Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 13 Article 9

2000 Hindu Occidentalism Tinu Ruparell

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Recommended Citation Ruparell, Tinu (2000) "Hindu Occidentalism," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 13, Article 9. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1229

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Ruparell: Hindu Occidentalism

Hindu Occidentalism

Tinu Ruparell Liverpool Hope University College

ON A RESEARCH trip through India one open the door to an imperial history many of my goals was to talk to Hindu scholars Hindus wish to leave behind.4 Just how about their views of Christianity and in par­ much this explains Hindu reticence to ticular Hindu-Christian dialogue. Though I partake in dialogue with Christians may be visited numerous Universities, Colleges, and debated. However the legacy of imperialism maths, I found very few Hindus who took cannot be ignored by those interested in any interest at all in the doctrinal conversa­ Hindu-Christian studies, and the concept of tion between religions then characteristic of Orientalism is key, I suggest, to under­ interreligious dialogue. Time and again I standing this legacy. In what follows I shall, was told by these distinguished and erudite therefore, focus on the Orientalist critique. academics that they were not interested in Edward Said's pivotal 1978 work, Hindu-Christian dialogue. While this may Orientalism5 brought the political implica­ have been due to a failure on my part to ask tions of Western academic study of the East the right sorts of questions, or simply my into sharp focus, and in so doing did much bad luck in not having found willing to instigate a new reflexivity in comparative academics, later discussions with colleagues studies of religion. While the orientalist - Indian, European, and North American - critique has been applied with much rigour echoed this experience and supported the to Western treatments of the East, less has view, held by my Indian "informants", that . been done the other way, that is on Eastern interreligious dialogue is a rather Christian negotiations with the West. This paper aims habit. 1 to subject Hindu understandings of Chris­ This experience begs the question of tianity to some of the hermeneuti.cs of why Hindus (at least the ones to whom I suspicion found in the orientalist critique. spoke) are not interested in discussing with What I hope to show are the outlines of Christians their respective views of God and "Hindu Occidentalism". 6 .the transcendent. In· such a religiously Immediately the question arises: does soaked and pluralist context, one might ex­ not "Hindu accidentalism" imply a false pect Hindus, of all people, to b~ most keen Indian political advantage in its dealings to debate the finer points of theology with with the West? If Orientalism is to be any and all people of faith.2 Now, for some understood according to Said's three central it may be that interreligious dialogue per se characterizations of it - namely that studies carries unfortunate·. connotations.3 More of the Orient have been conducted by likely, however, is the possibility that inter­ "experts" (primarily in the humanities religious dialogue with particular faith disciplines); that it is predicated on an traditions is, for many Hindus, redolent with epistemological and ontological distinction the history of empire. Recent nationalist between Orient and Occident; and most Hindu political rhetoric and indeed inter­ importantly that it is a "corporate" religious violence seem to reflect deep­ phenomenon, in till!-t Orientalism represents seated attitudes towards the non-Hindu a conglomeration of attitudes, presup­ Other in India. To enter into interreligious positions, practices, structures, bureau­ dialogue with Christians may thus be to cracies, mythology, literature and, crucially,

