dark hour of secularism

8/9/2019 Dark Hour of Secularism

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THE DARK HOUR OF SECULARISM

HINDU FUNDAMENTALISM AND COLONIAL LIBERALISM IN INDIA

S.N. Balagangadhara, Jakob De Roover

Forthcoming inMaking Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia,

edited by Ranjan Ghosh (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).

The relation between religion and politics remains one of the important issues of our

time. Discussions on this relation identify two poles that are regarded as opposites:

religious fundamentalism and liberal secularism. As the liberal perspective sees it, the

secular state and its principles of neutrality and toleration are antidotes to religious

nationalism and fundamentalism. Recently, however, this view has been challenged.

Several authors point out that fundamentalism and secularism are intertwined in

significant ways.1

India offers a fascinating case in point. In the 1980s, Ashis Nandy and T.N.

Madan suggested a causal link between the elitist and statist imposition of secularism, on

the one hand, and the rise of the Hindu right and its aggression towards Muslim and

Christian minorities, on the other hand. This alleged link between secularism and

fundamentalism (or communalismas it is often called in India) has not been adequately

clarified. Its plausibility depends largely upon two beliefs: secular statecraft is

responsible for the escalation of religious strife in Indian society; and the marginalization

of religion inevitably generates a backlash.2


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Neither conceptually nor historically has satisfactory evidence been provided for

the claim that secularism and fundamentalism are two faces of the same coin. The rising

Hindu-Muslim conflict in India could have many other causes, independent of the

workings of the liberal secular state. It may as well be blamed on the failure of the Indian

state to be truly secular and neutral.3The question is far too important, however, to leave

the argument unexamined. If one can demonstratethat secularism gave rise to the Hindu

right in India, then our understanding of the relation between secularism and

fundamentalism may be due for revision. Some evidence is available for such a link. For

instance, it has been argued that Hindu nationalism appropriated the colonial liberal

states views of the Hindu traditions as one unified religion and Indian history as a

struggle between Hinduism and Islam.4 Our question is: what has been the historical

relation between the secular state and religious fundamentalism in India?

I

The problem of Hindu fundamentalism is different than it is in Christianity or Islam.

Before the nineteenth century, militant traditions existed within the Hindu fold,5but these

did not aspire to found Indian society on a set of Hindu doctrines or principles. No one

text, teaching, or body of law was considered central to all Hindu traditions.6

In fact, early modern encounters between Europe and India present a striking fact:

when Christian travellers, merchants and missionaries denounced the indigenous

traditions as false religionand preached conversion to true religion,non-Muslim and

non-Christian Indians reacted with incomprehension. They failed to grasp how one

religion could be true and others false, and how different religions could be considered as

rivals.7To charges of falsity and idolatry, they replied that their ancestral traditions were


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very old and could not therefore be false.8Before the late eighteenth century, Hindus did

not defend their traditions in terms of doctrinal truth or texts: the tendency to provide a

foundation for ancestral practices in truescriptures was largely absent.9

The history of the Hindu right, on the contrary, reads as a quest for a common set

of principles around which all Hindus should unite. Moreover, its advocates argue that

Muslim and Christian minorities should also accept these. This movement, then, is Hindu

fundamentalistin the sense that it aspires to establish Indian society on the foundation of

supposedly Hindu principles. The content of the principles has varied over time and this

tendency is but one strand within Hindu nationalism. Still, we can isolate certain

properties that characterise this movement.

The first property lies in the pursuit of a discrete core that should unite followers

of indigenous Indian traditions (Hindutvaor Hindu-ness includes Buddhist, Sikh, Jain

and tribal traditions). The main ideologue of the movement, V. D. Savarkar, identified

this core in hisHindutva: Who is a Hindu?(1923).10

As he put it in his 1937 presidential

speech for theHindu Mahasabha, an early Hindu nationalist organization: Hindudom is

bound and marked out as a people and a nation by themselves not only by the tie of a

common Holy Land in which their religion took birth but by the ties of a common

culture, a common language, a common history and essentially a common fatherland as

well.11

As a second property, this Hindudom was taken to give these traditions a

common identity and interests, which separated them from Muslims and Christians. The

latter were excluded from claiming themselves as Hindus, since they had extra-territorial

loyalties and lacked the true Hindu spirit.12

This is not an ancient opposition. Medieval


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Sanskrit texts, for instance, did not even identify Muslims along religious lines. 13Until

today, traditions combining Hindu and Muslim practices continue to exist throughout the

subcontinent.14 Yet the drive of Hindu fundamentalism is to create an identity that

separates Hindus from others. Religion becomes the marker of the religious

brotherhoodof truly loyal Indians, as opposed to Christians and Muslims.15

This identity has proven difficult to find: no practice or doctrine is shared by all

Hindus. Many of their attitudes are common also among Indian Muslims and Christians.

Hindu fundamentalism is unique in the sense that it cannot draw upon any dogma or holy

book. Throughout its history, it has nevertheless tried to do so.

16

Noting the Christian call

for religious revival, a Hindu nationalist leader, B. S. Moonje, argued in 1944 that Hindus

must develop the boldness to strive for the revival of their religion, and that the

constitution of Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, should be based upon the Vedas as the

constitutions of the lands ofChristianity and Islam are to be based on the revival of

these religions.17

Paradoxically, Hindu fundamentalism tries to distinguish Hindu

identity from that of Muslims and Christians, while modelling itself upon Islam and

Christianity.

The third property is even more paradoxical. The lack of dogmas shared by

Hindus gives rise to the claim that they hold principles of tolerance in common. In

words spoken at a 1939Hindu Mahasabhameeting, Hindus, by religion and culture, are

tolerant of the presence in their midst of people of other faiths.18

The principles are

variously called as Hindu tolerance, positive secularism,or equality of religions.19

These are traced to Sanskrit aphorisms, which became the teachings of Hindutva.20

Then


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they are invoked to contrast Hindu identity to the fanatic theocratic nature of its rivals,

Islam and Christianity.21

Subsequently, these principles are imposed on Muslims and Christians: In Indian

thought, identity of underlying reality permits variety of surface custom or even

philosophical view. But the difference or diversity or variety should not oppose the

underlying reality. Difference should realise its common root in the identity.22

Therefore,

religions can be accepted only in so far as they conform to this underlying identity. This

inspires legal measures against proselytization, a practice regarded as a violation of

religious equality. It is argued that Muslims should rewrite the Koran to accommodate the

equality of religions and that Christians should Indianisetheir churches.23Made into a

principle, Hindu tolerance becomes a ground for intolerance towards Islam and

Christianity.

