Christian Missions and Cultural Assimilation in India through Interpretation and Textualization of Hindu Scriptures during the British Colonial Period

This article examines the inherent assimilation of the Christian view in Hinduism by attempting to textualize or canonize the Hindu texts during the British colonial era. The paper starts with an effort to understand the meaning and origin of the word Hindu and Hindu scriptures from both the Indian and Christian perspective. Though, certain practices in Hinduism performed uniformly throughout India but, even then, it does not seem to fall into the category of religion in the strict Western sense of belief. Hinduism, however, projected as a unified religion on the patterns of a similar understanding of Christianity by the Orientalists, colonial writers, and missionaries. Section III of the paper tries to understand the relation between Colonialism and Christian missions in general as both corroborated and needed each other for political and financial support in a foreign country. Section IV endeavors to analyze the translated Hindu texts during the Colonial period to see the indoctrination of the Christian perspectives in defining the certain concepts in Hinduism, which had very different connotations or sometimes completely diverse meanings in Hindu traditions. Also, the role of Socio-religious reform and Nationalist’s leaders in popularizing the concepts of Hinduism, which were mostly propagated by the colonial administration.