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Books, Reviews

Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895

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by Eugene F. Irschick, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994

Irschick made a deep dive into the colonial archive and summarized in his preface that “the presentation here seeks to show how structures of meaning and institutions are cultural products negotiated by a large number of persons from every level of society in a given place and time” (pg. ix). The central field where this reality is documented is land use and agriculture.

In his introductory chapter Irschick points out that prior to the European arrival there had been in India “two varieties of subcastes, each of whom had specific spatial orientations. The ‘right’ castes oriented themselves to local areas to which the ‘belonged.’ The ‘left’ castes, by contrast, had a conception of belonging to a space that was expansive, occupying many hundreds of villages” (pg. 10).

But then between 1795 and 1895

these spatial orientations were altered by the project to identify for each village outside Madras a corporate life stretching back almost two millennia into the Tamil past….This book seeks to look at the way in which that preoccupation with pasts was used to create the future. In particular, it seeks to understand how rural society around Madras town transformed itself from one of great spatial mobility into one in which inhabitants remained in their villages and, from these fixed points, formulated a cultural identity recognized as distinctly Tamil. (pg. 4)

So, repeating again his main theme,

The argument here focuses less on the willed or repressive aspect of a colonial state as part of the construction of knowledge than on the dialogic, heteroglot productive process through which culture is formed. The result is a necessary corrective to what has been an unbalanced picture of a complex process.[1] (pg. 10)

It should be noted that Irschick is not seeking to downplay the negatives of colonialism; he states that “this characterization of the process nevertheless presumes that in the colonial situation both domination and exploitation occurred on a constant basis” (pg. 8).

Chapter one is “To Fix the People to Their Respective Villages.” By 1795 the British had become the dominant power in south India after devastating wars with Hyder Ali. At the same time, the East India Company became bureaucrats rather than traders. They proceeded to map south India, particularly focused on agriculture for taxation purposes. Lionel Place, who led the initial survey, becomes a main player under discussion throughout the book.

Details of various interactions are outlined and present a fascinating picture of the British commitment to a portrayal of decline into which they arrive as saviors. Local power syndicates obviously objected to the new power brokers and did their best to subvert taxation and domination processes. Local caste tensions added further complexity.

Chapter two is “Using the Past to Create the Future.” The British restructured south Indian life, including related to “Hinduism” and “religion.” Lionel Place funded the restoration of temples and the celebration of neglected festivals.[2] Irschick suggests that, “this would, he thought, make the population happier and correspondingly more productive, useful and cooperative with each other” (pg. 79). Further, “In many ways, Place appears to have operated as he felt a Tamil king would act in regard to temples” (pg. 81). This is part of the larger picture of the British construction of Hinduism, which again is shown by Irschick to have been a complex, negotiated development involving many players.[3]

Chapter three brings Chingleput district into focus. The greed and short-sightedness of the British is documented along with local strategies to subvert their power and influence. Again, the focus is on land and agriculture as the primary scene where disputes played out.

The final chapter brings the Dalits into focus within a British debate between those looking for the “liberation of the land” (eliminating the power of local elites who hindered tax collection) and those concerned about “the emancipation of the slaves” (pg. 157). India was interpreted in terms set by William Booth of the Salvation Army in his analysis and response to poverty in England. The famines of 1866 and 1876-78 added fuel to the debates.

Broader reactions about the colonial government were now developing, including the claim that Britain was looting India. Both renascent Indians and the British were happy to redefine enslaved paraiyars (Dalits from whom the English term “pariah” comes) as the original Dravidians of India (pg. 169). This follows the theme throughout the book of the creating of pasts for the sake of the future.  “In effect, therefore, the elimination of the ‘slavery’ signification helped to create another, more useful identity, which gradually claimed the paraiyars [against actual history] as the most fixed inhabitants of the entire population” (pg. 190).

In his conclusion Irschick again returns to the main theme of the complexity of the development of cultural constructs, including this explicit critique of Edward Said:

Hence, we can no longer accept Said’s contention that the cultural categories of the colonized operated in a willed, unidirectional, top-down way on an unthinking and unresisting colonized group, as inert object. Despite the judicially dominant position of the British, who theoretically had a monopoly on the use of violence, these kinds of knowledge were not imposed. Rather, categories emerged from interactive, heteroglot cultural formations that had no author. To put is in another way, these formations were so multiauthored that the ideas and interactions that went to make up these cultural productions made it impossible to locate any real provenance for them. (pg. 193)

This is a stimulating book which provides detailed documentation of the many strategies employed by various groups in the long transition to colonial rule.

Notes

1. “An assumption made by many scholars about the Indo-British administration on the subcontinent is that it had, almost form the beginning, the capacity to exploit the environment to its advantage through violence and cultural imposition. What is not stated in this formulation is that all of these elements—important in creating bureaucratic devices such as special educational and employment facilities—resulted from intense cultural negotiations that took place over a long period of time. Even devices such as the development of juridical mechanisms to coerce the populations were heteroglot creations, not simple impositions by European conquerors. In the eighteenth century, the British were often not in a position of juridical strength but rather were forced continually to modify their expectations of local social and political structures in order to remain ‘in power’ or ‘legitimate.’ Negotiations took place in this and later contexts.” (pg. 68)

