Religion, Science, and Empire

Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India

Peter Gottschalk

Provides a new, grassroots examination of the British and Indian construction of Hindu-Muslim difference
Demonstrates how disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, and demographics have portrayed Indians as an inherently religious people
Shows how these how these disciplines and their religious categorization of Indians relied upon both Christian and scientific forms of classification

Religion, Science, and Empire

Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India

Peter Gottschalk

Description

Peter Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities.

England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse to differentiate people according to religion, led to a designation of Indians as either Hindu or Muslim according to rigidly defined criteria that paralleled classification in botanical and zoological taxonomies.

Through an historical and ethnographic study of the north Indian village of Chainpur, Gottschalk shows that the Britons' presumed categories did not necessarily reflect the Indians' concepts of their own identities, though many Indians came to embrace this scientism and gradually accepted the categories the British instituted through projects like the Census of India, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the India Museum. Today's propogators of Hindu-Muslim violence often cite scientistic formulations of difference that descend directly from the categories introduced by imperial Britain.

Religion, Science, and Empire will be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the colonial and postcolonial history of religion in India.

Religion, Science, and Empire

Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India

Peter Gottschalk

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Glossaries
Note on Transliteration
Foreword by Peter Lake
Introduction
Chapter One: Religion, Science, and Scientism
Chapter Two: Cartography, the Ideal of Science, and the Place of Religion
First Interlude: The Dynamics of Comparison and Classification
Chapter Three: Christocentric Travel Writing: Dynamics of Comparison and Classification
Second Interlude: The Five Modes of Comparison
Chapter Four: Humanist Travel Writing: Ascent of Empiricism and the On the Spot
Third Interlude: Classification in the Natural Sciences
Chapter Five: Categories to Count On: Religion and Caste in the Census
Chapter Six: A Raja, a Ghost, and a Tribe: Studies in Ethnology, Folklore, and Religion
Chapter Seven: Popularizing Chainpur's Past: Archaeology in Place and in Museums
Chapter Eight: Chainpur Today
Conclusion
Appendices
Notes
Index

Religion, Science, and Empire

Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India

Peter Gottschalk

Author Information

Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, Wesleyan University

Religion, Science, and Empire

Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India

Peter Gottschalk

Reviews and Awards

"This study of the many-faceted systems of classification of South Asian culture and society employed by the British from the 18th century to the present is necessary reading for historians, religionists, political scientists, anthropologists, and ethnographers" --CHOICE

"Gottschalk therefore offers a rich book in terms of the data he explores and the nuanced description showing that 'religion and science derive often from ultimately entwined and interrelated currents of interest and tradition' (21). For this reason Religion, Science, and Empire is an important book concerning the emergence of various disciplines and the imperial production of knowledge." --Religion & Theology