The author Manu S. Pillai has attempted to provide an overview of the evolution of Hindu Identity.  Though there are numerous quotations from several sources, the selection of opinions from different perspectives, yet, lacks incisive analysis.  This book is more a narrative and description of the process of evolution of an ideology rather than the identity.  The book has seven chapters, a long introduction and an epilogue. The author writes that the book is an investigation of human action and reaction, in a context of political conquest, cultural domination, and resistance.  It is more justification rather than investigation.

Most of present-day India was branded mleccha-desa , or barbarian country by the Brahmin promoters of Vedic religion and inhabitants as mlecchas – that included advanced urban people.  Even garlic eaters are mlecchas. Later they quietly changed the concept: it was not a geographical area, but where Brahmin’s dominion was not there. Three phases of Hinduism: Vedic, Puranic, Imperial, and modern.  The Vedas become the foundation of Hinduism.  The Puranas have a fluid form to universalize what was provincial and seed the parochial with the universal.  Thus, accommodated in the Sanskrit Master Narrative.  Like a python swallowing its prey whole, Brahmanism’s feats of incorporation changed and distended its [own] shape’.  Hinduism—became a ‘macro-reality of organically united micro-realities.’  The Puranic culture became an ocean, in which the Brahmanical stream was one among other streams, though big, forceful, and influential.  If Vedas were not denied, the superiority of Brahmins was accepted, they were into the tent or frame. Hence it is a many-face, multi-layered system, multi-scripture, multi-myths, multi-legends told and retold in multiple forms and languages. “There was always a hill nearby where Rama rested, or where characters from the Mahabharata dwelt; there was always a Puranic story in which local people were part of a great cosmic event.” (P.XXVIII) Pragmatic Brahmins made room for other gods and lamented an excuse of kali yuga.  “Indian civilization, after all, is built on stories—and if it met anything unfamiliar, it simply absorbed it and told yet more stories. (P.XXVIII)  It evolved from abstract reality to beholding the deity with images of wood, stone, and metal.  Gods were humanized and could be cajoled, flattered, reprimanded, loved, spurned, but embraced by emotion.  The images were placed in temples, and there were child and adult gods.  The temple evolved roles as a banker, cultural timekeeper, economic engine, and supplier of stability.  The phase of bhakti was scorned but received theological certification as a legitimate route to liberation. The Bhakti movement was compared to the Protestant movements of Christianity.  It was a spiritual bazaar, where multiple groups peddled religious wares.

Puranic stories were welded to physical temple sites, creating a ‘sacred geography,’ and pilgrimage sites.  Where they could gain spiritual release, but it also generated a culture of commonality despite different vocabularies, tongues, and histories. These temples received lands from kings and other patrons who supported musicians, priests, dancers, farmers, artisans, and, over time, whole communities. Caste became stringent, some segments were cast as so ritually impure as to be untouchable.  Even the Bhakti movement did not challenge the hierarchy.

As Islam came to India, there was no option but to accept a separate culture community—something that resulted in the partition in the 1940s. “In any case, once Islamic power settled in India, as opposed to making periodic visitations, its appetite for temple-smashing was much reduced. By the thirteenth century, a Muslim dynasty was entrenched in Delhi, and its armies would overwhelm most of the subcontinent.” (P. XXXVIII) Accommodation and suspicion, coexisted— continues today. The author writes that Hindu kings fought with one another but did not demolish temples but plundered them. 

The Hindu identity which was shaped by multiple parameters of caste, region, and language, was viewed in contrast to Muslims after the Islamic power.  The author asserts that it was not an artificial colonial invention.  Thus, two ideas of Nation emerged, first that has room for all, the second a Hindu nation, with memories of persecution of Muslim kings and Christian colonialists. Though it was an outsider’s tag, they gave substance to it.  Hinduism was not invented; it is a river with many streams.  Hindus would now begin to look at themselves in a mirror crafted by foreign hands, seeing a somewhat distorted reflection. Crucially, colonialism seeded a feeling among many Hindus that their identity needed muscle to counter the West and Muslims.

Monsters and Missionaries

In the early phase of the expansion of Christianity in the seventh century, the gods of other religions were branded as a multitude of devils.  Similarly, the idols in the Hindu shrines were compared with monstrous devils – creatures of Christian mythology.  But for Hindus, the Idols were visual theologies and visual scriptures.

