the critical, historical, and often reductive work of Western Indologists has met with passionate rejection by conservative Hinduism and been seen as part of a strategy of Western domination and suppression.[259]

...language is a central criterion for the definition of the Aryan. It is essential for preserving his ritual power and identity against the mlecchas [foreigners, barbarians]. The continuity of the tradition, the identity and stability of the Aryan dharma, depends on its linguistic vehicle, the Sanskrit language... [178]

The Sindhu (now Sindh), which in Sanskrit simply means the ‘river,’ as the western boundary of the Aryan settlements, suggested to the nations of antiquity which first came into contact with them in that quarter, a name for the whole peninsula. Adopted in the form of Indos, the word gave rise to the Greek appellation India as the country of the Indus. It was borrowed by the ancient Persians as hindu, which is used in the Avesta as a name of the country itself. More accurate is the modern Persian designation Hindustan, ‘Land of the Indus,’ a name properly applying only to that part of the peninsula which lies between the Himālaya and the Vindhya range [roughly North to Central India]. [Munshirama, 1972, p142]

A survey of three Sanskrit and ten Bengali hagiographic texts from early sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries discloses nearly fifty passages (all in the Bengali texts) in which the word ‘Hindu’ appears. Most occurrences are in episodes of strained relationships between Hindus and yavanas or Mlecchas, as the Muslims are called. The strains are usually resolved satisfactorily. The word ‘Hindu’ never appears in a purely intra-communal Hindu context and has no significance in the central religious concerns of the texts, the expositions of bhakti. (emphasis mine) ī there is to be found no explicit discussion of what ‘Hindu’ or ‘Hindu dharma’ means in any of the texts surveyed. īthere is no example of an abstract term which might be translated as Hindu-ness or Hinduism (e.g. hindutva)ī [340, 342]

Furthermore, it is interesting to note how often it is in the mouth of a non-Hindu that the word ‘Hindu’ is placed by the writers. [ibid. 341]

It was over against a group of people or type of people considered both foreign and barbarous (and often violent, as expressions like kāla-jabana, 'Death-Yavana', indicate) that the self-awareness of the Vaiṣṇavas as Hindus was fashioned. [342]

In this climate of ‘sectarian’ strife and search for identity (i.e. the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava and Vallabhīya ‘proselytizing’), the word ‘Hindu’ which so far had been used by foreigners, specifically Muslims, was first employed by the Hindus themselves. [192]

The period around 1800, which saw the full establishment of European power and presence in India, also saw the beginnings of modern Indology, i.e. the scientific exploration and objectification of India’s past. The combination of these two events, which is more than a temporal coincidence, had a fundamental impact upon Indian attitudes towards themselves and the ‘other’. [Halbfass 172]

The ārya Samāj tried to replace the word ‘Hindu’ with the ancient term ‘ārya.’ R.N. Suryanarayana calls ‘Hindu’ a ‘detestable termīof which we should be ashamed.’ [Halbfass 515, fn. 97]

Some modern Indian nationalists, most notably M.S. Golwalkar and V.D. Savarkar, have argued vehemently that the world ‘Hindu’ was not at all adopted from the Muslims and was not originally used by non-Hindus. Instead they claim that it is a genuinely Indian term, reflecting ‘the unity, the sublimity, and the specialty’ of the Indian people. [Halbfass 193]

Hacker’s two categories are not mutually exclusive and not always clearly distinguishable. īit is also possible ‘that one and the same person combines elements of both ways of thinking’. [Halbfass 220]

The sense of identity īwhich [Vivekananda] tries to awaken in his fellow Indians īmeans, above all, the heritage of Advaita Vedānta, the tradition of śaìkara. Ethics, self-confidence, and brotherly love find their true and binding foundation in Advaitic non-dualism. [Halbfass 234]

That is what we want, and that can only be created, established and strengthened by understanding and realizing the ideal of the Advaita, that ideal of the oneness of all. īto preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedānta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is therefore, that I preach this Advaita [From Vivekananda’s four lectures in London, titled Practical Vedanta, III, 190f., quoted by Halbfass 234]

Radhakrishnan’s very first articlesīalready articulate two fundamental themes of his Neo-Hindu apologetics: the importance of philosophy for the identity and self-affirmation of modern India, and the significance and potential application of Advaita Vedānta in the area of ethics and social practice.(3)

The Dharmapradīpa, written by Anantakåṣṇa śāstrin, Sītārāma śāstrin, and śrījīva Bhaööācārya, three of the leading pandits of their time (the preface is dated December 15, 1937), also bears mention. In this work, questions of ‘purification’ (śuddhi) and rehabilitation of Hindus who have joined a ‘mleccha religion’ (mleccha-dharma) or been coerced into giving up their ways of life and belief are discussed in great detail. The conversion of persons who were born into a foreign religion is not taken into consideration at all. [Halbfass 260]

The Bhāgavata also repeatedly stresses the independence of bhakti from all alternative means of salvation. Criticism of orthodoxy does not stop at the theological level. Here the primary objective is to refute the idea that a person’s birth, social status, or caste membership is of any significance with respect to salvation by means of devotion.

The commitment to the hereditary caste system may be less rigid in the sects than in mainstream ‘orthodoxy.’ This affects their xenological attitudes. The chosen membership in the religious or soteriological community can be more significant than the hereditary caste membership. Such openness and flexibility is occasionally extended beyond the confines of the Indian world, and even the mlecchas are at times recognized as potential members of the soteriological community. [Halbfass 193]

The categories ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Judaism’ are themselves problematicī, for, like the category ‘religion’, they represent theoretical constructs that attempt to impose unity on a myriad of different religious systems. The complex amalgam termed ‘Hinduism’ encompasses a variety of ‘Hinduism’s’. Beginning in the Vedic period and throughout Indian history the orthodox brahmanical tradition has been continually challenged by competing traditions and movements—local village traditions, ascetic groups, devotional (bhakti) sects, tantric movements, and more recently, modern reform movements. While the centripetal force of brahmanical power structures has sought to absorb and domesticate competing currents, the centrifugal force of these countervailing centers of power has persisted, giving rise to that uneasy conglomerate of heterogeneous tendencies which Western scholars term ‘Hinduism’. [Holdredge 1]

The Vaiṣṇavas in Bengal did not place their religious commitment in the solidarity of the Hindu people, nor in the sacred ideals, if there were such, common to Hindus. Their religious faith was in Krishna, a mode of faith that in principle a non-Hindu could shareīit would seem, then, either that religiously motivated Hindu communalism is a relatively recent development in Bengal or that the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas are atypical. my own opinion is that so long as the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas remained the pace-setting religious and literary group in Bengal, i.e. to the turn of the nineteenth century, their point of view prevailed in Bengal well beyond their own movement. With the partial breakdown of Gauīya Vaiṇava faith, self-assurance, and influence in the nineteenth century, due in part to the criticisms by reformers, this Vaiṣṇava resistance to religiously motivated communal consciousness by Hindus was eroded. [JOC 342]