A historical explanation of Hindu fundamentalism needs to account for the

emergence of this paradox. How did the inclination to found the Hindu traditions in a

common core of principles come into being? Why did followers of these traditions begin

to perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions with incompatible doctrines, if this

experience was largely absent before the late eighteenth century? These are the puzzles

we will set out to solve.

II

We will outline the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism in terms of three historical and

conceptual moments. The first is a moment of radical transformation: the attempt to

transform the Hindu traditions and their variety of practices, attitudes and stories into a

set of scripturally sanctioned doctrines. We suggest that the colonial state and its


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principles of religious toleration and neutrality were central forces behind this moment of

transformation.

When the East India Company became a governing power in Bengal, critical

policy decisions had to be made. What should be the stance of the colonial state towards

native beliefs and practices? In 1793, it was decided that the laws of the Koran and the

Shaster would be preserved in civil and religious usages.24

Time and again, colonial

officials stated that it is a fundamental principle of the British government, to allow the

most complete toleration in matters of religion, to all classes of its native subjects.25

Once the Bengal government faced shocking practices such as child sacrifice and widow

burning, its first step was to decide whether or not such practices were founded in the

religious opinions of the Hindoos and grounded in any precept of their law.26

The

punditsor Hindu scholars employed at colonial courts were asked to give judgment on

such issues. If they came to the conclusion that a practice had scriptural foundations, then

the colonial state ought to tolerate it.

For instance, a Bengal court case concerned a Muslim who had buried his leprous

mother-in-law alive, after she had requested him to burn her. The court stated that, while

this Muslim should be convicted, in the case of a Hindu indicted for a similar offence, the

judgment of the pundits showed that the prisoner was justified by the ordinances of the

Hindoo faith in assisting at the suicide of a leper.As a judge had remarked in an earlier

case: I am assured, that in the case of Hindoos it is countenanced and enjoined by their

religion. Pundits quoted the Brahma Poorana to show that the act was indeed

sanctioned by the Shaster.27

Consequently, the state ought to allow it among Hindus.


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Perhaps the most shocking custom was that of offering human sacrifice to the

Ganges, where they are devoured by the sharks.A similar debate ensued here. It was

decided that the practice could not be stopped among the aged and infirm, since it was

considered by Hindus instrumental to their happiness in a future state of existenceand

sanctioned by express tenets in their most sacred books.Where it concerned children,

however, officials found that the custom stands not either on the prescriptive laws of

antiquity, or on any tenet of the Shanscrit . Consequently, an 1802 law declared any

person guilty of murder, who assisted in forcing any individual to be a victim of this

superstition.

28

Of female infanticide, it was similarly concluded that it has not the

sanction of any religion, or of any lawand could therefore be eradicated.29

However, in the case of a widow, who was at her own request, buried alive with

her deceased husband,the judgment was different:

It appearing from the answer of the punditsthat the practice in question is

authorized by the Shasters, I am directed to communicate to you the opinion of

the court that no prosecution should be instituted against the persons who may

have been concerned in the interment of the woman; provided however, of

course, that those persons are of the Hindoo persuasion, and not otherwise.30

The decision was negative for women of the joogee cast who have buried themselves

alive with their husbands,because from the answer of the pundit of this court on the

subject,it appeared that this sacrifice is not tolerated by the Shaster.31

The debate on the toleration of satior widow-burning revolved around the same

issue of scriptural sanctions.32

Later in the century, the same question would be raised


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about other customs, such as hook-swinging, which was abolished given the absence of

textual justification.33

This policy of the colonial state introduced the tendency to found practices in

scriptures and doctrines. It involved almost a coercive mechanism to this effect. Indians

were informed by the government that their practices would be allowed, if they could

prove that these had doctrinal foundations. Hence, not only the punditsin the courts but

also Hindus in society set out on a mission to find scriptural sanctions for several

practices. This turned into a systematic strategy to defend the validity of ancestral

traditions.

III

In a second moment, this transformation altered the pattern of dissent and agreement

within the Hindu traditions. Its impact is clearest in the writings of Raja Rammohun Roy

and his opponents. A rich Brahmin with a Persian and Arabic education, Roy is still fted

as the father of the modern Indian Renaissance.34

In fact, we suggest that he took crucial

conceptual steps towards the emergence of Hindu fundamentalism. He accepted the view

that traditional practices ought to be founded in scriptures: The validity of theological

controversy chiefly depends upon Scriptural authority.35

Influenced by Islam and his interaction with Christian missionaries, Roy intended

to revive the Hindu traditions by transforming them into a religion along the biblical

model. In many of his texts, he spoke of the Vedas as though they were the Bible, of the

Shastrasas though they were church law, and of Manu as though he was Moses, the law

giver of a people. He wanted to demonstrate that truth was to be found in Vedic religion,

rather than in its rivals Islam or Christianity.36


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Convinced that the whole body of the Hindoo Theology, Law, and Literature is

contained in the Vedas,Roy denounced Hindu rituals as idolatrous fabrications and tried

to convince his countrymen of the true meaning of their sacred books.37He did all this

for the purpose of diffusing Hindu scriptural knowledge among the adherents of that

religion.38

These scriptures, he thought, acknowledged that only the one true God ought

to be worshipped, but self-interested Brahmin priests had led the believers into idolatry

and immorality.39

Now, the aim was to reform Hindu practices according to scriptural

sanctions.

When the government decided to tolerate sati, Roy produced tract after tract

arguing that it had no scriptural foundation, since neither the Vedas nor Manu recognised

it.40

This inspired some conservative Hindus of Calcutta to argue that he was wrong:

scriptural foundations did exist for sati.41 Thus, this reformer transmitted the religious

model that sought to justify Hindu practices in terms of textual doctrines. While the

liberal colonial state had initiated the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism among its

pundits, a thinker like Roy disseminated it among the public.

