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Review
| Hinduism: Past and Present, by Axel Michaels. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2004. 426 pages. $65.00, cloth; $19.95 paper.
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| In Hinduism: Past and Present, Axel Michaels surveys both the foundations of Hinduism and everyday Hindu practice. The book, comprehensive in its theoretical analysis, integrates anthropological fieldwork into the broader field of religious studies. Surveying Hinduism poses a challenge to scholars accustomed to the typical analyses arising from the study of monotheistic Western faiths. Of course Western religions are not simply homogeneous. Christianity, for example, varies broadly in form and belief across major organized faiths (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox) and independent sects (Mormonism). Even as structured and hierarchical an institution as the Roman Catholic Church is challenged by diversity among adherents, perhaps less on matters of faith (although even here one can find a host of theological interpretations of ostensibly universal beliefs, particularly among academics) than morals (while clergy may speak univocally about abortion, those in the pews do not). Yet pluralism in Christianity is constrained due to its foundation on a historical person and authoritative Scriptures, and to the fixed creeds, well-defined doctrines, and sanctioned rituals that followed. |
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Without a historical founder, central temple or scriptures universally accepted as normative, and with eighteen constitutionally recognized languages, thousands of gods and over 700 million adherents, Hinduism is characterized by diversity in its vast array of beliefs, rituals and traditions. While the history of Western religions can be interpreted in terms of the struggle to come to terms with pluralism in belief and practice, Hinduism has embraced its diversities. As a result scholars have for the most part been hesitant to generalize about a religion (perhaps better, "religions") so fluid in practices, beliefs and traditions. In contrast to this traditional reluctance, Axel Michaels' central contribution in this work is to locate "the cohesive force that binds the Hindu religions (sic) together and makes them resistant to foreign influences" in its "identificatory habitus," that is, the adherent's sense of membership in an extended family—not mere biological descent, but a living membership, the fundamental source of personal/communal identity. Here Michaels relies on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus as the "social sense," the implicit, prethematic norms by which individuals orient themselves within their culture. |
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The identificatory habitus is the means through which the individual's identity is supplanted by one's collective, corporate identity. Thus, in the Upanayana ritual, a male initiate is ushered into communion with his ancestors; the Twice-Born's "natural parentage is replaced by a ritual one." The situation is different for females. Michaels notes the Indian proverb: "Daughter, son-in-law and their children, these three are not part of the family." Daughters are to be given away; women married to the Twice-Born adopt the fictive lineage of their spouses. Romantic love is not the reason for marriage in India. Partners are selected by the fathers, and marriages are arranged, and compulsory. Marriage and the Gotra system, the means of assimilating new members while maintaining group identity, exemplify the identificatory habitus. Gotras originated as sacrificial communities and evolved into a system of fictive kinship forbidding certain marriages within certain overlapping patrilinear lines of descent. At marriage a woman loses her (i.e., her father's) ancestry and acquires the Gotra of her husband. Michaels graphically describes the implications of the Gotra system for the daily life of young married women: the "otherness" of her new identity and new social context; the spouses' mutual lack of knowledge of each other; mistrust by her adopted extended family; her subordination in public life; the likelihood that she is "isolated, confused, desperate, and homesick." |
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Neither in this discussion, nor in a more troubling subsequent discussion of widow burning, does Michaels challenge the sexism apparently prevalent in Indian culture. Adopting the distance of a detached anthropologist, Michaels describes popular practice and its underlying ideology while avoiding personal commentary (although the discussion of widow burning does refer in passing to contemporary critics of the practice). Readers may find this approach limited and surprising. While employing a new methodology to approach Hinduism as a coherent whole, however, Michaels does not ignore the traditional categories of the study of world religions. His work incorporates close readings of major texts as well as discussions of the life cycle and attendant rites of passage, of devotions, ritual purity, theism, mythology and cosmogony, and of the afterlife. Also treated are topics specific to Hinduism proper, such as untouchables and the caste system, and Hinduism's resistance to missionary incursion. The book features 24 illustrations and 34 tables. The latter are typologies, detailed charts and chronologies that are quite helpful in detailing this systematic overview of Hinduism. |
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The primary value of this comprehensive work is for students in upper division undergraduate or graduate courses, where it would be of use not only for its treatments of substantive issues within Hinduism, but also as an entree to analytical issues in the study of world religions. Those in introductory courses may be overwhelmed by the depth and detail of this study. The sophisticated reader, on the other hand, will not find it a dry compendium of facts and theories, but a vibrant description of the social context of Hinduism as a living faith. |
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| Xavier High School, New York, NY |
Joseph Gerics |
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