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Since
the contribution of British Orientalists in the second half of the
eighteenth century to the growth of self-awareness and pride in
their past cultural achievements among educated Hindus is well
known, it is rather surprising that the rise of Hindu nationalism
should be traced back at best to the Arya Samaj in the late
nineteenth century and, indeed, to the establishment of the Hindu
Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1925 and
1926. Obviously, the record needs to be set straight and this
perspective corrected.
The story begins in 1767 when John
Zephaniah Holwell's pioneering work was published under the lengthy
title Interesting Historical Events, relating to the Provinces of
Bengal and the Empire of Indostan.... As also the Mythology and
Cosmogony, Fasts and Festivals of the Gentoos, followers of the
Shastah, and a Dissertation on the Metempsychosis, commonly, though
erroneously, called the Pythagorean doctrine. Holwell's contribution
to the European view of India was twofold; he established the great
antiquity of the Indian people and the need to apply standards other
than European to the study of India and its culture. Holwell
dismissed previous accounts of India as "defective,
fallacious and unsatisfactory... only tending to convey a very
imperfect and injurious resemblance of a people, who from the
earliest times have been an ornament to the creation if so much can
with propriety be said of any known people on the earth".1
Author : Shri Girilal Jain
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