja Rammohun Roy
and his opponents. A rich Brahmin with a Persian and Arabic education, Roy is still fted
as the father of the modern Indian Renaissance.34 In fact, we suggest that he took crucial
conceptual steps towards the emergence of Hindu fundamentalism. He accepted the view
that traditional practices ought to be founded in scriptures: The validity of theological
controversy chiefly depends upon Scriptural authority. 35
Influenced by Islam and his interaction with Christian missionaries, Roy intended
to revive the Hindu traditions by transforming them into a religion along the biblical
model. In many of his texts, he spoke of the Vedas as though they were the Bible, of the
Shastras as though they were church law, and of Manu as though he was Moses, the law
giver of a people. He wanted to demonstrate that truth was to be found in Vedic religion,
rather than in its rivals Islam or Christianity. 36

Convinced that the whole body of the Hindoo Theology, Law, and Literature is
contained in the Vedas, Roy denounced Hindu rituals as idolatrous fabrications and tried
to convince his countrymen of the true meaning of their sacred books.37 He did all this
for the purpose of diffusing Hindu scriptural knowledge among the adherents of that
religion.38 These scriptures, he thought, acknowledged that only the one true God ought
to be worshipped, but self-interested Brahmin priests had led the believers into idolatry
and immorality. 39 Now, the aim was to reform Hindu practices according to scriptural
sanctions.
When the government decided to tolerate sati, Roy produced tract after tract
arguing that it had no scriptural foundation, since neither the Vedas nor Manu recognised
it.40 This inspired some conservative Hindus of Calcutta to argue that he was wrong:
scriptural foundations did exist for sati.41 Thus, this reformer transmitted the religious
model that sought to justify Hindu practices in terms of textual doctrines. While the
liberal colonial state had initiated the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism among its
pundits, a thinker like Roy disseminated it among the public.
From this debate emerged a group that claimed to represent the orthodox Hindu
community of Calcutta. In its petition against the abolition of sati, this group submitted
that the Hindoo religion is founded, like all religions, on usage as well as precept, and
one when immemorial is held equally sacred with the other. Therefore, the sacrifice of
self-immolation called suttee, which is not merely a sacred duty but a high privilege to
her who sincerely believes in the doctrines of their religion, ought not to be interfered
with. The group combined the old attitude towards practices as age-old ancestral
traditions with the tendency to provide them with doctrinal foundations. 42

In this way, the colonial toleration policy instigated a restructuring of Hindu

traditions, which soon acquired an institutional shape. In 1830, the group appealed to the
orthodox Hindus about the necessity of establishing a Dharma Sabha, which would
devise means for protecting our religion and our excellent customs and usages. 43 This
association met in the summer of 1830 to protest against the abolition of sati.
Accordingly as Roy opposed its attempts, the Dharma Sabha was even more convinced
that local traditions needed protection against their opponents who wish the overthrow of
religion.44
IV
How to make sense of the colonial policy of religious toleration? One approach would be
to attribute certain motives to the British: e.g., to avoid rebellion, they wanted to appease
the native religious inclinations, or, they found it impractical to impose a completely new
legal order on the Indian people and, therefore, decided to retain the existing systems of
religious law. However, colonial toleration was a macro-policy, a cooperative result of
the activities of multiple agents. One cannot impute intentions and multiple contradictory
motives to account for such a macro-policy, as though it expressed the beliefs of
individual agents. Moreover, a series of different motives for toleration can be
discerned in colonial writings: from a prudential fear of alienating native subjects to
principles of religious liberty. This generates a thorny question: which of these was the
true intention or real motive for the toleration policy?
No cogent answer to this question is forthcoming, since we lack a clear
understanding of the relation between an agent and his/her motive, let alone possessing a
social psychology of collective agencies. In the absence of such knowledge, if one

10

explains the policies of the colonial state as though it had motives, one commits
category mistakes: one ascribes a common-sense conception of the relation between
motive and act (attributable only to individuals) to collective or supra-individual
agencies.
We would like to suggest an alternative approach to making sense of colonial
toleration as a reasonable macro-policy. If the colonial state and its officials consistently
acted in a specific way, then we need to describe this as a collective act of reasonable
agents. We use the term reasonable in two minimal senses here. First, the notion is
context-dependent: what is reasonable in one context might not be reasonable in another.
Second, it is proposed as a condition for cognitive consistency. That is to say, one should
attempt to show that the policy plausibly follows from cognitive assumptions that we
expect a people in a period to share. How can this be done?
Through historical and textual research, one can provide evidence that people
from a given period could be plausibly expected to share certain cognitive assumptions.
This plausibility is our plausibility: we frame our expectations in the light of historical
research and we look for evidence to confirm or refute the hypothesis that we form about
the cognitive assumptions of earlier generations. Subsequently, we try to demonstrate that
the macro-policy is a plausible conclusion from the set of cognitive assumptions that we
attribute to the earlier generations. Against this background, we demonstrate that a
macro-policy can be derived. In this way, we show that a collective agency acts in a
reasonable way.
Any such explanation is hypothetical: not only because this is how we make sense
of macro-policies from the past, but also because we do not know how to develop causal

