Emergence of Hindu Nationalism-- Zavos

Question 1

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: Kaviraj on colonial rule

Answer 1

Kaviraj => colonial rule could not penetrate complex tissue of Indian culture, so its primary means of control was the forcible integration of segmentary productive regimes of rural India into an integrated economy
-There was no trickle down from the middle class, who interacted with colonial state in the typical way
-Kaviraj => minimal hegemony, existed only among the economic, political, and intellectual elite
-ZAVOS => these readings underrate the power of the native middle class

Question 1

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: “Hegemony” and “Dominance without Hegemony”

Answer 1

-Hegemony (Gramsci) => orientalist knowledge as power, but colonial state did not permeate, characterized by dominance without hegemony (Guha and Kaviraj)
-Dalmia points out that there is an aspiration to hegemony in the projection pf persuasion as a feature of the dominant colonial discourse… Guha notes that liberal culture hardly managed to penetrate beyond the upper crust of Indian society

Question 2

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: Zavos on power of middle class in colonial politics

Answer 2

Zavos => the crucial position of the middle class gave it unique power, they were able to accomodate and manipualte the language of colonial power… this language “supplies the categories, grammar, and principles through which political assertions are articulated and perceived” (12)
-The key site of this engagement b/w the middle class and cultural hegemony of the state was colonial politics.. it was cross-regional, movements in Punjab and Bengal had pan-India impact
-also was a significant area for the development od indigenous critiques of colonial control… expression of autonomous ideologies

Question 3

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: middle class as mediators b/w state and non-elite classes

Answer 3

the public space allowed native interlocutors to imprint their own political interests on the discourse (e.g., definition of a “Hindu” for census).

-middle class also acted as mediators for the benefit of non-elite classes in the public space. The state persistently projected organization as a key facet of colonial modernity– it was a means of articulating power, in that the projected organization of the state was contrasted with the supposed disorganization of society.

Question 4

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: the “project of organization”

Answer 4

-Projection of ORganization => informed status of societies, sabhas, etc, but also enabled bodies to project themselves as representative of that public whose interest they invoked.

-The idea of representation was necessary to legitimize the claims of the Sabha, to give them meaning, within the public space. This is what it means to refer to organization as a discourse: a means through which issues, claims, and their rights are given meaning within the public space of colonial India

-

Question 5

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: the discourse of organization and “Hindu religion”

Answer 5

The imbrication of the discourse of organization with “Hindu religion” forced constituents to confront the question of what is Hinduism, its boundaries.

In the 1920s, this process produced the conscious articulation of sangathan, organization as both a religions and a political movement. This was closely linked with the rise of the Hindu Mahasabha with the so-called Malkana shuddhi campaign to reconvert nominal Muslims in western United Provinces

Question 6

Situating the Ideology of Hindu Nationalism: Meaning of “sangathan”

Answer 6

This idea of sangathan stood in contrast to the programme of development by Aryam Samajist Swami Shraddhanand

Sangathan, from sanskrit meaning “to mould together”, is translated as “the act or process of organization or an organized body or system or society.”

Sangathan is a central feature of Hindu nationalist ideology, not a religious concept

Question 7

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: “Hinduism” and emerging nationalism

Answer 7

THe conception of “Hinduism” as a religionn as an area in which the power of the emerging state was influential…

-Thapar => “Hinduism of the pre-modern period was…not a uniform monolithic religion, but a juxtaposition of flexible religious sects.” (25)

-Traditional accounts focus on Christianity and rationalism as intellectual forces that contributed to formation of “Hinduism”, but colonial power was a cultural force in itself

Question 8

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: colonial legal system and conception of “Pure Hinduism”

Answer 8

The legal system created by the British had to appear to the natives as rational and just. The conception of an ancient pure “Hinduism” was vital to this project.

-codes of civil and criminal procedure in the 1860s, James Fitzgames Stephen, legal member of the Vicery’s Council from 1869 to 1872, articulated it: “The establishment of a system of law which regulates the most importnat parts of the daily life of the people constitutes in itself a moral conquest more striking, more durable, and far more solid, than the physical conquest which rendered it possible. It exercises an influence over the minds of the people in many ways cmparable to that of a new religion” (quoted in Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj) (26)

Question 9

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Railroads and “Hinduism”

Answer 9

-Development of railroads also contributed to this dynamic… festivals grew in size and became feats of administrative organization… as nationalist movement grew, Raj fdocused on rail travel as a means of regulating movement, accomodating unrest

-stations became focal points for monitoring and regulation of large movements of people.

