hinduism” and the history of “ religion” : will … · “hinduism” and the history of...

copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2003 Method amp Theory in the Study of Religion 15 329-353

ldquoHINDUISMrdquo AND THE HISTORY OF ldquoRELIGIONrdquoPROTESTANT PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THE CRITIQUE OF

THE CONCEPT OF HINDUISM

Will Sweetman

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion or not a single religion is so oftenrepeated that it might be considered an axiom of research into the religious beliefsand practices of the Hindus were it not typically ignored immediately after havingbeen stated The arguments for this claim in the work of several representativescholars are examined in order to show that they depend implicitly or explicitlyupon a notion of religion which is too much influenced by Christian conceptions ofwhat a religion is a conception which if it has not already been discarded byscholars of religion certainly ought to be Even where such Christian models areexplicitly disavowed the claim that Hinduism is not a religion can be shown todepend upon a particular religious conception of the nature of the world and ourpossible knowledge of it which scholars of religion cannot share

Two claims which I take to have been established by recent work onthe history of the concept ldquoreligionrdquo provide the starting point for myargument here The first is that while the concept emerged from aculture which was still shaped by its Christian history neverthelessthe establishment of the modern sense of the term was the result of ldquoaprocess of extracting the word from its Christian overtonesrdquo (Bossy1982 12)1 The second is that the concept like all abstractions im-plies a categorization of phenomena which is imposed upon ratherthan emergent from them ldquoreligionrdquo is not a natural kind It hasbeen suggested that the rejection by some scholars of the secondclaim is evidence that the term and the discipline for which it servesas the central organizing concept has not yet fully completed theprocess of disengagement from Christian theological presuppositionsThus Timothy Fitzgerald writes

Religion is really the basis of a modern form of theology which I willcall liberal ecumenical theology but some attempt has been made to

1 Bossy refers not only to the term ldquoreligionrdquo but also ldquosocietyrdquo noting that ldquothehistory of the word lsquosocietyrsquo hellip is practically identical with the history of the wordlsquoreligionrsquordquo and several other terms including ldquostate property philosophy charitycommunion conversationrdquo (1982 12)

330 will sweetman

disguise this fact by claiming that religion is a natural andor a super-natural reality in the nature of things that all human individuals have acapacity for regardless of their cultural context This attempt to dis-guise the theological essence of the category and to present it as thoughit were a unique human reality irreducible to either theology or sociol-ogy suggests that it possesses some ideological function hellip that is notfully acknowledged (Fitzgerald 2000a 4-5)2

Fitzgerald gives a number of arguments for this claim and for hisfurther proposal that scholars who do not have a theological agendaought to prefer terms which offer greater analytical precision thanldquoreligionrdquo One such argument considers several works by religionistsand anthropologists on Hinduism in order to show that ldquoreligionrdquofails to pick out anything that can be analytically separated fromother institutionalized aspects of Indian culture that ldquothe categoryreligion does not effectively demarcate any institutions located in aputatively non-religious domain such as Indian societyrdquo in shortthat ldquoHinduism is not a lsquoreligionrsquordquo (Fitzgerald 2000a chap 7 seealso Fitzgerald 1990 and 2000b) The claim is significant and is foundin the work of several other scholars3 While agreeing with much ofFitzgeraldrsquos analysismdashspecifically that religion is not ldquoin the nature ofthingsrdquo or a reality irreducible by other forms of analysis and thatthe study of religion continues to be too much influenced by unac-knowledged Christian theological presuppositionsmdashI will argue thatit is precisely the claim that Hinduism is not a religion which revealslingering Christian and theological influence even in the works of

2 Elsewhere Fitzgerald writes ldquoWhat I am arguing is that theology and what is atpresent called religious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectualactivity but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally dominatedby the former This domination is disguised because it is embedded in our a prioricentral analytical category and abandoning that category altogether appears evento scholars who are themselves critically aware of the legacy of phenomenology to bethrowing the baby out with the bathwaterrdquo (1997 97) In more general terms othershave suggested that the claim that religion is a sui generis phenomenon is associatedwith an approach to the study of religion which tends to assume the truth of religionSo Russell McCutcheon notes that ldquoone aspect of the discourse on sui generis reli-gionrdquo is a ldquotheoretically undefended preference for sympathetic and descriptive insid-ersrsquo accountsrdquo and that the ldquothe dominant yet uncritical and theoretically undefend-able conception of religion as sui generis effectively precludes other more socio-politically and historically sensitive methods and theoriesrdquo (1997 122-123) Likewisethe belief that religion because irreducible to anything else is best explained ldquoon itsown termsrdquo is described by Samuel Preus as ldquothe last bastion of theologyrdquo (1987 xvi)

3 See in addition to those discussed below Smith 1987 34 Hardy 1990 145Oberoi 1994 17 Dalmia and Stietencron 1995 20 Larson 1995 31 Frykenberg1997 82

ldquohinduismrdquo and the history of ldquoreligionrdquo 331

those who explicitly disclaim such influence Such influence exists ontwo levels the first relatively superficial the other more profoundThe first level will be demonstrated in three authorsmdashR NDandekar Heinrich von Stietencron and S N Balagangadharamdashwho implicitly or explicitly model the concept of religion on Christi-anity This model is disclaimed by two further authors Frits Staaland Timothy Fitzgerald but their arguments against the descriptionof Hinduism as a religion I will argue nevertheless depend upon aProtestant Christian epistemology

1 Religion as implicitly modeled upon Christianity

In his chapter on Hinduism for the Handbook for the History of Religionsa quasi-official document for the International Association for theHistory of Religions R N Dandekar argues that

Hinduism can hardly be called a religion at all in the popularly under-stood sense of the term Unlike most religions Hinduism does notregard the concept of god as being central to it Hinduism is not asystem of theologymdashit does not make any dogmatic affirmation regard-ing the nature of god Similarly Hinduism does not venerate anyparticular person as its sole prophet or as its founder It does not alsorecognize any particular book as its absolutely authoritative scriptureFurther Hinduism does not insist on any particular religious practice asbeing obligatory nor does it accept any doctrine as its dogma Hindu-ism can also not be identified with a specific moral code Hinduism asa religion does not convey any definite or unitary idea There is nodogma or practice which can be said to be either universal or essentialto Hinduism as a whole Indeed those who call themselves Hindus maynot necessarily have much in common as regards faith or worshipWhat is essential for one section of the Hindu community may not benecessarily so for another And yet Hinduism has persisted throughcenturies as a distinct religious entity (Dandekar 1971 237)

The centrality of the concept of god the veneration of a particularperson as the founder of a religion and the recognition of a particu-lar book as an absolutely authoritative scripture are characteristic ofcertain religions (Christianity and Islam in particular) Dandekar ex-trapolates from these characteristics and implicitly defines the ldquopopu-larly understood sense of the termrdquo religion as including these threecharacteristics Had he explicitly defined ldquoreligionrdquo in this way it islikely that his definition would have been attacked as being too nar-row and in particular as too much influenced by particular religions

332 will sweetman

especially certain forms of Christianity Nevertheless whatDandekarrsquos comments amount to is the claim that Hinduism is notlike Christianity or perhaps that Hinduism is not the same sort ofreligion that Christianity is This claim is unobjectionable but isnevertheless quite different from the claim that Hinduism is not areligion Dandekar refers only to the ldquopopularly understood sense ofthe term [religion]rdquo and this allows him to conclude that ldquoHinduismhas persisted through centuries as a distinct religious entityrdquo Otherwriters including S N Balagangadharamdashwho significantly mis-reads Dandekar as referring to the ldquoproperly understood senserdquo ofreligion (1994 15)mdashdraw more radical conclusions from structurallysimilar arguments

