Modern Hinduism and the Middle Class: Beyond Revival in the Historiography of Colonial India

Abstract

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India, a celebrated group of religious savants undertook the task of recreating Hinduism within the context of a colonial modernity that they helped to shape. One of the most important, yet under-discussed, aspects of this new Hinduism is that most of these reformers and revivalists were members of a common social group – the emerging Indian middle class. Building on recent work on middle-class Hinduism I call for further efforts to refocus the historiography of colonial India on the consideration of the class location of the leaders who produced modern Hinduism. I suggest that one of modern Hinduism's most significant features in its historical development was the way in which it demonstrated a pronounced shift in religious authority away from the traditional centres of influence towards the colonial middle class. This article invites a new way of interpreting the history of modern Hinduism that goes beyond the Marxist paradigm for analysing the relation of religion and class. Further, the shared class context reveals underlying concerns about revitalisation and empowerment that united the opposed camps of the reformers and revivalists alike.