Chapter 23: Colonial Encounter and Reform (1757–1947)

British colonial rule, and the accompanying arrival of Christian missionary activity, Western education, and Orientalist Sanskrit scholarship (including early European translations by figures such as William Jones and Max Müller), provoked a wave of internal Sanatan Dharma reform and self-definition in the 18th and 19th centuries — the period during which the modern discourse of “Sanatan Dharma” as a self-conscious term of identity took much of the shape familiar today.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) founded the Brahmo Samaj (1828) in Bengal, advocating monotheism grounded in the Upanishads and campaigning successfully for the 1829 ban on sati (widow immolation).

Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824–1883) founded the Arya Samaj (1875), rejecting the Puranas and idol worship, calling for a return to what it considered pure Vedic religion, while also pioneering assertive missionary and reconversion (shuddhi) activity.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–1886), a Bengali mystic at the Dakshineswar Kali temple, taught through direct religious experience across multiple traditions that all paths lead to the same ultimate reality.

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Ramakrishna’s chief disciple, founded the Ramakrishna Mission (1897) and represented Sanatan Dharma at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, presenting a confident, universalist Vedanta to a global audience for the first time.

This period also saw the term “Sanatan Dharma” itself take on a specific usage, adopted especially by more traditionalist Sanatan Dharma communities (organized in Sanatan Dharma Sabha movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) partly in conscious contrast to the reformist Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj, positioning “Sanatan Dharmis” as defenders of image worship, the Puranas, and inherited ritual practice against reformist calls for their abolition.

1. Reform under colonial rule: multiple agendas

Colonial-era Sanatan Dharma reform cannot be reduced to a simple response of “tradition versus modernity.” Reformers were working within several intellectual worlds at once. They encountered Christian missionaries, colonial law, Orientalist scholarship, modern science, print capitalism, new educational institutions, and changing forms of public association. Some defended Sanatan Dharma traditions against missionary criticism; others rejected practices they regarded as unjust; still others sought to reconstruct Sanatan Dharma as a rational, monotheistic, Vedic, or ethical religion that could compete in a global public sphere.

The Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna movement, Prarthana Samaj, and many regional organizations demonstrate the diversity of these projects. Raja Rammohan Roy drew heavily on Upanishadic monotheism while campaigning against practices he considered socially harmful. Dayananda Saraswati promoted a return to the Vedas and rejected many later accretions. Vivekananda emphasized Vedanta, service, and the spiritual dignity of humanity while also engaging modern nationalism. These projects were not interchangeable, and their followers sometimes criticized one another sharply.

Colonial census categories and legal classifications also changed the social meaning of religious identity. Communities that had previously organized themselves through region, caste, lineage, sect, or local deity could increasingly be represented as members of a single “Sanatan Dharma” population. Scholars such as Nicholas Dirks and Susan Bayly have shown how colonial knowledge practices interacted with pre-existing institutions rather than simply inventing them. The modern category of Sanatan Dharma therefore has both precolonial roots and a significant colonial history of consolidation, classification, and debate.

Print culture amplified these changes. Cheap books, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, lithographs, and public lectures allowed religious arguments to circulate far beyond temples and monasteries. Reformers could address audiences they would never meet personally. At the same time, polemics became sharper because religious communities increasingly competed in a shared public arena. The colonial period consequently produced both reform and boundary-making: it encouraged internal criticism while also strengthening collective religious identities.

Further sources: Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (1999); Dirks, Castes of Mind (2001); Halbfass, India and Europe (1988).

2. Historical context, evidence, and interpretation

The subject of Colonial Encounter and Reform (1757–1947) needs to be approached at more than one level. A religious tradition is not only a collection of doctrines; it is also a record of texts, institutions, practices, places, memories, and changing interpretations. The same word may carry different meanings in different centuries, and the same institution may change while retaining its name. For that reason, the discussion in this chapter distinguishes, wherever the evidence permits, between what a primary source says, what a later community remembers, and what historians infer from comparing independent evidence. This distinction is especially important when a tradition describes its own origins in sacred or idealized language.

Chronology is another safeguard. Dates in South Asian religious history are often approximate because manuscripts are later than the compositions they preserve, oral traditions can predate their surviving written forms, and legendary biographies may combine historical memory with theological purpose. A date attached to a text should therefore not automatically be treated as the date when every idea in that text first existed. Conversely, uncertainty about an exact date does not make a source useless. Linguistic change, intertextual references, material culture, inscriptions, manuscript relationships, and the geographical distribution of traditions can all help establish relative sequence. The result is a history that sometimes has to use ranges and probabilities rather than false precision.

Regional diversity is equally significant. Sanatan Dharma traditions developed across languages and political regions, and religious vocabulary moved between Sanskrit, Prakrits, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, and many other languages. A practice described in a Sanskrit normative text may not have been followed in the same form by every community. Conversely, a practice absent from a particular Sanskrit text may be important in a local tradition. Historians therefore compare textual sources with inscriptions, temple records, poetry, ritual manuals, oral histories, archaeology, and ethnography when those sources are available. This approach avoids treating elite textual traditions as a complete record of ordinary religious life.

The chapter's topic also demonstrates why the categories used in modern scholarship should be handled carefully. Terms such as “Sanatan Dharma,” “sect,” “orthodox,” “reform,” “tradition,” “modern,” and “folk” are analytical tools, not neutral labels that existed in exactly their present meanings throughout history. A community may understand itself through lineage, deity, village, language, caste, monastic order, philosophical school, or several of these at once. Modern institutions can preserve older practices while introducing new organizational forms, technologies, educational programs, or global networks. Describing such developments as either pure continuity or complete rupture usually misses the more interesting historical process of selective adaptation.

