world religions' and 'ethnic groups': do these paradigms lend themselves to the cause...

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©World religions© and ©ethnicgroups©: do these paradigms lendthemselves to the cause of Hindunationalism?

Mary Searle-Chatterjee

Abstract

The article explores the assumptions underlying common academic usage ofthe terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ in Britain. It argues that this body of dis-course is consonant with the radical claims of right-wing Hindu nationalists.This is a consequence of the in�uence of the phenomenological approach inReligious Studies and of the Durkheimian strand in anthropology. A ten-dency to focus on the positive and integrative functions of religion, com-bined with neglect of the larger social and political context, both in Britainand India, may have political consequences for struggles among Indians.

Keywords: Hinduism; ethnicity; Hindu nationalism.

1. The argument

In this article I argue that the assumptions underlying much academicusage of the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ in Britain are consonant withthe radical claims of right-wing Hindu nationalists. This usage bothexpresses and reinforces dominant British understandings alreadyshaping the local and national state policies which feed into processes ofidentity development among British South Asians. A variety of otherfactors contribute to the emergence of a more homogenized Hindu iden-tity in Britain, including the desire to be differentiated from stigmatizedor low-income Muslims. Self-consciousness induced by racism andminority status encourages the rei�cation of religion and culture. Theclaims of Hindu nationalists which have in the last �fteen years changedthe nature of public debate in India are now, in the diaspora, also in�u-encing identity development, class differentiation and political mobiliz-ation. These claims are as follows:

Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 23 Number 3 May 2000 pp. 497–515© 2000 Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis LtdISSN 0141-9870 print/ISSN 1466-4356 online

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1) that a ‘Hindu’ identity is an encompassing one to which other identi-ties of class, caste, gender, etc are subordinate;

2) that bearers of that identity share a distinct culture, despite variation,and have common interests;

3) that ‘Hinduism’ is a phenomenon which can be understood largely suigeneris, and in isolation from political and economic processes andcon�icts (see section 9);

4) that ‘Hinduism’ is primarily a culture, associated with a particulargroup of people, Indians, and with a particular country, India. This isa claim of great political import to be discussed further (see section9). It implies that Muslims and Christians cannot be true Indians andcannot therefore deserve the protections of full Indian citizenship.

The �rst two claims assume that being ‘Hindu’ is a primordial identity,rooted in a homogeneous and continuing culture. This assumption mayprovide bene�ts for certain groups of actors but does, of course, contra-dict current sociological and anthropological understandings of the �uidand contextualized nature of identity formation.

I shall explore the issue of how, as liberal academics, many of us havecome to work with what are, in practice, right-wing assumptions, associ-ated with groups which in India have been implicated in extensive vio-lence against Muslims and Christians. Before examining some aspects ofthe literature on Hindus in Britain, I shall refer brie�y to the British useof ‘Hindu’ as a classi�catory category both in the past and present.

2. Religious classi�cation in British India

It is not new for British conceptual usage to be implicated in South Asianpolitical practice. Many historians consider that the emergence of aHindu identity (as opposed to Hindu cultures), was stimulated by thecolonial British practice of classi�cation of people, in censuses andgazeteers, in terms of collective identities, as if those were bounded,singular and unchanging (Pandey 1990, p. 68; Said 1991, p. 32; Dirks 1996,p. 266. For a different view see Bayly 1988). Identities perceived as ‘reli-gious’, or primordial, were privileged over others. This process was alsoseen in the writing of Indian history (Pandey 1990). It was James Millwho set the pattern of periodizing Indian history prior to the coming ofthe British in terms of religion. Even today it is common to read ofHindu, Buddhist, Muslim and British (not Christian) periods (see Dwyer1994, pp. 166–67). This can be viewed as an expression of Western self-understanding as much as of Indian reality. The dominant ideologyviewed post-feudal British culture as rational, dynamic and knowledge-seeking. Indian culture was seen as the obverse: stagnant, superstitiousand steeped in traditionalism. These images are still fundamental towhite Western self-understanding, both on the political left and right, as

498 Mary Searle-Chatterjee

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witnessed in the Rushdie affair. The British assumed that people in Indiamust belong to a named ‘religion’, to something recognizable as areligion in British cultural terms, but, more importantly, that this mustbe what determined loyalties and con�icts. There were also, on occasion,political gains from working with this approach which facilitated a ‘divideand rule’ policy, including, at some stages, separate electoral quotas, andin the army, even toilets. Struggles for power in the British periodincreasingly, though not always, made use of the idiom of religion tomobilize support or claim legitimacy. Political instability increased thelikelihood of the use of this device (Frietag 1989).

