An Alternative Historiography for Hinduism

Abstract

My approach to Hindu historiography1 is alternative in several senses of the word. It highlights a narrative alternative to the one constituted by the most famous texts in Sanskrit and represented in most surveys in English. It tells a story that incorporates the narratives of and about alternative people – people who, from the standpoint of most high-caste Hindu males, are alternative in the sense of otherness, people of other religions, cultures, castes, species (animals), or gender (women). Part of my agenda in writing an alternative history is to show how much the groups that conventional wisdom says were oppressed and silenced and played no part in the development of the tradition – women, Pariahs – did actually contribute to Hinduism.