Disambiguations, Polly Hazarika's Ph.D. thesis, should be accessible below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12gcs6o34l8X8gEzglseT1z78G04pF_Gz/view?usp=sharing
She provided it to me in response to my question, "how does one jump from "such and such are problems with Hindus" to "the cause of these problems is lack of monotheism"?"
She writes: "The thesis is a bit dated, I would perhaps make the same arguments in a more measured way now. But the core of the problem with reform discourse and the problem in general of 19th century social reform in India has been looked at in a fairly consistent, systematic and coherent way."
---
Some observations, might whet your appetite for what is not an easy read.
"In the Indian context there were no texts that could be considered the revealed word of God. It was the ancientness of the text and its subject matter that decided its category. Thus the four Vedas were scriptures but the Natya Shastra was not, although they were all equally ancient texts, and the Natya Shastra makes an internal claim that it is revealed to Bharata by Indra."
"Two concrete problems emerge within reform discourse. The first is the way that these texts are accepted as ‘scriptures’ is a purely colonial, particularly Christian perspective; and two, the relationship between any text and a practice that is established through this perspective."
"The priests are corrupt, greedy, ignorant and disturb the text-practice hierarchy (i.e. they privilege the practice over the text, whereas the original hierarchy ought to privilege the text over the practice). The reformer restores an earlier and purer relationship to the texts. Thus, in order to be intelligible, this position requires a ‘true’ and ‘false’ interpretation of texts, like the claims about ‘true’ and ‘false’ practices."
"In the writings of the contemporary reformers there was no known group called priests or pundits who interfered or obstructed reform. Stories of reform begin to be told towards the end of the nineteenth century, in India."
"The early writings on reform criticised priests for misreading texts and inventing practices. The argument was within the text/practice hierarchy. The texts were seen as the source of all ‘true’ practices and the priest’s intervention was seen as immoral. Now Heimsath argues that some rebellions created new movements whose ‘doctrines and practices’ differed from ‘orthodox Hinduism’. In other words they produced practices which differed from those prescribed by the ‘scriptures’.
The limitations of this discourse become clear. Producing new practices is a problem if the Brahmins do it and a solution to a problem if the Bhakti reformers do it. Yet there is no analysis of what makes the departure from texts on the part of the Bhaktas more acceptable than the departure from the texts on the part of the priests or Brahmans. There is no analysis of either the nature of the texts or the nature of practices. The same sets of actions are evaluated differently and there is no explanation for the judgements which are merely asserted."
"An examination of the Brahmo attitude to the Raj Purohits is also fairly puzzling. The Purohits are both ‘wily’ and ‘ignorant’. They do not know the ‘truth’ about ‘Hinduism’ and yet they hide the ‘truth’ behind their practices! What truth do the purohits have access to that they do not divulge? What truth do the Brahmos have access to that the purohits are ignorant of? The Brahmos had, ostensibly, ‘realized’ the ‘doctrinal truth’ of monotheism underlying ‘Hinduism’. The purohits are ignorant of this. However, the purohits purportedly conceal the ‘true’ connection between doctrine and practice. They refuse to divulge what symbolic significance objects or actions have; whether these practices have monotheistic or polytheistic implications; whether they are part of the ‘corruption’ of the ‘religion’ or part of its ‘purer’ expression; and finally, whether these actions are ‘religious’ or just ‘customary’. It is strange that the Brahmos believe the purohits do not know their doctrine, yet, at the same time, they believe that the purohits know exactly what doctrines generate particular practices."
"It is important to remember that these inconsistencies in the Brahmo position are not simply a failure of individual reasoning, or symptoms of inadequate understanding, which were remedied through further developments in the reform movement. In fact, these inconsistencies of reasoning remain unresolved today and mark not just the Brahmo position, but all reformist and contemporary reasoning."
"One characterization of ‘Hinduism’ that has opened up possible directions for further research is S.N. Balagangadhara’s proposition in his book, The Heathen in his Blindness (1994), that in conceptualizing ‘Hinduism’ as a ‘religion’, we have adopted a purely colonial perspective upon ourselves. Balagangadhara shows how the West sought to conceptualize bewildering native practices as religion (although a false one), and named it ‘Hinduism’. The central implication being that the term really does not individuate anything (or grabs hold of everything as is evident from the thousands of definitions offered, including the only half-facetious one: ‘anything you say about Hinduism is likely to be true’.
