The Colonial Reinterpretation of Hinduism

Sanjib Goswami, Ph.D.

Adjunct Professor
University of Science and Technology
Meghalaya, India
Email: sanjivgoswami@gmail.com

Abstract

Colonialism in India continues to have far-reaching consequences on people’s lives.

Post-1857, a new form of colonial rule was introduced that interpreted several aspects
of socio-culture life and created triangulation in many parts of the society. The effect
of these changes also affected the religious life in India. In interpreting Hinduism in
the colonial frontier, European scholarship indicated two critical ways that classified
the religion as a particular, homogenous religious element: first, by finding the
essence of the Indian thought in certain Sanskrit writings and second, by analyzing
Indian religion by utilizing contemporary European understandings of Christian
conventions as an epistemological measuring stick. Hinduism was thus reinterpreted
and recast with much Christian underpinnings. This led to separation of the social and
cultural aspects of Hinduism from its religious elements resulting in a westernized
form of Hinduism. This has led to confusion on the boundaries and parameters of
Hinduism in the post-colonial period and, though having been in India over millennia,
Hindus now finds themselves at the crossroad of identity. This paper discusses these
colonial changes and looks at how to carry forward the study of Hinduism in future.

Key Words: Hinduism, India, Colonialism, Sanskrit, World Religion

Introduction:

The establishments of a scholastic investigation of religions were laid on a colonial interest to

control assets, both human and monetary. Out of this interest, developed the tools to control
and manipulate “religion” from the core thereby redirecting the focus onto the fringes. The
utilization of the “religion” as a tool encouraged the Europeans battle with social pluralism
(Chidester 1996:2-3). Supporting the colonial interpretation were structures which failed to
make an all inclusive idea of human conduct as the framework. Presuppositions in
themselves help shape the construction of any discipline, but with regard to the concept of
religion, presuppositions have determined to a great extent the very nature of study and of the
socio-cultural reality of religion (Flood 1999:65). In this paper, I shall discuss how colonial
presuppositions and underpinnings reconstructed Hinduism and how this led to separation of
its socio-cultural elements from the religious elements thereby helping to further the colonial
project in India.

Groupings, classifications and thoughts have traditionally been the historical backdrop of
investigating religions. It also reveals the texture and focus of colonial culture and qualities in
such investigations. For example, the idea of “religion” is the result of certain framework of
Christianity where Christianity has by and large presented the colonial researchers of a

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prototypical case of religion and remains as a basic measuring stick for investigating ‘other
religions’ in the colonial world (Balagangadhara 1994:307). Because of this underpinning of
investigating religions on such preset concept, it has to be consequently recognized that such
study is established on a structure that is unmistakably Christian from its very inception.

Even with the historical origin of “religion” revealed, these classifications still hold the
premise that all societies have some idea of a religion (Balagangadhara 1994:284-5). The
classification ‘world religions’ that is still being used today suggests an obvious and general
idea of religion that is effortlessly recognizable as well as accepted as a perpetual element of
any culture in whatever time of history. To be arranged as a ‘world religion’ however, what is
assumed as religious thought and practices is unmistakably recognized as a criteria that
satisfies a specific agenda of attributes situated within the framework of Christianity. These
may include consecrated writings and proselytisation (Hirst and Zavos 2005:5). A restricting
component of the class ‘world religion’ is that it must be separated from its local and social
moorings with a specific end goal as if it were a commodity. This definitely implies that the
accounts of customs, traditions and social folklore must be disconnected and reinterpreted
from an overwhelmingly diachronic measurement to a synchronic one that is on the idea of a
religion spread out over the globe, practically outside of time. (Flood 1999:235). In light of
this scholarly and social reality, this paper will present how colonial reconstruction of
identities across various facets of life in India added to the development of new form
religious definition that came to cast against the setting of European frontier extension in the
region.

