History vs Interpretation

Some historians may scoff at the very term ‘Hindu civilisation,’ for they contend that Hinduism itself is an invention or a construction of the nineteenth century, and that Hindus themselves were not aware of their distinctive religious identity in any meaningful sense before this. However, there is much disagreement among them on who invented Hinduism. While some credit this invention wholly to British scholars and administrators, others share it with Indian nationalists and communalists, and a few attribute it solely to Indians. When it comes to what exactly is meant by the ‘invention of Hinduism,’ the question can be addressed in two ways. Superficially, it means the construction of the word ‘Hinduism’ itself, which starts appearing in the early 19th century, more precisely in 1816, in Ram Mohan Roy’s works. But this date has been pushed back recently to 1787 by Asko Parpola, who credits this neologism to Charles Grant, an East India Company merchant and an evangelical Christian. No matter when exactly the word first appeared, it is undeniable that it gained currency only in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, mostly in books by British authors. So, in that limited sense, it is indeed correct to say that Hinduism was invented in the nineteenth century. More substantively, however, what is implied by the term ‘invention of Hinduism’ is that a single conceptual category called ‘Hinduism’ was invented and foisted upon a heterogeneous collection of sects, doctrines, and customs that neither had anything in common, nor were any such commonalities recognised by the Hindus themselves.

The casual sense of the term is so trivial that it does not merit refutation, for to claim that an idea or a concept does not exist until it is given a name is an indefensible position—it is like saying that Pythagorean triplets did not exist before they were so named. The substantive meaning of the term can be better understood by asking two related questions: Did the various sects, doctrines, and customs, which we now call Hinduism, have anything in common? If yes, did the followers of these heterogeneous sects perceive these commonalities?

The concepts of karma, punarjanma, samsara, moksha, etc., are shared by all sects, including heterodox Buddhists and Jains.

All schools of philosophy, including the four heterodox schools, operate within the same epistemological framework of pramanas. The cyclic conception of time, as also the broader cosmology, is common to all. Even though a deity may belong to a particular sect, its followers are not prevented from worshipping other deities. Rather, the difference lies in the degree of emphasis given to the principal deity. What appears as a motley collection of endless diversity has a fundamental essence, and if scholars, of all people, fail to notice it, one can only be infuriatingly surprised.

Agamadambara is a philosophical play written by Jayanta Bhatta, a minister in the court of Shankaravarman of Kashmir (r. c. 883–902). The central character of the play, Shankarshana, a recently graduated young Mimansa philosopher in the capital city of Srinagara, considers it his sacred duty not to rest until opponents of the Vedas are utterly defeated—of course, only through reason. The first of such debates happens with a Buddhist scholar, Dharmottara, according to the methods, standards, and decorum laid down by the observers. Shankarshana first gives a brief summary of the Buddhist tenets, which is then approved by Dharmottara. Thereafter, Shankarshana systematically refutes the Buddhist doctrines of kshanabhangavada (momentariness) and vijnanavada (consciousness-only). Subsequently, he takes on a Jaina, a Charvaka, and the adherents of Agamas, especially the Pancharatra Agama. But the play ends on a rather conciliatory note, with a peroration by Dhairyarashi, an umpire appointed by the queen to adjudicate the final debate: “This one God, by His own free will, takes manifold forms as Pasupati, Kapila, Visnu, Sankarsana, Jina, Buddha, and Manu, and teaches the different Agamas.” He goes even further and proclaims complete equality among all sects: “If Vaidikas are to deny the continuity of the other traditions or attribute motives to them, the same criticisms, it may be pointed out, have been brought against the Vedas by the Nastikas and Carvakas.” Shankarshana, instead of demurring, applauds him for his penetrative analysis, eloquence, and mastery over the Shastras. Two things are noteworthy: first, the methods of vada (debate)—the distinctive tradition of first stating the position of the opponent—apply equally to all sects, including the unorthodox; second, the dramatis personae return to their svabhava after some bitter intellectual wranglings—that the truth is one, but wise people call it by various names.