Balagangadhara provides an alternative characterization of ‘Hinduism’ as a set of traditions, which are distinctly different from religion and therefore require a whole new field of inquiry to emerge in order for us to investigate into their nature and functioning."
"Balagangadhara does not merely re-dub ‘Hinduism’ from a ‘religion’ into a ‘tradition’. It is not a semantic quibble that is at stake. In fact, Balagangadhara proposes that what is at stake in generating an alternative understanding of the nature of Indian traditions is a theory that finally explains cultural difference. In the absence of such a theory, we instinctively use such formulations as ‘cultural difference’ to speak of anything from varying clothing styles to cooking styles, but are unable to provide any meaningful answer to questions such as why colonialism produced accounts of the Indian traditions that were so shockingly misrepresentative and so damningly infantilizing? Is it ‘bad intention’ that produces such accounts? Then surely this would be the best orchestrated propaganda campaign that history has witnessed, since it sustains itself even after those who produce such representations no longer have any political or economic stake in its perpetuation!"
"There is also a remarkable passage in the same tract which speaks about the nature of discussion of practices in the ‘shasters’. This passage was entirely ignored it the discussion around the bewastha, and has since then has seen very little attention or analysis. The Pundit says:
"Discussions of practices in the ‘shasters’ have the quality of prescribing the best way of doing something and not the best thing to do. In other words, the Shasters do not prescribe a practice, having decided on a particular practice, the person may turn to the shasters to learn how best to do it. This is a unique relationship to practices which the colonial administration does not recognise."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12gcs6o34l8X8gEzglseT1z78G04pF_Gz/view?usp=sharing
She provided it to me in response to my question, "how does one jump from "such and such are problems with Hindus" to "the cause of these problems is lack of monotheism"?"
She writes: "The thesis is a bit dated, I would perhaps make the same arguments in a more measured way now. But the core of the problem with reform discourse and the problem in general of 19th century social reform in India has been looked at in a fairly consistent, systematic and coherent way."
---
Some observations, might whet your appetite for what is not an easy read.
"In the Indian context there were no texts that could be considered the revealed word of God. It was the ancientness of the text and its subject matter that decided its category. Thus the four Vedas were scriptures but the Natya Shastra was not, although they were all equally ancient texts, and the Natya Shastra makes an internal claim that it is revealed to Bharata by Indra."
"Two concrete problems emerge within reform discourse. The first is the way that these texts are accepted as ‘scriptures’ is a purely colonial, particularly Christian perspective; and two, the relationship between any text and a practice that is established through this perspective."
"The priests are corrupt, greedy, ignorant and disturb the text-practice hierarchy (i.e. they privilege the practice over the text, whereas the original hierarchy ought to privilege the text over the practice). The reformer restores an earlier and purer relationship to the texts. Thus, in order to be intelligible, this position requires a ‘true’ and ‘false’ interpretation of texts, like the claims about ‘true’ and ‘false’ practices."
"In the writings of the contemporary reformers there was no known group called priests or pundits who interfered or obstructed reform. Stories of reform begin to be told towards the end of the nineteenth century, in India."
"The early writings on reform criticised priests for misreading texts and inventing practices. The argument was within the text/practice hierarchy. The texts were seen as the source of all ‘true’ practices and the priest’s intervention was seen as immoral. Now Heimsath argues that some rebellions created new movements whose ‘doctrines and practices’ differed from ‘orthodox Hinduism’. In other words they produced practices which differed from those prescribed by the ‘scriptures’.
The limitations of this discourse become clear. Producing new practices is a problem if the Brahmins do it and a solution to a problem if the Bhakti reformers do it. Yet there is no analysis of what makes the departure from texts on the part of the Bhaktas more acceptable than the departure from the texts on the part of the priests or Brahmans. There is no analysis of either the nature of the texts or the nature of practices. The same sets of actions are evaluated differently and there is no explanation for the judgements which are merely asserted."