The work of Michel Foucault and Edward Said frame a couple of basic points on the
discussion and research in the development of the investigation of religion with
colonialisation. Foucault’s work attracts our attention regarding the power relations involved
in learning which renders all truth claims as suspect. As a commentator of the European
civilization, Foucault raises doubt about preconceived definitive frameworks of
understanding that shape identities or bodies of information (Ludden 1993:250). If
disciplines are regimes of power, then King quotes Foucault to say, the study of religions as a
discipline is a “technique for assuring the ordering of multiplicities not above but inside the
very texture of the multiplicity” (King 1999:68).

While Foucault proposed that the human sciences delivered objectified bodies of information,
Edward Said, examined the unpredictable and unpretentious routes in which European
subjectivity was managed and fortified to the detriment of colonized by generalizing a
universe of colonized “Others”. In Said’s study of the colonial body knowledge, which he
had named Orientalism, he expresses that the major divide between the East and West is a
distorted European understanding of the “Orient” that strengthened the idea of colonialism
(Said 1978:56). Orientalism, in this sense, created a new arrangement of explanations about
the Orient that turned out to be so generally acknowledged as genuine that it “determined the
content of assumptions on which theory and inferences can be built” (Ludden 1993:251).

After setting up new colonial areas, European pioneers also entered another epistemological
space of local dialects and languages that had to be figured out to firmly root the new
European domination. Traditional languages such as Persian and Sanskrit and other
vernacular languages and dialects were felt to be essential to understand the Hindu way of
life. Accordingly, these were the main learning foundations of the colonizers in the frontier
regions (Cohn 1996:4). Through the authority of local dialects and languages and by
promoting vernacular languages, colonial agents were able to categorize and sort their

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subjects, effect changes, gather taxes, keep up peace, and in the long run establish new types
of learning that could additionally build up structures that consolidated their position in the
frontiers (Cohn 1996:5). In addition, by knowing the religion of the Other, European
colonizers were not just able to understand the Oriental, with whom they had came into
contact, but it also gave them additional tools to control the subjects.

Through these Orientalist imaginings, religions in the orient were comprehended to be

ageless and constant, remaining outside the casing of chronicled, social and social settings of
the Eurocentric concepts of origin of history, religion and culture (King 1999:91). What
ended up in these theoretical interpretations was the mismatch of understanding between the
Indian and European religions and the life experiences of the individuals who practiced and
populated the Indian subcontinent. However, far from being merely passive objects, Oriental
religions constructed by colonial administrators, missionaries, and scholars, paradoxically,
utilized and projected these Oriental concepts in new colonial constructs. These new
constructs were necessitated as the expression “Hindu” did not suggest a particular religiosity
for the colonial agents (Chaterjee 1992:147). As a Western logical build, Hinduism thus first
became a British legitimate scientific classification to depict and represent the religious Other
in India who were not Muslims, Christians, Parsees or Jews (King 1999:99). This new
construction resulted in rendering Hinduism to the form of a contact based on a text.

In the interpretation of Indian religion in the colonial frontier, Richard King has indicated two
critical ways that classified Hinduism as a particular, homogenous religious element: first, by
finding the essence of the Indian thought in certain Sanskrit writings and second, by
analyzing Indian religion by utilizing contemporary European understandings of Christian
conventions as an epistemological measuring sticks. These two procedures intertwined and
constituted each other, thus turning them into the principle components of the “westernization
of Indian religion” (King 1999:101). Western presuppositions about religion, motivated by
Christian religious philosophy, put extraordinary stress on the holy content as the heart of its
devotees. A significant number of the early interpreters of Indian writings were European
Christian ministers, who, in their interpretations of Hindu composition, assumed a critical
part in creating a homogenized and reductionist version of thought of the Indian way of life
(Frykenberg 1991:40). Thus, the Indian religious conventions of the oral and prominent
socio-cultural motions were either disregarded or discarded as superstitious beliefs that were
corruption of contemporary Hindu religion and did not mirror their own Christian beliefs.
Thus, this approach tended to neglect the social and cultural content of Hinduism, thereby
restricting the religion to a particular shrine, priest or sect. It is here that the term “Hindutva”
needs to be mentioned. Coined by Veer Sarvarkar of the Hindu Mahasabha, this term is now widely
used in contemporary India. Hindutva refers to that form of Hinduism that stresses on the social and
cultural aspects of Hinduism rather than on the religious aspects. In this sense, it is projected as an
inclusive and secular form and a narrative of cultural nationalism is being built around it. In later
years, colonial agents used this reinterpretation and restrictive nature of Hinduism to add
strength to the nomenclature by which Hinduism came to be represented as “brahminism”
that revolved around priesthood. This was similar to the priest dominated Christianity, against
which was born the Protestant sect.

