Unifying Hinduism

Andrew Nicholson's book Unifying Hinduism advances our knowledge of medieval thought in India and demonstrates its ongoing relevance not only in India but in the contemporary culture and identity “wars” that spark global interest. Did the Orientalists “create” Hinduism? Nicholson answers no, and also cautions that the way Hindus describe themselves is far more complex and nuanced than is often assumed. In Unifying Hinduism, Nicholson has created a masterful analysis of how premodern India conceptualized and reflected upon the issues of unity and plurality. Medieval Hindu thinkers set forth a philosophical position that seeks to articulate a coherent worldview without sacrificing the complexity of India's divergent views and deities. Nicholson demonstrates that this endeavor was not an artificial product of modernist, revisionist hybridity as asserted by Orientalists but an authentic autochthonous response to an intricate theological context. By analyzing the work of Vijnanabhiksu (sixteenth century), Nicholson establishes that the tradition known as Hinduism had a reflexive self-awareness and a level of sophistication commensurate and perhaps even more inclusively complex than those found in the western Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theological traditions. Hence, his work is of importance for multiple audiences: scholars of religious studies seeking to understand how Indian thinkers have reconciled diverse perspectives; students of cultural studies interested in how different civilizations seek to establish self-definition; lay advocates in search of justifications that support the view that modern Hinduism was not a construction of colonizing Orientalist scholars but part of a long indigenous legacy; and students of Yoga worldwide who will discover in this book the central role of Yoga philosophy as a unifying rubric or prism through which various systems of thought and practice may be assessed and understood.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Hinduism · Identity (music) · Indigenous · Islam · Orientalism · Sociology · Theology · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies