By Maya Warrier
The so-called ‘natives’ are reading scholarly writings and fashioning their responses accordingly, the distinction between academic scholar and religious practitioner is fast blurring and the question of how one goes about studying troublesome ‘others’ while being compelled to engage them in critical dialogue is all the more pertinent. It may be worthwhile therefore to take a cue from Marcus and Fisher (1986) to consider the present moment as one rife with the possibilities of experiment by which to rethink the categories conventionally brought to bear on the study of religious groups and their activities and thereby to reconstitute the task of representation itself.
—Reddy and Zavos, 2009
Members of the ‘Public Representation of a Religion called Hinduism’ project have been grappling with the rather thorny issue of reaching beyond the world of academia to engage with Hindu individuals and groups—Hindu ‘practitioners’—who have a direct stake in the question of how Hinduism is publicly represented. Implicit in the agenda of reaching ‘beyond the world of academia’ is an interesting and problematic binary—that between ‘us’, the scholars/academics, who are setting the agenda, and ‘them’, the ‘practitioners’, who are responding to it. This practitioner–scholar binary raises more questions than one can readily answer. What does it mean to be a practitioner of Hinduism? What marks a practitioner out as different from an academic ‘scholar’? Where does the boundary between ‘practice’ and ‘scholarship’ lie? Are practitioner and scholar mutually exclusive categories or can there be an overlap between them?1 My attempt in this chapter is to tease out some of the assumptions underlying the categories of practitioner and scholar to examine what this categorisation implies in terms of marking and maintaining boundaries and to explore what exactly we can hope to achieve by facilitating dialogue between the two.
In the most simplistic sense, the practitioner–scholar binary translates into a dichotomy between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. As ideal types, practitioners are insiders to a faith tradition and practise it, whereas scholars are outsiders and investigate it. Practitioners’ attitudes and actions are based on faith and commitment, while those of scholars are based on rationality and critique. The practitioner takes her/his faith for granted, the scholar investigates and analyses it. The practitioner’s representation of her/his own faith tradition is value laden; it reflects the values and outlook of the tradition itself. The scholar’s approach is value neutral. The practitioner has a stake in how her/his tradition is represented since this has important implications for the practitioner’s identity; the scholar is not encumbered by such personal or collective interest. In anthropological terms, the scholar is the outside observer who observes the insider’s way of life, sometimes participating in it but always maintaining the critical distance indispensable for rigorous analysis, and the practitioner is the observed, going about his or her life even while being subjected to close (and presumably uncomfortable) scrutiny. Practising-insiders, in this ideal–typical understanding, are uncritical of their faith and take it for granted, whereas scholar-outsiders train a critical and analytical lens on them and their faith traditions in the interest of furthering humanity’s knowledge pool.
Needless to say, this kind of neat categorisation is rife with problems. The assumption that insiders are uncritical is the first problem—it does not allow for the possibility of the critical insider who has the ability to achieve analytical distance from her or his own faith tradition in order to critique it. A large number of contemporary scholars of Hinduism are in fact ‘critical insiders’ of one persuasion or another, seeking to engage critically with their own traditions by deploying tools and methods derived from modern academia. The assumption that religion or faith lies outside the realm of rational thought is a second problem—it can readily be argued that religion or faith has its own rationality, every bit as valid as the rationality of academic scholarship.2 One can also argue, conversely, that the scholar is in fact also a practitioner of a faith-based tradition—the tradition of observation and analysis based on faith in science and rationality. A third problem stems from the assumption that the scholarly approach is value neutral; it ignores the range of values that in fact inform modern-day academic scholarship, deriving from such disparate sources as scientism, secular or liberal humanism, feminism, cosmopolitanism, Marxism and postmodernism. It also ignores the range of interests—individual and collective—that modern scholarship serves and the interest-group politics in which academics inevitably participate.
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the scholar–practitioner binary as an ideal type is the suggestion that the two categories of ‘scholar’ and ‘practitioner’ are monolithic and absolute. The binary does not readily accommodate the diversity—in belief, attitude, practice—that obtains among scholars and among practitioners. It obscures the fact that there are many different ways of being a ‘scholar’ just as there are many different ways of being a ‘practitioner’. It also does not accommodate the relative nature of the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Insides and outsides and the boundaries between them are not fixed and unchanging any more than are individuals’ positions relative to these categories. The binary fails to do justice to the many different ways in which ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’ can be demarcated. It also obscures the range of positions that individuals can assume vis-à-vis delineated ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’, neglecting the context-sensitive nature of such positioning.