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academic disciplines, corralled for the thoroughly modernist. manipulation and control of the oriental This kind of discursive control or 7 Other - then how is it that the colonized power acts independently of imperial Hindu traditions can exercise the kind of domination since it is primarily an act of epistemological control over the Christian autochthonous interpretation. However, this West implied by the term Occidentalism? ill does not mean that it is not affected by other words is "Occidentalism" necessarily imperial power. The Hindu reformers and linked, as. Orientalism seems to be, with apologists were, of course, responding to a imperial power? My response to this must perceived threat and did so in terms be negative. However, the question does understandable to their rulers. In this sense serve to distinguish at the outset what the basic "ground rules" or criteria of Occidentalism might mean in the Hindu relevance were Western and Christian, and context. thus the discourse of the imperialists A key point to note is that the forcibly transformed/3 at least to some Oriental/Occidental distinction works for extent, that of the subjugated. Still, one both sides of its imposed divide: each polar cannot deny that Hindu responses to opposite serves to reflect the other. Said Western, Christian domination are argues· that the Orient served (and to some legitimate responses, nor should one make extent still serves) as the rhetorical or the mistake of imagining that these imaginative alter-egoS of Western man, but responses were not forms of resistance - a surely the same can be said for Hindus. Just point made very forcefully by the subaltern as the Orient is, in V. G. Kiernan's charac­ collective.14 These responses created, I terization, "Europe's collective daydream",9 ~ suggest, an "interstitial discourse", or what the Occident also plays a rhetorical role in Said calls a median category.IS Hindu the imagination and rhetoric of Hindus. responses to Christian or other foreign Hindu responses to the foreign, and traditions might thus be understood as both particularly Christian, mleccha are reflective interpretations or negotiations of the Other, of their own taxonomies, identities, myths, as well as redescriptions of their own and social structures - indeed, how could traditions in the light of the Other. It is on they not be so? Moreover, I suggest that these interpretations and redescriptions that such responses arise from a position of Occidentalist presuppositions bear. Like relative strength and autonomy unallied with Orientalism, Hindu Occidentalism applies a imperial domination. Hindu views of "other conglomeration of attitudes, practices, pre­ religions" will naturally work to organize suppositions, and social and academic the Other into manageable categories of structures on its object for the purposes of their own design since, as Said admits, this controlling or manipulating it. ill so doing it domestication of the exotic occurs between effects the redescription of both its object all societies.10 By and large, in the case of and itself. It is to these specific beliefs and the Hindu colonized such management in practices that we now tum. response to their Christian colonizers has of What were the categories Hindus used course not been conducted from a position in negotiating Christianity? Mention has of political strength.ll Nevertheless, by already been made of the term mleccha, necessity, there is a relative, non-coercive generally used to refer to the foreign as power implicit in the act of categorizing, such, which Halbfass defines as pertaining such that the categorist has discursive to "the violation of fundamental norms, as control over the categorized. Such control deficiency, deviation and lack of value".16 can clearly be seen in the texts of the Other terms, such as yavana, purasxka, and reformers in what is called the Hindu raumaka may have referred to particular Renaissance of the nineteenth and early groups or peoples, the Ionians, Persians, and twentieth centuries.12 It is the power of Romans respectively.17 These were general­ systematicians and theorists, and it is ly terms of opprobrium and served to

http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol13/iss1/9 2 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1229 Ruparell: Hindu Occidentalism 28 Tinu Ruparell

maintain the attitude of silence and evasion Europe is politically mighty and materially characteristic of classical Hindu attitudes to wealthy, it is poor in spirit. Vivekananda the alien, which Paul Hacker described as held that Hindus, of all people, are spiritual "passIve . m . t 0 I erance." 18 More interesting for experts and it is thus their "duty" to enter our purposes is the Hinduization of extrinsic into a transaction with the West: religious concepts and identities. This is Therefore it is fitting that whenever where Hindu Occidentalism is most ap­ there is spiritual adjustment, it should parent in its homogenizing inclusivism and come from the Orient. It is also fitting eclecticism, which we shall consider in turn. that when the Oriental wants to learn The universalizing and accommodating about machine-making, he should sit at nature of Hinduism, its inherent flexibility the feet of the Occidental and learn and multiperspectivalism can be praised and from him. When the Occident wants to criticized in almost equal measure. Julius learn about the spirit, about god, about the soul, about the meaning and the Lipner construes this multi-perspectival mystery of the universe, then he must polycentrism, what he calls Hindutta, in sit at the feet of the Orient and learn?' terms of a positive, dynamic tension. 19 In The fact that Vivekananda saw' this as a Radhakrishnan's hands, however the same . ' transaction - a deal - points to the second inclusivist nature is valorized as sanatana characteristic of Hindu Occidentalism: its dharma, the Hindu philosophia perennis and eclecticism. While clearly most Hindu essence of all religion. Radhakrishnan's responses to Christianity rejected wholesale construal of sanatana dharma rhetorically acceptance, there did seem to be an ad­ validates Hinduism's "swallowing up" of its mission that the religion of the Europeans competitors. In my analysis Radha­ i ~ould be of benefit to India. The primary krishnan's "median categories" are merely mterest seemed to lie in realm of social dis~sed Hindu genera and thus openly ethics, though this is not to say that Hindus avaIlable to control and manipulation. As a did not have their own moral systems. tool for dealing with the Other, sanatanist Rather the kind of ethics for which Hindus Hinduism clearly vitiates the alterity of looked to European Christianity was one Christian traditions, and this seems to have suitable for modernity. In this sense the been the dominant mode of negotiation with Hindu ~ricoleur collected from Christianity the Other ininodern times.20 The negative that WhICh could remake hislher Hinduism aspects of what I am calling Hindu Occi­ into a modern religion.22 This eclectic dentalism here become apparent: if borrowing is, however, already a sign of Orientalism constructed a mythical East in modernity. The decontextualization required order to ease and justify its political and for picking and choosing certain religious economic subjugation by the colonial elements from their proper homes presup­ powers, the image of an inclusivist, uni­ poses that such a process does no harm to versalized Hinduism raised in apologetic the element extracted, implying that these response, and which still holds sway not elem~nts ha~e an intrinsic, free-floating least in India, made possible the view of the meamng. Wnt large this view is crucial to West as morally and spiritually bankrupt and the fragmentation of discourses charac­ in need of India's greater religious wisdom teristic ofmodernity?3 to birth its own spiritual epiphany. In being So we have two main Occidentalist colonized, Hinduism is ironically the attitudes apparent in modem Hindu res­ Christian West's saviour .. ponses to the Christian West. The homo­ This attitude is nowhere better exem­ genizing inclusivism of sanatana dharma plified than in the writing and preaching of allows Hindus ~o incorporate alterior Vivekananda. Like Keshab Chandra Sen religious traditions into their own highly before him, Vivekananda sees it as Hindu de~elope~ hierarchical tropologies, thus India's mission to be the corrective and eVIscerating them of any threatening power. complement of the Christian West. Where

