The "Indian" Monotheism.
This essay is a wide-ranging inquiry into an early and consistent monotheistic impulse in Hindu nationalist discourses and identity formation since the late nineteenth century. It argues that the consolidation of a pan-Indian Hindu demographic and religious identity, cutting across a formidable and...
| Publicado en: | Boundary 2 Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 111 - 142 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Essay |
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Duke University Press
Summer2012
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=78857598&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 78857598 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01903659 BOU jtl: Boundary 2 issn: 01903659 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2012 vid: 39 iid: 2 pid: 154 pub: Duke University Press artinfo: ui: 78857598 10.1215/01903659-1597907 ppf: 111 ppct: 31 formats: tig: atl: The "Indian" Monotheism. aug: au: Basu, Anustup affil: Associate Professor of English, Cinema Studies and Criticism, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign su: Cultural nationalism Hinduism Monotheism Nationalism & religion Hindus Krishna (Hindu deity) Religious identity Social history sug: subj: Cultural nationalism Hinduism Monotheism Nationalism & religion Hindus Krishna (Hindu deity) Religious identity Social history ab: This essay is a wide-ranging inquiry into an early and consistent monotheistic impulse in Hindu nationalist discourses and identity formation since the late nineteenth century. It argues that the consolidation of a pan-Indian Hindu demographic and religious identity, cutting across a formidable and awry range of local devotional traditions and deities, entailed a form of modernist transcoding that was tendentially monotheistic. It would seem that a singular Hindu national imagination could be secured only when such myriad energies—differing vastly in terms of caste, class, region, local cosmologies, linguistic, and cultural formations—could be harnessed into a monotheistic edifice of faith. Only then could that singular faith be parlayed into nationalist feeling for one Hindu nation. The aspired-for Hindu monotheism would then not just yield a Hindu nation in the world but would also be equipped to synchronize with other monothematic mantras of modernity like scientific progress, democracy, or techno-financial development. The essay visits some nodal moments of this historical narrative—the coming into being of a Hindu "tradition" under the auspices of colonial Indology, Rammohun Roy's defense of Vedic monotheism, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's efforts at using modern disciplinary knowledge (history, philosophy, science, aesthetics) to formulate a system of Hindu ethics and to establish Krishna as a singular messianic figure like Christ or Buddha, or a later moment in Savarkar's time, when the theological question had to be sidelined altogether in favor of a more pragmatic Hindu cultural nationalism. The essay visits some cardinal points of tension and historical consequences in the fragmented, still unfolding story of this monotheistic drive. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Essay src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2012 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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