ABSTRACT
No matter how much one wishes that imperialism had never happened, no matter how much one tries to efface its memory or to distance oneself critically from the colonial event as such, it is simply impossible to undo the consequences of the history of imperialisms (Sakai, 1997, p. 18). The event seems to be written into the very means by which post-colonials try to reconfigure their identities. Nevertheless, it may be possible to come to a recognition that imperialist discourse and its legacy today can be rethought and specific sites disclosed by forging connections that link the design of a past imperialism with its repetition in the lives of post-colonials today. In this chapter I want to explore the possibility of forging such a connection by pursuing an oblique engagement between several discourses normally considered to be at odds with each other: the discourse called philosophy of religion which claims to speak for and about religion in general and the diversity of religions, the militantly secular discourse of post-colonial theory, and, thirdly, the articulation of cultural difference by adherents of North Indian devotional traditions living in the West today. The pursuit of such an engagement will help to disclose the site of a forbidden encounter between India and Europe whose memory was soon eclipsed by what came to be called the dialogue between religions or interreligious encounter.
