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== Addition to Further Reading ==


== Semi-protected edit request on 27 November 2024 ==
Hello! I have a suggested addition for 'Further Reading: Scholarly'


{{edit semi-protected|Hinduism|answered=yes}}
Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter (2015), , Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-6021-6
The word "territory" is incorrectly spelt as "terretory" in ].


"Réunion is not a country, but an independent French terretory." -> "Réunion is not a country, but an independent French territory." ] (]) 13:47, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
] (]) 18:11, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
:{{done}}<!-- Template:ESp --> ] (]) 14:50, 27 November 2024 (UTC)


== Can't get the story right ==
== Islam and sects of Hinduism (c. 1200-1700 CE) ==
This section does not look neutral - it does not even mention the revival of Hinduism in India under two powerful states - Vijayanagar<ref>
http://www.britannica.com/place/Vijayanagar
</ref> and Maratha<ref>
http://www.britannica.com/place/India/Political-and-economic-decentralization-during-the-Mughal-decline#toc46985
</ref> I am editing this section with absolute credible references


The etymology section states: "The term Hinduism was first used by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1816–17."
] (]) 18:55, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
{{reflist-talk}}
:Good addition, I think. Interestingly, it seems that it was also the Vijayanagar Empire where Shankara was elevated to the status he still has today. This contrasts with the statement in the article ''"Followers of the Bhakti movement moved away from the abstract concept of Brahman, which Adi Shankara consolidated a few centuries before."'' ] -] 19:59, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


Whereas the definition section states: "The term "Hinduism" was coined in Western ethnography in the 18th century." Note 13 states: "Hinduism is derived from Persian hindu- and the -ism suffix. It is first recorded in 1786, in the generic sense of "polytheism of India"."
:: Unfortunately, the first paragraph seems to have come from some Hindutva pamphlet. What "sects of Hinduism"? I don't see any. Cheers, ] (]) 22:29, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


So, which is it? 1816 or 1786? 100 years of "Indology" and they can't even figure out something this basic? ] (]) 18:26, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:::@Kautilya3: Bhakti sects of Hinduism, makes more sense in the title. Bhakti movement gathered steam after 12th century, peaked between 15th-18th centuries in east/west/central/north regions of the subcontinent. See Karen Pechelis and Schomer & McLeod sources in the article. Also see: Christian Lee Novetzke (2013), Religion and Public Memory, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0231512565, pages 138-140. It includes a discussion of Islamic rule period and Bhakti movement in their Deccan region, on those pages. ] (]) 04:26, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
:Welcome to Misplaced Pages, with all it's imperfections. The great thing is, ''you'' can improve the article by checking the sources and editing the text. ] - ] 19:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
::I can't, the article is locked. The "sources" are the problem here. They are shite, written by people who don't seem to understand what they are doing. What's the point of tracking the history of an ] formulation anyway? Misplaced Pages suggests -ism endings are themselves only a late 17th century invention. "religion of..." or "... religion" would have the common formulations before -ism words caught on. I don't see any discussion of the English word "Buddhism" on ], and it would be supremely silly to suggest that it has any bearing on when the dharma of the Buddha came into being. But this stuff passes for "scholarship" in Indology. ] (]) 19:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:It could be that it isn't saying that Ram Mohan Roy coined the term, just that he started using it in 1816-17. Is it that the term was coined in western ethnography in the late 18th century and then started to be used by Indians such as Ram Mohan Roy in the 19th century? If this is what the sources indicate (I can't be sure because I can't access all of them) then it needs to be edited to make this clearer. ] (]) 19:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)


::I've attributed the Roy-statement to Singh. 1786 is from etymonline; it does not give a specific rdference. Work in progress... ] - ] 19:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:::: Hi Sarah, I know. But I was pointing out that there is no mention of any of it in the section. In fact, the section is leaving religion behind and going off into politics. I am not sure how this happened. On the matter of "sects", as opposed to "movements", I expect there would be diversity in the scholarly sources. Calling them "sects" as if it were a fact seems to constitute POV. Cheers, ] (]) 08:04, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
::The source likely does say he coined the word, and whoever inserted the claim here clearly also did so to claim that it was coined by him. It's a popular claim.
:::::Totally agree with Amit20081980. This section is written in an utter rubbish way.] (]) 13:41, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
::My edit suggestion: remove the part starting with "In the 18th century ...". The source given, , doesn't support the claim that it started being used in the 18th century. It specifically argues against that, giving an example from 1616, talking about the wicked religion of Hindoos or whatever. The rest of it is similarly trite nonsense, having nothing to do with the etymology of the word Hindu or Hinduism, presumably what the section is supposed to be about. ] (]) 19:55, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
{{od}}
I fixed the Etymology section. The "Definitions" section would do best to avoid discussing the term, but talk instead of the ''concept'', using whatever term people might have used. -- ] (]) 20:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:No, it's not fixed. "Apparently coined" is a misrepresentation of the source: Sweetman states that there's no indication that the word was a neologism. He also directly contradicts the claim that Europeans "began" calling a group of people "in the 18th century". They were already ranting against the religion of "Hindoos" by 1616! They've probably done so since as long they've been in contact with Hindus. None of the following content about 1840s belongs in the etymology section. ] (]) 20:28, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:: Please propose the content you would like to see along with citations. -- ] (]) 21:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
{{od}}
is where that Sweetman citation comes from. -- ] (]) 14:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)


