Hinduism and the ‘World Religion’ fallacy

Religion (1990) 20, 101-118

HINDIJISM AND THE ‘WORLD RELIGION’ FALLACY

Timothy Fitzgerald

The present argument is (1) that a broadly sociological approach to Indian religion is more fruitful analytically than the ‘World Religion’ approach; (2) that the conception of Hinduism as a World Religion is highly artificial, and has been created by some theological needs; (3) that the case of Hinduism highlights more general problems with the notion of the World Religions. The implication of this argument is that the World Religion approach, which dominates the study of religion in schools and colleges, creates more confusion than clarity. A sketch of an alternative approach is offered.

The thesis of this paper’ is that the nature of Hinduism itself requires a broadly sociological method of approach to make it intelligible to western students and their teachers.’ Such an approach (my argument goes) is less likely to lead to the construction of a largely fictional entity, the World Religion Hinduism. The other side of this argument is that the current World Religion approach to the teaching of Hinduism in schools and colleges, which derives from Comparative Religion and thus in turn from a brand of Christian theology, presents a highly artificial image which does more to distort than to reveal its subject.

This quasi-theological endeavour, which has been given a scientific gloss through the adoption of ‘phenomenology’, has in the case of Hinduism been aided by neo-Vedanta, a family of theological viewpoints which represent themselves as the universal religion Hinduism.3 The modern neo-Vedantin ideology is highly significant and is one of the facts that needs to be studied; but it is primarily sociology that reveals it and places it in context for those who seek a non-theological perspective.

A further point of the argument is that the inadequacy of the World Religion category in relation to Hinduism may reflect a more general inadequacy. The very notion of a World Religion seems confused and dubious. This confusion arises because a World Religion is really a theological concept which is widely and uncritically used as though it were a scientific category describing a class of real objects in the world. But the sense in which these objects can be understood to exist is highly problematic in both semantic and empirical terms. The case of Hinduism seems to highlight these general problems.

0048-721X/90/020101 + 18$02,00/O 0 1990 Academic Press Limited

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My argument is aimed at the Religious Studies sector within which I teach, particularly that aspect of it that is concerned with the teaching of Hinduism and other so-called World Religions in schools and colleges. There has, of course, been considerable discussion about how to ‘characterise’ Hinduism;4 but, regardless of this, the World Religion approach continues to dominate, as can be readily seen from the continual production of books in this genre, aimed at primary, secondary and higher education students and teachers.5 So my argument reflects my own position as a college lecturer with responsibility for teaching Hinduism to student teachers, and the problems of incomprehen- sion that arise from a reliance on such sources. Indeed, I have had to disentangle myself (largely with the help of anthropology) from this fabrication.

Even if I had the space, which I do not, I would not have the necessary experience to translate my methodological argument into practical classroom strategies. But while acknowledging this pedagogical problem, that is not my aim or concern in this article. I am concerned with the high degree of distortion and artificiality in the idea of a World Religion, particularly as it is applied to Hinduism, though more tentatively also as a general category.

More positively I propose an analytical distinction within Hinduism between two different senses of Dharma. 6 For convenience I shall call these Dharma 1 and Dharma 2. Dharma 1 is fundamentally about ritual order or hierarchy; Dharma 2, which corresponds more closely with western conceptions of religion, is about soteriology. Dharma 1 is the analytical centre of gravity of Hinduism, and provides the context of ritual order within which Dharma 2 type sects need to be analysed. These latter salvational religions are rooted in Dharma 1 Hinduism but have developed theologies encouraging missionary activity. ‘Neo-Vedanta’ belongs to this type. However, Dharma 1 Hinduism is much less easily transplanted into foreign cultures, and there is a strong case for claiming that it is coterminous with traditional Indian culture and with the caste system as a peculiarly Indian phenomenon.

I return to this distinction in more detail at the end of this article. In reality there has, of course, been significant interaction over the centuries between these different emphases within Hinduism, and this analytical framework is not intended to imply that there has ever been a fixed and static order. On the other hand, certain values and structural orders have persisted, and they have manifested themselves in a particular bounded society. This analytical distinction between Dharma 1 and Dharma 2 Hinduism may help to provide a framework within which the traditional order, as well as social change, can be assessed by students and teachers.

My proposal is to bring this analytical distinction into some degree of correlation with Smart’s more general distinction between ‘a religion’ and ‘group-tied religion’.’ This distinction is part of Smart’s earlier work; but this work has been highly influential in the field, and seems to have encouraged

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the proliferation of the World Religion genre. I believe that a distinction within Hinduism between Dharma 1 and Dharma 2 may help to illustrate the almost tautological sense in which Hinduism, and perhaps all religious phenomena, is ‘group-tied’, and the methodological implications of this fact. Conversely, I examine the concepts of ‘a religion’ and ‘a World Religion’ and ask in what, if any, sense such objects exist in the world. In particular what sense can be given to the notion that Hinduism is a World Religion? And is it even a religion?