One such is Heinrich von Stietencron who argues that Hinduismrefers not to one religion but rather should be taken ldquoto denote asocio-cultural unit or civilization which contains a plurality of distinctreligionsrdquo (1997 33) The idea that Hinduism is a religion derives hesuggests from a fundamental misunderstanding of the termldquoHindurdquo which was originally a Persian term denoting ldquoIndians ingeneralrdquo (Stietencron 1997 33) Following the permanent settlementof Muslims in India Persian authors began to use the term to refer toIndians other than Muslims and identified several different religionsamong the Hindus However Stietencron argues that

when Europeans started to use the term Hindoo they applied it to thenon-Muslim masses of India without those scholarly differentiationsMost people failed to realise that the term ldquoHindurdquo corresponded ex-actly to their own word ldquoIndianrdquo which is derived like the name ldquoIn-diardquo from the same Indus river the indos of the Greek The Hindu theyknew was distinct from the Muslim the Jew the Christian the Parseeand the Jain who were all present in the Indian coastal area known towestern trade Therefore they took the term ldquoHindurdquo to designate thefollower of a particular Indian religion This was a fundamental misun-derstanding of the term And from Hindu the term ldquoHinduismrdquo wasderived by way of abstraction denoting an imagined religion of the vastmajority of the populationmdashsomething that had never existed as a ldquore-ligionrdquo (in the Western sense) in the consciousness of the Indian peoplethemselves (Stietencron1997 33-34 emphasis added)4

4 This brief history of European usage of ldquoHindurdquo or ldquoHindoordquo and ldquoHinduismrdquois vastly oversimplified and represents Stietencronrsquos attempt to reconstruct whatmight have happened rather than being based on examination of the relevant textsA more detailed but still inadequate account of the same process is given byStietencron in two other articles (1988 1995) John Marshall in India from 1668 to1677 knew that ldquothe name Hindoordquo was primarily a geographical not a religious


Given that as several writers have recently shown the modernsense of ldquoreligionrdquo as a reified entity in which other people are in-volved only began to develop in the West from the sixteenth centuryit would hardly be surprising were such a concept not to be present inthe consciousness of the Indian people prior to its articulation in theWest5 Like Dandekar Stietencron does not make explicit here whathe means by ldquothe Western senserdquo of religion6 We can gain someidea of what sense he intends by examining the counts on whichHinduism is said to fail to be a religion Hinduism fails to be areligion for Stietencron because ldquo[t]here is hardly a single importantteaching in lsquoHinduismrsquo which can be shown to be valid for all Hin-dus much less a comprehensive set of teachingsrdquo (1997 36) HereStietencron perpetuates the idea which he attributes to Christiansthat doctrinal uniformity is the sine qua non of a religion becauseHinduism does not insist on doctrinal uniformity it is not a religionIf this is what Stietencron means by saying that Hinduism ldquoneverexisted as a lsquoreligionrsquo (in the Western sense)rdquo then what his claimamounts to is that Hinduism is not or is not like Christianity This

concept (Marshall 1927 182) and Stietencron acknowledges that ldquothe correct deriva-tion (from the river) was current in Europe before 1768rdquo (1997 50) Accounts ofHinduism by the more scholarly of the early European writers were at least assophisticated as the earlier Persian accounts with respect to distinguishing groupswithin Hinduism The same may not have been true for travelersrsquo tales but it ishardly appropriate to compare these with the works of the outstanding Persianscholars Stietencron mentions (Ab-l Qˆsim al-Masdldquo al-Idrldquosldquo and Shahrastˆnldquo)In the seventeenth century Roberto Nobili explicitly acknowledged a plurality ofreligions among Hindus while at the start of the eighteenth century BartholomaumlusZiegenbalg noted that the Indians ldquohave forged many different religionsrdquo notingthat in addition to the two main religions yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism the Jains and theBuddhists were regarded as separate heterodox religious groups For a more detailedaccount of these authors and critique of Stietencronrsquos discussion of them seeSweetman (2001) Lorenzen similarly critiques Stietencronrsquos oversimplification of thehistory of this term noting that he ldquoquite blithely jumps from the sixth century BCto the nineteenth century AD with virtually no discussion whatever of the interven-ing uses of the term lsquoHindursquo either by foreigners or native Indiansrdquo (Lorenzen 1999635)

5 This is not to say that such an understanding of religion could not have devel-oped independently of Western influence as Michael Pye has suggested in his discus-sion of the eighteenth-century Japanese thinker Tominaga Nakamoto (1992 27-28see also Pye 2003) And indeed there is evidence of a reified understanding ofreligion in India in some circumstances See OrsquoConnell 1973 Wagle 1997 Lorenzen1999 Sharma 2002

6 Although he does write that ldquothe term religion hellip can only be applied to corpo-rately shared coherent systems of world explanation and valuesrdquo (Stietencron 1997 45original emphasis)

334 will sweetman

much is not to be contested7 It does not follow that because Hindu-ism is not like Christianity it is not a religion unless religion bedefined on an explicitly Christian model Stietencron in fact comesclose to this as an ostensive definition of religion when he writes thatldquo[i]f we accept Judaism Christianity and Islam as lsquoreligionrsquo hellip wecannot avoid concluding that there are a number of different lsquoreli-gionsrsquo existing side by side within lsquoHinduismrsquordquo (1997 41) He goes onto propose that we should describe Vedic religion Advaita VedˆntaVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism (among others) as independentreligions within the socio-cultural unit called Hinduism8 Onceagain the reasons for thinking of Advaita Vedˆnta VaisectEgraveavism oryenaivism as independent religions are because they resemble Christi-anity

[E]ach of these religions possesses its own set of revealed holy scripturesrecognized by all its members each worships the same god as thehighest deity (or reverts to an impersonal Absolute as the highest prin-ciple or recognizes a particular pantheon) Each of the literate Hindureligions has its own clearly identifiable and often immensely extensivetheological literature each knows its great saints its major reformersand the founders of sects (Stietencron 1997 44)

Stietencron admits ldquoNo doubt some of the Hindu religions areclosely related to one anotherrdquo but insists that like Judaism Christi-anity and Islam ldquothey are different religionsrdquo That which establishesdifference in apparently similar forms of religion is ldquothe authoritativereligious tradition received and perpetuated by a wider communityhellip Difference between religions is therefore a result of decisivevariance in the authoritative traditions or belief systemsrdquo (Stietencron1997 41-42) Again we may see here the influence of a ProtestantChristian insistence on belief as the final divider of religious commu-nities

Stietencronrsquos proposal raises three questions of identity and au-thority Who constitutes the community that receives and perpetu-ates authoritative religious tradition Who decides when variancebecomes ldquodecisiverdquo Who arbitrates what is and what is not ldquoauthori-tative traditionrdquo The difficulty in answering these questions revealsthe arbitrary nature of Stietencronrsquos willingness to describe

7 Although it is also arguable that despite some claims to the contrary historicallyChristianity itself has not been characterized by doctrinal uniformity

8 An alternative view of these traditions as parts of a single polycentric Hinduismhas been advanced by Julius Lipner (1994 1996)


VaisectEgraveavism but not Hinduism as a religion All Stietencron is ableto say is that a ldquocertain margin of tolerance usually allows for sectar-ian differentiation in doctrine and practice Yet there are limits un-seen thresholds Overstepping them leads to segregation or expulsionand if there are enough followers to forming a new religious unitrdquo(1997 42) This is not to say that it is never appropriate to considerVaisectEgraveavism yenaivism and yenaktism as separate religions merely that itis not the case that they in contrast to Hinduism ldquoreallyrdquo are sepa-rate religions In another article in which he argues for conceiving theseveral forms of Hinduism as independent religions Stietencronstates that