:What I understand from this huge page range, and also pages 56-58, is that "Hinduism" was a late entrant into the discussion. It was preceded by "heathenism", "Brahmanism" (in Portuguese), "Gentilism" (in French) and possibly "Gentooism" (in English). So the coinage of "Hinduism" or "HIndooism" was a non-event, except that it brought new scholarship to weigh in on the subject. It served the purpose of a buzzword. -- ] (]) 15:14, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
::Yes, you have that exactly right. This is why the etymology section going into detail about the coinage of Hinduism and "in the 18th" century is silly. The European Encounter with Hinduism by Jan Peter Schouten talks about it. He's a Protestant minister and comes with some bias, but it is still informative. You can read the Introduction. There was no single point where Europeans "began" to call anyone Hindu, that word was already current in the subcontinent and they just followed it. Do I need to propose citations to get things removed too? Shouldn't it be enough to point out that the text is not supported by the citations and do not belong to the section they are in? You've already removed it from the definitions section. ] (]) 17:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
::: The European encounter is only a small part of the Etymology section. You shouldn't overblow it. If you can come up with what to write for the happenings before the coinage of "Hinduism", we can certainly cover it.
::: Note that "Hindu" is a much older term than "Hinduism" and there is a ] on it. -- ] (]) 19:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
:::: I don't think you're getting what I am saying. The etymology section currently contains all this:
::::{{talkquote|In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.}} Nope. Not true. They weren't the ones to start it and certainly did not begin to do so in the 18th century. See Sweetman, and Schouten's Introduction.
::::{{talkquote|The use of the English term "Hinduism" to describe a collection of practices and beliefs is a fairly recent construction. It was apparently coined (with the original spelling "Hindooism") by Charles Grant in 1787, who used it along with "Hindu religion". The first Indian to use "Hinduism" may have been Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1816–17.}} All this is technically true, but useless. The use of the term "Buddhism" to describe the teachings of the Buddha is also a recent construction. There were other terms, in other European and Indian languages, before this. Sweetman makes this clear, and you've already made the changes in the definition section. Remove it from here too.
::::{{talkquote|By the 1840s, the term "Hinduism" was used by those Indians who opposed British colonialism, and who wanted to distinguish themselves from Muslims and Christians. Before the British began to categorise communities strictly by religion, Indians generally did not define themselves exclusively through their religious beliefs; instead identities were largely segmented on the basis of locality, language, varna, jāti, occupation, and sect.}} This is dubious, at best "technically true". Note 12 is barely relevant to the text it's next to let alone the etymology section. In any case, none of this is relevant to the etymology of "Hinduism", but makes a definational point about the development of an identity around the term/category. Remove it, or move it down to the definition section. ] (]) 19:43, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::One issue at a time please. Otherwise we won't get anywhere. Let us stick to the Etymology section for now.
:::::The first objection you raise is a non-issue. The section doesn't say that the Europeans "started" it. There is a long discussion of the history of the term "hindus".
:::::The second objection is also non-issue. The Etymology section needs to describe what is known about the history of the term "Hinduism" (which is what this page is about). If something is missing, you can suggest adding it. But you can't say it is "useless" and so it shoutd be gotten rid of.
:::::The comparison with "Buddhism" also doesn't hold water. That term was already in use in Indian languages, such as ''Baudha dharma'' or ''Baudha mata''. So, perhaps that term doesn't need any discussion. ] (]) 21:35, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::: It literally does say that. What else is "In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus" supposed to mean there? That they didn't begin to do something in the 18th century? If it's meaningless drivel and isn't supposed to say anything, just remove it.
::::::You state above: "It was preceded by "heathenism", "Brahmanism" (in Portuguese), "Gentilism" (in French) and possibly "Gentooism" (in English)". Add this statement, along with the various dates associated with the term into the two part I object to. It currently gives a false impression that the introduction of the term Hinduism was some special event.
::::::And there was also Hindu dharma before Hinduism? You've surely read the Lorenzen paper and this section where this is mentioned. Are you trolling? ] (]) 22:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
{{od}} {{od}}
, (Adi 17.174). The work was composed circa 1557. Where does the notion that term "Hinduism" predates Hindu dharma come from? What reason is there to devote so much attention to the European term Hinduism when the principle reason cited is bunkum? ] (]) 22:50, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Kautilya3: Indeed. Bhakti movement needs to be mentioned in this article. Religion-related historical violence and its impact on the religion, its followers is relevant and due, for balance and completeness. Similar discussions are in ] and ] articles. Let us focus on reliable sources, instead of puzzling perspectives of their anti-Hindu, pro-Hindu, anti-Islam, pro-Islam organizations. The section looks well sourced. ] (]) 14:10, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
: This page is on "Hinduism" and its etymology is what is being discussed. (I have said that already.) -- ] (]) 23:01, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

: You are also missing an important point. "Hindu religion" and "Hindu dharma" mean the religion of the "hindus", whoever they might be. You might also find terms like "Turaka dharma", "Yavana dharma", "China dharma" etc., without needing to think of any of them as names of religions. -- ] (]) 23:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ghatus: I reverted you because your edits have issues and they weakened the article. You, for example, generalized Richard Eaton's book on Islam-Hindu interaction in Bengal region of India (''The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier'') to all of India, and your summary wasn't accurate either (FWIW, Maratha/Vijayanagara should be trimmed; this overview article is too big). Lets discuss per BRD, and reach consensus. ] (]) 14:46, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
::Okay. There are two other points. ] (]) 23:20, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

::What do you know about Sufism in India? Bengal and Punjab was the center of Suhrawardiyya.] (]) 16:12, 6 August 2015 (UTC) ::: I finished all the clean-up I wanted to do. Please take a look. -- ] (]) 23:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
:::: This tendency to stonewall and minimise any concessions to editors with opposing viewpoints is frustrating. I don't have any complaints at this point Just an observation, one citation says: "Most passages identified a mix of religious and cultural norms. For instance, the texts refer to the “Hindu god” (hindura īśvara) and “Hindu treatise” (hindu-śāstre), on the one hand, and to “hindu clothes” (hindu-beśa), on the other."" Why does the author think that a "Hindu dress" is a cultural rather than religious norms? In India, dress is usually more of a religious norm than cultural: when Modi said that "you can identify them by their clothes", he wasn't referring to just a "cultural norm". Food, clothing, washing, housing, festivals, are all religious norms. The author imposes a binary that doesn't exist in India even in modern times, let alone when these texts were written. ] (]) 09:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