3. Religious classi�cation in contemporary Britain

Usage of the label ‘Hindu’ continues in Britain in various of�cial publi-cations (for example, Social Trends reports). Statistical research relatingto racialized minorities routinely asks about religion (as well as about‘ethnicity’) unlike research about the population in general. It is morelikely to ask about religion than about the mother tongue. Until recently,the term ‘ethnic’ was applied to groups differentiated on the basis ofnational, cultural or linguistic origin, not religion. The 1976 Race Rela-tions Act provides an example of this. Increasingly, the term ‘ethnic’ isbeing used to refer to groups differentiated by ‘religion’. In 1991 an‘ethnic’ question was introduced in the British census. This was based onnationality of origin, phenotype, or a mixture of both, with given optionsfrom which the informant had to choose. There was also an open ‘other’category. In effect, only racialized minorities are marked with ethnicity,since the category ‘white’ is not differentiated by national origin. In thenext census a question on religion may be introduced and it is likely thatthis too would present a range of predetermined options, thus obligingpeople to condense their practices and beliefs into a particular pigeon-hole. This is based on the assumption that an individual has a religiousidentity which is superordinate over other identities, and which separatesher/him from others. The very word ‘religion’ signals a range of accept-able possibilities, as witnessed by the dif�culties which Rastafarians haveoften faced. The respondent already knows that ‘Hindu’ is an acceptablecategory, whereas ‘Vaishnavite’ or ‘Balmiki’ is not. That is part of whatis involved in learning to use the English language ‘properly’. A differ-ent question, more in tune with actual thinking and practice, such as towhom do you do puja (worship), or seva (service), or who is your guru,would produce a different answer.

In the subcontinent, it was not religion but caste, the network ofrelated lineages to which one belonged, which more frequently provideda basis for identi�cation, even though the institution of caste was, his-torically, more �uid and segmental than the British realized. It is not sur-prising that in Britain many Indian organizations, including ‘religious’

Hinduism and the ethnicity paradigm 499

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ones, are caste-based, as is well-recognized in Roger Ballard’s collection,Desh Pardesh (1994). In 1978, at least thirty-one out of �fty-six LeicesterGujarati Hindu organizations were jati (caste) speci�c. Many of thoseinterviewed believed that an organization with a ‘religious’ identity wasmore likely to attract external funding than one apparently moreparochial, based on an exclusivistic jati group. Elements of the Srimalicaste therefore decided to continue stressing a Jain religious identity(Banks 1994, pp. 43, 246). ‘Religion’ is a sacred category, it appears, forlocal authorities who may inadvertently stimulate the development ofreligious identities among people who are far from wholly committed tosuch a world view (Baumann 1996).

Religious classi�cation is enshrined, uncritically, in law relating tostate institutionalization of religious education. The 1988 EducationReform Act refers to ‘religions’, and the working parties interpreting theAct have written in terms of a ‘world religions’ paradigm (see Fitzger-ald 1990 for an extremely useful discussion). This assumes that religiousactivity and belief can be understood independently of the contexts inwhich it appears. Religion is taken to be a separable and de�nablephenomenon which has crystallized into six or so distinct major ‘faiths’with speci�c institutions and literature. This is based on a Christian theo-logical model.

Several academic disciplines also use religious classi�cations, againoften as taken for granted categories. A striking recent example of thisin sociology is Asian Self-Employment (Metcalf, Modood and Virdee1996). The only variable in terms of which tabular correlations are madeis national origin, taken to correspond (questionably) with religion.Indian is assumed to correspond with Hindu and Pakistani with Muslim.The material is presented in such a way that it is impossible to exploresociological questions about the generation of small-scale business. Onecan only draw the conclusion, already implicit in the design of the study,that religion is the key de�ning variable of culture and social practice.

4. ‘Ethnic’ group paradigms and their critics

Early critiques of research which assumes the existence of homogeneousand stable minority groups, de�ned in terms of ethnicity and religion,rather than contextually in relation to speci�c interests and issues, wereassociated with Marxism and 1980s ‘anti-racism’ (for example, CCCS1982) as well as with black and Asian feminism (for example, Trivedi1984). A different type of critique stems from the work of Edward Said.His powerful, if diffuse, assault on ‘orientalist’ disciplines, focused onwhat he called the process of ‘essentializing’, by which a vast array ofdiverse individuals, societies and traditions are bracketed together as ifthey had a single unchanging essence. This process of stereotyping wassaid to facilitate exploitation (1991). Anthropologists, too, have for


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decades been pointing to the cross-cutting, multiple nature of identities(see Patterson 1974). More recently, Rattansi, among others, argues fora more post-modernist understanding of the �uidity of identities (1994).This approach is a rejection of the distortions involved in pigeonholingas such, rather than a demand for a different type of pigeonholing byrace, class or gender.

The counter response to these critiques was that ‘ethnic studies’ couldhelp in the provision of welfare needs particularly for the �rst generation.The collection of ethnic data in the 1991 Census was defended byRatcliffe (1996) and Karn (1997) for its potential contribution to policy-making, to estimating needs, for example, for the ethnic elderly. Defenceof ethnic studies approaches has also come from Modood (1992) andBallard (1992) who have argued that an exclusively racial or class focusdid not do justice to the way people experienced their lives, could notaccount for variation among ‘ethnic groups’, or for some of the develop-ments among the second generation. Con�icts arise over cultural recog-nition and esteem as well as over access to material goods.