THE IDEA OF A WORLD RELIGION To attempt to answer these questions I need first to risk a generalisation about the idea of a World Religion that permeates books in the Religious Studies and Religious Education sector, and to suggest how one of these so-called World Religions might be conceived to differ from just a plain religion. I start with the latter because it is apparently the more general category, World Religions appearing as exceptional examples of this category, with special distinguishing features. The most widespread concept of a religion available appears to be a system of beliefs about salvation and the supernatural, adherence to which leads people to live according to certain rules, to perform certain rituals, and to develop certain institutions such as churches. Individuals participate privately and publicly in a particular religion because they adhere to the beliefs in question.

According to this general view, the relation between the religion and the socio-economic system in general is perceived to vary. In some societies, notably primitive non-literate ones, a high degree of homogeneity is acknowledged, the religion is seen to be more closely tangled up with non-religious beliefs and institutions, magical, technical, economic and political, and is therefore more difficult to isolate and define as a distinct system. Moreover, insofar as the religion is perceived to exist at all in such primitive cultures, it tends to be confined to the boundaries of that society and not to be shared by other societies. These ‘primal’ religions were typified by the small isolated societies in Africa and Polynesia studied by social anthropologists. As Smart puts it, these religions are ‘group-tied’.8 They exist at one end of a spectrum, the position on which is determined largely by the degree to which any given religion has or has not developed into a distinct soteriological entity, distinguished itself from its non-religious bed-fellows such as the technical, the magical, the economic and the political, and emancipated itself from the boundaries of any one social group. Such development, self-definition and emancipation is the process by which ‘a religion’ emerges.

At this point of highly developed emancipation, a religion is perceived to have become a fully-fledged and self-articulated entity, ready to fly off from its nest and lay its eggs in foreign climes, perhaps through missionary activity

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or emigration. Such a religion is in danger of becoming a World Religion. But one crucial qualification, if it is to truly emancipate itself as such, and to develop a capacity to take root in different cultures, is that it must develop a universal message, a doctrine of salvation that is sufficiently transparent to be potentially available to adherents in a variety of cultural contexts. The other necessary conditions for a religion’s achievements as a fully-fledged World Religion are that it is literate, has scriptures that can be translated into different languages, has a class of special interpreters who can act as missionaries, appeals to large numbers of people, appears to transcend cultural boundaries, and is studied by hordes of westerners (such as this writer),

World Religion books say there are five or six of these-Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism are the usual group. Sometimes Buddhism is excluded and Zoroastrianism included.g The general conception seems to be that these are different kinds of the same type, sub-species of the genus religion. They are lined up alongside each other like collectors’ objects. All religions are, at bottom, systems of salvation centred on the supernatural; but World Religions have developed more, have refined and articulated themselves as clearly distinct entities, and consequently proclaim a message that is not bounded by one socio-cultural unit, but has a potentially universal relevance. Such a system can be described and studied insofar as it is ‘contained’ in its scriptures and organisational structures, though its relation with any given social context can be more or less problematic.

This idea of a World Religion is, in some important respects, a theological concept, but it has become incorporated as a basic category of Religious Education. The universalist pretensions of some theologies have passed over into a belief among scholars about the kind of things that exist in the world. It is possible that the prototype World Religion derives from evangelical Christianity of the capitalist west, which in the 19th century proclaimed a message of salvation equally valid to individuals everywhere, regardless of class, race or colour. But the missionaries encountered alternative theologies which either had, or which quickly developed, their own universalist claims. As a result, and in ‘dialogue’ with their foreign equivalents, liberal Christian theology dropped its exclusivity and began studying these alternative systems of salvation in earnest. Hence particular theological claims of universality became transformed into World Religions, objects that can be studied scientifically.

SMART’S DEFINITION OF RELIGION Much of this picture of ‘a religion’ and ‘a World Religion’, and the assumptions out of which it has been pieced together, can be detected in the early and influential work ofNinian Smart. In a sense he was the most persuasive British writer to formulate this theological viewpoint as though it was a scientific


concept, Whatever his position now, lo his phenomenological representation of the study of religion provides the theoretical background against which writers in the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education work in Britain. In one of his early books, The Phenomenon of Religion (1973), Smart presented his famous six-dimensional model of a religion. ’ ’ This was an early attempt to free Comparative Religion from its theological associations and to achieve some scientific objectivity. Unfortunately, however, the theology seems to have been built into the enterprise right from the start in the very concept of a religion implicit in his writing.

Take the definitional issue first. As I understand it, the six-dimensional concept was offered’as a model, not as a definition. It presupposes that the defining characteristic of a religion is belief in gods or the transcendent. For if one started out without any idea of what ‘a religion’ is, the statement that it is a complex object with these six dimensions would not by itself tell one the identity of the object.

Smart demonstrated this himself in another book, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge (1973), l2 where he applied the same six- dimensional model to an analysis of Maoism, while at the same time claiming to distinguish between a secular ideology (Maoism) and a religion proper (Buddhism). Both are amenable to the six-dimensional treatment, but only the latter is religion because it is centred on the gods and the transcendent, whereas the former does not qualify because it is not. This is the essential difference. True, Smart also holds to a family-resemblance type of definition in this book, which actually sets up an unresolved conflict between these differing approaches. But making such a distinction between Maoism and Buddhism only makes sense if you assume that, though a religion may share some of the same characteristics as a non-religious ideology, it nevertheless belongs to a sui generis category because it is focused on the gods or the transcendent.

