E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. G, ‘Sir William Jones and the Association between East and West’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. Many thanks! The issue of caste invention can be concluded by stating that the caste system is part of the content of what British colonialists generalised as Hinduism. A Hindu group never existed under a united religious identity, despite all the traditions of modern day Hinduism existing independently before British colonialism. Some writings seemed to celebrate scandal, as we have just seen in the case of hookswinging; others focused on the more exotic customs of tribal and lowercaste groups. This is due to the fact that, in order to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over Indian religion, generalisation was necessary simply due to the huge number of belief systems that were being challenged. D. N, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. Dirks, for example states that, “Caste achieved its critical colonial position because the British state was successful in separating caste as a social form from its dependence on pre-colonial political processes.” 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. The unifying role of the Sanskrit language will also be observed. Written for: Robert Bideleux 4, No. We have traced parts of the process whereby India was consigned to an otherworldly and decidedly premodern position, and have pointed out moments when reactions to colonial and Orientalist characterizations led to other versions of Hinduism as the indigenous cultural repository of identity and value. This is due to evangelical attempts to create a singular definable religious opponent. 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. The British conquest of India was anything but absent-minded. Porter states that, “With a caste organization the priesthood found means to increase their power by recasting scholastic systems, changing and adding to the injunctions they contained, and adapting them more perfectly to their own advantage.”[33] This demonstrates that the British were typical of any rulers, adapting systems to suit their own means. E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , P.5, [19] William Dalrymple, ‘Gods and Monsters’, in The Guardian, 25th August 2007, online, accessed on 4th March 2012, , [20] Cannon. Whereas the revenue and authority that accrued from the relationship between land and the state were fundamental to the formation of the early colonial state, the general agrarian revolts that followed hard on the heels of the 1857 “Mutiny” and the steadily increasing economic investment in imperial power (propelled in particular by the joint stock arrangement of the railways and other infrastructural projects) made it clear that things had to change. The missionary desire to spread Christianity came from the growth of evangelical Christianity and it was this evangelical trend that was most instrumental in the invention and systemization of Hinduism. Nationalism in India emerged under colonial conditions, conditions that put Indian civilization itself on trial as the principal impediment to modernity and self-rule. However it can be noted that while Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism contain many similarities, notably for example the belief in Karma, they also contain many differences. A further example is located within the Athasastra in the 4th century BCE. All Rights Reserved. The caste system in India is an ancient part of Indian society. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. revolution and nor was it a completely radical break with past tradition. Modernity’s Epistemic Violence. D.P. An example of generalisation demonstrated by Pennington is the missionary obsession with idol worship. The first conclusion to be drawn is that the social group of the Indus river valley from where the name Hindu derives did not exist as a recognisably Hindu social group. The second means through which Hinduism was invented was through India’s clash with British social and religious traditions. The main conclusions drawn on the ‘invention’ of Hinduism by Europeans are twofold. As of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 'Aryan' caste Hindus were widely said by both Indian and British … The second observation is that what would now be considered the Hindu group did not define themselves as a singular religious group, even in the face of Islam, both militarily and culturally. 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 … Sanskrit was an ancient liturgical language used across many religious groups, which made it a standard by which British colonialists could define Hinduism. A. At first glance this may seem like British orientalists were aware of the difference between the different religions that use the Sanskrit language. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics. 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. A study of the situation during British colonialism demonstrates that various factors contributed to the construction of Hinduism. The Portuguese have been credited with the initial use of the termcastato refer to the social order of India, although according to at least one source the first use of the word was applied only to the lowest Indian classes in contradistinction to their overlords.¹ In the early sixteenth century, the traveller Duarte Barbosa reported some features of a caste order after extended stays in India, in particular on the basis of his stay in the great kingdom of Vijayanagara. Caste is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the Vedas which are among the world’s oldest religious texts and the founding texts of many Indian religions: “The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rājanya made. His thighs became the Vaiśya, from his feet the Śūdra was produced.”[30]. This suggests that the popular uprising was Indian as opposed to Hindu. Cannon states that Jones was attempting to change “Europeans’ minds about the Indians.”[20] This approach inevitably leads to generalisations and misconstructions of facts especially given the huge subject area being dealt with. Mixed-Race and Modernity in Colonial India. The Great Rebellion had made it clear to the British that they knew far too little about the colonized populations of India. The impact of British colonialism is only considered to be so prevalent with regards to Hinduism because it is part of India’s recent history. ian notion of caste cafhe to preside along-side religion as an irreducible essence of Indian civilisation, amidst colonial profes-sions of the institution of equality.6 Modernity became the rhetoric rather than the project of colonialism. This suggests how the people of the ‘Indus’ could come to be identifiable as ‘Hindus’ even after the end of the Harappan civilisation. Most of these writings, like Caldwell’s monograph on the Shanars, concerned groups that either succumbed to conversion or were at least targeted for major missionary activity. 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 … The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a great number of British writers— among them Dow, Elphinstone, Wilks, Malcolm, and Mackenzie—felt compelled to confront India’s precolonial history. 4, October 1995, P.701, [8] Wagoner. Examples from the first chapter alone demonstrate various attempts to show Hinduism in a light that would make it more difficult for Christians to define it as heathen. He states that “almost every building in Mohenjodaro has a bathing area.”[4] These similarities demonstrate that the modern Hindu religion has tangible religious roots in the region from where its name derives. 37, No. ‘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. Pennington states that, “Alongside evangelical Christianity emerged the concept of a unitary Indian religion later known as Hinduism.”[24] Without the evangelical drive to spread the teachings of Christianity, the religious requirement for the construction of Hinduism would not exist. Due to the naturally Western approach taken by these academics, Indian religion was misconstrued, albeit unintentionally. According to some accounts, Rajeev Goswami had initially only intended to stage a mock self-immolation; as soon as he struck a match his friends were supposed to have doused him with water, waiting only for a few photographs to be snapped. H. V, Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, Sage Publications, London, 1995, P.23, [22] Orientalism and religion, Richard King, Routledge, London, 2006, P.99, [24] Pennington. 41, No.4, October 1999, P.654, Written by: Ben Heath Firstly that British colonials contributed heavily to the categorisation of the religion of Hinduism or of Hinduism as a unified body and system of religious doctrine, texts, rituals and practices, which it had not previously been and secondly that the social and religious content of the Hindu group was not in any way invented but developed over thousands of years. Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity. The earliest significant civilisation of the Indus Valley was the Harappan civilisation which existed between 3000 and 1500 BCE. 4, October 1995, Vaidyanathan. Hinduism should be considered Indian in every sense, regardless of the general label given to it by colonialists, Arthashastra, Book 3, Chapter XIX, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , Cannon. The caste system is consistently adapted by those with any degree of political power. Buddhism and Jainism are two religions whose liturgical texts are also in the Sanskrit language however they were not considered by the British to be Hindu. A, ‘The Early History of Caste’, The American Historical Review, Vol.19, No.2, January 1914, P.234, [32] Arthashastra, Book 3, Chapter XIX, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , [33] Porter. 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. 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