1

THE DARK HOUR OF SECULARISM

HINDU FUNDAMENTALISM AND COLONIAL LIBERALISM IN INDIA

S.N. Balagangadhara, Jakob De Roover

The relation between religion and politics remains one of the important issues of our

time. Discussions on this relation identify two poles that are regarded as opposites:

religious fundamentalism and liberal secularism. As the liberal perspective sees it, the

secular state and its principles of neutrality and toleration are antidotes to religious

nationalism and fundamentalism. Recently, however, this view has been challenged.

Several authors point out that fundamentalism and secularism are intertwined in

significant ways.1

India offers a fascinating case in point. In the 1980s, Ashis Nandy and T.N.

Madan suggested a causal link between the elitist and statist imposition of secularism, on

the one hand, and the rise of the Hindu right and its aggression towards Muslim and

Christian minorities, on the other hand. This alleged link between secularism and

fundamentalism (or “communalism” as it is often called in India) has not been adequately

clarified. Its plausibility depends largely upon two beliefs: secular statecraft is

responsible for the escalation of religious strife in Indian society; and the marginalization

of religion inevitably generates a backlash.2

Neither conceptually nor historically has satisfactory evidence been provided for

the claim that secularism and fundamentalism are two faces of the same coin. The rising

Hindu-Muslim conflict in India could have many other causes, independent of the

workings of the liberal secular state. It may as well be blamed on the failure of the Indian

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state to be truly secular and neutral.3 The question is far too important, however, to leave

the argument unexamined. If one can demonstrate that secularism gave rise to the Hindu

right in India, then our understanding of the relation between secularism and

fundamentalism may be due for revision. Some evidence is available for such a link. For

instance, it has been argued that Hindu nationalism appropriated the colonial liberal

state’s views of the Hindu traditions as one unified religion and Indian history as a

struggle between Hinduism and Islam.4 Our question is: what has been the historical

relation between the secular state and religious fundamentalism in India?

I

The problem of Hindu fundamentalism is different than it is in Christianity or Islam.

Before the nineteenth century, militant traditions existed within the Hindu fold,5 but these

did not aspire to found Indian society on a set of Hindu doctrines or principles. No one

text, teaching, or body of law was considered central to all Hindu traditions.6

In fact, early modern encounters between Europe and India present a striking fact:

when Christian travelers, merchants and missionaries denounced the native traditions as

“false religion” and preached conversion to “true religion,” the Indians reacted with

incomprehension. They failed to grasp how one religion could be true and others false,

and how different religions could be considered as rivals.7 To charges of falsity and

idolatry, they replied that their ancestral traditions were very old and could not therefore

be false.8 Before the late eighteenth century, Hindus did not defend their traditions in

terms of doctrinal truth or texts: the tendency to provide a foundation for ancestral

practices in “true” scriptures was largely absent.9

3

The history of the Hindu right, on the contrary, reads as a quest for a common set

of principles, around which all Hindus should unite. Moreover, its advocates argue that

Muslim and Christian minorities should also accept these. This movement, then, is Hindu

fundamentalist in the sense that it aspires to establish Indian society on the foundation of

supposedly Hindu principles. The content of the principles has varied over time and this

tendency is but one strand within Hindu nationalism. Still, we can isolate certain

properties that characterize this movement.

The first property lies in the pursuit of a discrete core that should unite followers

of indigenous Indian traditions (Hindutva or “Hindu-ness” includes Buddhist, Sikh, Jain

and tribal traditions). The main ideologue of the movement, V. D. Savarkar, identified

this core in his Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (1923).10

As he put it in his 1937 presidential

speech for the Hindu Mahasabha, an early Hindu nationalist organization: “Hindudom is

bound and marked out as a people and a nation by themselves not only by the tie of a

common Holy Land in which their religion took birth but by the ties of a common

culture, a common language, a common history and essentially a common fatherland as

well.”11

As a second property, this “Hindudom” was taken to give these traditions a

common identity and interests, which separate them from Muslims and Christians. The

latter were excluded from claiming themselves as Hindus, since they had extra-territorial

loyalties and lacked the true Hindu spirit.12

This is not an ancient opposition. Medieval

Sanskrit texts, for instance, did not even identify Muslims along religious lines.13

Until

today, traditions combining Hindu and Muslim practices continue to exist throughout the

subcontinent.14

Yet the drive of Hindu fundamentalism is to create an identity that

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separates Hindus from others. Religion becomes the marker of the “religious

brotherhood” of truly loyal Indians, as opposed to Christians and Muslims.15

This identity has proven difficult to find: no practice or doctrine is shared by all

Hindus. Many of their attitudes are common also among Indian Muslims and Christians.

Hindu fundamentalism is unique in the sense that it cannot draw upon any dogma or holy

book. Throughout its history, it has nevertheless tried to do so.16

Noting the Christian call

for religious revival, a Hindu nationalist leader, B.S. Moonje, argued in 1944 that Hindus

must develop the boldness to strive for the revival of their religion, and that “the

constitution of Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, should be based upon the Vedas as the

constitutions of the lands of…Christianity and Islam are to be based on the revival of

these religions.”17

Paradoxically, Hindu fundamentalism tries to distinguish Hindu

identity from that of Muslims and Christians, while modeling itself upon Islam and

Christianity.

The third property is even more paradoxical. The lack of dogmas shared by

Hindus gives rise to the claim that they hold principles of “tolerance” in common. In

words spoken at a 1939 Hindu Mahasabha meeting, “Hindus, by religion and culture, are

tolerant of the presence in their midst of people of other faiths.”18

The principles are

variously called as “Hindu tolerance,” “positive secularism,” or “equality of religions.”19

These are traced to Sanskrit aphorisms, which became the teachings of Hindutva.20

Then

they are invoked to contrast Hindu identity to the fanatic theocratic nature of its rivals,

Islam and Christianity.21

Subsequently, these principles are imposed on Muslims and Christians: “In Indian

thought, identity of underlying reality permits variety of surface custom or even

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philosophical view. But the difference or diversity or variety should not oppose the

underlying reality. Difference should realise its common root in the identity.”22

Therefore, religions can be accepted only in so far as they conform to this underlying

identity. This inspires legal measures against proselytization, a practice regarded as a

violation of religious equality. It is argued that Muslims should rewrite the Koran to

accommodate the equality of religions and that Christians should “Indianize” their

churches.23

Made into a principle, “Hindu tolerance” becomes a ground for intolerance

towards Islam and Christianity.