2. In 1818 the British ceased funding festivals but temple involvement continued for many years (pg. 84).

3. “Indeed, the definition of what came to be Hinduism or the temple was not imposed or reinvented by the British or by the Indo-British ‘state.’ The complicated process of defining religion included not only activity around the temple itself but also the act of disconnecting the political from the religious and the related process of placing the monopoly of violence in the hands of the state. Given the complexity of the process, we cannot attribute these cultural products to Europeans or to the colonial state alone in a top-down fashion; we must include in that new productive process the many, many individuals from the whole subcontinent who participated.” (pg. 94)

Books, Reviews

A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement

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A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement, by John Stratton Hawley, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015, pp. 438 + xiv

Bhakti (devotion) has come to be recognized as a central concept in Hindu traditions and practices. This was a rather late discovery in the history of ideas, as nineteenth century Indologists (encouraged by mostly Brahman informants) tended to focus on philosophy.[1] Now one of the pioneers of academic study of bhakti traditions, John Stratton Hawley of Columbia University, has written a history of the idea of the bhakti movement. This is a landmark study worthy of wide reading and deep discussion.

Hawley begins with an explanation of his “storm of songs” title, a phrase from Rabindranath Tagore. He then moves into an important discussion of bhakti:

“Bhakti” is usually translated as devotion, but if that word connotes something entirely private and quiet, we are in need of other words. Bhakti is heart religion, sometimes cool and quiescent but sometimes hot—the religion of participation, community, enthusiasm, song, and often personal challenge, the sort of thing that coursed through the Protestant Great Awakenings in the history of the United States. It evokes a widely shared religiosity for which institutional superstructures weren’t all that relevant, and which, once activated, could be historically contagious—a glorious disease of the collective heart. (2)

The focus on a community of bhaktas is important as it contrasts with sterile traditional Christian analyses of Hindu traditions. Hawley specifically rebukes an aspect of this once-popular misrepresentation:

Outsiders like the great linguist George Grierson sometimes confused it [bhakti] for personal monotheism, and modern-day Hindus have often followed suit, but in the idea of the bhakti movement we have the affirmation that the nature or number of the deity/deities concerned is secondary. What matters is the heartfelt, intrinsically social sense of connectedness that emerges in the worshipper. That socially divine sense of connectedness traces a pulmonary system that makes the nation throb with life. (4)

But “the idea of the bhakti movement” is the focus of this book, and Hawley finds the idea lacking in historical validity. In the process of examining this idea and its historical roots, far too many interesting insights are developed for mention in this review. This is truly a book that must be read by anyone interested in the idea of bhakti.

Hawley’s alternative history to the idea of the bhakti movement is rather nuanced; he proposes a “bhakti network” (295-312, referred to as a “crazy quilt,” 310) comprised of numerous bhakti movements rather than a single bhakti movement. This might seem rather trivial, but it represents a significant shift in thinking, and some of Hawley’s suggested reasons (see later in this review) for the widespread acceptance of the standard construct of “the bhakti movement” are certainly not trivial.

Hawley presents the case that the idea of a singular bhakti movement can be traced to Hazariprasad Dvivedi (1907-1979).[2] The standard form of the story is increasingly well known from the Bhagavata Mahatmya (a short poem of praise for the Bhagavata Purana), how bhakti was born in south India and grew up in Karnataka before migrating to Maharashtra and Gujarat. Then after a weakening phase there was renewal in Brindavan (Krishna’s holy land, in what is now the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh). Chapter two of this book is a fascinating discussion and deconstruction of this presentation, particularly pointing out that the idea of a single bhakti movement regardless of the focus of devotion (i.e. one movement whether the focus is on Krishna, Ram, Shiva or nirguna brahman) is very far from the intent of the Bhagavata Mahatmya, which is a distinctly Vaishnava text (89).

Hawley shows that the great omission in the Mahatmya’s account of bhakti moving from south to north is the centrality of the Muslim role in the development of Brindavan itself (74ff.) This writing of the Muslim period out of Indian history helped motivate the embracing of the idea of a bhakti movement that united India. The British had developed a rather simplistic pattern of history whereby ancient Hindu empires were taken over by Muslim rulers and the British came in to restore proper rule after the decline of the Muslim period. The bhakti movement idea tied together ancient and modern India while also providing a unifying basis for the movement towards independence. Such nationalistic concerns continue to be important in sustaining the idea of a bhakti movement, and these broader concerns are indeed of interest and importance.

Yet the focus on many aspects of many bhakti movements provides the true treasures of this book. Central to the history, as Hawley sees it, are Surdas and Kabir. (Ramanand, esteemed by tradition as the main link between south and north Indian bhakti traditions, is investigated and the traditions of his centrality are shown to be without historical foundation.) The followers of Surdas and Kabir were so many and so prolific that Hawley concludes “the poets we know as Sur or Kabir are actually bhakti movements in themselves” (274).

There is no evidence that northern poets knew of the earlier southern bhakti poets (307) but there was much borrowing of ideas, styles and even whole poems across the various bhakti movements (297-305). Even these are important ideas that leave one far from the heart of the bhakti network. Throughout the book, stimulating comments appear like the following on the centrality of music to the bhakti idiom.