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Eclecticism, on the other hand, temporarily ly open-ended and thus indeterminate, a postpones inclusion in order to identify and space can be formed for mutual trans­ extract specific elements of the foreign formation which is non-coercive and non­ religion or culture for its own use. These exploitative.24 What I am proposing is that modes of negotiation are cloaked in the those interested in Hindu-Christian dialogue rhetoric of religious tolerance and uni­ pragmatically and imaginatively reconstruct versality, allied to an attitude of almost the categories through which the Other is I messianic . duty to guide, instruct, and approached by the full use of novel encourage the spiritually moribund West. metaphors. The interstitial space in which Surely these are worthy Occidentalist these median categories are to be re­ counterparts to their Orientalist modes of constructed can thus become a kind of manipulation and SUbjugation. poetic "hybridization laboratory" where Now lest it be thought that Hindu religious traditions can transform and be responses to the Christian Other are through transformed by the Other. The "laboratory and through Occidentalist, let me suggest, technicians" for these hybridizations will be very briefly, how it might be transformed men and women of good will, who risk into the starting point of a much more open imaginative experiments with their own and mutually beneficial process. traditions in the face of an Other, in a search The eclecticism and inclusivism reveal­ for greater understanding of their own ed in the sanatanist response to the Christian tradition or the partial creation of a novel West highlights the malleability of its one. Their success can be measured ac­ median categories. Being universalist there cording to the criteria of the communities of are potentially no aspects of the Other which which they are already a part, or of those cannot be accommodated, and being re­ which they help through their experiments to interpretative in character, the categories can forge. This method holds, I suggest, the be fashioned to whichever ends are required. possibility of cOImnunication across cultural This shows a deep pragmatism running boundaries which avoids the pitfalls of through Hindu attitudes towards Christians Orientalism and Occidentalism and the and others. The specific contours of Hindu promise of greater success in the search for responses were geared towards the needs of truth wherever it may be found. the day, be thafnation building, theological apologetics, or passive intolerance. In .all cases there exists manipulation and control Notes of the categories of negotiation for the benefit of the Hindu. This is, in the end, the 1. Indeed, when I visited scholars and teachers crux of Hindu Occidentalism. However it at various Christian institutions in India, also allows for a rapprochement. The very discussion of these questions proved much malleability of median categories allows for more fruitful. a pragmatic redirection of the Orientalistl 2. My claim here applies primarily to the modem situation, as historically the primary Occidentalist methodology. If we take the Hindu attitude towards foreigners was pragmatism of such negotiations seriously silence and evasion. See Wilhelm Halbfass's we can mould our median categories to India and Europe: An Essay in another end. Understanding, (Albany NY: SUNY, 1988), These median categories can, I suggest, p.182. form the truly interstitial locus for the 3. For arguments against interreligious mutual transformations inherent in Orien­ dialogue per se, see John Milbank's "The talism and Occidentalism. Ifthese categories End of Dialogue" in Gavin D'Costa (ed.) are manipulated not specifically for the Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, interests of one religion or the other but (Maryknoll: Orbis books, 1990). rather, through the use of metaphorical 4. Interestingly I did not encounter the same predication, allowed to remain fundamental-

http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol13/iss1/9 4 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1229 Ruparell: Hindu Occidentalism 30 Tinu Rupare11