Sati was highlighted in travelogues and was used as justification for the British Raj’s quest to civilize India.  Another report of devotees casting themselves under the chariot so that its wheels may go over them was an accident and not a regular incident.  Yet, the author acknowledges that there were human sacrifices in certain shrines. The author mixes up the reports of the missionaries with the travelogues written by many travelers.  This is a sinister design to blame the missionaries, and also the Christian community as a whole.  The author writes that to answer such criticism, Hinduism took its contemporary form drawing pride and confidence from certain aspects of its past and shame from others. The author states all writings were against Hindu culture, but something positive is recorded, he gives evil motives for such description.  The motivation was to get special terms of trade.

In the beginning, the Europeans came for trade, but also to gain ‘glory’ – a commodity. As the Portuguese came Hindus were dragooned into the Catholic faith and gods made an exodus from that area.  Later, the Goans were allowed to come back with their gods.  The memories of persecution and resistance became the raw material to articulate a unified and combative Hinduism to defend and also go on the offensive. 

The author quotes several Catholic and Protestant missionaries’ writings.  Some are letters they wrote, others are tracts, reports published in journals, and books.  He describes their writings as vitric, violent language that compensated for their ignorance.  The missionaries came to convert people, whether they came along with colonial powers, traders, or on their own.  The missionaries were unable to understand and navigate the caste system.  Some like Robert de Nobili,tried to reach out to the Brahmins, while some went to the lower castes. 

‘Heathens’ and Hidden Truths

The author brings out the history of the Tranquebar mission – Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg and Henry Plutschau.  He states that Ziegenbalg wrote to his home country —that Christians had no new message to deliver, and that Hindus had

within their traditions, strands aligned with the best of Biblical teachings—

was a dangerous line.” (Page 57) This is cannot be true interpretation. Nobili compared Hinduism to a fragrant balm in a dirty pot.      

Popular Hinduism may deserve contempt from the European perspective, but higher constructs are good, so there is no reason to convert.  White men might corner power in India by natives would refuse instruction. Christians demonized all Hindu deities, some Hindus branded some gods ‘false.’ Images and idols are outside Vedic tradition yet approved. 

Writing about the rise age of Enlightenment, reason, and rationality Europe the author states: “And just as Protestants employed arguments against idolatry to discredit Catholics, Western rationalists, skeptics and scientists now calculated that Hindu philosophy might smash the orthodoxy in Europe.” (Page 65) So, there was a quest for authentic Hinduism to retrieve uncorrupted monotheism from Sanskrit literature, which brought in new kinds of people called orientalists and Indologists. While missionaries tried to smash Hinduism, Hindu texts were deployed in the West to dismantle Christianity in the West. People like Voltaire without examining the material used it against the church. Like the Church concealed Scripture from the masses, Brahmins concealed scripture from low-caste masses.  As the Bible was unknown to the masses, Vedas were unknown to the masses.  The author fails to write that it was the scripture called Manusmiriti that banned the masses and also the Bible translation triggered the Protestant movement in the Europe. 

The author writes the Vedas were for Brahmins, but Puranas were for masses including the epics – the Mahabharata and Ramayana.  However, Hindus linked all kinds of texts to the Vedas and gave higher status to other literature like Puranas.  It is an ongoing process of Vedic inspiration. “Either way, room, and board for diverse texts were available, in which none surrendered their validity, while the Vedas occupied an honorary head office.” (Page 82) There is no image worship in Vedas, but Vedic mantras used in temple rituals, become legitimate.  The faith is complicated and even disputed, but it is a living, organic elastic entity.

Governing the Gentoos

East India Company-sponsored wealth creation, led to a boom in Hindu practice.  The British rulers honoured the sacred places and followed the prejudices of the Brahmins.  However, the British Raj was resisted for replacing the rule of men with the rule of law.  The English bureaucrats were corrupt and so were the Indian officials working there.  Many individuals benefitted but the masses suffered.  The Portuguese ruled with the sword, the British with smoother misaimed affection, yet the people felt an absence of meaningful dialogue. 

There was no Hindu code, everything was determined by context: region, caste, community, economic background…etc.; as decided by a king or village head or caste committee or trade guild.  For the same crime, one caste would be set free, another penalized. Strangely, today Hindu nationalists demand Uniform Civil Code.  Laws were unwritten and uncertain. Interestingly, when Warren Hastings faced legal trouble in London, Brahmins send a memorandum in his defence, as they were richly blessed. 

An Indian Renaissance

Vedanayakam Sastri, a prominent high-caste Christian had fall out with British missionaries for refusing to renounce Hindu cultural markers including caste according to the author.  He mixed Biblical narrative with facts of science like ninety species of trees.  When asked once about the contradiction between caste

discrimination and the principle of equality, Sastri explained that change

could not be forced, instead proposing something more incremental.

