Customer Reviews

Modern Religious Movements in India

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I find it very hard to understand how a work about "Modern" religious movements should be helpful - if the stopping point is 1913! This edition was published by "Low Price Publications" in Delhi, and that's what it looks/feels like. There may be some historical nuggets to harvest if read really thoroughly - but except for some historicians I doubt many people will take the toil to do so. In my opinion this book should carry a warning tag because of its publication date and I'm rather disappointed with it, but I appreciate the thorough and critical treatment of Theosophy. Generally this book flows over with information, but I'd be critical whether it is not outdated. If you can use it anyway - all the best to you.

J. N. Farquhar, one of a remarkable breed of missionary scholars, has here written the history of how "Hinduism" emerged from the confluence of traditional religion and the Gospel in modern India. He accomplishes this by describing key thinkers and religious organizations up to the date at which he wrote (early in the 20th Century), and showing what each borrowed from Christian teaching, and what each left on the table. The people and groups whose stories he tells include such important figures as Ram Mohan Ray and the Brahma Samaj, the Deva Samaj, Sayananda, Parahamsa, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, the infamous Madame Blavantsky and the Theosophist Society, and others more obscure, not only in Hinduism, but also in Islam and Sikhism. (There is, unfortunately, not much about Gandhi yet.) As a passionate Christian, Farquhar is not writing "neutral" history, whatever that is, but is continuing his argument (as in Crown of Hinduism) that Christ completes what was lacking in Indian religion. That does not mean he is unjust; he is in fact honest and fair-minded, looks for good to balance whatever criticism he offers, and never thrashing anyone who doesn't appear to deserve it. But he also says what he really thinks. "Vivekanda has no historical conscience whatsoever." "(Ramakrishna) impressed all who came in contact with him as a most sincere soul, as a God-intoxicated man, but what distinguished his message . . . was his defense of everything Hindu and his theory that all religions are true." "The depths to which Mrs. Blavatsky habitually descends in defending Hinduism will hardly be believed. There is scarcely an exploded doctrine, scarcely a superstitious observance, which she has not defended with the silliest and most shameful arguments." Yet even in the "indescribable rubbish" of Theosophical teachings Farquhar found a few things of value.

J. N. Farquhar was, in short, a gentleman and a scholar. If you want to understand the amorphous set of doctrines and practices that make up modern "Hinduism," you'll want to read primary sources, of course, Indian classics and works by modern interpretters, but this book and Crown of Hinduism are excellent places to go for a fair but engaged overview. I also recommend an equally passionate by a modern Indian Christian, Vishal Mangalwadi, called World of the Gurus. Mangalwadi describes more recent Indian gurus, like Sai Baba and the Bagwan Rajneesh.

Some people claim Jesus went to India as a young man. Farquhar makes short work of that claim (also see Per Beskow's Strange Tales about Jesus), but he also makes it clear that in a difference sense, one might say that Jesus did come to the subcontinent later on, and participated deeply in the founding of the modern Indian civilization.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man