In this article I do not dismiss ‘ethnic studies’ out of hand, but simplypoint to the political implications in much of the literature on Hindus.

5. Academic writing on Hindus in Britain: impact and context

I shall develop my argument through discussion of selected in�uentialtexts, Kim Knott’s study, Hinduism in Leeds (1986), the collection byRichard Burghart, Hinduism in Great Britain (1987), the work of RobertJackson and Eleanor Nesbitt, particularly Hindu Children in Britain(1993), of Steve Vertovec (1992, 1995) and relevant contributions fromRoger Ballard’s collection, Desh Pardesh (1994). It is not surprising thatwork in Britain should have implications for struggles among Indians,since identities emerge in dialogue with others as a result of seeingoneself with their eyes (Taylor 1994), in contexts usually involving politi-cal and economic competition (Alavi 1987). Several of those who havewritten on the subject of Hinduism in Britain have recognized sucheffects (see Knott 1986, p. 83). ‘British Hinduism is being shaped by thekinds of questions which non-Hindus as much as Hindus ask of it’(Burghart 1987). ‘Teachers and other concerned adults may have a moresigni�cant role to play than they realize in the moulding of British Hindutraditions’ (Jackson and Nesbitt 1993). Marcus Banks even attributes theresurgence of Jainism to the impact of British attitudes (1994, p. 240).Western educationists and academics may themselves be in�uencedby speci�c interest groups, particularly Hindu nationalists, who arewidespread in Britain, and now producing teaching materials for schools(see Prinja 1996). The nostalgia of immigrants often has a role in fur-thering nationalist causes (van der Veer 1995). (Hindu nationalists inBritain may, in turn, exercise a cultural in�uence on the subcontinental


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nationalist political parties to which they send funds). Romanticized andrei�ed images of ‘true’ Hinduism may have been reinforced recently byan American much admired and cited by Hindu nationalists. DavidFrawley, who lectures in Indian astrology and Vedic studies at the Uni-versity of Santa Fe. He is President of the American Council of VedicAstrology, and has been a guest lecturer in various British Universitydepartments (Frawley 1995; Rajarama and Frawley 1995). He maintainsan active presence on the Internet where he attacks critics of Hindunationalism as enemies of India, as godless communists, or proselytizingMuslims or Christians.

Academic writing is a product of various social in�uences. I nowexamine two academic in�uences particularly evident in writing on thelives of Hindus in Britain.

6. The ‘world religions’ paradigm of Religious Studies and theDurkheimian tradition

These two approaches share at least four features 1) a focus on what areperceived as relatively bounded unities, in one case, religions, in theother, societies or cultures; 2) a focus on shared norms; 3) neglect of div-ision and con�ict; 4) a normative assumption that the object of study isof positive value.

Religious Studies is a discipline whose very existence has been positedon the construction of a particular object for study, religion and, some-times, even God too (see Taylor 1987, p. 101). This is a consequence ofits roots in Theology and Comparative Religion. A disciplinary mode oforganization obliges one to have a differentiated product but no other�eld involving the study of social action is so tied to the use of a particu-lar concept and to the belief in the existence of a particular phenomenon.The ‘world religions’ paradigm which is embedded in Western culturestill provides the framework for the discipline, despite having been abun-dantly critiqued from within (Waardenburg 1973). Hinduism is seen asone of those distinct ‘world religions’ despite the inevitable disclaimersto the effect that it is an umbrella term and a different sort of phenom-enon from Christianity or Islam. Yet it is dif�cult enough to de�ne even‘religion’, a polysemic concept (Southwold 1978). Burghart, thoughclearly aware of the problem, fell into the ‘world religions’ mode (1987,pp. 224, 244, 246), as did Jackson and Nesbitt (1993, pp. 2–3, 167–8, 171,174, 182). Vertovec speaks of the issue of rei�cation of culture andreligion though he attributes that to social actors/Hindus, rather than toacademics (1995, pp. 148–50). While recognizing divisions and variationsbased on caste, sect and region of origin (pp. 146–47), some of his workfocuses on Hindus as if they are a trans-national grouping of people,rather than on ‘Hindu’ as a trans-national category which may be usedfor particular purposes to provide a basis for group formation (1995). It


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is one thing to discuss the problems of rei�cation in an abstract sense andquite another to operationalize that insight.

Isolating out a Hindu sample, rather than studying an existing socialmatrix, is in itself problematic, since it involves starting with the concep-tions both of religion and of Hinduism as separable phenomena, as wellas with the conception of ‘Hindu’ as a pre-existing identity. Examples ofthis are in Jackson and Nesbitt’s schools’ sample where the object ofstudy has been constructed from categorizations only invoked contextu-ally. They suggested that their decision to study a sample of Hindu schoolchildren was in�uenced by Geertzian renderings of the Durkheimian(1961)/Radcliffe-Brownian (1952) holistic conception of cultures. Theyrefer favourably to Geertz’s (1973) approach of ‘grasping anotherculture’ (1993, p. 19) and write ‘like any living organism Hindu traditionis changing’ (p. vii, emphasis added), though such an approach has beenexhaustively critiqued over the years for its neglect of historical process.It also has to be said that even for Geertz, let alone Radcliffe-Brown,culture was embedded in society. A tradition or group was not detachedfrom its social context. Religion was seen as a dimension of social life. Itmay have been taken for granted as a category but it was but one chapterin an ethnographic monograph.

