Mishra, P. (1 December 2002). “The God of New Things: Why Hinduism is as much a modern political invention as an ancient tradition.” The Boston

Globe.

 

 

Overview

In this personal glimpse at the Hindu religion by a New Delhi writer, Mishra begins by placing his readers in Rishikesh, a town bordering the Himalyas and on the banks of the great Ganges river. It is a gateway for today’s spiritual tourists, even a destination of the Beatles when they came in the 1960s to learn transcendental meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Today there are yoga centers and Internet cafes.

 

It is also a place in which the ideal of ‘detachment’ is beset by a heavy dose of contention between the categories of “Hindu” and “Muslim.” According to Mishra, in the 19^th century Hinduism began an “extraordinary makeover” as India confronted Western ideologies and progress for the first time. Says Mishra,

 

“Indeed, there was no such thing as ‘Hinduism’ before the British invented the catch-all category. . . and made India seem the home of a ‘world religion’ that was as organized and theologically coherent as Christianity and Islam.”

 

 

Traditionally, what has passed for the Hindu “religion” consisted in a stock of allegiances to family, caste, linguistic group, region, and devotional sect. Religion was originally “more a matter of unselfconscious practice than of rigid belief.” This set it apart from the monotheistic bent of Islam and Christianity encountered in the 19^th century. Hindu religion, by contrast, “very rarely demanded. . . adherence to a set of theological ideas prescribed by a single prophet, book, or ecclesiastical authority.”

 

Hinduism allows for atheism and/or agnosticism, a great diversity in deities, the creation of new deities, and all this while evidencing no notable evangelical zeal.

 

The first of its regional sects was the Vedic religion among the nomads and pastoralists of Central Asia who settled in North India in the second millennium BC. Brahmans, a priestly class, conducted fire sacrifices according to the Vedas, the earliest known Indian scriptures. But the Brahams quickly opted for power and glory over an all-inclusive faith. Mishra identifies this as an early step toward Hindu nationalism and self-preservation.

 

When the British of the 19^th century encountered Brahamical literature, their own literal-theistic framework converged with Brahman appetites for ideology and consolidation, resulting in a forced, nationalistic, “Hinduism.” The story is long and complicated, and Mishra accounts for it in impressive detail. But the larger message is that of the modernization of Hinduism.

 

Central in this story is Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a middle-class disciple of the illiterate mystic Ramakrishna. Vivekananda sought to make Hinduism intellectually respectable to both Westerners and Westernized Indians. He toured England and America, giving lectures which presented India as “the most ancient and privileged fount of spirituality.” He also exhorted Hindus to embrace Western science and materialism.

 

All of this, according to Mishra, meant a convergence of British-constructed Hinduism and European nationalist realpolitik. Though he remained a mystic, his work influenced the later formation of the BJP, an upper-caste, middle-class Hindu political party that aspires to increased nuclear capability and information technology in India. This catalyzed the movement of the Hindu ‘faith’ into a nationalist ideology that “has pretensions to being all-inclusive but demonizes Muslims.” Today, the movement enjoys the support of India’s Western-minded upper-class, for whom it is a practical boon to let Hinduism appear a unified, coherent faith.

 

Mishra contends that Vivekananda’s influence will outmatch that of even Ghandi, and that this means the prospect of a liberal humanism will continue to erode under the march of an “intellectually and spiritually oppressive” drum.

 

 

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

 

1.      Have you or teenagers you know had any experience of the Hindu faith?

 

2.      Do you think the development of a faith involves the political and geographical situations that make up its context?

 

3.      What do you think Mishra is trying to imply about the Hindu faith(s) prior to their contact with the Western world?

 

4.      Can traditional religious practices preserve their integrity in an increasingly globalized and Westernized world?

 

5.      Have you encountered Hindu/Muslim/Christian antagonism first hand?

 

 

Implications:

This historical-cultural glimpse at the development of the Hindu faith(s) sheds an unusual light on the challenge of inter-religious dialogue and pluralism. The extent to which Western monotheisms have coerced eastern faiths into a certain mold is a phenomenon worth considering. One wonders, as well, the extent to which practicing Hindus today have addressed the political influences in the development of their faith.

 

Christopher S. Yates cCYS