[n]one of these Hindu religionsmdashexcept perhaps for monastic AdvaitaVedˆntamdashdeveloped an all-India institutional body invested with thepower to pass binding judgments on the correct exegesis of sacred scrip-tures Diverging interpretations of religious tradition could not be effec-tively banned Authority was never vested in a central organizationcomparable to the Roman church (Stietencron 1995 71)

Such a body presumably would be able to rule on what constitutesldquoauthoritative religious traditionrdquo and what constitutes ldquodecisivevariancerdquo Again however Hinduism appears not to be a religionbecause it lacks something definitive of certain forms of Christianity

2 Religion as explicitly modelled upon Christianity

The claim that Hinduism is not a religion has been argued mostvehemently and at greatest length by S N Balagangadhara (1994)For Balagangadhara the ldquoHinduismrdquo discussed by European schol-ars is ldquoan imaginary entityrdquo (1994 116 298) a creation of Europeanscholars as are the other world religions supposed to have emergedfrom India

The creation of Hinduism antedates that of Buddhism By this I do notimply that Hinduism existed in India before Buddhism came into be-ingmdashthis claim after all is a standard text-book triviummdashbut that theEuropeans created Buddhism after they had created Hinduism (Bala-gangadhara 1994 138)

Balagangadhara gives several independent arguments and severalversions of his thesis The strongest is that not only is Hinduism nota religion but that it is impossible that Hinduism could be a religionldquono matter what the facts are there could simply be no lsquoreligionrsquo in

336 will sweetman

Indiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 394) His argument for this claim de-pends on his definition of a religion as ldquoan explanatorily intelligibleaccount of the Cosmos and itselfrdquo and he concludes that ldquoIndiantraditions could not possibly be religions because the issue of theorigin of the world cannot properly be raised thererdquo (1994 384 398)His argument for this strong version of his thesis will be consideredbriefly below however in his other arguments for a weaker versionof his thesis Balagangadhara makes explicit what I have argued isimplicit in several other authors who argue that Hinduism is not areligion and it is therefore this part of his work that I will considerhere

Balagangadhara expresses the problem thus

Consider just what is being asked of us The Hindus the American-Indians and the Greeks have (had) a set of traditions that lack thefollowing (i) creeds (ii) beliefs in God (iii) scriptures (iv) churchesDespite this these traditions are not only lsquoreligionsrsquo but are also distin-guishable from each other as religious traditions (Balagangadhara1994 22-23)

He argues however that precisely these properties are ldquowhat makesJudaism Christianity and Islam into religionsrdquo for if ldquowe bracketaway creeds beliefs in God and prophets existence of scriptures andchurches from Judaism Christianity and Islam hellip we could not eventell the difference between these traditions let alone distinguish themfrom Hinduism or Greek religion or whatever else We would get anamorphous whole that could not even be called a religionrdquo (Bala-gangadhara 1994 23-24) Balagangadhara sums up his argument inthe following dilemma

Some set of properties are absolutely necessary for some traditions(Judaism Christianity Islam) to be religions But if one accepts this thethreat is that other cultures appear not to have religions at all For somereason or another other cultures are said to have religions too How-ever the conditions under which other cultures are to have religion areprecisely those that make it impossible for the Semitic religions to bereligions That is to say if the Semitic religions are what religions are othercultures do not have religions If other cultures have religions then theSemitic religions are not religions The inconsistency lies in insistingthat both statements are true (Balagangadhara 1994 24-25 emphasisadded)

The crucial premise in this argument is the assumption that ldquotheSemitic religions are what religions arerdquo that is rather than merelybeing examples of religion they are ldquoexemplary instances ie prototypical


examples of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 301 originalemphasis)

Balagangadhara justifies his choice of these religions as exemplaryinstances by arguing that when ldquoinvestigating that which is desig-nated by the term lsquoreligionrsquordquo we ought to start with cultures andlanguages where the term already exists because ldquoto pick out entitiesas prototypical instances of the term from other cultures and lan-guages where the term lsquoreligionrsquo itself does not exist is to take anepistemic decision That is one already assumes beforehand thatobjects from other cultures instantiate the term as well Such a deci-sion is not justifiable at this stagerdquo (1994 304-305) ie at the start ofan investigation into that to which the term ldquoreligionrdquo refers Al-though the modern concept of religion first gained wide currency inthe West it emerged against the background of a growing detach-ment from Christianity rather than as a part of Christianityrsquos uncon-tested self-description (see Bossy 1982 12 Preus 1987 xiv)9 Thisimportant gloss is missing in Balagangadhararsquos argument The aca-demic study of the religions is not in the words of Vivek Dhareshwar(discussing Balagangadhara) ldquocondemned to be Christianrdquo(Dhareshwar 1996 130)10

Conceding that applying this argument to Judaism and Islam maygenerate problems Balagangadhara limits his claim of prototypicalityto Christianity ldquoWhether Judaism and Islam are religions or not atthe least our term picks out Christianity as one When we use thecategory lsquoreligionrsquo we minimally refer to Christianityrdquo (Balaganga-dhara 1994 305) If one denies this and argues that ldquoChristianity isnot an exemplary instance of lsquoreligionrsquo then we have no other exam-ples of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) Balagangadhararsquos argu-ment then has the following form

First premise Christianity is prototypically what religion isSecond premise Hinduism does not share all (or perhaps any) of the

relevant properties of ChristianityConclusion Hinduism is not a religion

9 Balagangadhararsquos second reason for choosing the Semitic religions as prototypi-cal instances of religion is that ldquo[e]ach of the three traditions has described itself as areligionrdquo (1994 305) As Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1991 [1962]) has shown each hasalso denied the appropriateness of being so described

10 In the same volume both Philip Almond (1996 140) and David Loy (1996 151-152) note that Balagangadhara emphasizes too much the formative influence ofChristianity on modern European thought

338 will sweetman

The first premise as Balagangadhara expresses it is problematic orat least ambiguous However the argument is only valid if he meanssomething like the set of properties of Christianity is identical withthe set of properties of (a) religion I have argued that this argumentis implicit in those authors who argue that Hinduism is not a religionbecause it lacks a founder a single authoritative text or some otherspecified characteristic The concept of religion invoked in these ar-guments is plainly too narrow and too much influenced by Christi-anity If such a concept has not already been abandoned by theacademic study of religionsmdashand reasons can be given for thinkingthat the process of doing so has started even if it is not completemdashthen it certainly ought to be11

Balagangadhara declares himself tempted to say that ldquobecause someproperties characteristic of Christianity are absent from traditionselsewhere (like say in lsquoHinduismrsquo or lsquoBuddhismrsquo) the latter cannotpossibly be religionsrdquo This position is justified he writes ldquoonly if oneis able to show that the properties of Christianity which one hasidentified are also the properties of religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994309) His first premise must be making a claim like this in order forhis argument to be valid But the section of his book in which thisstatement appears is entitled ldquoThou shalt resist temptationhelliprdquo andBalagangadhara refrains from saying that the sort of characteristicshe has been discussing (creeds beliefs scriptures churches) are therelevant properties of Christianity ie those that make it a religionand the lack of which make Hinduism something other than a reli-gion He states ldquoI am not defining explicitly what the concept lsquoreli-gionrsquo means I am simply identifying an example a prototypical ex-ample of the category religionrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 307) He hasnot yet answered the question ldquoWhat makes Christianity a religionrdquo(Balagangadhara 1994 317) His answer when it comes is that ldquore-ligion is an explanatorily intelligible account of both the Cosmos anditselfrdquo (Balagangadhara 1994 384 his argument for this definition isgiven in pages 331-334) Because the ldquoconfiguration of learningrdquo inAsian cultures is performative rather than theoretical such accounts