A religion, then, is an entity that is essentially distinguished from other things by belief in gods or the transcendent. It has six dimensions or aspects. One of these is the ‘social’ aspect. Now the idea that Christianity, and even more particularly Hinduism, has a social dimension is a peculiar one, because its negation is inconceivable. It is presupposed by, and included in, all the other dimensions. One cannot imagine a non-social ritual, or a non-social ethic, or a non-social doctrine. What would a doctrine be without a social group to formulate it, and to interpret it, and to hold to it? Indeed, what would a religion be without a social group? In this sense the idea of a social dimension is redundant. It makes more sense to talk about the religious dimension of a society.

This idea of ‘a religion’ having a social dimension is, however, revealing. It suggests that the scholar of twenty years ago seems to have imagiaed a

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religion to be a kind of substantial entity, existing in a state ofsemi-indepen- dence from any particular social group, with a variable degree of potential to detach itself and transplant its essential message of salvation from one context to another, though perhaps as a consequence being forced to modify its social dimension or form. ’ 3 And I suggest that this reified view of a religion pervades World Religion books. In the case of Hinduism it leads to all the problems that Religious Education specialists sometimes acknowledge but can never resolve, about how to account for this World Religion’s stubborn and all-but- marginal refusal to budge from its moorings in a specific social system, and the problems about how to analytically separate the religion from its social dimension, including caste.

In The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knbwledge Smart seemed to have partially recognised that this concept of a religion is, if not universally false, at least problematic in the case of religions that do not have such universalist pretensions, but that are patently tied to the total social life of a specific bounded society. Indeed, he seemed to have recognised that such religions-he gives the example of the Nuer, as studied by Evans-Pritchard- do not really exist as religions at all. This led him to make the following distinction:

Christianity is a religion, and it crosses the bounds of a number of societies; while the religion of the Nuer is essentially group-tied and functions as an abstraction from the total life of the Nuer. l4

In this latter case, religion, instead of being an object with a social aspect, now becomes ‘an aspect of existence. Men behave and react religiously, and this is something that the study of religion picks out; just as economics picks out the economic behaviour of people’. l5 In a society such as the Nuer, any culturally defined action or belief may simultaneously have religious, political or economic aspects. The religious aspect is identified by reference to the gods-in the case of the Nuer, stories about Kwoth and the other spirits. The use of the words ‘religion’ and ‘religious’ is still determined by reference to the gods or the transcendent; but the analytical centre of gravity, at least for Nuer-type societies, has shifted from the ideological construct ‘a religion’ to an empirically observable society or social group. There is also a corresponding methodological dependence on social anthropology in this context. Social anthropology is not a ‘sub-discipline’ of Religious Studies here. The study of religion is an aspect of social anthropology. This at least seems to be the implication.

The argument to which I am moving in this paper is that, despite its vastness, literacy and complexity, Hinduism is in profound respects analytically closer to the Nuer type of group-tied religion than to ‘a religion’, which for Smart is exemplified by Christianity. Consequently Hinduism needs the


same fundamentally sociological perspective as the Nuer. But even if I am able to establish this, it still leaves the question what ‘a religion’ is supposed to be if it is being contrasted with ‘group-tied’ religion or the religious aspect of a society? Surely it is almost a tautology to say that all beliefs and institutions are group-tied. This is true regardless of whether membership is ascribed or achieved. In what sense, then, does a religion cross the bounds of a number ofsocieties? Is it some transcendental entity that is only contingently (not essentially) connected to empirical social groups? And who has access to this entity?

Let us suppose for the moment that the category ‘a religion’, or its counterpart a World Religion, is scientifically valid in some cases such as Christianity, because the latter is not tied to any one specific social group. This in itself sounds dubious. Arguably, it means that several distinct social groups of quite different kinds claim to believe in something called Christianity. But Christianity here is a theological concept, and its contents will change depending on how it is understood by each different social group. To grasp this ideological entity, we cannot start by assuming that it can simply be detached from its social dimension. We have to approach it through the sociological structure of the group. But there may be an argument for claiming that Christian theologies, liturgies, and church organisations can to some extent be studied scientifically without reference to any specific sociological instance, and in this sense constitute ‘a religion’. This would be in contrast to Nuer ‘religious ideology’ which is merely an aspect of the total life of the society. This needs further examination.

Smart seems to have in mind an analytical continuum, with Christianity as a World Religion at one end of the spectrum, and Nuer-type religion at the other end. This cannot be taken to mean that some of the things that we call religions are group-tied and some are not, because all human ideologies and institutions are group-tied by definition. It therefore has to be established in what sense Christianity is being contrasted with the Nuer? In what sense does Christianity transcend social boundaries? Later, I will ask, and try to answer, the question ‘Where should Hinduism be placed on such a continuum?’ But first I want to explore this idea of a continuum further, and its methodological implications.

