Universal Religion in Modern Hindu Thought: Some Conclusions

Abstract

Several meanings of the term universal religion were identified in the first chapter. In this last chapter we discover that, notwithstanding its polysemic connotations, the term can also be employed with a measure of semantic economy. The foregoing survey of universal religion in the life and thought of several leading figures of modern Hinduism, enables one to identify two major senses in which the concept of universal religion has played itself out in modern Hinduism: either as the acceptance by all of one religion, or, as the acceptance of all the religions by one. Although both these senses of universal religions can be identified in modem Hinduism, and are sometimes even found incarnated in the same person, the latter sense – that ‘of acceptance of all the religions by one’ by and large occupies the higher and larger ground over and above the sense of ‘the acceptance by all of one religion’. The concept of universal religion in modern Hindu thought must therefore primarily be understood as conforming to this sense. A folksier way of stating the same conclusion would be to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the people of the world into two kinds and those who do not. Modern Hindus like to think that they belong to the type who don’t.