11 Lawson and McCauley detect a theological bias in ldquo[t]he insistence in the studyof religion that texts and traditions are critical features of full-fledged religionsrdquo whichthey argue ldquohas always served as a strategy for insulating the lsquogreatrsquo world religionsgenerally and Christianity in particular from the sort of analyses otherwise reservedfor lsquoprimitivesrsquo mdash which is to say all the rest of humanityrdquo (1990 6)


are ldquoabsent from the cultures of Asiardquo (Balagangadhara 1994 314)and hence Asia has ritual (performative) but not religious traditionsThe argument is formally valid but we have as little reason to acceptBalagangadhararsquos restriction of religion to explanatorily intelligibleaccounts of the cosmosmdashof a type Hinduism allegedly cannot givemdashas we would to accept a definition of religion as necessarily involvingcreeds beliefs scriptures and churches While Balagangadhararsquosdefinition is explicitly modelled upon Christianity Philip Almondargues that even what Balagangadhara takes as ldquoas essentially or proto-typically Christianrdquomdashand hence prototypically religiousmdashis in factldquoonly one particular manifestation of [Christianity] namely andcrudely put an Enlightenment deistic Christianityrdquo (Almond 1996144) and thus that for most of its history Europe too would havelacked religions In Balagangadhararsquos work can be clearly seen theform of the argument that underlies the claims of other authors thatHinduism is not a religion It is equally clear that this argumentdepends on a tendentious concept of religion Balagangadhara him-self acknowledges that ldquothere is a quasi-universal consensus that thelsquoWesternrsquo concept of religion is inadequaterdquo (Balagangadhara 1994313) but he fails to see that this in itself is not a reason for thinkingthat Hinduism is not a religion but rather a reason to work out abetter concept of religion

3 Religion ritual and the real

While Frits Staal follows Balagangadhara in emphasizing the impor-tance of ritual in Asian religion and in arguing that ldquothe idea ofreligion is essentially a Western concept inspired by the three mono-theistic religions of the West hellip not applicable to the phenomena wefind in and around the Himalayasrdquo (Staal 1982 39) unlike Bala-gangadhara he does consider attempts to formulate wider concep-tions of religion Nevertheless in his argument he does at times slipback into a position formally similar to that of Balagangadhara andthe other authors discussed above More significantly he also dependsupon an epistemological ideal which is arguably still more profoundlyinfluenced by Protestant Christian thought and which it will beargued is shared by Fitzgerald

Discussing what he calls ldquolsquoreligionrsquo in its fullest senserdquo Staal writesldquoDoctrines and beliefs are regarded as religious when they involve

340 will sweetman

belief in a god or gods in paradise and hell salvation and similarreligious concepts that are characteristic of the three monotheisticreligions of the Westrdquo (Staal 1989 389)12 He makes the point that

most of the other lsquoreligionsrsquo of mankind are deficient in one or anotherrespect when studied within this perspective hellip The main reasonhowever that Asian traditions do not fit the Western pattern of religion isthat their emphasis is not on doctrines or beliefs but on ritual mysti-cism or both In so far as doctrines or beliefs are mentioned at all theyare not primary but added they are of the nature of secondary interpre-tations often rationalizations and generally after-thoughts (Staal 1989389-390 emphasis added)

There are certainly counter-examples to Staalrsquos characterisation ofAsian traditions It would be difficult for example to describeRˆmˆnujarsquos project as a secondary interpretation a rationalizationor an after-thought Nevertheless Staal asserts

Hinduism does not merely fail to be a religion it is not even a meaning-ful unit of discourse There is no way to abstract a meaningful unitarynotion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena unless it is done byexclusion following the well-worn formula a Hindu is an Indian who isnot a Jaina Buddhist Parsi Christian Muslim Sikh Animist hellip (the listis indefinite) When faced with such data should we abandon the con-cept of religion altogether Basically there are two possible proceduresWe can either start with a rather narrow concept of ldquoreligionrdquo basedupon the three Western monotheisms and see to what extent such aconcept of religion can be used in Asia Or else we can try to formulatea wider and more flexible concept and see just where that leads us(Staal 1989 397)

Staal suggests that the concept of religion to be used in the firstprocedure ldquowould involve such notions as a belief in God a holybook and (at least in two cases out of these three) a historic founderrdquo(Staal 1989 398) Because the Asian traditions lack some of thesecharacteristicsmdashBuddhism and Confucianism have ldquoa founder butneither a belief in God nor a holy bookrdquo Taoism a founder and aholy book but no belief in GodmdashStaal concludes that ldquonone of theso-called religions of Asia is a religion in this sense hellip [A]ny notionof religion that is based upon characteristics of the three Westernmonotheistic religions is inapplicable in Asiardquo (Staal 1989 398) Con-

12 Elsewhere he acknowledges that far from being ldquoits fullest senserdquo a concept ofreligion based upon the three Western monotheisms would be ldquoa rather narrowconcept of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 397)


spicuous by its absence in this analysis is any reference to Sikhismwhich has all three characteristics Nevertheless we can admit Staalrsquospoint to a degree a degree which once again amounts to the claimthat Asian religions are in some respects not like the Westernmonotheisms

Staalrsquos argument relies on equating two subtly different conceptsthat ought to be distinguished from each other The first is ldquoreligionin the Western senserdquo (Staal 1989 415 416) which may be taken tomean what religion is or what forms it has taken in the West Thusldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo may be taken to mean that form ofmonotheistic belief and practice represented by Judaism Christian-ity and Islam The second is ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo (Staal1989 419) or ldquoWestern notions of religionrdquo (Staal 1989 393) whichrefers or ought to refer to that concept of religion which developedin the West from about the sixteenth century This concept is notidentical to the self-perception of the Western monotheisms It didemerge in the modern West but it emerged out of criticism of reli-gion especially of Christianity Moreover the concept has continuedto develop and is no longer or at least ought no longer to bedominated by a Protestant Christian emphasis on doctrine or be-lief13 Thus the modern academic concept of ldquoreligionrdquo althoughWestern in origin and perhaps also in use is not identical to theform(s) that religion has taken in the West The ldquoWestern concept ofreligionrdquo no longer means only ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo stillless ldquoWestern religionsrdquo It is clear that Asian religions are in signifi-cant respects not ldquoreligions in the Western senserdquo ie not monothe-istic traditions which place a certain kind of emphasis on doctrinalconformity Staal has not shown however ldquothe inapplicability ofWestern notions of religion to the traditions of Asiardquo (Staal 1989393) that is that Asian traditions cannot be understood through aconcept of religion that is not modelled on any specific tradition andno longer takes belief to be the all-important feature of religion

13 David Chidester lists those who have argued for ldquoan open multiple orpolythetic definition of religionrdquo (1996 259) Brian K Smith has attempted a defini-tion that takes seriously elements of religion which Asian religions have found to beimportant He proposes a definition that does not depend on transcendent referentsReligion he argues ldquois defined by its rules of discourse rules that always (by defini-tion) involve the necessary return to an authoritative source or canon to legitimize allpresent and past creations perpetuations and transformations of that traditionrdquo(1987 53)

342 will sweetman

Staal concludes that ldquothe imposition of the Western concept ofreligion on the rest of the world illustrates how Western imperialismcontinues to thrive in the realms of thoughtrdquo (1989 419) Ironicallyin insisting that Asian traditions are not religions (because they arenot religions of the same sort as Christianity and Islam that is theyare not religions ldquoin the Western senserdquo) it is Staal who remainsenthralled by a Western concept of religion Insofar as his argumentrelies on the slippage between ldquoreligion in the Western senserdquo andldquothe Western concept of religionrdquo it is formally similar to that ofStietencron and Balagangadhara Staal does acknowledge howeverthat this is a ldquorather narrowrdquo concept of religion and suggests that wemight ldquotry to formulate a wider and more flexible concept and seejust where that leads usrdquo (1989 397) As it has been argued here thatthis is precisely what in fact has happened during two centuries ofacademic study of the religions his argument must be examined forhe concludes that this does not enable us to rescue ldquoreligionrdquo as auniversal term and that we ought either to abandon religion or toconfine its use to the Western monotheisms