From this debate emerged a group that claimed to represent the orthodox Hindu

community of Calcutta.In its petition against the abolition of sati, this group submitted

that the Hindoo religion is founded, like all religions, on usage as well as precept, and

one when immemorial is held equally sacred with the other.Therefore, the sacrifice of

self-immolation called suttee, which is not merely a sacred duty but a high privilege to

her who sincerely believes in the doctrines of their religion,ought not to be interfered

with. The group combined the old attitude towards practices as age-old ancestral

traditions with the tendency to provide them with doctrinal foundations.42


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In this way, the colonial toleration policy instigated a restructuring of Hindu

traditions, which soon acquired an institutional shape. In 1830, the group appealed to the

orthodox Hindus about the necessity of establishing a Dharma Sabha, which would

devise means for protecting our religion and our excellent customs and usages .43

This

association met in the summer of 1830 to protest against the abolition of sati.

Accordingly as Roy opposed its attempts, the Dharma Sabhawas even more convinced

that local traditions needed protection against their opponents who wish the overthrow of

religion.44

IV

How to make sense of the colonial policy of religious toleration? One approach would be

to attribute certain motives to the British: e.g., to avoid rebellion, they wanted to appease

the native religious inclinations, or, they found it impractical to impose a completely new

legal order on the Indian people and, therefore, decided to retain the existing systems of

religious law. However, colonial toleration was a macro-policy, a cooperative result of

the activities of multiple agents. One cannot impute intentions and multiple contradictory

motives to account for such a macro-policy, as though it expressed the beliefs of

individual agents. Moreover, a series of different motives for toleration can be

discerned in colonial writings: from a prudential fear of alienating native subjects to

principles of religious liberty. This generates a thorny question: which of these was the

true intentionor real motivefor the toleration policy?

No cogent answer to this question is forthcoming, since we lack a clear

understanding of the relation between an agent and his/her motive, let alone possessing a

social psychology of collective agencies. In the absence of such knowledge, if one


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explains the policies of the colonial state as though it had motives, one commits

category mistakes: one ascribes a common-sense conception of the relation between

motive and act (attributable only to individuals) to collective or supra-individual

agencies.

We would like to suggest an alternative approach to making sense of colonial

toleration as a reasonable macro-policy. If the colonial state and its officials consistently

acted in a specific way, then we need to describe this as a collective act of reasonable

agents. We use the term reasonable in two minimal senses here. First, the notion is

context-dependent: what is reasonable in one context might not be reasonable in another.

Second, it is proposed as a condition for cognitive consistency. That is to say, one should

attempt to show that the policy plausibly follows from cognitive assumptions that we

expecta people in a period to share. How can this be done?

Through historical and textual research, one can provide evidence that people

from a given period could be plausibly expected to share certain cognitive assumptions.

This plausibility is ourplausibility: we frame our expectations in the light of historical

research and we look for evidence to confirm or refute the hypothesis that we formabout

the cognitive assumptions of earlier generations. Subsequently, we try to demonstrate that

the macro-policy is a plausible conclusion from the set of cognitive assumptions that we

attribute to the earlier generations. Against this background, we demonstrate that a

macro-policy can be derived. In this way, we show that a collective agency acts in a

reasonable way.

Any such explanation is hypothetical: not only because this is how we make sense

of macro-policies from the past, but also because we do not know how to develop causal


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explanations for human behaviour as yet. This does not make the hypothesis arbitrary,

because it is held in check by two other conditions: there must be empirical evidence that

enables us to postulate a set of cognitive assumptions shared by the earlier generations;

dislodging the hypothesis requires another hypothesis, which does a better job at

accounting for the relevant evidence.

Consequently, the question that confronts our proposal is this: why would it be

reasonable to act as though a practice deserved toleration, if it had scriptural sanctions?

How does the cognitive framework of the colonial agents render such a stance reasonable

for us?

A common answer, which is the rival hypothesis that we want to challenge,

suggests that the colonial state intended to appease Indians by allowing them to continue

the indigenous religion and that the British assumed that this religion was structurally

analogue to Christianity.45

Though valid to some extent, neither claim is satisfactory.

First, the idea that it was impracticable to suddenly impose a completely new legal

system on an alien people did play a role in the considerations of the East India

Company. The British did not want to cause unnecessary upheaval and decided to retain

existing legal structures. However, if the central goal was appeasement, the colonial state

should have allowed all practices held dearly by the population and not only those with

scriptural sanctions. Yet, it did not do so, but explicitly banned certain practices for

which no scriptural foundation could be found, even though these were recognized as

age-old customs. Second, the appeasement hypothesis fails to tell us why the colonial

state approached local traditions as structural equivalents of Christianity. The British

were aware that these traditions were in many ways dissimilar from their own religion.


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Why did they nevertheless start looking for scriptural foundations and tolerate only

practices with such foundations?

When they landed in India, European Christians had originally assumed they

would find false religion there. This implied that the natives would be aware of the

existence of the biblical God and would desire to obey His law. However, most

Europeans also thought that the Devil and his minions would have deceived the believers

into a false understanding of this law: evil priests would have imposed their own

fabrications as though these were Gods will.46To understand the Indians, one had to find

out the content of these fabricated laws from their sacred scriptures, which they embraced

as divine revelation.

By the nineteenth century, this explicitnotion of false religion as the work of the

devil and his priests was limited to certain Protestant groups in British India.47However,

thebasic conceptual model for understanding Indian religion remained in placeamong

other British authors and administrators also: the Hindus accepted a particular set of laws

as divine revelation; these laws were to be found in their scriptures; Hindus believed they

had to follow these in order to obtain salvation. To understand Indian society, the British

assumed, one not only had to identify the texts (mis)taken by the Hindus for the

Almightys revelation, butalso their ancient law giverthe equivalent of Moses. This

would become the key to decipher the Hindu religion and society.48

The British were convinced that one ought not to interfere in Hindu practices

sanctioned by this sacred scripture.The rationale suggested that religion was a domain

where the biblical God alone had authority. No human being could impose his or her own

understanding of the Supreme Beings will on others. Therefore, the Hindus had to be left


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free to live according to the principles which they (wrongly) believed to be divine law.

