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Rethinking Religious Divides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2014

Richard M. Eaton
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Extract

Notwithstanding the considerable body of scholarship on South Asian history that has appeared over the past several decades, we still live with the image of a monolithic and alien Islam colliding with an equally monolithic Hinduism, construed as indigenous, and from the eleventh century on, politically suppressed. Such a cardboard-cutout caricature survives in much of India's tabloid media, as well as in textbooks informed by a revivalist, aggressively political strand of Hinduism, or “Hindutva.” Though useful for stoking primordial identities or mobilizing support for political agendas, this caricature thrives on a pervasive ignorance of South Asia's past. Removing such ignorance is precisely the endeavor to which academic institutions, and scholarship more generally, are properly committed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 305 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2014 

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References

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3 Ibid., 6.

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