Configurations of the modern Indian renaissance
Date
1974
Authors
Mullens, James Gerald
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The 19th and early 20th C. witnessed a revival of Hindu culture which has come to be known as the Renaissance. Stimulated by contact with Europe, and affected by the imposed requirements of British rule, the Hindu upper castes created within their milieu a consciousness and reaffirmation of their traditional role in Indian society. This social movement was reinforced by education, social reform, political growth, literary development and religious and philosophical revival.
Emanating primarily from the centres of colonial rule, the upper caste revival employed western styles of literature and education, European models of administration and government, and revised Hindu socio-religious doctrine. Over a span of 100 years this community of Indians established itself as the recipient of British authority, and the modern interpreters of Hinduism. The process of 'stimulus diffusion', developed by A. Kroeber to explain certain kinds of cultural growth patterns, was a major principle operating throughout the contact period.
Incorporation of western influence at first created a trend towards assimilation, giving pronounced superiority to European culture. This produced a period of reform which sought to rid Indian society of many cultural features antithetical to an evolving group of brokers and mediators bent on seeing India develop as a disciple of the West. For the first two generations after 1800 exhuberance and idealistic thinking of modernizing Indians went largely unchecked. It was not until the economic drain of the subcontinent was becoming evident, and the number of educated exceeded the positions available to them, that a reaction set in. The growth of nationalism and the concomitant revival and reinterpretation of Hinduism's socio-religious structure was due in part to competition within Indian society for the rights and privileges of social preeminence.
The emergence of a middle class element within the educated Hindu broker community, which contested both the aims of British rule and the assimilation of it by many Indians is a feature of the social evolution of the Renaissance. Class mobility, made possible by the super-imposition of the British administrative-economic system opened new areas of cultural growth and development, yielding significant achievements in Literature and Philosophy, and giving militant nationalism its most vocal exponents. Hindu revivalism in the Renaissance period was closely aligned with extreme forms of national expression, and individuals such as Aurobindo Ghose played an active part in bringing literature and religious doctrine to bear on the issue of Swaraj (self-rule).
The social and cultural manifestations of the Renaissance were limited to the upper caste strata of Hindu society involving only a minority of the population. Due to the literacy and authority of this group, the socio-religious changes which resulted from the transfer of power eventually reached a broad social base. These developments conform to M. Singer's understanding of the Great Tradition in Indian civilization being influential and at times decisive in affairs both secular and religious, in spite of the small numbers involved in its preservation, interpretation and continuance.