reticence to discuss issues ansmg from conspired to elicit an (Hindu) Indian· Hindu-Muslim relations. This may simply response to (Christian) Europe in Western be due to the larger number of Muslims in philosophical terms. which partially India, but it also might reflect the greater instigated the Hindu renaissance. See historical and mnemonic distance from Halbfass's India and Europe, chapter 11. Muslim domination of India. The reality of 12. Ram Mohan Roy and Sarvepali Radha­ Mogul imperialism is, despite its many krishnan are two among many Hindu legacies, relegated to history in a way that apologists to exercise this control. Using the scarcely 50-year-old departure of the Western philosophical and religious terms British Raj cannot be. Moreover the and categories, often very much indebted to Indianization of Muslim culture has the Hegelian tradition and German arguably been far more successful than for romanticism, they reinterpreted their own European culture. traditions for Western and indigenous 5. Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: consumption, and in the process mapped Vintage books, 1979). both Hinduism and Christianity onto their 6. While "Occidentalism" may not be the most own map of faiths. Radhakrishnan might appropriate nor the most elegant of thus, in his Hindu View of Life and An monikers, it does serve to highlight the bi­ Idealist View of Life, be seen as an early directionality of Orientalism. As suggested theologian of religions. ir.l many responses to Said's work, the 13. See Talal Asad, "The Concept of Cultural Western study of the orient was not merely Transformation in British Social Anthro­ one-way, assuming an altogether passive pology", in James Clifford and George E. Eastern recipient, but is better understood as Marcus, (eds.), Writing Culture.: The Poetics a conversation, albeit by politically unequal and Politics of Ethnography, (Berkeley and partners. See J. J. Clarke's Oriental En­ London: University of California Press, lightenment: The Encounter between Asian 1986), pp. 157-8. and Western Thought, (London: Routledge, 14. This collective was largely made up of 1997) for an illuminating analysis of this Indian academics who sought consciously to "conversation" . rewrite Indian historiography from the point 7. Orientalism, pp. 2-3. of view of the marginalized. See Ranajit 8. Ibid., p. 58 Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (ed.) 9. V. G. Kiernan, Lords ofHuman Kind: Black Selected Subaltern Studies, (Oxford; OUP, Man, Yellow Man, and White Man in an Age 1988). of Empire, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 15. Said,· Orientalism, p. 58. I have developed 1969), p. 151. As quoted by Said, Orien­ the idea of an interstitial discourse in "A talism, p. 52. Elements of this daydream Methodology for Interreligious Theo­ include the supposed mystic, inscrutable, logizing: Toward an Interstitial Theology", backward, hedonistic, irrational, and ARC 23 (Montreal: McGill University recidivist qualities imputed of the oriental. Press, 1995) and more fully in my forth­ 10. Orientalism, p. 60. coming Dialogue and Hybridify (Albany: 11. This is not to say that Hindu societies have SUNY Press, 2001). , from the outset been "on the back foot" in 16. Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 176. their relations with Christian societies. As 17. Ibid., p. 184. noted above, Wilhelm Halbfass, in tracing 18. Paul Hacker, Kleine Schriften, ed. L. traditional Indian "xenology", begins with Schmithausen, (Wiesbaden: Glasenapp­ the comment that traditional Hinduism has Stiftung, 1978), p. 380. As quoted by not reached out for the West, implying that Halbfass, India and Europe, p. 181. wilful ignorance has been the dominant 19. Julius Lipner, "Ancient Banyan: An Inquiry Indian attitude toward others. This has been into the Meaning of 'Hindu-ness' ", punctuated by periods where Hindus, Religious Studies, March 1996, p. 28 exercising greater power than the foreigners, 20. Halbfass India and Europe, chapter 11. positively discriminated against them, Richard King argues similarly in his though by relatively passive means. He goes Orientalism and' Religion: Postcolonial on to say, however, that by 1800 the foreign Theory, India and "The Mystic East", presence in India coupled with the (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 136. establishment of the field of orientalism 21. Vivekananda, Complete Works, vol. IV.,

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I (Calcutta: Mayavati Memorial edition), 23. See Weber's introduction to his Collected 1970-73), p. 156. As quoted by Halbfass, Essays on the Sociology of World Religions, India and Europe, p. 233. in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of 22. But even this was not a real borrowing from Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons, . extrinsic sources, since for the sanatanist (London:lJnwin,1930) Hindu all religious ideals are already 24. While I cannot present this proposal fully in present, in potential fonn, in Hindu dharma. the remaining space, a full elaboration and To make a Christian notion Hindu was thus example of it will appear in a forthcoming really only to remember what Hinduism publication. already possesses.

http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol13/iss1/9 6 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1229