The Epicenters of a "National" Religion: Orthodox Hindu Representations of Sacred Space, 1920–60

This paper examines the orthodox Hindu (Sanatani) representation of temples in a period in which many Hindu socio-religious reformers were dismissive of sacred spaces as emblematic of the superstition and irrationality haunting religion.  For Sanatanis, temples were sites from which the practices and precepts of sanatana dharma, or the eternal/national religion, percolated to the rest of the social body. Sanatani images and discussions also foregrounded temples as the main symbols of a rational faith, ordered through the worship of deities, and rituals and ceremonies perpetuating the orthodox Hindu ‘way of life’. Simultaneously, I show how a prominent strand of orthodox Hindu opinion presented temples, and their custodians as symbols of a religion gone to seed, in sore need of reform. Indeed, from 1920, Sanatani socio-religious reformers sought to purge religious institutions of ‘worldly’ concerns to make them conform to their idealised vision of the ‘sacred world’. Implicit in these discussions of temples was the understanding that sacred spaces belonged to the ‘Hindu public’. The membership of this orthodox ‘public’ and its ability to access and conduct worship in temples venerated by Sanatanis shall also be the focus of the paper.