Indic Religions
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The Place of Colonial Terminology within Religious Studies – Sikhi, “Sikhism,” Sikhism, or Sikhi(sm)
[…] what I’ve often discovered, you know, plenty of the studies or books or courses and what-not will pay lip-service [emphasis mine] to the [project of decolonising] . . . they’ll say “Religion is a constructed category, bound up in colonial history and referring to Protestant Christianity.” And then, “Let’s just get on with using it, just like we would normally do.” That’s something that we should try and avoid! Malory Nye and Christopher R. Cotter, “Decolonizing the Study of Religion,” The Religious Studies Project (29/06/2020). This essay will focus on debates into whether the term “Sikhism” is sufficient and whether it is necessary, appropriate, and realistic to change the…
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Constructing a Hindu Black Theology
In the context of Christianity, black theologians have offered understandings of scripture that promote black upliftment. One may then ask the question: can a Hindu to do the same? I argue that the answer to this question is “yes.” In this article, I examine the Bhagavad Gītā and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, two central Hindu sacred texts, in order to construct a Hindu black theology. I first turn my attention to the notion of the spiritual equality of all living beings. Hindu thought recognizes that individuals have a physical and a spiritual aspect of their being. The spiritual aspect is the ātman, or the immaterial spiritual self, who remains distinct from…