The development of present day Hinduism was not however an effort entirely led singularly
by colonial agents and researchers. It was also supported by certain elitist groups in the
Indian society who were the target of the civilizing mission of colonialism. Such a joint effort
helped set up Hinduism as ‘world religion’. This was something that was to the liking of the
Indian elites and was first reflected broadly by Swami Vivekananda at the World Parliament

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of Religions in Chicago in 1893 (Frykenberg 1991:42) and the concept of a world religion
was also later carried forward by others such as Swami Prabhupada. As I mentioned above,
the subsequent impact of this content which focused on “brahminisation” of Indian religious
life also led to a hostile constraint that focuses on the demands of Hindu individuals and
accentuated the caste and class divisions in society.

Indirect Rule:

The move to redefine the entire Hindu way of life was a colonial project under a new form of
colonialism which came to be known as ‘indirect rule colonialism’ post 1857. While
Christian missionaries have been active in India since hundreds of years, it was in nineteenth
century that a systemic attempt was made by colonial scholars to understand Hinduism. This
project was a part of the indirect rule paradigm that colonial agents started in the post 1857
period in India. The Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 led to policy changes in the administration of
British India. As part of the change, the British stopped all further annexation of native states
and during the period 1858–1947 the general policy changed to one of non-annexation but
with the right of intervention. Opinions differ on the causes of the mutiny: whether it was a
planned war of independence against the colonial empire, or an uncoordinated mutiny of
soldiers who felt a threat to their religious sensitivity, or simply a revolt by soldiers who
wanted increased pay and greater career opportunities. Whatever the cause, the Sepoy Mutiny
saw the participation of some 8,000 of the 139,000 sepoys (soldiers) of the Bengal Army.
Though the mutiny was suppressed by the end of 1858, it was a major shock to British power.
It led to the administration of India being directly taken over by the British Crown from the
East India Company.

Unable to make sense of the mutiny, the colonial authorities took support of the services of
scholars. Mamdani writes that the task of interpreting and articulating a response to the crisis
of 1857 was primarily led by Sir Henry Maine, who had to “rethink and reconstruct the
colonial project on a more durable basis”. Maine’s understanding of the crisis emanated from
a failure of the British administrators to understand the ‘nature’ of native Indian religious and
social beliefs and what Mamdani refers to as “the mid nineteenth-century crisis of
colonialism”. Maine called for a shift in focus from direct rule colonialism to indirect rule
colonialism in several key areas. As part of that process, the Queen’s proclamation of 1858
stipulated non-interference in the private domain of the colonized, especially in religion
(Mamdani 2012: 6-84).

The content and implementation of Maine’s indirect rule colonialism was vastly different
from earlier paradigms implemented by the East India Company. The Company had since
1757 allowed local kings to pay an annual royalty. These kings retained their traditional
administrative authority and the ability to legislate, subject to British supervision and control.
Maine’s indirect rule was vastly different because it moved away from a focus on the
conquered elites. In essence, direct rule had a civilizing aim over ‘uncivilized’ colonized
others. In addition, direct rule colonialism was also primarily premised on economic
exploitation. In doing so, it acknowledged the differences between the colonizer and the
colonized. Post-1857, although the British gave up outright annexation of territory, they still
reserved the right to intervene in the internal affairs of native states and they exercised this
right in several native areas. North East India was no exception.

