With knowledge comes the responsibility to ensure its proper application

Who Speaks for Hinduism A talk given by Dr Ravi Gupta at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Board of Governors Dinner, June 2006 http://www.ochs.org.uk/bg2006/

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening! It is a great pleasure to be present in such a distinguished gathering of individuals. This is a homecoming of sorts for me-I studied at Oxford for six years and then went off into the real world, as they say. Now, after a year of full time teaching at the University of Florida, it is great to be back with friends at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.

My first year teaching in the United States brought many surprises, but one of the most interesting was the experience of teaching young Hindus about Hinduism. When I walked into class on the first day, I was surprised to find that nearly one third of my class were second generation Hindus-children of Indian immigrants who have lived their lives so far in the United States. Now they were sitting in class at the University of Florida hoping to learn more about a religious heritage which they claim as their own but perhaps are not entirely comfortable with.

This makes for an interesting dynamic in class: for these students, the classroom is much more than a place to gain information about foreign religions and distant lands. It is a part of their search for identity, a study of something that is close to home and yet far away at the same time. Their presence is of course very enriching for the rest of the class, for it helps the American students to understand that Hinduism is not simply an exotic, mystical religion of snake charmers and naked yogis but a tradition that is lived and practiced by normal people with day-to-day concerns much like their own. When the American students hear one of their classmates say, "Yes, my mother fasts on Mondays and my father eats only once on Tuesdays . . ." that does more to bring Hinduism home than any amount of lecturing can do. It adds experience to the textbook.

The Hindu students, on the other hand, have firsthand experience of the subject matter, but they need a way to make sense of that experience. They sometimes come to me after class and say, "I thought what we did at home was it-that was Hinduism. But now I see that there is a whole world of philosophy and ritual out there." In the classroom, these students find themselves in a challenging and sometimes awkward position-they are seen by their classmates as representatives of a tradition that they know very little about.

The situation becomes even more interesting by the fact that their professor is also a second generation Hindu born and bred in the United States. This means that my role is much more than that of an academic instructor. Of course, everyone expects academic integrity and objectivity. But besides conveying information about Hinduism, the students also hope I will interpret the tradition for them-"Can you tell me what it means to be a Hindu in the West?" "Am I a good Hindu, even though I don't want an arranged marriage?" "Can you explain the caste system to my friends?" They hope I will stand up for our religion, defend it, and make it look reasonable in front of their classmates.

This classroom dynamic is played out repeatedly in universities across the United States and Britain. Usually, the professor is not Hindu himself, complicating the situation even further-Hindu students seeking knowledge and guidance from teachers who are not Hindus themselves, but clearly know far more about the tradition than they do. All this raises a pressing question: who speaks for Hinduism? Who represents Hinduism? Is it those who come from Hindu backgrounds, even if they know little of the history and diversity of their tradition? Or is it scholars of Hinduism, who may not practice the tradition but have spent their lives studying it? Throughout the western world, both scholars and practitioners are asking themselves this question-who speaks for Hinduism?

The question was not always this complicated. There was a time when Hindus kept to themselves, happy to stay in India and do what Hindus do. Outsiders were "unclean" foreigners, who clearly had little understanding of the beauty and sophistication of their traditions. Similarly, western scholars also kept to themselves, happy to theorize about the origin and development of Hinduism from an outsider's perspective. Max Muller, the Oxford scholar helped found Indian studies in the West, never saw the need to visit India. More recently, a well-known European scholar studied Sanskrit his entire life before finally deciding to go to India. It is said that he was disappointed and disillusioned, for India on the ground did not live up to the India of literature.

But those days are now gone. An American or British Ph.D. student of Hinduism can hardly expect to get his or her degree without traveling to India at least once. Scholars spend extended periods of time living on the subcontinent and becoming fluent in local languages. Similarly, Hindus now find themselves living in every part of the world, mixing with the people and cultures of those regions. This has led to cultural adaptations and compromises that might have surprised or even shocked earlier generations but are commonplace today. With many Westerners becoming Hindus, and Hindus becoming more Western, the question "who speaks for Hinduism," becomes more difficult and more urgent than ever before.

An American professor once described how he is sometimes approached by his Indian students after class, "Do you think we are good Hindus? What do we have to believe in to be Hindus? What is the essence of Hinduism?" His reaction is initially one of panic. Help! This is not part of my job description! It is not my job to evaluate my students' faith! But job descriptions mean little in today's globalized world. Any professor, Indian or Western, possesses knowledge, and with knowledge comes the responsibility to ensure its proper application.