First, what Smart meant by calling Nuer religion ‘group-tied’ seems relatively unproblematic, given its basis in Evans-Pritchard’s classic account. The value of Evans-Pritchard’s study was that he was able to describe Nuer religion as an aspect of Nuer culture as a whole. He first set out to study the culture in its totality, as limited and defined by a specific social group, before then analysing out the ‘religious’ aspects. It would not have been possible to present a convincing or interesting picture of Nuer religion as a soteriological system of beliefs and practices abstracted from the more comprehensive set ofvalues

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and social relations that constitute Nuer society in its totality. Being an anthropologist, Evans-Pritchard was working on the principle that

religion is only properly intelligible in the context of a particular society. To treat religion as a social phenomenon should not be confused with reductionism. Nobody would claim that Evans-Pritchard’s method or presuppositions were reductionist. He explicitly made the point that Nuer conceptions of the divine cannot be reduced to the social order. To some extent he was able to compare Nuer conceptions with Old Testament ones, suggesting a degree of ideological abstraction. But at the same time the value of his study derived in the first place from his ability to describe Nuer representations as an aspect of Nuer culture as a whole.

Similarly, I understand Smart’s notion of ‘group-tied’ religion to mean, not that divine conceptions are fully reducible to the social relations and institutions of a particular social group, but that these conceptions are only superfici- ally intelligible in abstraction from that social group and its culture. Equally, my criticism of the World Religion approach to Hinduism does not imply that I advocate a reduction of the gods to social relations. I am not arguing that the gods are merely a projection of human values, or that relations between gods and people are nzereb relations between people transposed into a symbolic key. This may or may not be true. But the fact that supernatural conceptions cannot be completely ‘explained’ by reference to the social order16 does not mean that the ‘religion’ itself should not be treated as a social phenomenon, or as a phenomenon that is only properly intelligible in the context of a particular social group.

So, if one takes the Nuer (as Smart did) as an ideal type, it is clear where the analytical weight lies. It lies with the sociological study of a set of social relations and representations. On the other hand, Evans-Pritchard was able to some extent to compare Nuer ‘theology’ with Old Testament theology, demonstrating a degree of potential ideological abstraction of Nuer representations. But this was the work of the anthropologist, not of Nuer people. Nuer ideology does not seem to have developed within itself this ‘universalist’ notion that it might have a message of salvation, and a concept of the supernatural, which is in principle available to individuals regardless of their social group or culture. In this case it seems clear that, if we want to understand what people mean by their beliefs, for instance in sacrifice or the leopard skin priest, we first have to understand the totality within which such institutions are established. We might then hazard a series of abstractions for comparative purposes, without making the mistake of attributing these abstractions and the meaning we give them to anybody but ourselves.

RELIGION AS AN ENTITY? I hope the relevance of this for the study of Hinduism specifically will become


clearer later, though some sense of the methodological point may already be evident. But, for the moment, I want to consider Smart’s ideal type of ‘a religion’, which is Christianity. This is presumably located at the other end of the spectrum from Nuer culture, on the grounds that ‘Christianity is a religion, and it crosses the bounds of a number of different societies’. ’ 7 Are we to understand by this that there is literally some essential entity, with a definable identity, which exists simultaneously in several different societies? An object with identical primary qualities, but externally coloured in different ways’by secondary qualities contributed by different cultures? Or a kind of abstraction contained in texts and transcending any particular social group? Is this religion something that exists a priori, and which can be studied in abstraction, while acknowledging its purely contingent relation to various societies (the social dimension)?

If religion is being thought of in any of these ways, then we immediately need to ask who has access to it, and what methodology do people use to get at it? We also need to ask whether this abstraction belongs to the analyst or to the adherent(s)? One difference seems to be that, whereas in the case of the Nuer the idea of a universal God or a universal Justice seemed to be found only incipiently, and only fully explicitly in the mind of the Catholic anthropologist, in the case ofchristianity it belonged both to the analyst and to many of the adherents. But for it to be valid, the analyst’s conception has to have a different content from the theological conception. The object of universal Christian theology is God, who transcends all particular social groups and who offers salvation to all individuals everywhere. This is the theological sense in which Christianity is a World Religion. But the object of the analyst is this theology itself, as it is understood and interpreted and acted upon by sociologically specific groups of people.

Therefore, from the point of view of the analyst, this distinction between ‘a religion’ and ‘group-tied religion’ is only valid in a carefully qualified sense. When we talk about a religion or a World Religion, we are not talking about some real type ofobject that is only contingently associated with any empirical social group, and which can be studied in its own right, as though the ‘social dimension’ was an optional extra which can be relegated to the sub-discipline sociology. We are using an analytical category that corresponds to what some religious ideologies proclaim themselves to be. That Christian theologies and Christian hierarchies proclaim themselves to be universally available does not mean that there is some empirical object of study that transcends any particular social group. It means that the ideology of some social groups contains within it this universalist claim. Some degree of theological abstraction and institutional flexibility has developed such that the ‘idea’ can be exported and transplanted into different social groups who will interpret it and act upon it according to the context of their own cultural life. From

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inside, it may appear to be universally available. But this is a theological viewpoint, not a scientific one.

