290. identity
members of an oppositional group is overcome, we believe that a step will be taken
toward a more nuanced and context-sensitive treatment of views and opinions in
place of generic attacks. In addition, if we treat people as interchangeable members
of an oppositional group, we tend to attribute to the entire group the same motiva-
tions (imperialism, nationalism, etc.). In our view, the complex and lifelong rela-
tionships outlined above would preclude such attributions; in the context of such re-
lationships, motivations are always complex and rarely reducible to one binary or
another.
Second, we query the present state of the discussion about “representing the
other.” We find it an obligation to wonder, constantly, who represents whom, and
how. We have found that everyday acts of representation tend to involve not the two
overarching categories “Hindu” and “non-Hindu” but a rich set of alternatives. A
nonessentialized view of “the other” would recognize complexities in such labels as
“imperialist” and “subaltern.” To take two salient examples: we would be suspicious
of a Hindu software professional in the United States being classified as a “subal-
tern”; and we would be equally suspicious of classifying as “fundamentalist” an In-
dian Hindu who simply articulates some sort of offense at an intended or unintended
slight to his or her tradition. Neither label works in any meaningful global way.
The most troubling issue in recent debates is the historically and otherwise prob-
lematic representation of a monolithic Hinduism. This is largely a Western fiction.
However, Western culture and academic practice have also been represented in
these debates, and with equal amounts of distortion, misunderstanding, and bias,
both Western and Indian. We recognize that certain distortions have greater power
than others, but we also acknowledge that institutional, financial, social, and aca-
demic contexts often determine the impact of such distortions. This view explains
our emphasis on the specific. Western representations may indeed have an asym-
metrical relationship with Hindu representations in general, but we notice that in
each case power relations determine the asymmetry, not religion or ethnicity. So,
once again, it is clear that brute binarisms are misleading. We would suggest, rather,
that each situation be considered on the basis of who wields what sort of power.
Special difficulties arise in the Indian diaspora. It is surprisingly hard for dias-
poric Hindus to shake off a sense of epistemic marginality, even when they are eco-
nomically and perhaps also socially well-settled. The self-representation of many
Hindus in the West conveys a sense of unease that contrasts with their economic
well-being. There are Hindus who express their sense of self in terms of power-
lessness, marginality, or exploitation—terms that often seem singularly unsuited to