Conclusion

Abstract In the preceding chapters I have tried to raise a number of questions regarding the phenomenon of eclecticism. Is it possible to devise a general model of eclecticism that can do justice to its various historical manifestations? What are the differing valuations of eclecticism within modernist and postmodernist discourse? Can an awareness of the shifting verdicts on eclecticism within the Western intellectual tradition help us revisit or revise dominant Indological attitudes toward the eclectic dimensions of South Asian religious life and literature? If so, how might we formulate an alternate interpretation of modern Hindu eclecticism? At the outset of this undertaking, I made Agehananda Bharati the foil with which to raise these problems. I questioned the presuppositions of scientific rationality and confident historicism that he brought to bear on the apologetic strategies of Renaissance Hinduism. I called into question his posture as the scholar who knew better than to be taken in by what he viewed as a species of sloppy thinking unsupported by the higher traditions of Sanskritic or Brahmanical Hinduism.