hinduism with others. 289
concrete reality of people in all their particular and variegated difference, not
merely as essentialized beings called “Hindu” or “non-Hindu.” While we ac-
knowledge that people refer to themselves in broad ways, we believe that there is no
simple dichotomy to be resolved, no brute binarism to be negotiated. To mark this
conviction that the engagement of people with diverse identities is both normal and
complex, we refer to this engagement as an “interlogue.” The term “interlogue” is
a new way to translate samvada,a term usually translated as “colloquy or dialogue.”
In all of its complexity in the Sanskrit tradition, samvadaconveys the idea of a trans-
formation through conversation. In the samvadasof early and classical India, there
might be two or more speakers, but the participants were many—witnesses, audi-
ences, praisers, and detractors. And all acknowledged the social transformation that
takes place in the samvada.^2
So, too, the term “interlogue” implies an interaction that is far more meaningful
than a mere verbal exchange. We wish to show not a dialogue between two essen-
tialized entities that we call “Hindu” and “non-Hindu,” but an “inter-logue” be-
tween people in various, multiple, complex, and changing historical circumstances.
Moreover, the exchange itself is an actual ex-change, or “change outwards” to a new
form of relationship.
QUERIES
First, we query the binary opposition of Hindu/non-Hindu. There are endless
practical examples that make such binarism meaningless and unnecessarily opposi-
tional. Spouses and children participate in many kinds of relationships across tradi-
tions; marriages, in-law relationships, spiritual bonds between gurus and disciples,
and student-teacher relationships are among the many lifelong and transformative
relationships that move happily and unremarkably across the apparent Hindu/non-
Hindu divide. Moreover, at a more “official” religious level, caste and sect group-
ings (Dalits, tribals, ISKCON) have reworked the sense of being Hindu to the point
of asserting a new form of Hinduism (ISKCON, Munda) or of not counting them-
selves Hindu at all (certain forms of Dalit societies). In addition, there are many
Western academics with committed Hindu lifestyles—they are Hindu doctrinally,
practically, but most of all, intellectually. The diversity of ways in which one can be
Hindu or non-Hindu raises questions about the drawing of any dividing lines.
Similarly, we question whether it is right to divide people into two opposing
camps when they express feelings of reservation, hurt, or self-justification. And is
such division sustainable? Once the temptation to treat people as interchangeable