Indirect rule colonialism, on the other hand, while acknowledging differences, sought to
shape them. Using a specific theory of history and a particular theory of law, Maine sought to

4
differentiate between the Western concepts of universal civilization and non-Western
concepts of local customs. This meant a shift from the homogenizing concepts of civilization
to one articulating and managing intractable differences in society. This resulted in a new
form of protection that sought to redefine custom and traditions, create new political
identities, and endeavoured to shape the perception of the past, the present and the future of
the colonized. Mamdani argues that the shaping of this new form of colonialism was
achieved by creating new histories that memorialized the past by casting different groups of
colonized peoples differently. In essence, it created triangulation in society and attempted to
give new meanings to social, cultural and religious practises. I shall discuss how this
redefinition and reconstruction affected Hinduism.

Colonization of Hinduism:

Of the many enduring images of India that have captured the imagination of Westerners over
the centuries, it is the characterization of eastern culture, and Indian religions in particular, as
‘mystical’ that is most relevant to our current discussion. As Europeans became increasingly
intrigued by the cultural mysteries and economic resources of foreign lands in an age of
colonial expansion, it was inevitable that a developing awareness of the diversity of cultures
and religions would require some characterization of these ‘alternative perspectives’ in a way
that displayed their alterity when compared to the normative European Christian perspective.

The imaginative construction of a ‘mystical’ tradition within Western Christianity seems to

have gained increasing credence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With a greater
awareness of the plurality of religious perspectives throughout the world furnished by
colonial encounters abroad, it became inevitable that comparisons with Christianity would
naturally come to the fore. It is thus no coincidence, then, to find the Christian
presuppositions of many Europeans getting reflected in their characterization of non-
Christian religion such as Hinduism.

Equally, it is worth noting that the characterization of the Indian subcontinent as ‘mystical’ in
the colonial period is not just about the classification and control of foreign lands and
peoples; it also carries with it the weight of another burden. This burden is the implicit, and
often explicit, criticism of contemporary elements of the practices of Indian religion and
culture. Today, there are two powerful images in contemporary Western thought on Indian
religion. One is the enduring notion of some disturbing and outdated practices about
Hinduism, while the other represents the magic, the mystery and the spirituality that Western
thinkers find lacking in their own culture. The backwardness of the traditional Hinduism thus
appears to sit side by side with its spirituality and cultural richness. At the same time, we
also find Western scholars representing Hinduism as a globalized and all-embracing world
religion while also presenting a new intolerant and virulent face of religious nationalism.

Despite the apparent incongruity of these two representations, I will argue in this chapter that
one feature that both characterizations share in common is the influences of Western thoughts
that underpin many Hindu practices today. However, this is not to say that the modern
concept of ‘Hinduism’ is merely product of Western thought. While Western influence does
have a role, it is not a sufficient causal factor in the rise of this particular social construction.
To argue otherwise would be to ignore the thousands of years of crucial role played by
indigenous ideology in the formation of Hindu religiosity.

5
Western Orientalist discourses however, by virtue of their privileged political status within
‘British’ India, have contributed greatly to the modern construction of ‘Hinduism’ as a single
world religion. This was somewhat inevitable given British control over the political,
educational and media institutions of India in the post 1857 indirect rule paradigm.

It is here that I discuss how the construction of the term ‘Hinduism’ continued to lead to
confusion on its meaning and content even in the post colonial period. In 1995, the Supreme
Court of India was called up to go into the issue of what constitutes Hinduism and what is
meant by it. In the detailed judgment, the Court cited several authorities to clear the
confusion. The Constitution Bench in Sastri Yagnapurushadji and Others vs. Muldas
Bhudardas Vaishya and Another, (1966-3 SCR 242) held thus : "Who are Hindus and what
are the broad features of Hindu religion, that must be the first part of our enquiry in dealing
with the present controversy

The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics has described "Hinduism" as the title applied to that
form of religion which prevails among the vast majority of the present population of the
Indian Empire (Vol VI: 686). Dr. Radhakrishnan writes as under:

The Hindu civilization is so called, since its original founders or earliest followers
occupied the territory drained by the Sindhu (the Indus) river system corresponding to
the North West Frontier Province and the Punjab. This is recorded in the Rig Veda,
the oldest of the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures which give their name to this period
Indian history. The people on the Indian side of the Sindhu were called Hindu by the
Persian and the later western invaders. That is the genesis of the word "Hindu".
(Radhakrishnan 1927:13).

