​Joseph Daly

Dr. Nair is Assistant professor of history at UCF. She was born in India and holds a PhD in history that she received from the National University of Singapore.

                Dr. Nair’s presentation focused on introducing us to the variety of religions that are seen in southern Asia. Home to 1.6 billion people, south Asia is culturally and religiously diverse with 62% of the population being Hindu, 31% being Muslim, 1.8% being Buddhist, 1% being Christian, and 4.2% having other religions affiliations.

                One historical event that had the most impact on religion in South Asia was Colonization. Colonization, according to Dr. Nair, affected how religions where structured, formed, and even named. The colonizing countries began to use religion as a way to separate and classify people into subgroups, people who never looked at their culture and religion in this way. The very word Hindu, derived from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, was a historic local name for the Indus River. The word Hindu was used to describe those who lived by the river and the colonizing countries also used that word to describe the religion and culture of the people as well. Even though those that lived near the river where culturally and religiously very different, they were all lumped together by the colonizers and this caused a transformation of many religions and certain ideologies and symbols where traded throughout them.

                Because 62% of the population of southern Asia is Hindu, certain religions movements pertaining to Hindus have occurred in the area. One such religions movement is the cow protection movement of 1882. Cows are a sacred animal to Hindus but many of them where being slaughtered by those in southern Asia who didn’t subscribe to the same religious beliefs as Hindus. Also there have been a number of religious gatherings and protests in southern Asia centering on the Hindu religion.

                According to Dr. Nair, the Hindu religion has changed a lot since pre-colonial days. One such change is the Arya Samaj revivalist movement that occurred in 1875. This revival movement changed Hinduism from a polytheistic religion to a monotheistic religion. The revivalist movement centered around one god, one holy book, and congregational worship. All of these where fundamental changes to the Hindu religion.

                I personally found the event to be very educational. I knew practically nothing about the Hindu religion and I learned a lot from the speaker. I also found it interesting that there is such a large variety of religions and cultures present in southern Asia.