Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and

Nineteenth-Century Banaras by Vasudha Dalmia
Review by: Heidi Pauwels
Source: International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Apr., 1999), pp. 96-99
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20106638
Accessed: 24-09-2018 21:19 UTC

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96 / International Journal of Hindu Studies 3, 1 (1999)

Tamil love lyrics and shows how its repetitive, erotic imagery upholds the Jaina
injunctions against eroticism by repelling the reader. Coil's essay on kingship
analyzes three Jaina narratives about ?aiva kings to reconstruct what a good king
is in the Jaina sense. Michael W. Meister's essay on the Osi?n Mah?v?ra and
Sacciy?m?t? temples illustrates the shared ritual culture of Jainas and Vaisnavas by
examining the competitive identities of Osv?l Jainas as past Rajputs. Lawrence A
Babb's essay compares S ve tambara Jaina p?j? to Vaisnava and Sai va p?j?s by
exploring each group's definitions of worshiper and the worship-worthy. Leslie C.
Orr's analysis of eighth- to thirteenth-century Tamil donative inscriptions by Hindu
and Jaina religious women finds that, despite the similarities in their donative
patterns, these women's boundary identities and localized frames of reference?
which offer them little public influence?prevent mem from having meaningful
influence on each other. Indira Viswanathan Peterson's article argues that the Pallava
era ?aiva polemics prevented the study of non-Saiva Tamil texts and that these anti
Jaina polemics were fashioned during the Cola period as part of Tamil nationalist
rhetoric. Finally, Richard H. Davis' essay balances ?aiva polemics against clear
evidence of Saiva-Jaina dialogue expressed in Saiva Siddh?nta texts, suggesting
that scholarship on these dialogues opens up the study of parallel developments in
South Asian religious traditions.
Open boundaries can teach something of Jainism and of the dialogues between
South Asian religions to scholars of South Asian religions with a variety of foci:
Yoga and Tantra, literature and poetics, sociopolitical rhetoric, temple history and
donative inscription, the history of kingship, and the interpretation of ritual. The
essays also speak to two regions in South Asia?Western India (Babb, Cort, Meister)
and South India (Davis, Orr, Peterson, Ryan)?where Jainism has been a major force
in the development of religion and culture. This volume successfully argues that the
study of Jainas must be contextualized within the greater study of South Asian
religions and that, more importantly, the study of South Asian religions must
include the study of Jainas.

St. Lawrence University, Canton M. Whitney Kelting

Vasudha Dalmia, The nationalization of Hindu traditions: Bh?ratendu Hari?

chandra and nineteenth-century Ba?aras. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
xii + 490 pages.

This book is crucial for anyone trying to understand modern Hinduism and the way
it came to establish itself in dynamic interchange with die colonial encounter, a
question with much contemporary relevance. Vasudha Dalmia tackles this important
issue by concentrating on nineteenth-century 'traditionalism,' rather than the
already much studied 'reformist movements' (defined on pages 7-8), and by
providing a nuanced case study of Ba?aras, in particular 'the father of Hindi,'

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 Book reviews and notices I 97

Bh?ratendu Hari?candra.
Continuing her efforts of the book coedited with Heinrich von Stietencron
(Representing Hinduism: The construction of religious traditions and national
identity, 1995), the author historicizes the timelessness of 'San?tanism.' She does so
in a balanced way, taking care not to overemphasize its 'traditionalism' nor to
construe it as a purely 'Orientalist construct.' Her study of nineteenth-century
Ba?aras illustrates the process by which the multiplicity of Hindu traditions became
streamlined and nationalized, putting the finger on when and how tradition rein
vented itself and what power configurations were involved.
Methodologically, Dalmia's monograph is the result of an erudite and impressive
combination of a literary analysis and social studies approach. She takes the frame of
her study (with some qualifications, see pages 15-18, also 49) from Ranajit Guha:
the interaction of two idioms, the metropolitan derived political culture of the
colonizer and the one derived from precolonial tradition, produces a third, the
modem Indian one. In that frame, she analyzes the literary output from the second
half of the nineteenth century, when the third idiom was forged, concentrating on
two trend-setting magazines edited by Hariscandra. The importance of these (short
lived) magazines lay in their creation of a literary public that was to occupy a
politically functional public sphere.
Dalmia's theoretical contributions are well grounded in her own ongoing original
research on Hariscandra. It is with one famous speech of his that she opens the
problematic of constituting tradition in colonial India (chapter two). In order to
properly contextualize Hariscandra's role, she includes a chapter on the holy city
of Ba?aras (chapter three) and the constitution of Hindi as the national language
of the Hindus (chapter four). She then proceeds to analyze the literary output of
Hariscandra (chapter five) and links this with the significance in the religious field
(chapter six).
The focus on Hariscandra should not deter the general reader because his is an
interesting case in point, and this study offers much wider insights than those of
interest to Hindi-v?/?s. Hariscandra may be seen as representative for traditionalist
Hinduism, and as a leading publicist he would not only represent but also create
public opinion. Hari?candra's role in defining modem Hindi and Hinduism has been
contested: it has been evaluated by some as revivalist, by others as vanguard of
modernity, by some as loyalist to British colonial power, by others as radically
rebellious (on the status questions of Hariscandra research, see 42-49). Dalmia
shows mat all evaluations hold some truth. Hariscandra cannot be easily classified
as black or white but rather is a thoroughly ambiguous figure. Among others, he was
so in his attitude to women and Victorian morals (editing a magazine for uplifting
women, B?l?bodhini, while carrying out affairs with courtesans, some of which were
child-widows) and in his position between the elite and the 'people' on whose behalf
he claims to speak.
The reader mainly interested in Hinduism will want to rum especially to chapters
three and six. In chapter three, the author draws upon a variety of sources (including