"An examination of the Brahmo attitude to the Raj Purohits is also fairly puzzling. The Purohits are both ‘wily’ and ‘ignorant’. They do not know the ‘truth’ about ‘Hinduism’ and yet they hide the ‘truth’ behind their practices! What truth do the purohits have access to that they do not divulge? What truth do the Brahmos have access to that the purohits are ignorant of? The Brahmos had, ostensibly, ‘realized’ the ‘doctrinal truth’ of monotheism underlying ‘Hinduism’. The purohits are ignorant of this. However, the purohits purportedly conceal the ‘true’ connection between doctrine and practice. They refuse to divulge what symbolic significance objects or actions have; whether these practices have monotheistic or polytheistic implications; whether they are part of the ‘corruption’ of the ‘religion’ or part of its ‘purer’ expression; and finally, whether these actions are ‘religious’ or just ‘customary’. It is strange that the Brahmos believe the purohits do not know their doctrine, yet, at the same time, they believe that the purohits know exactly what doctrines generate particular practices."
"It is important to remember that these inconsistencies in the Brahmo position are not simply a failure of individual reasoning, or symptoms of inadequate understanding, which were remedied through further developments in the reform movement. In fact, these inconsistencies of reasoning remain unresolved today and mark not just the Brahmo position, but all reformist and contemporary reasoning."
"One characterization of ‘Hinduism’ that has opened up possible directions for further research is S.N. Balagangadhara’s proposition in his book, The Heathen in his Blindness (1994), that in conceptualizing ‘Hinduism’ as a ‘religion’, we have adopted a purely colonial perspective upon ourselves. Balagangadhara shows how the West sought to conceptualize bewildering native practices as religion (although a false one), and named it ‘Hinduism’. The central implication being that the term really does not individuate anything (or grabs hold of everything as is evident from the thousands of definitions offered, including the only half-facetious one: ‘anything you say about Hinduism is likely to be true’.
Balagangadhara provides an alternative characterization of ‘Hinduism’ as a set of traditions, which are distinctly different from religion and therefore require a whole new field of inquiry to emerge in order for us to investigate into their nature and functioning."
"Balagangadhara does not merely re-dub ‘Hinduism’ from a ‘religion’ into a ‘tradition’. It is not a semantic quibble that is at stake. In fact, Balagangadhara proposes that what is at stake in generating an alternative understanding of the nature of Indian traditions is a theory that finally explains cultural difference. In the absence of such a theory, we instinctively use such formulations as ‘cultural difference’ to speak of anything from varying clothing styles to cooking styles, but are unable to provide any meaningful answer to questions such as why colonialism produced accounts of the Indian traditions that were so shockingly misrepresentative and so damningly infantilizing? Is it ‘bad intention’ that produces such accounts? Then surely this would be the best orchestrated propaganda campaign that history has witnessed, since it sustains itself even after those who produce such representations no longer have any political or economic stake in its perpetuation!"
"There is also a remarkable passage in the same tract which speaks about the nature of discussion of practices in the ‘shasters’. This passage was entirely ignored it the discussion around the bewastha, and has since then has seen very little attention or analysis. The Pundit says:
...the directions of the Shasters on this head (the act of anumarana) apply only to such as are afflicted with pain arising from disease or separation, as consider death preferable to the sufferings they endure; and come forward, voluntarily, with a firm resolution, of putting a period to their existence. The act of dying is not enjoined; but merely the mode of it, as entering the fire, falling from a mountain etc. The shasters say, if you are obstinately bent on death, at all events, put an end to yourself by such and such means; as a father, after all his admonitions to the contrary, had failed of producing the desired effect, would point out to a son, who was obstinately bent on visiting a distant country, the proper path he should pursue. These observations apply equally to the suicide, (effected by falling from a mountain, drowning, etc) in the case of persons afflicted with incurable diseases. (Ray 1985: 89-90)
"Discussions of practices in the ‘shasters’ have the quality of prescribing the best way of doing something and not the best thing to do. In other words, the Shasters do not prescribe a practice, having decided on a particular practice, the person may turn to the shasters to learn how best to do it. This is a unique relationship to practices which the colonial administration does not recognise."