A historical explanation of Hindu fundamentalism needs to account for the

emergence of this paradox. How did the inclination to found the Hindu traditions in a

common core of principles come into being? Why did followers of these traditions begin

to perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions with incompatible doctrines, if this

experience was largely absent before the late eighteenth century? These are the puzzles

we will set out to solve.

II

We will outline the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism in terms of three historical and

conceptual moments. The first is a moment of radical transformation: the attempt to

transform the Hindu traditions and their variety of practices, attitudes and stories into a

set of scripturally sanctioned doctrines. We suggest that the colonial state and its

principles of religious toleration and neutrality were the main forces behind this

transformation.

When the East India Company became a governing power in Bengal, critical

policy decisions had to be made. What should be the stance of the colonial state towards

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native beliefs and practices? In 1793, it was decided that the laws of the Koran and the

“Shaster” would be preserved in civil and religious usages.24

Time and again, colonial

officials stated “that it is a fundamental principle of the British government, to allow the

most complete toleration in matters of religion, to all classes of its native subjects.”25

British colonialism established a liberal state in India, which repeatedly reaffirmed “its

ancient policy of perfect neutrality in matters affecting the religion of the people of

India.”26

When the Bengal government faced shocking practices such as child sacrifice and

widow burning, its first step was to decide whether or not such practices were “founded

in the religious opinions of the Hindoos” and “grounded in any precept of their law.”27

The pundits or Hindu scholars employed at colonial courts were asked to give judgment

on such issues. If they came to the conclusion that a practice had scriptural foundations,

then the colonial state ought to tolerate it.

For instance, a Bengal court case concerned a Muslim who had buried his leprous

mother-in-law alive, after she had requested him to burn her. The court stated that, while

this Muslim should be convicted, in the case of a Hindu indicted for a similar offence, the

judgment of the pundits showed “that the prisoner was justified by the ordinances of the

Hindoo faith in assisting at the suicide of a leper.” As a judge had remarked in an earlier

case: “I am assured, that in the case of Hindoos it is countenanced and enjoined by their

religion.” Pundits quoted the “Brahma Poorana” to show that the act was indeed

“sanctioned by the Shaster.”28

Consequently, the state ought to allow it among Hindus.

Perhaps the most shocking custom was that of “offering human sacrifice to the

Ganges, where they are devoured by the sharks.” A similar debate ensued here. It was

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decided that the practice could not be stopped among the aged and infirm, since it was

considered by Hindus “instrumental to their happiness in a future state of existence” and

“sanctioned by express tenets in their most sacred books.” Where it concerned children,

however, officials found that the custom “stands not either on the prescriptive laws of

antiquity, or on any tenet of the Shanscrit.” Consequently, an 1802 law declared any

person guilty of murder, who assisted in forcing “any individual to be a victim of this

superstition.”29

Of female infanticide, it was similarly concluded that it has “not the

sanction of any religion, or of any law” and could therefore be eradicated.30

However, in the case of a widow, who was “at her own request, buried alive with

her deceased husband,” the judgment was different: “It appearing from the answer of the

pundits…that the practice in question is authorized by the Shasters, I am directed to

communicate to you the opinion of the court that no prosecution should be instituted

against the persons who may have been concerned in the interment of the woman…;

provided however, of course, that those persons are of the Hindoo persuasion, and not

otherwise.”31

The decision was negative for women of the “joogee cast who have buried

themselves alive with their husbands,” because “from the answer of the pundit of this

court on the subject,” it appeared that this sacrifice “is not tolerated by the Shaster.”32

The debate on the toleration of sati or widow-burning revolved around the same

issue of scriptural sanctions.33

Later in the century, the same question would be raised

about other customs, such as hook-swinging, which was abolished given the absence of

textual justification.34

This policy of the colonial state introduced the tendency to found practices in

scriptures and doctrines. It involved almost a coercive mechanism to this effect. Indians

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were informed by the government that their practices would be allowed, if they could

prove that these had doctrinal foundations. Hence, not only the pundits in the courts but

also Hindus in society set out on a mission to find scriptural sanctions for several

practices. This turned into a systematic strategy to defend the validity of ancestral

traditions.

III

In a second moment, this transformation altered the pattern of dissent and agreement

within the Hindu traditions. Its impact is clearest in the writings of Raja Rammohun Roy

and his opponents. A rich Brahmin with a Persian and Arabic education, Roy is still

glorified as the father of the modern Indian Renaissance.35

In fact, we suggest that he

took crucial conceptual steps towards the creation of Hindu fundamentalism. He accepted

the view that traditional practices ought to be founded in scriptures: “The validity of

theological controversy chiefly depends upon Scriptural authority.”36

Influenced by Islam and Christianity, Roy intended to revive the Hindu traditions

by transforming them into a religion along the biblical model. In many of his texts, he

spoke of the Vedas as though they were the Bible, of the Shastras as though they were

church law, and of Manu as though he was Moses, the law giver of a people. He wanted

to demonstrate that truth was to be found in Vedic religion, rather than in its rivals Islam

or Christianity.37

Convinced that “the whole body of the Hindoo Theology, Law, and Literature is

contained in the Vedas,” Roy denounced Hindu rituals as idolatrous fabrications and tried

to convince his countrymen “of the true meaning of our sacred books.”38

He did all this

“for the purpose of diffusing Hindu scriptural knowledge among the adherents of that

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religion.”39

These scriptures, he thought, acknowledged that only the one true God ought

to be worshipped, but self-interested Brahmin priests had led the believers into idolatry

and immorality.40

Now, the aim was to reform Hindu practices according to scriptural

sanctions.

When the government decided to tolerate sati, Roy produced tract after tract

arguing that it had no scriptural foundation, since neither the Vedas nor Manu recognized

it.41

This inspired some conservative Hindus of Calcutta to argue that he was wrong:

scriptural foundations did exist for sati.42

Thus, this reformer transmitted the religious

model that sought to justify Hindu practices in terms of textual doctrines. While the

liberal colonial state had initiated the genesis of Hindu fundamentalism among its

pundits, a thinker like Roy disseminated it among the public.

