Questioning the authority of theologians to do what theologians do create a doctrinal umbrella un... more Questioning the authority of theologians to do what theologians do create a doctrinal umbrella under which the particularities of any religious tradition are organized seems a bit presumptuous. One may never wish to do so in order to decenter traditional sources of authority, to represent the interests of voices within the tradition that have been disregarded or silenced. But there is certainly no reason to single out the theologians of Hinduism. Such an enterprise, if set into motion, should be directed equally at all of threligions.Buddhism,Christianity,Islam,and Judaism are all, at least in part, the conceptual products of their theologians Hinduism from this point of view is hardly a unique case,that if we as students of religion decide it is incumbent upon us to decenter the theological authorities of the religions we study, we should be mindful of the ethical and intellectual consequences of such interventions. We should carry out this self-appointed task in our study of all religions and not just a selected few. Religions do of course change over time; and the conceptualizations of any particular religion will inevitably be altered by history. The contours of modern indigenous views of Hinduism have also undergone such change, especially in light of the interactions Hindus have had with the West. Traditional Brfihma0ical views of Hinduism have themselves been adapted to the new conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, more importantly, have been joined by other modernize to some extent, 'Westernized') indigenous visions. It is with two other sets of Hindu authorities that have arisen in the wake of this intercultural encounter over the past two centuries where this kind of adaptation to modernity is most visible: the socalled Neo-Hindu reformers, and the Hindu nationalists. Scholars who contest the monolithic conceptualization of 'Hinduism' regard the Neo-Hindu movement as something like the native shadow of the Orientalist project. For it is in the formulations of 'Hinduism' issuing forth from such various nineteenth-and twentieth-century reformers like Aurobindo, Day manda Sarasvati, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Rammohun Roy, and Viveknanda that the impact of the Western ideas is most obvious. The Neo-Hindu indigenous authorities are often dismissed as 'inauthentic,' their claims to legitimacy compromised by their encounters with modernity and Questioning authorityWestern social, political, and intellectual trends. Their representations of 'Hinduism' are delegitimized as merely the native restatement of ideas originating in the West.Neo-Hinduism is not a unified system of ideas. In fact it is chiefly because of one common trait that classify religious thinkers as Neo-Hindus. Their intellectual formation is primarily or predominantly Western. It is European culture, and in several cases even the Christian religion, which has led them to embrace certain religious, ethical, social, and political values. But afterwards they connect these values with, and claim them as, part of the Hindu tradition.
Questioning the authority of theologians to do what theologians do create a doctrinal umbrella un... more Questioning the authority of theologians to do what theologians do create a doctrinal umbrella under which the particularities of any religious tradition are organized seems a bit presumptuous. One may never wish to do so in order to decenter traditional sources of authority, to represent the interests of voices within the tradition that have been disregarded or silenced. But there is certainly no reason to single out the theologians of Hinduism. Such an enterprise, if set into motion, should be directed equally at all of threligions.Buddhism,Christianity,Islam,and Judaism are all, at least in part, the conceptual products of their theologians Hinduism from this point of view is hardly a unique case,that if we as students of religion decide it is incumbent upon us to decenter the theological authorities of the religions we study, we should be mindful of the ethical and intellectual consequences of such interventions. We should carry out this self-appointed task in our study of all religions and not just a selected few. Religions do of course change over time; and the conceptualizations of any particular religion will inevitably be altered by history. The contours of modern indigenous views of Hinduism have also undergone such change, especially in light of the interactions Hindus have had with the West. Traditional Brfihma0ical views of Hinduism have themselves been adapted to the new conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, more importantly, have been joined by other modernize to some extent, 'Westernized') indigenous visions. It is with two other sets of Hindu authorities that have arisen in the wake of this intercultural encounter over the past two centuries where this kind of adaptation to modernity is most visible: the socalled Neo-Hindu reformers, and the Hindu nationalists. Scholars who contest the monolithic conceptualization of 'Hinduism' regard the Neo-Hindu movement as something like the native shadow of the Orientalist project. For it is in the formulations of 'Hinduism' issuing forth from such various nineteenth-and twentieth-century reformers like Aurobindo, Day manda Sarasvati, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Rammohun Roy, and Viveknanda that the impact of the Western ideas is most obvious. The Neo-Hindu indigenous authorities are often dismissed as 'inauthentic,' their claims to legitimacy compromised by their encounters with modernity and Questioning authorityWestern social, political, and intellectual trends. Their representations of 'Hinduism' are delegitimized as merely the native restatement of ideas originating in the West.Neo-Hinduism is not a unified system of ideas. In fact it is chiefly because of one common trait that classify religious thinkers as Neo-Hindus. Their intellectual formation is primarily or predominantly Western. It is European culture, and in several cases even the Christian religion, which has led them to embrace certain religious, ethical, social, and political values. But afterwards they connect these values with, and claim them as, part of the Hindu tradition.
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