::::: It takes a while to fit your ideas into the Misplaced Pages framework. Off hand, if you come and start asking for well-sourced content to be removed because you don't agree with it, you would be sent off packing. Misplaced Pages summarises ], not our opinions. -- ] (]) 12:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
== Islam and Hinduism-1200-1750 ==

1)Which renowned Historian wrote that Hindus became Muslim by just dent of Sword? It's a total rubbish statement. Even a person having some knowledge of mediaval History knows that there were several reasons for conversions. Read books of B. Chandra, Thapar, RS sharma, Eaton, D. Jha.
Some of the reasons are:
*Initially by violence, threat or other pressure against the person.
*As a socio-cultural process of diffusion and integration over an extended period of time.
*That conversions occurred for non-religious reasons of pragmatism and patronage such as social mobility among the Muslim ruling elite.
*Some of Muslims were descendants of migrants from the Iranians or Arabs.
* Majority Conversion was a result of the actions of Sufi saints.

2)Islam was dominant in North India, but not in the South.

3)Bhakti started in the the South actually, but flourished in the north.

4)Vijaynagar and Maratha power show the revival of Hinduism.

These are historical facts. Theologians should keep a distance from History. ] (]) 15:36, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

{{Yo|Kautilya3}} & {{Yo|Joshua Jonathan}} Do look into the matter. Ms Sarah Welch is unfit for history writing. I do not have enough time at hand now, but this myth of "Hindu trauma at the hand of Muslim tyranny" was first spread by the British and it later became a main driving point of Hindu Nationalist movement.] (]) 16:06, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

:@Ghatus: Avoid forum-y behavior, see ]. Try providing specific RS with page numbers, with sentences/proposal to improve the section. I am puzzled by your third revert on this article today, despite BRD reminder, and after I have already provided specific issues with your edits above. If you want another issue, you changed the Jizya repeal language, which was already in article before your edit. You to, without source:
::'''"The Delhi Sultanate of North India imposed Jizya tax on Hindus, later it was repealed by Akbar when the Mughal rule was formally established in India."'''
:This made it misleadingly inaccurate and worse, because Akbar did not establish Mughal rule, and Jizya was brought back by Aurangzeb. ] (]) 16:13, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

1)Babur's Mughal rule on some parts of India was wiped out within some years. Akbar FORMALLY ESTABLISHED mughal rule in India in 1556. yes, Jizya was re-introduced by his great grand son Aurangzebe, but the Marathas are now already in the scene and it was the end of the empire. I was just presenting both sides.] (]) 16:20, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

:::: Dear both, this is an article on religion. I suggest we steer clear of politics. What interests us in this article is what impact Islam/Muslim rule made on Hinduism. Nothing has been said about that in the article. Jizya and slavery etc. don't belong here. Cheers, ] (]) 16:26, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

:::::@Kautilya3: Jizya were religion-related taxes. It belongs here, much like it belongs in the relevant ] section, as it already does. Same is true for slavery and other issues, if and where religion was an issue. This is well sourced, relevant and belongs. ] (]) 16:34, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

:::::Who wrote such lines like- "Typically enslaved Hindus converted to Islam to gain their freedom","Starting with 13th century, for a period of some 500 years, very few texts, from the numerous written by Muslim court historians, mention any "voluntary conversions of Hindus to Islam", suggesting its insignificance and perhaps rarity of such conversions".
I CHALLENGE TO PRESENT ANY SERIOUS HISTORIAN WRITING SUCH LINES ON INDIAN HISTORY. THESE ARE TOTAL RUBBISH WRITTEN BY SOME THIRD RATE PAMPHLETEERS. ALL BOGUS. Are these lines written by-B. Chandra? Thapar? RS sharma? Eaton? D. Jha? ] (]) 16:38, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

:Who is P Hardy? Who is Hari Sharma? What are their worth and accomplishment? Their opinion do not even count. ] (]) 16:44, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

::BTW, I am not going to leave this matter. Wrong quote and selective cherry picking would be dealt with in the next few days till I get the desired result. I need some time. ] (]) 16:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

== Mass Conversion to Islam: Theories and Protagonists- Eaton ==


'''Four Conventional Theories of Islamization in India'''

Theories purporting to explain the growth of Islam in India may be reduced to four basic modes of reasoning. Each is inadequate. The first of these, which I shall call the Immigration theory, is not really a theory of conversion at all since it views Islamization in terms of the diffusion not of belief but of peoples. In this view, the bulk of India’s Muslims are descended from other Muslims who had either migrated overland from the Iranian plateau or sailed across the Arabian Sea. Although some such process no doubt contributed to the Islamization of those areas of South Asia that are geographically contiguous with the Iranian plateau or the Arabian Sea, this argument cannot, for reasons to be discussed below, be used to explain mass Islamization in Bengal.