Staal uses what he calls an lsquoldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of reli-gion a concept that incorporates the categories of doctrine (belief)ritual mystical experience and meditation (the latter either as afourth category or as a sub-category of one or two of the othersrsquo)(1989 401) Of the categories he states that ldquorites [or rituals] areprimary because they are almost always independent and can beaccounted for on their own terms hellip Rites become lsquoreligiousrsquo whenthey are provided with a religious interpretationrdquo (1989 388) More-over he states

Rituals are not merely remarkably persistent within so-called religioustraditions where they are provided with constantly changing interpreta-tions rituals remain the same even across so-called religious bounda-ries they are invariant under religious transformation This is demonstratedby the fact that the same rites occur in Vedic Hindu and Buddhistforms not only in India but also in China Japan Tibet and Indonesia(Staal 1989 401)

Staal says little about the other categories noting only that ldquo[l]ike theother so-called religions of Asia Buddhism is characterized by thefact that ritual (in which all monks engage) is more important thanmystical experience (which only a few attain) which is in turn moreimportant than belief or doctrine (a matter confined to philosophersscholarly monks or reserved for Western converts anthropologists


and tourists)rdquo (1989 400)14 Thus for Staal ldquothe trio of ritual medi-tation and mystical experience are more fundamental than the cat-egory of religion itselfrdquo ritual being the most important of these threein the Asian traditions But because ldquorituals remain the same evenacross so-called religious boundariesrdquo they cannot be used to justifyour existing taxonomy of religions ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may bein a position to constitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989401) This lack of correspondence between rituals and beliefs meansthat if

we adopt the ldquoextended-Durkheimrdquo concept of religion which incorpo-rates the categories of doctrine (belief) ritual mystical experience andmeditation hellip we have a concept on our hands that has all the charac-teristics of pathological if not monstrous growth tumorous with cat-egory blunders It is worse than a spider with a submarine a burningbush an expectation and a human head (Staal 1989414-415)

Even in Buddhism ldquothe Asian tradition that is in many respects mostreligion-like doctrine plays a subordinate role and mystical experi-ence and rites are basicrdquo (Staal 1989 415)15 Therefore says Staalldquo[w]e must conclude that the concept of religion is not a coherentconcept and therefore misleading It does not hang together like aconcept should and should either be abandoned or confined to West-ern traditionsrdquo (1989 415)

Attention to ritual rather than belief as a defining feature of reli-gion may well produce a taxonomy of religions different from the onewith which we are familiar although Staal does not suggest whatsuch a taxonomy based on ritual might look like Such a taxonomy

14 He leaves aside the question of ldquowhether meditation constitutes a fourth ldquofun-damental categoryrdquoldquo noting only that ldquo[m]editation at any rate is not gazing uponnothing (except in the limiting case) but is closely related to ritual and mantrasrdquo(Staal 1989 400)

15 Staal concedes that a ldquophenomenon more like religion in the Western senseappears in the later phases of development of several Asian traditionsrdquo (1989 415)By this he means the development of yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism and of the Bodhisattvaideal in Buddhism Because these phenomena are more like ldquoreligion in the Westernsenserdquo he is prepared also to describe them using ldquothe Western concept of religionrdquoThus yenaivism and VaisectEgraveavism ldquoshould perhaps be regarded as the first two indig-enous religions of Indiardquo for with their appearance ldquoa Hindu is no longer an Indianconcerned about what he must do while thinking anything he likesrdquo but becomesfor the first time ldquoa believer in God equipped with faith and a holy bookrdquo (1989415) Buddhists finally have belief ldquonot in God but in the Buddhardquo (1989 416) andBuddhism is therefore closer to being a religion although it still lacks a single authori-tative text

344 will sweetman

may be more useful in understanding the history and function ofAsian religion16 but would be neither more nor less a natural tax-onomymdashgiven in the nature of thingsmdashthan one based upon belief

Staalrsquos proposal raises the question of how we are to describe theldquoAsian traditions that are generally called religionsrdquo (Staal 1989 405-406) if we abandon the concept of ldquoreligionrdquo or redefine it to referspecifically to doctrine and confine it to Western traditions Althoughat one point he refers to Buddhism as ldquoa ritual-mystical cultrdquo (1989406) Staal more often relies on other locutions such as ldquoso-calledreligionsrdquo or ldquotraditionsrdquo Thus he speaks of ldquothe so-called religionsof Asiardquo (1989 398 400) or ldquothe so-called religions of mankindrdquo(1989 418) Yoga MˆmˆDaggersˆ yenaivism VaisectEgraveavism and Buddhismare all referred to as ldquoAsian traditionsrdquo or ldquoIndian traditionsrdquo (1989390 406 410 414 415) Staal also refers to ldquoso-called religioustraditionsrdquo (1989 401) the ldquoAsian traditions that are generally calledreligionsrdquo (1989 405-406) ldquowhat is now called a lsquoreligiousrsquo traditionrdquo(1989 393) and simply ldquoreligious traditionsrdquo (1989 387) The diffi-culty Staal has in escaping some collective term for the phenomenahe wishes to discuss is not insignificant and will be returned to laterHere the point is that ldquoWestern traditionsrdquo and ldquonon-Western tradi-tionsrdquo (Staal 1989 415) are discussed together in a way that suggeststhe only difference between them is that Western traditions are con-cerned with doctrine and are therefore religious while non-Westerntraditions are not They seem nevertheless to be treated by Staal asmembers of a class comparable with each other In practice thenStaal replaces ldquoreligionrdquo with ldquotraditionrdquo where traditions may bereligious or not A concern with doctrine makes a tradition a religioustradition a concern with ritual does not

Staal does not seem to be able to avoid defining religion in relationto doctrine or belief ldquoOnly doctrine or belief may be in a position toconstitute a religious category per serdquo (Staal 1989 401) While thesame lingering influence of Protestant Christian conceptions of reli-gion has been detected in other authors a fundamentally religiousideal underpins Staalrsquos epistemology at a deeper level Staal arguesthat study of Buddhism has proceeded upon the unproven assump-tion that ldquoBuddhism is a religion and that there is therefore a certain

16 Although this is not so in every case As Staal notes many of the rituals inwhich Buddhist monks engage are ldquoindependent of Buddhismrdquo (1989 401) andtherefore would not be significant in defining a useful taxonomy


unity to the subjectrdquo Because ldquothe concept of religion is not easilyapplicable to Buddhism hellip [t]hat unity is therefore imposed from theoutside and a priori hellip For scholarship to be adequate it should notbe based upon such assumptions Only if we abandon them are we ina position to discover whether and to what extent such a unity mayin fact existrdquo (Staal 1989 410) The idea of such a position free of allassumptions from which we can discover whether or not Buddhismis a unified entity is not only illusory as many Buddhists would surelyrecognize but also an essentially religious ideal An indication thatStaal thinks such a position is attainable may be gained from theconfidence with which he feels able to distinguish ldquogenuine manifes-tationsrdquo of Buddhism from other ldquorepresentations of Buddhism byAsian Buddhistsrdquo (1989 402) The ideal of such an understanding ofthe way things are unmediated by language (and thus by conceptswhich have a specific history) is very old going back in the Westerntradition at least to Plato However as Jonathan Z Smith points outin its more recent forms it is

above all a modulation of one of the regnant Protestant topoi in whichthe category of inspiration has been transposed from the text to theexperience of the interpreter the one who is being directly addressedthrough the text hellip As employed by some scholars in religious studies itmust be judged a fantastic attempt to transform interpretation intorevelation (J Z Smith 1990 55)

