The Indian response

It is clear that these “streams” from the West and especially the coming of British colonialism and Christianity had a permanent impact on the Indian landscape. Ironically, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the civilizations flourishing in India exceeded those of Europe in most respects.

Once the British established control over some three-fifths of the sub­continent, a certain degree of stability did ensue.

Stage one

One of the early responses was that of a radical critique, even toward secularization, by some young Anglicized Indians. Henry de Rozio (1809— 31), an Anglo-Indian Bengali, was a case in point. Writing poetry at the age of seventeen, and assistant to a headmaster at a Christian college, he called upon young Indians to join him in seeking radical change from unreflected traditions. De Rozio lived only briefly, but his work exemplified one approach in shaping a new era.²³

Perhaps more common was the approach that sought reform. Ram Mohun Roy (1772-1833) became a leader in seeking change in the indigenous landscape while retaining what were thought to be the best principles of the Indian heritage.²⁴ Often called the “Father of Modern India,” Roy retired at the age of forty-two to devote his life to his causes. He had studied Persian, Sanskrit, and English, had met Unitarians and Deists in England and in Calcutta, and interacted with the Baptist missionaries of Serampore. He favored the use of the English medium in public education and believed cooperation with the British would bring new opportunities to India.

The Samaj survived for several generations, for a while under the leader­ship of Debindranath Tagore (1817-84) who tended toward an internal­ization of religion, and Keshub Chandra Sen (1834-84) whose ideas, in fact, led to a split and eventual decline of the Samaj. Sen believed it important to practice fidelity to the throne of England and receive Western art and science in exchange for sharing with the world the wisdom of India’s ancients. He spoke of an “Asiatic Christ” who was the quintessential human and the culmination of Asian wisdom. The “church” of the future would espouse a god who inspires both quiet meditation (Hinduism) and fervent service (Islam and Christianity). The religion would be universal, yet reflect the values of each culture.²⁵

A far more conservative approach to the British presence was that of Dayananda Sarasvati (1824-1883). A Gujarati brahman brought up some­what more removed from the British centers at Calcutta and Bombay, he nonetheless became disenchanted in his early years with certain popular forms of Hinduism such as the use of iconography, and determined to become an ascetic and seek the truth. His understanding of Hinduism and its need for change was that it ought not to be indebted to Western models, but to the Vedas.

Stage two

From the mid- to the late nineteenth century, a number of developments marked the Indian landscape. One of these was the strengthening of a sense of Indian nationalism. Ironically, fueled in part by the nationalisms of Europe, it took at least two forms. The first was a moderate effort to nudge the British to more responsive policies and Indians to various forms of self­reform. Nairoji (1825-1917), for example, a Parsl graduate of Elphinstone College, moved to England in 1855 where he was eventually elected to the British parliament (1892) to represent a section of London. He continually sought to urge the crown to redress the financial exploitation of India and to provide her more political representation.²⁷

Similarly, two Maharashtrian brahmans were active in this form of moderate nationalism. Ranade (1842-1901) worked toward certain social reforms - the elimination of child marriage and the increase of women’s rights among others.

Ranade’s friend and follower Gohhale (1866-1915) similarly fought for certain causes: famine relief, Hindu-Muslim unity, and elevation of the “lower classes” among them. At the same time, he attacked the British policy of taxation that did not yield economic benefit for Indians. He became active in the Indian National Congress, which in 1883 became the official organ through which Indians would work toward independence.²⁹

In some cases, the nationalism was more militant. Another Maharashtrian brahman, B. G. Tilak (1856-1920) illustrated that pattern well. Tilak was a

judge who succeeded in politicizing religion and linking it to the common people. He evoked the Bhagavadgita; the role of Sivaji, the Marathi warrior, and Rama to legitimate violence in the name of political freedom.³⁰ Two of Tilak’s enterprises illustrate his approach. The first was in the form of a play performed for the first time in 1907, in which he recast a story of the Mahabharata as an anti-British drama. Draupadi was India seized by Kichaka (Britain). Yudisthara (the “moderate”) counseled caution. Bhima (the “extremist”) insisted Kichaka must be slain. In due course Bhima, in the form of Bhairava, Siva’s terrible manifestation, descended to strangle Kichaka and free Draupadi.

