ABSTRACT
Cultural nationalism fi rst appeared in India during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The same period saw a consolidation of the idea of a
Hindu religion and lively debates about what Hinduism was and ought to
be. When thinking about the nation converged with thinking about religion,
two themes emerged: defi nition and organization. Indian thinkers who had
been exposed to Western religion and thought observed that Hinduism
lacked the doctrinal and organizational unity that Christianity and Islam
possessed. In response, some of them tried to isolate a common core of
Hindu belief and to organize separate Hindu sects into a coherent Hindu
saṅghaṭan or organization. As the national movement gained force and the British government was compelled to introduce elected assemblies,
protonationalist organizations transformed themselves into political parties
and pressure groups. In democracies, numbers mean power, so sectarian
and caste groups confi gured themselves in such a way as to maximize their
demographic strength. Patterns established along these lines during the
anticolonial movement are still visible in the religious and caste identities of
independent India.