The assumption that ritual is a more fundamental category thanreligion may lead to the emergence of concepts different from (al-though comparable to) those we presently use to denote differentreligions Nevertheless the impossibility of occupying a position freeof all assumptions means that whatever unity such concepts mightrepresent would no more have a definite ontological status than thatrepresented by the terms with which we denote the collections ofbeliefs and practices which we call religions The ldquounityrdquo of Bud-dhism does not exist except in and for the purposes of analysiswhether that analysis chooses religionmdashno longer defined simply asthe possession of a god founder and textmdashor ritual as its key

Staal states that ldquo[t]he unities presumed to cover early and lateBuddhism or Indian or Chinese and other forms of Buddhism arefunctions of the same unproven assumptionrdquo (1989 410) that Bud-dhism is a religion and thus a unity Fitzgerald makes a similar pointwith respect to Ambedkar Buddhists in Maharashtra TheravˆdaBuddhists in other parts of South Asia and Japanese Buddhists argu-

346 will sweetman

ing that each inhabit ldquoa significantly different semantic universerdquoand that the idea that ldquothese are three different manifestations of oneessencerdquo or that ldquoBuddhism is an entity with an essence that can bedescribed and listed with other such entities the Religions or theworld religions can be described as an essentialist fallacyrdquo Whileldquohistorical and philosophical links between these different culturallysituated institutionsrdquo exist

[i]n the Maharashtrian context it is extremely difficult to separate outsome putative Buddhism from the Buddhist (formerly Mahar) caste andthus from the complex ideology of caste institutions In the Japanesecontext it is difficult to conceive of lsquoBuddhismrsquo as distinct from otherindigenous cultural institutions or from a dominant system of Japanesevalues in particular (Fitzgerald 2000a 26-27)

Fitzgerald makes the same claim in respect of Hinduism The ldquoana-lytical centre of gravity of Hinduismrdquo is fundamentally a conceptionof ritual order or hierarchy ldquoand there is a strong case for claimingthat it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with thecaste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenonrdquo (1990 102) Eventhe more universalistic sectarian Hindu movements remain ldquorootedrdquoin this ldquoideologically defined contextrdquo such that Fitzgerald asks inwhat sense ISKCON at Bhaktivedanta Manor in southern Englandis the same religion as ISKCON in California or Bengal ldquoIt seems tobe the same question essentially as lsquoWhat is Christianityrsquo or anyother example of lsquoa religionrsquo abstracted from a particular sociologicalcontext hellip That these are variants of the same reality is a theologi-cal claim made by sociologically specific groups of people Thisclaim is part of the object of non-theological observation it shouldnot be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115)

Fitzgerald suggests that the methodological priority ought then tobe the study of ldquoone or other or all of these institutions in their actualcontextrdquo (2000a 27) ldquowe first have to understand the totality withinwhich such institutions are established We might then hazard a se-ries of abstractions for comparative purposes without making themistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give tothem to anybody but ourselvesrdquo (1990 108) Fitzgerald argues thatscholars whose study of Hinduism is guided by the ldquoessentially theo-logical conceptrdquo of a religion as an entity transcending particularsocial groups ldquocut across the data in the wrong placesrdquo with theresult that ldquo[v]irtually everything that sociology has revealed aboutHinduism is ignoredrdquo (1990 111 2000a 136)


Fitzgerald reports that in his own study of Ambedkar Buddhism heldquofound the concept of religion unhelpful and instead hellip analyzed it interms of the concepts ritual politics and soteriologyrdquo (2000a 121)Ritual is here defined by Fitzgerald to be essentially the same ldquocon-cept of hierarchical orderrdquo he identifies elsewhere as the ldquoanalyticalcentre of gravityrdquo of Hinduism While elements of the practice of thisritual ordermdashfor example practising untouchability against otheruntouchable castes or the worship of the Buddha and Ambedkar asthough they were Hindu godsmdashare incompatible with Ambedkarrsquosteaching they are nevertheless ldquoto some variable degree part of theactual situation and identity of Buddhistsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000a 130)Ambedkar Buddhists are more clearly demarcated from others whoshare their ritual practices by their politics which departs from thetraditional legitimation of power mediated by ritual status and bytheir soteriology which though often reinterpreted as ldquoliberationfrom inequality and exploitationrdquo has ldquoan important spiritual ortranscendental element as well hellip pursued through reading Buddhisttexts practicing meditation and going on retreatsrdquo (Fitzgerald2000b 5) These three concepts allow greater analytical clarity Fitz-gerald argues than religion which covers and therefore obscures therelations between ritual politics and soteriology Religion generatesa lack of clarity because it ldquodoes not effectively demarcate any non-religious institutionsrdquo (Fitzgerald 2000b 1 cf Fitzgerald 2000a 134-135)17

The issue is whether or not lsquoreligionrsquo does genuinely pick out a distinc-tive set of institutions that demarcate it from other institutions orwhether we need concepts that can pick out finer distinctions that per-vade many or most institutions such as the ritual the soteriologicaland the political (Fitzgerald 2000a 149)

So much states Fitzgerald ldquocan be and is called religion in Indiathat the term picks out nothing distinctiverdquo (2000a 149) For theterm to be a useful analytical category it must be possible to stateldquowhat counts as religion and what counts as non-religionrdquo (2000a153) However as Fitzgerald states elsewhere when ldquowe talk about areligion hellip we are not talking about some real type of objectrdquo (1990

17 Fitzgerald adds ldquonor does it clarify the sense in which Buddhists ChristiansJainas Muslims or Sikhs constitute separate minorities in Indiardquo and explains thatbecause religion is used to cover ritual principles centred on caste and hierarchywhich are shared by non-Hindu groups in India it conceals the distinctiveness whichanalysis of them as different soteriologies would reveal

348 will sweetman

109) or essence but rather we are making an abstraction usually forthe purposes of comparison He is wrong to suggest that such anabstraction is only useful if it is infallibly able to demarcate the reli-gious from the non-religious18 It would only be possible for theconcept to allow such precise demarcation to identify what is reli-gion and what non-religion if religion were indeed a real object anessence whose manifestations could be identified

The claim that religion is such an essence and that the boundariesbetween the religious and the non-religious can be drawn with suchprecision is as Fitzgerald suggests a religious or theological claim19

In discussing precisely the same issue of caste observances amongdifferent groups in India Roberto Nobili made the claim crucial forhis theological argument that ldquothere is a norm by which we candistinguish between social actions and the purely religiousrdquo (1971[1619] 155) Such a claim has no place in a non-theological study ofreligion Again as Fitzgerald states when ldquowe talk about a religionhellip we are not talking about some real type of object that is onlycontingently associated with any empirical social group and whichcan be studied in its own rightrdquo rather we are ldquousing an analyticalcategoryrdquo (Fitzgerald 1990 109)20 He goes on however to state thatthis analytical category ldquocorresponds to what some religious ideolo-gies proclaim themselves to berdquo (1990 109) This is only true if wecontinue to take a religion to be some kind of substantial entity whichexists as a real object somehow transcending particular societies Ifinstead religion is regarded as one of a series of abstractions we mighthazard for the purpose of comparison of different societies (withoutas Fitzgerald states making the mistake of attributing the abstractionand the meaning given to it to anyone else) there is no reason toregard ldquoreligionrdquo as a theological category with no place in an avow-

