A Most Uncommon Task: Arvind Sharma and the Construction of Hindu Missiology

Abstract

In this essay, I offer a critical, appreciative assessment of Arvind Sharma’s vision of missionary Hinduism, as developed in his 2011 monograph Hinduism as a Missionary Religion and related works in ethics, comparative method, and philosophy of religion. As a historian, Sharma has been criticized for his selective focus and his tendency to de-emphasize the diversity and mutual rivalries of Hindu traditions, especially in the classical and medieval periods. As a self-consciously constructive, even confessional thinker, however, he also develops a coherent theology of mission, grounded in his own distinctive form of universalist Advaita Vedānta. In this sense, I argue, Sharma might be regarded as a founding figure in the emergence of missiology as a vital category of contemporary Hindu thought, as well as a rich new field for interreligious exchange.