Pre-independence India

As intimated above, many of the issues which fueled discussion of India’s nineteenth century informed discourse in the first half of the twentieth century as well: the concern for envisioning a new India which took its place in a global network; the role of history in shaping the present; the concern for a people free of colonial control; and the place of religion in a modern setting; all these continued to be part of the agendas of India’s elites.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was certainly one of the significant figures on the Indian scene from the 1920s until independence. Born in Gujarat of an industrious father and deeply religious mother, and influenced early in life by Jain neighbors, Gandhi studied law in London. There, he redis­covered the Bhagavadgita and his Hindu identity through the eyes of Western seekers. Unable to find work in India, he went to South Africa for two decades where he became active in helping Indians resist the racist laws of the white administration; it was in South Africa that his religio-political strategy of satyagraha (the force of truth) developed. This principle affirmed that truth was the very nature of the universe (satya [truth] equals brahman [cosmic essence]); that all peoples shared a common essence; that the force of that truth could be enacted in non-violent action that would embarrass and force an oppressor to change laws. The strategy was designed to unite all persons, irrespective of educational, religious, or economic status into boycotts, marches, and protests that would put economic and international political pressure to bear on repressive regimes. It was also in South Africa, where Gandhi stayed for a while in the home of Plymouth Brethren mission­aries, that he came to appreciate aspects of Christian social ethics while disdaining doctrinaire Christian theology.

When Gandhi returned to India at the age of forty-five, he became actively engaged in the Indian National Congress. By now he had adapted a simple lifestyle as he experimented with approaches that would combine indigenous health practices with religious orientations forged by the influ­ences of Jain non-violence, Christian ethics, and a reinterpretation of the Bhagavadgita as the story of an internal battle wherein each one was obliged to “wage war” with the passions and temptations within. These elements were combined with a political strategy that sought to unite all Indians, including Hindus and Muslims, upper castes and “outcastes” (whom Gandhi called “harijans” or “children of God”) for the purpose of attaining political and financial independence of India from British rule. Through fasts and marches, identifying with highly placed and low alike, many joined Gandhi in protesting British policy. Nonetheless, when independence finally came in 1947, Gandhi was deeply disappointed that the country was divided into two nations - India and Pakistan - and that his call for village-based economics and simple lifestyle went largely unheeded.⁵³

Another significant figure during this period was Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The fourteenth child of Debindranath Tagore, Rabindranath did not need to earn his own livelihood, so had time as a youth to experiment with writing. By 1912 he had published Gitanjali (song offerings) for which he won the Nobel Prize for literature. He founded a school at Shantiniketan, which became a retreat and a center for the cultivation of the creative arts. Here too a university was established in 1921 for the promotion of “world brotherhood and cultural interchange.”⁵⁴

Tagore was soon a world traveler and global figure. He was impatient with Indian nationalism, whether of the Gandhian or the Bengali variety. Tagore’s was a “religion of man” (the title of one of his books), characterized by a fundamental faith in humanity and its divine source and in the notion that humankind’s hopes lay in the reaffirmation of the fundamental spiritual values to be found in all religions.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into everwidening thought and action -

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.⁵⁵

Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), a Bengali schooled in England, returned to India in 1893 intending to serve in the civil service. Soon he was seeking to rediscover his Indian heritage. He studied Sanskrit and read the works of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and B. C. Chatterjee, the Bengali nationalist. He soon found himself embroiled in the “extremist politics” of Bengal. His speeches and writings made him a “persona non grate? with the British and he was jailed for “sedition.”

While in prison he had a series of religious experiences, which led him eventually to abandon politics and Bengal. He withdrew to the French pro­tectorate, Pondicherry, to practice his yogic discipline and to let his religious thought mature. While he had once idealized Indian nationalism and Hinduism, in his later years his thought became more eclectic, and he sought to wed notions of the Indian spiritual tradition with Western science and philosophy. His religious orientation turned inward as he sought to live and express union with the divine. What he called “Integral Yoga” was the “rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal nature had hidden in herself and which she travails to discover.

A final figure illustrating in a very different way the kind of sentiment stirring in the first half of the twentieth century is V. D. Savarkar (1883­1966). A Maharashtrian brahman, Savarkar was influenced by the politics of B. G. Tilak and by several incidents in his youth, including the hanging of two Maharashtrian “terrorists.” Savarkar became a firebrand in the cause of Hindu nationalism.

As a youth he learned the art of bomb making from a Russian revo­lutionary and organized groups to protest British policies, from the throwing of stones, the building of bonfires, and the advocacy of violence, to the writing of a pamphlet glorifying the “Sepoy Mutiny” as the “First Indian War of Independence.” For his activities, he was imprisoned for years and restricted from political activity. Yet he served as president of the Hindu Mahasabha for seven years, one of the most militant and “communalistic” of the Hindu organizations.

Savarkar advocated the reconversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism and the incorporation of the untouchables into Hindu institu­tions. He coined the term “Hindutva,” which represented his vision for Hinduizing the Indian polity and making Hinduism more militant. Hindutva incorporated the idea that all of India shared a common geography and culture that was infused with sacrality.

Savarkar’s legacy has continued to be part of India’s religious landscape. One of his disciples assassinated Gandhi for the latter’s alleged softness toward India’s Muslims. Some of the organizations which have become the exponents of Hindu nationalism today draw inspiration from Savarkar’s agenda: these include the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS - the National Assembly of Volunteers), and the Jan Sangh (People’s League).