The oldest theory of Islamization in India, which I shall call the Religion of the Sword thesis, stresses the role of military force in the diffusion of Islam in India and elsewhere. Dating at least from the time of the Crusades, this idea received big boosts during the nineteenth century, the high tide of European imperial domination over Muslim peoples, and subsequently in the context of the worldwide Islamic reform movements of the late twentieth century. Its general tone is captured in the way many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalists explained the rise of Islam in seventh-century Arabia, as illustrated in these lurid lines penned in 1898 by Sir William Muir:
It was the scent of war that now turned the sullen temper of the Arab tribes into eager loyalty.…Warrior after warrior, column after column, whole tribes in endless succession with their women and children, issued forth to fight. And ever, at the marvelous tale of cities conquered; of rapine rich beyond compute; of maidens parted on the very field of battle “to every man a damsel or two”…fresh tribes arose and went. Onward and still onward, like swarms from the hive, or flights of locusts darkening the land, tribe after tribe issued forth and hastening northward, spread in great masses to the East and to the West.

In the end, though, after the thundering hooves have passed and the dust has settled, in attempting to explain the Arab conquests, Muir leaves us with little of substance. Rather, he simply asserts the Arabs’ fondness for the “scent of war,” their love of “rapine,” and the promise of “a damsel or two.” Muir’s vision of a militant, resurgent Islam gone berserk reflected, in addition to old European associations of Islam with war and sex, colonial fears that Europe’s own Muslim subjects might, in just such a locustlike manner, rise up in revolt and drive the Europeans back to Europe. SirWilliam, after all, was himself a senior British official in colonial India,as well as an aggressive activist for the Christian missionary movementthere.

If colonial officials could imagine that the reason for the rise of Islam was its inherently militant nature, they had little difficulty explaining its extension in India in similar terms. Yet as Peter Hardy has observed, those who argued that I'''ndian Muslims were forcibly converted have generally failed to define either force or conversion, leaving one to presume that a society can and will alter its religious identity simply because it has a sword at its neck. Precisely how this mechanism worked, either in theoretical or in practical terms, has never, however, been satisfactorily explained.''' Moreover, proponents of this theory seem to have confused conversion to the Islamic religion with the extension of Turko-Iranian rule in North India between 1200 and 1760, a confusion probably originating in too literal a translation of primary Persian accounts narrating the “Islamic” conquest of India. As Yohanan Friedmann has observed, in these accounts one frequently meets with such ambiguous phrases as “they submitted to Islam” (“iṭā‘at-i Islām numūdand”), or “they came under submission to Islam” (“dar iṭā‘at-i Islām āmadand”), in which “Islam” might mean either the religion, the Muslim state, or the “army of Islam.” But a contextual reading of such passages usually favors one of the latter two interpretations, especially as these same sources often refer to Indo-Turkish armies as the lashkar-i Islām, or “army of Islam,” and not the lashkar-i Turkān, or “army of Turks.” In other words, it was the Indo-Muslim state, and, more explicitly, its military arm, to which people were said to have submitted, and not the Islamic faith.

Nor does the theory fit the religious geography of South Asia. '''If Islamization had ever been a function of military or political force, one would expect that those areas exposed most intensively and over the longest period to rule by Muslim dynasties—that is, those that were most fully exposed to the “sword”—would today contain the greatest number of Muslims. Yet the opposite is the case''', as those regions where the most dramatic Islamization occurred, such as eastern Bengal or western Punjab, lay on the fringes of Indo-Muslim rule, where the “sword” was weakest, and where brute force could have exerted the least influence. In such regions the first accurate census reports put the Muslim population at between 70 and 90 percent of the total, whereas in the heartland of Muslim rule in the upper Gangetic Plain—the domain of the Delhi Fort and the Taj Mahal, where Muslim regimes had ruled the most intensively and for the longest period of time—the Muslim population ranged from only 10 to 15 percent. In other words, in the subcontinent as a whole there is an inverse relationship between the degree of Muslim political penetration and the degree of Islamization. Even within Bengal this principle holds true. As the 1901 Census of India put it:
None of these districts contains any of the places famous as the head-quarters of Muhammadan rulers. Dacca was the residence of the Nawab for about a hundred years, but it contains a smaller proportion of Muslims than any of the surrounding districts, except Faridpur. Malda and Murshidabad contain the old capitals, which were the center of Musalman rule for nearly four and a half centuries, and yet the Muslims form a smaller proportion of the population than they do in the adjacent districts of Dinajpur, Rajshahi, and Nadia.

Indeed, it has even been proposed that, far from promoting the cause of Islamization, the proximity of Muslim political power in some cases actually hindered it. '''According to S. L. Sharma and R. N. Srivastava, Mughal persecution of the nominally converted Meo community of Rajasthan had the effect, not of strengthening the Meos’ Islamic identity, but of reinforcing their resistance to Islam.'''
A third theory commonly advanced to explain Islamization in India is what I call the Religion of Patronage theory. This is the view that Indians of the premodern period converted to Islam in order to receive some non-religious favor from the ruling class—relief from taxes, promotion in the bureaucracy, and so forth. This theory has always found favor with Western-trained secular social scientists who see any religion as a dependent variable of some non-religious agency, in particular an assumed desire for social improvement or prestige. Many instances in Indian history would appear to support this theory. In the early fourteenth century, Ibn Battuta reported that Indians presented themselves as new converts to the Khalaji sultans, who in turn rewarded them with robes of honor according to their rank. According to nineteenth-century censuses, many landholding families of Upper India had declared themselves Muslims in order to escape imprisonment for nonpayment of revenue, or to keep ancestral lands in the family. The theory might even be stretched to include groups employed by Muslim rulers that assimilated much Islamic culture even if they did not formally convert. The Kayasthas and Khatris of the Gangetic Plain, the Parasnis of Maharashtra, and the Amils of Sind all cultivated Islamic culture while meeting the government’s need for clerks and administrative servants, a process that Aziz Ahmad once compared with nineteenth- and twentieth-century “Westernization.” The acculturation of captured soldiers or slaves perhaps formed another dimension of this process. Severed from their families, and with no permanent sociocultural ties to their native homes, these men not surprisingly fell into the cultural orbit of their patrons.