Clearly, on the one hand, the ideal–typical practitioner–scholar divide, for all its neatness and simplicity, offers little of real value if we insist on treating ‘practitioner’ and ‘scholar’ as mutually exclusive categories. If on the other hand, we acknowledge that the boundaries between the two are in fact totally blurred, and that the assumptions on which the divide is based are problematic, we are forced to consider whether it might be best to abandon these categories altogether. I would suggest that even though the scholar–practitioner dichotomy has little intrinsic value, there is rather a lot we can learn by exploring the ways in which it is used by individuals and groups in different contexts. The crucial question here is not so much whether these binaries are valid, but what they do. As McCutcheon (2003: 235) points out, binaries such as insider/outsider; practitioner/scholar; religion/rationality; the sacred/the secular are significant political forces when used as part of a larger discourse. These political forces bring people under a certain system of classification and control, erect boundaries between individuals and groups and facilitate the othering of those understood to be different, or to uphold rival truth claims (Knott, 2005a, 2005b; McCutcheon, 1997, 1999).
Academia and its insiders have had a long history of creating and maintaining boundaries—there are boundaries within academia, for instance, between different disciplines and different schools of thought, and there are boundaries marking academics apart from the non-academic outsider. Different disciplines within modern academia each have their own objects and modes of enquiry, systems of categorisation and classification, their own bodies of theory, their methods for engaging with their subject matter and hence their distinct disciplinary identity. Outsiders to the discipline and outsiders to academia itself are marked out by their unfamiliarity with these specific systems of knowledge production. The boundaries created by academia however are often contested: they change, get redrawn in different ways and are constantly negotiated and renegotiated in the ebb and flow of academic life.
Since the 17th century, Western academia has had at its base what we might refer to as the ‘secular consensus’ of modernity. This secular consensus rests on the somewhat arbitrary and highly problematic post-Enlightenment division between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’,3 which relegates religious belief and practice to the ‘private’ realm and locates academia within the realm of the secular and public.4 While religion has remained a valid area of enquiry within this modernist framework, the secular consensus has restricted and regulated the objects and modes of enquiry of scholars studying religion. Consistent with the secular consensus, scholars of religion have tended not to concern themselves with the study of ‘non-falsifiable alternate realities’ (Cox, 2008: 54–55); that is, they tend not to ask questions about the nature of the ‘divine’ or about the meaning and purpose of life or about the existence or otherwise of souls or spirits. They choose instead to restrict the scope of their enquiry to the empirical study of human engagement with a diverse range of postulated non-falsifiable alternate realities. Their mode of enquiry has typically been critical, analytical and, ideally, self-reflexive. They have sought to privilege inquiry and critique over advocacy and commitment.
By controlling and restricting their mode of engagement, academics have thus maintained boundaries which have served to set them apart from the non-academic world. For academic scholars of religion, their many significant others have traditionally included, for instance, those whose truth claims are based on divine revelation or mystical insight; those who tend towards advocacy and commitment rather than enquiry; and those unfamiliar with the language and methods of academic scholarship. Scholars of religion have sought to distance themselves from ‘others’ not just outside academia but also within. Contemporary scholars of Hinduism, for instance, seek to distance themselves from the Orientalist and missionary scholarship of past centuries where the approach to Hinduism is decidedly Christian-centric. Scholars like Timothy Fitzgerald (1990, 2000, 2001) even question the applicability of the term ‘religion’ to Eastern traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism, going so far as to argue that to study these traditions as ‘religions’ is to implicitly pursue a Christian theological agenda.
These boundaries, and the secular consensus of modernity on which they are based, have served not merely to demarcate, regulate and classify academia and its disciplines but also to establish particular power relations between academic scholars and those whom they study. The truth claims of those being studied are often relegated to a position of inferiority in relation to the findings of the academy which rely on the ‘superior’ methods of rational, scientific enquiry. Scholars are presumed to provide insights—into the practices, values and beliefs of those being studied—that the subjects themselves lack; they exchange these insights with fellow academics who share the language and methods of academic discourse. These academics are deemed to be the ‘knowers’, and they are powerful by virtue of this assumed ‘knowledge’; their subjects have limited access to their findings since they are outsiders to academia’s modes of knowledge production and dissemination. The subjects therefore remain alienated from this knowledge and power unless they cross academia’s boundary lines and become academics themselves.