Sir William Jones was the godfather of Orientalism in India, he translated the Manusmriti into English. The author writes the 18^th and 19th-century orientalists did not want to Christianize India, but knew the country to rule better.  The author acknowledges the fact, that only through British inquiries, Ashoka was understood as a global luminary, and patron of Buddhism, and his lion capital is the national emblem and his wheel of righteousness adorns the National flag of India. The unforeseen byproduct of Orientalism and European research contributed to confidence and self-worth of natives, which created a patriotic spirit.  Orientalist interest in Gita popularized it among large sections of Hindus, as until then it was preserve of elites.  Even Gandhi first read Gita in English.  It became the bible of the Indian national movement.  It was an amusing turn—translating the Gita, Wilkins had ascribed Brahmins’ willingness to share it with foreigners to the gratitude ‘natives’ felt for British rule. And the same was used against the foreigners. Indians were placed under ‘temporary tutelage’ of British.

There were three opinions regarding education:  Orientalists wanted Sanskrit colleges, and all texts were translated from Sanskrit and used that as a curriculum for education.  The second was to combine both and bring out a hybrid curriculum.  The third was to use modern knowledge and educate the masses.  The author states that there were many schools in homes, temples and under trees teaching epics and arithmetic.  However, he fails to state that the schools were not inclusive and a majority population were deprived of education. The author does not state there were no higher education institutions, even those existed like Taxila and Nalanda were Buddhist, and not Hindus. 

In a state-funded education institution in Varanasi, myths were taught as science.  The British government had to decide in favour of the English.  An Indian crtic said:  Indians do not need the ‘romance’ of Sanskrit as proposed by Orientalists, but English the needed bread.  The author writes that the British had little capacity to educate Indians and missionaries slid into that space. Schools as expected my missionaries did not bring conversion.  But Hindus wanted enlightenment and not Christian enlightenment. 

For God and Country

Initially, the Danish mission as European missionaries were considered as hindrance to their profit.  The Danish company was circumspect about the law of mandating a clergyman abroad for every ship of 500 tonnes and above, so build ships below that size.  By the lobbying of Evangelical Christians like Grant, William Wilberforce, Claudius Buchanan,and the religious people, the British gradually in 1833, considered it as a holy mission entrusted to them to spread the Christian message. The arguments for sending missionaries were the evils like Sati, human sacrifice like falling before the chariot, child marriage, child widows…etc.  But, according to the author, it was not pan-Indian practice, and blaming Hindu culture to the totality was a mischief. 

Evangelical Christians mobilized inviting all to be engaged in mission that resulted in the first missionaries coming to India, William Carey a shoemaker.  The evangelicals reared men to populate Company ranks, carrying evangelical work through the state. This resulted in officials getting involved in mission work or supporting the missionaries.  The author provides some examples.

During Dalhousie’s era, he gave converts the right to inheritance in their original families.  It was vehemently protested.  “Understandably, wrath towards missionaries was on the ascendant in Hindu circles, especially among high-caste groups.”(Page 196)  The dislike is the insistence that Christianity was the

only path to god.  They did not object to Christ but could not accept him as the only savior.  Some Hindus wanted to become Christians but demanded that they should not be branded as Christians and renounce caste.  When not allowed, they turned away.  This restlessness caused the 1857 rebellion against the British and Christianity. 

Six:  Native Luthers

The author names the reformers as Native Luthers – like Martin Luther.  Some of them like Raja Ram Mohun Roy did not view the British rule as disaster but could be an instrument for regeneration.  He evaluated religion by an ethical yardstick and abandoned all unethical practices.  “Just as evangelicals in Britain nurtured a ‘religious public’, that is, reformers like Roy were cultivating one in India: a class that in time would also glaze their Hindu identity with nationalism.” (Page 219)  Hence, the author argues that Hinduism is not a British construct but a fresh incarnation due to political and social crises. 

Later Dayananda Saraswati also emerged who espoused Hinduism anchored in the Vedas.  He said that: ‘Steam-engines, railways, and steam-boats, all were shown to have been known, at least in their germs, to the poets of the Vedas’. He developed

 shuddhi (purification) schemes were developed, to re-convert those who departed Hinduism for Christianity or Islam. The Arya Samaj is a Hindu evangelical movement. He is termed as the grandfather of a mass-based Hindu nationalism. He acknowledged the flaws but did not reject caste. 