The second of Tilak’s ploys was the way in which he popularized and politicized the Ganesa Chathurthi festival. The festival had been observed largely within homes until Tilak had it performed publicly in 1894. The celebration of Ganesa’s birthday became a venue for the performance of Hindu myths in public, for processions that often passed through Muslim sections of town, and for the denunciation of “mlecchas” (i.e., “barbarians” or “foreigners”) - especially British as well as Muslims.³¹ In 1895, some Muslims who found the procession and its songs to be offensive as it passed a mosque rushed out and engaged in a scuffle resulting in at least one death.

Yet another form of religio-political nationalism was that found in the writings of the Bengali brahman, poet, and dramatist, B. C. Chatterjee (1838-94). Just as Tilak had written in his vernacular, Marathi, so Chatterjee used the Bengali language and religious idiom to rally the public to a sense of regional and national pride. Kali, the mother goddess of Bengal was equated to Bengal itself. The motherland was the place where pristine Hinduism would be restored and the British and Muslims alike would be ousted.³²

Neo-bhakti

Quite apart from the explicitly nationalistic revival of religion, one finds by the end of the nineteenth century, a resurgence of religious piety or neo­bhakti. One form this took was the emergence of gurus and mystics offering an internalized form of religion. The popular and controversial Bengali Ramakrishna (1834-86) represented this model. A devotee of Kali, he was endowed with a capacity for trance perceived as a form of “god-intoxication” and a charismatic personality which attracted disciples who were more formally educated than he. He was perceived to be the epitome of sainthood and the model of religion at its most positive.³³ One of his best-known disciples was Vivekananda (1863-1902), who combined his Western edu­cation with piety. He became one of the first “missionaries” to North America, establishing Vedanta centers in several cities in the eastern United States.³⁴ He was also responsible for reforming and “classicizing” temples around India. Near Srinagar, Kashmir, for example, he was said to be instru­mental in transforming a shrine to a tantric, even demonic, deity into a vegetarian goddess who came to be known as Kir Bhavani (Lady of the Place of Sweet Milk).³⁵

Other such reformers/pietists dotted the Indian landscape. Upgrading or establishing centers for meditation and worship, many sought to apply Western technology (e.g., print media) in reinterpreting various religious movements. Bhaktivinoda Thakur, for example, sought to recover and enliven the Gaudia Vaisnava movement in Bengal (the sect associated with Caitanya) and make it more attractive and accessible to an emerging middle class of urbanized Bengalis. His work included the creation of a pilgrimage site, of centers for meditation and scholarly work, and literature articulating a “modern” expression of Caitanya’s message.³⁶

The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the resurgence of religion in various forms. Renovations were made to temples, pilgrimages were encouraged, and the festival and ritual life associated with such centers increased. Often associated with these renovations was the recovery and publishing of classical literatures in the vernacular languages and the increased popularity of deities with strong regional ties - such as Kali in Bengal; Ganesa and Vithoba in Maharashtra; and Murukan in Tamil Nadu. In addition, the religions of folk communities became increasingly visible as transportation and communication improved. “Folk deities,” such as Mariamman, the goddess of smallpox in Tamil Nadu, were often ascribed an anti-British mythology. (For example, when a British surveyor came to a particular village to plan for the construction of a railroad through it, Mariamman is said to have knocked him from his horse and made him change his plans.³⁷) Increasingly, such temples as those of Mariamman were assigned brahman priests and the “folk” goddess was linked to the classical tradition. Yet, at the same time, there was, in some quarters (as in Tamil Nadu), increased anti-brahman sentiment to the point that non-brahman communities sought to develop a cultic life that could emulate brahmanical religion without benefit of a brahman priest. By the 1920s, India’s cultic life had mushroomed geometrically as roads and railroads made pilgrimage centers more accessible to more common folk. By then, India’s fourth major surge of bhakti had taken hold; like its three predecessors, this movement combined several elements at once: responding to but selectively appro­priating from alternative options; selectively appropriating indigenous and vernacular forms of mythology, theology, and cultus; and using the idiom and technology of the times to restate a sense of heritage and identity. A new India, religiously and politically, was dawning.