The ‘world religions’ paradigm often shapes the presentation of ma-terial. Much of what is described in Hindu Children in Britain (Jacksonand Nesbitt 1993) would be equally true of Muslims and Sikhs of similarclass backgrounds originating from the north and west of the subconti-nent. Examples of this are in the account of family roles and gender dis-tinctions (ch. 4) and in the sections on job aspirations, attitudes tomarriage and caste (pp. 33–37). The same can be said of Chapter Nine(on ‘cultural transmission’), particularly of the sections on �lms, musicand radio cassettes. Much of Chapter Five on ‘Food and Fasts’ would notbe applicable to Muslims, but nor would it be applicable to BengaliHindus who are hardly ever vegetarian.

The in�uence of the idea that religions are bounded unities can be seenin the common failure to distinguish between the actor’s (emic) use ofthe word ‘Hindu’ as an identity label and the analyst’s (etic) use of it asa summative category pointing to association with traditions having somefamily resemblances (Stietencron 1989), or even constituting a uni�edsystem based on notions of social order, power and hierarchy (Fuller1992). Little attention is paid to the way in which informants use the word‘Hindu’ and in what context. These categorizations do not denote cor-porate groups, though whites and Hindu nationalists, among others,often use them as if they do. Much writing has neglected the anthropo-logical maxim that one should pay close ethnographic attention to ‘local’usage (which, of course, is always changing), in order to avoid imposinginappropriate categories. An exception is Jackson and Nesbitt (1993) andNesbitt (1994). Nesbitt’s careful attention to detail means that she is able


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to problematize the ‘world religions’ assumption of clearly bounded dis-tinctions between Hinduism and Sikhism and also to show how ‘lower’caste perceptions of religious identity diverge from those presumed inmonolithic accounts of Hinduism. Many of her ‘lower’ caste informantsdo not perceive themselves as Hindu, or at least not unequivocally.Jackson and Nesbitt also made efforts to consider ‘less practisingfamilies’. In other contexts, however, they attempt to force their inform-ants into the distorting pigeonholes of the ‘world religions’ paradigm.Where children say ‘my religion is Punjabi’, they comment ‘they haveconfused their categories’. The implication is that the informant ought toshare the same categories as the researcher. They include examples ofdialogues in which the interviewer attempts, desperately and unsuccess-fully, to get children to identify themselves in ‘religious’ rather than lin-guistic or regional terms (1993, pp. 29–31). The parallels between this andthe endeavours of the nineteenth-century classi�ers who struggled withthe awkwardness of informants whose identities seemed to overlap, orbe indistinct, is striking. It has to be said that it is the transparency ofJackson and Nesbitt’s presentation which makes their rei�cation ofreligion so visible.

A great deal of other work on Hindus in Britain similarly gives theimpression that informants are providing information in terms of the cat-egories which the researcher has supplied rather than from listening tospontaneous usage outside the context of an interview. Few researchershave explored the ways in which people actually use and constructreligious and other identity labels in daily social life. Labels are oftensimply taken to refer to �xed identities rather than to be aspects of con-stantly changing identi�cation (see Stuart Hall 1996, for this distinction).If we study the context in which the word ‘Hindu’ is used, we �nd, notsurprisingly, that it functions in a way very different from the term ‘Chris-tian’ which may be used within the tradition to indicate degrees of spiri-tual or moral achievement – ‘He a true Christian was’. One cannotimagine a similar construction for a Hindu, since the traditions did notemerge from the teachings of a single founder by whose standards aperson could be judged. Indeed, the word ‘Hindu’ is used with verydifferent meanings at different levels of the caste system. Research inVaranasi (Banaras) in north India in the 1970s and 1980s showed thaturban ‘lower’ castes used the word ‘Hindu’ primarily to refer to ‘upper’castes. This usage was found among the oldest and least politicized indi-viduals, and there is no reason to see it as a recent development. The‘high’ castes often used the term ‘Hindu’ to refer to those who were seenas truly Indian, that is, not having any religious link or allegiance to‘foreign’ traditions. The term ‘Muslim’ was often counterposed toregional rather than ‘religious’ identities (Searle-Chatterjee 1994a,1994b). We need to study in what context the term ‘Hindu’ is used, withwhat connotation, and for what purpose, realizing that like any other


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identity label its usage varies and is contested. Fuller goes so far as to saythat in India the term ‘Hinduism’ still does not correspond to any conceptor category that belongs to the thinking of a large proportion of the ordi-nary rural people (1992, pp. 10–11).

