Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective

Imagining Hinduism introduces a new and significant way of looking at Western constructions of Hinduism. Employing current postcolonial categories, Sharada Sugirtharajah examines how Hinduism has been defined, interpreted, and manufactured through Western categorizations, from the foreign interventions of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Orientalists and missionaries to the present day. Her contention is that ever since early Orientalists 'discovered' the ancient Sanskrit texts and the Hindu Golden Age, the West has nurtured a complex and ambivalent fascination with Hinduism, responding to it in ways ranging from romantic admiration to ridicule. At the same time, she focuses attention on how Hindu discourse has drawn upon Orientalist representations in order to redefine Hindu identity and construct a monolithic Hinduism, both in the Indian and diasporic contexts.

As the first comprehensive work to bring postcolonial critique to the study of Hinduism, Imagining Hinduism is essential reading for an informed and critical understanding of how both Europeans and Hindus engage with Hinduism.

Contents

Introduction Defining the other Postcolonial criticism as an interrogative tool About the volume

1. William Jones: Making Hinduism safe Biblical Jones Gods of Indian and European heathens Primitive monotheism to Biblical monotheism Hindu texts made secure Hindu chronology through biblical lens Romantic Jones Discovery of Sanskrit literature East and West - philosophical affinities Hindu Goddesses and colonial enterprise Juridical Jones Oriental and colonial pursuits Hindus and their laws Hindu laws - Sublime and ridiculous Justinian model for Hindu laws Jones and the Pandits Concluding remarks

2. Max Müller: Mobilizing texts and managing Hinduism Territorial and intellectual conquest The Veda as an Aryan testament The Veda - celebrated and caricatured Fragile monotheism Restoring, fixing and privileging the Veda Sanskrit, self-definition and spiritual kith and kin Aryan theory: implication and appropriation Aryan masculinity and Aryan past Eulogizing Aryan character Fall from Aryan glory Comparing religions: Hinduism in relation to Christianity Classifying sacred texts Redacting the sacred books of the East Concluding remarks

3. William Ward's virtuous Christians and vicious Hindus Negating traditional Hindu texts: Corrupted and corrupting Christian monotheism and Hindu God and Goddesses Feminized Hinduism and muscular Christianity Corrupt Hindus Lost in darkness with no sense of history, time or place Hindu women as hapless victims Concluding remarks

4. Decrowning Farquhar's Hinduism Classifying the Other Trivializing texts Hinduism through Western Protestant lens Hindu 'idolatry' and Christian monotheism Hindu indifference and Christian engagement Hindu myth, Christian truth Linear time, cyclic time Christianizing Hinduism Concluding remarks

5. Courtly text and courting Sati Sati as Voluntary Sati as a positive construct Textual warrant: Resurrecting an eighteenth-century Sanskrit text Two voices framing Sati: Julia Leslie and Mary Daly Liberating texts: Roop Kanwar's Sati from Srivaisnava and other textual practices Liberating female texts and voices Concluding remarks Conclusion Replicating Orientalist constructions New Orientalists: Fashioning a monolith Hinduism Textualizing Hinduism Politicizing Hinduism Reframing Hinduism and forging an identity References Index