11

explanations for human behaviour as yet. This does not make the hypothesis arbitrary,
because it is held in check by two other conditions: there must be empirical evidence that
enables us to postulate a set of cognitive assumptions shared by the earlier generations;
dislodging the hypothesis requires another hypothesis, which does a better job at
accounting for the relevant evidence.
Consequently, the question that confronts our proposal is this: why would it be
reasonable to act as though a practice deserved toleration, if it had scriptural sanctions?
How does the cognitive framework of the colonial agents render such a stance reasonable
for us?
A common answer, which is the rival hypothesis that we want to challenge,
suggests that the colonial state intended to appease Indians by allowing them to continue
the indigenous religion and that the British assumed that this religion was structurally
analogue to Christianity. 45 Though valid to some extent, neither claim is satisfactory.
First, the idea that it was impracticable to suddenly impose a completely new legal
system on an alien people did play a role in the considerations of the East India
Company. The British did not want to cause unnecessary upheaval and decided to retain
existing legal structures. However, if the central goal was appeasement, the colonial state
should have allowed all practices held dearly by the population and not only those with
scriptural sanctions. Yet, it did not do so, but explicitly banned certain practices for
which no scriptural foundation could be found, even though these were recognized as
age-old customs. Second, the appeasement hypothesis fails to tell us why the colonial
state approached local traditions as structural equivalents of Christianity. The British
were aware that these traditions were in many ways dissimilar from their own religion.

12

Why did they nevertheless start looking for scriptural foundations and tolerate only
practices with such foundations?
When they landed in India, European Christians had originally assumed they
would find false religion there. This implied that the natives would be aware of the
existence of the biblical God and would desire to obey His law. However, most
Europeans also thought that the Devil and his minions would have deceived the believers
into a false understanding of this law: evil priests would have imposed their own
fabrications as though these were Gods will. 46 To understand the Indians, one had to find
out the content of these fabricated laws from their sacred scriptures, which they embraced
as divine revelation.
By the nineteenth century, this explicit notion of false religion as the work of the
devil and his priests was limited to certain Protestant groups in British India.47 However,
the basic conceptual model for understanding Indian religion remained in place among
other British authors and administrators also: the Hindus accepted a particular set of laws
as divine revelation; these laws were to be found in their scriptures; Hindus believed they
had to follow these in order to obtain salvation. To understand Indian society, the British
assumed, one not only had to identify the texts (mis)taken by the Hindus for the
Almightys revelation, but also their ancient law giverthe equivalent of Moses. This
would become the key to decipher the Hindu religion and society.48
The British were convinced that one ought not to interfere in Hindu practices
sanctioned by this sacred scripture. The rationale suggested that religion was a domain
where the biblical God alone had authority. No human being could impose his or her own
understanding of the Supreme Beings will on others. Therefore, the Hindus had to be left

13

free to live according to the principles which they (wrongly) believed to be divine law.
Hence, the following implication was reasonable to a Protestant Christian mind-set: if a
practice had its foundations in Hindu sacred law, no secular or civil authority ought to
interfere, because to do so would be to arrogate to civil powers that authority which God
alone possessed.49
The cognitive framework of the colonial state construed the Hindu traditions as
structural equivalents of Christianity in the sense that it viewed them as embodiments of a
series of fundamental laws and doctrines, professing to be divine revelation. The
neutrality and toleration of the state depended on this equivalence. If Hinduism,
Christianity and Islam embodied different religious doctrines and laws, then a liberal state
ought to take a neutral position towards their conflicting truth claims and tolerate the
practices that embodied these.
However, in the case of traditions that do not approach ancestral practices as
embodiments of doctrines, the resulting policy generated a mechanism that compelled
these traditions to refashion themselves according to this model. Indian subjects quickly
learned that they needed to give evidence of scriptural foundations to continue practicing
their traditions under colonial rule. This is how Hindu fundamentalism first manifested
itself: as a child born from the liberal policies of the colonial state. The moment of
transformation occurred because the colonial state operated within a theological
framework that approached all traditions as variations on the biblical model of religion.
V
This colonial intervention triggered the rise of Hindu reform movements. In their turn,
these movements provoked traditional Hindus to organise themselves and defend a