When we think of the Hindu religion, it is difficult, if not impossible, to define Hindu religion
or even adequately describe it. Unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does
not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one God; it does not subscribe to any one
dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of
religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional
features of any religion or creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life that
encompasses social, cultural and religious of the people of the Indian subcontinent. The term
‘Hindu’, according to Dr. Radhakrishnan, originally had a territorial and not a creedal
significance. It implied residence in a well-defined geographical area that stretch from the
Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. Aboriginal tribes, savage and half- civilized people, the
cultured Dravidians and the Vedic Aryans were all Hindus as they were the sons of the same
geographical territory.

Monier Williams observed:

It must be borne in mind that Hinduism is far more than a mere form of theism resting
on Brahmanism. It presents for our investigation a complex congeries of creeds and
doctrines which is its gradual accumulation may be compared to the gathering
together of the might volume of the Ganges, swollen by a continual influx of tributary
rivers and rivulets, spreading itself over an ever increasing area of country and finally
resolving itself into an intricate Delta of tortuous steams and jungly marshes ... The
Hindu religion is a reflection of the composite character of the Hindus, who are not
one people but many. It is based on the idea of universal receptivity. It has ever aimed
at accommodating itself to circumstances, and has carried on the process of adaptation

6
 through more than three thousand years. It has first borne with and then, so to speak,
swallowed, digested, and assimilated something from all creeds. (Williams 1883:57).

Scholars have mentioned that the usual tests which can be applied in understanding any
recognized religion or religious creed is inadequate in dealing with the problem of Hindu
religion. As already mentioned, Christian scholars believed that any recognized religion or
religious creed subscribes to a well defined body of set philosophic concepts and theological
beliefs. This did not apply to Hinduism. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in his work on Indian
philosophy maintained that unlike other religions and regions, Indian religion and thought
was not an auxiliary to any other science or art, but always held a prominent position of
independence. He wrote:

In all the fleeting centuries of history, in all the vicissitudes through which India has
passed, a certain marked identity is visible. It has held fast to certain psychological
traits which constitute its special heritage, and they will be the characteristic marks of
the Indian people so long as they are privileged to have a separate existence.
(Radhakrishnan 2009: 22-23)

The history of Indian thought emphatically brings out the fact that the development of Hindu
religion has always been inspired by an endless quest of the mind for truth based on the
consciousness that truth has many facets. While “truth” is one, but in Hinduism, it is
described and practised differently. The Indian mind has, consistently through the ages, been
exercised over the problem of the nature of godhead and the interrelation between the
individual and the universal soul. The Supreme Court in Ramesh Yashwant Prabhoo vs
Prabhakar Kashinath Kunte (1996 SCC 1 – 130) quotes Dr. Radhakrishnan by saying:

If we can abstract from the variety of opinion, and observe the general spirit of Indian
thought, we shall find that it has a disposition to interpret life and nature in the way of
monistic idealism, though this tendency is so plastic, living and manifold that it takes
many forms and expresses itself in even mutually hostile teachings.

It is somewhat remarkable that this broad sweep of Hindu religion has been eloquently
described by Toynbee, when he says:

When we pass from the plane of social practice to the plane of intellectual outlook,
Hinduism too comes out well by comparison with the religions and ideologies of the
South- West Asian group. In contrast to these Hinduism has the same outlook as the
pre-Christian and pre-Muslim religions and philosophies of the Western half of the
old world. Like them, Hinduism takes it for granted that there is more than one valid
approach to truth and to salvation and that these different approaches are not only
compatible with each other, but are complementary (Toynbee 1962: 48-49).

Chitkara quotes Bal Gangadhar Tilak from his celebrated treatise "Gitarahasaya" on the broad
description of the Hindu religion as under:

Acceptance of the Vedas with reverence; recognition of the fact that the means or
ways of salvation or diverse; and realisation of the truth that the number of gods to be
worshipped is large, that indeed is the distinguishing feature of Hindu religion
(Chitkara 1997:225).

