Hindu Renaissance, Nationalism and Hinduism Abroad

Overview

Recall questions on the Hindu renaissance, Neo-Vedanta and Hindutva, inclusivism and tolerance, Gandhi's non-violence and swaraj, modern science, whether Hinduism is one religion, and its representation abroad.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the phrase Hindu renaissance describe, and why is it disputed?

   Model answer

   It describes the nineteenth and early twentieth-century revival in which Hindus reorganised, defended and reinterpreted their tradition in the face of colonial rule and missionary criticism, producing new movements, institutions and confidence. It is disputed because renaissance implies rebirth after decline, and critics argue there had been no such decline, only a tradition changing as it always had. The term also flatters the reformers' own account of themselves as recovering a pure original, which historians treat as a claim to be examined rather than a fact.

2. 2

   Compare Neo-Vedanta with Hindutva.

   Model answer

   Neo-Vedanta is universalist and philosophical: it treats Advaita as the essence of religion as such, holds that all paths lead to one reality, and addresses humanity generally, which is why it travelled abroad so successfully. Hindutva is particularist and political: it defines Hinduness by attachment to a land, treats religion as the core of a national culture, and is concerned with who belongs to India rather than with metaphysics. Both emerged from the same colonial crisis and both claim to defend Hinduism, but one does so by dissolving boundaries and the other by drawing them.

3. 3

   How does Hindu inclusivism affect relations with other faiths?

   Model answer

   It makes conflict less likely and agreement harder than it looks. Hindus who hold that all paths reach the same goal are naturally hospitable to interfaith work and unlikely to proselytise, which has made Hindu representatives welcome participants in interfaith bodies. But Christian and Muslim partners often reply that being told their exclusive claims are partial glimpses of a Vedantic truth is not acceptance of them on their own terms, and is itself a theological position rather than neutrality. Genuine dialogue therefore has to acknowledge that inclusivism is a stance, not the absence of one.

4. 4

   Assess the claim that Hinduism is intrinsically tolerant.

   Model answer

   In favour: the tradition has no single creed or authority to enforce, has absorbed rather than expelled divergent movements, has produced explicit teachings that different paths suit different people, and has historically hosted Jews, Parsis and Christians without state persecution. Against: caste hierarchy is itself a form of institutionalised inequality; there is a history of Shaiva and Vaishnava rivalry and of hostility to Buddhism and Jainism; and modern communal violence, including at Ayodhya and in Gujarat, involves Hindu actors. The fair conclusion is that Hindu tradition supplies strong resources for tolerance and that its record, like others, is mixed, and Hindus themselves argue about which represents the tradition.

5. 5

   Explain non-violence and swaraj as political ideas, and the objections to them.

   Model answer

   Gandhi built a political method out of religious principle: because truth cannot be served by injury, resistance must accept suffering rather than cause it, converting the opponent instead of defeating them, and independence must be accompanied by self-mastery and by economic self-reliance in the village. Supporters point to the achievement of Indian independence and the method's later export. Objectors argue that it worked only against an opponent with a press and a conscience, that it asked intolerable suffering of the poorest, that partition's violence showed its limits, and that Ambedkar thought it left social hierarchy untouched.

6. 6

   How do Hindus respond to the challenges of modern science?

   Model answer

   Often with confidence rather than defensiveness, since Hindu cosmology already works with vast cycles of time and repeated creation, which many find easier to reconcile with astronomy and deep time than a short chronology would be, and India has an old tradition of astronomical and mathematical work bound up with calendar and ritual. In medicine, Ayurveda continues as a state-recognised system alongside biomedicine, valued for its holistic approach and criticised where claims outrun evidence. A more contested strand argues that the Vedas already contain modern scientific discoveries; other Hindus regard such claims as apologetics that mistake poetry for physics, and note that the tradition never required scripture to do the work of science.

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