Religious Freedom in Contest

Legal regulation of religious conversion has become one of the central human rights issues worldwide. Numerous countries, especially in South Asia, have enacted laws that prohibit proselytizating on the grounds of force, allurement, and misrepresentation. Critics have consistently relied on freedom of religion to oppose these laws, but courts in these jurisdictions have upheld them on the very grounds of religious freedom. The present Article explains the historical and ideological bases of this counterintuitive approach to religious freedom by focusing on the case of India. It argues that this approach is based on a historically evolving conception of religion associated with modern Hinduism, according to which all religions have an equal claim to spiritual truth. This precept of religious equality has come to constitute the political and judicial approach to religious freedom and religious conversion laws. The Article uses this interpretive insight to renew the normative critique of such laws.

Christ as Yogi: The Jesus of Vivekananda and Modern Hinduism

Swami Vivekananda was the most influential pioneer of a Yogi Christ, illustrating well over a century ago how the life and teachings of Jesus might be incorporated within a larger Hindu worldview—and then presented back to Western audiences. Appropriation of Jesus, one of the central symbols of the West, might be viewed as the ultimate act of counter-Orientalism. This article begins by providing a brief biography of Vivekananda and the modern Hinduism that nurtured him and that he propagated. He articulated an inclusivist vision of Advaita Vedanta as the most compelling vision of universal religion. Next, the article turns to Vivekananda's views of Christianity, for which he had little affection, and the Bible, which he knew extraordinarily well. The article then systematically explores Vivekananda's engagement with the New Testament, revealing a clear hermeneutical preference for the Gospels, particularly John. Following the lead of biblical scholars, Vivekananda made a distinction between the Christ of the Gospels and the Jesus of history, offering sometimes contradictory conclusions about the historicity of elements associated with Jesus's life. Finally, the article provides a detailed articulation of Vivekananda's Jesus—a figure at once familiar to Christians but, in significant ways, uniquely accommodated to Hindu metaphysics. Vivekananda demonstrated a robust understanding and discriminating use of the Christian Bible that has not been properly recognized. He deployed this knowledge to launch an important and long-lived pattern: an attractive, fleshed out depiction of Jesus of Nazareth, transformed from the Christian savior into a Yogi model of self-realization. Through his efforts, Jesus became an indisputably Indian religious figure, no longer just a Christian one. The Yogi Christ remains a prominent global religious figure familiar to Hindus, Christians, and those of other faiths alike.

Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharananda Aranya and Samkhyayoga, by Knut A. Jacobsen

Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharananda Aranya and Samkhyayoga, by Knut A. Jacobsen. London: Routledge, 2018. 242 pp., £97.99 (hb). ISBN 978-1-13808-059-1.

Hinduizing Nepal’s Hindus: Making Modern Hinduism in Medieval Nepal

This article examines Nepal’s Svasthānīvratakathā (SVK) text as a lens to explore the shift from the heterogeneity of Newar and Parbatiyā Hindu ideology and identity in premodern Nepal toward a singular, hegemonic form of Hinduism in modern Nepal. The SVK originated in the sixteenth century as a Newar folk legend and is today the most often read and heard Hindu devotional text in Nepal. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the text began to incorporate normative Sanskritic narratives and gradually transformed into an expansive Purāṇa text. These narratives expanded the SVK’s geographical, temporal, and ideological parameters in a manner that articulated, promulgated, and reinforced the emergence of a broader—but simultaneously narrower, Brahmanical—‘Hindu’ identity that became increasingly important in modern Nepal as its rulers cast Nepal as the ‘pure Hindu land.’ The SVK’s Puranicization demonstrates the ways in which the tradition privileged Nepali Hindu-ness over sectarian or ethnic affiliations to create a shared Nepali tradition among Newar and Parbatiyā Hindus and broadcast an emergent Nepali Hindu identity vis-à-vis Indian Hindu identity.