Jotirao Phule emerged as one of modern India’s great anti-caste ideologues.  He is viewed as the ‘father of Indian social revolution’. British impact was the political mobilization of subordinate castes, which successfully utilized British rule to bargain for just treatment from their traditional superiors. Missionary activities gave a toolkit for the self-assertion of marginalized sections.  Neither the British nor the missionaries intended to alter the power dynamics of Hindu society and produce local reformers, but that happened.  Jotirao demanded compulsory primary education, his wife Savitribai became the first female teacher, started schools inspired by missionaries, and in one of her poems Mother English as emancipatory power. He stated that the British Raj has reduced the power of the elite and gave hope to the marginalized.  For him, Social liberation was a priority not Independence from British rule.  Phule asked, how Queen Victoria, who presided over the termination of slavery in the British Empire, was blind to the suffering of her low-caste Hindu subjects.  He said that Hindus should be grateful to British rule as they had taught humanness. 

Dayananda, while acknowledging its flaws, never rejected caste itself,

Phule was allergic to the very principle. It came from two different ways of

viewing the world. Caste was foundational to Hindus because their society

was ‘order-oriented rather than justice-oriented’. That is, Hinduism’s

diversity made finding equilibrium between the many its main priority, not

equality. Phule, though, was drawn to a bolder idea—to him, deliverance

lay in modern egalitarianism, not inherited hierarchy. Phule:  how Queen Victoria, who presided over the termination of slavery in the British Empire was blind to the suffering of her low-caste Hindu subjects.

The author has not picked up the debates between Ambedkar and Gandhi.  The annihilation of caste has not be included in this research. 

Drawing blood

B.G. Tilak was against educating all castes as it would be cultural destruction.  Those who were against caste were anti-nationals.  He converted religious festivals like the Ganesh festival, asserted the right to play music before mosques on the way, and also popularized the annual commemoration of Shivaji: a hero.  He envisaged Hindu consolidation, Hindu nationalism, and a Hindu state.  Hinduness was reinforced by emphasizing not what Hindus were but what they were not: Christian and Muslim.  He argued that by the eighteenth century, the Marathas were masters of India. It was by defeating them —not the Mughals—that the Raj embedded itself. So the power should be handed over to Hindus. Tilak did not favour education for girls.  He asked: did Shivaji establish Maratha kingdom with girls?  He did not oppose child marriage.  He said that the  Higher castes were the ‘soul of the nation.’ The Tilakite nationalism was viewed with suspicion. Indeed, some of Phule’s followers decried the anti-British movement itself as a ruse for Brahmins to replace white men as rulers. Tilak denied the problem of caste.  Blamed the British for the Brahmin and non-Brahmin divide. 

To be part of the Hindu nation, they argued—marrying Phule’s anti-casteism with

Tilakite cultural nationalism—caste must be rejected and equality embraced. Savakar was inspired by Tilakite Nationalism.  Savakar admirers claim that he used a tactical ruse to get released from jail.  Savarkar clarified that Hinduness was not synonymous with Hinduism; one could shun the Vedas and yet be Hindu.  At the same time those who have India as their fatherland – having ancestors from India and equally considered as holy land, are Hindus.  By this measure, Saivas, Vaishnavas, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, and so on were invariably Hindu, even if only the first two recognized Hinduism. Muslims and Christians, however, were barred as they do not have a permanent interest here.  If driven out, they have countries to go to, but Hindus do not have any place to go.  He said Hinduness – equal for all castes would crush the design of foreigners.  He wanted the Hindu Union to attack Muslims.  For him, tolerance was a weakness.  The colonial Census also helped him to think of solidified Hindu unity.  His Hindu Mahasabha was not successful, but Congress succeeded as they acted like a Hindu party, sans the divisive language.

Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse, a Chitpavan Brahmin who was in the inner circle of Savarkar.  In the Indian parliament, in 2003, his portrait was opened next to that of Gandhi. 

Epilogue:  What is Hinduism

Colonialism and exposure to the West altered Hinduism but did not create Hinduism.  They were pressed to reinvent themselves.  They acquired new clothes of foreign design for older bodies.  Dalits could not negotiate for higher status within the Hindu order but obtained from outside.  But Arya Samaj claims that they alone can save Dalits by taking into the boson of the Vedic church.

Reaction to historical events

The author tries to create an impression that today’s Hindutva and its nationalism are a reaction to invasions, persecutions, and oppression of foreign powers. By acknowledging that the identity is not by what is from inside, but what is not in contrast with others, especially Muslims.  An identity formed as reaction, bitterness, and hate would be restless and self-destructive.