HINDU REVIVALISM AND EDUCATION 5 gogic strategies that characterises the contribution of revivalist movements to education over the last one hundred years is a highly intricate phenomenon to study. In this paper, we will focus on one segment of this phenomenon—the one relating to Hindu revivalism in the Gangetio-Vindhya belt of northern-central India. Broadly synchronising with the territories of modern-day Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Madhya Pradesh (erstwhile United Provinces and Central Provinces), this area is the seat of Hindi. The argument proposed in this paper is that the development of Hindi as a medium of modern education was the major function that Hindu revivalist forces assigned to themselves. They appropriated a mass language, and in the name of education and national development, turned it into a class dialect. It is argued that the political value of Hindi as a symbol of anti-colonialism combined with the existing trend towards Hindi-Lrdu differentiation to make Hindi a potent instrument for the consolidation of revivalist ideology. The use of the term 'revivalism' needs some explanation. This term is preferable to 'fundamentalism1 mainly because the latter term seems rather inappropriate in the context of Hinduism. Unlike Semitic religions, Hinduism is characterised by the multiplicity of basic beliefs, texts, and practices.2 Fundamentalism of the kind we notice in some societies in a Christian or Islamic context is incompatible with the Hindu religious philosophy. Indeed, the revivalist movements we will discuss in the course of our narrative had to make a conscious attempt to systemise Hinduism by constructing a set of fundamental dictums and texts. It is historically valid to say that such attempts represent the influence of Islam and Christianity on Hindu revivalist leaders. Moreover, the attempts to systemise Hindu society could not find adequate resources for their purposes within religion alone. They had to assemble bits and pieces of relevant material from literature and mythology, history and geography. The common element in their different approaches was the use of the past, especially the distant past, to evoke a wistful mood. A sense of lost Utopia, territorial outlining of the Utopia and its anthropomorphisation, collective naming of a scapegoat, and the determination to rebuild the Utopia— all these necessary ingredients of social action consistent with revivalism were believed to be logical outcomes of the wistful mood. In the course of my analysis I will refer to two specific sources of revivalist influence on education, namely, the Arya Samaj and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. In the development of the revivalist ideology in modern India, these two sources have undoubtedly piciyed prominent roles. Yet, revivalism is a wider phenomenon than v/hat may be grasped by studying these or some other specific sources of revivalist influence. Unlike some other societies where fundamentalism or revivalism has surfaced as a discrete element in