Though in Britain various factors combine to make the category‘Hindu’ more salient, this does not mean that religious identity may betaken for granted as a basis for behaviour. Such an approach is remi-niscent of the studies of ‘tribalism’ which the 1960s Manchester school ofanthropology fought so hard against in their studies of African towns,arguing that one must look at social behaviour in its present form,without focusing on divergence from a presumed earlier culture. Thesubject of study was to be ‘situational selection’ of behaviour rather than‘adaptation’ to a new context. As Gerd Baumann points out, the situationof ethnic studies in Britain today recalls that current in African studiesbefore then! Baumann’s work on Southall provides an example of analternative model for �eldwork (1996). Instead of presuming that peoplehave given religious identities, and that these are superordinate, he paysattention to the way in which identity labels are used, and considerscross-cutting allegiances and contextual �uctuations. It is not anthro-pology itself which is problematic as a discipline so much as neglect ofsome major strands within that discipline and of some of the lessons thathave been learnt.

7. Cultural change: modes of description

The study of patterns of change and adaptation in the new environmentprovides the avowed raison d’être of many studies of Hindus in Britain,and it is generally presumed that a given phenomenon, the same as thatfound in India, is being studied, ignoring the fact that similar actions,words and claims may have totally different meanings and functions indifferent contexts: that was, indeed, an item of faith in the functionalistmanifesto fundamental to much of the anthropological tradition. A verydifferent ‘phenomenon’ may be under scrutiny though caste-fellows maybe able to draw from the same ‘pool of values, ideas and legitimatingstrategies . . . available as an inspirational resource’ (Banks 1994, p. 248).For example, actions that in India were a form of petitioning to superiorpower might in Britain function primarily to show continuity with thepast as well as to create group bonds. What often happens is that ‘Hin-duism’, or some sectarian sub-division of it, tends to be regarded as aphenomenon on which change impinges from outside. Marcus Banks (inBallard 1994, p. 250) challenges this approach. ‘The conventional view ofmigrants implies that they are subject to a series of (. . .) transformationsas they move from one �xed pole to another (. . .) but transformationsare a feature inherent in the cultural process itself.’ One might also add


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that ‘the cultural process itself’ always has political dimensions, as wellas symbolic and ritual ones.

Studying the development of a geographically given religious centre isin itself less problematic than abstracting out a sample de�ned in termsof religion. It is problematic if ‘religious’ dimensions alone are isolatedfor examination. Such studies have been published by Knott (1986, 1987,1994), Carey (1987), Taylor (1987), Vertovec (1992), Nye (1993, 1995)and Barot (1997). Migration history and changes over time are describedbut religious activities are not generally placed in a larger social context.Some of these studies make no reference to class. The fact that little cog-nizance can be taken of those who do not visit the temple is problematicif the object of study is seen to be ‘Hindus’, or ‘Hinduism’, but not if theobject of study is seen as the processes which have led to the construc-tion of a temple (see Nye 1995).

In so far as the focus of interest is the ways in which religious practiceis changing in the diaspora, it is signi�cant that certain aspects of chang-ing religious practice have passed completely unnoticed by researchers.In the subcontinent, most non-élite ‘Hindu’ groups share much religiouspractice with non-élite ‘Muslims’. They worship at the same shrines andmake offerings to the same ‘pirs’ and ‘babas’ (Imam 1975; Stree�and1979; Mines 1981; Searle-Chatterjee 1994a and 1994b; Fuller 1996, p. 7),though this seems to be declining in urban areas. It appears that thissharing has disappeared in Britain. If this is so, it is a matter of someinterest to establish why. Lack of interest in this aspect of religiouschange may be due both to lack of awareness of popular religious prac-tice in the subcontinent as well as to the in�uence of the ‘world religions’paradigm.

I have felt it appropriate to point to ways in which studies of Hindusin Britain relate to particular strands of anthropological practice becausethe Burghart collection is clearly perceived as anthropological ratherthan sociological and both Jackson/Nesbitt and Ballard make a point ofinsisting that neither they nor their contributors are sociologists. Theauthors in question are either anthropologists or Religious Studiesspecialists who have been exposed to the discipline of anthropology. Theinsistence that they are not sociologists is presumably to justify theirfocus on ritual, and to defend themselves from the possible charge thatthey are not discussing an issue but are simply describing a particulargroup and the changes affecting it. Such a concern for description, uncon-nected with theoretical, policy or political issues, emerges from a combi-nation of in�uences, the ‘descriptive’, interpretive approach rooted inDurkheimian functionalism, the ‘culturalist’ tendencies of American cul-tural anthropology, and Indology, by which Burghart at least wasaffected, and �nally the culture of the discipline of Religious Studies.

A focus on description may also be partly a result of market demandsfor publications within the ‘world religions’ paradigm and of expectations


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that researchers will provide packaged ‘information’ about groups (‘com-munities’), for health professionals and others, rather than about pro-cesses. Ethnic Studies are akin to travel guides to the unfamiliar at home,and anthropologists, by tradition, are more inclined to study groups of‘foreign’, especially ‘post-colonial’, origin. A study of something appar-ently more familiar like a Catholic or Methodist centre would probablyonly seem interesting if related to a sociological question.

