Submission of max. 300 word abstracts are invited for the following themes:
It is commonly accepted that colonialism has had a determining impact on Indian society. Some authors claim that it has created or constructed entities, such as Hinduism, that did not exist in pre-colonial India. Even though there is some truth to this claim, it also faces several problems. Long before colonialism, for instance, both Muslims and early European travellers wrote about a Hindu religion in India. Today Hindus speak about “their Hindu religion” but scholars are still unable to identify the characteristic properties of Hinduism as a religion. In other words, if Hinduism is indeed a colonial construction, the nature of this construction is unclear and it is equally unclear what is colonial about it.
Some guiding questions:
There is a widely held belief that the Indian social organisation or system is immoral. Indian society is said to be determined by a rigid and hierarchically structured social system, namely the caste system. This system is considered to be intrinsically related to Hinduism and its Brahmin priesthood. It is also seen as an impediment to development and social mobility. At the same time, empirical research shows that there is no recognisable hierarchy to be found in Indian society; that there has been no authority to implement the ‘caste laws’ and punish violations; that so-called caste laws are not even known to most Indians; and so on.
Some guiding questions:
Today it is commonly felt that secularism is the solution to religious violence in India, especially with regard to conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. At the same time, however, secularism is fiercely contested by a variety of groups in India. Historically, notions of secularism and tolerance originated as solutions to the problems of religious strife in the West. Therefore, it is important for the study of religion to develop an understanding of the problems that can be solved by secularism, and whether these are also the problems that Indian society faces.
Some guiding questions:
In the wake of Edward Said many scholars have claimed that the dominant descriptions of religion and culture in India are specifically Western in nature and do not reflect Indian realities. These descriptions, they say, represent India as a pale and erring variant of the West. Reacting to such claims by Said and others, other scholars have argued that this denies the agency of the Indians, as if Indians had no say in the production of these representations. Today, a virtual consensus has come into being among scholars that the dominant modern descriptions of Hinduism, Brahmanism, Vedism, Sikhism, Jainism, ... are the result of collaboration between Europeans and Indians. But what does this tell us about the nature of the orientalist descriptions? Does it mean they do reflect an Indian reality after all? Does this mean that we can discard the insights of Said? Or is there a different and more interesting way of looking at the insights of Said that has been neglected so far?
Some guiding questions:
From the 16th century onwards, Europeans have described India: from early travellers, missionaries, traders to the British, French and Portuguese colonisers and orientalists. It is our claim that all these descriptions reflect a specifically European experience of the Indian culture. Finding out the common pattern in these descriptions not only teaches us a lot about the Western culture but is also a necessary precondition to develop an alternative way of understanding and describing the Indian traditions. Therefore, we invite papers of scholars who study the European descriptions of India from this perspective.
What does the modernization of Indian traditions mean?
From the 19th century onwards there have been movements in India that tried to reform or modernize the Indian traditions. To a large extent these reform movements arose as reactions to the European descriptions that depicted the Indian traditions as degenerated and false religions. Accepting these descriptions as true, the Indian reformers wanted to improve their traditions and rid them of corrupt elements. However, what this improvement or reform actually meant for them is far from clear. Even though the Indian reformers took over the European concepts and descriptions the question is whether they understood them in the same way as Europeans. If not, we need to see how they understood them, how concepts like ‘reform’, ‘modernization’, ‘reformation’... were distorted and what this tells us about the nature of the Indian traditions.
Some guiding questions:
Islamic mysticism in European and Indian perspective
The history of the study of Islamic mysticism shows that most people so far have understood sufism as a separate part of Islam. It has also been seen as something more attractive than other Islamic traditions, not only for Europeans but for Asians as well. Recently it was proved that even contemporary religious movements sometimes called “fundamentalists”, “Islamists” or “Muslim brotherhood” use sufi terminology as an integral part of their Muslim tradition. The question we want to focus on is why scholars, both in the East and the West, have looked at sufism in a more positive way than at the other Islamic traditions.
Some guiding questions:
In the workshop sessions concrete questions such as ‘How to teach about the Indian religions and traditions?’ or 'How to develop de-colonised descriptions of the Indian traditions?' will be addressed. Even though the aim of these sessions is to involve the audience in a more active way, the structure of these sessions is left open: the sessions could consist of presentations, a discussion among a panel of experts on a particular theme, a discussion with the audience introduced and moderated by a chair. It is left to the organiser of a 'how to…?' workshop to decide upon this.
Workshop proposals should explain why this workshop is important vis-à-vis the general objectives of Rethinking Religion in India. They should also contain an outline of the planned structure of the session with the number and names of speakers, moderator and/or other participants.