From this debate emerged a group that claimed to represent “the orthodox Hindu

community of Calcutta.” In its petition against the abolition of sati, this group submitted

that “the Hindoo religion is founded, like all religions, on usage as well as precept, and

one when immemorial is held equally sacred with the other.” Therefore, “the sacrifice of

self-immolation called suttee, which is not merely a sacred duty but a high privilege to

her who sincerely believes in the doctrines of their religion,” ought not to be interfered

with. The group combined the old attitude towards practices as age-old ancestral

traditions with the tendency to provide them with doctrinal foundations.43

In this way, the colonial toleration policy instigated a restructuring of Hindu

traditions, which soon acquired an institutional shape. In 1830, the group appealed to “the

orthodox Hindus” about the necessity of establishing a Dharma Sabha, which would

“devise means for protecting our religion and our excellent customs and usages.”44

This

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association met in the summer of 1830 to protest against the abolition of sati.

Accordingly as Roy opposed its attempts, the Dharma Sabha was even more convinced

that local traditions needed protection against “their opponents who wish the overthrow

of religion.”45

IV

How to make sense of the colonial policy of religious toleration? One approach would be

to attribute certain motives to the British: e.g., to avoid rebellion, they wanted to appease

the native religious inclinations. However, colonial toleration was a macro-policy, a

cooperative result of the activities of multiple agents. One cannot impute intentions and

multiple contradictory motives to account for such a macro-policy, as though it expressed

the beliefs of individual agents. Moreover, a series of different “motives” for toleration

can be discerned in colonial writings: from a prudential fear of alienating native subjects

to principles of religious liberty. This generates a thorny question: which of these was the

“true intention” or “real motive” for the toleration policy?

No cogent answer to this question is forthcoming: we lack a clear understanding

of the relation between an agent and his/her motive, let alone possessing a social

psychology of collective agencies. In the absence of such knowledge, if one explains the

policies of the colonial state as though it had “motives,” one commits category mistakes:

one ascribes a common-sense conception of the relation between motive and act

(attributable only to individuals) to collective or supra-individual agencies.

We would like to suggest an alternative approach to making sense of colonial

toleration as a reasonable macro-policy. If the colonial state and its officials consistently

acted in a specific way, then we need to describe this as a collective act of reasonable

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agents. We use the term “reasonable” in two minimal senses here. First, the notion is

context-dependent: what is reasonable in one context might not be reasonable in another.

Second, it is proposed as a condition for cognitive consistency. That is to say, one should

attempt to show that the policy plausibly follows from cognitive assumptions that we

expect a people in a period to share. How can this be done?

Through historical and textual research, one can provide evidence that people

from a given period could be plausibly expected to share certain cognitive assumptions.

This “plausibility” is our plausibility: we frame our expectations in the light of historical

research and we look for evidence to confirm or refute the hypothesis that we form about

the cognitive assumptions of earlier generations. Subsequently, we try to demonstrate that

the macro-policy is a plausible conclusion from the set of cognitive assumptions that we

attribute to the earlier generations. Against this background, we demonstrate that a

macro-policy can be derived. In this way, we show that a collective agency acts in a

reasonable way.

Any such explanation is hypothetical: not only because this is how we make sense

of macro-policies from the past, but also because we do not know how to develop causal

explanations for human behavior as yet. This does not make the hypothesis arbitrary,

because it is held in check by two other conditions: there must be empirical evidence that

enables us to postulate a set of cognitive assumptions shared by the earlier generations;

dislodging the hypothesis requires another hypothesis, which does a better job at

accounting for the relevant evidence.

Consequently, the question that confronts our proposal is this: why would it be

reasonable to act as though a practice deserved toleration, if it had scriptural sanctions?

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How does the cognitive framework of the colonial agents render such a stance reasonable

for us?

The popular answer, which is the rival hypothesis that we want to challenge,

suggests that the colonial state intended to appease Indians by allowing them to continue

the native religion and that the British assumed that this religion was the analogue of

Christianity.46

Though valid to some extent, neither claim is satisfactory. First, if the goal

was appeasement, the colonial state should have allowed all practices held dearly by the

population and not only those with “scriptural sanctions.” Second, this fails to tell us why

the colonial state approached local traditions as structural equivalents of Christianity. The

British were aware that these traditions were dissimilar from their own religion. Why did

they nevertheless start looking for scriptural foundations and tolerate only practices with

such foundations?

When they landed in India, the British assumed they would find “false religion.”

This implied that the natives would be aware of the existence of the biblical God and

would want to obey His law. However, the British also thought that the Devil and his

minions would have deceived the believers into a false understanding of this law: evil

priests would have imposed their own fabrications as though these were God’s will.47

The

Indians would follow these principles as sacred law. To understand Indian society, one

had to identify the texts mistaken by the Hindus for God’s revelation. One had to find

their “ancient law giver”—the equivalent of Moses and Mohammed. This would become

the key to decipher the Hindu religion and society.48

The British were convinced that one ought not to interfere in Hindu practices

sanctioned by this “sacred scripture.” The rationale suggested that religion was a domain

13

where the biblical God alone had authority. No human being could impose his or her own

understanding of the Supreme Being’s will on others. Therefore, the Hindus had to be left

free to live according to the principles which they wrongly believed to be divine law.

Hence, the implication was reasonable to Protestant Christians and Deists: if a practice

had its foundations in “Hindu sacred law,” no secular authority ought to interfere,

because to do so would be to arrogate to civil powers that authority which God alone

possessed.49

The cognitive framework of the colonial state construed the Hindu traditions as

structural equivalents of Christianity in the sense that it viewed them as embodiments of a

series of fundamental laws and doctrines, professing to be God’s revelation. The

neutrality and toleration of the state depended on this equivalence. If Hinduism,

Christianity and Islam embodied different religious doctrines and laws, then a liberal state

simply ought to take a neutral position towards their conflicting truth claims and tolerate

the practices that embodied these.

