and may perhaps be due largely to the Indological works and
wider academic interests of F. Max Muller, who is associated
with the founding of comparative religion as a scholarly dis-
cipline.
Hindrances to the academic field. One reason the
South Asian approach to the study of religion differs from
the Western approach is that the South Asian worldview sees
dharma or religion configured in a different way. The dichot-
omy between the sacred and the secular does not exist in
South Asia as it does in the West. Among Western academ-
ics, the study of religion is understood to deal with the out-
ward expressions of a social reality and the production of data
about it. The tendency in South Asia is to focus on under-
standing the inner meaning of that social reality in peoples’
lives and in that respect comes to be seen and taught as an
aspect of Indian philosophy. It approximates in the West
that which is known as philosophical theology, having phi-
losophy as its academic mother.
Another factor mitigates against the establishment of re-
ligious studies departments in Indian universities: aspects of
religion as a subject matter are already considered by various
different departments, thus making a separate department
redundant. The field of anthropology, for example, is fre-
quently occupied with aspects of the study of religion. But
anthropologists generally have little interest in understand-
ing religion as a phenomenon, and their study seldom shifts
from descriptive accounts to explanatory and theoretical
ones. On the other hand, there is little significant momen-
tum in existing comparative religion departments to broaden
the study as a subject matter and a discipline comparable to
that found in the West.
THE IAHR REGIONAL CONFERENCE, DELHI, 2003. The
Indian Association for the Study of Religion (IAHR) Re-
gional Conference took place in Delhi, India, in December
- One of its aims was to restructure and strengthen the
Indian Association for the Study of Religion in recognition
of the fact that India was comparatively underrepresented in
the scholarly study of religion on the international level. The
restructuring of the existing national association was intend-
ed to encourage wider participation in the study of religion
beyond a handful of scholars working in anthropology, espe-
cially on tribal and folk religions.
The conference, whose theme was “Religions and Cul-
tures in the Indic Civilization,” brought together some three
hundred scholars, roughly 20 percent from the West. Many
of the participants focused attention on the relevance of the
study of religion and its future direction. In the inaugural
session Bhikhu Parekh delivered an address titled “The Role
and Place of Religion,” which was followed by Ashis Nandy’s
“A Modest Plea for Learning the Language of Religion.” In
one workshop four papers dealt with teaching a basic course
on the academic study of religion in an Indian context. In
another session the theme was promoting the study of reli-
gion in Indian universities. Papers presented included “Polit-
ical Implications of Changes in Religious Demography in
India,” “Language and Religion as Sites of Struggle,”
“Women Regaining a Lost Legacy: The Restoration of Bik-
khuni Order in Sri Lanka,” suggesting a shift away from a
normative to a nonnormative approach as practiced at secu-
lar universities in the West. Interestingly the majority of par-
ticipants came from outside departments of comparative reli-
gion or philosophy. Conference participants expressed
interest in establishing an Indic studies network, raising
hopes that a stronger South Asian presence will emerge to
make a distinct contribution to the academic study of
religion.
RELIGIOUS STUDIES IN MODERN SOUTH ASIA. Thirteen in-
stitutions of higher learning on the Indian subcontinent offer
one or more courses on the study of religion as a subject ei-
ther at the undergraduate or at the postgraduate level, ac-
cording to the 2003–2004 Commonwealth Universities
Handbook. India has a total of nine universities that offer de-
grees either at the undergraduate, masters, or doctoral level.
This does not include schools focusing on a specific religion
or tradition. Sri Lanka has two universities that offer courses
in the study of religion at the undergraduate level. In Paki-
stan only the Lahore School of Management, in its social sci-
ence department, offers a course at the undergraduate level.
In Bangladesh there is growing interest in courses and pro-
grams on world religions. Dhaka University in Bangladesh
established a Department of World Religions in 2000, offer-
ing two-year master’s and master of philosophy degrees.
Small private universities in Bangladesh also offer programs
in comparative religion.In the Muslim world of South Asia, the academic study
of religion is comparatively slow in gaining recognition.
Most teaching focuses on the classical and modern perspec-
tives of Islamic thought and contemporary movements and
issues related to the Muslim world. Interfaith dialogue is lim-
ited to Islamic forms of religious consciousness and the desire
to perpetuate traditional Islamic values without going be-
yond a normative approach. As Smith suggested at the Ban-
galore Consultation in 1967, “Muslim society here is on the
whole too frightened to be interested in other men’s faith;
and too bewildered to ask systematic questions about its
own.”Religion and politics. The emergence of national poli-
tics in the postindependence era in South Asia has histori-
cized and contextualized academic study of religion on the
subcontinent. In particular religion has become intertwined
with nationalist politics, resulting in religious communalism,
the rejection of the concept of a modern nation-state as un-
derstood in the West, and resistance to modernization and
secularization as indicators of social development. For some,
religion has become a means to overcome a disenchantment
with modernity and to reinstate South Asia’s cultural and
spiritual heritage. Neither political Islam nor political Hin-
duism can be discounted in the subject matter of academic
studies of religion. Nor can the temper of such religious
movements, linked to transcendent values, be understoodSTUDY OF RELIGION: THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELIGION IN SOUTH ASIA 8791