The Use of 'Superstition' as an Anti-Traditional Device in Urban Hinduism.

This article presents author's views on study made by various sociologists on the use of superstition as an anti-traditional device in urban Hinduism. The term 'superstition' is used by modern Indians as they speak English or an Indian language in which they use the English lexeme together with about a hundred other English words in everyday speech. As I shall try to show, there is no Indian term which does the same semantic job in modern ideological discourse, again analogous to 'verboten' in American-English. Some seemingly modern communities, particularly Smarta and Vaisnava Brahmins in the Tamilian South, do not use 'superstition' as an anti-traditional lexeme, because such audiences belong to the grass roots; they are true traditionalists. The idiom of the missionary, on all levels of proselytization as of secular education inspired by missionary purpose, was totally interiorized by the men who generated the Hindu Renaissance, especially by religious and social reformer Swami Vivekananda, by Ramatirtha Paramhans, and in true Rajasthan-is 'superstition' praised by the Thakurs, but angrily rejected by modern Hindus.