Although this thesis might help explain the relatively low incidence of Islamization in India’s political heartland, it cannot explain the massive conversions that took place along the political fringe—as in Punjab or Bengal. Political patronage, like the influence of the sword, would have decreased rather than increased as one moved away from the centers of that patronage. What we need is some theory that can explain the phenomenon of mass Islamization on the periphery of Muslim power and not just in the heartland, and among millions of peasant cultivators and not just among urban elites.
To this end a fourth theory, which I call the Religion of Social Liberation thesis, is generally pressed into service. Created by British ethnographers and historians, elaborated by many Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals, and subscribed to by countless journalists and historians of South Asia, especially Muslims, this theory has for long been the most widely accepted explanation of Islamization in the subcontinent. The theory postulates a Hindu caste system that is unchanging through time and rigidly discriminatory against its own lower orders. For centuries, it is said, the latter suffered under the crushing burden of oppressive and tyrannical high-caste Hindus, especially Brahmans. Then, when Islam “arrived” in the Indian subcontinent, carrying its liberating message of social equality as preached (in most versions of the theory) by Sufi shaikhs, these same oppressed castes, seeking to escape the yoke of Brahmanic oppression and aware of a social equality hitherto denied them, “converted” to Islam en masse.

It can be seen that by juxtaposing what it perceives as the inherent justice of Islam and the inherent wickedness of Hindu society, the Religion of Social Liberation theory identifies motives for conversion that are, from a Muslim perspective, eminently praiseworthy. The problem, however, is that no evidence can be found in support of the theory. Moreover, it is profoundly illogical. First, by attributing present-day values to peoples of the past, it reads history backward. Before their contact with Muslims, India’s lower castes are thought to have possessed, almost as though familiar with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Thomas Jefferson, some innate notion of the fundamental equality of all humankind denied them by an oppressive Brahmanic tyranny. In fact, however, in thinking about Islam in relation to Indian religions, premodern Muslim intellectuals did not stress their religion’s ideal of social equality as opposed to Hindu inequality, but rather Islamic monotheism as opposed to Hindu polytheism. That is, their frame of reference for comparing these two civilizations was theological, not social. In fact, the idea that Islam fosters social equality (as opposed to religious equality) seems to be a recent notion, dating only from the period of the Enlightenment, and more particularly from the legacy of the French Revolution among nineteenth-century Muslim reformers.
Second, even if Indians did believe in the fundamental equality of mankind, and even if Islam had been presented to them as an ideology of social equality—though both propositions appear to be false—there is abundant evidence that Indian communities failed, upon Islamization, to improve their status in the social hierarchy. On the contrary, most simply carried into Muslim society the same birth-ascribed rank that they had formerly known in Hindu society. This is especially true of Bengal. As James Wise observed in 1883: “In other parts of India menial work is performed by outcast Hindus; but in Bengal any repulsive or offensive occupation devolves on the Muhammadan. The Beldar is to the Muhammadan village what the Bhuinmali is to the Hindu, and it is not improbable that his ancestors belonged to this vile caste.”

Finally, as with the Sword and Patronage theories, the Religion of Social Liberation theory is refuted by the facts of geography. In 1872, when the earliest reliable census was taken, the highest concentrations of Muslims were found in eastern Bengal, western Punjab, the Northwest Frontier region, and Baluchistan. What is striking about those areas is not only that they lay far from the center of Muslim political power but that their indigenous populations had not yet, at the time of their contact with Islam, been fully integrated into either the Hindu or the Buddhist social system. In Bengal, Muslim converts were drawn mainly from Rajbansi, Pod, Chandal, Kuch, and other indigenous groups that had been only lightly exposed to Brahmanic culture, and in Punjab the same was true of the various Jat clans that eventually formed the bulk of the Muslim community.

But this is hardly surprising. The Baudhāyana-Dharmasūtra, a late Vedic text (fifth-sixth centuries B.C.) reflecting the values of self-styled “clean” castes, divided the subcontinent into three concentric circles, each one containing distinct sociocultural communities. The first of these, Aryavarta, or the Aryan homeland, corresponded to the Upper Ganges-Jumna region of north-central India; there lived the “purest” heirs to Brahmanic tradition, people styling themselves highborn and ritually clean. The second circle contained an outer belt (Avanti, Anga-Magadha, Saurastra, Daksinapatha, Upavrt, and Sindhu-Sauvira) corresponding to Malwa, East and Central Bihar, Gujarat, the Deccan, and Sind. These regions lay within the pale of Indo-Aryan settlement, but they were inhabited by people “of mixed origin” who did not enjoy the same degree of ritual purity as those of the first region. And the third concentric circle contained those outer regions inhabited by “unclean” tribes considered so far beyond the pale that penances were prescribed for those who visited such places. Peoples living in this third circle included the Arattas of Punjab, the Sauviras of southern Punjab and Sind, the Pundras of North Bengal, and the Vangas of central and East Bengal.

Now, the theory of Social Liberation assumes the prior existence of a highly stratified Hindu social order presided over by an entrenched and oppressive Brahman community. If the theory were valid, then, the greatest incidence of conversion to Islam should logically have occurred in those areas where Brahmanic social order was most deeply entrenched—namely, in the core region of Aryavarta. Conversely, Islam should have foundits fewest adherents in those areas having the least exposure to Brah-manic civilization, that is, along the periphery or beyond the pale of that civilization, in the outermost of the three concentric circles cited in the Baudhāyana-Dharmasūtra. But it is precisely in that outer circle—the area roughly coinciding with the areas included in the original (1947) state of Pakistan, with its eastern and western wings—that the vast majority of South Asian Muslims reside. The modern, pre-Partition distribution of South Asian Muslims thus indicates an outcome precisely opposite to the one predicted by the theory—namely, the less the prior exposure to Brahmanic civilization, the greater the incidence of subsequent Islamization. If the aboriginal peoples inhabiting India’s “periphery” had never been fully absorbed in a Brahman-ordered society in the first place, the matter of their escaping an oppressive Hindu social order cannot arise logically, just as it did not arise empirically.