14

conservative interpretation of the teachings of Hindu religion, which sanctioned existing

practices. Orthodox Hindu associations opposed the reform movement, but accepted its
model of religion and doctrinal rivalry. This fuelled the growing conviction in India that
Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were rival religions with competing truth claims. Both
reform movements and orthodox associations intended to defend Hinduism against
assaults of Christian missionaries. They were also hostile to Indian Muslims, who were
seen as representatives of an aggressive religion that had earlier attempted to destroy their
traditions.
The chief agency of reform in the nineteenth century was the Arya Samaj. In his
autobiography, its founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati recounts how he came to the
conviction that Hindu traditions were in need of reform. After an orthodox Sanskrit and
ritual education, he had left home dissatisfied. On his wanderings through North India, he
witnessed all kinds of traditions, many of which appalled him. Everywhere, he saw
profound ignorance or ridiculous superstition and temples full of idols and priests.50
The movement established by Dayanand disseminated the colonial model of
religion. A teacher had convinced him that religious truth lay in the Vedas and Shastras.
Earlier, these texts had been important only to certain strands within the Hindu
traditions.51 After the colonial state identified them as the Hindu scriptures and legal
codes, however, reformers began to preach the same as gospel truth. Dayanand regarded
them as infallible and as authority by their very nature. In fact, they are selfauthoritative and do not stand in need of any other book to uphold their authority.52 The
Vedas and Shastras embodied religious truth. Like Roy, he insisted that the texts revealed
a monotheistic Hinduism, not only similar to Christianity and Islam, but also superior.

15

Dayanand composed the foundational text of the Arya Samaj, the Sathyarth
Prakash or Light of Truth (1875), which followed the form of Protestant catechisms. It
claimed to contain the one correct interpretation of Vedas and Shastras, while all puranas
and other traditional Indian stories were denounced as forged books. The true
confession of faith followed:
We believe that the Vedas alone are the supreme authority in the ascertainment of
true religionthe true conduct of life. Whatever is enjoined by the Vedas we hold
to be right; whilst whatever is condemned by them we believe to be wrongAll
men, especially the Aryas, should believe in the Vedas and thereby cultivate unity
in religion.53
The Arya Samaj mimicked Protestant fundamentalism in yet other ways. Dayanand
accepted the characterization of Brahmins as sectarian and selfish popes, who fabricated
false teachings and kept true revelation from the laity. He imagined a history of religious
degeneration, which mirrored the Protestant historiography of medieval Church: As in
Europe, so in India the popery appeared in a thousand different forms, and cast its net of
hypocrisy and fraud, in other words, the Indian popes have kept the rulers and the ruled
from acquiring learning and associating with the good.54
This reproduced the colonial version of Indian religious history. Like certain
strands within the Reformation, this historiography invented a primitive and true Hindu
religion, corrupted by human additions over time. Now one had to return to the pure and
primitive core: I believe in a religion based on universal and all-embracing principles
which have always been accepted as true by mankind, and will continue to command the
allegiance of mankind in the ages to come. Hence it is that the religion in question is

16

called the primeval eternal religion, which means that it is above the hostility of all
human creeds whatsoever. 55
This restructuring of Hindu traditions introduced universal truth claims for a set of
doctrines: The educated Hindus have now learned that the religion of their forefathers is
founded on solid rock of truth.56 It also entailed the launch of a missionary movement.
As one of the Samaj publications put it, funds were required so That our missionaries
may be able to preach the Vedic religion even in the far distant nooks of the land and
save the inhabitants thereof by taking them up, as it were, from the dark abyss of
ignorance in which they are struggling.57 The newly converted threw their idols into the
river or publicly smashed them in local markets.
Thus, this reform movement spread different elements of the colonial framework
in Indian society. In his excellent work on the Arya Samaj in nineteenth-century Punjab,
Kenneth Jones describes its impact on society. More and more, Christianity and Islam
were viewed as rival religions, whose falsity had to be supplanted by Vedic truth. The
Arya Samaj also attacked Sikhism as a degenerate rival. Consequently, several traditions
in the urban Punjab of the 1880s entered into a strife over religious truth: In the years
that followed, the streets of Lahore became dotted with preachersChristian, Arya,
Brahmo, Sikh, Muslimeach extolling his particular cause and condemning all others. 58
The Arya Samaj also initiated stinging attacks on traditional pundits, who were
chided for hardly knowing Sanskrit and the Vedas. Rather than realizing that these texts
were marginal to many traditions, this ignorance was viewed as another confirmation of
the corruption of popular religion in India. Hence, the Arya Samaj began to reform all
traditions in strict accordance to Vedic principles.59