The model I have described here of academic knowledge production has, however, increasingly come to be challenged from within academia itself. Anthropologists in particular have long struggled with these issues of unequal power relations. The anthropological gaze, traditionally backed by the economic and political forces of the ‘developed’ world, has typically been trained on less ‘developed’ societies, and as a result the methods and aims of anthropological inquiry have time and again come dangerously close to reinforcing global power inequalities (for instance, between coloniser and colonised, between the First World and the Third World, between North and South). Forced to engage with the political implications of their own academic endeavours, anthropologists have been among the first to reflect critically on their own practice, acknowledge and critique the unequal power relations between scholar/outsider and native/insider and explore new modes of engagement that are more reciprocal and egalitarian. The increased awareness of the political nature of the academic exercise, shifts in thinking brought about by feminism and postcolonial studies, as well as the postmodern turn in academia (and beyond) have all served to erode (to some extent) the traditional power base of Western academia. Postmodernism, with its distrust of meta-narratives and its critique of scientific rationality and the secular consensus, has dealt a severe blow to academia’s claims to superior knowledge based on scientific and rational inquiry. It has exposed the culture-specific, relative and particular, rather than universal and absolute, value of scientific rationality. It has undermined the value of academia’s truth claims by pointing to the contingent and provisional nature of all truths and called for critical self-reflection on the truths that academics hold dear. These developments have a crucial bearing on questions relating to the desirability, and indeed the possibility, of dialogue across the scholar–practitioner divide.
Much like the very many Hindu religious and political groups who have a stake in the question of how this ‘religion’ called Hinduism is represented in public, academics studying Hinduism too can function as something of an interest group privileging their own favoured representation. Academic representations of Hinduism tend to problematise the idea that Hinduism is a religion/world religion and emphasise its diverse and polycentric nature. They emphasise the role of the colonial encounter in shaping Hindu self-consciousness as people of a ‘faith’; highlight the multiplicity of traditions that go to make up the whole; identify power inequalities within Hinduism, for instance, between caste groupings and between men and women; emphasise the inadequacy of studying brahmanical and Sanskritic traditions alone to the neglect of popular, everyday, folk aspects; and point to the blurred nature of the boundaries between Hinduism and other ‘religions’ in everyday practice.
The academic representation of Hinduism as diverse, complex and polycentric often competes in the public arena with other representations favoured by Hindu groups. Some of these competing representations portray Hinduism as a more or less systematic and tidy ‘religion’, with identifiable core texts, shared beliefs and shared practices. These representations often rely on a largely brahmanical understanding of Hinduism. Many are concerned to assert what they perceive as the glory of Hinduism and to foster a sense of Hindu pride among Hindus. Often authors of such representations betray an acute sensitivity to Christian-centred perceptions that Hinduism, with its many gods and goddesses, its image worship and its rituals of devotion, is irrational and ‘primitive’; they are also sensitive to the liberal humanist critique that Hinduism with its caste hierarchies and its patriarchal values is ill-suited to a modern egalitarian ethos. These representations are, thus, often tailored to suit what are perceived as standards of ‘respectability’ in a modern liberal context. Re-visioning Hinduism in this way entails erasing out, from these representations, elements like caste and gender inequalities, polytheism and image worship that could seem problematic to particular audiences.
Other competing representations are often concerned less with systematising Hinduism as a religion with core beliefs, texts and practices and focus more on asserting a shared sense of Hindu-ness (or Hindutva)—a unified Hindu identity based on claims of a primordial Hindu ‘essence’ to the relative neglect of historical agency.5 Such representations are concerned to define Hindus against identifiable ‘others’, often Muslims and Christians, and to lay claim to Hindu nationhood on the basis of majoritarian principles. Authors of such representations challenge the idea of India as a secular nation state, inviting opposition from secularists who resist the de-secularisation of the Indian public arena by the Hindu right.
From the point of view of academic scholars of Hinduism, their significant ‘others’ are many and varied. So long as these ‘others’ populate parallel worlds which seldom intersect with the world of academic scholarship and representation, they present no problem. Academics can continue to safely study these ‘others’, write about them, discuss them at conferences and workshops, so long as the findings of their studies remain obscured within the confines of academia to be accessed only by fellow academics who share the premises and methods of academic enquiry. However, over the last few decades, the walls between academic scholarship on Hinduism and the outside world have been decisively breached. As the quote at the start of this chapter reminds us, academic writing on Hinduism is increasingly attracting an audience outside of academia. The others—the practitioners, the natives, the subjects of academic scrutiny—are beginning to read and engage with scholarly writing. Some of these subjects are also beginning to voice their responses to, and opinions about, this writing. Sometimes they find this writing objectionable and offensive, sometimes it desecrates their sacred realms and often it hurts their sentiments. The result is anger, public protest, controversy and confrontation—the California textbook controversy of 2006 and the outcry over the works of scholars like Wendy Doniger, Jeffrey Kripal, Paul Courtright and James Laine are cases in point. Unsurprisingly, this leads to difficult questions about the authority and legitimacy of academic representations and about scholars’ presumed right to speak for, and about, Hinduism.6 Academic truths are challenged and rival truth claims are asserted in their stead. The result is a closing of ranks, an intensified sense of victimhood in both camps, a greater policing of boundaries and increased vigilance.
