What the Colonial Regime Denied India!
The British, under their colonial regime, had perpetrated several things in India. The first thing they did was deprive India of its identity, bestowed on its people, by the fact of its geography and religion. Names associated with India such as its religion, Hinduism or the identity of its citizens as Indians was not appealing to this colonial regime. Anything that provides India cultural identity and connection to its heritage is either squandered off or disputed. Imperialist government under the British worked hard to convince Indians that Hinduism is not religion, and that the people of India were not the only Indians, but that there were many other Indians across the world, because of the colonial objective that disenfranchised from its identity and heritage, India will forever become bonded to Britain, and its people will be enslaved and forever remain loyal to Britain.
Granted that Columbus made a mistake of calling the first people he met off the coast of America Indians, still I do not see any reason why Britain and other colonial regimes continued to refer to them as Indians, even after the mistake was clear right from the beginning itself. So now there are Indians (Canada refers to them as First Nations, but rest of North and South America still refer to the natives as Indians) in the United States. Hence there are several people in the world under the name Indian tribes across North and South America. These native tribes of North and South America have nothing to do with India, but still continue to be called Indians. With one stroke of genius the colonial regimes (the British in particular) disenfranchised the Native Tribes of America from their identity and cultural heritage, while at the same time denied the Indians of India their own identity as they were forced to share their name with numerous tribes thousands of miles away from them. Through the process of misnaming the native tribes of North and South America, the colonial regime had rendered them to be nameless, cultureless masses to be colonized. They tried a similar tactic in India with their efforts to deny Indians the name Indian as well as the name of their religion Hinduism.
In the case of India, the colonialist administrative technique is two pronged: On the one hand Indians are told that the names India and Hinduism are not their names and on the other hand they are told that their religion and culture are backward and stagnant. Both contradictory and confusing to Indians and still continues to cause problems to India.
The first issue the name India (Hindustan in Hindi) as not being the original name of India did not have much currency as it is still referred to as India and as Hindustan in common usage, although the constitution names it as Bharath also. However the issue of the name of its religion, Hinduism attracted official attention, sponsorships, while it still continues to attract some attention from one section of scholars in the Western academia. Two issues should be addressed before we address the question of Hinduism in India. The first one is that ancient religions were not referred to as 'ism,' but as 'the path,' or 'the way'. Second issue is that the absence of the term Hinduism, does not mean the absence of a unified religious practice, but only that it was called by a different name. The Vedas, the path of the Vedas is followed as a religion since at least 2000 B.C.E. in India, and was known by the name of Hinduism since 300 B.C.E. The Greeks should be credited with calling indians Hindus and their religion Hinduism. Megasthenes's book the Indica provides early evidence of Hindu life in India. This was followed by Chinese pilgrims between 3-7 centuries C.E. Even if one does not want to trust the Vedas or the early classical sources of India, they must at least heed the advise of ancient Greeks and Chinese with regards to the religion of India.
Religion of India is referred to as the way, in Sanskrit: the Dharma. It is called as the 'eternal path,' or 'ancient way,' under the Sanskrit term, Sanatana Dharma. However, one encounters the name Hindu from the fifth century onwards. Rashtrakuta inscriptions followed by Chalukya inscriptions of Western India provide early records to the term between 534-1200 C.E. From 1200 C.E. onwards the term Hindu and Hinduism replaces the use of Sanatana Dharma. It is found used in the documents of Delhi Sutlanate as well as the Vijayanagara empire. The notion held by one section of colonial historians that Hinduism as a name of the religion was only coined and used by British administration is not true, but an invention intended to serve the interests of the colonial administration.