17

Such moves also gave rise to opposition from traditional Hindus, but again the
latter adopted the new framework. They invoked scriptural foundations to claim the
opposite of Arya Samaj doctrines. One of the first to do so was Pandit Din Dayal, who in
a lecture is said to have proved by quotations from the Vedas, Puranas and the Smritis,
that the worship of idols alone is the means of finding God.60 By the mid 1890s,
traditional Hindus united in Sanatan Dharma Sabhas in order to propound the eternal
religion. In their meetings also, the correct meaning of the Vedas was presented as the
basic scripture of this religion. Here, the tenets of unity in diversity and the Truth is
only One, but different persons call it by different names were formulated as Hindu
religious teachings. Along with this message of Hindu tolerance, they stressed the
national pride and unity of Aryan Hindus.61
Similar reform movements, such as the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay, emerged in
other parts of the subcontinent, with analogous social effects. From this moment of
dissemination grew a generation of intellectuals and politicians in India. Mahadev G.
Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal and many others had
all been involved in, or opposed to, these movements at some point. All of them would
play significant roles in the further development of Hindu nationalism. 62
VI
We shall now jump to the twentieth century, since the next moment is conceptual rather
than historical in nature. Neutrality, toleration and religious freedom were seen as the
norms that ought to direct state policies regarding the religious realm. They constituted
the normative framework of the colonial state, shaping its perception of Indian society.
From this perspective, each factual situation was understood as a deficiency vis--vis the

18

liberal framework and its principles. This is the moment of normative disjunction, which
reduced the options open to the Indian state and society: either liberal secularism or its
normative negation, religious fundamentalism.
Again, we have to consider the religious background of British colonialism. By
the late eighteenth century, certain strands within the English Reformation had become
dominant, which identified true religion with spiritual liberty.63 Faith was viewed as the
work of the Holy Spirit in the human soul. Therefore, secular authorities had the duty to
safeguard the liberty that allowed this Spirit to work unfettered. In spite of theological
diversity, a variety of Reformation movements shared this view and contrasted it to the
spiritual tyranny of papism. 64 As the precondition of true faith, spiritual liberty
became the normative focus of a generic Protestant framework, which construed its rivals
as religious tyrannies.
When the British arrived in India, they knew in advance what the basic structure
of her native traditions would be. As instances of religion, these would consist of priestly
hierarchies and laws that led believers into idol worship. From the seventeenth century,
most European descriptions were unequivocal: Indian religion had taken the form of a
tyranny of priests, called Brahmins here. Like their Catholic counterparts, Hindu priests
had kept the religious books and sacred language to themselves to protect their
worldly interests.65
A key mechanism is at work here. Generally, from the perspective of a normative
framework, factual situations are experienced as or transformed into deficiencies vis-vis the framework. The conceptual framework of the British helped them construe
Indian traditions as negations of their own norms. Whereas this framework revolved

19

around principles of religious liberty and equality, the native religions of India could only
embody their opposites. In colonial eyes, Brahmanism became the quintessence of
religious or spiritual tyranny.66 As opposed to their own liberal norms, British scholars
and officials perceived theocratic despotism and religious fanaticism throughout Indian
history and society.67
In his textbook history of India, Talboys Wheeler contrasted the Hindu
despotisms of the seventeenth century to the British liberties brought by colonial rule.68
According to Valentine Chirol in his classic Indian Unrest (1910), the trouble in India
was Brahmanism, which as a system represents the antipodes of all that British rule must
stand for in India, and Brahmanism has from times immemorial dominated Hindu
societydominated it, according to the Hindu Nationalists, for its salvation. This
included a theocratic State, where both spiritual and secular authority were consecrated
in the hands of the Brahmans. Indian unrest in general had as its mainspringa deeprooted antagonism to all the principles upon which Western society, especially in a
democratic country like England, has been built up.69 Or as Sir Alfred Lyall said in his
introduction to the same work, while the British were relying upon secular education and
absolute religious neutrality to control the unruly affections of sinful men, Indian
agitators combined primitive superstition with modern politics: The mixture of religion
with politics has always produced a highly explosive compound, especially in Asia.70
This was not primarily a justification of colonial rule, as contemporary critics of
Orientalism might suggest. Rather, it was an epistemic consequence of the normative
framework that constrained the colonial reasoning on religion, state and society. This

20

carved up the universe of political possibilities in terms of a normative disjunction: either

one pursued a liberal secular state or one ended up in religious oppression.
The colonial project presupposed that western civilization embodied the pursuit of
the norms of liberty, equality and toleration. Propelled by this normative goal, the
progressive West viewed itself as far superior to the unchanged and stationary Asia,
stuck in despotism and theocracy.71 In short: To India British rule has brought security,
justice, religious freedom, and the repression of all religious conflicts, together with a
vast material progress made possible by the substitution of law and order for the medieval
anarchy that preceded it.72
In other words, the British believed they had demonstrated that the immoral
structure of Indian society had to be replaced by their own moral laws. In reality, they
were begging the question. First, they presupposed the validity of the liberal framework.
Next, they viewed and described Indian society through this framework and transformed
it into a deficiency vis--vis its norms. From this, they concluded liberalism had to be
implemented here as elsewhere. The framework through which they viewed India had the
same belief as its presupposition and as its conclusion: Indian society embodied the
failure to live up to the norms of western civilization.
The western-educated intelligentsia of colonial India adopted this mode of
reasoning. Hence, while the freedom fighters desired to end colonial rule, it had become
self-evident to many that a free India would also have to create a secular liberal state, or it
would end up in religious despotism. This normative disjunction was perhaps clearest in
the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister. His perspective allowed for
two potential forms of political organization only: either a secular state or a religious

21

theocracy. As he wrote in a letter to a Muslim aristocrat: If Pakistan insists on being

what is called an Islamic State it will be backward, narrow-minded and unprogressive just
as India, if its seeks to be a Hindu State, would be similarly backward and
unprogressive.73
Throughout his speeches and writings, this conceptual restriction on Nehrus
thought is striking: either a country is a progressive civilized secular nation-state or it
becomes a backward narrow-minded theocracy. In a 1947 speech, he asserted: As long
as I am at the helm of affairs India will not become a Hindu StateThe very idea of a
theocratic state is not only medieval but also stupid. In modern times the people may
have their religion but not the State.74 This two-pronged view compelled him to conceive
of violence in the Indian society as instances of communalism. Just as all peaceful
pluralism was equivalent to the separation of politics and religion in Nehrus mind, the
violence between different communities was the consequence of mixing the political and
the religious.
As the title of another speech said, the alternatives were either Toleration or
Ruin: Toleration alone will lead India to peace and prosperity. I warn you that the
manner in which this killing is going on will lead the country to nothing but ruin.75 Were
one to define toleration as the absence of violent conflict, such an approach would
amount to a truism. But Nehru did not have this tautology in mind. Toleration meant a
democratic secular State which neither favours nor discriminates against any particular
religion and this was the only conceivable aim for a civilized country. 76
The Nehruvian secularism of post-Independence India reproduced the normative
disjunction introduced by the colonial state. Civilization was equated to the liberal

22

secular state. All opposition was conceived as religious fundamentalism. This

framework allowed for only one form of opposition, namely, the normative negation of
itself: the pursuit of a Hindu nation-state founded in principles of Hindutva. The clash
between liberal secularism and Hindu fundamentalism in India, then, is a grand colonial
struggle. It is a confrontation between a normative framework and the mirror image it has
produced.
VII
In conclusion, we can return to our original questions: What explains Hindutvas quixotic
pursuit of a set of beliefs common to all Hindus, upon which it desires to found Indian
society? Why do modern Hindus perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions,
incompatible with Hindu doctrines, when this experience was very rare, if not absent,
before the eighteenth century?
The intervention of the liberal colonial state was one of the central factors in the
emergence of Hindu fundamentalism. This state operated within a particular theological
framework, which construed the indigenous traditions of India as variants of the same
phenomenon as Islam and Christianity. Colonial policies of toleration and neutrality
induced the Hindu traditions to transform themselves according to this model of religion.
They were required to identify scriptural foundations for their practices, in order to
survive under the rule of the Raj.
This inspired a series of movements in nineteenth-century India to embark on a
quest for the true teachings of Hindu religion. Originally, they turned to the Vedas and
Shastras. Given the lack of consensus and the diversity of traditions, however, the core of
Hindu principles could not but become less precise. No set of scriptures or specific

23

dogmas would be accepted by all Hindu traditions. Eventually, the Hindutva movement
located its unity in notions of Hindu tolerance.
In other words, Hindu nationalists sustain and reproduce the colonial
transformation of Indian traditions. As the colonial model of religion locates Hindu
identity in a shared set of principles and beliefs, Islam and Christianity are now inevitably
viewed as rivals with incompatible doctrines. Accordingly as Hindutva focused on
principles of tolerance, Islamic and Christian intolerance towards other religions were
identified as the central flaws of these minorities. From this perspective, in order to
coexist with the Hindu nation, Indian Islam and Christianity have to conform themselves
to its fundamental principles.
In this sense, liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism in India are two
faces of the same coin. They are two mutually reinforcing moments of a mechanism that
transforms the native traditions of India into variants of the religions of the Book. If the
two forces are not opposites in this case, then we will have to rethink their mutual
relationship in general. More importantly, it is high time for intellectuals to move beyond
the normative disjunction between liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism.
There have been calls to draw on the Indian traditions as alternative sources of vibrant
pluralism, which may improve upon the dominant liberal model. Instead of dismissing
such attempts as revivalism or indigenism, we might consider the possibility that
liberal secularism is not the one true political salvation for humanity.

