Hindu Occidentalism

On a research trip through India one of my goals was to talk to Hindu scholars about their views of Christianity and in particular Hindu-Christian dialogue. Though I visited numerous Universities, Colleges, and maths, I found very few Hindus who took any interest at all in the doctrinal conversation between religions then characteristic of interreligious dialogue. Time and again I was told by these distinguished and erudite academics that they were not interested in Hindu-Christian dialogue. While this may have been due to a failure on my part to ask the right sorts of questions, or simply my bad luck in not having found willing academics, later discussions with colleagues -- Indian, European, and North American -- echoed this experience and supported the view, held by my Indian "informants", that interreligious dialogue is a rather Christian habit