However, in the case of traditions that do not look at ancestral practices as

embodiments of doctrines, the resulting policy generated a mechanism that compelled

these traditions to refashion themselves according to this model. Indian subjects quickly

learned that they needed to give evidence of scriptural foundations to continue practicing

their traditions under colonial rule. This is how Hindu fundamentalism first manifested

itself: as a child born from the liberal policies of the colonial state. The moment of

transformation occurred because the colonial state operated within a theological

framework that approached all traditions as variations on the biblical model of religion.

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V

This colonial intervention triggered the rise of Hindu reform movements. In their turn,

these movements provoked traditional Hindus to organize themselves and defend a

conservative interpretation of the “teachings of Hindu religion,” which sanctioned

existing practices. Orthodox Hindu associations opposed the reform movement, but

accepted its model of religion and doctrinal rivalry. This fueled the growing conviction in

India that Hinduism, Islam and Christianity were rival religions with competing truth

claims. Both reform movements and orthodox associations intended to defend Hinduism

against assaults of Christian missionaries. They were also hostile to Indian Muslims, who

were seen as representatives of an aggressive religion that had earlier attempted to

destroy their traditions.

The chief agency of reform in the nineteenth century was the Arya Samaj. In his

autobiography, its founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati recounts how he came to the

conviction that Hindu traditions were in need of reform. After an orthodox Sanskrit and

ritual education, he had left home dissatisfied. On his wanderings through North India, he

witnessed all kinds of traditions, many of which appalled him. Everywhere, he saw

“profound ignorance or ridiculous superstition” and temples “full of idols and priests.”50

The movement established by Dayanand disseminated the colonial model of

religion. A teacher had convinced him that religious truth lay in the Vedas and Shastras.

Earlier, these texts had been important only to certain strands within the Hindu

traditions.51

After the colonial state identified them as the Hindu scriptures and legal

codes, however, reformers began to preach the same as gospel truth. Dayanand regarded

them “as infallible and as authority by their very nature.” In fact, “they are self-

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authoritative and do not stand in need of any other book to uphold their authority.”52

The

Vedas and Shastras embodied religious truth. Like Roy, he insisted that the texts revealed

a monotheistic Hinduism, not only similar to Christianity and Islam, but also superior.

Dayanand composed the foundational text of the Arya Samaj, the Sathyarth

Prakash or Light of Truth (1875), which followed the form of Protestant catechisms. It

claimed to contain the one correct interpretation of Vedas and Shastras, while all puranas

and other traditional Indian stories were denounced as “forged books.” The true

confession of faith followed: “We believe that the Vedas alone are the supreme authority

in the ascertainment of true religion—the true conduct of life. Whatever is enjoined by

the Vedas we hold to be right; whilst whatever is condemned by them we believe to be

wrong…All men, especially the Aryas, should believe in the Vedas and thereby cultivate

unity in religion.”53

The Arya Samaj mimicked Protestant fundamentalism in yet other ways.

Dayanand accepted the characterization of Brahmins as sectarian and selfish “popes,”

who fabricated false teachings and kept true revelation from the laity. He imagined a

history of religious degeneration, which mirrored the Protestant historiography of

medieval Church: “As in Europe, so in India the popery appeared in a thousand different

forms, and cast its net of hypocrisy and fraud, in other words, the Indian popes have kept

the rulers and the ruled from acquiring learning and associating with the good.”54

This reproduced the colonial version of Indian religious history. Like certain

strands within the Reformation, this historiography invented a primitive and true Hindu

religion, corrupted by human additions over time. Now one had to return to the pure and

primitive core: “I believe in a religion based on universal and all-embracing principles

16

which have always been accepted as true by mankind, and will continue to command the

allegiance of mankind in the ages to come. Hence it is that the religion in question is

called the primeval eternal religion, which means that it is above the hostility of all

human creeds whatsoever.”55

This restructuring of Hindu traditions introduced universal truth claims for a set of

doctrines: “The educated Hindus have now learned that the religion of their forefathers is

founded on solid rock of truth.”56

It also entailed the launch of a missionary movement.

As one of the Samaj publications put it, funds were required so “That our missionaries

may be able to preach the Vedic religion even in the far distant nooks of the land and

save the inhabitants thereof by taking them up, as it were, from the dark abyss of

ignorance in which they are struggling.”57

The newly converted threw their idols into the

river or publicly smashed them in local markets.

Thus, this reform movement spread different elements of the colonial framework

in Indian society. In his excellent work on the Arya Samaj in nineteenth-century Punjab,

Kenneth Jones describes its impact on society. More and more, Christianity and Islam

were viewed as rival religions, whose falsity had to be supplanted by Vedic truth. The

Arya Samaj also attacked Sikhism as a degenerate rival. Consequently, several traditions

in the urban Punjab of the 1880s entered into a strife over religious truth: “In the years

that followed, the streets of Lahore became dotted with preachers—Christian, Arya,

Brahmo, Sikh, Muslim—each extolling his particular cause and condemning all others.”58

The Arya Samaj also initiated stinging attacks on traditional pundits, who were

chided for hardly knowing Sanskrit and the Vedas. Rather than realizing that these texts

were marginal to many traditions, this ignorance was viewed as another confirmation of

17

the corruption of popular religion in India. Hence, the Arya Samaj began to reform all

traditions “in strict accordance to Vedic principles.”59

Such moves also gave rise to opposition from traditional Hindus, but again the

latter adopted the new framework. They invoked scriptural foundations to claim the

opposite of Arya Samaj doctrines. One of the first to do so was Pandit Din Dayal, who in

a lecture “is said to have proved by quotations from the Vedas, Puranas and the Smritis,

that the worship of idols alone is the means of finding God.”60

By the mid 1890s,

traditional Hindus united in Sanatan Dharma Sabhas in order to propound the “eternal

religion.” In their meetings also, “the correct meaning” of the Vedas was presented as

“the basic scripture” of this religion. Here, the tenets of “unity in diversity” and “the

Truth is only One,” but “different persons call it by different names” were formulated as

Hindu religious teachings. Along with this message of Hindu tolerance, they stressed the

national pride and unity of Aryan Hindus.61

Similar reform movements, such as the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay, emerged in

other parts of the subcontinent, with analogous social effects. From this moment of

dissemination grew a generation of intellectuals and politicians in India. Mahadev G.

Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal and many others had

all been involved in, or opposed to, these movements at some point. All of them would

play significant roles in the further development of Hindu nationalism.62

VI

We shall now jump to the twentieth century, since the next moment is conceptual rather

than historical in nature. Neutrality, toleration and religious freedom were seen as the

norms that ought to direct state policies regarding the religious realm. They constituted

18

the normative framework of the colonial state, shaping its perception of Indian society.

From this perspective, each factual situation was understood as a deficiency vis-à-vis the

liberal framework and its principles. This is the moment of normative disjunction, which

reduced the options open to the Indian state and society: either liberal secularism or its

normative negation, religious fundamentalism.

Again, we have to consider the religious background of British colonialism. By

the late eighteenth century, certain strands within the English Reformation had become

dominant, which identified true religion with spiritual liberty.63

Faith was viewed as the

work of the Holy Spirit in the human soul. Therefore, secular authorities had the duty to

safeguard the liberty that allowed this Spirit to work unfettered. In spite of theological

diversity, a variety of Reformation movements shared this view and contrasted it to the

spiritual “tyranny” of “papism.”64

As the precondition of true faith, spiritual liberty

became the normative focus of a generic Protestant framework, which construed its rivals

as religious tyrannies.

When the British arrived in India, they “knew” in advance what the basic

structure of her native traditions would be. As instances of false religion, these would

consist of priestly hierarchies and fabricated laws, which led the believers into idolatry.

From the seventeenth century, descriptions were unequivocal: Indian religion had taken

the form of a tyranny of priests, called “Brahmins” here. Like their Catholic counterparts,

Hindu priests had kept “the religious books” and “sacred language” to themselves to

protect their worldly interests.65

A key mechanism is at work here. Generally, from the perspective of a normative

framework, factual situations are experienced as, or transformed into, deficiencies vis-à-

19

vis the framework. The conceptual framework of the British helped them construe Indian

traditions as negations of their own norms. Whereas this framework revolved around

principles of religious liberty and equality, the native religions of India could only

embody their opposites. In colonial eyes, “Brahmanism” became the quintessence of

religious tyranny.66

As opposed to their own norms, British scholars and officials

perceived religious fanaticism and theocratic despotism throughout Indian history and

society.67

In his textbook history of India, Talboys Wheeler contrasted the “Hindu

despotisms” of the seventeenth century to the “British liberties” brought by colonial

rule.68

According to Valentine Chirol in his classic Indian Unrest (1910), the trouble in

India was Brahmanism, which “as a system represents the antipodes of all that British

rule must stand for in India, and Brahmanism has from times immemorial dominated

Hindu society—dominated it, according to the Hindu Nationalists, for its salvation.” This

included “a theocratic State,” where “both spiritual and secular authority were

consecrated in the hands of the Brahmans.” Indian unrest in general had as “its

mainspring…a deep-rooted antagonism to all the principles upon which Western society,

especially in a democratic country like England, has been built up.”69

Or as Sir Alfred

Lyall said in his introduction to the same work, while the British were “relying upon

secular education and absolute religious neutrality to control the unruly affections of

sinful men,” Indian agitators combined “primitive superstition” with modern politics:

“The mixture of religion with politics has always produced a highly explosive compound,

especially in Asia.”70

20

This was not primarily a justification of colonial rule, as contemporary critics of

Orientalism might suggest. Rather, it was an epistemic consequence of the normative

framework that constrained the colonial reasoning on religion, state and society. This

carved up the universe of political possibilities in terms of a normative disjunction: either

one pursued a liberal secular state or one ended up in religious oppression.

The colonial project presupposed that western civilization embodied the pursuit of

the norms of liberty, equality and toleration. Propelled by this normative goal, the

progressive West viewed itself as far superior to the “unchanged and stationary” Asia,

stuck in despotism and theocracy.71

In short: “To India British rule has brought security,

justice, religious freedom, and the repression of all religious conflicts, together with a

vast material progress made possible by the substitution of law and order for the medieval

anarchy that preceded it.”72

In other words, the British believed they had demonstrated that the immoral

structure of Indian society had to be replaced by their own moral laws. In reality, they

were begging the question. First, they presupposed the validity of the liberal framework.

Next, they viewed and described Indian society through this framework and transformed

it into a deficiency vis-à-vis its norms. From this, they concluded liberalism had to be

implemented here as elsewhere. The framework through which they viewed India had the

same belief as its presupposition and as its conclusion: Indian society embodied the

failure to live up to the norms of western civilization.

The western-educated intelligentsia of colonial India adopted this mode of

reasoning. Hence, while the freedom fighters desired to end colonial rule, it had become

self-evident to many that a free India would also have to create a secular liberal state, or it

21

would end up in religious despotism. This normative disjunction was perhaps clearest in

the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. His perspective allowed for

two potential forms of political organization only: either a secular state or a religious

theocracy. As he wrote in a letter to a Muslim aristocrat: “If Pakistan insists on being

what is called an Islamic State it will be backward, narrow-minded and unprogressive just

as India, if its seeks to be a Hindu State, would be similarly backward and

unprogressive.”73

Throughout his writings, this conceptual restriction on Nehru’s thought is striking:

either a country is a progressive civilized secular nation-state or it becomes a backward

narrow-minded theocracy. In a 1947 speech, he asserted: “As long as I am at the helm of

affairs India will not become a Hindu State…The very idea of a theocratic state is not

only medieval but also stupid. In modern times the people may have their religion but not

the State.”74

This two-pronged view compelled him to conceive of violence in the Indian

society as religious fundamentalism or “communalism.” Just as all peaceful pluralism

was equivalent to the separation of politics and religion in Nehru’s mind, the violence

between different communities was the consequence of mixing the political and the

religious.

