review by brown
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/12/2019 Review by BROWN
1/2
74 JOURNAL
OF
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
OF
RELIGION
Crump Miller of
What We CanBelieve
and
TheLanguage
Gap
and God
had
undertakenamore daringandcritical inquiry intothetradit ionofAm erican religious
thought
as awhole.
If the present work were retitled " The E mp irical Sp iritinAm erican
Theology,"
it
would be
a
useful han dbo ok Unfortunately, insofar as the au th or mak es
larger claims,
he
fails
New College of U S F. JAMESG. MOSELEY, JR.
RELIGIONININDIA
Language, Religion andPoliticsin North India.
By PAUL R. BRASS. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1974.467pages. $27.50.L.C. No.73-82453.
"Nationality-form ation," according to B rass, is
a .
process by which objectively
distinct groupsofpeopleorethnic g roups acqu ire subjective self-consciousnessand
political significance either withinanexisting state'or withinaseparate s tate"(p. 403).
"Nationalism," moreover,
. . . isthe
striving
to
achieve multi-symbol congruence
amongagroupofpeop le defined initiallyintermsof asingle criterion "(p 410).B rass
clearly distinguishesthe"sta te" fromthe"nation,"andargues convincingly tha t there
may indeedbe"multi-level national conc eptions" ope rating withinagiven "state" and
that such pluralistic con ceptu alization s neednotbe considered de trimen taltothe unity
and integrationof astate. The autho r also argues convincingly against three com mo n
propositions
in
political development
and
political sociolo gy.
(1)
that "mu tually
reinforcing cleavages"
are
"destabilizing,"
(2)
tha t political parties simply reflect
or
exacerbate existing communal differences, and (3)"tha t ethnic cleavagesare
inherently more dangerous than other formsofcleavage" (p. 431). Me thodologically,
the case-study approach isused,and three modern north Indian communitiesare
studiedindetail: (a) theHindu Maithili movementinnorth B ihar, (b)the Muslim
separatist movement
in the
United P rovinces,
and (c) the
Sikh movement
in the
Punjab .Thetendency tow ards symbolic congruenceisanalyzedineach case,and the
usual clichesofsocial-scientific analysisintermsofcomm unalism , caste, religion, and
languagearenicely deb unked .Itbecomes clear that each region mustbestudiedin its
uniqueness and that great weight must be given to self-conscious "symbol
manipulation"
of
partic ular political leaders.
In
other w ords, one must pay attention
to
what individual political leaders
and
parties
do in
a
given area .
The
bo ok sufficiently
transcendstheusual social-scientific nonsense written a bo ut India
to be
well wo rth
reading.The price, however,isoutrageous
University of California Santa Barbara GERALD JAMES
LARSON
The Spiritof Modern India. Writings
in
Philosophy, Religion Culture.
Edited
by
ROBERT
A.
M C D E R M O T T
and V. S.
NARAVANE.
New York- Thomas Y. Crowell,
1974. xvin+ 313 pages, chronology, glossary, bibliography, index. $6.95 L.C No.
74-5142.
The spiritofmo dern Indiaishardly definable.Itis reflectedin avariety of cul tura l,
religious,and philosophical phenomena
It
encompasses muchofwhatistradit ional,
as well as m odern; of what is "Western,"aswellas Indian. This spirit, tho ugh ,
transcendsallthatitembraces,in astriving tow ard unity tha t synthesizesorintegrates
the rich diversity.
