Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissance—in the "Age of Reason" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century "Enlightenment".Some commentators consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with … There is nothing new in the phrase “Hindu nationalism,” even if it has come to be associated with the recent emergence of political movements expressing Hindu rather than secular ideology. The locally dominant caste or the king of a region was often hostile to the process of the lower caste’s taking over of the customs and rites of the higher castes. Moreover, what they did know was far too unsystematic.¹ During the 1860s, a number of efforts were made to generate the basis for systematic and statistical knowledge collection and compilation. This therefore would contribute to the conclusion that the concept of a unitary Hindu religion was, at some point, largely invented by British colonialists. The third conclusion is that the Sanskrit language, which British scholars would use to generalise Hindus, is the liturgical language for many religious denominations where the majority have been generalised into Hinduism regardless of huge diversity between them. These aspects of ‘invention’ during the British colonial period will now be explored. Talbot states that the “assertion that the fourteenth-century epigraphical meaning of Hindu was not primarily a religious one comes from the negative evidence that the terms Islam and Muslim (in its Persian variant, Musalman) never figure in Andhra inscriptions of the fourteenth through mid-seventeenth centuries.”[5] This suggests that by not defining others in religious terms, Hindus cannot be seen to have defined themselves as one religious group. Talbot states that endowments and the like were “recorded in Sanskrit on copper plates, a traditionally kingly type of gift and inscriptional medium.”[6] This indicates that the language had potential to be utilised for political as opposed to religious means. These observations means that the content existed before British colonialism at was at some point during the period generalised into Hinduism. Wagoner concludes that the assimilation of Islamic culture was not due to any aggression of Islam but “the result of conscious and deliberately calculated acts by creative individuals seeking to maximize their opportunities in an ever-widening world.”[9] This demonstrates that Hindus in Vijayanagara, by to not feeling threatened by Islam on religious grounds, cannot have viewed themselves as a single religious entity. What follows is a recap of the work I have since done in collaboration with members of the collective modernity/coloniality.2 The basic thesis is the following: ‘modernity’ is a European narrative that hides its darker side, ‘coloniality’. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. It refers to the way in which the concepts (modernity and coloniality) are inseparable –two sides of the same coin. The caste system also existed in a tangible social context, along with a purely religious context. focus our attention on the rich outpouring of scholarship about the ‘invention of tradition,’ the reification of native culture, and the genealogies of colonial modernity in British (and to a lesser degree French) colonial South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below. Hence, the concept of citizenship did not confer universal rights on all individuals. Additionally to the orientalists, however, there were other factors that contributed to the construction of Hinduism. This adaption is also discussed by Vaidyanathan who, while supporting Dirk’s assertions, allows us to draw conclusions on British utilisation of the caste system. This is despite evidence that suggests that use of Sanskrit was not exclusively Hindu. D, Making India Hindu, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, Macdonell. While this is arguably true this is a conclusion invented by Moor as opposed to divulged strictly from Hindu teaching. This process... On September 19, 1990, a student from Delhi University poured kerosene over his body and set himself on fire. DOI link for Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity. Hinduism emerged in the encounter between modernity’s greatest colonial power, Great Britain, and the jewel of her imperial crown, India. Although the putative divide between Muslims and Hindus became the more dominant colonial charge, caste division had been used throughout colonial history to explain India’s “lack” of politics, and when that did not work, to trivialize its politics as localistic, particularistic, and inherently divisive. B.K, Was Hinduism invented?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, Porter. The history of intensive western cognitive as well as political engagements in matters of caste had started in the early 19th century, with earlier antecedents. E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , Narayan. Written at: Swansea University  N.B, The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India, CSST Working Paters, The University of Michigan, October 1988, P.30, [35] Vaidyanathan. First Published 2006 . P.B, ‘”Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.55, No.4, November 1996, [1] Orientalism and religion, Richard King, Routledge, London, 2006, P.98, [2] Fitzsimmons. The reason for looking at Hinduism before British involvement will be to demonstrate that before British colonialism there was not a cohesive, self-determined, large-scale ‘Hindu’ religious group. This unifying factor can be considered to be one of cultural as opposed to religious similarities for pre-colonial Hinduism. The caste system in the West disappeared only with the colonial expansion of the West. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. This led to the unintentional invention of a religion that never existed before that point in a coherent form. Sanskrit was a useful political tool as it demonstrated a connection to the ancient religions of local populations. 41, No.4, October 1999, [29] Macdonell. Despite the self-serving rhetoric about political chaos and social involution, the British conquest was one of the most comprehensive, long-lasting, and successful campaigns in world history. Some view it as an unchanged survival of Brahmanical traditions of India. D. N, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 38, No. Wagoner states that “adaptation of Islamicate dress at Vijayanagara was a fundamental part of a broader, far-reaching process of Islamicization, through which selected Indic cultural forms and practices were replaced in key “public” contexts with analogues drawn from a more universal, Islamicate culture.” [8] This suggests a lack of any strict Hindu coherence despite the fact that Vijayanagara and its culture would be largely defined as Hindu by British colonialists. This suggests how the people of the ‘Indus’ could come to be identifiable as ‘Hindus’ even after the end of the Harappan civilisation. These writers often engaged a growing body of assertion and argumentation about the fundamental nature of Indian society and its civil and political institutions, in the context of extensive debates about the colonial project of conquering and ruling India. Censuses and other categorising institutions demonstrate British definitions of Hinduism. He wrote that there were “three classes of Heathen, each one of which has a very distinct rule... By the second half of the nineteenth century, the colonial state in India was about to undergo several major transformations. Sir William Jones was an earlier prominent Orientalist who contributed to the invention of Hinduism. Although that struggle has been successful, it has not only been drenched in violence but it has also led to the general recognition that the effects of imperialism have by no means disappeared with the demise of formal colonial regimes of rule. This is due to evangelical attempts to create a singular definable religious opponent. 42-52 Nicholas B. Dirks. Mignolo, W. (2009) Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom. G, ‘Sir William Jones and the Association between East and West’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 8, No.1, January 1895, Rig Veda, Book 10, Hymn 90, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , Sugirtharajah. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. While aspects of their religious beliefs exist within modern day Hinduism, there is not a coherent religion that survived between then and now. Moor states that, “Strictly speaking, the religion of the Hindus is monotheism. The British conquest of India was anything but absent-minded. The Dalits (untouchables) is a group that does not exist within any of the four Varna categories. Firstly, however an understanding of pre-colonial European conceptions of Hinduism must be achieved. H. V, Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, Sage Publications, London, 1995, Dalrymple. It is within Harappan culture that many origins of modern Hindu religion are found. book Despite considerable association and integration with Islamic traditions in some areas of India, Sanskrit was still used as the one liturgical language used to demonstrate sovereignty despite the prevalence of other religions in India, notably Islam. By doing so, we aim at submitting the logic of modernity to a post-colonial criticism. 4, No. Moor states that Brahma, now viewed as one of the most important deities of Hinduism, was not prevalent in Indian teachings. Here, secularism functions as the mirror twin of modern religion that welds together the two ends of modernity/coloniality. Colonialism lives on in the massive disparities of wealth and control over capital between north and south, in the contradictory institutional legacies that inhabit political, juridical, educational,... JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. 37, No. amount, in any currency, is appreciated. P.B, ‘”Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.55, No.4, November 1996, P.702, [10] Orientalism and religion, Richard King, Routledge, London, 2006, P.99, [11] Pennington. ‘Hindoo’ was originally a Persian word used to identify these people[1], demonstrating that it was originally a term of external definition and not a self-determined identity. The following section will highlight what aspects of the modern day interpretation of Hinduism existed before British colonialism. S, Imagining Hinduism: A postcolonial perspective, Routledge, London, 2003, Talbot. Dalrymple calls these categorisations “encyclopaedias of the gods of the classical and near-eastern world.”[12] The encyclopaedic efforts of these orientalists led to the mass generalisation of many distinct Indian traditions under the umbrella definition of Hinduism. 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