Consider, too, the musical idiom. Isn’t it striking that the principal nodes in bhakti’s remembered network—the bhaktas of this world—are communicators who operated in a universe where ordinary words ride frequencies of sound that set them apart from their quotidian existence? Here is a mode of interpersonal connection whose very existence depends upon auditory frameworks that set it apart from conversational speech. In this realm of heightened feedback antiphons are frequent, refrains are repeated, and audiences are not only implied but participate in the work of the singer. The way we know who Mirabai or Namdev “is” is to enter into the world they are believed to have created. We pipe into the patterns of vibration—songs—that end with the announcing of their names. Because we do so, this musical network is never really past; it is always present. The fact that these bhakti songs are so often addressed to God, giving plot to divine actions or otherwise relating the bhakta to bhagavan through a process of “puranic” recycling, creates a shortcut for memory. It invites the hearer to act as a character in the story—to reenter it, absorb it, and in a way become the story itself. Thereby, as Christian Novetzke has pointed out, the singer-saint in question turns out to be, on closer inspection, a public. (296-7, referencing Novetzke, Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008; Indian edition History, Bhakti and Public Memory: Namdev in Religious and Secular Traditions, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009)

In his closing chapter, almost necessarily, Hawley raises crucial issues in modern India like the Hindutva and Dalit movements. His book is deconstructing a paradigm of “Hindu history,” and it undermines the Hindutva effort to homogenize Hindu traditions. He clearly feels empathy for Dalits who share the low caste status of Ravidas (333); but this is not a book denigrating the marvel of the bhakti movements that arose and still thrive across India. The standard historical paradigm of a single bhakti movement may be too simplistic and contrived to withstand scrutiny, but Hawley’s closing words reveal his true sentiment about bhakti:

Every nation requires a narrative of itself. This one, incubated in a nation, pushes well beyond that nation. It touches and tests every heart. (341)

 

[1] Geoffrey Oddie wrote that “There was, indeed, comparatively little discussion of bhakti among European scholars for the greater part of the nineteenth century and it was only in the 1880s and 1890s that Ramanuja’s philosophy, ‘dualism’, and the ideas implicit in the bhakti movement appear to have received much more systematic attention” (Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant Missionary Constructions of Hinduism, 1793-1900, New Delhi: Sage, 2006, pg. 270).

[2] Hawley uses a rather pedantic transliteration/spelling; more common is “Dwivedi.”

Books, Reviews

Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

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Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India by Akshaya Mukul, Noida: HarperCollins, 2015, pp. 540.

This is a remarkable study of the development and importance of Gita Press in Gorakhpur. Anyone looking for books on Indian train platforms would have seen Gita Press book stalls, and investigation would have revealed highly subsidized books, mostly Hindu scriptures, in Hindi, English and other languages.

It was Marwari businessmen behind the explosive growth of Gita Press, supported by the whole network of organizations associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). But the Gita Press group maintained a more strict approach to caste, never wavering on the validity and importance of the fourfold varna scheme.

The central figure is Hanuman Prasad Poddar (1892-1971), founding editor of Gita Press’ Kalyan journal which he edited from 1926 until his death in 1971. Akshaya Mukul was given free access to Poddar’s papers in Gorakhpur and his careful reading of that voluminous archive lies behind this book, giving a rare inside look at one of the early important leaders of the developing Hindutva movement.

Poddar’s first journalistic encounter was in his teenage years with Brahmabandhab Upadhyay in Kolkata. His involvement with Gita Press was based on a relationship with the founder, Jaydayal Goyandka (1885-1965). Mukul’s subtitle for a section on Goyandka is “a shadowy presence” (91) as very little has been written about Goyandka, especially compared to Poddar. Gita Press was registered in 1923 in Kolkata, but shifted to Gorakhpur in 1926.  It was Kalyan that put Gita Press on the map, with distribution of 3 thousand copies a month after only the first year, up to 27,500 after nine years. Today it is around two hundred thousand with another hundred thousand for the accompanying English journal, Kalyana-Kalpataru.

Part of the success of Kalyan was due to its commitment to getting materials from a wide range of authors. The relationships Poddar developed with people like Gandhi, the great industrialist G.D. Birla and RSS leaders among many others are analysed. A fascinating aspect of the study is related to reforming traditional Hindu practices, and creating new “traditions” (note this case: “while women were allowed to chant Hare Ram during menstruation, they were asked not to use tulsi (sacred basil) beads to keep count. Instead, they could use wooden beads” (127)).

This is essential reading for anyone interested in the rise of Hindutva. It contains many insights into modern India and modern Hinduism. One criticism is that a book of this quality and importance should have an index.

Books, Reviews

Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History

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Text and Practice: Essays on South Asian History by Ronald Inden, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 372

This collection of eleven papers by Ronald Inden will have appeal to various readers in various ways. Two papers are grouped as “Critiques of the Studies of Ancient and Medieval India,” two as “Ancient to Medieval,” five as “Medieval” and two as “Medieval to Modern.”

The first paper on “Orientalist Constructions of India” lays out a lot of the material that appeared in Imagining India (Blackwell, 1990), Inden’s outstanding book. Kingship and caste play a large role in the papers, no surprise in light of Inden’s recognized interest and expertise in these matters.

The highpoint of the book that makes it an important read is Inden’s presentation of the transition from Vedic sacrifices to the later temple puja traditions, which is the two papers under “Ancient to Modern.” Inden states,

I should like to argue that the picture of a slow, evolutionary unfolding and transformation, sparked apparently by the internal requirements of a single tradition treated as more or less self-contained, becomes somewhat disturbed if we contextualize the tradition. (90)

There were, in Inden’s understanding, two significant jolts to the system that account for the demise of Vedic sacrifice. The theory of a smooth transition from animal sacrifice to temple puja just does not stand up under the evidence. The first jolt was Ashoka’s reign as Buddhist emperor, which changed the status of Vedic sacrifice. Central to Ashoka’s rituals of power were Buddhist gift giving ceremonies, as the horse sacrifice, like all sacrifices, was forbidden by Buddhist traditions. So lesser kings continued for some time to practice Vedic sacrifice, but an emperor (or pretended emperor) would move beyond this in emulation of the great Ashoka.