<ref>http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft067n99v9&chunk.id=ch05&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ch05&brand=ucpress</ref>


== Will Sweetman ==
HERE EATON TALKING ABOUT ENTIRE INDIA.] (]) 17:18, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
{{reflist}}
:Please post more.]<sup>]</sup> 17:22, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


So I have been reading bits and pieces of Will Sweetman's book, because a helpful editor provided a meaningless page range for mundane stuff and so I ended up having to hunt for things. It seemed to me to be a pretty bold book, especially when I saw him say von Steitencron's understanding was "flawed", my jaw dropped.
== MISQUOTING OF SOURCE ==


So I went to check what reception the book got. I found that there was only book review, by Paul Zavos, but the review was pretty much content-free. It seemed as if Zavos didn't even understand what the book was about. Or maybe he did, but didn't want to upset his colleagues :-) Then I found an article co-authored by Zavos ({{doi|10.1080/09584930500194868}}) and multiple references have been made to Sweetman. So all is not lost. Google Scholar shows 80+ citations for the book, but that is apparently low in the Hinduism field. Lipner's book has 500+ citations. (I didn't know Hinduism was that hot!)
THE ARTICLS CLAIMS THAT EATON WROTE - ""In 1562 Akbar abolished the practice of enslaving the families of war captives; his son Jahangir banned sending of slaves from Bengal as tribute in lieu of cash, which had been the custom since the 14th century. These measures notwithstanding, the Mughals actively participated in slave trade with Central Asia, deporting Hindu rebels and subjects who had defaulted on revenue payments, following precedents inherited from Delhi Sultanate"(P.11)


In any case, Sweetman made the entire book downloadable from his website . So please read it and we can see what we can make out of it.
EATON DID NOT WRITE IT. HE DID NOT EVEN MENTION HINDU-MUSLIM ISSUE. I AM GIVING THE LINK OF P.11 <ref></ref>
{{reflist}}
<s>FULL OF LIES AND HYPOCRISIES IS BEING SPREAD BY THE NAME OF OTHERS. SHAMELESS.</s> ] (]) 17:42, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
: Ok, it appears that this slavery issue doesn't have anything to do with the subject of this article. I am removing it. Cheers, ] (]) 18:15, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


Happy holidays! -- ] (]) 02:25, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
:@Ghatus: You have slightly misquoted what is actually quoted in the article. I see it on page 11. It is in a chapter written by Richard M Eaton (see top of pages 10 and 12). The context is Hindu and Muslim, see page 10 and elsewhere, with footnotes. I don't think there is a need to quote more or the entire chapter by Eaton. ] (]) 18:17, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
:Sweetman isn't the only one to criticise von Steitencron. Some of the recent works of Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Baghcee also talk of the "passions" of Paul Hacker and discuss von Steitencron's work. ] (]) 09:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
::Paul Hacker seems to be the first Westerner who put out this "Hinduism was invented by the British" thing. It was picked by the likes of Vasudha Dalimia and von S. later, who used "subaltern" and "Orientalist critique" language to dress up Hacker's ideas. ] (]) 09:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)


== Can we add an "Infobox" Religion template in the page? ==
::WHAT MISQUOTE? You have given page number and the quote in the article. Both are false. There were Hindu slaves and there were Muslim slaves. You made it a communal matter. Where is the line you have given in the source??? I am a student of History and I know it very well how to quote and how to misquote.BTW, SEE above. Eaton has explained my position very well.] (]) 18:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


:::@Ghatus: The article's embedded quote is , not Hindu. If you acknowledge there were Hindu slaves and Muslim slaves, just remember @Kautilya3's advice: the relevant part here is "anything to do with the subject of this article", that is Hindus. ] (]) 18:34, 6 August 2015 (UTC) articles like ], ] & ] have religion infobox added template on their front page. Can we get one in the Hinduism? ] (]) 16:46, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
::::What a logic! The source says that Sultan X killed Hindus and Muslims. And, you are writing that "The source says that Sultan X killed Hindus" totally omitting "Muslim" under a lame excuse of the article being on Hinduism fully knowing that it is both distortion and communalization of the source, hence,it is falsification. You have no idea on History. It seems that I wasted my time.] (]) 18:39, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


:The short answer is NO. See Archive 31 for the previous discussions. -- ] (]) 17:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
::::: Sarah, slavery was an integral part of the way the Afghan/Turkic societies worked. The Sultans themselves were slaves originally, and they are called "slave kings" for that reason. Their invading armies were mostly made up of slaves. It is wrong to suggest that Hindus were being singled out for slavery.
::Indeed. ] - ] 20:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)


== Updating the old demographics of various traditions with the latest one ==
== Historians vs Pamphleteers ==


Can two cent Pamphleteers like P Hardy, Hari sharma etc be taken seriously when Giant historians like RS Sharma, Eaton, Thapar etc have given a totally counter point of view????] (]) 18:02, 6 August 2015 (UTC) The demographics mentioned in the article are old, as per 2010 estimate. They should be updated as per the new 2020 estimate by World Religion Database. Source-https://www.britannica.com/topic/List-of-religious-populations ] (]) 05:48, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 12:10, 5 January 2025

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To-do list for Hinduism: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2021-06-06

  • Ongoing: Get better references and citations in all sections where they are lacking.
  • Prune to (and keep at!) a size below 65k (WP:SS! avoid Misplaced Pages:main article fixation + WP:SIZE)
  • Aspire to FA quality
  • Add criticism and demographic sections
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  • Minor Edit - In the 'Pilgrimage' section, subsection 'Kumbh Mela' there needs to be a change of the misspelling 'afetr' to 'after'. -Thanks SlingPro.
  • Idol worship is prohibited per Vedas which should be mentioned. (Yajurveda 32:3; Yajurveda 40:8; Yajurveda 40:9)
  • Minor Edit - Mentioning Nastik School of thought in Hinduism
  • Also explainig, Hindu idea of spiritual plularism, generally a hindu temple in north India has images statues of several deities that shiva, shakti and vishnu in the same temple in addition to local gods. See
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Semi-protected edit request on 27 November 2024

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The word "territory" is incorrectly spelt as "terretory" in cite note 34.