Hence, the following implication wasreasonable to a Protestant Christian mind-set: if a

practice had its foundations in Hindu sacred law,no secular or civil authority ought to

interfere, because to do so would be to arrogate to civil powers that authority which God

alone possessed.49

The cognitive framework of the colonial state construed the Hindu traditions as

structural equivalents of Christianity in the sense that it viewed them as embodiments of a

series of fundamental laws and doctrines, professing to be divine revelation. The

neutrality and toleration of the state depended on this equivalence. If Hinduism,

Christianity and Islam embodied different religious doctrines and laws, then a liberal state

ought to take a neutral position towards their conflicting truth claims and tolerate the

practices that embodied these.

However, in the case of traditions that do not approach ancestral practices as

embodiments of doctrines, the resulting policy generated a mechanism that compelled

these traditions to refashion themselves according to this model. Indian subjects quickly

learned that they needed to give evidence of scriptural foundations to continue practicing

their traditions under colonial rule. This is how Hindu fundamentalism first manifested

itself: as a child born from the liberal policies of the colonial state. The moment of

transformation occurred because the colonial state operated within a theological

framework that approached all traditions as variations on the biblical model of religion.

V

This colonial intervention triggered the rise of Hindu reform movements. In their turn,

these movements provoked traditional Hindus to organise themselves and defend a


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conservative interpretation of the teachings of Hindu religion,which sanctioned existing

practices. Orthodox Hindu associations opposed the reform movement, but accepted its

model of religion and doctrinal rivalry. This fuelled the growing conviction in India that

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were rival religions with competing truth claims. Both

reform movements and orthodox associations intended to defend Hinduism against

assaults of Christian missionaries. They were also hostile to Indian Muslims, who were

seen as representatives of an aggressive religion that had earlier attempted to destroy their

traditions.

The chief agency of reform in the nineteenth century was the Arya Samaj. In his

autobiography, its founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati recounts how he came to the

conviction that Hindu traditions were in need of reform. After an orthodox Sanskrit and

ritual education, he had left home dissatisfied. On his wanderings through North India, he

witnessed all kinds of traditions, many of which appalled him. Everywhere, he saw

profound ignorance or ridiculous superstitionand temples full of idols and priests.50

The movement established by Dayanand disseminated the colonial model of

religion. A teacher had convinced him that religious truth lay in the Vedas and Shastras.

Earlier, these texts had been important only to certain strands within the Hindu

traditions.51

After the colonial state identified them as the Hindu scriptures and legal

codes, however, reformers began to preach the same as gospel truth. Dayanand regarded

them as infallible and as authority by their very nature. In fact, they are self-

authoritative and do not stand in need of any other book to uphold their authority .52The

Vedas and Shastras embodied religious truth. Like Roy, he insisted that the texts revealed

a monotheistic Hinduism, not only similar to Christianity and Islam, but also superior.


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Dayanand composed the foundational text of the Arya Samaj, the Sathyarth

Prakashor Light of Truth (1875), which followed the form of Protestant catechisms. It

claimed to contain the one correct interpretation of Vedas and Shastras, while allpuranas

and other traditional Indian stories were denounced as forged books. The true

confession of faith followed:

We believe that the Vedasalone are the supreme authority in the ascertainment of

true religionthe true conduct of life. Whatever is enjoined by the Vedaswe hold

to be right; whilst whatever is condemned by them we believe to be wrong All

men, especially the Aryas, should believe in the Vedasand thereby cultivate unity

in religion.53

The Arya Samaj mimicked Protestant fundamentalism in yet other ways. Dayanand

accepted the characterization of Brahmins as sectarian and selfish popes,who fabricated

false teachings and kept true revelation from the laity. He imagined a history of religious

degeneration, which mirrored the Protestant historiography of medieval Church: As in

Europe, so in India thepoperyappeared in a thousand different forms, and cast its net of

hypocrisy and fraud, in other words, the Indian popeshave kept the rulers and the ruled

from acquiring learning and associating with the good.54

This reproduced the colonial version of Indian religious history. Like certain

strands within the Reformation, this historiography invented a primitive and true Hindu

religion, corrupted by human additions over time. Now one had to return to the pure and

primitive core: I believe in a religion based on universal and all-embracing principles

which have always been accepted as true by mankind, and will continue to command the

allegiance of mankind in the ages to come. Hence it is that the religion in question is


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called the primeval eternal religion, which means that it is above the hostility of all

human creeds whatsoever.55

This restructuring of Hindu traditions introduced universal truth claims for a set of

doctrines: The educated Hindus have now learned that the religion of their forefathers is

founded on solid rock of truth.56

It also entailed the launch of a missionary movement.

As one of the Samaj publications put it, funds were required so That our missionaries

may be able to preach the Vedic religion even in the far distant nooks of the land and

save the inhabitants thereof by taking them up, as it were, from the dark abyss of

ignorance in which they are struggling.

57

The newly converted threw their idols into the

river or publicly smashed them in local markets.

Thus, this reform movement spread different elements of the colonial framework

in Indian society. In his excellent work on the Arya Samaj in nineteenth-century Punjab,

Kenneth Jones describes its impact on society. More and more, Christianity and Islam

were viewed as rival religions, whose falsity had to be supplanted by Vedic truth. The

Arya Samaj also attacked Sikhism as a degenerate rival. Consequently, several traditions

in the urban Punjab of the 1880s entered into a strife over religious truth: In the years

that followed, the streets of Lahore became dotted with preachersChristian, Arya,

Brahmo, Sikh, Muslimeach extolling his particular cause and condemning all others.58

The Arya Samaj also initiated stinging attacks on traditional pundits, who were

chided for hardly knowing Sanskrit and the Vedas. Rather than realizing that these texts

were marginal to many traditions, this ignorance was viewed as another confirmation of

the corruption of popular religion in India. Hence, the Arya Samaj began to reform all

traditions in strict accordance to Vedic principles.59


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Such moves also gave rise to opposition from traditional Hindus, but again the

latter adopted the new framework. They invoked scriptural foundations to claim the

opposite of Arya Samaj doctrines. One of the first to do so was Pandit Din Dayal, who in

a lecture is said to have proved by quotations from the Vedas, Puranas and the Smritis,

that the worship of idols alone is the means of finding God.60

By the mid 1890s,

traditional Hindus united in Sanatan Dharma Sabhas in order to propound the eternal

religion.In their meetings also, the correct meaningof the Vedas was presented as the

basic scriptureof this religion. Here, the tenets of unity in diversityand the Truth is

only One, but different persons call it by different nameswere formulated as Hindu

religious teachings. Along with this message of Hindu tolerance, they stressed the

national pride and unity of Aryan Hindus.61

Similar reform movements, such as the Prarthana Samajin Bombay, emerged in

other parts of the subcontinent, with analogous social effects. From this moment of

dissemination grew a generation of intellectuals and politicians in India. Mahadev G.

Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal and many others had

all been involved in, or opposed to, these movements at some point. All of them would

play significant roles in the further development of Hindu nationalism.62

VI

We shall now jump to the twentieth century, since the next moment is conceptual rather

than historical in nature. Neutrality, toleration and religious freedom were seen as the

norms that ought to direct state policies regarding the religious realm. They constituted

the normative framework of the colonial state, shaping its perception of Indian society.

From this perspective, each factual situation was understood as a deficiency vis--vis the


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liberal framework and its principles. This is the moment of normative disjunction, which

reduced the options open to the Indian state and society: either liberal secularism or its

normative negation, religious fundamentalism.

Again, we have to consider the religious background of British colonialism. By

the late eighteenth century, certain strands within the English Reformation had become

dominant, which identified true religion with spiritual liberty.63

Faith was viewed as the

work of the Holy Spirit in the human soul. Therefore, secular authorities had the duty to

safeguard the liberty that allowed this Spirit to work unfettered. In spite of theological

diversity, a variety of Reformation movements shared this view and contrasted it to the

spiritual tyranny of papism.64 As the precondition of true faith, spiritual liberty

became the normative focus of a generic Protestant framework, which construed its rivals

as religious tyrannies.

When the British arrived in India, they knewin advance what the basic structure

of her native traditions would be. As instances of religion, these would consist of priestly

hierarchies and laws that led believers into idol worship. From the seventeenth century,

most European descriptions were unequivocal: Indian religion had taken the form of a

tyranny of priests, called Brahminshere. Like their Catholic counterparts, Hindu priests

had kept the religious books and sacred language to themselves to protect their

worldly interests.65

A key mechanism is at work here. Generally, from the perspective of a normative

framework, factual situations are experienced as or transformed intodeficiencies vis-

-vis the framework. The conceptual framework of the British helped them construe

Indian traditions as negations of their own norms. Whereas this framework revolved


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around principles of religious liberty and equality, the native religions of India could only

embody their opposites. In colonial eyes, Brahmanism became the quintessence of

religious or spiritual tyranny.66As opposed to their own liberal norms, British scholars

and officials perceived theocratic despotism and religious fanaticism throughout Indian

history and society.67

In his textbook history of India, Talboys Wheeler contrasted the Hindu

despotismsof the seventeenth century to the British libertiesbrought by colonial rule.68

According to Valentine Chirol in his classic Indian Unrest (1910), the trouble in India

was Brahmanism, which as a system represents the antipodes of all that British rule must

stand for in India, and Brahmanism has from times immemorial dominated Hindu

societydominated it, according to the Hindu Nationalists, for its salvation . This

included a theocratic State,where both spiritual and secular authority were consecrated

in the hands of the Brahmans.Indian unrest in general had as its mainspringa deep-

rooted antagonism to all the principles upon which Western society, especially in a

democratic country like England, has been built up.69Or as Sir Alfred Lyall said in his

introduction to the same work, while the British were relying upon secular education and

absolute religious neutrality to control the unruly affections of sinful men, Indian

agitators combined primitive superstitionwith modern politics: The mixture of religion

with politics has always produced a highly explosive compound, especially in Asia.70

This was not primarily a justification of colonial rule, as contemporary critics of

Orientalism might suggest. Rather, it was an epistemic consequence of the normative

framework that constrained the colonial reasoning on religion, state and society. This


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21

carved up the universe of political possibilities in terms of a normative disjunction: either

one pursued a liberal secular state or one ended up in religious oppression.

The colonial project presupposed that western civilization embodied the pursuit of

the norms of liberty, equality and toleration. Propelled by this normative goal, the

progressive West viewed itself as far superior to the unchanged and stationary Asia,

stuck in despotism and theocracy.71

In short: To India British rule has brought security,

justice, religious freedom, and the repression of all religious conflicts, together with a

vast material progress made possible by the substitution of law and order for the medieval

anarchy that preceded it.

72

In other words, the British believed they had demonstrated that the immoral

structure of Indian society had to be replaced by their own moral laws. In reality, they

were begging the question. First, they presupposed the validity of the liberal framework.

Next, they viewed and described Indian society through this framework and transformed

it into a deficiency vis--vis its norms. From this, they concluded liberalism had to be

implemented here as elsewhere. The framework through which they viewed India had the

same belief as its presupposition and as its conclusion: Indian society embodied the

failure to live up to the norms of western civilization.

The western-educated intelligentsia of colonial India adopted this mode of

reasoning. Hence, while the freedom fighters desired to end colonial rule, it had become

self-evident to many that a free India would also have to create a secular liberal state, or it

would end up in religious despotism. This normative disjunction was perhaps clearest in

the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister. His perspective allowed for

two potential forms of political organization only: either a secular state or a religious


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theocracy. As he wrote in a letter to a Muslim aristocrat: If Pakistan insists on being

what is called an Islamic State it will be backward, narrow-minded and unprogressive just

as India, if its seeks to be a Hindu State, would be similarly backward and

unprogressive.73

Throughout his speeches and writings, this conceptual restriction on Nehrus

thought is striking: either a country is a progressive civilized secular nation-state or it

becomes a backward narrow-minded theocracy. In a 1947 speech, he asserted: As long

as I am at the helm of affairs India will not become a Hindu StateThe very idea of a

theocratic state is not only medieval but also stupid. In modern times the people may

have their religion but not the State.74This two-pronged view compelledhim to conceive

of violence in the Indian society as instances of communalism. Just as all peaceful

pluralism was equivalent to the separation of politics and religion in Nehrus mind, the

violence between different communities was the consequence of mixing the political and

the religious.

