Hinduism and India

Overview

Recall questions on India as a holy land, Hindutva and Hindu-ness as identity, caste and non-Hindus, India as a secular state, religious diversity and conversion, scheduled castes and family law, the prohibition on brahmin sea travel, and Hindu efforts to reform Hinduism.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   In what sense is India a holy land for Hindus?

   Model answer

   The sacred is mapped onto the physical territory itself rather than located in a single centre. Rivers are treated as divine and purifying, above all the Ganges; particular cities are held to grant liberation to those who die in them; mountains are the dwellings of deities; and networks of sites, including the four points of pilgrimage at the compass corners of the subcontinent, the sites sacred to Shiva and the sites sacred to the goddess, tie the whole land together as one ritual geography. Vast pilgrimage gatherings, of which the greatest is the Kumbh Mela, are the practical expression of this. The consequence is that Hindu practice has a geography built into it in a way that a portable religion does not.

2. 2

   How closely are Hinduism and Indian history bound together?

   Model answer

   Hindu traditions developed almost entirely within the subcontinent, and their languages, texts, temples, dynasties and pilgrimage routes belong to its history. Indian political history in turn was shaped by Hindu institutions, by royal patronage of temples and by the brahmin learned class. Later periods of Muslim and then British rule became formative in a different way, since Hindu self-understanding was substantially reshaped by encounter and by opposition, and much of what is now regarded as normative Hinduism took its present form in that context. This entanglement is why arguments about Indian history are also arguments about Hindu identity, and why they are so heated.

3. 3

   What is Hindutva?

   Model answer

   Hindutva means Hindu-ness, and it is the name given to a political and cultural nationalism which was set out systematically in the 1920s by V. D. Savarkar. Its defining move is to identify who belongs to the nation by asking whether India is both a person's ancestral land and their holy land. On that definition Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists qualify, while Muslims and Christians, whose sacred sites lie elsewhere, do not, though its advocates say they are welcome as citizens who share the national culture. It presents itself as a cultural and national identity rather than as a religion or a creed, and it has been carried by a family of organisations including a volunteer movement founded in 1925 and, in electoral politics, by a major national party.

4. 4

   Why is Hindutva contested?

   Model answer

   Its critics, including a great many Hindus, argue that it converts a plural and non-credal tradition into an ethnic nationalism, that defining belonging by holy land makes minorities conditional citizens whatever the assurances given, that it has been associated with communal violence and with campaigns over disputed religious sites, and that anti-conversion legislation in several states restricts a freedom the constitution protects. Its defenders argue that it asserts the culture of the overwhelming majority after long periods of conquest and colonial rule, that it is not a religious test because it includes non-Hindu Indian traditions and excludes no one from citizenship, that Indian secularism has in practice favoured minorities through separate personal laws, and that the movement runs extensive welfare and education work. The Indian Supreme Court described Hindutva in the 1990s as denoting a way of life rather than a religion, a ruling that both sides cite and that remains disputed.

5. 5

   Explain how Hindu-ness is understood as a political and cultural identity rather than a religious one.

   Model answer

   The argument is that a person can be recognisably Hindu through language, festivals, food, family structure, marriage customs, respect for the cow, the epics and a general sense of belonging to Indian civilisation, without holding any particular belief about God or performing any particular ritual. Since Hinduism has no creed to subscribe to and no act of conversion, this is not obviously strange, and it explains how self-described non-believers can still be counted and count themselves as Hindus. The difficulty is that a cultural definition makes the boundary with national identity very thin, so that being Indian and being Hindu begin to merge, which is precisely what Indians who are not Hindus object to.

6. 6

   How does caste affect relations between Hindus and non-Hindus in India?

   Model answer

   Because jati is inherited and governs marriage and commensality, it operates as a boundary that religious conversion does not necessarily cross. Communities that converted to Islam, Christianity or Sikhism have in many cases carried caste identity and caste ranking with them, so caste is found among Indian Muslims and Christians as well as Hindus, which complicates the claim that it is a purely Hindu institution. Conversion has often failed to deliver the social equality converts hoped for, since neighbours continue to treat them by their former standing. Conversely, since one is normally born into a jati, non-Hindus have no place within the system, which has historically made outsiders ritually ambiguous.

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