8. ‘Positive images’ and the survivalist problematic

Ballard insists that because the contributors to his collection are mostlyanthropologists they focus on family, kinship, morality and networks ofobligation and reciprocity and the resiliences generated within self-created worlds. The image is a positive one, deriving again from theDurkheimian tradition, a welcome counter-balance to older images ofdeprivation and victimhood. Larger religious solidarities are, as herightly points out, short-lived. ‘The groups have all been followingbroadly parallel trajectories’ (1994, p. 28), ‘all the new minorities arestrongly committed to cultural and religious reconstruction’ (p. 2). This‘all’ refers not to individual agents but to groups de�ned ethnically. It isinteresting to place alongside this the recent �nding in a British samplesurvey that less than one-third of Indians and African Asians said thatreligion was very important in how they led their lives (Metcalf, Modoodand Virdee 1996, p. 133). Though such a �nding must be tested on othersamples, it is striking, given that all of Modood’s work has been premisedon the importance of religion as a social variable.

Many accounts of Hindus in Britain are suffused uncritically with‘positive images’. This is surprising, for theological accounts of churchschisms in the history of the West generally have no hesitation in showingthe role of con�icting interest groups in the writing of texts and in thestruggle to control both religious institutions and the interpretation ofcultural representations. The same is true of anthropological studies ofHindus in India. This difference must be partly due to awareness of theethnocentric and racist context within which such work is produced.Regardless of the intention of the author, work relating to racializedminorities in Britain will be received by the reader in terms of his/herown, often negative, assumptions and prejudices. Where little othermaterial exists, and where the reader has little relevant personal experi-ence by which to assess what is written, a particularly heavy burden fallson the writer. S/he must attempt to control all possible readings of thework, knowing that it will be subject to particularly intense scrutiny. Theresult is that many kinds of social and cultural contradiction disappearfrom the writing. The irony of this is that such work may end up by con-veying the impression that there are bounded groups, with particularessences, in some way cut off from the normal political and economic


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struggles in which Western individuals participate. The parallels to ‘ori-entalism’ as described by Edward Said (1991) are easy enough to see.

Two main arguments are generally put forward in the literature toexplain the emergence of religious institutions among British Hindus.One treats this as simply a process of naturalizing, transplanting a poten-tial which was already present (indeed, Werbner 1987, pp. 177–78 usesthis particular phrase in relation to Sikhs and Muslims). The other refersto the mutual support or sense of identity and meaning provided in analien context (see Nye’s 1995 discussion of this). A Durkheimian accountof the process is provided by Burghart who refers to the establishmentof a sect or temple as an expression of the emergence of a social group(Burghart 1987) which, in turn, facilitates an intensi�cation of inter-action.

Often a protective concern is shown for the survival of the religion intothe future. The language sometimes resembles that used in ecologicalstudies of endangered species. Recurring words are preservation, persis-tence, reestablishment, survival. I quote some examples. ‘Sikhs sufferfrom internal differences (Knott 1987, p. 159) but are not divided byethnic allegiance like Hindus. The Hindus do not have the same naturaladvantages’. ‘Without the temple the maintenance of the tradition woulddepend on the efforts of individuals to consolidate and transmit theimportant features of Hindu religion and culture. While this might resultin the private retention of valuable vernacular traditions ignored in thetemple’s current religious provision, it is dif�cult to see how Hinduism asa religious and social system could be perpetuated (. . .) without under-going some kind of institutionalisation’. ‘The process of giving newmeaning (. . .) is the price of its survival as a socially meaningful tradition’(pp. 177–79). Such sentiments are expressed in many of the Burghartcontributions and also by Nesbitt. ‘Many British born Valmikis �ndaspects of their parental tradition boring and meaningless (. . .) howmight this gulf be bridged?’ (Nesbitt 1994, p. 135). The �ndings of earlierresearch (that Hinduism is dying out) are ‘gloomy’ and can be rejected(Jackson and Nesbitt 1993, pp. 10, 12). Dwyer speaking of the Pushtimargsect, says ‘its survival is endangered unless long-term action is taken soon’(1994, p. 188). These are deeply conservative sentiments of the kind onemight associate with a heritage document. Outside folklore studies,which have often been associated with nationalist movements, or thewritings of nationalist historians, it would be unusual to encounter suchan academic approach in relation to the cultural practices of whites. Whatis curious here is that the concern and protectiveness relates not to thecultural traditions of the researcher her/himself, nor does it relate to indi-viduals and their civic rights. Would researchers adopt such an attitudeto Christian denominations not their own? Though it is understandablethat many Indians are concerned with issues of cultural continuity, it issurprising that a survivalist problematic forms the focus for an academic


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text, as it does in Burghart’s book, sub-titled The Perpetuation of Religionin an Alien Milieu. This approach is often based on the view that religion,in any form, is primarily benign and positive, with socially integrativefunctions. It derives from a combination of the in�uences of bothDurkheim and the discipline of Religious Studies.

