Hinduism as a Missionary Religion

Conclusions

Conclusions I One conclusion which emerges from the foregoing survey is the need to refine the religious vocabulary that is traditionally employed in discussing this issue. Three terms often come into play in such a context: a religion is sometimes described as a missionary religion, sometimes as a proselytizing religion, and sometimes as a religion which believes in conversion. The case of Hinduism suggests that the semantic fields in the case of each need to be mapped out more clearly. Let us begin with the expression missionary religion. A missionary religion, by definition , is a religion which either has a mission or has a sense of mission. It is possible, in principle, for a religion to be performing a mission without a sense of doing so. Hanukkah, for instance, is an important Jewish festival. A standard textbook on religion offers the following description of it: Near the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year, comes Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. Each night for eight nights, another candle is lit on a special candle holder. The amount of light gradually increases like the lengthening of sunlight. Historically, Hanukkah was a celebration of the victory of the Maccabean Rebellion against the attempt by Antiochus to force non-Jewish practices on the Jewish people. According to legend, when the Jews regained access to the Temple, they found only one jar of oil left undefiled, still sealed by the high priest. It was only enough to stay alight for one day, but by miracle, the oil stayed burning for eight days. Many Jewish families also observe the time by nightly gift-giving, as rewards for Torah study. The 131 132 Hinduism as a Missionary Religion children have their own special Hanukkah pastimes, such as “gambling” for nuts with the dreidel, a spinning top with four letters on its sides as an abbreviation of the sentence “A great miracle happened there.”1 What this description does not tell us is that the Hanukkah, in the opinion of many scholars of religion, is an especially important festival for American Jewry because it falls around Christmas. Given the importance Christmas enjoys in a largely Christian country like the United States, it provides an important foil for it for the Jews and serves to maintain Jewish identity in what would otherwise be an overwhelming Christian environment. One cannot claim that this was done by conscious choice. It was not on account of a sense of “mission” on the part of Christianity, that this qualitative enhancement of the role of the Hanukkah holiday came about. Yet, the two phenomena cannot be dissociated. However, although related as cause and effect, no sense of mission can be attached to the situation because it was a case of causation brought about without consciousness of it. Interaction between Hinduism and Islam provides at least two examples of influence exerted by a religion without any sense of mission. It has been argued that, under Islamic law, a Muslim is not allowed to covet a married woman, even if of another faith, but an unmarried woman even of another faith may be considered fair game for marriage. Some historians have argued that this was a factor in lowering the marriageable age of women in Hinduism, because, however young, the women’s security in an otherwise politically inhospitable environment was enhanced by her having the status of being a “married woman.” Now, surely, it was not Islam’s mission in India to lower the age of marriage of Hindu women, although such a development is attributed by some to its presence in India. Similarly, it has been suggested that the idea—that Hindu law was immutable—may have been developed in the face of a similar claim made for the Shar¥‘ah in Islam. Once again, it is doubtful if Islam looked upon it as its mission to “freeze” Hindu law in time, although this could again have been a consequence of its presence. A third example is provided by the growth of purdah in Hindu circles, allegedly as a result of the prevalence of that practice in the Islamic environment in India. Again, it is doubtful if the achievement of such an effect was looked upon by Islam as its mission. A fourth example is provided by the possibility that the abolition of discriminatory punishments based on caste in medieval Hindu nibandhas may have come about, at least [3.140.188.16] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 13:52 GMT...