Muslim responses to coloniality

In the context of British hegemony, Muslims were faced with a triple dilemma: political, economic, and religious. No longer having access to patronage in the courts of the Mughals, many Muslims were unsure where to turn to find a political haven where Islamic principles could be applied, and where economic opportunity could be found. In the face of political and economic decline, what did it mean to be Muslim? Surely Allah did not let his people down. Where does one turn for renewal of a sense of one’s heritage?

Even before the British came to power these questions were arising in the mind of Shah Wall-Allah (1703-62). He was aware of increasing Hindu revivalism, but also the movement associated with al-Wahhab in Saudi Arabia. Working with the Saudi royal house, al-Wahhab had purged the Arabian peninsula of elements considered inappropriate to Islam and installed a puritanical form of the religion. Wall-Allah’s response in India was to seek greater harmony amongst Muslims and attempt a moral and religious “reform” based on the Qu‘ran. He helped translate the Qu‘ran into Urdu, calling upon Muslims in India to return to the pristine form of their religion. He was not opposed to using military action against other militants, and attempted to get Afghani help against the Marathas.³⁸

Within two generations, Wall-Allah’s influence had led to the estab­lishment of a mujahidin (an Islamic militia), especially in Afghanistan wherein jihad became an article of faith. Under Sayyid Ahmed Barelwi, Islamic courts were established and Muslims were encouraged to eschew “Hindu” practices. Especially in Bengal, several conservative movements were spawned which sought to distinguish Muslim from Hindu and con­fronted Hindu landlords and the British administration. Saiyid Ahmed Khan (1786-1831), similarly, set a goal of returning to the “pristine Islam” of the past and declared India to be a “land of warfare” (dar al-harb) as opposed to a land of peace (dar al-islam). Jihad could appropriately be invoked (as by Afghans on the Sikhs in the Panjab). Indeed, it was some of Saiyid Khan’s followers who were involved in the “Sepoy Mutiny.”³⁹

After the rebellion, there was some change in strategy. Urdu was flourish­ing in such places as Lucknow and had become the language of culture and of some colleges. Especially instrumental in setting this new tone was a different Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98). Khan was impressed by the reforms undertaken in earlier eras of Islam - especially those of al-Malmun, the fifth ‘Abbasid caliph. By the mid-eighth century, al-Malmtin had made Baghdad a center of philosophy, science, the arts, and a place where the Qu‘ran and philosophy were apparently reconciled under Hanafi scholarship. Ahmad Khan also saw Egypt and Turkey as nations where modernization was successfully occurring in his own time. Accordingly, Khan argued that Muslims needed the British and vice versa. Education in the arts and sciences would help Muslims compete; further, he argued, Islam was not incom­patible with other forms of knowledge insofar as Allah is the source of all truth and nature is the work of Allah. Muslims and Hindus should be able to get along, as both were the products of migration centuries before, though now both groups were indigenous to the subcontinent. India was like a beautiful bride, with two eyes, one Hindu, one Muslim.⁴⁰

Khan’s attempts at reconciliation led to the founding of Aligarh College where both the “Western” sciences and Islam were taught and where the Aligarh movement was spawned. The movement did inspire a number of Muslims to take advantage of Western forms of education, and led to the founding of colleges in various parts of India where Muslims could study the sciences. Yet Ahmad Khan’s “modernism” either spawned other reactions, or developed alongside some that were more conservative.

One of these developments was the founding of Deoband Madrasa (Seminary) in 1867, which sought to re-establish contact between the Muslim middle classes and classical Islam. Its theological positions were decidedly orthodox; indeed, the school received some visibility in recent years as a major source of Islamic education for the advisers to militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Talibans. Other conservative reactions included the work of Sayyid Amin (1840-1928) who developed an apologetic on behalf of Islam, and Nawwab Saddiq and Hassan Khan, who, while writing in Urdu, led a movement known as ahli-hadith wherein innovation was condemned as being contrary to the sunna.⁴