The climate of considerable hostility between sections of the academic world and some particularly strident Hindu groups means that it is important to explore the possibilities for a different mode of engagement—one where the scholar does not treat the practitioner as an object of enquiry and one where both engage on equal terms. As the quote at the start of this chapter notes, the present academic climate (with its breached boundaries, its critical awareness of power inequalities and its entanglement in confrontation and controversy) can be seen as a moment of opportunity—one that holds the potential for experimentation, for rethinking conventional categories, for reconstituting the very task of representation.
It would doubtless be naïve to assume that the road to meaningful dialogue is smooth. It would also be naïve to assume that we can readily chance upon common ground from which to begin such dialogue or that we can all agree the terms and conditions of such exchange. Some of the prerequisites for meaningful dialogue would presumably include a willingness to be receptive to opposing points of view, a readiness to empathise, a willingness to be critically self-reflexive rather than simply reassert deeply held convictions.
Even if these prerequisites were met, however, what could such dialogue achieve? At the very least, it could perhaps lead to a clearer understanding of the multiple agendas of those who speak for and about Hinduism and result in a subtler awareness of the diversity of positions in either camp. It could perhaps lead to greater questioning and self-scrutiny on both sides and result in a more self-conscious engagement with the ‘other’ in ways that suggest an understanding of, and respect for, the other’s sensibilities and sensitivities. And at its very best, such dialogue could perhaps force a rethinking of theoretical concepts, analytical categories, insider–outsider divisions and modes of representation, generating new paradigms of thought and practice within academia and beyond.
Caldwell, Sarah and Brian K. Smith (guest editors). 2000. ‘Articles and Response on “Who Speaks for Hinduism?”’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68 (4): 705–836.
Cox, James L. 2008. ‘Religious Studies Sui Generis: The Role of Phenomenology in the Religion-Theology Debate’, in M. Warrier and S. Oliver (eds), Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries, pp. 45–57. London: T&T Clark.
Fitzgerald, Timothy. 1990. ‘Hinduism and the “World Religion” Fallacy’, Religion, 20 (2): 101–18.
———. 2000. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2001. ‘Problematising Discourses on Religion’, Culture and Religion, 2 (1): 103–12.
Knott, Kim. 2005a. The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis of the Left Hand. London: Equinox.
———. 2005b. ‘Insider/Outsider Perspectives’, in John R. Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, pp. 243–58. London and New York: Routledge.
Marcus, George and Michael Fisher. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourses on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1999. The Insider/Outsider Problem and the Study of Religion: A Reader. London and New York: Cassell.
———. 2003. The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric. London and New York: Routledge.
Reddy, Deepa S. and John Zavos. 2009. ‘The Public Representation of a Religion Called Hinduism’. See http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/hinduism/resources/index.htm (last accessed on 10 November 2010).
Warrier, Maya and Simon Oliver (eds). 2008. Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries. London: T&T Clark.
1 In our attempts to answer these questions, we have come to realise that the views of the editorial team on these issues diverge significantly. There are differences not only in terms of how we envisage the relationship between the two categories but also in terms of how far we consider it desirable or otherwise to facilitate dialogue between them (see the ‘snapshot’ by Williams, Chapter 4 in this volume).
2 The rationality of the scholarly academic is only one kind of rationality in what is best described as a world of multiple rationalities—multiple ways of meaning making, all of which have their own internal logic and rationale.
3 See Reddy and Zavos (2009) on this public/private distinction and academic perspectives on the nature of the ‘public’ domain.
4 This framework renders somewhat problematic the place of theology as a discipline within modern universities. See, for instance, ‘Introduction’ in Warrier and Oliver (2008).
5 One of the important concerns of this research network has been to tease out affinities and differences between the idea of ‘Hinduism’ as a ‘religion’ and that of ‘Hindutva’ as a marker of identity. See Reddy, Chapter 26 in this volume.
6 See, for instance, the debate between scholars in the special edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Caldwell and Smith, 2000: 68, 4) on the subject ‘Who Speaks for Hinduism?’