The loss of regal sacrificial ceremonies turned Vedic traditions toward household rituals rather than kingly public ceremonies. Hindu kings adopted gift giving;

Settlements of Brahman householders (agrahara)—answers to the Buddhist monasteries—took their place beside the ancient animal sacrifices—temporarily in abeyance—as the central cultic institutions of the Aryan states and the making of gifts to Brahmans in these settlements became as much the duty of the regional king as had been the performance of the calendrical [Vedic] Srauta rites. (93)

The ascension of Hinduism, which Inden clearly delineates from Vedic traditions, is the second jolt that was in fact a death blow to the Vedic sacrificial system.

Regional rulers and their ritualists began to append more fully articulated Hindu rites to their daily liturgy, first in their houses and then, starting with the Guptas in the fourth century [C.E.], in separate shrines made of permanent materials. Down through the seventh century, however, these temples continued to be considerably smaller and less lavish than the structures housing the monks and rites of the central, imperial cult of Buddhism. And, like the Great Gifts that accompanied the cosmo-regal form of the Vedic sacrifice, image worship was classed as a peripheral act taking place ‘outside the sacrificial enclosure.’ By the end of the next century, however, Hinduism had become established as the dominant religion of Indian imperial kingdoms, reversing and transforming its relationship to Buddhism and Vedism. (95)

This outline of Inden’s perspective on a crucial transition in Indian history gives a taste of his scholarship and style, and the entire argument related to this transition needs to be read carefully. Other readers will no doubt highlight other insights from these important essays.

 

Books, Reviews

Debating Vivekananda: A Reader

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Debating Vivekananda: A Reader, ed. A. Raghuramaraju, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 514 + xxviii

This is an outstanding collection of nineteen papers, including a few early accounts of Vivekananda but mostly more recent scholarly analysis. Vivekananda remains not only a significant historical figure but a significant cultural force.

The essays are in seven sections, with a significant introduction by the editor who states that “The essays collected in this volume on Swami Vivekananda have a two-fold task: to arrive at a rigorous evaluation of Vivekananda as emerging from different debates and to take stock of what is available” (xi).

The first section, “The Extent and Limits of Impact,” has three brief historical papers by Brajendranath Seal (a classmate of Vivekananda, written in 1907), Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jawaharlal Nehru and Prabha Dixit. Dixit’s excellent paper probes the political thought of Vivekananda, whose views were not well formulated and left very little impact; “he was a protagonist of political and economic status quo and a defender of traditional culture” (38).

The second section is on “Practical Vedanta,” although other papers also look at this key aspect of Vivekananda’s heritage. Essays by Paul Hacker, Wilhelm Halbfass and Krishna Prakash Gupta make up this section. Hacker is critical of Vivekananda’s neo-Vedantic ethics, which he sees as borrowed from the West and not true to Vedantic sources. Halbfass’ paper is a response to Hacker,and Gupta provides a larger perspective on the whole question of Vivekananda borrowing from the West, showing the complexity of Vivekananda in his own Indian contexts as well as in relating to the West.

Section three on “Ramakrishna Paramahansa” is one of the most stimulating in the book. It opens with the longest and perhaps the best paper in this collection, Sumit Sarkar’s 83 pages of analysis of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and their tenuous relationship. The differences between Ramakrishna’s Dakshineswar Temple and Vivekananda’s Belur Math, on opposite banks of the vast Bhagirathi River, is illustrative of how different the two men were. Carl Olson’s essay which follows presents a rather pedantic comparison with the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, but is also insightful into Vivekananda’s transformation of Ramakrishna’s ideas and practice.

Section four is on “Secularism,” is a reprint of four papers from the journal Quest from 1973. Krishna Prasad Gupta’s core paper is a consideration of religion and secularism in Vivekananda. This draws responses from Ashish Nandy and Nirmal Mukherjee followed by Gupta’s response to his respondents. Gupta points out Vivekanand’s pragmatism and rationalism. Nandy suggests that Vivekananda kept a religious focus due to the times in which he lived; Gandhi a generation later had a far more strongly political focus.

Section five is on “Fundamentalism,” two papers by Nemai Sadhan Bose and Jyotirmaya Sharma that show how poorly Vivekananda fits the mold of modern fundamentalist Hinduism. Sharma suggests that “he [Vivekananda] remained torn between contending notions of Hinduism all his life, some of which were his creation” (373).

Section six on “Women” has papers by Indira Chowdhury and Vrinda Dalmiya. Gender is often discussed in the book as Vivekananda is famous for his appeal for muscular masculinity in response to British rule, and Ramakrishna’s extreme reactions to femininity are outlined. Dalmiya compares love in Vivekananda’s thought with that of modern feminists.

Section seven is on “Science,” with two rather technical but interesting papers. D. H. Killingley looks at Vivekananda’s attempt to show that scientific evolution was first taught in the Yoga Sutras, which involved various ways of stretching his evidence. Anantanand Rambachan more broadly considers Vivekananda’s use of science to support his teachings, particularly with a focus on samadhi; like Killingley, Rambachan finds Vivekananda’s presentation to be lacking in numerous ways.

