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Impasses around Contemporary Hinduism
Hinduism’s structural tension between monotheism and polytheism is examined. The interweaving of polytheism and monotheism could be seen to constitute the more and less oppressive phases of Hinduism’s history. Three contemporary impasses have been examined: B R Ambedkar’s proposals to modernise Hinduism in Annihilation of Caste, Hindutva’s attempts to develop an authoritarian version of Hinduism, and Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s Post-Hindu India. A democratic politics needs to work with the contradictory practices that constitute Hinduism.
The author would like to thank the Anveshi Hegel reading group for providing the local backdrop for these reflections. He is deeply grateful to his collaborators in conceptual thievery, Suneetha and Moid for the patient ear. He would also like to thank Paul Trejo for the commitment with which he has slow read with the author over the past year the Hodgson compilation of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume 2, the section on Hindu religion on the Hegel Yahoo! discussion e-group. The author would thank this e-group for its toleration and friendly probes that forced him to think better.
I have noticed that most of us on the secular left tend to condemn a monolithic Hinduism/Hindutva somewhat stridently and shrilly. This knee-jerk condemnation’s effect on our thinking is to let the latter escape the political task of analysing and assessing adequately the threats, constraints, and possibilities that are the effect of Hinduism’s history. This article is a tentative sketch of a framework of analysis, through which I try to address the aporias (impasses and crises) of contemporary Hinduism. The notes that follow are grouped under three heads. First, I review the ways of looking at the historiography of Hinduism. Second, I look at a structural framework of exploration. Third, I employ these sketches of history and structure to understand three different impasses around contemporary proposals regarding the development of Hinduism. In this, I explore some insights and proposals of Annihilation of Caste by B R Ambedkar, the issues with Hindutva, and reflect on some aspects of Post-Hindu India by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd.
Historical Possibilities
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