南アジア・インド洋世界研究会

Abstract:

Hinduism’s adherents, particularly in the United States, have displayed in recent years a marked tendency to turn towards various forms of digital media, and in particular the internet, to forge new forms of Hindu identity, furnish Hinduism with a purportedly more coherent and monotheistic form, engage in debates on American multiculturalism, and partake of the protocols of citizenship in the digital age. The aspiration to create linkages across Hindu groups worldwide, embrace Hindus in remoter diasporic settings who are viewed as having been ‘left behind’, and create something of global Hindu consciousness, has a fundamental relationship to India’s ascendancy as an ‘emerging economy’ and the confidence with which its Hindu elites increasingly view the world and their prospects for prosperity and political gain. In this lecture, I shall focus on some contemporary phenomena, among them the deployment of the internet in battles over the content of history textbooks in California and attempts to secure ‘the dignity of Hinduism’ by groups such as American Hindus Against Defamation (AHAD). As I shall argue, a revolutionary internet Hinduism is being forged which transforms an old faith into a worldwide religion, and brings pliant Hindus, both in India and in the older Indian diasporas of the nineteenth century, to an awareness of the global strengths of a ‘modern’ Hindu community.

On the speaker:

Vinay Lal is Professor of History and Asian American Studies at UCLA. He earned his Ph.D. with Distinction from the University of Chicago in 1992 after undergraduate and Master’s degrees in literature and philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. He writes widely on Indian history, historiography, public and popular culture in India, the Indian diaspora, colonialism, human rights, and the architecture of nonviolence, Gandhi, and the global politics of knowledge systems. His sixteen books include the two-volume Oxford Anthology of the Modern Indian City (Oxford, 2013); Political Hinduism: The Religious Imagination in Public Spheres (ed., Oxford, 2009); The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the Twenty-first Century, co-edited with Ashis Nandy (Viking Penguin, 2005); Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture (Penguin, 2005); The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (Oxford, 2003); Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy (Pluto Press, 2002); and, most recently, India and the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics I, co-edited with Roby Rajan (Oxford, 2016). His work has been translated into Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, French, German, Spanish, Finnish, Korean, and Persian. Works in progress include two books on Gandhi, a political study of fasting, and a book on internet Hinduism. He also has the distinction of being listed among the “101 Most Dangerous Professor in America” in David Horowitz’s book, The Professors, on account of his critical work on American history and foreign policy, and is the only UCLA Professor to be so designated.