Guest guest Posted June 5, 2008 Report Share Posted June 5, 2008 India: does Hinduism exist? An nterview with Martin Farek by Jean-Francois Mayer Religioscope http://www.religion.info/ 1 Jun 2008 " Rethinking Religion in India " was the topic of a conference that took place in New Delhi from 21st to 24th January 2008, which was attended by both international and Indian scholars. Under the leadership of Prof. Dr. S. N. Balagangadhara (Ghent University, Belgium), This conference was jointly organized by the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Ghent University, Belgium), the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures (Kuvempu University, India) and the Karnataka Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities (Karnataka, India). The purpose of this conference is to develop an alternative theoretical framework to understand Indian religions and traditions. See the bottom of this post for more information about the conference. ---------------------- Martin Farek is a researcher from the Czech Republic, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at the University of Pardubice. [....] Dr. Farek is involved in research on several issues, all of them connected more or less with India. One of them is the representation of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition in the writings of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals since the 19th century. His second field of interest is the new routes taken by Indian traditions in a Western environment [....]. Dr. Farek has also written a book on problems and processes of institutionalization in ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Counsciouness, also known as the Hare Krishna movement). He has examined the interpretations of the works of Ram Mohan Roy, one of the great reformers of the 19th century. He has also dealt with debates regarding the issue of Aryan invasion theory. ----------------------- [....] Religioscope - Very often, a fascination for India goes along with stereotypes in the West. Quite early in your research, you would have certainly been confronted with such issues. Farek - Yes. When I started my research on Western descriptions of the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, especially Anglo-Saxon descriptions, but also those from some German and other sources as well, I found that several things were unsatisfactory. I knew the tradition from my own travels in India and from the Sanskrit sources and translated Bengali texts that I had read. I felt that the picture that was presented didn't fit at all with that tradition. Here you have Western people saying: " Look, this tradition is a part of Hinduism, " but the same people did not understand the basic philosophical and intellectual claims of the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition, which is also a school of Vedanta that attempted to reach a synthesis of discussions around the teachings of Ramanuja (1017-1137, according to tradition) and Madhva (1238-1317). But most Westerners' work just didn't fit in with what I knew. Then I also started to see problems with the idea of the caste system, because it also affected one's understanding of the tradition itself, as well as the question of the position of women, and also the understanding of texts that didn't fit into the framework of many Western scholars. This even included the understanding of bhakti practices themselves, how they were described, and what they were meant to be. Western scholars sometimes missed things that were important for people within the tradition that I had studied; in fact, some of these things were entirely missing in Western descriptions. All this together made me think about the reasons why such things are happening. Four years later, I came across the work of Prof. Dr. S. N. Balagangadhara (Ghent University, Belgium), [....] Balagangadhara's work " The Heathen in His Blindness " : Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion clarified some questions for me, and especially helped me to see more clearly how our Western understanding still sticks to the Christian theological framework. [...] ome of the basic claims and structures in the Western understanding of India were shaped by missionaries and Christian thinkers in general. Religioscope - Did you also come across such stereotypes and misunderstandings in the work of secular authors? How far did you identify the ideological presuppositions that drove such views? Farek - There is a double movement under way. [....] [Q]uite a few scholars developed views according to which a [stereotyped or simplistic] concept such as " Hinduism " was very vague and should not be applied. They were able to put aside some of the simplistic notions about the caste system [...]. But on the other hand, there are many people still using the " classical " , philological-erudite assumptions and structures in their descriptions of the tradition. [....]Other authors, however, have been able to distance themselves from those presuppositions and to reach new insights. [....] According to the material I have seen, [the newer trend] started in the 1960s. Several works appeared that took into account the importance of sound within the tradition, for instance. The singing of the name of Krishna, with an Indian and specific Chaitanya Vaishnava understanding of the sound, could be described as sonic theology (this term was used by Guy Beck in his work), although the word " theology " is used here with a meaning different from the Western one. Other scholars took seriously insiders' views on human spiritual growth and accomplishment as such, which were taken as more important than social position, family lineage, etc. [...] It seems to me that at least some people were able to bring about a shift in that direction. They managed to access the tradition from inside, at least in a small way. Religioscope - And we now come to that intriguing idea of " rethinking religion in India " . For most people outside India, the country is seen as a place where religion is prospering, pervading everything. How does it come about that both Western and Indian scholars feel the need to " rethink " religion in India? What is at stake here? Farek - Many basic questions have arisen about understanding differences between cultures, how different cultures meet, how they describe each other and in which terms, and also whether the people from the various cultures can be helped to really understand each other better. For India in particular, this process is very much connected with the discussions on Orientalism started by the famous book by Edward Said, [....] and [also books by ]other scholars who are more or less aware that the descriptions of India by Europeans were in many ways problematic. The basic question is: What is the definition and role of religion? Christianity is probably the best example of religion as we know it in the West. While the conference was focused on India, it is very much connected with the general discussion about the definition of religion itself. Prof. Balagangadhara has demonstrated extremely well that we have either inconsistent definitions of religion, or scholars remain more or less silent on the issue of such a definition after many unsatisfactory attempts at achieving it [....] Religioscope - But when people speak about Hinduism, what is problematic? Farek - It also depends on the position of the person speaking about Hinduism. When a Westerner speaks about Hinduism, I see several problems. One of them is the notion that it is a unified religion. There have been so many different attempts to define Hinduism itself; I myself have written an article about these discussions and definitions. Some people say that the term " Hinduism " makes no sense. In academia, you have radically diverse opinions on the very basic understanding of what Hinduism is. Behind this, there are more serious questions. When we speak about Hinduism in Europe, in our classrooms or in the media, we are conveying to people the idea that a religion such as Hinduism exists and that this is what Indians are. By doing this, we are explaining what the people of India are, what they do, why they do it, etc. We make sense of Indian cultures and traditions according to this definition of Hinduism, very much connecting it to the caste system and a range of other issues that have arisen at the conference. The question is: Does all this really help us to understand people in India? Let's now turn to India. Several Indian participants at the conference have done a wonderful job of showing that this understanding of " Hinduism " is more or less the product of interactions between European and Indian people, and is thus also a part of the colonial legacy and the question of what colonial rule had to do with Western perceptions of India. It is during those interactions that the notion of " Hinduism " emerged. But the basic tenets of this construct called Hinduism are older - they are rooted in Christian theology and have been repeated in Western descriptions of other cultures for centuries. [....] But when you come to the process of Indian communities' self-description in situations like ritual or philosophical discussions, you will find that the term " bhakta " is used (which is loosely translated as devotee, or somebody who has submitted to the deity), or the term " Vaishnava " (one who is devoted to Vishnu), etc. The existence of the word " Hindu " at that time does not prove that it was used to describe a religious community. .. This leads us back to the question of the conference. [Prof.] Balagangadhara feels that we are replacing the entire experience of people in India with something different. Religioscope - But we know that, in history, no religion is frozen in time or concepts! Any religion also evolves and develops through interaction with other worlds. Farek - You have to ask: Development of what sort? Of course, you have Christians interacting with the Roman Empire, where one finds different cults, and the Greek philosophers - many actors were involved. In the case of Christianity, despite the persecutions Christians endured, the development was more or less a voluntary one. What happened in India was not that voluntary at first. When you come in particular to the emergence of a Hindu identity and later of a unified Hinduism, which becomes an ideological movement like Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] in modern India, you see how this creates an alienating experience for local people. [....] Religioscope - It is interesting to observe [....] currents claiming that the mind should be decolonized. Can we say that what has taken place at the conference " Rethinking Religion in India " is part of those trends toward decolonizing the mind? Is there not a kind of ideological agenda as well? Farek - I would not say that the agenda is ideological: but it is about ideas, surely - about the ideas that shape our understanding. In that sense, we are trying possibly not merely to decolonize, but to " detheologize " our minds, not on the personal level of forgetting that one is a Christian or whatever, but on the level of how that theological understanding shaped our constructions of India. Religioscope - Do you expect such an undertaking to have any impact outside of academic research? Do you see it as something more than an intellectual exercise - something that could initiate changes in Indian society? Farek - I think it can. But there is a question of several layers or groups when one is speaking about Indian society. At the conference in question, during several sessions and discussions, one could observe that there are people whom we call " Hindus " who rarely use the word, and if they did, it was because they had to complete forms for the government or respond to census questions such as : Are you Christian, Hindu, etc., i.e. What is your religion? It was on these occasions that many Indians first heard about " Hinduism " ! Many of them decided: " OK, I am Hindu! " But this obviously did not mean much to them. So we must think first of all about how many people in India still live in villages - I think possibly 70 per cent of the population. These people are not touched by these emerging notions of " Hinduism " so much and whatever other terms are used. Of course, then you have the educated strata of society, not only intellectuals: I think they are the real targets of the conference - the educated so-called " Hindus " . Many of them experience difficulty in understanding who they are and what their tradition is. Some of them feel that they are anglicized or modernized, but what are the alternatives? There is a lot of heated discussion around such questions. This is a sign that this conference can achieve a more general outcome. Religioscope - Such an endeavour, however, is bound to clash with several " camps " . It puts into question the whole ideology of Hindutva, but also the approaches of liberal academics... Farek - It is very thought-provoking and provocative, right!... Religioscope - ...and it is also very much a minority position. [....] Farek - There was also another important thing, raised by Sharada Sugirtharajah (Dept. of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham) in one of her comments: there are discussions about and accounts of how converts to Christianity make sense of their own experience. She pointed to a case where somebody - an Indian convert - was describing to his fellow Western Christians his experiences with regard to Jesus and to prayer, and they were horrified: they said that it was impossible - that it was not Christian. We see here an instance of a meeting between two traditions and two ways of experiencing... In a sense, the conference " Rehinking Religion in India " was also about acknowledging radical otherness. One of the important things that Prof. Balagangadhara has contributed is the notion that, through the process of describing other traditions as religions (Hinduism, Daoism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Animism...), we Westerners have actually only replicated ourselves; i.e. the process is one of creating just another " us " . This is why I speak of " radical otherness " : it is not just somebody else that we are talking about, but somebody very different. This is what I feel to be very important about meetings like this one: some participants are already aware of such issues, and we must somehow try to open the doors more and find out what this radical otherness looks like. Because we may not really be meeting other people and other cultures, even though we think that we are... http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_377.shtml For additional information and material on the conference, see: http://www.cultuurwetenschap.be/conferences/RRI/index.ph p Topics discussed include - Is it possible to say that the descriptions of Indian culture and its traditions are the products of the Western experience of India? - In the domain of religious studies, in post-colonial studies and in the field of comparative science of cultures, scholars have begun to argue that the questions and conceptual framework for the study of India and its religions are firmly embedded within the Western cultural history, i.e. within the theological framework of Christianity. How true is this? - If this is true, what are the possible alternatives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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