attack the social evils of Hinduism their actions
must not be seen as merely a mimicking of Chris-
tians and the British. It should be noted, as well,
that the antiiconic view of the Brahmo Samaj of
Calcutta (Kolkata) were also not new. The Viras-
haivas were essentially antiiconic (except for the
Shiva lingam, which they kept in their personal
homes), and the traditional Vedanta of the Upa-
nishads looked to brahman alone without char-
acteristics (or icons) as the ultimate divinity. The
Brahmo Samaj takes its name, in fact, from this
brahman, spelled as Brahmo in Bengali.
In the rich matrix of Hindu reform in Bengal in
the 19th century emerged the great saint Ramak-
rishna and his student Swami Vivekananda. They
maintained the reformist notions that caste must
be uprooted, but Ramakrishna himself was not
opposed to worship of icons. What Ramakrishna
does, though, is round out the syncretic move-
ments of the Sants, who melded Islamic and
Hindu notions while decrying orthodoxy. Ramak-
rishna directly experienced Islam and Christianity
and saw them as alternate paths to the one goal of
the Divine. Ramakrishna then takes Hinduism full
circle from its Vedic roots, where God could be
seen as having any face and still be God. But now
the social evils that had accrued in Hinduism over
the centuries were seen by many to be superfluous
to any religious need.Post-Independence India
(after 1947)
The Indian Constitution was written by an
untouchable (now referred to as a Dalit), B.
R. Ambedkar. Dr. Ambedkar’s selection as the
person to head the Constitutional Commis-
sion was a sign that the reform values that the
Indian independence fighters held were going
to be instituted in law in independent India.
In the Indian Constitution, “scheduled castes
and tribes,” those “out-casted” by traditional
Hindu society, were given a specified percent-
age of guaranteed seats in the Indian Parliamentuntil such time as the Constitution could be
amended. (This guarantee was also instituted
in nearly every state of the new Indian Union.)
Additionally, separate electorates were estab-
lished for Muslims to ensure that they would
have adequate representation in the new Indian
state. Along with these reforms, inheritance
and marriage laws established legal practices to
aid women and to counter long-held traditions
detrimental to women. Dowry, for instance,
a burden for every woman’s family, was out-
lawed. (This law, regrettably, has never been
rigorously enforced.) Most importantly, the new
state of India was declared a secular state with
its own unique definition: it was a state that
respected all religions and made accommoda-
tions for them, but a state that privileged no
single religion. This respect for religion went to
the extent of institution, by request of Muslim
leaders, of certain laws regarding marriage and
property that only applied in the Muslim com-
munity. (Muslims, for instance, were allowed
to maintain the practice of polygamy, in which
men may have as many as four wives.)
Independent India began in the chaos of par-
tition. Many Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were
killed in the days after independence, when the
state of Pakistan was created. Millions crossed the
borders on India’s east and west to enter the state
that they felt would most protect their interests.
Blame has been assigned in many places for the
tragic fact of partition. Muslim leaders, Hindu
leaders, and the British certainly all bore some
share of the blame. Conflict ensued over the state
of Kashmir, where a Hindu king ceded his major-
ity Muslim state to India at the last minute. This
began a long history of wars and disagreement
between Pakistan and India that continues in the
present day. (Pakistan itself was split in two in
1972, when the state of Bangladesh was created
from East Pakistan.)
For a long time these disagreements did not
greatly affect the relationship between Indian Mus-
lims and the Hindu majority. In the 1980s a new
political movement emerged in India, based on theK xxiv Encyclopedia of Hinduismi-xL-hindu-fm.indd xxiv 12/14/06 1:02:37 AM