Introduction: Establishing
the Boundaries
Gavin Flood
That religion is still of central importance in today’s world can hardly be doubted
in the aftermath of violent events in recent years. In South Asia religion is at the
center of controversy and ideological battles and questions about what it is to be
a Hindu in the twenty-first century are vibrant. Questions concerning the rela-
tion of Hinduism to state and global politics, to the individual, and to the poli-
tics of identity are of great relevance to Hindus everywhere. On the one hand
we have seen the world shrink through globalization along with the late modern
erosion of tradition, while on the other we have seen the reinvigoration of some
traditions and the reanimation of traditional forms of knowledge (such as
Ayurveda). Secularists in India would wish to see the complete erosion of reli-
gion in the public sphere of governance and its relegation to the private realm,
while many religious nationalists would wish to see even more growth in the
influence of religion in the political and public arena.
It is in the context of such vital issues that scholars in this book examine
Hinduism in its widest sense, looking not only at questions of contemporary iden-
tity politics but also at historical questions and presenting historical accounts of
particular texts and traditions. We certainly understand the present through the
past but we also wish to understand the past for the sake of increasing human
knowledge. There is therefore great diversity in the following pages that seek
both to account for the contemporary situation and to explain the historical tra-
jectories that have led to the modern, global religion we call “Hinduism.” From
ancient Tamil texts to contemporary politics, all the essays gathered here bear a
relation to that nebulous abstraction and raise many questions. Are we dealing
with a single religion, an essence manifested in different forms? Or is Hinduism
a diversity of distinct traditions sharing certain common features with no single
feature being shared by them all? Or are we dealing with a fragmented, cultural
reality of widely diverse beliefs and practices, inappropriately classified as a
single religion? All of these positions have been adopted in understanding