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This broad abstract nature of Hinduism was what led to confusion of the colonial scholars
and administrators. It was in this context that they embarked on a project to reconstruct
Hinduism in a narrow sphere, confined only to the strict Hindu religious practices unrelated
to the culture and social ethos of the people of India that depicted the way of life of the Indian
people. In this way, Hinduism came to be indicative more as a matter of faith based on a God
head and not on the way of life of the Indian people.

The term ‘Hinduism’, as well as the term ‘Hindu’, is now established as a Western
explanatory construct. As such it reflects the colonial Christian presuppositions of the
Western scholars who first coined the term. Richard King quotes David Kopf to state how
the superimposition of a monolithic entity of ‘Hinduism’ upon Indian religious material has
distorted and perhaps irretrievably transformed Indian religiosity in a Westernized direction.
Thus he states that:

The work of integrating a vast collection of myths, beliefs, rituals, and laws into a
coherent religion, and of shaping an amorphous heritage into a rational faith known
now as “Hinduism” were endeavors initiated by (Western) Orientalists. (King 1999:
100)

As discussed above, European colonial influence upon Hinduism has thus profoundly altered
its nature in the modern era. In particular, I would like to highlight two ways in which
western colonization has contributed to the modern construction of ‘Hinduism’. First by
textualization through a process of reification the core of Indian religiosity in certain Sanskrit
and religious texts and removing the social and cultural underpinning of Hinduism and
secondly, by an implicit and sometimes explicit tendency to define Indian religion in terms of
a normative paradigm of Christian traditions. As already mentioned, these two processes are
clearly interwoven in a highly complex fashion and can be termed as the colonization of
Hinduism.

It is well established that many of the early European translators of Indian religious texts
were Christian missionaries. Thus their translations of these texts effectively constructed a
uniform and homogenized written canon based on their own understanding of Christianity. In
this way, the oral and popular aspect of Indian religious traditions were either ignored or
neglected. This neglect of oral traditions, culture and history was an integral part of the
indirect rule paradigm. European scholars were also convinced that the peaceful coexistence
of different Hindu sects was not possible without an overarching religious tradition. Their
interpretation thus tried to reconstruct this religious tradition and this model failed to
comprehend that religion could be premised on a multi-cultural coexistence as compared to
the monotheistic exclusivism of Christianity. This therefore resulted in the imagination of a
singular religion of ‘Hinduism’. Of course, the ability to classify Hindus under a single
religious rubric also made colonial control and manipulation of vast section of the people
easier.

It needs to be mentioned here that the rise of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century in India owed considerable debt to this colonial construction of a unified
religious concept. The lack of orthodoxy similar to an ecclesiastical structure in traditional
forms of Hinduism was dismissed, and one consequence of this was the tendency to portray
‘Hinduism’ as a contradictory religion which did require some form of organization along
ecclesiastical and doctrinal lines. Thus was born several religious movements, often labeled
as reformists. Through the colonially established apparatus of political, economic and

8
educational institutions, contemporary Hinduism continue to remain deeply influenced by
Western presuppositions about the nature of Indian culture.

Towards the decolonization of the study of religions

As discussed above, Hinduism became a defined religion with the Hindus taking on a defined
identity where text-based Hinduism became the idealized model. This was adopted by
different strands of Hindu community and belief systems. In this endeavor, nationalists
sought to recover their place as the original people of India with an antagonism towards
Muslims (Gold 1991:534). At the same time, as European scholars sought to highlight the
corruption of the Hindu religion by superstition and blind faith, various Hindu reform
movements began to emerge in the nineteenth century. Based on these reconstructions,
attempts were made to restore Hinduism to its former glory based on notions of a pre-colonial
mono-faith and unified India (King 1999:101). An image of a unified universal Hinduism
was important to colonial rulers for colonial control of population under indirect rule and
formed the basis of subsequent collective action (Veer 1993:42-3). The Western influence on
Indian religions is so prevalent today that even in the post colonial period, religion emerged
as an obvious analytical tool to define political patterns (Hirst and Zavos 2005:4). Thus, as
the focus of Hinduism shifted from its socio-cultural base to a text based politically defined
faith based construct, a stage emerged where politics defined religion