Primary sources deserve particular attention because they constrain what can responsibly be said. Where the chapter discusses a scripture, the strongest evidence is the text itself in a reliable critical or scholarly translation. Where it discusses an institution, inscriptions, legal records, institutional constitutions, archival documents, court records, or contemporary statements can be more probative than later summaries. Secondary scholarship remains indispensable for chronology, context, translation, and historiographical disagreement, but it should be possible for a reader to trace important claims back toward the underlying evidence. Where evidence is disputed, the text should identify the disagreement rather than manufacture certainty.

Finally, interpretation should remain proportionate to evidence. Similar symbols do not necessarily prove direct historical borrowing; theological similarity does not by itself establish institutional descent; and a later community's claim about antiquity is evidence for that community's self-understanding, not automatically proof of the claimed chronology. These cautions do not diminish the significance of religious traditions. They make the history stronger by allowing sacred claims, scholarly hypotheses, archaeological evidence, and modern institutional narratives to be distinguished rather than conflated. The aim of this chapter, as with the book as a whole, is therefore not to settle every contested question but to give readers enough evidence and context to understand why the questions remain meaningful.

4. Reform, Revival, and the Construction of Modern Sanatan Dharma identity

Colonial rule changed not only political institutions but also the categories through which Indian religious traditions were described. Census classifications, missionary polemics, colonial legal systems, print culture, English education, and new forms of public association encouraged religious communities to formulate identities in ways that were increasingly comparable to the European category of a “religion.” This did not mean that Sanatan Dharma traditions were invented in the colonial period; rather, older traditions were reorganized, selected, defended, and sometimes standardized in response to a new intellectual and political environment. Torkel Brekke's study of late nineteenth-century religious reform shows how modern Sanatan Dharma identity could become explicitly connected to questions of national unity and public ethics.

The Brahmo and Arya reform movements illustrate different responses to this environment. Brahmo thinkers engaged Vedanta alongside Christianity and other intellectual currents, while Arya Samaj leaders emphasized a return to the authority of the Vedas and rejected practices they regarded as later accretions. Neither movement can simply be described as “more authentic” or “less authentic” Sanatan Dharma historically. Each represents a particular modern interpretation with its own textual selections, institutional structures, debates, and social programme.

5. Print, Public Debate, and New Religious Institutions

One of the major differences between early modern and colonial religious life was the scale and speed of print communication. Newspapers, pamphlets, journals, translated scriptures, inexpensive religious literature, and public lectures allowed arguments about Sanatan Dharma practice to circulate among audiences that were not confined to a single temple, lineage, or locality. This helped create new forms of religious publicity. Reformers could criticize practices across regional boundaries, while opponents could organize responses using the same technologies.

The colonial state also created legal categories that affected family life, marriage, inheritance, education, and religious endowments. These changes encouraged Indian intellectuals to argue about what should count as “religion,” what belonged to custom, and what could legitimately be changed through law. The resulting debates were not simply colonial versus indigenous. Indian reformers, traditionalists, revivalists, women writers, caste organizations, missionaries, and colonial officials all participated in overlapping controversies.

Amiya Sen's study of Sanatan Dharma revivalism in Bengal demonstrates how social and religious reform could produce resistance as well as support, including controversies around marriage and consent legislation. The history therefore cannot be reduced to a triumphant narrative of reform or a story of cultural decline. It was an arena of argument in which different visions of Sanatan Dharma society competed.

6. Evidence, Terminology, and Responsible Interpretation

Several methodological principles help prevent overstatement. First, terminology must be historically situated. Words such as “Sanatan Dharma,” “sect,” “folk,” “tribal,” “orthodox,” “reform,” and “modern” have different meanings in different contexts. Applying a contemporary category to a much earlier community can create the illusion of continuity where the evidence actually shows a change in identity or institution. Second, religious traditions should not be represented solely through elite texts. Archaeology, inscriptions, regional literature, temple records, biographies, oral traditions, and ethnographic research can reveal dimensions of religious life that normative Sanskrit texts do not record.

Third, similarities should be described cautiously. A shared ritual form, deity name, symbol, or philosophical idea may result from direct borrowing, common inheritance, independent development, or later reinterpretation. Establishing influence requires chronological plausibility and some evidence of transmission. This is particularly important when discussing connections between local traditions and pan-Indian deities, between Sanatan Dharma and Islamic traditions, or between ancient and modern institutions.

Finally, uncertainty should be treated as information rather than a weakness. A historical account becomes more trustworthy when it tells readers what is known, what is probable, what is disputed, and what belongs primarily to sacred tradition. The purpose of a research-oriented portal is not to eliminate religious meaning but to keep different kinds of claims intelligible. Where the evidence cannot establish a precise conclusion, the chapter should say so explicitly. That standard will be applied consistently throughout the remaining chapters.

Print, education and the new public sphere

Colonial print culture changed the scale at which religious arguments could circulate. A debate that once occurred within a court, monastery or local community could now appear in newspapers, pamphlets and books. Reformers could address readers they had never met, and opponents could respond in print. This created a new kind of public religious reasoning.

Education also changed the repertoire of argument. Sanskrit learning continued, but English education introduced new philosophical and historical categories. Reformers selectively translated older concepts into those categories, sometimes emphasizing monotheism, rationality, ethics or social reform. The result was not simple replacement but a layered intellectual world.

This period therefore deserves to be studied as an encounter among several knowledge systems: inherited śāstric learning, vernacular traditions, colonial historiography, Christian theology and modern science. The modern history of Sanatan Dharma emerged through arguments among these systems rather than through a single linear reform program.