-In contrast, there was scrutiny of semi-nomadic groups, like sannyasis, vagrants, traders who represented “an alternative structure of social and political organization” to the colonial state…. resulted in 1871 Criminal Tribes Act, which requried members of these groups to carry passes, restrict movement, and in some cases enforced settlement

Question 10

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Hastings and law

Answer 10

Wiliam Hastings in 1772 produced a plan to “adapt our regulations ot the manners and understandings of the people…” , which led them on a quest to produce a law code based on ancient Hindu law

-The British simply assumed that the natives were governed by an ancient religious law, implicitly paralleled shastric law with ecclesiastical law in England, which covered marriage and divorce, property, religious worship, etc

Question 11

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: William Jones and the “golden age” of Hinduism

Answer 11

William Jones produced a Code or Digest of Hindu Law, which was meant to represent the legal aspects of the Dharma Shastras

-Jones’s language is revealing, he saw himself as “discovering” or “reconstituting” a system of law which was the true form of that system

-the true form of this system could only exist in a text. So in their efforts to produce an organized system of law, colonial administrators and orietnalist scholars projected the image of an essential religious tradition based on its most ancient texts

-The discovery of the “true form” of Hinduism in a “golden age” was critical because it allowed the delinking of the former from the actual practices of contemporary “Hinduism”– “The glorification of Aryan civilization as the depository of at rue or normative form of Hinduism necessitated the projection of its contemporary legacy as a degenerate, debased form, permeated with superstition and idolatry, and indicative of the degeneration of indigenous society” (33)

Question 12

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: The model of “degeneration”

Answer 12

This resulted in two distinct level of Hinduism, which form the basis of nineteenth century Hinduism discourse.

-Monier-Williams, refers to contemporary Hinduism in 1891 as “Brahmanism run to seed and spread out into a confused tangle of divine personalities and incarnations. The one system is the rank and luxurian outcome of the other” (33)

-Alfred Lyal in 1884 called popular Hinduism “a whole vegetation of cognate beliefs spouting up in every stage of growth beneath the shadow of the great orthodox traditions and allegories of Brahminism” (33)

-The native intellectual elite that cooperated with the Orientalists adopted this framework by identification of the Golden Age… the “Muslim period” came to be perceived as the dark ages of Hinduism, marked by decline into oppressive casteism idolatry, superstition– all the signifiers of this contemporary degeneracy and disorganization

-Images of disorganization reinforced and legitimized the ascendance of British rule… state-sanctioned textual Hinduism, a key feature of the British rule of law, was projected precisely as the antithesis of contemporary degenerate Hinduism

Question 13

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: “discourse of organization” and the Raj

Answer 13

In 1858, Government of INdia Act officially transferred ultimate authority to the Crown, Court of Directors was replaced by a Secretary of State, assisted by a Council of India

Queen’s Proclamation emphasized state’s neutrality towards indigenous religion while reaffirming monarch’s Christian faith… “all shall enjoy the equal and impartial proitection of the law”

-1892, Surendranath Banerjea saw proclamation as a “Manga Carta of our rights and privileges”

-After 1858, the discourse or oganization emerged as a more elaborate feature of the state’s hegeomonic arrangement, emphasized the motion of “symbolic representation” as a means of articulating indigenous concerns. It is in this sense that the developing discourse of organization increasingly acts as a pressure of Hinduism to become organized in the public space.

Question 14

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Impact of missionary activity on native elite, acculturative vs transitional movements

Answer 14

Missionary activity in the 19th century put pressure on native elite to define Hinduism… two interrelated narratives: (1) the vulnerability of Hinduism, due to the opression of low caste groups and (2), the question of the shape of Hinduism, how it defines its boundaries and maintained its own identity.

-British commentators attributed all reform to english ideas, but this has come under challenge. Kenneth Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India => conceptual distinction between transitional and acculturative movements. Transitional movements had their roots in pre-colonial world, acculturative movements were driven largely by english-educated south asians influenced by the specific culture of England

-Movements that emerged within the colonial milieu were acculturative… but this distinction onyl matters if the colonial milieu is properly theorized.