Such an ideology is still significantly, one might say necessarily, ‘group- tied’. This is true regardless ofwhether membership to the group is ascribed or achieved. The sociological nature of the groups may differ; but it is still some social group’s semantic universe, and is embedded in their social relations. Christianity in Salt Lake City is a different thing from Christianity in rural India, ‘* not just because their beliefs are in some formal sense relatively incompatible, but because the semantic texture of their beliefs belongs to quite different sets of social relations. The same point could be made about Buddhism in Osaka and Buddhism in Nagpur, and so on. Obviously, this does not mean that there are no historical or textual links between these ideologies, and sometimes these links are very strong. An example would be Buddhism in South East Asian countries such as Ceylon, Burma and Thailand. Gombrich’s recent social history of Buddhism in India and Ceylon has indicated some of these connections.‘g But Gombrich’s interpretation of textual and historical Buddhism is always informed by a sociological perspective. This is part of its strength. In the case of Buddhism in Nagpur and Buddhism in Osaka, the textual and historical links are far more remote. To start teaching Buddhism or Christianity as abstract ideological entities, defined by certain supernatural and soteriological beliefs, without first pre- senting them in concrete sociological perspective, is a thoroughly misleading and indeed fictitious enterprise. Analytically speaking, it is putting the cart before the horse.

So, in distinguishing between a ‘World Religion’ such as Christianity, and ‘group-tied religion’ of the Nuer type, one is not validly distinguishing between religions that are tied to a particular social group and religions that are not. We are distinguishing between the degree to which the ideologies of different social groups do or do not share this universalist claim. Christian theologians and preachers proclaim it to a pre-eminent degree, whereas when Evans- Pritchard studied the Nuer he found their ‘religious’ beliefs and practices relatively submerged in the totality of their culture. Certain theological viewpoints within Hinduism claim a universal soteriological significance and availability; but for the non-theologian these theologies must be seen in their group-tied context, both in the sectarian sense and also in relation to the caste- based nature of Hindu ideology.

My point is that the World Religion approach does not begin, as it should, with the study of a particular society; it begins with ‘a religion’, or ‘a World Religion’. The extent to which religion is embedded in the social relations of a group, or of an ideologically defined set of groups in a geographical location, is basically ignored. The ‘social dimension’ is presented almost as though it were an optional extra, rather than the locus of non-theological interpretation.


One can see this clearly in the case of Hinduism, where time and again books on the subject written for the Religious Studies/Religious Education market acknowledge that in crucial respects Hinduism simply defies their categories. Hinnells’ and Sharpe’s book Hinduism (1972) is a good case in point.” I single out this particular book because it is one of the best of its kind, produced by an early Shap Working Party. It attempted to move Religious Education away from its theological origins and to introduce some objectivity into its presentation. It is still widely used in schools and colleges, and is recommended reading on at least one new GCSE syllabus. *’ It attempted, with considerable skill, to isolate and describe a coherent entity from the mass of data provided by Sanskritists, historians and others. But because the editors were a priori guided by an essentially theological concept, along the lines I have argued above, they cut across the available data in the wrong places.

Actually they themselves acknowledge this problem concerning their methodological focus. And the same problem is produced again and again in World Religion publications right up to the present.** At its simplest, the problem arises most concretely around ‘caste’. I use caste here in a rather wide, but I hope not over-stretched, sense to stand for the range of traditional social relations, including marriage and the family, government, services, all of which embody the principle of hierarchy.23 The editors, Hinnells and Sharpe, acknowledge the problem of caste in this way:

A Hindu is a Hindu not because he accepts certain doctrines or philosophies, but because he is a member of a caste.24

Given the actual contents of the book, this is an astonishing admission. There are less than three pages on caste. The section on caste is no longer than the average length of the other 52 sections, and is thus given the same importance as, for instance, Orthodox Philosophy 1, or Orthodox Philosophy 2, or Orthodox Philosophy 3, or the Religion of the Rig Veda, or any one of such outstanding figures as Ram Mohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tagore, Gandhi, and Radhakrishnan. Generally speaking, ideology and ritual are described for their theological and soteriological significance, as though the salvation of the individual soul was central and fundamental, and that Hinduism exists as a religious philosophy that has universal relevance, and which only contingently happens to be practised mainly in India. The centrality of Hinduism as an ideology belonging to the social relations of a particular group or set of groups is acknowledged but then side-stepped. Virtually everything that sociology has revealed about Hindu- ism is ignored in the quest for a soteriological belief system, a ‘World Religion’, which transcends any particular social group. In other words, the fundamental sense in which Hinduism is group-tied is ignored.

My argument is that the ideas of ‘a religion’ and a ‘World Religion’, even

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if these are valid in some other contexts, are highly dubious to say the least when applied to Hinduism. Of course, there are some sectarian forms of Hinduism, which for short-hand can be termed ‘neo-Vedanta’, which pro- pagate universalist messages. These theologies correspond to the idea of a religion held by many Christian theologians and Religious Studies/Religious Education academics, as Richard Burghart has suggested.25 One can see the influence of the neo-Vedanta view of Hinduism as a World Religion in the book discussed above by Hinnells and Sharpe. Such sectarian viewpoints with their ‘universal’ soteriologies are one important part of the studying of Hinduism, but it is a distortion to present them as identical with the subject. Perhaps a lot of Hindus have little familiarity with these viewpoints and their propagators. How many Hindus would even know much about Gandhi’s viewpoint, let alone the never-endingly quoted theological trio of Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva? Additionally, to the extent to which these sectarian ideologies are meaningful to ordinary Hindus, they themselves are ‘group- tied’. That is to say, they are sectarian, and we are therefore dealing with an aspect of Hinduism that might be analytically distinguished from caste-based ideology, but which still requires sociological analysis to present it in some real, concrete form.