In the meanwhile, there were also other responses: Nu’mani, for example, founded a school in Lucknow in 1894, which contributed to Indo-Islamic studies and published more “liberal” scholarship. Pietism was yet another response. Hali (1837-1914), for example, a Sufi poet and saint, continued the tradition of Sufi mystical poetry expressed in the Urdu ghazal wherein religion is internalized. There was, in addition, even the creation of a new Islamic sect. It was founded by one Mirza Ghulani Ahmad of Qadiyan (1839-1908), who proclaimed himself both the Messiah and the Mahdi (who was the expected “redeemer” at the end of history). He was presented as an incarnation of both Krsna and Christ. His followers came to be known as the Ahmadiyah movement, which sought to defend Islam against the polemics of the Arya Samaj and Christian missionaries while co-opting elements from both religious traditions. They maintained, for example, thatJesus had come to India and was buried in Kashmir.⁴²

Inter-religious relations: conciliation and confrontation

As evident from the preceding discussions, relationships between religious communities were often fragile in the mid- and late nineteenth century. Without doubt, these relationships were at times confrontational. On the Muslim side, for one, there were occasional outbreaks of hostility. In the 1850s, for example, in what were apparently the first Hindu-Muslim skirmishes in Ayodhya, the Sunnis (some one third of the city’s population at the time) led battles against entrenched Hindu warring ascetics on the grounds that a Muslim pilgrimage site had been taken over by Hindus. Some militant Hindus, for their part, were known to “bait” Muslims: in 1893, a Cow Protection Movement was launched (the first of several) trying to prevent Muslims from slaughtering cows; and in the mid-1890s, the Arya Samaj launched its attempt to reconvert Muslims. The situation was exacerbated by certain British policies wherein caste and religious distinctions were highlighted: identity cards were issued which indicated a person’s caste and religion; a quota system was used to assign places in the civil service; and certain communities were granted permission to follow their own laws, not least important, Muslims who were permitted the right to follow the shan‘a. This last policy led to protests by some Hindus in 1907 and thereafter. These policies, in general, tended to lead to the creation of power blocs based on caste or religion and to the phenomenon known in India as communalism⁴³ - the propensity to make the values of one’s “community” more important than those of any other community, including those of the nation-state itself.

One response on the part of Muslim leaders was that of calling for a separate electorate for Muslims. Even the moderate Ahmad Khan had worried that because Muslims were only 20 percent of the subcontinent’s population, they would be unable to find appropriate representation in the face of the majority. In 1906, the Muslim League was founded to press for demands that Muslims be elected from separate Muslim electorates and that the percentage of these be higher than the percentage of the population.⁴⁴ In light of these developments, the contribution of Muhammed All and Muhammad Iqbal are apropos.

Muhammed All (1878-1931) was born of a conservative Muslim family, studied at Aligarh College and at Oxford. In England, he observed the results of British hegemony over other Islamic areas and the decline of the Ottoman empire. This increased his resistance to the British, especially during the First World War for which he was incarcerated. Mahatma Gandhi sought his release; subsequently, he became an admirer and ally of Gandhi, working for a united and independent India. He believed cooperation between Hindu and Muslim was essential and that non-violence was the way to self­rule. Hindus, he argued, needed to understand that Muslims were trying to catch up economically and politically, and that Muslims were a people of two identities, one fully Indian and, like Hindus, waiting to be free, the other “supernational” shaped by the principles of Islam.⁴⁵

Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938), a native of Panjab, was trained in law, continental philosophy, and Islamics. Less the activist than the poet and thinker, Iqbal argued that Islam’s contribution to the world was its belief in the unity of humankind, its abhorrence of injustice, and its insistence that the self be developed to its fullest extent. At the same time, Islam needed to embrace the modern world and rethink its fundamental message in light of contemporary thought. One such rethinking lay in how Islamic principles could be applied in a democratic state: the classical Sunni principle of ijma‘ (consensus of the ‘ulama¹) could be the basis for parliamentary govern­ment - that is, consensus by an elected body. His poetry, in both Urdu and Persian, was rich in expressing his beliefs - that love, for example, was the basis, not for quiescence, but for “righteous action” for the betterment of humankind; that the self was the gift of God and deserved to be free and conscious of the fullness of life’s values.⁴⁶

Relationships between Christians and Hindus were also fragile at times, though they seldom took on violent form into the early twentieth century. More often, the confrontations were intellectual. Two illustrations will suffice.

