The European Influence on Hinduism

The uniqueness of Hinduism lies in its inability to be defined by a singular set of rituals, beliefs, or practices. Are Hindus vegetarians? Do Hindus sacrifice animals? Do all Hindus fast on specific days? Are Hindu prayers always in Sanskrit? Do all Hindus worship sacred groves? Are the Vedas the foundational texts of the religion, or does that honor belong to the Gita? None of these questions can be answered with an unequivocal “Yes.” And herein lies the essence of Hinduism—its nebulous, all-encompassing nature that resists homogenization

The Vedas, originally Brahmanical texts, disapproved of temple rituals. However, as the religion faced stiff competition from local cults that worshipped deities in image form, it underwent a transformation. It assimilated the stories, legends, and myths of the land. Around the same time that Christianity was taking root in the West, the Puranas—a treasure trove of stories that remain the foundation of most Hindu beliefs and practices—began to take shape. This evolution was also a response to the rapid growth of Buddhism and Jainism. This pragmatic and open-minded approach allowed figures like Ayyappa and Aiyannar to be embraced as Hindu gods and even recognized Buddha as one of Vishnu’s Dashavataras.

In Manu S Pillai’s ‘Gods, Guns and Missionaries’, an amusing fact that struck me was that Gandhi, for whom the Gita was a key text that shaped his thinking, encountered it through an English translation, not Sanskrit. This fact packs a punch as it alludes to the rise of the printing press, the mass translations of Hindu scriptures and the interpretations of the texts by the intellectuals.

When European missionaries landed in India, they had to report about the ‘barbaric’ lands that their evangelism had to ‘redeem’. This was their fund-raising pitch. This reporting, often bombastic and far-fetched, portrayed and exaggerated some of the regressive aspects of Hinduism – Sati, human sacrifice, sexual practices and so on. The European effort to define Hinduism and make sense of the hydra-natured legends and myths of the land led to the need for a single, foundational text (like the Bible) to be identified. The Brahmanical Vedas were their answer to this question, despite most Hindus being oblivious to its contents.

Over a period of time, this encounter with the British led to the rise of the ‘reformers’ we all know of. Raja Rammohan Roy’s exaltation of the Upanishads as the ‘pure’ representation of Hinduism, Vivekananda’s iconic speech in Chicago extolling Hinduism as a ‘World Religion’, Tilak galvanizing Hindus to celebrate Ganeshotsavs in full public glare as a counter to the Muharram processions of the Muslims, Phule’s crusades against casteism and his lampooning of the Puranic stories, Dayanand Saraswati’s Arya Samaj reforms in which he frowned upon idol worship and finally Savarkar who tried to resolve all inconsistencies of the earlier reformers by simplifying his concept of Hindutva, which declared that everyone for whom India was a holy land belonged here — thus excluding Christians and Muslims, whose holy lands were in Palestine and Mecca, were all a product of this centuries-long wrestling with the European gaze.

The evolution of Hindutva has not received sufficient scholarly attention. The Left has always been dismissive and the Right has never been objective. In this backdrop, this work is an important contribution to understanding how we’ve reached where we are now. There has always been a strong undercurrent of Hindutva since the rise of Indian nationalism. Had it not been for their role in Gandhi’s assassination, the Hindutva movement might probably not have had to wait till the mid-nineties to taste political power.

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