And this brings me to rn$ proposal for a distinction between two different senses of Dharma, which for simplicity can be designated Dharma 1 and Dharma 2. And I believe that this distinction can be tentatively linked to the distinction made by Smart, though with all the reservations mentioned, between ‘group-tied religion’ and ‘a religion’. This is a methodological proposal designed to clarify the sense in which it is and is not legitimate to treat Hinduism as ‘a religion’, or even as several religions.

DHARMA 1 AND DHARMA 2 Dharma 1 is fundamentally an ideology of hierarchy or ritual order that embraces the whole mythical cosmos, but which is manifested to the observer most evidently in ‘caste’. Dharma 1 defines the status and obligations of all beings, including gods, demons, ancestors and men. This is the fundamental unifying principle of traditional.Hinduism. Dharma in this sense is embodied in hierarchical ritual relations. It is exemplified and mediated by the Brahmin, whose authority, which is ascribed by birth, derives from Brahman and the Vedic texts, The value of hierarchy is most universally expressed in the idiom of purity and impurity. 26 The importance of correct ritual action in the fulfilment and maintenance of cosmic order is paramount, whereas notions of faith and inner personal commitment are not.27 It is in this sense of Dharma that it is true to say ‘A Hindu is a Hindu not because he accepts certain doctrines or philosophies, but because he is a member of a caste’ (Hinnells and Sharpe),28 or that ‘. . . it is perfectly possible to be a good Hindu whether


one’s personal views incline towards monotheism, monism, polytheism or even atheism’ (Zaehner). *’ But Hinduism in this sense is not a ‘World Religion’, or even ‘a religion’, for it is fundamentally group-tied, it is not for export, it is not a soteriology, it is not a system of meaning available for non- Hindus. Furtl. :rmore, it is, analytically speaking, the centre of gravity, the context within which the other phenomena, the sectarian soteriologies, the potential ‘religions’ for export, are rooted. And it is anthropology that has revealed the structure of this ideologically defined context.

Having understood something ofthe structure ofthis basic context, Dharma 2 can be seen with less distortion. Dharma 2 can be understood as soteriology, as a system or rather several systems of personal salvation. In this sense, Dharma is sectarian rather than caste-based, inclines towards free choice of personal devotion instead of ascribed status and duties, is ‘other-worldly’ rather than ‘this-worldly’, and tends towards egalitarianism and individual- ism, rather than hierarchy. This is because, ideally, the sect can recruit men and women from any caste. The figure of authority here is typically the ascetic who has achieved some personal realisation of transcendent deity (Vishnu, Shiva, Nirvana, etc.) in contrast to the inherited authority of the Brahmin, who ideally should be married. This charismatic knowledge becomes in- stitutionalised in the Ashram. The fundamental value here is Moksha.

These salvation philosophies may exhibit similar structures, though with philosophical or theological variations. Gombrich3” has distinguished between two basic types: (1) such as Buddhism and Jainism which are characterised by (among other things) the abolition of emotion and the achievement of detachment from the world; and (2) bhakti cults (such as the Virasaivas, or the Caitanya sect which became the Hare Krishna movement) which are characterised by the cultivation of emotion and by devotion to a personal Lord. At their historical inception, these sects have often appeared as radical and egalitarian, at least in the sense that they are open to people of all castes, but have tended to become re-absorbed again into the hierarchical totality, sometimes as a closed caste group, and sometimes as exhibiting internal caste hierarchy. 3 ’

It seems to be this latter sense of Dharma that corresponds most closely to western conceptions of religion; and it is this sense of Dharma that provides the possibilities for the emergence of religions corresponding to an analytical type of ‘a religion’ which in some (problematic) sense transcends any particular group. 32 To study Hinduis m in India it is necessary to study both meanings of Dharma-Dharma 1 as ritual order or hierarchy, and Dharma 2 as soteriology. It has already been emphasised that these are ideal types. Historically, these two types have been interwoven and dynamically related. Thus some important texts such as the Gita say that duties must be performed with inner devotion. Similarly, sectarian theologies do not typically denounce

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caste. Since the empirical reality is a mixture of these ideal .types, then doctrines and practices explicitly focused on devotion and salvation cannot be the starting point for a presentation of Hinduism, as if they existed in abstraction from the wider ritual context in which they are anchored. The member of the sect is also the member of a caste. The Lord who is the object of someone’s personal devotion may also be the mythological founder of a lineage. However, when the Dharma 2 sect moves from its Dharma 1 context to somewhere like England, it is obviously becoming discontinuous in some important respects with its origins.33

This distinction between Dharma 1 and Dharma 2 can be brought into some degree of correlation with a modified version of Smart’s distinction between ‘a religion’ and ‘group-tied religion’, along lines which I have already indicated. In terms of its vastness, literacy and complexity, Hinduism is more similar to Christianity, conceived as a World Religion, than to the religion of the Nuer. This may partly explain why World Religion scholars line Hinduism up alongside Christianity as though they were fundamentally the same kind of phenomena. Hinduism as Dharma 1, however, brings it analytically closer to the religion of the Nuer. This is because, as I suggested above, Hinduism is still to a considerable extent submerged in the total life of a particular bounded society. This is why it has to be approached from a sociological perspective, much as the study of the Nuer society and culture required this. Of course, literacy makes a profound difference, and the classical and verna- cular texts need to be studied. This is obvious. But literacy does not turn Hindu culture into a soteriological sect which can be studied as though it existed in abstraction from its sociological environment. This is why anthropologists such as Dumont, and many others, who also know and read Sanskrit, have placed the study of Indian religion and culture on a more fruitful path than the World Religion theological abstractions.