Regardless of these colonial definitions of ‘Hinduism’, religion in India continues to provide

frameworks for certain actions in the daily lives for the people. This results in the category
‘religion’ often remaining fluid and shifting boundaries across other identities such as caste,
class, gender, ethnicity, region and languages and defining other beliefs and practices (Hirst
and Zavos 2005:6). As Harjot Oberoi points out:

Scholars often think, speak and write about Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, but they
rarely pause to consider if such clear-cut categories actually found expression in the
consciousness, actions and cultural performances of the human actors they describe
(Oberoi 1994:1).

The academic study of Hinduism has now moved from its focus on rituals to the historical
side of religion. In this regard, the studies are more about how people construct their religious
worlds. The problematic term ‘Hinduism’, however, is useful so far as understanding those
diverse Indian traditions that have survived the colonially constructions is concerned. (King
1999:110). Thus, while Hinduism continue to be seen as heterogeneous, (polythetic) yet it is
also referred to as an idealized unified construct (prototypical) by Europeans (Ferro-Luzzi
1991:192). Bringing to light these issues of heterogeneity and unification can assist in
overcoming the colonially induced political construction that underpin the idealized
‘Hinduism’. This will potentially lead to recovering the subaltern voices of ‘Hinduism’.

The question that naturally arises at this point is how to define Hinduism after this colonial
construction. Naturally, it would be counter-productive to attempt to return to a pre-colonial
cultural understanding of the religion following what Spivak writes as the “the planned
epistemic violence of the imperialist project” (Spivak 1985:250). By attempting to locate an
approach to religion that predates colonial expansion would then lead to further constructions
in inverse relation to colonial construction. This may lead to further confusion and
complications. Therefore, the academic study of Hinduism must be made in relation to its
object of study. More so, as systems of knowledge that are specific to certain epistemic

9
traditions are embodied within particular cultural narratives, where neutrality is impossible
and undesirable (Flood 1999:220).

Conclusion

For over 1000 years, India had been subjected to foreign rule, be it the Muslims or the
Europeans. But that had not affected the inner strength of the people that had its root in
Hinduism. It is often said that this strength was derived from a holistic socio-cultural-
religious way of life that Hinduism laid for the people. But in the post colonial period, this
belief in the innate strength of Indian people has suffered setbacks as Hinduism became
confined to temples, rituals and priests. Devoid of its social and cultural moorings, post
colonial Hinduism was a shadow of its pre-colonial whole. This has pushed several scholars
to re-define, re-cast and re-find the religion once again.

The history of the study of religion traces the complex relationship between European
concepts and the often violent reality experienced by people and cultures all over the world
(Long 1986:3-4). Colonial influences that stubbornly remain in the way of what we
understand as ‘religion’ thus continue to shape the study of Hinduism. The attempts to correct
the colonial interpretation of Hinduism will have meaning if they are aligned with the social
and cultural practices, values and ideology of the people, which then can dislodge the
dominance of the western influences (Turner 1991:104). However, decolonization of
Hinduism after the reconstruction under colonial influence is not an easy task and
decolonization in this sense should also not mean forcing a philosophical unanimity upon
diverse people of India. At best, a middle path might be found that lays more stress on the
social and cultural aspects of Hinduism rather than the religious elements.

As I discussed above, Hinduism is presented as a contested category, where colonial

constructions of the religion has made it to some extent “alien” to its origin (Smith 1964:62).
From its broad spread over thousands of years, a narrow colonial definition of Hinduism has
tended to exclude many sects as intercultural and socio-cultural issues of religious studies has
got neglected (Chidester 1996:254). This has led to the present crisis of identity.
Disentangling Hindu frameworks of thoughts from colonial impositions is thus an urgent task
for scholars. But in the end, the question of whether or not the study of Hinduism is by
default invalidated because of its underlying links with certain forms of colonial knowledge
lies in the issue of representation which is always open to critique.

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