Claiming high ground

With its English periodical, The Harmonist, in the 1920s and 1930s, the Gaudiya Math aimed to position itself as a confident voice of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition and forward-thinking vision in the wider world of imperial Britain. In this brief study I examine two of the journal’s articles, “Idolatry” (May 1928) and “Gandhiji’s Ten Questions” (January 1933), to consider rhetorical means by which the authors argued and defended their perspectives on image worship and the issue of untouchability in relation to temple entry and worship, respectively. The general approach in both articles may be characterized as “claiming high ground”—staking out what their authors aim to show to be the more reasonable and inclusive positions, to validate the institution’s missionizing agenda in the modern context while maintaining practices of temple worship—typically associated at the time with reactionary Hinduism.