Whether the Hindus possessed a self-conscious religious identity before the nineteenth century is a more complex question. Denialists place reliance on the fact that the word ‘Hindu’ was used in an ethno-geographical sense, beginning with the inscriptions of Darius I, from the sixth century BCE. Lorenzen argues that if the word ‘Hindu’ had been purely an ethno-geographical term right up to the nineteenth century, then India-born descendants of foreign Muslims, or at least native converts to Islam, should have been called ‘Hindus’ or ‘Hindu Muslims.’ But any evidence of this is wholly absent.

Denialists also argue that Sanskrit sources identify foreign invaders by names such as tajika, turushka, mlechchha, yavana, hammira, shaka, etc., and not by their religion. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya gives us a list of Sanskrit sources between the eighth and the seventeenth centuries, which contains various terms used for Muslims, but ‘musalamana’ has been used only once in about seventy instances to refer to them. I will have something interesting to say later on why Muslims were referred to in such an oblique manner in Sanskrit sources. At this point, it is sufficient to say that all epithets used for Muslims had negative connotations, and sometimes these terms conveyed the sense of an impending apocalypse. However, the evidence from vernacular literature is quite unambiguous and abundant, and I need only summon the erudition of Lorenzen: the bulk of this evidence takes the form of texts composed by popular religious poet-singers of North India, most of them members of non-Brahmin castes. This literature does precisely what Sanskrit literature refuses to do: it establishes a Hindu religious identity through a process of mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim Other. In practice, there can be no Hindu identity unless this is defined by contrast against such an Other. Without the Muslim (or some other non-Hindu), Hindus can only be Vaishnavas, Saivas, Smartas, or the like. The presence of the Other is a necessary prerequisite for an active recognition of what the different Hindu sects and schools hold in common.

To buttress his assertion, Lorenzen presents a few examples, but for the sake of brevity, I shall reproduce only one, which is an extract from Kirtilata, a historical romance of Vidyapati, composed in the early fifteenth century. Lorenzen argues that the conjoining of the word ‘dhamme’ with ‘hindu’ and ‘turake’ provides us with the closest vernacular equivalence of the terms ‘religion of the Hindus’ and ‘religion of the Muslims.’

Moreover, the heightened sense of contrastive awareness in the passage is impossible to ignore. Also, this challenges the assertion that “the term ‘Hindu’ as referring to a religion is initially absent in the vocabulary of Indian languages and only slowly gains currency.” The overwhelming evidence from vernacular literature makes a compelling case to accept his proposition that “the often antagonistic modern Hindu and Muslim identities, both individual and communitarian, arose out of political and religious conflicts during the historical periods of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and the regional Sultanates.” There indeed existed a distinct way of life with a common operating system that got crystallised only after an encounter with the Other, and although this has been held by critics as its incapacity to express itself purely in an intrinsic manner, I find this quite in tune with the natural order of things. The ethno-geographical sense of being a Hindu was crystallised soon after coming into contact with a different ethnographical entity. Similarly, the religious sense of being a Hindu was precipitated by the arrival of Islam. Where does our South Asian identity find expression, if not in distant geographies like the UK and the US? If you randomly ask anyone in an international gathering about their identity, they will surely refer to their nationality; hardly anyone will claim to belong to the world or to planet Earth. This, however, might change if an alien civilisation from an exoplanet were to invade the Earth. The latent shared sense of humanity would then manifest to counter the threat.

At any rate, the proponents of the ‘invention of Hinduism’ thesis are obliged to explain why Hindus enthusiastically embraced the imposition of a wholly artificial construct on what ostensibly was a heterogeneous collection of sects, doctrines, and customs, if no unifying feature was already extant. I am firmly on the side of those who think that the collective religious identity of the Hindus had been lying dormant for long, and that it was catalysed by the arrival of Islam in the subcontinent, and not in the 19th century, as the opponents claim.

My only point of departure from Lorenzen is in the antiquity of Hinduism. While he sees it taking shape in the early Puranas, roughly c. 300–600 CE—although, in all fairness, it ought to be said that he concedes the point about its continuity with the earlier Vedic religion—I see Hinduism as a living and constantly evolving tradition from the very dawn of civilization, and any attempt to pronounce a specific date, or even a period, for its origin would be an unwelcome arrogation.