The Hindus: An Alternative History

In the furore surrounding The Hindus: An Alternative History, remember that “Hinduism” is an invention of the British colonial administration, a classification of all religions originating in India other than the Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism that were arbitrarily excluded.

The existence of extremely nationalistic mass political movements based on it is nothing if not a confirmation of the insistence of the late Professor Stuart Hall that no culture exists except in relation to all the others.

The same is true of the statements being put out over the names of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Catholic leaders supporting the Supreme Court’s reiteration of the British colonial ban on homosexual activity, on the grounds that anything else would be a capitulation to Western imperialism and contrary to “the traditions of the East”.

Western philosophers, examining the thought of India, have concentrated on those thinkers who viewed the impersonal Brahman as the ultimate reality and who conceived of Nirvana accordingly. Such thinkers have come from elite backgrounds comparable to their own.

Those equally elite figures who have nevertheless given philosophical articulation to the vastly more popular theistic traditions, with all that theism entails for the definition of one’s ultimate destiny, have, in so doing, reminded their Western counterparts far too much of Christianity in general and of Catholicism in particular.

Venerating the unpopular Deists of Early Modernity, such Westerners have deliberately chosen the unpopular “Deists of the East”, thus misunderstanding India no less than they misunderstand the West.

Most Hindus are no more or less Vedantic philosophers seeking after Brahman and Nirvana than most Westerners, never mind Christians, are adherents of comparable schools of thought in Western academe.

For example, although they may still use the word, I am not sure that people believe much in Nirvana at a popular level, at least if they are confronted with an alternative.

In the very syncretistic world of Northern India, for example, followers of the Sant tradition, whence came Sikhism, basically seem to replace Brahman with Allah as understood by the popular Sufi teachers, and Nirvana with the Qur’anic Paradise thus understood, while still seeing the latter as the place of escape from samsara and karma.

But then, who could believe, as most Hindus do, in a personal Vishnu, Shiva or Mother-Goddess, seldom or never thinking about any mysterious impersonality beyond it all, and yet believe in Nirvana rather than in a state of being with the deity, most obviously presented as the place where the deity lives?