There is surprisingly little repetition in a book with so many authors on roughly the same topic. There are certainly disagreements, which enlivens the study. Vivekananda left behind a remarkably mixed legacy; he manipulated his guru Ramakrishna’s life and message and likewise himself has become a symbol manipulated for various causes. This book is highly recommended reading for sorting out the many conundrums and incongruities in the life and thought of a remarkable figure.

Books, Reviews

Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat

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Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat: A Legacy of Bhakti in Songs and Stories by Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 325 + xxi

This outstanding book reviews the work of Narsi Mehta (c. 1414-1480), considered the original poet of the Gujarati language, and his legacy to the present time in the songs and stories (and the way they are told) about him.

As a work of modern scholarship, there is concern for who Narasinha Mehta was and what compositions that are in his name were actually composed by him. But there is little hope to answer such questions with modern historiographical tools, so the influence of what is claimed about Mehta and claimed to be written and sung by Mehta is mostly what is studied, in so far as even that can be traced out.

Mehta was a great influence on Mahatma Gandhi, and the Gandhi chapter is an important part of this study. Gandhi’s favorite song was Mehta’s Vaisnavajana to (call only that one a Vaishnava who…), and this song is also subject to very helpful analysis. The author grew up hearing and singing the songs of Narsi Mehta, so the book has a deep personal touch as well.

The book is in seven chapters in two parts, with an introduction. A preface outlines the goals of the book; “One goal is to introduce the Narasinha tradition in all its richness to readers in the English language, since no comprehensive work on this tradition is yet available in this language” (pg. xiii). This aim is admirably achieved. “The second aim of the book is to explore the implications of the interweaving of the devotional and moral messages with the aesthetic appeal of songs and stories in performances for the legacy of a saint-poet tradition such as Narasinha’s” (pg. xiv). This purpose will be discussed further below. “The third aim of the book is to consider whether Narasinha’s songs and hagiography have the potential to serve as cultural resources for a constructive social agenda in contemporary Gujarat” (pg. xv).  The author concludes that yes, as in the case of Gandhi, the bhakti traditions in general have great potential related to contemporary social crises in India.

A lengthy introduction (30 pages) introduces Mehta, bhakti traditions, Gujarat and Gujarati, and the Narasinha tradition, along with Indian aesthetics and the concept of rasa (“juice” or enjoyment) as a complement to bhakti (devotion). Part one, four chapters, is on Devotion and Aesthetics in the Narasinha Tradition. The first chapters focuses on the Narasinha songs focused on Krishna. Chapter two looks at the more broadly spiritual and moral songs in the tradition, including Vaisnavajana to. The numerous songs translated in these chapters provide a rich encounter with the tradition. The third chapter spells out the traditional stories about Narasinha, tracing sources for the historical and hagiographical and highlighting the popular exemplary incidents that are central to the tradition. The final chapter of the first section is “Singing as Bhakti: Narasinha’s Lyrics in Musical Performances.” There is some technical analysis of songs here along with discussion of modern meanings of the songs and performances.

The second section of three chapters looks at The Narasinha Legacy in Religious and Popular Culture. The first chapter considers Mehta’s influence in Gujarat and beyond, and how modernity has helped to shape the tradition as it changed from oral to print-based and then as electronic distribution made an even greater impact. An important section of this chapter considers Mehta in the sectarian bhakti traditions of Gujarat, and how he his legacy has impacted various bhakti sects. The concept of Mehta as the first Gujarati poet moves him out of the devotional realm, and the secular or aesthetic appeal of Narsi’s songs is helpfully pointed out throughout this second section of the book.

The second chapter of the second section focuses on Mahatma Gandhi.

While Narasinha’s biography was a great source of personal inspiration for Gandhi, it was in the area of social reform that he found it to be an invaluable cultural resource. He was the saint’s association with the “untouchables,” at the price of being excommunicated, as the centerpiece of his sacred biography and strove to emulate it in one of the most important battles of his life – the one against the practice of untouchability in Hindu society. (182)

Gandhi’s term for untouchables, still in use by some to this day, was Harijan, which is directly taken from Narsi Mehta (Shukla-Bhatt shows that in Mehta it was a broader term for “people of Hari/God/Krishna, not particularly about “untouchables,” although they were included). Vaisnavajana to as a “Gandhi anthem” is again discussed in insightful detail. This chapter contains this insightful summary of Gandhi’s approach to Hindu traditions:

But Gandhi’s convictions were such that, despite – somewhat perversely – calling himself a sanatani (an orthodox Hindu), he was very sceptical of the idea that there was a higher canonical Hinduism. The appeal of Hinduism for him was precisely that there was no such thing, by way of neither doctrine nor authoritative institutions, allowing him to make of it what his temperament wished, while allowing others to embrace it in quite other forms deriving from the many influences available in a diverse land and its history. (193, quoted from Akeel Bilgrami, “Gandhi’s Religion and Its Relation to His Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi, eds. Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93-116, quotation from pp. 93-94)

The final chapter focuses on the Narasinha tradition in modern media. A 1940 film, Narsi Bhagat in Hindi and Narsi Mehta in Gujarati, is discussed in relation to the Gandhian and traditional interpretations of Narasinha. The transformations from that presentation to the 1991 Gujarati television 27-part serial, Narsaiyo, are striking. A final section of this chapter looks at Narasinha songs and performances available on YouTube, including a Christian interpretation of the song Vaisnavajana to by a Roman Catholic priest. This is rich material for understanding modern Indian devotional spirituality.