Question 15

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: characteristics of 19C reform movements, meaning of “orthodoxy”

Answer 15

19C reform was driven in large part by the notion that Hinduism had a catholic-style establishment that required a proestatnt-style reform movement. However, this analogy assumes that the existence of a monolithic orthodoxy withinm “Hinduism”

-How is this orthodoxy defined? It’s more institutional in structure: caste and sampradaya define a code of proactive and a range of doctrinal truth that has direct influence over svadharma

-Anncharlotte Eschmann => sampradaya form encompasses classical manifestations of Hinduism (i.e. Advaita Vedanta) as well as disssenting or protesting traditions such as Virshaivism. Nevertheless, radical sampradaya exist alongside caste and generate change from the coterminous position of the ashram or matha.

-The structural opposition between Church and Sect and Christianity, does not exist in the relationship between caste and sampradaya…even if its radical manifestation, then, the sampradaya will not necessarily present as transformative challenge to the system as a whole.

Question 16

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Satya Mahima Dharma Movement

Answer 16

Annacharlotte Eschmann => Why didn’t 19C reform build on thew work of the radical sampradays? Satya Mahima Dharma movement, identified by Jones as transitional, was avowedly monotheistic, critical of idol worship, and of Brahmanic practice, and caste as a whole, Mahiam Gosain drew inspiration from Vaishnavite school of Pancasakha.

-The reformist POV of Satya Mahima Dharma dovetailed with acculturative movements like the Arya Samaj, but it came from the existing tradition, and was not wholly opposed to it

Question 17

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Reform/Orthodox movements and the state’s organizational structure

Answer 17

Calcutta Dharma Sabha in 1831, formed by members of the Calcutta intelligentsia who petitioned Parliament early in 1830 oppposing Bentinck’s sati decree, cited as first orthodox institution

-When Brahmo Samaj was revived in early 1840s by Debendranath Tagore, it followed a similar pattern of development

-state’s organizational structure informed how these orgs were presented in the public domain. Hindus articulated concerns through the formation of bodies which had a coherent meaning within this context… they were modern int he sense that they were governed by constitutions and aims an objectives, had boards, secretaries, etc.

-within this framework, the Brahmo Samaj represented a reforming, modernizing constituency, and the Dharma Sabha represented a traditional, orthodox constituency. These constituencies were projected in order to legitimize or give meaning to these organizations within the public space, despite the lack of any evidence that such constituencies existed

Question 18

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Arya Samaj Basics

Answer 18

Arya SAmaj => Dayananda completed first edition of Satyarth PRakash in 1875, textualization of the Vedas, where Vedas are projected as the “Book” of Hinduism.

-Dayananda attempted to establish a fixed, clearly demarcated Hindu canon, rejected caste system in favor of an idealized vision of society structured in acordance with the four varnas, base don merit, not birth

-By shifting the weight of religious authority on to the written text of the vedas, Dayananda provided the rationale for a transformative approach to caste

Question 19

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Structure of the Arya Samaj

Answer 19

-fundamental element of Samaj structure was teh local branch organization, any nine individuals (male or female) willing to accept the Ten Principles (Niyams) of the Arya Samaj could set up a local branch

-There was elasticity in the ten principles, which allowed members to retain caste statuis while joining the Arya Samaj… but the radical nature of the principles was clear: Principle three: “The Vedas are the books of all true Knowledge. It is the paramount duty of all Aryas to read them and to instruct others in them, to hear them read, to recite them to others”

-Second transofrmative factor was the Samaj Mandir, or meeting house. Principal among activities was a weekly service, which consisted of Vedic ritual, singing of hymns, prayers and a sermon. Samaj Mandir assumed the position of a church-like organization.

Question 20

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Baratendu Harischandra

Answer 20

In contrast to Arya Samaj, Sanatana Dharma Sabhas and their umbrella org, Bharat Dharma Mahamandal

-Vasudha Dalmia = orthodoxy in Benares, Bharatendu Harischandra, tried to formulate a standardized Vaishnavite approach to the “true” form of Hindu belief and practice. Wanted to be able to issue religious ordiances, a role previously confined to individual pandits guided by their own sampradya-based theology… Harischandra tried to give this system an organized structure through the Dharma Sabha.. ultimately the role of the organization was to define correct standard procedure within Hindu religion

-1870s, attempted to establish a doctrinal standard in Hinduism, to consolidate the doctrinal approach of key Vaishnavite sampradayas throught he articulation of a common base in monotheism and bhakti => Tadiya Samaj

