Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 21 Article 23

January 2008

Book Review: "Bourgeois Hinduism, Or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists"

Brian K. Pennington

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Recommended Citation Pennington, Brian K. (2008) "Book Review: "Bourgeois Hinduism, Or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists"," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 21, Article 23. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1422

The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Pennington: Book Review: "Bourgeois Hinduism, Or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists"

Book Reviews 81

this work forcefully reminds us that a helpful acknowledged, one is compelled to question any way to enter into the ethos of a religious particular and narrowly defined religious tradition is through .its narrative tradition. identity as a requirement for the enjoyment of a Hindus and Christians need to share with one particular religious tradition. Third, an easy another their respective hagiographies that offer access to Hindu religious tradition through multiple points of contact between the two works of this kind offers to all religionists - traditions. Second, it affirms the fact that the especially Christians - a vision of the one "who religious heritage of every religion belongs to rules over earth and heaven, by whatever name the jointly-owned wealth of the whole of he is known." humanity. Such a view opens people of all religions to access, enjoy, and be enhanced by M. Thomas Thangaraj Tainil Saivism. Once such common heritage is Emory University, Atlanta, GA.

Bourgeois Hinduism, Or the Faith of the Modern Vedanti~ts. Brian A. Hatcher. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 226 pp.

"ON the evening of September 29, 1839, a small Deoendranath Tagore, its guiding force, later group of earnest young men met in a small room revived his memory as their founding inspiration on the premises of the Tagore mansion in north considerably after the fact. Calcutta." This unassuming opening to Brian. A. Hatcher characterizes the Tattvabodhini Hatcher's most recent work on religion in Sabha as an independent and initially more colonial Calcutta gives little indication that the successful movement, born from the religious book that follows, covering the origins and longing of Debendranath. His experience and evolution of an almost-forgotten religious spirItual quest were also characteristic of a class society, might compel us to reconsider the most of men at the forefront of a commercial commonly told story of the birth of modem, revolution that was taking place in Calcutta. reformist Hinduism. Through his discovery, This class, called bhadralok in Bengali, translation, and analysis of the founding possessed or acquired the necessary connections discourses of the Tattvabodhini Sabha (Truth­ and educations that enabled them to benefit from Propagating Society) and his reconstruction of the expansion of the British Raj, some the evolution of that group's major ideas, materially, some merely socially. And while Hatcher has unsettled our understanding of the many bhadralok were able also to convert their religious milieu of Calcutta in the period successes into concomitant markers of status following the death of modem Hinduism's most recognized by both Hindu and British society, famous architect, Rammohan Roy. Canonical they seem to have exp~rienced significant history generally traces an uninterrupted dislocation from traditional religion and society. development of neo-Vedanta that begins with The rationalist, monotheistic, scripturally Roy working out his insights in a climate of anchored, morally rigorous, and anti-idolatrous dialogue and debate with Islam, Unitarianism, faith of such groups as the Tattvabodhini Sabha and evangelical missionaries in Calcutta. Steady and the Brahmo Samaj fulfilled those longings success led, this version goes, to the mid-century with a religious ideology perfectly suited to the diffusion of reforming Hinduism. The most social and intellectual circumstances of this new significant revision to our previous set of ideas class. about the emergence of modem Hinduism is this Although the Brahmo Samaj (founded in book's resituation of Roy himself. The book 1828) preceded the Tattvabodhini Sabha by deals with Roy in only a single, preliminary more than a decade, after Rammohan' s death in chapter, as a deceased reformer whose England in 1833, the society fell into a period of institutional legacy, the Brahmo Samaj was relative obscurity and inactivity until the languishing and straying from its founding Tattvabodhini Sabha agreed to manage its affairs principles until the Tattvabodhini Sabha and in 1843. In the preceding two or three years,

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2008 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 21 [2008], Art. 23 1 82 Book Reviews I

Brahmo worship had only begun to attract Young Bengal and Henry Louis Derozio deeply significantly higher attendance, Hatcher argues, troubled both orthodox and reforming Hindus. as a result of the environment stoked by the Historians such as David Kopf and M. M. Ali (until then) more successful Tattvabodhini had previously seen the Sabha as an overt Sabha. Debendranath's autobiography tells us attempt to respond to these conversions with a that when he witnessed an idolatrous invocation spiritual "halfuray house" that would offer an of Rama as an avatar of Vishnu at a Brahmo attractive alternative to these. other tw.o dangers. service, he was moved to reinvigorate the Hatcher makes it clear that the open rivalry society according to the rationalist and non­ between the sabha and missionaries working in idolatrous principles of Rammohan. The Bengal dates to the same later penod as the interests of the two societies merged, sewing the group's post facto adoption of Rammohan Roy seeds for the ironic eventual disappearance of as spiritual father and corroborates his detection the Tattvabodhini Sabha, which had become of a rapid crystallization of group purpose and superfluous with the great success of the identity at this time. Brahmo Samaj during the middle decades of the Many readers will fmd the last three century. chapters the most compelling. In these Hatcher Hatcher joins those who in recent years have translates the discourses of the Tattvabodhini promoted an appreciation of middle-class Sabha. Published under the title Sabhyadiger Hinduism as "real" religion, not just the tepid Vaktrta, each of these pieces had been originally devotions of the upwardly mobile. A great delivered during one of the society's meetings in strength of Hatcher's work as a whole, and this its first year, but in published form they were book in particular, is his ability to articulate the signed only according to an obscure system of moral and cosmological contours of what he initials. Hatcher appears not only to have made calls "bourgeois Vedanta" (or, borrowing from this important and illuminating text public, but Rammohan himself, the spirituality of the to have identified the authors of most of its "godly householder") in such a way that his discourses. If his identifications are correct­ readers come to comprehend what, from another and his case on most of them is strong-we have point of view, might look like the barely­ in the Sabhyadiger Vaktrta the earliest extant disguised rationalizations of a lifestyle and writings from such important nineteenth-century religiosity that are decidedly middle-class. figures as Debendranath Tagore himself and Hatcher achieves these insights without a hint of Isvaracandra Vidyasagara, as well as unseen irony or cynicism and indeed with a real writings by the rationalist Aksayakumara Datta sensitivity to the spiritual longings of a and the Brahmo Samaj custodian Ramacandra privileged elite. Vidyavagisa. In these discourses we find an Members of SHCS may find chapter five, emergent neo-Vedanta and a testing ground for "Missionaries and Modem Vedantists" of the the concepts and vocabulary that will define greatest interest. Here Hatcher undoes some later Brahmo spirituality. The critical apparatus prior historical theorizing about the birth of the that follows, particularly the glossary of terms Tattvabodhini Sabha that attributed its origins to~ and their English translations, is an important an anxious concern to stem the tide of high­ contribution in itself from a book that sheds profile conversions to Christianity in the 1830s important new light on a much -examined and 1840s that had scandalized Calcuttan chapter of modem Indian history. society. In particular, the success of Scottish missionary Alexander Duff and his disciple· Brian K. Pennington Krishna Mohan BaneIjea, and the radical Maryville College rationalism personified some years earlier by

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol21/iss1/23 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1422 2