On the other hand, any particular Hindu sect, an example of Dharma 2, to some degree defines itself in opposition to the Dharma 1 context in which it is born and nurtured. It is still ‘group-tied’, but in a sectarian rather than caste-based sense- though in empirical reality a sect like the Lingayats is also a caste, a fact that strengthens the point that the distinction between Dharma 1 and Dharma 2 is an analytical one, and that it cannot be taken for granted that a sect can be understood in abstraction from its Dharma 1 context.34

Nevertheless, the Hindu sect does define itself in such a way that it stands opposed to caste, not so much in the sense of ‘anti-caste’, but rather in the sense that the other-worldly renounces the this-worldly. C*onsequently, it contains a degree of ideological detachment which may be equivalent to the potential for transforming itself into a ‘religion’ and crossing the bounds of a number of societies. That is to say, it conceives itself as having a universally valid soteriology, the meaning of which is transparent and available equally

Hinduism as Wbrld Religion 115

to individuals in different cultures. Iskcon would be an example of this phenomenon, with its sectarian roots in the culture of Bengal, its international organisation, and its many local ,organisations scattered around the world. One might wonder, when one visits Bhaktivedanta Manor in Mr Cecil Parkinson’s Hertfordshire constituency in southern England, in what sense is this religion ‘the same as’ the one in California or Bengal. It seems to be the same question essentially as ‘What is Christianity, or any other example of “a religion”, abstracted from a particular sociological context?’ In what sense does such an entity exist institutionally or ideologically? Another, related point is that Hare Krishna is ‘group-tied’ in England in a very different sense from the way it is group-tied in Bengal. This is because England is a culture, or part of western culture, with very different values and socio- economic institutions from Bengal. Precisely the same point can be made about Christianity, for instance taking the examples of Salt Lake City and Tamil Nadu. That these are variants of the same reality is a theological claim, made by sociologically specific groups of people. This claim is part of the object of non-theological observation; it should not be one of its basic assumptions.

CONCLUSION I have attempted to do the following things in this article. I have tried to discredit the World Religion concept, both in general and in its particular application to Hinduism. In general, I have argued that it is basically a theological concept which has been uncritically employed as though it was a scientific category that describes a class of real objects in the world. I have considered how the relatively sophisticated theories of Smart may have helped to promote this confusion. I have looked at his early distinction between ‘a religion’ and ‘group-tied’ religion, and suggested that, tautologically, all religion is ‘group-tied’, and that the category ‘a religion’ is only valid if understood to refer to those kinds of group-tied ideologies that claim to transcend social and cultural boundaries. It follows from this that the study of specific social groups is the methodological priority, rather than the study of a putative religion or World Religion which is presented as an entity with ‘a social dimension’, or a variety of social dimensions.

I have also tried to indicate the way in which Hinduism in particular highlights the World Religion fallacy. I have suggested an analytical distinction between Dharma 1 and Dharma 2, which may provide a framework of approach, basically sociological, which is more sensitive to the kind of thing Hinduism is. Hopefully this framework may also provide a view on the important questions about continuity and discontinuity, not only within the sub-continent of India itself, but between Hinduism in India and Hinduism in Britain, for example.

