Hindoo Religion in American National Culture

This chapter argues that representations of “Hindoo religion” functioned in American national culture to reinforce a white Protestant American identity. The chapter analyzes representations of “Hindoo religion” in American public school textbooks and the popular magazine Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Public school textbooks constructed an anthropology through which they understood human difference. These textbooks ranked human difference across categories of race, civilization, and religion. They taught American children that they were part of a superior enlightened, white, Protestant identity. Similarly, magazines such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine use “Hindoo religion” as a foil for superior white American Protestantism. American popular culture thus constructed American identity by representing the Hindoo Other.