hinduism for hindus. 277
TAKING BACK HINDU HISTORY
AND HINDU STUDIES
Coming to know India’s past must become part of the critical pedagogy of decolo-
nizing Hindu studies. This must be accomplished by creating an alternative history
of Hinduism, which in turn would generate alternative pathways to knowledge
about Hinduism. Is the history of Hinduism in its modernist and Western con-
struction relevant and useful to Hindus today? For most Hindus, the answer would
seem to be self-evident, because they assume that when the truth comes out, a true
account of Hinduism will be given. Wrong. How then to write a new history of Hin-
duism and India? Particularly when Aimé Césaire observed (in his Discourse on
Colonialism) that the only history is white? How can the Hindu find his or her voice?
Can the Hindu subaltern speak?
I think a beginning must be made by raising and debating issues that have to
do with taking back Hindu history and studies. Toward that objective, it is possi-
ble to extrapolate from the urgent claims that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak makes
in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” via the critical theory of Theodor Adorno.^14 Fol-
lowing Spivak’s lead, Hindus in the diaspora and academics and students of Hin-
duism in India must begin by asking, Who does research in Hinduism? Who
funds, defines, and owns such research? Whose interests does it serve? Who ben-
efits from it? Who designs the research framework, the questionnaire, and frames
the scope of this research? Who carries it through and writes it up? How are its
results disseminated?
HINDU AWAKENING IN THE DIASPORA
Taking back Hindu studies will require Hindus to revisit site by site the history of
Hinduism that was constructed under colonial and Western eyes. This in turn will
require developing a theory and approach for engaging with, understanding, and
then acting upon the received history of Hinduism. Rewriting the history of Hin-
duism, reclaiming Hindu studies, and giving testimony to the distortion of India’s
past will have to be the basic strategies of decolonizing Hindu studies.
It is unlikely that such an endeavor will be readily accepted and acknowledged on
the international scene. But we must persist in this enterprise. Decolonization need
not mean the rejection of all theory or research or Western knowledge. Rather, it
should focus on concerns and worldviews about Hinduism as Hindus understand it,