John Wilson was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary in Bombay from 1829-75. He helped establish a college and schools in English and Marathi, and, together with his wife, the first school for girls in Bombay in 1832. Wilson was also a scholar who became comfortable in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindustani, Hebrew, Portuguese, Persian, Sanskrit, and Arabic. His style, nonetheless, was confrontational, as he would write pamphlets and offer lectures, challenging intellectuals of Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim communities to rethink the essential nature of religion. When two Parsis were converted in 1839, and a brahman in 1843, responses were generated especially amongst the brahmans of Bombay. The more conservative group, led by a man named Prabhu, came to oppose attendance at mission schools and re-entry into caste after such attendance. By the late 1840s, they published journals in Marathi and Gujarati, defending Hinduism, resisting change, and calling for a return to orthoprax ritual activities. A more “progressive” group led by Sastri took a different tack: they believed re-entry into caste was possible after contact; they espoused social reform, and the rethinking of Hindu “essentials.” Some studied Hindu classics more deeply in order to defend it more adequately, and to reject those practices not deemed consistent with “vaidika” tradition.⁴⁷

The other illustration follows from the writings of John Muir (1810-82), a Scottish administrator in the East India Company and maverick lay theo­logian. His writings in “church Sanskrit” reflected a “theology” of concilia­tion, in which he sought to present Christianity as an expression of “truth” through rational discourse. He sought to convey a “benign humanism” which entailed empathy and scholarly knowledge of his intended audience, in this case Hindus. In his writings, he presented the idea of “God” and “true religion” in ways consistent with a Christian perspective.

Responses to Muir’s work were of several kinds: a moderate Maharashtrian brahman (Somanatha), for example, concurred that moksa (enlightenment) is possible in non-Hindu religions so long as one follows the scripture of that religion. A more virulent response, that of a Calcutta brahman (Haracandra), was to castigate Muir as a prejudiced and blind infidel, and critiqued Christianity for its newness, its sectarianism, and imperiousness, as well as its naivete (for accepting such “legends” as those of the virgin birth as “true”).⁴⁸

Out of the responses emerged a Hindu apologetic shaped in contra­distinction to Christianity. The principles of this defense included the following ideas: 1) Sanatana dharma was more ancient than Christianity, hence more true. 2) The fundamental human problem was epistemologi­cal (that is not knowing the truth) rather than moral. Indeed, the concept of “original sin” was deemed illogical and unjust. 3) Hinduism was a religion with a variously adaptable deity (rather than one confined to a single revelatory moment) and its various viewpoints (darsana) afforded flexibility for different types of people. 4) The Hindu goal of moksa was superior to any idea of a literal heaven. 5) Vedic authority was beyond question and brahmanhood was authentic inasmuch as it was rooted in karma.⁴⁹

Despite such confrontations, there were also accommodations and bor­rowings between the communities. On the Christian side, there was adaptation of Sanskrit and vernacular terminology to express Christian ideas; the appropriation of such institutions as the ashram for meditation and study; and the appropriation of local accretions in the celebration of festi­vals and rituals, especially within Catholic circles. Not least important, there was some reinterpretation of basic Christian ideas. Hence, one would find some Christian thinkers expressing the nature of the Christ figure in terms that reflected the Indian landscape: as the “bringer of a new created order” (Chenchiah); the paradigmatic guru and true avatara of the divine (Chakkarai); and the “eternal om” and personality who embodies ahimsa (S. Jesudason).⁵⁰ In addition, there were those upper-class Christians who sought to retain caste identities after conversion (despite missionary protests), and some who became partners with other Indians to fight for freedom and human dignity. Some Hindus, for their part, borrowed from Christianity. There was emulation of aspects of Christian ethics that were, nonetheless, simultaneously rediscovered in their own ancient sources: for example, a spirit of egalitarianism, and self-giving service. Institutions of social activism were formed. Strategies of communication (e.g., street preaching and printing pamphlets) were often borrowed from Christian propagandists.⁵¹ Not least important, there was a co-opting of Christian ideas and making these consistent with Hindu traditions. Thus, Hindus could speak of Christ as “true guru” (Subba Rao), the “perfect god-man” (Brahmandero), and exemplary renunciant, oriental avatara, and embodi­ment of “true religion” (Vivekananda), or the yogin par excellence (Swami Akhilananda).⁵²