14. introduction
in fact. Non-Hindu groups living in India are also affected—Christians, Jains,
Sikhs—and the idea of the fourvarnashas had an impact on the organization of
Hindu societies outside India. Bali is a good example. This vision of layered social
plurality has much to do with an understanding of truth or reality as being similarly
plural and multilayered, whether one understands the direction of influence to pro-
ceed from social fact to religious doctrine or vice versa.^7 Seeking its own answer to
this conundrum, a well-known Vedic hymn (Rg Veda10.90) describes how in the
beginning of time a primordial Person underwent a process of sacrifice that pro-
duced a four-part cosmos and its human aspect, a four-part social order. A thinker
and activist like Gandhi was eager to reshape this age-old vision in a way that would
work for contemporary sensibilities. In this he joined a long lineage of earlier re-
formers. Many Hindus have thought Gandhi’s effort was noble and creative; oth-
ers, that it was futile and misguided. But all acknowledge the weight of India’s so-
cial past.
As in the realms of doctrine and religious practice, so too in this social domain
we may see a characteristic tension or dialectic. Here the issue is the relation be-
tween the seemingly humble and evenhanded perspectival view of truth/reality
about which we have spoken and an array of social formations that enshrine privi-
lege and prejudice. Many Hindus espouse the former (as tolerance) and disown the
latter (as caste), even if they acknowledge that caste discrimination is all too preva-
lent in Indian society. Responding to such oppression, groups despised by caste Hin-
dus have sometimes thrown the challenge back, saying, “We are not Hindus!” Yet
their own communities may enact similar inequalities, and their religious practices
and beliefs often continue to tie them to the greater Hindu fold. To break this chain,
B. R. Ambedkar, the principal framer of India’s constitution and a man of extremely
low-caste birth, ended up urging his caste-fellows to abandon Hinduism altogether
and become Buddhists.
story and performance
A fourth dimension drawing Hindus into a single religious community is narrative.
For at least two millennia, people in almost all corners of India—and now well be-
yond—have responded to certain prominent stories of divine play and divine/
human interaction. These concern major figures in the Hindu pantheon: Krishna
and his beloved Radha, Rama and his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, Shiva and
his consort Parvati, and the great goddess Durga or Devi as a slayer of the buffalo
demon Mahisa. Such narratives focus in different degrees on dharmicexemplitude,
genealogies of human experience, forms of love, and the struggle between order