ABSTRACT

It has become part of the Indian common sense to regard communalism as simply another term for religious intolerance. Scholars seem to treat it as more or less a historical accident that this special term came to be coined in India for the universal phenomenon of religious antagonism. This chapter proposes that the British did not see communalism in the same way as the religious intolerance they were familiar with in Europe. This becomes clear on considering that the British themselves, no strangers to a history of religious antagonism and intolerance, never saw the solutions drawn in Britain as applicable in India. In fact, most of them believed (a) that communalism was a peculiarly Indian problem, one that did not have a parallel in the West and (b) that India already had toleration, the solution to religious intolerance in the West. But, communalism was still a major problem in India. How does one reconcile these seemingly contradictory positions? This chapter suggests that Christian theological assumptions that shaped the colonial understanding of Hinduism form at least one key aspect of the answer to this question.