So here we are. Today Calcutta is known as Kolkata and the
city is sprouting skyscrapers and mega-malls. The tenor of politics is changing
too, as decades of Marxist leadership have given way to new electoral tensions.
Some of the parties making headway in Bengal today would have been almost
unimaginable in pre-liberalization Calcutta. The Hindu majoritarianism of the
BJP is making striking inroads, and side by side with the gleaming skyscrapers
one spots the distinctive spires of North Indian nagara temples. It
seems as if the twain has finally met—Rammohun’s Calcutta must make room for
the Swaminarayanis (see image).
BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir, Kolkata Photo by Brian A. Hatcher, 2018.
For many, changes like this strike a dissonant chord. And I
am not thinking only of the spiritual and cultural heirs of Rammohun. Scholars
of religion in modern India are themselves confronted with the challenge of
rethinking some of their most cherished teleologies around progress in Indian religion
and public life. Hard questions arise. Does the rapid expansion of the
Sampraday in the past few decades register the return of the repressed in
modern religious life? If the modern comparative study of religion has tended
to celebrate the sober Vedantic inclusivism inaugurated by Rammohun, how will
our textbooks make sense of the current landscape, with its soaring temples and
exuberant devotional communities? If we continue to tell the story of modern Hinduism
in terms of the inevitable spread of progressive religion across South Asia, we
paint ourselves into an interpretive corner. Not only do the terms of our comparisons
fail, but we face the uncomfortable challenge of confronting the colonial genealogy
of our own disciplinary tools. But this is a task we must undertake. Along the
way we should strive to develop new analytical tools, such as the model of religious
polity construction I offer—tools that will allow us to bring together for
comparison what scholarly accounts have for so long kept asunder. In the present-day
confluence (or collision) of Gujarat and Bengal we face the challenge of assessing
anew the place of religion in 21st century India.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
So here we are. Today Calcutta is known as Kolkata and the city is sprouting skyscrapers and mega-malls. The tenor of politics is changing too, as decades of Marxist leadership have given way to new electoral tensions. Some of the parties making headway in Bengal today would have been almost unimaginable in pre-liberalization Calcutta. The Hindu majoritarianism of the BJP is making striking inroads, and side by side with the gleaming skyscrapers one spots the distinctive spires of North Indian nagara temples. It seems as if the twain has finally met—Rammohun’s Calcutta must make room for the Swaminarayanis (see image).
For many, changes like this strike a dissonant chord. And I am not thinking only of the spiritual and cultural heirs of Rammohun. Scholars of religion in modern India are themselves confronted with the challenge of rethinking some of their most cherished teleologies around progress in Indian religion and public life. Hard questions arise. Does the rapid expansion of the Sampraday in the past few decades register the return of the repressed in modern religious life? If the modern comparative study of religion has tended to celebrate the sober Vedantic inclusivism inaugurated by Rammohun, how will our textbooks make sense of the current landscape, with its soaring temples and exuberant devotional communities? If we continue to tell the story of modern Hinduism in terms of the inevitable spread of progressive religion across South Asia, we paint ourselves into an interpretive corner. Not only do the terms of our comparisons fail, but we face the uncomfortable challenge of confronting the colonial genealogy of our own disciplinary tools. But this is a task we must undertake. Along the way we should strive to develop new analytical tools, such as the model of religious polity construction I offer—tools that will allow us to bring together for comparison what scholarly accounts have for so long kept asunder. In the present-day confluence (or collision) of Gujarat and Bengal we face the challenge of assessing anew the place of religion in 21st century India.