The Evangelicalization of Hinduism

C.A. Bayly discusses the development of "imperial religions" and their globalization in his book on the Birth of the Modern World. He points out that the major world religions other than Christianity were transformed by their encounter with Christianity, and their response to that encounter. Of Hinduism in particular he writes:

The Asian religions rapidly took up Christian missionaries' methods of preaching and evangelization. In some senses, indeed, they became proselytizing religions for the first time. By 1900, the Hindu orthodox had begun to establish purifying associations (shuddhi sabhas), whic tried to "reconvert" to Hinduism lowers-cast and "tribal" groups who had become Muslim or Christian. Of course, the idea of conversion in Hinduism, or even the idea of a unified Hinduism itself, was quite recent in origin [a reflection, perhaps, of the church's catholicity �EPJL]. This went along with the slower and older process of ritual consolidation by which Hindu priests, ascetics, and text-readers moved among tribal and lower-caste people, gradually attaching them to more orthodox rites and forms of worship. In the case of the Arya Samaj, the Aryan Society, a self-consciously modern form of Hinduism, "evangelical" activity extended to denouncing other world religions and sending missions to Indian communities abroad in places such as Fiji, Mauritius, and the Caribbean. The society's preachers and publicists consciously imitated the aggressive form of Christian preaching and printing and ridiculed the inconsistencies and dubious logic of the Christian scriptures. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, students along the China coast and in Southeast Asia followed suit and began to found organizations such as the already mentioned Young Men's Buddhist Associations, which were directly modeled on the YMCA and played a significant role in the origins of Chinese nationalism. In all these revival movements, the newspaper and printed pamphlet played an important role in confirming the integrity of believers.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, April 16, 2004 at 08:40 AM

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