Rarely is there more than a perfunctory consideration of the way inwhich religion may serve as a vehicle for the expression of con�icts, orof the ideological functions of ‘religious’ behaviour. We are told ofmiracles, homes being visited by deities and becoming semi-public placesof worship, without any attempt to consider possible economic or socialdimensions of this (Michaelson 1987, pp. 39–40), though there is abun-dant evidence that in India, at least, a common way of expressing a risein social status is by accentuating religious practice, by sponsoring theperformance of elaborate rituals, or building of places of worship.Another contributor to the Burghart collection tells us that there are‘many possible stories about the founding of the Community of ManyNames of God’. This variety is not narrated, let alone related to anysocial base (Taylor 1987, p. 104). We are presented with the Guru’sversion as a way of understanding ‘the community’s relation to god’(p. 101), as if this is the only version needed. Reference is made to verylarge sums of money which appear mysteriously as a result of prayer, suf-�cient to enable purchase of a London �at, the �ying over of an elephantfrom Sri Lanka, and purchase of a centre, but no attempt is made to con-sider where these funds might have come from (Taylor 1987, p. 106).

9. Religion and politics

The phenomenological approach common in Religious Studies (seeSmart 1973; Knott 1986) places complete reliance on the accounts of key‘insiders’ and ignores the fact that ‘insiders’ always diverge in theirinterpretations. This is seen where Bowen refers (1987, pp. 16–17) to theHindu Swayamsevak Sangh [HSS], conceding that its counterpart inIndia, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS], had strong politicalovertones but assuring us that in the UK these have been neutralized.Such a claim is, indeed, put across by HSS members but on what groundsdoes an academic researcher report it uncritically? The HSS and theVishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP] in Britain have never publicly disassoci-ated themselves from the activities in India of their counterparts. Bowencomments ‘differences are subsumed within the idea of Hindu society,transcended by the notion of sanskritic civilisation of which all Hindusirrespective of regional culture are a part’ (1987, pp. 28–30). This is a veryparticular ‘high’ caste viewpoint, speci�cally associated with NorthIndian urban Brahmins and secondarily with merchant castes (Dirks1996). He romanticizes a particular ‘insider’ view which he takes to be auniversal. ‘In this movement between unity and diversity one �nds


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among the Gujaratis of Bradford evidence of a characteristically Hinduparadigm for the structure of a plural society in Britain’. His work con-trasts with that of Carey in the same volume who clearly detaches himselffrom his informants despite showing imaginative empathy (1987, p. 99).

One might concede that this was 1987 and political innocence wastherefore understandable. Bowen’s comments on the HSS and VHP are,however, quoted again by Knott in 1994 who states authoritatively thatthe VHP and HSS have been politically neutralized in Britain. What is theevidence for this? Once again it reads as the words of key informants. Bythe late 1980s there were clear signs of political dimensions to moves forHindu unity. In 1989 the VHP held a vast assembly at Milton Keynes (theVirat Hindu Sammelan), at which leaders of the right-wing political party,the BJP, had a prominent role, and at which the programme was dedi-cated to Hedgewar, the founder of the para-military RSS. The programmeadvocated the building of a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Mosque(Dwyer 1994, pp. 185–86, 189), in other words, demolishing the mosque.Vertovec, too, as late as 1995, refers to the Council’s moves towards uni�-cation but ignores its involvement in right-wing political movements

[T]hus far little actually exists to safeguard common interests acrossthe board of regional, sect and caste groups (. . .). The NationalCouncil of Hindu Temples comes closest to this (. . .) though somecomplain it is Gujarati dominated. Large-scale mobilisation has notbeen given cause or opportunity to take place in society-wide publicspace (1995, pp. 144–147).

Dwyer and Banks are exceptional in showing awareness of economic andpolitical uses of religion in the case of Swaminarayans and Jains (1994).

Neglect of political dimensions of religious action may partly be a con-sequence of researchers in Britain not taking note of subcontinental poli-tics. Communist parties exist in every Indian state: Kerala and Bengaloften have communist governments. The use of religious symbolism as abasis for political mobilization is one of the more powerful tools at thedisposal of anti-left movements. Middle-class Brahmins and merchantcastes provide the backbone for Hindu nationalist organizations. It is nocoincidence that they are particularly active in the Bombay region withits long history of ‘low’ caste anti-Brahminical movements (Basu et al.1993, pp. 4–12, 16). It is revealing that the advertisements in the national-ist Savarkar memorial volume were addressed to extremely wealthyentrepreneurs (1989).

Political innocence is now no longer acceptable for it appears to legit-imize forms of religious nationalism. It is possible that the ‘Islamophobia’entrenched in European culture, and reinforced by various recent con-�icts and movements, may blind academics in the West to the signi�canceof religious nationalisms of other kinds.


