The modern concept of Indian Literature and canonical Hinduism were fabricated together.

Evidence

For the historical moment in which this particular idea of an ‘Indian Literature’ came into being was also that same moment in which a canonical kind of ‘Hinduism’ (‘syndicated Hinduism’, in Romila Thapar’s telling phrase) was also assembled, more or less on the model of the Semitic religions, with notions of uniform beliefs, canonical texts, prophetic traditions, clerical institutions, adjudicable bodies of prescriptions, and all the rest. Overlaps in the fabrication of literary canonicity and religious canonicity were intense, as is evident in the standard anthologies of ‘Indian Literature’, ‘Indian Tradition’ and ‘Hindu Religion’ in which a great many items, especially those that receive the most emphasis, tend to be the same, with the difference that the former two types of anthology would make room for some ‘Muslim’ items for the ‘Muslim’ period and thereafter. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 509

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘invented traditions’ and Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities — canon formation as nation-building. — connects to: The unified ‘Indian Literature’ was assembled alongside a canonical syndicated Hinduism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1142; Orientalist scholarship constructed ‘Indian Literature’ as Sanskritic, religious, and North Indian, excluding Tamil. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1134; Secular Indian modernism conceded religious texts’ greatness in exchange for a nonreligious sphere. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1204
• DEEPTHINKING: A dense, paradigm-shifting claim: a single historical moment jointly fabricated a national literature AND a religion, on a Semitic-Christian template, so that both now appear timeless.
• SHARE: Send to anyone working on canon theory or South Asian historiography — the Thapar ‘syndicated Hinduism’ coinage plus the shared-anthology-items observation is a precise, citation-ready point.

Related

• The unified ‘Indian Literature’ was assembled alongside a canonical syndicated Hinduism. (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalist scholarship constructed ‘Indian Literature’ as Sanskritic, religious, and North Indian, excluding Tamil. (similarity 0.81)
• Indian literature’s unity is an effect of geography and the nation-state (similarity 0.80)
• European-style national-literature categories distort India’s actual interlingual literary relations (similarity 0.79)
• Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises (similarity 0.78)