24

Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular : Christianity, Islam, modernity (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2003); S.N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover, The
Secular State and Religious Conflict: liberal neutrality and the Indian case of pluralism,
The Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (2007), 67-92; Nikkie R. Keddie, Secularism and
the State: towards clarity and global comparison, New Left Review 226 (1997), 21-40.
2

T.N. Madan, Secularism in Its Place, The Journal of Asian Studies 46 (1987), 747-59;

Ashis Nandy, An Anti-secularist Manifesto, Seminar 314 (1985), 14-24. See also two
important collections of articles: Rajeev Bhargava (ed.), Secularism and Its Critics (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (eds.), The Crisis of Secularism in India (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 2007).
3

This is a common argument: Paul R. Brass, Secularism Out of Its Place, in Tradition,

Pluralism and Identity eds. Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta and Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi:
Sage, 1999), 370-1, 375; Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee,
India After Independence, 1947-2000 (New Delhi: Penguin, 1999), 438-9; P.C. Chatterji,
Secular Values for Secular India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), ix; Stanley Tambiah, The
Crisis of Secularism in India, in Secularism and Its Critics, 427. The argument is shared
by Hindutva ideologues who accuse the Congress party and secularists of being pseudosecularists, because of the failure to be neutral between Hindus and Muslims.
4

Partha Chatterjee, History and the Nationalization of Hinduism, Social Research 59

(1992), 111-149; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial

North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Romila Thapar, Imagined

25

Religious Communities? Ancient history and the modern search for a Hindu identity,
Modern Asian Studies, 23 (1989), 209-231; Thapar, Secularism, History and
Contemporary Politics in India, in The Crisis of Secularism in India, 191-207.
5

E.g. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Before the Leviathan: sectarian violence and the state in

pre-colonial India, in Unravelling the Nation: sectarian conflict and Indias secular
identity eds. Kaushik Basu and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Penguin, 1996), 4480.
6

Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich Von Stietencron, Representing Hinduism: the

construction of religious traditions and national identity (New Delhi: Sage, 1995);
Robert E. Frykenberg, Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993), 523-550; Richard King, Orientalism and
the Modern Myth of Hinduism, Numen 46 (1999), 146-185.
7

Franois Bernier, A Continuation of the Memoires of Monsieur Bernier concerning the

Empire of the Great Mogol, Tome III & IV (London, 1671), 149-150; Quintin Craufurd,
Sketches Chiefly Relating to the History, Religion, Learning, and Manners of the Hindoos
(London, 1790), 131-132; Anonymous, The History of British India, in The Asiatic
Annual RegisterFor the Year 1799 (London, 1800), 6; and excerpts in Richard Fox
Young, Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit sources on Anti-Christian apologetics in early
nineteenth-century India (Vienna: Institut fr Indologie der Universitt Wien, 1981).
8

E.g., Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg, Thirty Four Conferences Between the Danish

Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramansin the East Indies, Concerning the Truth of
the Christian Religion (London, 1719), 5, 15.

26

For analysis, see S. N. Balagangadhara, The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the

West and the dynamic of religion (Leiden, 1994).

10

V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva: who Is a Hindu? (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan,

1969).
11

Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1984), 8.

12

Ibid., 9.

13

Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims

(eighth to fourteenth century) (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998).

14

J. J. Roy Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (New Delhi:

Mittal Publications, 2002); David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.), Beyond Turk
and Hindu: rethinking religious identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2000).
15

Savarkar, Hindu Rasthra Darshan, 9.

16

B. D. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: the origins and development of

the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 94-5;
Jyotirmaya Sharma, Hindutva: exploring the idea of Hindu nationalism (New Delhi:
Penguin, 2003), 5-9.
17

Sobhag Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement: a documentary

study of the ideals and policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939-45 (Jodhpur: Kusumanjali
Prakashan, 1996), 217-8.
18

Ibid., 65.

27

19

Balraj Madhok, Secularism: genesis and development, in Secularism in India:

Dilemmas and Challenges ed. M. M. Sankhdher (New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications,
1992), 110-122; Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, 50.
20

Two favourites are Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava and Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudha

Vadanti, translated as equal respect for all religions and truth is one; the sages call it
by many names respectively. See M. S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore:
Vikrama Prakashan, 1966), 101-6.
21

See M. G. Chitkara, Hindutva (New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation, 1997), 1;

Mathur, Hindu Revivalism, 113, 131; Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 14-5, 41, 49.
22

M. A. Venkata Rao, Jana Sangh, Islam & Humayun Kabir, Organiser (1 August

1960), 6.
23

Venkata Rao, Introduction, in Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, i-xxxiv, xxix.

24

Sir John W. Kaye, Christianity in India: an historical narrative (London, 1859), 366-

96.
25

From a letter to the register of the nizamat adalat (provincial court), dated December 5,

1812, signed by G. Dowdeswell, chief secretary to the Bengal government, British

Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1821, Vol. 18, 31.
26

Extract Bengal Judicial Consultations, 7th February 1805, in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 24.

27

Extract from the Report of the Criminal Cases adjudged by the Court of Nizamut

Adawlut, in the year 1810, in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 25-6.

28

Anonymous, Peculiar Customs of the Hindus, in The Asiatic Annual RegisterFor

the Year 1803, Vol. 5 (London, 1804), 29-30.

28

29

Minute of Mr. G. L. Prendergast, in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 246-7. See Sir John

Malcolm, The Government of India (London, 1833), 32.

30

BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 38-39.

31

Letter from Searman Bird, senior judge and J. Rattray, 2d judge at Dacca to M. H.

Turnbull, esq. Register to the Nizamut Adawlut, Fort William, dated 19 th August 1816,
in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 101.
32

Jakob De Roover and S.N. Balagangadhara, Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God: the

principle of toleration in early modern Europe and colonial India, History of Political
Thought 30 (2009), 111-39; Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: the debate on sati in
colonial India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); Andrea
Major, Pious Flames: European encounters with Sati 1500-1830 (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
33

Geoffrey A. Oddie, Popular Religion, Elites and Reform: hook-Swinging and its

prohibition in colonial India, 1800-1894 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), 77-78, 86.
34

Shashi Ahluwalia and Meenakshi Ahluwalia, Raja Rammohun Roy and the Indian

Renaissance (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1991); A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Social
Ideas and Social Change in Bengal 1818-1835 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965).
35

Rammohun Roy, The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1, ed. Jogendra

Chunder Ghose (1885, sec. ed. New Delhi, 1982), 113.

36

Rammohun Roy started The Brahmunical Magazine or The Missionary and the

Brahmun, being a vindication of the Hindoo Religion against the attacks of Christian
missionaries in 1821 and produced several issues defending the truth of Hindu religion
against Christian arguments.

29

37

Roy, The English Works, 3.

38

Ibid., 45.

39

Ibid., 69, 21.

40

E.g.: Translation of a Conference between an Advocate for, and an Opponent of, the

Practice of Burning Widows Alive, A Second Conference between an Advocate for,

and an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive, Abstract of the Arguments
regarding the Burning of Widows, considered as a Religious Rite, and Address to Lord
William Bentinck, in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1.
41

J. K. Majumdar, ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India

(Calcutta: Anmol Publications, 1983), 97-156.

42

The Petition of the orthodox Hindu community of Calcutta against the Suttee

regulation (January 14, 1830), in Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in
India, 156-63.
43

An appeal to the orthodox Hindus on the necessity of establishing the Dhurma Subha

(February 6, 1830), in Raja Rammohun Roy, 163-5.

44

From a lamentation on the rejection of the sati appeal in the Samachar Chandrika, the

journal of the Dharma Sabha, in Raja Rammohun Roy, 205-7.

45

Mani, Contentious Traditions; Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of

Knowledge: the British in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 57-75; Lynn
Zastoupil and Martin Moir, eds., Introduction, in The Great Indian Education Debate:
documents relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy, 1781-1843 (Richmond:
Curzon, 1999), 1-72.

30

46

Raf Gelders and Willem Derde, Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: colonial experience of

Indian intellectuals, Economic and Political Weekly 38 (2003), 4611-17.

47

Geoffrey A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant missionary constructions of

Hinduism, 1793-1900 (New Delhi: Sage, 2006).

48

British authors as varied in their religious outlooks as Nathaniel Halhed, William

Jones, James Mill, and Charles Grant all agreed that the Hindus took the laws that were
found in their sacred scriptures to be the revelation of the Almighty or the divine being.
See Halhed, A Code of Gentoo Laws or, Ordinations of the Pundits ed. M. J. Franklin
(London and New York: Routledge, 2000), xiii-xv; Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law or, the
Ordinances of Menu ed. M. J. Franklin (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), xvi;
Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain
(1792), in British Parliamentary Papers Colonies East India, Vol. 5: 18311832
(Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), 34; James Mill, The History of British India, vol.
1 (London, 1817), 170. From the start, the British had embarked on a quest for the Hindu
sacred law and its textual foundation. In the eighteenth century, they decided that the
Code of Manu was the text that contained the original laws mistaken by the Hindus for
the biblical Gods revelation. See Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda, Appropriation and
Invention of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu law in early colonial Bengal
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008).
49

We have argued this point elaborately in earlier work; see De Roover and

Balagangadhara, Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God.

50

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati (New Delhi:

Manohar, 1978), 39.