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98 / International Journal of Hindu Studies 3, 1 (1999)

primary archival material) to show how, in the course of the nineteenth century,
the king and merchants of Ba?aras moved from patronage of the Indo-Persian
mix-culture (as exemplified in the glittering festival of Burhv? M?ngala) to a
strong identification with Hindu culture, increasingly defined as Vaisnavism (as
exemplified by the R?mal?l?). This coincided (not coincidental^) with increased
British impact in economical, administrative, and judiciary spheres. The financial
patronage of Hindu culture and panditic learning by the British came with strings
attached, as is well illustrated by the example of Benares Sanskrit College (97-107).
Dalmia shows that the conservative Br?hmana reaction to the challenge of reformist
Hinduism (especially 'antimodern' vyavasth?s or edicts) was deeply impacted by the
colonial setting. Particularly interesting in the current debate about conversions and
Hinduism is her discussion of Christian proselytization in Ba?aras and Hindu
reactions to it (107-17).
Chapter six contains a detailed study of the evolution of Hariscandra's views on
several theological and sociopolitical issues. In particular, his increasing insistence
on adherence to devotion to one God as the essence of Hinduism is illuminating.
Dalmia draws the conclusion that mis feature of modern Hinduism came about not as
a purely Orientalist construct but in dynamic exchange with the indigenous elites, in
particular the merchant formations sponsoring Vaisnava samprad?yas. Hariscandra
is also representative in his use of the term 'Hindu,' which is ambiguous (sometimes
exclusive and other times inclusive of Muslims, the latter when used as opposed to
'British colonizers,' so as to stake the claim of representation of the nation).
For those interested in the link between religion and nationalism on the one hand
and language and literature on the other, chapters four and five are the ones to turn
to. Here Dalmia describes how 'Hindi as a language and literature...restricted the
meaning of Hindu, even as it claimed to inscribe the autobiography of Hindustan as
a nation' (337). In chapter four language is the main issue, and the author gives an
apt overview of the complex process by which the term 'Hindi' came to mean what it
does today and traces HariScandra's changing views on the language issue. In
chapter five literature is central. After describing the Hindi journal scene and the
bourgeois public sphere created by it, Dalmia zooms into the case of Hariscandra
trend-setting journals and how they 'mapped out the literary terrain' in terms of
pioneering new genres, canon-formation, and the establishing aesthetic criteria.
Hari?candra is well positioned as a fulcrum between the new literary world of
Calcutta and the one of traditional learning in which he was steeped.
In the course of her study, Dalmia digests and critiques all recent work bearing on
the topics she discusses, which is quite a bit. The book in effect contains several
thoughtful reviews of those works, often indicating good questions for further
research. In short, this book is extremely rich and interesting, whatever minor
quibbles one might have with certain points are dwarfed by the scope of the study.
Its only flaw may be due to this very strength. The author covers such a broad area
and manages to bring together so many threads, that the reading can get very dense
and the reader may occasionally feel lost in a mass of details. However, when loosing

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 Book reviews and notices I 99

track of the broad picture, the reader should not loose heart. The author always will
lead him back to the main issues at stake, and they are decidedly worthwhile.

University of Washington, Seattle Heidi Pauwels

Richard H. Davis, Lives of Indian images. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1997. xiii + 331 pages.

The reader of this fascinating book may wonder how Richard Davis moved from his
Ritual in an oscillating universe: Worshipping Siva in medieval India (1991) to
this historicist work of 'postmodernism.' The answer appears in the book's final two
sentences:

In its recognition of change and situatedness, and in its attempt to ground the
identities and significances of images in their shifting encounters and relation
ships with human audiences, this [postmodernist] frame also coheres with the
views of devout Hindus, medieval and modem, who optimistically acknowledge
that their gods may manifest themselves in countless diverse ways, in response to
ever-changing realities. With this in mind, we can eagerly await further manifesta
tions (263).

The key to Davis' argument, which is largely free of 'postmodernist' jargon, is

a shift away from concerns with the 'original' meaning of an object toward the
religious, cultural, political, and economic circumstances within which 'the
identities of religious icons are constructed and reconstructed' (263). He uses
the notion of an 'intellectual dispensation,' an historically grounded and
socially shared understanding of the systems by which things are ordered and
administered that produces a 'community of response.' In India, as he richly
illustrates, several communities of response deriving from differing intellectual
dispensations have interacted over the centuries to view various images and icons
differently.
With an impressive command of detail interestingly conveyed through a style
that is usually lively, Davis uses specific objects to focus his analysis. In chapter
one, it is a medieval South Indian bronze image of Siva that appeared at the National
Gallery in Washington, DC, during the 1985 Festival of India. There he analyzes the
profoundly different ways in which the same image is 'seen' by viewers in a museum
and by devotees in a medieval temple. In chapter two he turns to medieval Hindus,
discussing the way Hindu kings looted religious objects and images in wartime,
relocated them, and gave them new political meanings. Then, in chapter three, he
turns to the destruction of the Siva temple of Soman?tha in Gujarat by Mahmud
of Ghaznah in 1026 and to Indo-Muslim anecdotes about it. To view such events
from the other side, chapter four turns to medieval Hindus who sought to protect

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