Why, Salmond asks, would nineteenth-century Hindus who come from an
iconic religious tradition voice a kind of invective one might expect
from Hebrew prophets, Muslim iconoclasts, or Calvinists?
Rammohun was a wealthy Bengali, intimately associated with the British
Raj and familiar with European languages, religion, and currents of
thought. Dayananda was an itinerant Gujarati ascetic who did not speak
English and was not integrated into the culture of the colonizers.
Salmond's examination of Dayananda after Rammohun complicates the easy
assumption that nineteenth-century Hindu iconoclasm is simply a case of
borrowing an attitude from Muslim or Protestant traditions.
Salmond examines the origins of these reformers' ideas by considering
the process of diffusion and independent invention--that is, whether
ideas are borrowed from other cultures, or arise spontaneously and
without influence from external sources. Examining their writings from
multiple perspectives, Salmond suggests that Hindu iconoclasm was a
complex movement whose attitudes may have arisen from independent
invention and were then reinforced by diffusion.
Although idolatry became the symbolic marker of their reformist
programs, Rammohun's and Dayananda's agendas were broader than the
elimination of image-worship. These Hindu reformers perceived a link
between image-rejection in religion and the unification and
modernization of society, part of a process that Max Weber called the
"disenchantment of the world." Focusing on idolatry in
nineteenth-century India, Hindu Iconoclasts investigates the encounter
of civilizations, an encounter that continues to resonate today.