As the title of another speech said, the alternatives were either Toleration or

Ruin: Toleration alone will lead India to peace and prosperity. I warn you that the

manner in which this killing is going on will lead the country to nothing but ruin .75

Were

one to define toleration as the absence of violent conflict, such an approach would

amount to a truism. But Nehru did not have this tautology in mind. Toleration meant a

democratic secular State which neither favours nor discriminates against any particular

religionand this was the only conceivable aim for a civilized country.76

The Nehruvian secularism of post-Independence India reproduced the normative

disjunction introduced by the colonial state. Civilization was equated to the liberal


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secular state. All opposition was conceived as religious fundamentalism. This

framework allowed for only one form of opposition, namely, the normative negation of

itself: the pursuit of a Hindu nation-state founded in principles of Hindutva. The clash

between liberal secularism and Hindu fundamentalism in India, then, is a grand colonial

struggle. It is a confrontation between a normative framework and the mirror image it has

produced.

VII

In conclusion, we can return to our original questions: What explainsHindutvas quixotic

pursuit of a set of beliefs common to all Hindus, upon which it desires to found Indian

society? Why do modern Hindus perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions,

incompatible with Hindu doctrines, when this experience was very rare, if not absent,

before the eighteenth century?

The intervention of the liberal colonial state was one of the central factors in the

emergence of Hindu fundamentalism. This state operated within a particular theological

framework, which construed the indigenous traditions of India as variants of the same

phenomenon as Islam and Christianity. Colonial policies of toleration and neutrality

induced the Hindu traditions to transform themselves according to this model of religion.

They were required to identify scriptural foundations for their practices, in order to

survive under the rule of theRaj.

This inspired a series of movements in nineteenth-century India to embark on a

quest for the true teachings of Hindu religion. Originally, they turned to the Vedas and

Shastras. Given the lack of consensus and the diversity of traditions, however, the core of

Hindu principles could not but become less precise. No set of scriptures or specific


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24

dogmas would be accepted by all Hindu traditions. Eventually, the Hindutvamovement

located its unity in notions of Hindu tolerance.

In other words, Hindu nationalists sustain and reproduce the colonial

transformation of Indian traditions. As the colonial model of religion locates Hindu

identity in a shared set of principles and beliefs, Islam and Christianity are now inevitably

viewed as rivals with incompatible doctrines. Accordingly as Hindutva focused on

principles of tolerance, Islamic and Christian intolerance towards other religions were

identified as the central flaws of these minorities. From this perspective, in order to

coexist with the Hindu nation, Indian Islam and Christianity have to conform themselves

to its fundamental principles.

In this sense, liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism in India are two

faces of the same coin. They are two mutually reinforcing moments of a mechanism that

transforms the native traditions of India into variants of the religions of the Book. If the

two forces are not opposites in this case, then we will have to rethink their mutual

relationship in general. More importantly, it is high time for intellectuals to move beyond

the normative disjunction between liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism.

There have been calls to draw on the Indian traditions as alternative sources of vibrant

pluralism, which may improve upon the dominant liberal model. Instead of dismissing

such attempts as revivalism or indigenism, we might consider the possibility that

liberal secularism is not the one true political salvation for humanity.


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25

1Talal Asad,Formations of the Secular : Christianity, Islam, modernity(Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2003); S.N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover, The

Secular State and Religious Conflict: liberal neutrality and the Indian case of pluralism,

The Journal of Political Philosophy15 (2007), 67-92; Nikkie R. Keddie, Secularism and

the State: towards clarity and global comparison,New Left Review226 (1997), 21-40.

2T.N. Madan, Secularism in Its Place,The Journal of Asian Studies46 (1987), 747-59;

Ashis Nandy, An Anti-secularist Manifesto,Seminar314 (1985), 14-24. See also two

important collections of articles: Rajeev Bhargava (ed.), Secularism and Its Critics(New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (eds.), The Crisis of Secularism in India(Durham and London:

Duke University Press, 2007).

3This is a common argument: Paul R. Brass, Secularism Out of Its Place,in Tradition,

Pluralism and Identityeds. Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta and Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi:

Sage, 1999), 370-1, 375; Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee,

India After Independence, 1947-2000(New Delhi: Penguin, 1999), 438-9; P.C. Chatterji,

Secular Values for Secular India(New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), ix; Stanley Tambiah, The

Crisis of Secularism in India,in Secularism and Its Critics, 427. The argument is shared

byHindutvaideologues who accuse the Congress party and secularists of being pseudo-

secularists,because of the failure to be neutral between Hindus and Muslims.

4Partha Chatterjee, History and the Nationalization of Hinduism,Social Research59

(1992), 111-149; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial

North India(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Romila Thapar, Imagined


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26

Religious Communities? Ancient history and the modern search for a Hindu identity,

Modern Asian Studies, 23 (1989), 209-231; Thapar, Secularism, History and

Contemporary Politics in India,in The Crisis of Secularism in India, 191-207.5E.g. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Before the Leviathan: sectarian violence and the state in

pre-colonial India,in Unravelling the Nation: sectarian conflict and Indiassecular

identityeds. Kaushik Basu and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Penguin, 1996), 44-

80.

6Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich Von Stietencron,Representing Hinduism: the

construction of religious traditions and national identity(New Delhi: Sage, 1995);

Robert E. Frykenberg, Constructions of Hinduism at theNexus of History and Religion,

Journal of Interdisciplinary History23 (1993), 523-550; Richard King, Orientalism and

the Modern Myth of Hinduism,Numen46 (1999), 146-185.

7Franois Bernier, A Continuation of the Memoires of Monsieur Bernier concerning the

Empire of the Great Mogol, Tome III & IV(London, 1671), 149-150; Quintin Craufurd,

Sketches Chiefly Relating to the History, Religion, Learning, and Manners of the Hindoos

(London, 1790), 131-132; Anonymous, The History of British India,in The Asiatic

Annual RegisterFor the Year 1799(London, 1800), 6; and excerpts in Richard Fox

Young,Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit sources on Anti-Christian apologetics in early

nineteenth-century India(Vienna: Institut fr Indologie der Universitt Wien, 1981).