-The concern was precisely expressed in 1872 as a need to counter the heterogeneity of Hinduism, which prevented the presentation of a united front, an effective “Hindu public opinion.” The colonial public space, then, was influential in the articulation of this formulaic orthodoxy, but it also drew on the traditional authority of the sampradaya structure, and the natural authority of Benares (51)

Question 21

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Tadiya Samaj as distinct from the Sanatana Dharma Sabhas

Answer 21

Tadiya Samaj was an attempt to reformulate tradition in a modern, nationalist context, but this is distinct from the approach of the Sanatana Dharma Sabhas that emerged in the late 1870s, wanted to “maintain the orthodox faith”

The debate between the Aryas and Sanatanis over the issue of image worship is underwritten throughout this period by a consistency consensus on issues such as cow protection, promotion of Sanskrit and Hindi, the need to purify practice and curb expenditure on ritual, and to an extent, the importance of shuddhi

Question 22

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Sanatana Dharma Sabhas and the orthodoxy

Answer 22

How did Sanatana Dharma SAbhas distinguish thesmevles as Orthodox? Unlike Harischandra’s attempt to create a homogenous doctrinal core, the Sanatana Dharma Sabhas only generated doctrinal statements to oppose the Arya Samaj, no core theology was developed.

Relied on individuals like Shraddha Ram to travel, refuting the arguments of Dayananda and other formers. The empahsis was on practice and structure. Because Arya Samaj criticized image worship and the position of Brahmans in Hindu society, image worship and caste hierarchy were identified as core features of the tradition

Question 23

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Bharat Dharma Mahamandal

Answer 23

Bharat Dharma Mahamandal => first met in 1887, central umbrella organization for the network of Sanatana Dharma Dabhas. led by Pandit Din Dayal Sharma, criticized the ignorance of reformers, advocated religious an dlinguistic education, translation of some books into vernaculars, protection of varna dharma. custom was key

-Mahamandal evolved into a Congress-style organization, projected several Hindu Rajas as figureheads, 1900 discussion focus was on the worship of images, use of devanagri lanuage, obedience to Brahmins, lack of Shastric basis for widow remarriage, need for Sansksirt college, no doctrinal core, just practice and structure

Question 24

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: Arya v. Sanatani approach

Answer 24

For Aryas, the main pressure was the threat of Christianity, and they attributed Christianity’s success to the passive, disorganized nature of Hinduism, and the oppression of certain groups due to proliferation and corruption of Brahmans

subtext to this view was the model of the degeneration of Hinduism, its fall from the Vedic Golden Age.

For Sanatanis, both missionaries and reformers created the pressure, but the issues were essentially the same: the disorganized nature of Hinduism and the problem of low caste oppression.

The Arya approach was working towards a certical restructuring of society, Hinduism would be unified by means of an overhaul whcih would see the gradual dimunition of the oppressive elements of the structure, bringing it progressively into line with the vedic ideal (shuddhi)

The Sanatani appraoch OTOH had no doctrinal source. Instead, doctrine was releated to a secondary importance, as a pan-Hindu orthodoxy would not confront difference in doctrine. So it focused on a horizontal binding together of the existing structure, driven by the notion that all castes have an organic role in Hindu society and therefore demand respect.

Question 25

The State and the Hindu Religion in the Nineteenth Century: “Old Hindu’s Hope”

Answer 25

Pamphlet titled an Old Hindu’s Hope published in Calcutta in 1889: lamented fissiparous tendencies of Hindu society fuled by caste and doctrinal antagonisms. As a remedy, it advocates unity “under the banner inscribed with the words Iswara o Matribuhum… Unity given amterial form through the organization of a MAha Hindu Samiti as a political body… discussion of doctrinal questions and social questions would be totally avoided.

-Maha Hindu Samiti is presented as a means of binding together Hindus under a common banner, but also drew criticism for its failure to consider questions of reform. Positions were articulated as reformist or orthodox on the basis of the discourse of organization. Both types or organizatsion were equally modern, and both focused on the same problem of the organization of Hinduism.

-Aryas sought a vertical restruturing of Hindu society, by transforming the nature of caste and its relationship to religiosity; the Sanatanis sought a horizontal ‘binding together’ of Hindu society, which implicitly accepted the established position of caste within it.

Question 26

Indian Nationalism and Representations of Hinduism towards the End of the Nineteenth Century: