Summary of the author’s thesis
Bulk of the paper is about presenting shaiva view about vaidika-s (and - to a much lesser extant - vice versa), and shakily foisting a thesis of “absence of inherent tolerance” on to various Hindu traditions.
the juridical view that all religions other than those considered criminal or subversive should be accepted by the state, and the evidence of royal patronage extended to religious traditions other than those to which monarchs claimed to be especially devoted suggest that there was indeed a high degree of official tolerance of religious diversity to be found in the various states of early mediaeval India. But the evidence presented above also shows that this tolerance was not innate to the individual traditions that had been absorbed, however incompletely, into this consensus.
… that the Indian religions were essentially tolerant, cannot reasonably be maintained in the face of the carefully formulated views of the adherents of these Indian traditions and evidence of sporadic outbreaks of intolerance and persecution. If the religions that flourished during the early medieval period in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia enjoyed in many regions and periods an enviable degree of peaceful co-existence, this must be explained not through an argument from essence, which leads in evitably to the overlooking or dismissing of contrary evidence, but in terms of a balance of influence in which no one religious tradition was in a position of such strength that it could rid society of its rivals, a balance of power sustained by the policy of governments.
Evaluation
- We have here a classic example of missing the forest for the trees.
- When a paramabhāgavataḥ or paramamāheśvaraḥ or paramasaugataḥ monarch tolerates or even encourages other traditions, one must see from their perspective. The explanation that “the monarch’s favored inherently intolerant system lacked sufficient power” or “the monarch was not fully committed to his system” are entirely unsatisfactory.
- Author presents evidence to show that various (non-criminal) religious traditions definitely thought that the others were markedly inferior (Eg. shaivas about plain vaidika-s). He does not show that they actively sought to eliminate them or impose their view on others by force. This then is tolerance, if not respect.
- This view that moha-shAstra-s are apt/ beneficial for certain classes of inferior/ cursed people is seen in authoritative texts - though the author has failed to note those. As Vivekananda said: “One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth—from a lower truth to a higher truth—and never from error to truth.”
- The author does not put expressions of dissatisfaction in the proper context of a spectrum of beliefs. The vaidika might say “these shaiva-s / pAncharAtra-s are all wrong - I wish they were not so popular and that they were curbed”. The proper context would include the unstated and implicit statements such as: “Ah - at least they’re far better than the nAstika-s; against whom they have been creditably quite successful.” and “Given the conditions, you cannot force beliefs on people. Beyond preferentially favoring certain traditions, let the state allow that heretical people be elevated to the limited extant they are destined to in this life.”
- Fact is that polytheist systems are far more tolerant of rivals than Abe’s diseases - and this is a pretty inherent quality. It is not merely about “balance of influence in which no one religious tradition was in a position of such strength that it could rid society of its rivals”. The author fails to examine this basic angle which applies to the classical Indian scenario as well.