As the title of another speech said, the alternatives were either “Toleration or

Ruin”: “Toleration alone will lead India to peace and prosperity. I warn you that the

manner in which this killing is going on will lead the country to nothing but ruin.”75

Were

one to define “toleration” as “the absence of violent conflict,” such an approach would

amount to a truism. But Nehru did not have this tautology in mind. Toleration meant “a

22

democratic secular State which neither favours nor discriminates against any particular

religion” and this was the only conceivable aim for a civilized country.76

The Nehruvian secularism of post-Independence India reproduced the normative

disjunction introduced by the colonial state. Civilization was equated to “the liberal

secular state.” All opposition was conceived as “religious fundamentalism.” This

framework allowed for only one form of opposition, namely, the normative negation of

itself: the pursuit of a Hindu nation-state founded in principles of Hindutva. The clash

between liberal secularism and Hindu fundamentalism in India, then, is a grand colonial

struggle. It is a confrontation between a normative framework and the mirror image it has

produced.

VII

In conclusion, we can return to our original questions: What explains Hindutva’s quixotic

pursuit of a set of beliefs common to all Hindus, upon which it desires to found Indian

society? Why do modern Hindus perceive Islam and Christianity as rival religions,

incompatible with Hindu doctrines, when this experience was rare before the eighteenth

century?

Hindu fundamentalism emerged from the intervention of the liberal colonial state.

This state operated within a particular theological framework, which construed the

indigenous traditions of India as variants of the same phenomenon as Islam and

Christianity. Colonial policies of toleration and neutrality induced the Hindu traditions to

transform themselves according to this model. They were required to identify scriptural

foundations for their practices, in order to survive under the rule of the Raj.

23

This inspired a series of movements in nineteenth-century India to embark on a

quest for the true teachings of Hindu religion. Originally, they turned to the Vedas and

Shastras. Given the lack of consensus and the diversity of traditions, however, the core of

Hindu principles could not but become less precise. No set of scriptures or specific

dogmas would be accepted by all Hindu traditions. Eventually, the Hindutva movement

located its unity in notions of “Hindu tolerance.”

In other words, Hindu nationalists sustain and reproduce the colonial

transformation of Indian traditions. As the colonial model of religion locates Hindu

identity in a shared set of principles and beliefs, Islam and Christianity are now inevitably

viewed as rivals with incompatible doctrines. Accordingly as Hindutva focused on

principles of tolerance, Islamic and Christian intolerance towards other religions were

identified as the central flaws of these minorities. From this perspective, in order to

coexist with the Hindu nation, Indian Islam and Christianity have to conform themselves

to its fundamental principles.

In this sense, liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism in India are two

faces of the same coin. They are two mutually reinforcing moments of a mechanism that

transforms the native traditions of India into variants of the religions of the Book. If the

two forces are not opposites in this case, then we will have to rethink their mutual

relationship in general. More importantly, it is high time for intellectuals to move beyond

the normative disjunction between liberal secularism and religious fundamentalism.

There have been calls to draw on the Indian traditions as alternative sources of vibrant

pluralism, which may improve upon the dominant liberal model. Instead of dismissing

24

such attempts as revivalism or indigenism, we might consider the possibility that liberal

secularism is not the one true political salvation for humanity.

25

1 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular : Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2003); S.N. Balagangadhara and Jakob De Roover, “The

Secular State and Religious Conflict: Liberal Neutrality and the Indian Case of

Pluralism,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 15, no.1(2007): 67-92; Nikkie R. Keddie,

“Secularism and the State: Towards Clarity and Global Comparison,” New Left Review

226(November-December 1997): 21-40.

2 T. N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 46, no. 4(1987),

747-59; Ashis Nandy, “An Anti-secularist Manifesto,” Seminar 314(October 1985): 14-

24. See also two important collections of articles: Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev

Bhargava (New Delhi, 1998) and The Crisis of Secularism in India, eds. Anuradha

Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Durham and London, 2007).

3 This is a common argument: Paul R. Brass, “Secularism Out of Its Place,” in Tradition,

Pluralism and Identity, eds. Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta and Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi,

1999), 359-380, 370-1, 375; Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee,

India After Independence, 1947-2000 (New Delhi, 1999), 438-9; P.C. Chatterji, Secular

Values for Secular India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), ix; Stanley Tambiah, “The Crisis

of Secularism in India,” in Secularism and Its Critics, 418-453, 427. The argument is

shared by Hindutva ideologues who accuse the Congress party and secularists of being

“pseudo-secularists,” because of the failure to be neutral between Hindus and Muslims.

4 Partha Chatterjee, “History and the Nationalization of Hinduism,” Social Research 59,

no. 1(1992): 111-149; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial

North India (New Delhi, 1990); Romila Thapar, “Imagined Religious Communities?

26

Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity,” Modern Asian Studies,

23(1989): 209-231; Thapar, “Secularism, History and Contemporary Politics in India,” in

The Crisis of Secularism in India, 191-207.

5 E.g. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Before the Leviathan: Sectarian Violence and the State in

Pre-Colonial India,” in Unravelling the Nation: Sectarian Conflict and India’s Secular

Identity, eds. Kaushik Basu and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi, 1996), 44-80.

6 Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich Von Stietencron, Representing Hinduism: The

Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity (New Delhi, 1995); Robert E.

Frykenberg, “Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,” Journal

of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 3(1993): 523-550; Richard King, “Orientalism and

the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism’,” Numen 46, no. 2(1999): 146-185; Geoffrey A. Oddie,

Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793-

1900 (New Delhi, 2006).

7 François Bernier, A Continuation of the Memoires of Monsieur Bernier concerning the

Empire of the Great Mogol, Tome III & IV (London, 1671), 149-150; Quintin Craufurd,

Sketches Chiefly Relating to the History, Religion, Learning, and Manners of the Hindoos

(London, 1790), 131-132; Anonymous, “The History of British India,” in The Asiatic

Annual Register…For the Year 1799 (London, 1800), 6; and excerpts in Richard Fox

Young, Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit Sources on Anti-Christian Apologetics in Early

Nineteenth-Century India (Vienna, 1981).

8 Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg, Thirty Four Conferences Between the Danish Missionaries

and the Malabarian Bramans…in the East Indies, Concerning the Truth of the Christian

Religion (London, 1719), 5, 15.

27

9 For analysis, see S. N. Balagangadhara, “The Heathen in His Blindness…”: Asia, the

West and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, 1994).

