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Was Hinduism Invented? - Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (Hardcover)
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Was Hinduism Invented? - Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (Hardcover)
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The appearance of "religion" as a category describing a set of
practices and beliefs allegedly an aspect of all cultures dates
only from the modern period, emerging as Europe expanded trade
abroad and established its first colonial relations in the 17th and
18th centuries. The invention of Hinduism can be seen in the
encounter between modernity's greatest colonial power, Britain, and
the jewel of her imperial crown, India. This encounter was deeply
shaded by the articulation and development of the concept of
"religion," and it produced the now common idea that Hinduism is a
religion. The Bengal Presidency, home of Calcutta - the capital of
colonial India and center of economic gravity in the eastern
hemisphere - emerged as the locus of ongoing and direct contact
between Indians and colonial officials, journalists, and
missionaries. Drawing on a large body of previously untapped
literature, including documents from the Church Missionary Society
and Bengali newspapers, Brian Pennington offers a fascinating
portrait of the process by which "Hinduism" came into being. He
argues against the common idea that the modern construction of
religion in colonial India was simply a fabrication of Western
Orientalists and missionaries. Rather, he says, it involved the
active agency and engagement of Indian authors as well, who
interacted, argued, and responded to British authors over key
religious issues such as image-worship, sati, tolerance, and
conversion. Pennington retells the story of Christians' and Hindus'
reception of each other in the early 19th century in a way that
takes seriously the power of their religious worldviews to shape
the encounter itself and help to produce the very religions that
colonialism thought it "discovered." While post-colonial theory can
illuminate issues of power and domination, he demonstrates, history
of religions reminds us of the continuing importance of the sacred
and spiritual dimensions of the peoples under colonial rule.
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