8E.g., Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg, Thirty Four Conferences Between the Danish

Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramansin the East Indies, Concerning the Truth of

the Christian Religion(London, 1719), 5, 15.


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27

9For analysis, see S. N. Balagangadhara, The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the

West and the dynamic of religion (Leiden, 1994).

10

V. D. Savarkar,Hindutva: who Is a Hindu? (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan,

1969).

11Savarkar,Hindu Rashtra Darshan(Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1984), 8.

12Ibid., 9.

13Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya,Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims

(eighth to fourteenth century)(New Delhi: Manohar, 1998).

14J. J. Roy Burman,Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities(New Delhi:

Mittal Publications, 2002); David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.),Beyond Turk

and Hindu: rethinking religious identities in Islamicate South Asia(Gainesville:

University Press of Florida, 2000).

15Savarkar,Hindu Rasthra Darshan, 9.

16B. D. Graham,Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: the origins and development of

the Bharatiya Jana Sangh(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 94-5;

Jyotirmaya Sharma,Hindutva: exploring the idea of Hindu nationalism(New Delhi:

Penguin, 2003), 5-9.

17Sobhag Mathur,Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement: a documentary

study of the ideals and policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939-45(Jodhpur: Kusumanjali

Prakashan, 1996), 217-8.

18Ibid., 65.


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28

19Balraj Madhok, Secularism: genesis and development,in Secularism in India:

Dilemmas and Challengesed. M. M. Sankhdher (New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications,

1992), 110-122; Graham,Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, 50.20

Two favourites are Sarva Dharma Sama Bhavaand Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudha

Vadanti, translated as equal respect for all religions and truth is one; the sages call it

by many namesrespectively. See M. S. Golwalkar,Bunch of Thoughts(Bangalore:

Vikrama Prakashan, 1966), 101-6.

21See M. G. Chitkara,Hindutva(New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation, 1997), 1;

Mathur,Hindu Revivalism, 113, 131; Savarkar,Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 14-5, 41, 49.

22M. A. Venkata Rao, Jana Sangh, Islam & Humayun Kabir,Organiser(1 August

1960), 6.

23Venkata Rao, Introduction,in Golwalkar,Bunch of Thoughts, i-xxxiv, xxix.

24Sir John W. Kaye, Christianity in India: an historical narrative(London, 1859), 366-

96.

25From a letter to the register of the nizamat adalat(provincial court), dated December 5,

1812, signed by G. Dowdeswell, chief secretary to the Bengal government,British

Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1821, Vol. 18, 31.

26Extract Bengal Judicial Consultations, 7th February 1805,inBPP 1821, Vol. 18, 24.

27Extract from the Report of the Criminal Cases adjudged by the Court of Nizamut

Adawlut, in the year 1810,inBPP 1821, Vol. 18, 25-6.

28Anonymous, Peculiar Customs of the Hindus,in The Asiatic Annual RegisterFor

the Year 1803, Vol. 5(London, 1804), 29-30.


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29

29Minute of Mr. G. L. Prendergast,inBPP1821, Vol. 18, 246-7. See Sir John

Malcolm, The Government of India(London, 1833), 32.

30

BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 38-39.31

Letter from Searman Bird, senior judge and J. Rattray, 2d judge at Dacca to M. H.

Turnbull, esq. Register to the Nizamut Adawlut, Fort William, dated 19thAugust 1816,

inBPP1821, Vol. 18, 101.

32Jakob De Roover and S.N. Balagangadhara, Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God: the

principle of toleration in early modern Europe and colonial India,History of Political

Thought30 (2009), 111-39; Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: the debate on sati in

colonial India(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); Andrea

Major,Pious Flames: European encounters with Sati 1500-1830(New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2006).

33Geoffrey A. Oddie,Popular Religion, Elites and Reform: hook-Swinging and its

prohibition in colonial India, 1800-1894(New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), 77-78, 86.

34Shashi Ahluwalia and Meenakshi Ahluwalia,Raja Rammohun Roy and the Indian

Renaissance(New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1991); A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Social

Ideas and Social Change in Bengal 1818-1835(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965).

35Rammohun Roy, The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1, ed. Jogendra

Chunder Ghose (1885, sec. ed. New Delhi, 1982), 113.

36Rammohun Roy started The Brahmunical Magazine or The Missionary and the

Brahmun, being a vindication of the Hindoo Religion against the attacks of Christian

missionariesin 1821 and produced several issues defending the truth of Hindu religion

against Christian arguments.


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30

37Roy, The English Works, 3.

38Ibid., 45.

39

Ibid., 69, 21.40

E.g.: Translation of a Conference between an Advocate for, and an Opponent of, the

Practice of Burning Widows Alive, A Second Conference between an Advocate for,

and an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive, Abstract of the Arguments

regarding the Burning of Widows, considered as a Religious Rite, and Address to Lord

William Bentinck,in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1.

41J. K. Majumdar, ed.,Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India

(Calcutta: Anmol Publications, 1983), 97-156.

42The Petition of the orthodox Hindu community of Calcutta against the Suttee

regulation (January 14, 1830),inRaja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in

India, 156-63.

43An appeal to the orthodox Hindus on the necessity of establishing the Dhurma Subha

(February 6, 1830),inRaja Rammohun Roy, 163-5.

44From a lamentation on the rejection of thesatiappeal in the Samachar Chandrika, the

journal of theDharma Sabha, inRaja Rammohun Roy, 205-7.

45Mani, Contentious Traditions; Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of

Knowledge: the British in India(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 57-75; Lynn

Zastoupil and Martin Moir, eds., Introduction,in The Great Indian Education Debate:

documents relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy, 1781-1843(Richmond:

Curzon, 1999), 1-72.


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31

46Raf Gelders and Willem Derde, Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: colonial experience of

Indian intellectuals,Economic and Political Weekly38 (2003), 4611-17.

47

Geoffrey A. Oddie,Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant missionary constructions of

Hinduism, 1793-1900(New Delhi: Sage, 2006).

48British authors as varied in their religious outlooks as Nathaniel Halhed, William

Jones, James Mill, and Charles Grant all agreed that the Hindus took the lawsthat were

found in their sacred scriptures to be the revelation of the Almighty or the divine being.

