8/12/2019 Review by BROWN

1/2

74 JOURNAL

OF

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

OF

RELIGION

Crump Miller of

What We CanBelieve

and

TheLanguage

Gap

and God

had

undertakenamore daringandcritical inquiry intothetradit ionofAm erican religious

thought

as awhole.

If the present work were retitled " The E mp irical Sp iritinAm erican

Theology,"

it

would be

a

useful han dbo ok Unfortunately, insofar as the au th or mak es

larger claims,

he

fails

New College of U S F. JAMESG. MOSELEY, JR.

RELIGIONININDIA

Language, Religion andPoliticsin North India.

By PAUL R. BRASS. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1974.467pages. $27.50.L.C. No.73-82453.

"Nationality-form ation," according to B rass, is

a .

process by which objectively

distinct groupsofpeopleorethnic g roups acqu ire subjective self-consciousnessand

political significance either withinanexisting state'or withinaseparate s tate"(p. 403).

"Nationalism," moreover,

. . . isthe

striving

to

achieve multi-symbol congruence

amongagroupofpeop le defined initiallyintermsof asingle criterion "(p 410).B rass

clearly distinguishesthe"sta te" fromthe"nation,"andargues convincingly tha t there

may indeedbe"multi-level national conc eptions" ope rating withinagiven "state" and

that such pluralistic con ceptu alization s neednotbe considered de trimen taltothe unity

and integrationof astate. The autho r also argues convincingly against three com mo n

propositions

in

political development

and

political sociolo gy.

(1)

that "mu tually

reinforcing cleavages"

are

"destabilizing,"

(2)

tha t political parties simply reflect

or

exacerbate existing communal differences, and (3)"tha t ethnic cleavagesare

inherently more dangerous than other formsofcleavage" (p. 431). Me thodologically,

the case-study approach isused,and three modern north Indian communitiesare

studiedindetail: (a) theHindu Maithili movementinnorth B ihar, (b)the Muslim

separatist movement

in the

United P rovinces,

and (c) the

Sikh movement

in the

Punjab .Thetendency tow ards symbolic congruenceisanalyzedineach case,and the

usual clichesofsocial-scientific analysisintermsofcomm unalism , caste, religion, and

languagearenicely deb unked .Itbecomes clear that each region mustbestudiedin its

uniqueness and that great weight must be given to self-conscious "symbol

manipulation"

of

partic ular political leaders.

In

other w ords, one must pay attention

to

what individual political leaders

and

parties

do in

a

given area .

The

bo ok sufficiently

transcendstheusual social-scientific nonsense written a bo ut India

to be

well wo rth

reading.The price, however,isoutrageous

University of California Santa Barbara GERALD JAMES

LARSON

The Spiritof Modern India. Writings

in

Philosophy, Religion Culture.

Edited

by

ROBERT

A.

M C D E R M O T T

and V. S.

NARAVANE.

New York- Thomas Y. Crowell,

1974. xvin+ 313 pages, chronology, glossary, bibliography, index. $6.95 L.C No.

74-5142.

The spiritofmo dern Indiaishardly definable.Itis reflectedin avariety of cul tura l,

religious,and philosophical phenomena

It

encompasses muchofwhatistradit ional,

as well as m odern; of what is "Western,"aswellas Indian. This spirit, tho ugh ,

transcendsallthatitembraces,in astriving tow ard unity tha t synthesizesorintegrates

the rich diversity.

The

concern

for

integration

is

manifested

not

only

in the

realm

of

ideas,

butalso in the

lives

and personalities of those wh o articulate and exemplify those

ideas.The

strength

of

McDermott

and

Naravane's book

isits

ability

to

focus

on and

illustrate this spiritof integration.

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BOOK NOTICES

175

The writings selected

for the

volume cover

the

period from

the

m id-nineteenth

century

to the

present They

are

divided into eight section s:

New

Awakening,

Philosophy, Dharma, Karma-yoga, Aesthetics, Education, Spiritual Discipline,

and

National Consciousness Some

of

these clearly reflect traditional Indian categories

of

thoug ht, while the first (New A wak ening) and last (Nationa l C onsciousness) are mo re

exclusively modern

The

auth ors include

Sri

Ram akrishna, V ivekananda,

Rabindranath Tagore,

Sri

Aurob indo, Ra dha knsh nan, Gandhi , B have, Nehru,

Knshnamurti , Ramana Maharshi ,

and

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

It

is significant that

some

of the

writers appea r und er several categories;

e.g , Sri

Aurobindo under

Philosophy, Dharma, Karma-yoga, Aesthetics , Education,

and

Nat ional

Consciousness,

an

obvio us illustration of the con cern

for

integration. Each of the eight

sections

has a

brief introduction giving some

of

the basic historical and philosoph ical

background

for the

au tho rs selected

The introductory sections will

be

helpful

for

the beginning student, thoug h

at

times

they

are

somew hat incomp lete, even from

the

necessarily limited perspective

of a

volume

of

this kind For exam ple, M uha mm ad Iqbal, the only Muslim represented

in

the book,

has two

short selections included under Dharma,

but

he himself is

not

even

mentioned

in the

introduction

In

addition, there

are

some minor inconsistencies

or

confusion

in

the general o utlining

of

sections, table of contents, and page head ings,

but

overall,

the

book brings together

an

interesting variety

of

important sources that

should serve

as an

excellent introduction

to the

subject.

Trimly University C

MACKENZIE B ROWN

EARLY MODERN WESTERN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Respectable Folly, Millenanans and the French Revolution inFranceand England.

B y

CLARKE GARRETT

B altimore. Joh ns Hop kins University P ress, 1975. x+ 23 7

pages $10.00.

L C. No

74-24378.

The late eighteenth centu ry was a critical period

for

Western mil lenanan thoug ht,

a

watershed between the traditional religious idiom of world transformation and the new

secular rhetorics

of

progress, nationalism, and revolution. Thu s, P rofessor G arrett has

performed

a

signal service

in

describing

the

com plex responses

of

millenarians

to the

political turm oil of the 1790s. Indeed, he has don e so ma ny useful and im po rtan t th ings

that

a

brief review can scarcely d o justic e to so rich

a

wo rk. However, three features are

wo rth special n ote- structura lly,

the

book consists

of

case studies

of

three

prophets

Suzette Labrousse, Catherine The ot,

and

Richard B rothers

interspersed with more broadly conceived chapters

on the

intellectual climates

of

France

and

England This design allows

us to set

the figures

in a

meaningful con tex t.

P rofessor Garrett exercises special pains to dem on strate the com plex interconn ections

among

the

proph ets ' followers. This

in

tur n she ds light

on

P eter Worsley's distinction

between movements and "coteries,"

for

the "millenanan international" described here

was often

a set of

coteries

in

futile search

of a

movement

In the second place, although

the

French Revolution provided

a

comm on st imulus

to millenanan speculation, P rofessor Garrett makes clear the substantial difference

in

popular culture between France and England The "print cultu re"

of

England allowed

a play

of

ideas constrained

in

France

by

mo re traditional media

of

com municat ion

Finally,

Respectable Folly

demo nstrates just how am bivalent

the

initial reaction

was

to millenanan interpretations

of the

Revolution.

The

struggle between religious

and

secular idioms,

so

clear

in

hindsight, appeared much less conclusive

at the

t ime.

By way

of

criticism,

it

seems

to

me that P rofessor G arrett would have strengthened

his

own

argument

had he

conceded that

the

secular rev olution aries w ere themselves

millenanans, albeit

of a

new variety. Yet

he

hesitates

to

take this step. And the

all too

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