"Réunion is not a country, but an independent French terretory." -> "Réunion is not a country, but an independent French territory." Sleet827 (talk) 13:47, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

 Done Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 14:50, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Can't get the story right

The etymology section states: "The term Hinduism was first used by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1816–17."

Whereas the definition section states: "The term "Hinduism" was coined in Western ethnography in the 18th century." Note 13 states: "Hinduism is derived from Persian hindu- and the -ism suffix. It is first recorded in 1786, in the generic sense of "polytheism of India"."

So, which is it? 1816 or 1786? 100 years of "Indology" and they can't even figure out something this basic? 117.194.202.145 (talk) 18:26, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Welcome to Misplaced Pages, with all it's imperfections. The great thing is, you can improve the article by checking the sources and editing the text. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I can't, the article is locked. The "sources" are the problem here. They are shite, written by people who don't seem to understand what they are doing. What's the point of tracking the history of an -ism formulation anyway? Misplaced Pages suggests -ism endings are themselves only a late 17th century invention. "religion of..." or "... religion" would have the common formulations before -ism words caught on. I don't see any discussion of the English word "Buddhism" on its Misplaced Pages page, and it would be supremely silly to suggest that it has any bearing on when the dharma of the Buddha came into being. But this stuff passes for "scholarship" in Indology. 117.194.202.145 (talk) 19:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
It could be that it isn't saying that Ram Mohan Roy coined the term, just that he started using it in 1816-17. Is it that the term was coined in western ethnography in the late 18th century and then started to be used by Indians such as Ram Mohan Roy in the 19th century? If this is what the sources indicate (I can't be sure because I can't access all of them) then it needs to be edited to make this clearer. Brunton (talk) 19:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I've attributed the Roy-statement to Singh. 1786 is from etymonline; it does not give a specific rdference. Work in progress... Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:54, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
The source likely does say he coined the word, and whoever inserted the claim here clearly also did so to claim that it was coined by him. It's a popular claim.
My edit suggestion: remove the part starting with "In the 18th century ...". The source given, Mapping Hinduism, doesn't support the claim that it started being used in the 18th century. It specifically argues against that, giving an example from 1616, talking about the wicked religion of Hindoos or whatever. The rest of it is similarly trite nonsense, having nothing to do with the etymology of the word Hindu or Hinduism, presumably what the section is supposed to be about. 117.194.202.145 (talk) 19:55, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

I fixed the Etymology section. The "Definitions" section would do best to avoid discussing the term, but talk instead of the concept, using whatever term people might have used. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

No, it's not fixed. "Apparently coined" is a misrepresentation of the source: Sweetman states that there's no indication that the word was a neologism. He also directly contradicts the claim that Europeans "began" calling a group of people "in the 18th century". They were already ranting against the religion of "Hindoos" by 1616! They've probably done so since as long they've been in contact with Hindus. None of the following content about 1840s belongs in the etymology section. 117.194.202.145 (talk) 20:28, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Please propose the content you would like to see along with citations. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

This is where that Sweetman citation comes from. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

What I understand from this huge page range, and also pages 56-58, is that "Hinduism" was a late entrant into the discussion. It was preceded by "heathenism", "Brahmanism" (in Portuguese), "Gentilism" (in French) and possibly "Gentooism" (in English). So the coinage of "Hinduism" or "HIndooism" was a non-event, except that it brought new scholarship to weigh in on the subject. It served the purpose of a buzzword. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:14, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes, you have that exactly right. This is why the etymology section going into detail about the coinage of Hinduism and "in the 18th" century is silly. The European Encounter with Hinduism by Jan Peter Schouten talks about it. He's a Protestant minister and comes with some bias, but it is still informative. You can read the Introduction. There was no single point where Europeans "began" to call anyone Hindu, that word was already current in the subcontinent and they just followed it. Do I need to propose citations to get things removed too? Shouldn't it be enough to point out that the text is not supported by the citations and do not belong to the section they are in? You've already removed it from the definitions section. 117.195.141.121 (talk) 17:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
The European encounter is only a small part of the Etymology section. You shouldn't overblow it. If you can come up with what to write for the happenings before the coinage of "Hinduism", we can certainly cover it.
Note that "Hindu" is a much older term than "Hinduism" and there is a separate page on it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:16, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't think you're getting what I am saying. The etymology section currently contains all this:

In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.

Nope. Not true. They weren't the ones to start it and certainly did not begin to do so in the 18th century. See Sweetman, and Schouten's Introduction.

The use of the English term "Hinduism" to describe a collection of practices and beliefs is a fairly recent construction. It was apparently coined (with the original spelling "Hindooism") by Charles Grant in 1787, who used it along with "Hindu religion". The first Indian to use "Hinduism" may have been Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1816–17.

All this is technically true, but useless. The use of the term "Buddhism" to describe the teachings of the Buddha is also a recent construction. There were other terms, in other European and Indian languages, before this. Sweetman makes this clear, and you've already made the changes in the definition section. Remove it from here too.

