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through the institutions and funding agencies (including the state) that supported
and sustained them. Exegetical imperialism was similarly instituted in manifold
ways of representation and in ideological constructions of Hinduism as the “Other”
in scholarly and popular works, which helped select and recontextualize those con-
structions in such things as the media, official histories, and school curricula. Ashis
Nandy argues that the structures of colonialism contained precise codes and rules
by which colonial encounters occurred and dissent was managed.^5 Recent contro-
versies involving scholars like Jeff Kripal and Paul Courtright and diasporic Hin-
dus suggest that such encounters continue even today without much change in the
form and institutional mechanism set during the heyday of colonialism. Many Hin-
dus in the diaspora feel that exegetical imperialism and colonialism continue to
frame Hindu studies: whether in India or in the diaspora.^6 As a discursive field of
knowledge, Indology is one such idea and spirit with many forms of realization de-
signed to subjugate the Indic/Hindu Other. Writing, theory, and history are key
sites in which Western research in Indology and Hinduism has evolved. The mod-
ern academy claims theory as thoroughly Western and thus constructs the rules by
which the Hindu world has been theorized.
A Western or modern education prevents many Hindu scholars from writing or
speaking from a “real” and authentic Hindu or Indic position and perspective.
Those who do dare to speak from a traditional Hindu perspective are criticized for
not making sense. Alternatively, their arguments are “suitably translated” or re-
duced to some “nativist” discourse by Western (and many Westernized Hindu) ac-
ademics. More often, their ideas are dismissed as naive, contradictory, and illogical.
This positions today’s Hindus in North America in a difficult space both in relation
to the general Indic populations and within the Western academy. For each Hindu
scholar who does succeed in the academy, there remains a whole array of unresolved
issues about the ways North American Hindus in general relate inside and outside
of Hindu studies, inside and outside the academy, and between all those different
spaces and worlds.
TAKING BACK INDIA’S HISTORY
Historiography is a modernist project that developed in concert with imperial be-
liefs about the Other. The discipline of history developed from two interconnected
ideas: (1) there is a universal history with fundamental characteristics and values
that all human subjects and societies share; (2) universal history is one large
chronology or grand narrative. History is about developments over time; it charts