Abstract
Around 1867, North Indian religious reformer Kanhaiyalal Alakhdhari completed a translation into Urdu of fifty-two Upanishads. Alakhdhari, who later played a key role in establishing the Arya Samaj in the Punjab, wished for Hindus to emulate Christians and Muslims in giving centrality to their sacred texts. His translation was based on the Persian Sirr-i akbar produced by the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh (d. 1659), who had claimed that the Upanishads held the key to the Quran's mysteries. How did this imperial project of translation infused with an Islamic interpretive framework come to inform a Hindu revivalist project in the nineteenth century? Through examining Alakhdhari's career and writings, this article explores the entangled histories of Mughal Indology and colonial-era public Hinduism. Alakhdhari's oeuvre illuminates overlooked strands of the genealogy of modern Hinduism: namely, the production of Persian Indological writings during Mughal as well as colonial rule, and the emergence of an Urdu public sphere for Hindus of nineteenth-century North India, especially in the Punjab.