18 Neither can the ritual political or soteriological always be precisely demar-cated from other categories of analysis Fitzgerald notes that in Maharashtra ldquosomeforms of exchange today are descended from the old balutedari system which wasvery much embedded in ritual statusrdquo (2000a 122) thus ritual is to some degreeconfounded with economics Likewise some elements of what Fitzgerald categorizesas soteriology can surely also be analysed as either ritual or politics

19 Fitzgerald argues that this sense of religion as a substantial entity independentof any particular social group is in fact a theological conception allied to the idea ofGod ldquowho transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to allindividuals everywhererdquo (1990 109)

20 Cf McCutcheonrsquos contention that ldquothe category of religion is a conceptual tooland ought not to be confused with an ontological category actually existing in real-ityrdquo (1997 viii)


edly non- theological discipline or to expect the category to be ableinfallibly to discriminate between religious and non-religious phe-nomena To think that because the concept of religion emerged fromtheological claims about the unity of a religion (or the object of thatreligion) the concept remains theological is to commit the geneticfallacy Our usage of it clearly no longer corresponds to what reli-gious ideologies proclaim themselves to be Fitzgerald argues that ifwe take the examples of Christianity in Salt Lake City and in TamilNadu the claim ldquothat these are variants of the same reality is atheological claim made by sociologically specific groups of peopleThis claim is part of the object of non-theological observation itshould not be one of its basic assumptionsrdquo (1990 115) It is at leastas likely that it would be denied on theological grounds that two ver-sions of Christianity (let alone say Christianity and Hinduism inTamil Nadu) were variants of the same reality where non-theologicalscholars of religion would want to assert that these were variants ofthe same reality not in the sense of being both manifestations of asingle essence but in the sense that both could be understood betterby being brought under a single analytical category That categoryneed not be ldquoreligionrdquo but there is no compelling reason why itshould not be

4 ldquoHinduismrdquo and ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo

Donald S Lopez suggests that ldquoone of the ways that scholars ofHinduism may be distinguished from experts on other religions at theannual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is by theiroverdeveloped pectoral muscles grown large from tracing quotationmarks in the air whenever they have mentioned lsquoHinduismrsquo over thepast ten yearsrdquo (2000 832) The gesture has several oral analoguesusually of the form ldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo or ldquowhatWestern scholars have designated by the term Hinduismrdquo What issignified by such gestures and tics is nevertheless usually identicalwith what the term Hinduism has been taken to signify from itsearliest use21 H H Wilson in an essay first published in 1828 notes

21 As Lorenzen notes ldquomost scholars of Indian religions who have not directlyaddressed this questionmdashand even several who claim that Hinduism is a modernconstructionmdashcontinue to write about Hinduism as if it in fact existed many centu-ries earlierrdquo (1999 631)

350 will sweetman

that ldquo[t]he Hindu religion is a term that has been hitherto employedin a collective sense to designate a faith and worship of an almostendlessly diversified descriptionrdquo (1846 [1828] 1) Having drawn at-tention to the constructed nature of the term such physical andverbal gestures serve to dissociate the speaker from the processes ofselection by which the termrsquos meaning is constituted while allowingher or him to retain the analytical function for which the term wascoined This procedure threatens to reverse recent advances in ourunderstanding of the proper status of key concepts in the academicstudy of religion not only of Hinduism but of religion itself Dissoci-ating oneself from the inevitable process of selection that underliesour use of this or any other general term (for example by referring toldquowhat has come to be called Hinduismrdquo) without specifying an alter-native basis for selection merely perpetuates a confusion betweenconceptual and ontological categories in the study of religion

It is clear that whatever conception of Hinduism (or any otherreligion) emerges from such a process of selection is the result ofdecisions that are inevitably influenced by the purposes and precon-ceptions of the analyst It is not a representation of what Hinduismldquoreallyrdquo is Nor need it aspire to be a mirror image of Hindu self-perception not least because any such self-perception (and thesewould be legion not just in the case of Hinduism) would be equallydependent on a specific set of purposes and preconceptions Therepresentation of Indian religions which emerged in the works ofEuropean writers between the seventeenth and nineteenth centurieswas the result of just such a decision-making process The usefulnessof such representations will depend upon the extent to which weshare their purposes

What the scholarly vocabulary of religion provides is one of anumber of possible ways of cutting across the available data Pro-vided we remain self-conscious about our use of such a vocabularyand refrain from postulating entities where we have only abstractionsand representations there is no reason why such a vocabulary shouldnot continue to be used This is not to say that this is the only oreven the best way of making a selection of data The question oughttherefore to be How far is it profitable to analyse Hinduism as areligion There can be no doubt that at times VaisectEgraveavism yenaivismand yenaktism or ritual politics and soteriology will be more profit-able concepts for analysis But we should never forget that these alsoare abstractions and that they are first of all our abstractions (even if


they are also shared by Hindus) They may or may not pre-exist inthe consciousness of those studied or be taken up later (as was thecase with some neo-Hindu groups) The intuitive appropriateness ofsome of these abstractions is of course the result of our preconceptionof religion but despite its emergence in the modern West this oughtno longer to be dominated by the idea of Christianity as the paradigmof what a religion is That the modern academic concept of religionemerged in the West does not by itself mean that the concept isinapplicable in other cultures any more than it means that religiondid not exist in the West prior to the articulation of the modern senseof religion22

Having reviewed the history of their production and reproductionas contested terms David Chidester states that ldquowe might happilyabandon religion and religions as terms of analysis if we were not as aresult of that very history stuck with them They adhere to ourattempts to think about identity and difference in the worldrdquo (1996259) The recovery of that history in the work of several writersmeans that these terms can no longer be used innocently Preciselybecause it ought now to be impossible to use concepts such as ldquoreli-gionrdquo and ldquoHinduismrdquo without being aware that in doing so one isapplying a theoretical framework to the world the use of such termsis less likely to result in the unconscious imposition of such a frame-work than the use of some new coinage whose theory-laden statusmay initially be obscured by its novelty Catherine Bell writes ldquoThatwe construct lsquoreligionrsquo and lsquosciencersquo [and one might add lsquoHindu-ismrsquo] is not the main problem that we forget we have constructedthem in our own imagemdashthat is a problemrdquo (1996 188) If so thennot only is there no reason to abandon the terms ldquoreligionrdquo andldquoHinduismrdquo but there is good reason to retain them

Department of Religious StudiesUniversity of NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RUUnited Kingdom

22 Note Ninian Smartrsquos comment that ldquo[t]he non-traditional nature of westernterms does not by itself mean that there is a distorting reification lsquoGamesmanshiprsquo isof fairly recent coinage but gamesmanship preceded the coinage (hence the successof the coinage)rdquo (1974 46)

352 will sweetman

References

Almond Philip C (1996) The heathen in his blindness Cultural Dynamics 8 137-145Balagangadhara S N (1994) ldquoThe Heathen in His Blindness helliprdquo Asia the West and the

Dynamic of Religion Leiden BrillBell Catherine (1996) Modernism and postmodernism in the study of religions

Religious Studies Review 22 179-190Bossy John (1982) Some elementary forms of Durkheim Past and Present 95 3-18Chidester David (1996) Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern

Africa Studies in Religion and Culture London University Press of VirginiaDandekar R N (1971) Hinduism In C Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (eds)

Historia Religionum Handbook for the History of Religions vol 2 Religions of the Present237- 243 Leiden Brill

Dalmia Vasudha and Heinrich von Stietencron (1995) Introduction In VasudhaDalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) Representing Hinduism The Construc-tion of Religious Traditions and National Identity 17-32 London Sage

Dhareshwar Vivek (1996) The trial of pagans Cultural Dynamics 8 119-135Fitzgerald Timothy (1990) Hinduism and the ldquoworld religionrdquo fallacy Religion 20

108-118mdash (1997) A critique of ldquoreligionrdquo as a cross-cultural category Method amp Theory in the

