ABSTRACT
In the Courtright affair, it was the local politics of an aggrieved diaspora community, who were themselves living half a world away from home. A new wrinkle in the politics of the study of Hinduism in North America was articulated in a panel on the theme "Who Speaks for Hinduism?" at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature at Disney World. We have here both the politics of parties and elections and also the more diffuse politics of identity, but I would insist that both are properly labeled politics. As with the photos of Lewis Hine, it is these kinds of political stakes that make the Courtright and Laine tales compelling. As for Lewis Hine's politics, the letter that he wrote to J. B. Hardman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1940 is worthy of analysis.
