champion of the indigenous non-Brahman against the alien Brahman, and his
role as protector was now taken by the British. Phule thus combined a common
mythical motif in which low castes claim to be descended from Ks.atriyas who
were cheated of their status, with the Indologists’ narrative of an A ̄ryan inva-
sion (O’Hanlon 1985: 141–51). The view of the Brahman as an alien oppressor
was taken up and elaborated by the Tamil anti-Brahman movement in the twen-
tieth century, which was able to point to a 2,000-year-old Tamil literature
independent of Sanskrit.
Religious and Secular
In the course of the modern period, movements to reform Hindu society became
more varied, and leaders emerged among oppressed groups as well as elites. Yet
there was general agreement that Hindu society must have roots in the past, and
it must have a religious basis. The emphasis on the past refuted both those who
thought reform could only come from the West, and those who thought it was
precluded by an unchanging dharma. The emphasis on religion was natural
when so much criticism of Hindu society attributed its evils to religion, while
most of the ancient literature which became accessible was religious, or used
religious motifs. Keshub, Viveka ̄nanda, Ra ̄dha ̄krishnan and others promoted the
idea that Indian culture was essentially spiritual, in contrast to the materialism
of the West (King 1985).
There are exceptions to this religious approach to reform. E. V. Ramaswamy
Naicker (1879–1973), leader of the Tamil anti-Brahman movement, denounced
belief in God along with Brahmans and their texts and rituals; however, others
in the movement discarded these while retaining God. Apart from Ramaswamy
and some extreme nineteenth-century Utilitarians, secular programs have
come mainly from twentieth-century Marxists, and it is notable that many of
these were Brahmans: M. N. Roy, D. D. Kosambi, E. M. S. Namboodiripad. The
Marxists, like others, used the past as an arena for the ideological contest; one
of their methods was to reclaim ancient Indian materialism, which they believed
had been deliberately forgotten in favor of a false picture of Indian spirituality
(e.g. Chattopadhyaya 1968). Another Brahman secularist was Jawaharlal
Nehru, whose book The Discovery of Indiais a personal reflection on the past and
what it can say to the future; he too extols ancient Indian materialism, but also
theBhagavad-Gı ̄ta ̄, Buddhism, and even S ́an.kara. Revival is not opposed to
reform; it is the idiom in which it speaks.
References
Ahmed, A. F. Salahuddin. 1976. Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal: 1818–1835.
2nd ed. Calcutta: RDDHI (1st ed. Leiden: Brill, 1965).
Anon. 1845. “Veda ̄ntism; – What Is It,” Calcutta Review4: 43–61.
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