(Anti-)Colonialism, religion and science in Bengal from the perspective of global religious history

Julian Strube

doi:10.1017/s1740022822000110

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on debates about the relationship between religion, science and national identity that unfolded in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal. Combining perspectives from religious studies and global history, it offers a specific approach to theoretical and methodological issues revolving around entanglement, agency and modernity. This will be operationalized, first, through an exploration of personal networks surrounding the Bengali Tantric pandit Shivachandra Bhattacharya Vidyarnava; his Bengali disciple, philosopher and nationalist educator, Pramathanath Mukhopadhyay and Shivachandra’s British disciple, the judge John Woodroffe. Second, an investigation of the connections between self-referentially ‘orthodox’ societies, so-called reformers, and the Theosophical Society will further illustrate the global exchanges that conditioned and shaped contemporary debates about religion, science and politics. This will complicate and shed new light on the contested relationship between modernity and tradition, or reformism and orthodoxy, opening new perspectives for further dialogue between religious studies and global history.

Highlights

This article focuses on debates about the relationship between religion, science and national identity that unfolded in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal
It is well established that religion lies at the core of central issues that have been debated by global historians for decades, including nineteenth-century racial and linguistic theories, social reform movements and the elusive subject of ‘modernity.’ There is wide agreement that, in the words of Peter van der Veer, ‘modernity has a global history’ that was not shaped
Barton Scott has pleaded for situating ‘Hindu reformism as part of the cultural history of the study of religion in the nineteenth century,’ highlighting the decisive role played by one of the most famous Indian reform movements in the emergence of comparative religion: the Bengali Brahmo Samaj, which will be of primary concern in this present paper

Summary

Global religious history

The approach of global religious history is proposed here to unravel and explore the tangle of exchanges that will emerge in what follows. It may serve to contribute to ongoing debates about the meaning of ‘global,’ as well as related theoretical and methodological concepts such as connections, entanglement and agency. Such a perspective offers a way forward for debates within religious studies. We are frequently confronted with ambiguities between universalistic tendencies that presented ‘true dharma’ as the core of a universal religion of humanity—a position typical for ‘orthodox’ actors, ‘reformists’ and Theosophists alike—and nationalistic as well as exclusivist tendencies claiming, for instance, the authority of what was presented as the Vedic Brahmanical tradition These debates about the origin, meaning and future of ‘dharma’ and ‘religion’ may be considered very modern, not least because they were largely informed or motivated by the emergence of critical philological scholarship since the late eighteenth century.

Orthodox Sabhās and Shivachandra Vidyarnava

Conclusion