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One of the claims of the Hindu nationalists which alarms otherreligious groups in India (as well as many non-nationalist Hindus) is thatHinduism is the ‘way of life’ of the people of India, that Hinduness or‘Hindutva’ is a matter of culture rather than of religious commitment, anethnic marker of peoplehood, rather than a rich reservoir of symbols,values and practices from which individuals may draw. Bowen referredfavourably to this HSS claim that they are not concerned with Hindureligion but simply with the values of Hindu civilization (1987). Heappeared to be unaware of its history and signi�cance. Its implication isthat all true Indians, regardless of religion, ought to be able to accept thatthey are Hindu. If they cannot do this their right to citizenship is ques-tionable. Academic discussion of whether Hinduism is, or is becoming,an ‘ethnic religion’ in Britain may have implications for this claim. In theolder ‘Comparative Religions’ literature it was common to refer to Hin-duism, like Judaism, as an ethnic religion in that it was associated withpeople of a speci�c geographical origin. Ninian Smart’s description ofHinduism as a ‘world religion’ rather than a ‘group-tied’ one (1973) coun-teracted that approach. Burghart took up this issue for discussion, recog-nizing that some prominent groups of Hindus in Britain, particularly theNational Council of Hindu Temples [NCHT], were now claimingthat Hinduism is the ‘timeless spiritual culture of India’, a marker ofIndianness (1987, pp. 231, 246f, 251). He had a slightly unclear positionon this, noting that these lay spokesmen were ceasing to make univer-salist claims to truth unlike the ascetic spokesmen of redemptive Hin-duism who have never claimed that it was an ethnic religion, that is tosay restricted to a particular people (1987, pp. 233–4, 237). What is sur-prising is that he did not consider the political implications of the NCHTclaim, that is, that only Hindus have rights to full Indian citizenship. Sucha hegemonic claim has existed since the 1920s and derives from Savarkar(1989 [1923]), though it has been heard much more since 1985. ForBritish whites, Hinduism is an ethnic religion, that is to say of a particu-lar bounded group of people. That is why Indians are considered to beits most appropriate spokespersons (p. 233). In the end, Burghart arguedthat though British Hindus identify with ethnic groups based on regionor caste, they do not in general see themselves as constituting a singlepeople or ethnic group.

The National Council of Hindu Temples imagines and attempts tocreate a community of Hindus on the basis of what was, and is, generallyonly a category, used contextually and intermittently. For the Council, asfor the VHP and RSS/HSS, this is to be the prime identity of all Indians.The work of academics should not be blind to the importance of this ideain representing a political interest likely to be more prominent in thefuture. Uni�cation is a political project, enabling mobilization againstlow caste, or left-wing movements (in India) and differentiation fromstigmatized or low-status Muslims (in Britain). The Western reader may


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not be aware of the complex relationships between class and religion inSouth Asia (see Fuller 1992, pp. 260–1; Lieten 1994; Searle-Chatterjee1994b). Although in India there was always a landed Muslim feudal class,as well as Muslim merchants and professionals, Muslims were, and are,more likely to be of the ‘lower’ classes than are Hindus (Imam 1975;Banerjee 1992, p. 58). This pattern continues, not surprisingly, in Britaintoo (Modood 1992), though here this is partly related to the region oforigin of the migrants, and timing of arrival.

Conclusion

Although there is much detailed description and analysis of interest inacademic writing on the lives of Hindus in Britain, I have focused on thewider implications of much of that literature and on some of the prob-lems implicit in it. I have argued that it needs to free itself from the in�u-ence of the ‘world religions’ paradigm common in Religious Studies andfrom the Durkheimian model, with its assumption that religion primarilyhas integrative functions. It is common to refer to the in�uence of SocialAnthropology on Religious Studies. What is often not recognized is thein�uence of Religious Studies on Anthropology. Much of what I refer tois the product of disciplinary drift and market demand, coupled withpolitical innocence. By reifying religious action and prioritizing it, ratherthan seeing it as a contextualized dimension of social action, we areleaving out individual actors’ frames of reference and inadvertently pro-viding legitimacy to the hegemonic endeavours of right-wing Hindunationalists. Nowikowski and Ward (1979), Kalka (1991), Werbner(1991) and Baumann (1996) provide examples of some alternative pathsthat can be followed. Though it is essential to retain awareness of theracist context in Britain, should this make us treat the religious activityof racialized minorities with special intellectual tools? Is the Western aca-demic being patronizing by refusing to recognize that Hindu individuals,too, may have a will to power? If Religious Studies specialists wish tostudy religious practice in contemporary society, they will have to takeon board the wider social and political awareness which is part both ofsociology, and of the best traditions of social anthropology.

Acknowledgements

This article owes much to discussions with Chetan Bhatt, Parita Muktaand Ursula Sharma, among others. Thanks also for the comments ofMalory Nye. The views expressed are mine alone.

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MARY SEARLE-CHATTERJEE is Senior Lecturer in the Departmentof Applied Community Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.ADDRESS: Department of Applied Community Studies, ManchesterMetropolitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, ManchesterM20 2RR, UK.


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world religions' and 'ethnic groups': do these paradigms lend themselves to the cause...

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