10 V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (Bombay, 1969).

11 V. D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan (Bombay, 1984), 8.

12 Ibid., 9.

13 Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, Representing the Other? Sanskrit Sources and the Muslims

(Eighth to Fourteenth Century) (New Delhi, 1998).

14 J. J. Roy Burman, Hindu-Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (New Delhi,

2002); Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia,

eds. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (Gainesville, 2000).

15 Savarkar, Hindu Rasthra Darshan, 9.

16 B. D. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development

of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Cambridge, 1990), 94-5; Jyotirmaya Sharma, Hindutva:

Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (New Delhi, 2003), 5-9.

17 Sobhag Mathur, Hindu Revivalism and the Indian National Movement: A Documentary

Study of the Ideals and Policies of the Hindu Mahasabha, 1939-45 (Jodhpur, 1996), 217-

8.

18 Ibid., 65.

19 Balraj Madhok, “Secularism: Genesis and Development,” in Secularism in India:

Dilemmas and Challenges, ed. M. M. Sankhdher (New Delhi, 1995), 110-122; Graham,

Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, 50.

20 Two favourites are “Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava” and “Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudha

Vadanti,” translated as “equal respect for all religions” and “truth is one; the sages call it

28

by many names” respectively. See M. S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore,

1966), 101-106.

21 See M. G. Chitkara, Hindutva (New Delhi, 1997), 1; Mathur, Hindu Revivalism, 113,

131; Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, 14-5, 41, 49.

22 M. A. Venkata Rao, “Jana Sangh, Islam & Humayun Kabir,” Organiser (1 August

1960), 6.

23 Venkata Rao, “Introduction,” in Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, i-xxxiv, xxix.

24 Sir John W. Kaye, Christianity in India: An Historical Narrative (London, 1859), 366-

396.

25 From a letter to the register of the nizamat adalat (provincial court), dated December 5,

1812, signed by G. Dowdeswell, chief secretary to the Bengal government, British

Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1821, Vol. 18, 31.

26 The quote is from a despatch by Lord Ellenborough endorsed by Lord Stanley in the

House of Commons on 30 July 1858, in Eugene Stock, The History of the Church

Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men and Its Work, Vol. 2 (London, 1899), 251-

2. From its beginning, the colonial state was explicitly viewed in terms of religious

toleration. From 1857, colonial officials and missionaries described the state’s principle

and policy as “religious neutrality.” E.g., J.N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in

India (New York, 1915), 11; Kaye, Christianity in India; George F. Laclear, The

Christian Statesman and Our Indian Empire (Cambridge, 1859); Stock, History of the

Church Missionary Society, 157, 235-80; Charles L. Tupper, Our Indian Protectorate: An

Introduction to the Study of the Relations Between the British Government and Its Indian

Feudatories (London, 1893), 311-312.

29

27

“Extract Bengal Judicial Consultations, 7th February 1805,” in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 24.

28 “Extract from the Report of the Criminal Cases adjudged by the Court of Nizamut

Adawlut, in the year 1810,” in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 25-26.

29 Anonymous, “Peculiar Customs of the Hindus,” in The Asiatic Annual Register…For

the Year 1803, Vol. 5 (London, 1804), 29-30.

30 “Minute of Mr. G. L. Prendergast,” in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 246-247. See Sir John

Malcolm, The Government of India (London, 1833), 32.

31 BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 38-39.

32 “Letter from Searman Bird, senior judge and J. Rattray, 2d judge at Dacca to M. H.

Turnbull, esq. Register to the Nizamut Adawlut, Fort William, dated 19th August 1816,”

in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 101.

33 Jakob De Roover and S.N. Balagangadhara, “Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God:

The Principle of Toleration in Early Modern Europe and Colonial India,” History of

Political Thought 30, no. 1(2009): 111-139; Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The

Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998); Andrea Major, Pious

Flames: European Encounters with Sati 1500-1830 (New Delhi, 2006).

34 Geoffrey A. Oddie, Popular Religion, Elites and Reform: Hook-Swinging and Its

Prohibition in Colonial India, 1800-1894 (New Delhi, 1995), 77-78, 86.

35 Shashi Ahluwalia and Meenakshi Ahluwalia, Raja Rammohun Roy and the Indian

Renaissance (New Delhi, 1991); A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Social Ideas and Social

Change in Bengal 1818-1835 (Leiden, 1965); Amiya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism in

Bengal, 1872-1905: Some Essays in Interpretation (New Delhi, 1993).

30

36

Raja Rammohun Roy, The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1, ed. Jogendra

Chunder Ghose (1885, sec. ed. New Delhi, 1982), 113.

37 Rammohun Roy started The Brahmunical Magazine or The Missionary and the

Brahmun, being a vindication of the Hindoo Religion against the attacks of Christian

missionaries in 1821 and produced a series of issues, all of which defended the truth of

Hinduism against Christian arguments.

38 Roy, The English Works, 3.

39 Ibid., 45.

40 Ibid., 69, 21.

41 E.g.: “Translation of a Conference between an Advocate for, and an Opponent of, the

Practice of Burning Widows Alive,” “A Second Conference between an Advocate for,

and an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive,” “Abstract of the Arguments

regarding the Burning of Widows, considered as a Religious Rite,” and “Address to Lord

William Bentinck,” in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, vol. 1.

42 J. K. Majumdar, ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India

(Calcutta, 1983), 97-156.

43 “The Petition of the orthodox Hindu community of Calcutta against the Suttee

regulation (January 14, 1830),” in Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in

India, 156-163.

44 “An appeal to the orthodox Hindus on the necessity of establishing the Dhurma Subha

(February 6, 1830),” in Raja Rammohun Roy, 163-165.

45 From a lamentation on the rejection of the sati appeal in the Samachar Chandrika, the

journal of the Dharma Sabha, in Raja Rammohun Roy, 205-207.

31

46

Mani, Contentious Traditions; Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of

Knowledge: The British in India (Delhi, 1997), 57-75; Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir,

eds., “Introduction,” in The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the

Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781-1843 (Richmond, 1999), 1-72.

47 Raf Gelders and Willem Derde, “Mantras of Anti-Brahmanism: Colonial Experience of

Indian Intellectuals,” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 43(2003): 4611-17.