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No; TES 1

2 3

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6

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8 9

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14 15

I am grateful to the following for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this article: Richard Burghart, Shirley Firth, Chris Fuller, Richard Gombrich, Kim Knott, Penny Logan, Gwen Palmer, Nancy Tapper. I received many useful criticisms and suggestions, few of which I have had the space to acknowledge. I also received a great deal of encouragement, but naturally any faults with the argument are mine. I stress ‘broadly’ sociological, with considerable reliance on social anthropology. A point made by Richard Burghart in his introduction to R. Burghart (ed.), Hinduism in Great Britain: The Perfietuation of Religion in an Alien Cultural Milieu, Tavistock, London 1986, p. 6. One can see a range of different approaches advocated in the British Journal of Religious Education 6:3 (Summer 1984); as examples, the articles by John Rankin, ‘Teaching Hinduism-Some Key Ideas’; and A. D. Brear, ‘An Approach to the Complexities of the Hindu Tradition’. These are so numerous that it would be pointless to offer a list. A good example is the output of a single author, W. Owen Cole, Chairman of the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education. His publications include World Faiths in Education, Unwin 1978; Five Religions in the 20th Century, Hulton 1981; Six Religions in the 20th Century, Hulton 1984; Comparative. Religions: A Modern Textbook, Blandford Press 1982; Meeting Hinduism, Longman 1987. Various people have made this kind of distinction and I am not claiming originality. A broadly similar distinction seems to me to be at least implicit in Dumont’s opposition between the ‘this worldly’ values of the Brahmin house- holder and the ‘other-worldly’ values of the renouncer. He discusses this in Homo Hierarchicus, and also in his article ‘World Renunciation in Indian Religions’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology 4 (1960). Similar distinctions have been made by Richard Burghart, O$J, cit., p. 227; and also by Richard Gombrich in his recent book Theravada Buddhism, A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Columbo, RKP 1988, pp. 25-31. However, this kind of distinction has been around in sociology for a long time, and I am not concerned here with its precise origins. N. Smart, The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, Princeton University Press 1973, p. 15. Ibid. This seems to depend on which member of the Shap Working Party is editing any given publication. Smart’s work is too prolific to be comprehensively assessed in a short article like this. Nevertheless, his earlier writing reflects and reinforces a concept of religion that is fundamentally theological, despite his claim to be providing a neutral, value-free methodology. N. Smart, The Phenomenon of Religion, Macmillan 1973. This six-dimensional model is also employed in his other books: Secular Education and the Logic of Religion, Faber 1968; The Religious Experience of Mankind, Collins 1969, p. 31; The Science of Religion and the Sociolou of Knowledge, op. cit. pp. 15, 24. Ibid. Smart substitutes for the monolithic object ‘religion’ several putative organic objects ‘religions’-see The Religious Experience of Mankind, p. 3 1. Op. cit., p. 15. Ibid.


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C. J. Fuller, in ‘Gods, Priests and Purity: On the Relation Between Hinduism and the Caste System’, Man, 1979, (NS) 14,459-476. Fuller’s claim that Dumont is committed to a form of social reductionism seems arguable. But his well-argued paper demonstrates how an anthropological perspective can clarify the senses in which Hindu gods are, and are not, social phenomena. op. cit., p. 15. In the latter case, the cult of the Saints is more like a caste-bound variant of Hinduism, even though it maintains some distinctively non-Hindu features belonging to ‘a religion’ called Christianity. See David Mosse, Caste, Christianity and Hinduism: A Study of Social Organisation and Religion in Rural Ramnad, D.Phil. thesis, Oxford 1986. Op. cit.

J. Hinnells and E. Sharpe (eds), Hinduism, RKP 1971. For instance, Southern Examining Group, GCSE Religious Studies (1988), p. 208. The recommended reading for teachers on Hinduism in this syllabus is predict- ably dominated by the World Religion genre. For example, W. Owen Cole, Meeting Hinduism, Longman 1987. Most of the information Cole gives can be found in other World Religion books. It is true that Cole has made a little more effort this time to deal with ‘caste’, marriage, family, traditional village economy, etc. But the methodology is faulty, and it still looks like a bit of sociology tacked on to the subject proper, the World Religion Hinduism. I do not intend to say that caste is in fact coterminous with these different aspects of Hindu culture, only that the problem of caste has become a kind of symbol of the way in which sociological concerns keep impinging themselves in a rather insistent way on those who would be happier without them. However, it has been pointed out to me that, as well as caste, attention should be paid to traditions of polity, family, marriage, etc. J. Hinnells and E. Sharpe, op. cit. p. 6. See his introduction and conclusion in R. Burghart, op. cit. This point was also emphasised to me by Chris Fuller. This, at least, seems to be the overriding, if not the exclusive, idiom of status ranking. Dumont’s view that the Brahmin is pure because ofhis function as Priest has been challenged by C. J. Fuller, Servants of the Goddess, Cambridge University Press 1986, pp. 49% and also by J. Parry, ‘Ghosts, Greed and Sin; the occupational identity of the Benares funeral priests’, Man, (NS) 15 (l), pp. 88-l 11. These elements can be closely intertwined, such that the performance ofascribed actions, and the maintenance of ascribed social relations, can be reinterpreted according to a theological/sectarian viewpoint about the attainment of personal salvation. J. Hinnells and E. Sharpe, op. cit., p. 6. R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism, Oxford, Oxford University Press 1971, p. 1, Richard Gombrich at the Shap Conference on Hinduism, 1983. This picture does not exclude the possible longer term view that Dharma 1 may have achieved definition in response to Dharma 2-type sects such as Buddhism. I have stressed the point that there can be no such entity in empirical reality which exists independently of a specific social group, and that ‘a religion’ is the ideology of a social group that claims to have a transcendent, universal reality, and which consequently behaves accordingly.

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33 Some of the most valuable sociological studies of these sects are conducted by The University of Leeds Community Religions Project.

34 See Dumont’s discussion in Homo Hierarchicus, pp. 187ff.

TIMOTHY FITZGERALD holds a B.A. in Religious Studies and a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion (King’s College, London) and an M.Sc. in social anthropology (London School of Economics). Since 1980 he has lectured at Hatfield Polytechnic in philosophy, methodology and Indian religions. The author of several articles on philosophical agnosticism and on Buddhism, he is at present engaged in research on Buddhism in Japan and South East Asia.

Department of Internation+ Culture, Faculg of Letters, Aichigakuin University, Nisshin-Cho, Aichi-gun, Aichi 470-01, Japan.

Documents

Hinduism and the ‘World Religion’ fallacy