Study of Religion 9 91-110mdash (2000a) The Ideology of Religious Studies Oxford Oxford University Pressmdash (2000b) Problems with ldquoReligionrdquo As A Category for Understanding Hinduism Decatur

Illinois Millikin University and International Institute of Indian StudiesFrykenberg Robert E (1997) The emergence of modern ldquoHinduismrdquo as a concept

and an institution A reappraisal with special reference to South India InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 82-107 Delhi Manohar

Hardy Friedhelm (1990) Turning points in the study of Indian religions 7 Hindu-ism In Ursula King (ed) Turning Points in Religious Studies Essays in Honour ofGeoffrey Parrinder 145-155 Edinburgh T amp T Clark

Larson Gerald James (1995) Indiarsquos Agony Over Religion Albany State University ofNew York Press

Lawson E Thomas and Robert N McCauley (1990) Rethinking Religion ConnectingCognition and Culture Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Lipner Julius J (1994) The Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices LondonRoutledge

mdash (1996) Ancient Banyan An inquiry into the meaning of ldquoHindunessrdquo ReligiousStudies 32 109-126

Lopez Donald S (2000) Panditrsquos revenge Journal of the American Academy of Religion68 831-835

Lorenzen David N (1999) Who invented Hinduism Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 41 630-659

Loy David (1996) ldquohellip While the scholar in his wisdom bows down to the truthrdquoCultural Dynamics 8 147-160

Marshall John (1927) John Marshall in India Notes and Observations in Bengal 1668-1672 Sharfaat Ahmed Khan (ed) London H Milford for the Oxford Univer-sity Press

McCutcheon Russell T (1997) Manufacturing Religion The Discourse of Sui GenerisReligion and the Politics of Nostalgia Oxford Oxford University Press


Nobili Roberto (1971 [1619]) Narratio Fundamentorum quibus Madurensis MissionisInstitutum caeptum est et hucusque consisit S Rajamanickam (ed) and J Pujo (trans)as Adaptation Palayamkottai De Nobili Research Institute

Oberoi Harjot (1994) The Construction of Religious Boundaries Culture Identity and Diver-sity in the Sikh Tradition Chicago University of Chicago Press

OrsquoConnell Joseph (1973) The word ldquoHindurdquo in Gauparaldquoya VaisectEgraveava texts Journal ofthe American Oriental Society 93 340-344

Preus J Samuel (1987) Explaining Religion Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud NewHaven Yale University Press

Pye Michael (1992) An Asian starting point for the study of religion In MiroslawNowaczyk and Zbigniew Stachowski (eds) LanguagemdashReligionmdashCulture InMemory of Professor Witold Tyloch 27-35 Warsaw Polish Society for the Study ofReligionsInternational Association for the History of Religions

mdash (2003) Modern Japan and the science of religions Method amp Theory in the Study ofReligion 15 1-27

Sharma Arvind (2002) On Hindu Hindustˆn Hinduism and Hindutva Numen 491-36

Smart Ninian (1974) Truth and religions In John Hick (ed) Truth and DialogueTtheRelationship Between World Religions 45-58 London Sheldon

Smith Brian K (1987) Exorcising the transcendent Strategies for defining Hindu-ism and Buddhism History of Religions 27 32-55

Smith Jonathan Z (1990) Drudgery Divine On the Comparison of Early Christianities andthe Religions of Late Antiquity Chicago University of Chicago Press

Smith Wilfred Cantwell (1991 [1962]) The Meaning and End of Religion A RevolutionaryApproach to the Great Religious Traditions Minneapolis Fortress

Staal Frits (1982) The Himalayas and the fall of religion In Deborah E Klimberg-Salter (ed) The Silk Route and the Diamond Path Esoteric Buddhist Art on the Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes 38-51 Los Angeles UCLA Art Council

mdash (1989) Rules Without Meaning Ritual Mantra and the Human Sciences New YorkPeter Lang

Stietencron Heinrich von (1988) Voraussetzungen westlicher Hinduismusforschungund ihre Folgen In Eberhard Muumlller (ed) ldquo aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeitrdquo123-153 Tuumlbinger Studien zum 18 Jahrhundert Dietrich Geyer zum 60Geburtstag Tuumlbingen Attempto

mdash (1995) Religious configurations in pre-Muslim India and the modern concept ofHinduism In Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron (eds) RepresentingHinduism The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity 51-81 Lon-don Sage

mdash (1997) Hinduism On the proper use of a deceptive term In Guumlnther-DietzSontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered 32-53 DelhiManohar

Sweetman Will (2001) Unity and plurality Hinduism and the religions of India inearly European scholarship Religion 31 209-224

Wagle N K (1997) Hindu-Muslim interactions in medieval Maharashtra InGuumlnther-Dietz Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke (eds) Hinduism Reconsidered134-152 Delhi Manohar

Wilson Horace Hayman (1846 [1828]) Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus Cal-cutta Bishoprsquos College Press

330 will sweetman

disguise this fact by claiming that religion is a natural andor a super-natural reality in the nature of things that all human individuals have acapacity for regardless of their cultural context This attempt to dis-guise the theological essence of the category and to present it as thoughit were a unique human reality irreducible to either theology or sociol-ogy suggests that it possesses some ideological function hellip that is notfully acknowledged (Fitzgerald 2000a 4-5)2

Fitzgerald gives a number of arguments for this claim and for hisfurther proposal that scholars who do not have a theological agendaought to prefer terms which offer greater analytical precision thanldquoreligionrdquo One such argument considers several works by religionistsand anthropologists on Hinduism in order to show that ldquoreligionrdquofails to pick out anything that can be analytically separated fromother institutionalized aspects of Indian culture that ldquothe categoryreligion does not effectively demarcate any institutions located in aputatively non-religious domain such as Indian societyrdquo in shortthat ldquoHinduism is not a lsquoreligionrsquordquo (Fitzgerald 2000a chap 7 seealso Fitzgerald 1990 and 2000b) The claim is significant and is foundin the work of several other scholars3 While agreeing with much ofFitzgeraldrsquos analysismdashspecifically that religion is not ldquoin the nature ofthingsrdquo or a reality irreducible by other forms of analysis and thatthe study of religion continues to be too much influenced by unac-knowledged Christian theological presuppositionsmdashI will argue thatit is precisely the claim that Hinduism is not a religion which revealslingering Christian and theological influence even in the works of

2 Elsewhere Fitzgerald writes ldquoWhat I am arguing is that theology and what is atpresent called religious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectualactivity but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally dominatedby the former This domination is disguised because it is embedded in our a prioricentral analytical category and abandoning that category altogether appears evento scholars who are themselves critically aware of the legacy of phenomenology to bethrowing the baby out with the bathwaterrdquo (1997 97) In more general terms othershave suggested that the claim that religion is a sui generis phenomenon is associatedwith an approach to the study of religion which tends to assume the truth of religionSo Russell McCutcheon notes that ldquoone aspect of the discourse on sui generis reli-gionrdquo is a ldquotheoretically undefended preference for sympathetic and descriptive insid-ersrsquo accountsrdquo and that the ldquothe dominant yet uncritical and theoretically undefend-able conception of religion as sui generis effectively precludes other more socio-politically and historically sensitive methods and theoriesrdquo (1997 122-123) Likewisethe belief that religion because irreducible to anything else is best explained ldquoon itsown termsrdquo is described by Samuel Preus as ldquothe last bastion of theologyrdquo (1987 xvi)

3 See in addition to those discussed below Smith 1987 34 Hardy 1990 145Oberoi 1994 17 Dalmia and Stietencron 1995 20 Larson 1995 31 Frykenberg1997 82







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hinduism” and the history of “ religion” : will … · “hinduism” and the history of...

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