ABSTRACT
In contemporary discourse about religion, ‘Hinduism’ is naturally counted among the major ‘World Religions’ – those religious traditions with a legacy of scriptures, sacred language(s) and ancient monuments, linked to a people or focused on a place, and understood as possessing world-historical significance, transnational scope or some combination of these elements. Many scholars have reflected on the ‘construction’ of the World Religions (King 1999; Pennington 2005), but in practice the framework continues to be used with great frequency in departments of religious studies in North America. Organizationally, the world religions are often paired in geographical opposition: the ‘Western’ religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are contrasted to the so-called ‘Eastern’ religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism). From the globalized perspective of the twenty-first century, however, it is clear that many of these religions have been flourishing in both the eastern and western hemispheres for centuries – for example, Arabs have been identifying as Muslims since the seventh century but there have been Muslims in India and outwards into Asia from the eighth century onwards. The characterization of Islam as a ‘Western’ religion thereby obfuscates its ‘Eastern’ nature, and flags the underlying inadequacy of this framework.