The religious landscape of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India was marked by a wide range of activity. There was reawakening and rediscovery of some elements from a perceived past; accommodation, con­frontation, and negotiation between communities in a pluralistic landscape; the rearticulation of Hindu and/or Muslim identities; the resurgence of vernacular sensibilities at the same time as there was increased national and global consciousness; the use of religion for political purpose; the increased visibility of folk practice and its intermingling with neo-classical developments; and a resurgence of pietism and popular religion. It was, in short, a century of transition that set the stage for the contemporary period and, in the process, illustrated the religious options available to a globe facing similar dynamics in the twenty-first century.

Recommended reading

On religious minorities in India

Beyrenther, E. Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg. Trs. S. G. Lang and H. W. Gensichen. Madras: Christian Literature Society, Diocesan Press, 1955.

Boyce, M. B. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Third revision. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988.

Brown, L. W. The Indian Christians of St.

Clarke, Sathianathan. Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Cronin, V. A Pearl to India: The Life of Robert de Nobili. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959.

Drewery, Mary. William Carey: A Biography. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979.

Fischel, W. J. The Jews in India. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, Hebrew University, 1960. Forrester, D. B. Caste and Christianity: Attitudes and Policies on Caste of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Missions in India. London: Curzon Press, 1980.

Ingham, Kenneth. Reformers in India, 1793—1833. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.

Insler, S. The Gathas of Zaruthustra. Actan Iranica Volume one. Leiden: Mouton, 1975. Katz, N. Who are the Jews of India? Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Kotwal, F. W. and Boyd, J. W. eds. A Guide to the Zoroastrian Religion. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982.

Kulke, E. The Parsees in India: A Minority as Agents of Social Change. Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1974.

Lehman, E. Arno. It Began at Tranquebar. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1956.

Luke, P. Y. and Carman, J. B. Village Christians and Hindu Culture. London: Lutterworth Press, 1968.

Neill, S. A History of Christianity in India: the Beginning to 1707. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Neill, S. A History of Christianity in India: 1707—1858. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Parasurama, T. V. India’s Jewish Heritage. New Delhi: Sagar Publications, nd. Richter, J. A History of Missions in India. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1908. Samartha, S. J. The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1974.

Strizower, S. The Children of Israel: the Bene-Israelof Bombay. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Thomas, P. Christian and Christianity in India and Pakistan. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1956.

Thurston, F. Castes and Tribes of South India. Seven volumes. Reprint. Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1993.

Tiliander, Bror. Christian and Hindu Terminology, A Study of their Mutual Relations with Special Reference to the Tamil Area. Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell Tryckeri, 1974.

Timberg, T. Alex. Jews in India. New York: Advent Books, 1986.

Tisserant, E. C. Eastern Christianity in India: A History of the Syro-Malabar Church from the Earliest Time to the Present Day. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957.

Webster, J. C. B. The Dalit Christians: A History. Delhi: ISPCK, 1992.

The colonial period

Bayly, C. A. Indian Society and the Making of British India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Boxer, C. R. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415—1825. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Boxer, C. R. Portuguese Society in the Tropics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.

Copland, Ian. India 1857—1947: The Unmaking of an Empire. London: Longman, 2001.

Dirks, Nicholas. ed. Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Fisher, Michael. Indirect Rule in India. Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Gopal, S. British Policy in India, 1858—1905. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

Lewis, M. D. ed. The British in India: Imperialism or Trusteeship? Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Parry, B. Delusions and Discoveries: Studies on India in the British Imagination, 1880—1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

Philips, C. H. The East India Company. 1784—1834. Second edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961.

Stokes, Eric. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

Trautmann, Thomas. Aryans and British India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

The Indian experience (pre-independence)

Ambedkar, B. R. The Buddha and the Dhamma. Third edition. Bombay: Siddarth Publications, 1984.

Baljon, J. M. S. The Reforms and Religious Ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Leiden: Mouton & Co., 1949.

Brown, D. Mackenzie. The Nationalist Movement: Indian Political Thought prom Ranade to Bhave. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.

Chakravarty, Amiya. ed. A Tagore Reader. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.

Crawford, S. C. Ram Mohan Roy: Social, Political and Religious Reform in Nineteenth Century India. New York: Paragon House, 1987.

Fischer, L. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. Bombay: Bharata Vidya Bhavan, 1959.

Gandhi, M. K. An Autobiography. The Story of my Experiments with Truth. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

Ghose, Aurobindo. A Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.

Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Harischandra, Vasudha Dalmia. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions. Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Hawley, J. S. ed. Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Widows in India. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Hay, S. ed. Sources of Indian Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Heimsath, C. H. Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Jones, Kenneth. Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Jones, Kenneth W. ed. Religious Controversy in British India. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. Keer, Dhananjay. Dr. Ambedkar Life and Mission. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1990. Kopf, D. British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773—1834. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

Kopf, D. The Brahmo Samaij and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Lavan, Spencer. The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective. New Delhi: Manohar, 1974.

Lelyveld, D. Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

McLane, J. R. Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Metcalf, Thomas R. The Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857-1870. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Oddie, G. A. ed. Religion in South Asia: Religious Conversion and Revival Movements in South Asia in Medieval and Modern Times. London: Curzon Press, 1977.

Robinson, F. Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces: Muslims, 1860-1923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Whitehead, H. The Village Gods of South India. Second edition. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1988.

Wolpert, Stanley A. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

Young, Richard Fox. Resistant Hinduism. Vienna: E. J. Brill, 1981.