31

51

Many colonial authors were aware of this problem. Walter Ewer stated in 1818 that it

is well known that not one man in a thousand knows anything of the contents of the
Shasters, in BPP 1821, vol. 18, 229. Or in the words of Sir John Strachey: If a religion
be a creed with certain distinctive tenets, the Hinduism of the mass of people is not a
religion at all. Their religion is in no way represented by the sacred books of Sanskrit
literature. The sanctity of the Vedas is an accepted article of faith among Hindus who
have heard of their existence, but they have nothing to do with the existing popular
beliefs. The Puranas, and other comparatively late works, which Elphinstone says may be
called the scriptures of modern Hinduism, have no practical connection with the religion
of the great majority of the population. Strachey, India: Its Administration & Progress
(London, 1911), 317.
52

Dayanand Saraswati, Autobiography, 82-3.

53

Dayanand Saraswati, Light of Truth or an English Translation of the Satyarth Prakash,

trans. Chiranjiva Bharadwaja (New Delhi: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, 1994), 745.
54

Ibid., 336.

55

Ibid., 772.

56

Arya Patrika, April 13, 1886, 5. Cited in Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu

consciousness in 19th-century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),

144.
57

Arya Patrika, August 31, 1886, 7. Cited in Jones, Arya Dharm, 123.

58

Ibid., 47.

59

Ibid., 96-97.

32

60

From the Arya Patrika, December 27, 1887, 3-4, cited in Jones, Arya Dharm, 109. In

1915, Farquhar noted that Din Dayals association, the Bharata Dharma Mahamandala,
even though it claimed to defend orthodox Hinduism, found itself driven to set forth the
Hindu system as the religion for all mankind. To defend a religion which is but the
religion of the Hindus is felt to be impossible for the modern mind. He noted with
satisfaction: Clearly, the freedom as well as the universality of Christianity is working
with irresistible force within the very citadel of Hinduism. Farquhar, Modern Religious
Movements, 321-2.
61

The quotes are from a lecture delivered in 1896 by Swami Rama Tirtha at the Sanatan

Dharma Sabha of Sialkot, now in Pakistan. Swami Rama Tirtha, On Sanatan Dharma
(Lucknow, n.d.), 2, 10-34. See Jones, Two Sanatan Dharm Leaders and Swami
Vivekananda: a comparison, in Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism,
ed. William Radice (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 224-43.
62

As William Gould shows, a softer variant of Hindu nationalism developed within the

Indian National Congress in the early twentieth century: Gould, Hindu Nationalism and
the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004).
63

For the development of these strands, see A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty

(London: J. M. Dent, 1938), 60-100; John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: the
case for toleration in the English Revolution, The Historical Journal 41 (1998), 961-85;
J.C. Davis, Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution, The
Historical Journal 35 (1992), 507-530.

33

64

E.g., Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici (1521), in Wilhelm Pauck, ed.,

Melanchthon and Bucer (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 3-150, 123;
Luthers The Freedom of a Christian (1520) in Timothy F. Lull, ed., Martin Luthers
Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 585-629; Calvins
chapter on Christian liberty in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T.
McNeill and trans. Ford L. Battles (1559; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
1960); Edward B. Underhill, ed., Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 16141661 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1966).
65

E.g. Henry Lord, A Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians (London, 1630), 43-95; John

Z. Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the
Empire of Indostan, Part I and II, ed. Michael J. Franklin (1765-67, repr. ed. London and
New York: Routledge, 2000), 16-17; Anonymous, The History of British India, 3-5; J.
Talboys Wheeler, College History of India: Asiatic and European (London: Macmillan,
1888), 13, 21; Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism (London:
Macmillan, 1891), 352; Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest (London: Macmillan, 1910), 33;
Strachey, India: Its Administration & Progress, 318-9.
66

Wheeler, College History of India, 21; Henry Whitehead, Indian Problems in Religion,

Education, Politics (London: Constable & Co., 1924), 38-39.

67

Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 23-65; Strachey, India, 336-41.

68

Wheeler, College History of India, 107-108, 148. See also Whitehead, Indian

Problems, 3.
69

Chirol, Indian Unrest, 32, 37, 5.

70

Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Introduction, in Chirol, Indian Unrest, xv.

34

71

Lyall, Introduction, in Chirol, Indian Unrest, ix, xvi, xiii.

72

The Worlds Work, Vol 35: November, 1917, to April, 1918: a history of our time

(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1918), 35.

73

Letter to the Nawab of Bhopal, New Delhi, 9 July 1948, in Selected Works of

Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 7, ed. S. Gopal (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru
Memorial Fund, 1988), 8.
74

India Will not be a Hindu State, Address to mill workers and labourers in Delhi, 30

September 1947, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 4, ed. S.
Gopal (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1986), 107-9.
75

Toleration or Ruin, Speech at New Delhi, 27 September 1947, in Selected Works,

Second Series, Vol. 4, 101-2.

76

The quotes are from A Uniform Refugee Policy, Note to Cabinet Ministers, 12

September 1947, in Selected Works, Second Series, Vol. 4, 62-6; italics added.

35