By the 1840s, the term "Hinduism" was used by those Indians who opposed British colonialism, and who wanted to distinguish themselves from Muslims and Christians. Before the British began to categorise communities strictly by religion, Indians generally did not define themselves exclusively through their religious beliefs; instead identities were largely segmented on the basis of locality, language, varna, jāti, occupation, and sect.

This is dubious, at best "technically true". Note 12 is barely relevant to the text it's next to let alone the etymology section. In any case, none of this is relevant to the etymology of "Hinduism", but makes a definational point about the development of an identity around the term/category. Remove it, or move it down to the definition section. 117.195.141.121 (talk) 19:43, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
One issue at a time please. Otherwise we won't get anywhere. Let us stick to the Etymology section for now.
The first objection you raise is a non-issue. The section doesn't say that the Europeans "started" it. There is a long discussion of the history of the term "hindus".
The second objection is also non-issue. The Etymology section needs to describe what is known about the history of the term "Hinduism" (which is what this page is about). If something is missing, you can suggest adding it. But you can't say it is "useless" and so it shoutd be gotten rid of.
The comparison with "Buddhism" also doesn't hold water. That term was already in use in Indian languages, such as Baudha dharma or Baudha mata. So, perhaps that term doesn't need any discussion. Kautilya3 (talk) 21:35, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
It literally does say that. What else is "In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus" supposed to mean there? That they didn't begin to do something in the 18th century? If it's meaningless drivel and isn't supposed to say anything, just remove it.
You state above: "It was preceded by "heathenism", "Brahmanism" (in Portuguese), "Gentilism" (in French) and possibly "Gentooism" (in English)". Add this statement, along with the various dates associated with the term into the two part I object to. It currently gives a false impression that the introduction of the term Hinduism was some special event.
And there was also Hindu dharma before Hinduism? You've surely read the Lorenzen paper and this section where this is mentioned. Are you trolling? 117.195.141.121 (talk) 22:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's a mention of "Hindu dharma" in Chaitanya Charitamrita, (Adi 17.174). The work was composed circa 1557. Where does the notion that term "Hinduism" predates Hindu dharma come from? What reason is there to devote so much attention to the European term Hinduism when the principle reason cited is bunkum? 117.195.141.121 (talk) 22:50, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

This page is on "Hinduism" and its etymology is what is being discussed. (I have said that already.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:01, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
You are also missing an important point. "Hindu religion" and "Hindu dharma" mean the religion of the "hindus", whoever they might be. You might also find terms like "Turaka dharma", "Yavana dharma", "China dharma" etc., without needing to think of any of them as names of religions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
Okay. There are two other points. 117.195.141.121 (talk) 23:20, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I finished all the clean-up I wanted to do. Please take a look. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
This tendency to stonewall and minimise any concessions to editors with opposing viewpoints is frustrating. I don't have any complaints at this point Just an observation, one citation says: "Most passages identified a mix of religious and cultural norms. For instance, the texts refer to the “Hindu god” (hindura īśvara) and “Hindu treatise” (hindu-śāstre), on the one hand, and to “hindu clothes” (hindu-beśa), on the other."" Why does the author think that a "Hindu dress" is a cultural rather than religious norms? In India, dress is usually more of a religious norm than cultural: when Modi said that "you can identify them by their clothes", he wasn't referring to just a "cultural norm". Food, clothing, washing, housing, festivals, are all religious norms. The author imposes a binary that doesn't exist in India even in modern times, let alone when these texts were written. 117.195.142.30 (talk) 09:26, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
It takes a while to fit your ideas into the Misplaced Pages framework. Off hand, if you come and start asking for well-sourced content to be removed because you don't agree with it, you would be sent off packing. Misplaced Pages summarises reliable sources, not our opinions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Will Sweetman

So I have been reading bits and pieces of Will Sweetman's book, because a helpful editor provided a meaningless page range for mundane stuff and so I ended up having to hunt for things. It seemed to me to be a pretty bold book, especially when I saw him say von Steitencron's understanding was "flawed", my jaw dropped.

So I went to check what reception the book got. I found that there was only book review, by Paul Zavos, but the review was pretty much content-free. It seemed as if Zavos didn't even understand what the book was about. Or maybe he did, but didn't want to upset his colleagues :-) Then I found an article co-authored by Zavos (doi:10.1080/09584930500194868) and multiple references have been made to Sweetman. So all is not lost. Google Scholar shows 80+ citations for the book, but that is apparently low in the Hinduism field. Lipner's book has 500+ citations. (I didn't know Hinduism was that hot!)

In any case, Sweetman made the entire book downloadable from his website . So please read it and we can see what we can make out of it.

Happy holidays! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:25, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Sweetman isn't the only one to criticise von Steitencron. Some of the recent works of Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Baghcee also talk of the "passions" of Paul Hacker and discuss von Steitencron's work. 117.195.142.30 (talk) 09:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
Paul Hacker seems to be the first Westerner who put out this "Hinduism was invented by the British" thing. It was picked by the likes of Vasudha Dalimia and von S. later, who used "subaltern" and "Orientalist critique" language to dress up Hacker's ideas. 117.195.142.30 (talk) 09:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Can we add an "Infobox" Religion template in the page?

articles like Islam, Sikhism & Christianity have religion infobox added template on their front page. Can we get one in the Hinduism? I like MG (talk) 16:46, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The short answer is NO. See Archive 31 for the previous discussions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Indeed. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 20:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Updating the old demographics of various traditions with the latest one

The demographics mentioned in the article are old, as per 2010 estimate. They should be updated as per the new 2020 estimate by World Religion Database. Source-https://www.britannica.com/topic/List-of-religious-populations Hbanm (talk) 05:48, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

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