Manu Pillai on his book Gods, Guns and Missionaries, the evolution of Hinduism and Hindu-Christian encounters under colonialism

You constitute that erstwhile Europeans archetypal encountered Hinduism, their ideas of the religion, “were shaped by their ain taste and governmental preoccupations”. Could you explain?

As Christianity dispersed successful Europe, aged pagan cults and systems were deemed not conscionable barbaric but Satanic. The thought emerged that immoderate gods worshipped done images were truly agents of the devil, that idols contained demonic forces. In time, arsenic Europeans encountered Hindu temples and deities successful India, they applied the aforesaid lens here. It did not assistance that representations of, say, Narasimha oregon Kali person a fierce character. To Europeans, these figures could ne'er beryllium forms of gods, lone servants of Satan. So, galore concluded that conscionable arsenic Europe had been nether the wicked oculus of the devil until saved by Christianity, India besides needed to beryllium liberated from paganism done the airy of the Bible.

In their brushwood with European missionaries, did Hindus sorb immoderate of the Christian ethos successful their ain spiritual framework? If so, was it a mode to defy conversions oregon owed to a consciousness of admiration towards the alien culture?

The Hindu-Christian brushwood features both. Each broadside adapted. Christianity successful the South absorbed ideas of caste and ritual purity. For instance, we spot missionaries formal similar Hindu gurus and follow Brahmin customs. Meanwhile, arsenic India came nether the White man’s rule, Hindus endorsed galore Western frames of thinking. Raja Ram Mohan Roy is simply a lawsuit successful point. Just arsenic Protestant missionaries claimed that archetypal Christianity was “corrupted” by the Catholic church, until rescued by the Protestant Reformation, Roy began to representation a pristine, abstract, monotheistic Hinduism, corrupted by Brahmins into idolatry; helium promoted the thought of a Hindu Reformation. Equally, helium resisted conversion, seeing successful it not a question of spiritual prime unsocial but a governmental enterprise. Besides, the Advaitic thought of divinity was, to him, superior to Christian conceptions of god. So alternatively of converting, helium urged Hindus to “revert” to “original”, pristine Hinduism.

When and however did militant Hinduism emerge?

In a sense, we tin hint a genealogy for militant Hinduism backmost to earlier times. History offers grounds of affable exchanges betwixt Hindus and Muslims, but besides of animosity and tensions. It is against Islamic powerfulness that we archetypal find immoderate hardening of the Hindu consciousness of self. And nether assemblage regularisation this feeling grows much potent, not slightest due to the fact that of missionaries’ polemical attacks connected Hindu culture. By the extremity of the 19th century, the connection ‘Hindutva’ emerged, and figures similar Tilak effort to specify it, earlier Savarkar’s enduring mentation appears. This signifier of militant Hinduism emerged owed to a analyzable interplay betwixt nationalism and communalism, which are modern forces. It was capable to bash truthful due to the fact that past supplied capable ingredients to enactment specified a turn. All governmental ideologies, aft all, are based connected circumstantial readings of the past.

What are your views connected the modern historiography of Hinduism? What are its biggest successes oregon failures?

It would beryllium presumptuous of maine to effort to database retired successes and failures successful a fewer lines. What excites me, however, is that determination is phenomenal enactment emerging connected the subject, not conscionable by mode of world probe but besides via radical from wrong the contented engaging with it successful absorbing ways, beryllium it successful Sanskrit lit oregon alleged people traditions. A batch of received contented and seemingly established ‘truths’ are being nuanced, determination is greater acknowledgment of complexity and a tendency to emergence supra ideological persuasions and categorical statements. This is simply a steadfast trend.

There is simply a fashionable cognition that successful the existent governmental environment, Hinduism has acquired an attraction that was denied to it truthful far. Would you hold with this idea?

These feelings are not new. As societies change, prosper and navigate caller forces, they not lone look to the aboriginal but besides analyse the past afresh, sometimes successful pursuit of emerging ideological goals. What you allude to is astir apt the grievance galore consciousness that Hinduism has been subjected to disproportionate criticism. This is simply a statement I bash not privation to enter. But I tin accidental that surviving successful the property of Hindutva, determination is people a greater appetite to survey Hinduism, including to analyse contradictions betwixt the governmental look of the Hindu individuality and Hinduism’s spiritual evolution. In practice, Hindutva stresses regimentation; Hinduism, though, has historically not been a regimented system. Many understandably find Hindutva disagreeable therefore. But the much absorbing humanities question to inquire is, whether, successful the agelong arc of Hinduism’s evolution, this excessively is different milestone.