Pluralism, Diversity and Hindu Migration

Overview

Recall questions on Hinduism as a plurality of traditions, religious pluralism, Hindutva as exclusivism, Hindu inclusivism, practice in a multicultural society, migration, Hinduism in the United Kingdom, and diaspora unity.

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Questions from this subtopic

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1. 1

   In what sense is Hinduism better described as a plurality of traditions?

   Model answer

   Because its major streams have their own supreme deity, scriptures, theology, initiation and priesthood. Vaishnavas centre Vishnu and his avatars, Shaivas centre Shiva, Shaktas centre the Goddess, and Smartas honour several deities as forms of one Brahman. Add regional languages and deities, jati-specific practices, sampradaya loyalties and philosophical disagreement, and the differences within Hinduism can exceed those between some separate religions elsewhere. Some scholars therefore prefer to speak of Hindu traditions in the plural, while noting the shared vocabulary and history that make the singular defensible too.

2. 2

   Explain religious pluralism as an attitude to other faiths.

   Model answer

   The position that more than one religion can be a genuine way to the ultimate, rather than one being true and the rest mistaken. Many Hindus hold something like this, often on the ground that the ultimate exceeds any description and that different temperaments and cultures require different approaches, a view Ramakrishna is taken to have verified in practice and Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan made programmatic. It should be distinguished from indifference: it is a substantive claim about the ultimate, and it has been argued for rather than merely assumed.

3. 3

   How does Hindutva represent an exclusivist position?

   Model answer

   By defining who belongs. On Savarkar's account a Hindu is one whose ancestral and holy land are both India, which admits Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as part of the same civilisation while placing Muslims and Christians outside it because their sacred geography lies elsewhere. The exclusion is cultural and territorial rather than doctrinal, but its effect is a boundary of the kind classical Hinduism largely lacked. Many Hindus reject it precisely on those grounds, arguing that it imports a model of religious identity foreign to their tradition.

4. 4

   What is Hindu inclusivism, and what is the objection to it?

   Model answer

   The position that other religions are true as far as they go but are partial or preliminary expressions of a truth their own tradition holds more fully, so that other faiths are welcomed rather than rejected, and included rather than accepted as equals. The objection, pressed by Christian and Muslim participants in dialogue and by some scholars, is that this is a form of assimilation: it grants respect while quietly ranking, and it defines others in terms they would not accept. Defenders reply that every tradition assesses others from somewhere, and that inclusivism is at least honest and generous about it.

5. 5

   How do Hindus practise their faith in a multicultural society?

   Model answer

   Domestic practice travels most easily: a shrine at home, daily puja, food customs and vrata observance need no institution. Public practice adapts. The mandir becomes a weekly gathering place in a way it seldom was in India, with congregational elements, sermons and community facilities. Festivals such as Divali and Navaratri move into civic spaces and become occasions of public visibility. Families negotiate vegetarianism, dress, dating and marriage within a wider society, and organisations take on interfaith and representative roles that Hindu traditions had no precedent for.

6. 6

   How did Hindu communities come to be spread around the world?

   Model answer

   In two main waves. From the 1830s, indentured labour carried large numbers to the Caribbean, Guyana, Fiji, Mauritius, Natal and elsewhere, communities that developed distinctive forms of Hinduism, often centred on the Ramayana, at long distance from India. From the mid-twentieth century, professional and family migration brought Hindus to Britain, North America and the Gulf, including East African Asians, many of them Gujarati, who arrived in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s and notably after the 1972 expulsion from Uganda.

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