48 From the start, the British embarked on a quest for this Hindu sacred law and its textual

foundation. In the early eighteenth century, they decided that the “Code of Manu” was

the text that contained the original laws mistaken by the Hindus for the biblical God’s

revelation. See Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda, Appropriation and Invention of Tradition:

The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal (New Delhi, 2008).

49 De Roover and Balagangadhara, “Liberty, Tyranny and the Will of God.”

50 Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Autobiography of Dayanand Saraswati (New Delhi,

1978), 39.

51 Many colonial authors were aware of this problem. Walter Ewer stated in 1818 that “it

is well known that not one man in a thousand knows anything of the contents of the

Shasters,” in BPP 1821, Vol. 18, 229. Or in the words of Sir John Strachey: “If a religion

be a creed with certain distinctive tenets, the Hinduism of the mass of people is not a

religion at all. Their religion is in no way represented by the sacred books of Sanskrit

literature. The sanctity of the Vedas is an accepted article of faith among Hindus who

have heard of their existence, but they have nothing to do with the existing popular

beliefs. The Puranas, and other comparatively late works, which Elphinstone says may be

called the scriptures of modern Hinduism, have no practical connection with the religion

32

of the great majority of the population.” Strachey, India: Its Administration & Progress

(London, 1911), 317.

52 Dayanand Saraswati, Autobiography, 82-83.

53 Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Light of Truth or an English Translation of the Satyarth

Prakash, trans. Chiranjiva Bharadwaja (New Delhi, 1994), 74-5.

54 Ibid., 336.

55 Ibid., 772.

56 Arya Patrika, April 13, 1886, 5. Cited in Kenneth W. Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu

Consciousness in 19th

-Century Punjab (Berkeley, 1976), 144.

57 Arya Patrika, August 31, 1886, 7. Cited in Jones, Arya Dharm, 123.

58 Ibid., 47.

59 Ibid., 96-97.

60 From the Arya Patrika, December 27, 1887, pp. 3-4, cited in Jones, Arya Dharm, 109.

In 1915, Farquhar noted that Din Dayal’s association, the Bharata Dharma

Mahamandala, even though it claimed to defend orthodox Hinduism, found “itself driven

to set forth the Hindu system as the religion for all mankind. To defend a religion which

is but the religion of the Hindus is felt to be impossible for the modern mind.” He noted

with satisfaction: “Clearly, the freedom as well as the universality of Christianity is

working with irresistible force within the very citadel of Hinduism.” Farquhar, Modern

Religious Movements, 321-2.

61 The quotes are from a lecture delivered in 1896 by Swami Rama Tirtha at the Sanatan

Dharma Sabha of Sialkot, now in Pakistan. Swami Rama Tirtha, On Sanatan Dharma

(Lucknow, n.d.), 2, 10-34. See Jones, “Two Sanatan Dharm Leaders and Swami

33

Vivekananda: A Comparison,” in Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of

Hinduism, ed. William Radice (New Delhi, 1998), 224-243.

62 As William Gould shows, a softer variant of Hindu nationalism developed within the

Indian National Congress in the early twentieth century: Gould, Hindu Nationalism and

the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge, 2004).

63 For the development of these strands, see A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty

(London, 1938), 60-100; John Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for

Toleration in the English Revolution,” The Historical Journal 41, no. 4(1998): 961-985;

J.C. Davis, “Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution,” The

Historical Journal 35, no. 3(1992): 507-530.

64 E.g., Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici (1521), in Wilhelm Pauck, ed.,

Melanchthon and Bucer (Philadelphia, 1969), 3-150, 123; Luther’s “The Freedom of a

Christian” (1520) in Timothy F. Lull, ed., Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings

(Minneapolis, 1989), 585-629; Calvin’s chapter on Christian liberty in The Institutes of

the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford L. Battles (1559; Louisville,

1960); Edward B. Underhill, ed.., Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution,

1614-1661 (New York, 1966).

65 E.g. Henry Lord, A Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians (London, 1630), 43-95; John

Z. Holwell, Interesting Historical Events Relative to the Provinces of Bengal and the

Empire of Indostan, Part I and II, ed. Michael J. Franklin (1765-67, repr. ed. London,

2000), 16-17; Anonymous, “The History of British India,” 3-5; Charles Grant,

“Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain,” in

British Parliamentary Papers—Colonies East India, Vol. 5, 1831-1832 (Shannon, 1970),

34

34-35; James Mill, The History of British India, Vol. 1 (1817, repr. ed. New Delhi, 1990),

48; J. Talboys Wheeler, College History of India: Asiatic and European (London, 1888),

13, 21; Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism (London, 1891), 352;

Valentine Chirol, Indian Unrest (London, 1910), 33; Strachey, India: Its Administration

& Progress, 318-319.

66 Wheeler, College History of India, 21; Henry Whitehead, Indian Problems in Religion,

Education, Politics (London, 1924), 38-39.

67 Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 23-65; Strachey, India, 336-341.

68 Wheeler, College History of India, 107-108, 148. Wheeler also suggests that the British

rule “established law, liberty, and order in Bengal.” See also Whitehead, Indian

Problems, 3.

69 Chirol, Indian Unrest, 32, 37, 5.

70 Sir Alfred C. Lyall, “Introduction,” in Chirol, Indian Unrest, xv.

71 Lyall, “Introduction,” in Chirol, Indian Unrest, ix, xvi, xiii.

72 The World’s Work, Vol 35: November, 1917, to April, 1918: A History of Our Time

(Garden City, NY, 1918), 35.

73 “Letter to the Nawab of Bhopal,” New Delhi, 9 July 1948, in Selected Works of

Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 7, ed. S. Gopal (New Delhi, 1988), 8.

74 “India Will not be a Hindu State,” Address to mill workers and labourers in Delhi, 30

September 1947, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 4, ed. S.

Gopal (New Delhi, 1986) 107-9.

75 “Toleration or Ruin,” Speech at New Delhi, 27 September 1947, in Selected Works,

Second Series, Vol. 4, 101-2.

35

76

The quotes are from “A Uniform Refugee Policy,” Note to Cabinet Ministers, 12

September 1947, in Selected Works, Second Series, Vol. 4, 62-6; italics added.