Gods, Guns, and Missionaries review: Manu Pillai expounds how Hinduism became homogenous

His is not a balancing act and he cites all sorts of sources, evidences and positions to discuss the transition of Hinduism from mind-boggling diversity to growing homogeneity and even attempted regimentation and headwinds against which such attempts find themselves pitted. The focus of the book is primarily the evolution of Hinduism in relation, response and reaction to the political, economic, religious and cultural presence of Christianity represented most formidably by the British in India and fanatically by the Portuguese in Goa. But he also discusses in some detail the interaction of Hinduism with Islam and the latter's transformative impact upon the evolution of Hindu Identity.

Diversity of Hinduism and the question of identity

Identity is essentially a protean idea, all the more so for a non-semitic system of belief and practice like Hinduism. Without tethered to one book, one God and prophetic intervention, Hinduism (as it came to be called) is bewilderingly diverse and complex. All the more so for a country like India with tremendous heterogeneities of all manners informing its existence. But, in the due course of time, Hinduism would undertake transitions — from inscrutable diversity to growing uniformity, from amorphous to tangible, from decisively protean to attempted procrustean.

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Pillai does a good job in decoding and delineating the strategic processes which accompanied the process of transition and went into the making of the modern Hindu Identity. The process — as he reminds time and again — was not smooth, seamless and unilinear but rather fractious and often ran into countervailing forces. But there is no doubting the direction of the transition.

Plasticity of early Hinduism and indigenous factors in identity formation

The author clarifies that even though the term Hinduism is of recent vintage, it evolved through a long process. The first transition was from the Vedic system of fire altars and sacrifices to the Puranic complexity. As the civilisation expanded, and in the process, encountered people with their own religio-cultural beliefs and practices, there was inevitable interaction. What anthropologists call the process of universalisation with small traditions getting integrated with the great traditions, the Puranas were "knitting all kinds of regional cults and beliefs into a comprehensive whole." The author highlights that the kinship of Shiva, the incarnations of vishnu and the emergence of Shakti cult would be able to accommodate what Brahmins encountered as the civilisation expanded. He quotes Julius J. Lipner in Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices to drive home the point that Hinduism became a ‘macro-reality of organically united micro-realities.’

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In this entire process, he notes that while Hindus had many ways and practices, it was Brahmins who helped 'sculpt Hinduism'. It was done by their symbiotic relationship with the ruling elites, by according Kshatriya status on those with power, by co-opting what appeared alien, by arriving at astute compromises with new beliefs and practices, by standing up to Buddhism and Jainism, by papering over differences and highlighting commonalities. And these commonalities — the author points out — were the acceptance of the Vedas and the caste superiority of Brahmins. Not that there would be no frictions as Shaivites and Vaishnavites would vie with each other — at times violently — to claim supremacy. Later on, the caste question would come again and again in the path of the formation of modern Hindu identity.

Interaction and transformative encounter with Islam

The author argues perceptively that given its proximity to power and given its foundation in one book and one God, Islam could neither have been wished away or defied nor absorbed into one of India's capacious traditions. In this regard, the author argues that the religious divide between Hinduism and Islam was not artificial or colonial invention as "ingredients always existed in India to support a binary between Muslims and non-Muslims."

In due course, accommodation developed but suspicion coexisted with accommodation. Pillai notes that this alerted Hindus — despite their various differences — to the possibility of political oneness. This process would get fillip with the encounter of Hinduism with Christianity.

Encounter with Christianity, Nationalism and Hindu identity

Pillai has an eye for nuances, patience for details and not in a hurry to cut corners. So, while discussing the spread of Christianity in India, he does not treat it as a monolith. He brings out their denominational differences (European conflict between Catholics and Protestants would play out in India too), national differences (fanatical Portuguese in Goa against more discreet English missions elsewhere), their different strategic forays, (with De Nobili giving up priestly cassoc to take up Indian dresses, including sacred thread and proclaiming in no uncertain terms: “I shall become an Indian to save the Indians” while others were more openly intolerant and dismissive of Hinduism), sharp differences between Orientalist and Evangelicals and how the British power — once secure in India —would aid and abet the process of proselytisation.

The author discusses factors and forces which received a fillip from the interaction with Christianity, with modern west, with imperial ventures and their implications for the making of modern Hindu identity. One, the power-backed proselytisation and attempted Christianisation would make heterogeneous Hindus to increasingly close ranks. Two, Hindus would adapt and respond to this new reality by glorifying their past and its accomplishments — something that owed in large measure to the works and views of the Orientalists, archaeologists and men like James Princep.

Many values Evangelicals cherished were shown to be internal to 'native' traditions. Putative greatness of past could always be solace and a rallying point when the present offered little or no hope. With increasing criticism and assaults upon Hinduism, the native agency asserted itself. The revolt of 1857 was a stark manifestation of the way the wind had been blowing. Not long before, Andrew Fuller, a leading evangelical, had remarked that no anti-British effort was possible in India, for 'Hindoos resemble an immense number of particles of sand, which are incapable of forming a solid mass.'

The chapter titled ‘Native Luthers’ and 'Drawing Blood' gives a good account of the ways the Indians responded at the level of ideas and action. He is careful as Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Dayanand Saraswati are accompanied by a contrarian Jotiba Phule with his own sense of agency, autonomy, iconoclasm and thrusts. And while Bal Gangadhar Tilak and VD Savarkar receive detailed treatment in the final chapter titled ‘Drawing Blood,’ he keeps harping on the operational tenacity of caste and other countervailing forces and how they interact varyingly and unpredictably with the formation of modern Hindu identity.

This book must be read because it is able to synthesise so many forces and factors — not always neat and coherent — into a lucidly written account. One book of history that comes to mind is Professor Sumit Sarkar’s Modern India — a work of great value, extremely detailed, written with great felicity, in lucid prose and attention to interesting and unmissable nuances. Both the books stop at 1947, even though modern India continued to evolve after that.