The
concern
for
integration
is
manifested
not
only
in the
realm
of
ideas,
butalso in the
lives
and personalities of those wh o articulate and exemplify those
ideas.The
strength
of
McDermott
and
Naravane's book
isits
ability
to
focus
on and
illustrate this spiritof integration.
atUiTTheArcticUniversityofNorwayonAugust7,2014
http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/
Downloaded
from
http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ -
8/12/2019 Review by BROWN
2/2
BOOK NOTICES
175
The writings selected
for the
volume cover
the
period from
the
m id-nineteenth
century
to the
present They
are
divided into eight section s:
New
Awakening,
Philosophy, Dharma, Karma-yoga, Aesthetics, Education, Spiritual Discipline,
and
National Consciousness Some
of
these clearly reflect traditional Indian categories
of
thoug ht, while the first (New A wak ening) and last (Nationa l C onsciousness) are mo re
exclusively modern
The
auth ors include
Sri
Ram akrishna, V ivekananda,
Rabindranath Tagore,
Sri
Aurob indo, Ra dha knsh nan, Gandhi , B have, Nehru,
Knshnamurti , Ramana Maharshi ,
and
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
It
is significant that
some
of the
writers appea r und er several categories;
e.g , Sri
Aurobindo under
Philosophy, Dharma, Karma-yoga, Aesthetics , Education,
and
Nat ional
Consciousness,
an
obvio us illustration of the con cern
for
integration. Each of the eight
sections
has a
brief introduction giving some
of
the basic historical and philosoph ical
background
for the
au tho rs selected
The introductory sections will
be
helpful
for
the beginning student, thoug h
at
times
they
are
somew hat incomp lete, even from
the
necessarily limited perspective
of a
volume
of
this kind For exam ple, M uha mm ad Iqbal, the only Muslim represented
in
the book,
has two
short selections included under Dharma,
but
he himself is
not
even
mentioned
in the
introduction
In
addition, there
are
some minor inconsistencies
or
confusion
in
the general o utlining
of
sections, table of contents, and page head ings,
but
overall,
the
book brings together
an
interesting variety
of
important sources that
should serve
as an
excellent introduction
to the
subject.
Trimly University C
MACKENZIE B ROWN
EARLY MODERN WESTERN RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Respectable Folly, Millenanans and the French Revolution inFranceand England.
B y
CLARKE GARRETT
B altimore. Joh ns Hop kins University P ress, 1975. x+ 23 7
pages $10.00.
L C. No
74-24378.
The late eighteenth centu ry was a critical period
for
Western mil lenanan thoug ht,
a
watershed between the traditional religious idiom of world transformation and the new
secular rhetorics
of
progress, nationalism, and revolution. Thu s, P rofessor G arrett has
performed
a
signal service
in
describing
the
com plex responses
of
millenarians
to the
political turm oil of the 1790s. Indeed, he has don e so ma ny useful and im po rtan t th ings
that
a
brief review can scarcely d o justic e to so rich
a
wo rk. However, three features are
wo rth special n ote- structura lly,
the
book consists
of
case studies
of
three
prophets
Suzette Labrousse, Catherine The ot,
and
Richard B rothers
interspersed with more broadly conceived chapters
on the
intellectual climates
of
France
and
England This design allows
us to set
the figures
in a
meaningful con tex t.
P rofessor Garrett exercises special pains to dem on strate the com plex interconn ections
among
the
proph ets ' followers. This
in
tur n she ds light
on
P eter Worsley's distinction
between movements and "coteries,"
for
the "millenanan international" described here
was often
a set of
coteries
in
futile search
of a
movement
In the second place, although
the
French Revolution provided
a
comm on st imulus
to millenanan speculation, P rofessor Garrett makes clear the substantial difference
in
popular culture between France and England The "print cultu re"
of
England allowed
a play
of
ideas constrained
in
France
by
mo re traditional media
of
com municat ion
Finally,
Respectable Folly
demo nstrates just how am bivalent
the
initial reaction
was
to millenanan interpretations
of the
Revolution.
The
struggle between religious
and
secular idioms,
so
clear
in
hindsight, appeared much less conclusive
at the
t ime.
By way
of
criticism,
it
seems
to
me that P rofessor G arrett would have strengthened
his
own
argument
had he
conceded that
the
secular rev olution aries w ere themselves
millenanans, albeit
of a
new variety. Yet
he
hesitates
to
take this step. And the
all too
atUiTTheArcticUnivers
ityofNorwayonAugust7,201
4
http://jaar.oxfordjournals
.org/
Downloadedfrom
http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/