See Halhed,A Code of Gentoo Laws or, Ordinations of the Punditsed. M. J. Franklin

(London and New York: Routledge, 2000), xiii-xv; Jones,Institutes of Hindu Law or, the

Ordinances of Menu ed. M. J. Franklin (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), xvi;

Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain

(1792), inBritish Parliamentary PapersColonies East India, Vol. 5: 18311832

(Shannon: Irish University Press, 1970), 34; James Mill, The History of British India, vol.

1 (London, 1817), 170. From the start, the British had embarked on a quest for the Hindu

sacred law and its textual foundation. In the eighteenth century, they decided that the

Code of Manuwas the text that contained the original laws mistaken by the Hindus for

the biblical Gods revelation. SeeNandini Bhattacharyya-Panda,Appropriation and

Invention of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu law in early colonial Bengal

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008).

49We have argued this point elaborately in earlier work; see De Roover and

Balagangadhara, Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God.

50Swami Dayanand Saraswati,Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati(New Delhi:

Manohar, 1978), 39.


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32

51Many colonial authors were aware of this problem. Walter Ewer stated in 1818 that it

is well known that not one man in a thousand knows anything of the contents of the

Shasters,inBPP1821, vol. 18, 229. Or in the words of Sir John Strachey: If a religion

be a creed with certain distinctive tenets, the Hinduism of the mass of people is not a

religion at all. Their religion is in no way represented by the sacred books of Sanskrit

literature. The sanctity of the Vedas is an accepted article of faith among Hindus who

have heard of their existence, but they have nothing to do with the existing popular

beliefs. The Puranas, and other comparatively late works, which Elphinstone says may be

called the scriptures of modern Hinduism, have no practical connection with the religion

of the great majority of the population.Strachey,India: Its Administration & Progress

(London, 1911), 317.

52Dayanand Saraswati,Autobiography, 82-3.

53Dayanand Saraswati,Light of Truth or an English Translation of the Satyarth Prakash,

trans. Chiranjiva Bharadwaja (New Delhi: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, 1994), 74-

5.

54Ibid., 336.

55Ibid., 772.

56Arya Patrika, April 13, 1886, 5. Cited in Kenneth W. Jones,Arya Dharm: Hindu

consciousness in 19th-century Punjab(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976),

144.

57Arya Patrika, August 31, 1886, 7. Cited in Jones,Arya Dharm, 123.

58Ibid., 47.

59Ibid., 96-97.


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33

60From theArya Patrika, December 27, 1887, 3-4, cited in Jones,Arya Dharm, 109. In

1915, Farquhar noted that Din Dayals association, theBharata Dharma Mahamandala,

even though it claimed to defend orthodox Hinduism, found itself driven to set forth the

Hindu system as the religion for all mankind. To defend a religion which is but the

religion of the Hindus is felt to be impossible for the modern mind .He noted with

satisfaction: Clearly, the freedom as well as the universality of Christianity is working

with irresistible force within the very citadel of Hinduism.Farquhar,Modern Religious

Movements, 321-2.

61The quotes are from a lecture delivered in 1896 by Swami Rama Tirtha at the Sanatan

Dharma Sabhaof Sialkot, now in Pakistan. Swami Rama Tirtha, On Sanatan Dharma

(Lucknow, n.d.), 2, 10-34. See Jones, Two Sanatan DharmLeaders and Swami

Vivekananda: a comparison,in Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism,

ed. William Radice (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 224-43.

62As William Gould shows, a softer variant of Hindu nationalism developed within the

Indian National Congress in the early twentieth century: Gould,Hindu Nationalism and

the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India(Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004).

63For the development of these strands, see A.S.P. Woodhouse,Puritanism and Liberty

(London: J. M. Dent, 1938), 60-100; John Coffey, Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: the

case for toleration in the English Revolution,The Historical Journal41 (1998), 961-85;

J.C. Davis, Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution,The

Historical Journal35 (1992), 507-530.


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34

64E.g., Philip Melanchthon,Loci Communes Theologici(1521), in Wilhelm Pauck, ed.,

Melanchthon and Bucer(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 3-150, 123;

Luthers The Freedom of a Christian(1520) in Timothy F. Lull, ed.,Martin Luthers

Basic Theological Writings(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 585-629; Calvins

chapter on Christian liberty in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T.

McNeill and trans. Ford L. Battles (1559; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,

1960); Edward B. Underhill, ed., Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 1614-

1661(New York: Burt Franklin, 1966).

65E.g. Henry Lord,A Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians(London, 1630), 43-95; John

Z. Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the

Empire of Indostan, Part I and II, ed. Michael J. Franklin (1765-67, repr. ed. London and

New York: Routledge, 2000), 16-17; Anonymous, TheHistory of British India, 3-5; J.

Talboys Wheeler, College History of India: Asiatic and European(London: Macmillan,

1888), 13, 21; Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism (London:

Macmillan, 1891), 352; Valentine Chirol,Indian Unrest(London: Macmillan, 1910), 33;

Strachey,India: Its Administration & Progress, 318-9.

66Wheeler, College History of India, 21; Henry Whitehead,Indian Problems in Religion,

Education, Politics(London: Constable & Co., 1924), 38-39.

67Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 23-65; Strachey,India, 336-41.

68Wheeler, College History of India, 107-108, 148. See also Whitehead,Indian

Problems, 3.

69Chirol,Indian Unrest, 32, 37, 5.

70Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Introduction,in Chirol,Indian Unrest, xv.


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71Lyall, Introduction,in Chirol,Indian Unrest, ix, xvi, xiii.

72The Worlds Work, Vol 35: November, 1917, to April, 1918: a history of our time

(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1918), 35.73

Letter to the Nawab of Bhopal, New Delhi, 9 July 1948, in Selected Works of

Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 7, ed. S. Gopal (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru

Memorial Fund, 1988), 8.

74India Will not be a Hindu State,Address to mill workers and labourers in Delhi, 30

September 1947, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 4, ed. S.

Gopal (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1986), 107-9.

75 Toleration or Ruin, Speech at New Delhi, 27 September 1947, in Selected Works,

Second Series, Vol. 4, 101-2.

76 The quotes are from A Uniform Refugee Policy, Note to Cabinet Ministers, 12

September 1947, in Selected Works, Second Series, Vol. 4, 62-6; italics added.

dark hour of secularism

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