Some concluding remarks summarize the main findings of the book. This is highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to probe into bhakti traditions and their development from medieval to modern times. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Gujarat and Gujaratis. All lovers of the bhakti traditions will be grateful for this outstanding study of one of the giants of the genre.

Books, Reviews

Europe’s India and The Ruler’s Gaze

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India and Orientalist Europe:  A Review of Two Books

Europe’s India: Words, People, Empires, 1500-1800  by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, pp. 394 + xvii

The Ruler’s Gaze: A Study of British Rule over India from a Saidian Perspective by Arvind Sharma, Noida, India: HarperCollins, 2017, pp. 427 + viii

These two books continue the discussion on the Orientalist legacy in India. They cover two different time frames (with some overlap) as Subrahmanyam’s study is mostly prior to British rule, while Sharma is focused on the British. Yet the conclusions reached complement each other. Both studies are careful to avoid facile generalizations, although both must be selective in their analysis as they cover centuries of history.

Subrahmanyam follows a largely biographical approach in his analysis of how Europe viewed India. His brief preface outlines how he came to write the book and speaks to the Orientalist project and how to interpret it. He rejects each of three “trajectories” (xv) for representing how Europe saw India from 1500 to 1800 (his chosen timeline); “one of these is simply cumulative, as a slow move from lesser to greater knowledge, mediated by ever-growing and deeper contacts” (xv). In the second approach it is considered that “an initial set of prejudices, often based on deep religious hostility, gave way to a far more ‘objective’ understanding, largely on account of the secularization of European knowledge-forms, especially as a result of the Enlightenment” (xv). Both of these are rejected as “quite simplistic” (xvi). The third viewpoint also rejects the first two and “portrays the existence of a persistent and stable (at least homeostatic) set of misunderstandings, and mistranslations, as characterizing the relationship between Europe and India” (xv). This is rejected as “for all intents and purposes ahistorical in nature” (xvi). Subrahmanyam summarizes that “different forms of knowledge and modes of knowledge-production existed, and sometimes they and their adherents struggled bitterly with one another. This is the reason a close attention to context is always essential…” (xvi).

Subrahmanyam’s introduction portrays two fascinating French figures in Mughal India before overviewing the entire period of his study. His first chapter is “On the Indo-Portuguese Moment,” where he goes as deep as his sources will allow in considering early Portuguese visitors to India like Fernᾶo Lopes (official chronicler for Portugal in the 1430s), his successor Gomes Eanes de Zurara and many other obscure historical figures up to the first official chronicler of the empire, Joᾶo de Barros, who died in 1570, and others into the seventeenth century. Subrahmanyam summarizes the Portuguese approach to India as initially philological/historical and later ethnographic (83). Most interesting here is the development of “caste” as a standard trope for understanding Indian society. Subrahmanyam dates this to the second half of the sixteenth century (94) and shows how it initially differed from the use of the term today.

Chapter two is on “The Question of ‘Indian Religion’.” Subrahmanyam points out that even up until twenty-five years ago speaking of “religion” was “unproblematic” (104). But the assumptions involved in exporting that concept from Europe are now clearly seen as massive impediments to true understanding. Throughout the book Subrahmanyam is interacting with art as well as writings, and this chapter interacts with a multi-volume set of prints produced by Bernard Picart between 1723 and 1737, along with other works. Early writings on Indian “religion” are shown to lack any consistent framework that would fit the rubric of “religion,” yet by the end of the seventeenth century a consensus was being reached that there was indeed a religion uniting India, although at that point it had no name (139).

Chapter three is fully biographical, a case study of James Fraser of Scotland. Fraser was back and forth between Britain and India and was an inveterate collector of manuscripts and art work (one of many such noted in this book). Fraser’s major work was a biography of Nadir Shah, published in 1742. This is analyzed at some depth for an understanding of how Fraser viewed Mughal India and Indians.

Chapter four is on “The Transition to Colonial Knowledge,” which begins with an overview of scholarly opinions about the colonial knowledge project. Subrahmanyan sees three stages; in the 1960s and 70s it was accepted that Europeans were at first ignorant, then gradually built up a reliable database about life and thought in India. In the 1970s and 80s that view came under attack; Subrahmanyam refers to art historian Partha Mitter’s Much Maligned Monsters and Edward Said’s classic Orientalism and concludes that “these critiques demonstrated that the notion that Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were innocent gatherers of information in the world at large could simply not be sustained” (213). More recently there is a push back in defense of the colonial knowledge project, and Subrahmanyam’s critique of that is a crucial part of his book (213ff.)

This chapter then provides four more biographical studies; Portuguese Bishop Dom Antonio Jose de Noronha (1720-1776), Frenchman Charles de Bussy (1720-1785), Swiss Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Portier (1741-1795), and Scotsman Alexander Walker (1764-1831). Subrahmanyam concludes that by the middle of the eighteenth century a clear distinction between Europeans in general and “Asiatics” existed (284). With the acquisition of power the dynamics of information gathering and the development of “new forms of knowledge” are clearly seen (284).

An interesting concluding chapter looks at Indian views of Europe, which was first a perspective on the European visitors without any sense of Europe as such, then gradually through Indians in Europe a sense of that continent. The arguments of the book are well summarized in the closing paragraphs (the third quotation below is the closing sentences of the book):

The central argument of this book has been to suggest … that even in the absence of an apparatus of political and military domination, European relations with and understandings of India in the centuries from 1500 to 1800 were the product of layered and intermittent conversations and distinct asymmetries in perception….The sixteenth century already witnessed a two-pronged approach, between an hesitant employment of a form of philology, and the use of ethnography to produce bold and slapdash generalizations, which somehow proved enduring. These concerned both the invention by the end of the sixteenth century of an idea of Mughal “despotism,” and a preoccupation with giving a radically schematic and systemic character to the society and “religion” of the “Gentiles” of India. (323)

Yet, as the eighteenth century wore on, and the conquest of the subcontinent by the Company proceeded apace, one sees more and more of a different combination of attitudes: an ill-disguised contempt, a growing impatience and an urge to infantilize the Other, and a tendency to generalize from Olympian heights in new institutions such as Calcutta’s Asiatic Society. (324)

What is undeniable … is that even five centuries after Vasco da Gama, the consequences of how India was represented in and by Europe in the centuries between 1500 and 1800 still weigh heavily on us. We must live with these consequences, but perhaps we can do so somewhat better in a fuller knowledge of their nuances and complexities. (325)

Arvind Sharma’s The Ruler’s Gaze comes to the same conclusions but in a much more direct fashion. This is directly an analysis, focused on India, of Said’s Orientalism thesis that power equations distorted Orientalist knowledge creation. The first chapter gives a broad survey of Indian history, suggesting that “if the contours of major developments in Indology were to match these political changes in a recognizable way, then such coincidence of events would lend credence to the Saidian thesis” (21). William Jones and Thomas Babington Macaulay become the test case for how British attitudes changed with the accumulation of power.

The second chapter discusses “The Anomalous Nature of British Rule over India.” The fundamental anomaly was a country taking over the rule of another country, and so it “required constant justification” (94, italics original). The vilifying of India was a necessary part of the colonial agenda, and becomes the focus of chapter three on “The British Depiction of Indian Society.” Suttee (sati), thugee, slavery, legal inequality, dowry, female infanticide, the caste system, and illiteracy are discussed, and it is shown that British rule contributed to these problems rather than solving them.

The fourth chapter looks at the distinction between high and low (Sudra) castes, and suggests that this is unduly exaggerated in Colonial discourse and scholarship. A major discussion of the Aryan Invasion theory is part of the broader discussion, and Sharma outlines B. R. Ambedkar’s objections to the theory, with his own conclusion that (following Ambedkar) the racial element of the theory is unacceptable: “The main point of the comprehensive exercise carried out in this chapter was to establish how desperate Orientalism was, and still is, to inject race as an element in the caste system and how little basis there was for it according to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a leader of the former untouchables, who had most to gain politically from such a racialization of the caste system” (192).

Chapter five compares ancient Greek perspectives on India with those of modern Europe. Chapter six compares Muslim accounts of India with British. Both chapters add up to discrediting the British. This reviewer did not feel the author was always fair in his choice of topics and presentation of material. That was most likely recognized, since the brief concluding chapter presents nuances and subtleties that need to be in play. There is room to allow for some altruism of some actors in the Colonial period, and there were indeed helpful discoveries and reforms. There is also the problem of knowledge and power within India itself, not just between India and the Colonial power. This includes an interesting segment on inter-dining, with Sharma opposing the long-standing tradition of refusing to eat with people of other castes and communities.

The last section of the conclusion suggests four ways to extend Said’s thesis. One is to recognize that what Orientalists said about other cultures reveals a great deal about their own culture (321). Second, Orientalism may well have been discovering or observing a reality which was “in some measure at least” created by their own involvement (327). Third, when a dominant culture imposes its solutions for problems in a subject culture, it may very well be a case where the “solution” creates the very problem that is supposedly to be cured (328). Finally, “on account of the global domination of the West over the rest, multicultural or multireligious societies may end up with mutually superimposed Orientalisms” (329), as is the case in India where Orientalist perspectives on Islam fed Hindu ideologies and vice versa:

The claim that the Hindus of India are a separate nation was one Orientalist construction; the claim that the Muslims of India are a separate nation was another Orientalist construction; and the claim of the British that without the British acting as an umpire, they cannot live together in peace, was a third Orientalist construction. The acceptance of Partition marks the convergence of the acceptance of the three different Orientalist constructions by three different parties. (330)

These books are both recommended reading. Subrahmanyam’s volume is heavier and maintains nuance throughout. Sharma’s is more directly polemical against the Orientalist heritage. Both paint helpful pictures of the confusion and scandal of Europe’s encounter with India.

Books, Reviews

Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion and Narrative

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Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion and Narrative by Alf Hiltebeitel, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 747 + xxi

This massive volume wanders far beyond its stated focus on dharma and leaves the reader a bit overwhelmed. The book is at least true to its subtitle in focusing on early history, showing little concern for how ancient meanings impact modern understandings of dharma.

Dharma is a term that still carries many shades of meaning, and it carried many varied meanings in the many changing contexts of ancient India. Hiltebeitel’s study undermines simplistic assumptions about what dharma meant and means. For example, he points out two ways that dharma is misunderstood by reading later meanings back into the Vedic era. One is associating dharma with ṛta, the Vedic term for cosmic order; the other is closely relating dharma and karma (duty and deeds), which are not so related in Vedic contexts (pp. 52f.).

Hiltebeitel’s greatest expertise is in the Mahabharata, and he presents a compelling case for the complexity of meaning of dharma in that great epic. Along the way (one of many, many tangential threads) he presents his case against the Mahabharata being an oral tradition developed over centuries, and suggests it was always a textual tradition. He also at great length examines the dharmic and adharmic behavior of multiple characters, with a full chapter focused on the women of the Mahabharata.

Hiltebeitel suggests that there was a great deal of interaction between Brahmanical and Buddhist thought on dharma (dhamma). Chapter two on Ashoka lays out a strong case that this was a foundation period where dharma got associated with kingship and Vedic ways were undermined. Chapter four looks at dhamma in early Buddhism, and like most chapters in the book the discussion is so much broader than this that one feels this is an introduction to ancient Buddhism rather than a discussion of dhamma. The concluding chapter of the book is an analysis of Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita, another very technical study that involves relating the Ramayana and Mahabharata to Asvaghosa (as Manusmṛiti had earlier been so compared).

The book ends quite abruptly with no summary or conclusion. This seems intentional as the data presented cannot be woven into any neat summary. Thus, the point of diverse meanings of the term dharma is reinforced. This is not a book for beginners or for the faint of heart; scholars and those probing deep into the histories of Hindu traditions will find much that is highly stimulating.

Books, Reviews

The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan

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The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, ed. Vinay Dharwadker, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 638 + xviii

This collections of academic essays has run into its eighth printing in 2014, a remarkable level of popularity for a book that is decidedly not “popular.” Ramanujan (1929-1993) is briefly introduced in two brief tributes by noted scholars (Milton Singer and Edward Dimock). Thirty of his essays follow, divided under four major themes.

The first section of six general essays on literature and culture is introduced by Wendy Doniger. Ramanujan’s profound perspective on India is summarized in the first essay in this volume:

I would like to suggest the obvious: that cultural traditions in India are indissolubly plural and often conflicting but are organized through at least two principles, (a) context-sensitivity and (b) reflexivity of various sorts, both of which constantly generate new forms out of the old ones. What we call Brahmanism, bhakti traditions, Buddhism, Jainism, tantra, tribal traditions and folklore, and lastly, modernity itself, are the most prominent of these systems. They are responses to previous and surrounding traditions, they invert, subvert, and convert their neighbours. Furthermore, each of these terms, like what we call India itself, is “a verbal tent with three-ring circuses” going on inside them. Further dialogic divisions are continuously in progress. They look like single entities, like neat little tents, only from a distance. (8)

This is repeatedly illustrated in the essays in this book which are chock full of anecdotal evidence about the complexity of Indian cultural traditions. The interaction (reflexivity) of literature and traditions is wonderfully illustrated still in this first chapter.

In the Adhyatma Ramayana (eleventh century?), as in every other Ramayana, the hero Rama is exiled. He tries to dissuade his gentle wife Sita from going with him into the dangerous forest, but Sita insists on sharing the exile and the hardships with him. When Rama continues to argue, Sita is exasperated and wins the argument by acclaiming, “Countless Ramayanas have been composed. Do you know of one where Sita does not go into the forest with Rama?” Such self-reference to other or prior examples of the narrative, often implicit, make texts like the Ramayana not merely single autonomous texts but also members of a series with a family resemblance. (21)

The second essay is a stimulating consideration of the question “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?” Ramanujan suggests that “context sensitivity,” usually to the neglect of seeking universal principles, is definitive for Indian thought.

The second section is six essays on classical literatures, with an introduction by Vinay Dharwadker. The opening essay here is Ramanujan’s famous study of Three Hundred Ramayanas, which questions if there might actually be three thousand. This was dropped from the history syllabus in Delhi University in 2011 due to protesters complaining that it offended Hindu beliefs. Half of these essays focus on Tamil issues and are quite technical.

Six essays on bhakti and modern poetry make up the third section, introduced by John B. Carman. The first essay is on women saints, the second on men, women and saints. The introduction to the second points out that “as you know, every major group of south Indian saints has at least one woman and one untouchable among them” (279). The third essay on Siva bhakti suggests that

Virasaiva [Lingayat] poetry is about the worshipping subject, not the object of worship. Vedic hymns, Upanisadic speculations, describe god. But this bhakti poetry describes the inner movements of the speaker’s heart. Such poetry assumes Siva, agonizes over the speaker’s struggles, the stages of his snakes-and-ladders game with his god; he loves, hates, prays, suffers, and addresses it all to his god. I would hazard a guess that poets who are confident of their god, like Appar and Namalvar, describe him a great deal; and poets who concentrate on the hardships of bhakti describe their own feelings and shortcomings as if they could not help doing so. (296)

The final section is twelve essays on folklore, introduced by Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes. The breadth and depth of Ramanujan’s learning is clear in the first three sections of this book, but he was not merely an academic, rather was a noted poet and most notably a folklorist. The best part of the earlier sections were the many anecdotes; here the folklore takes center stage. The closing chapter of the book is “Who Needs Folklore?” and Ramanujan gives a clear answer:

For starters, I for one need folklore as an Indian studying India. It pervades by childhood, my family, my community. It is the symbolic language of the non-literate parts of me and my culture. Even in a large modern city like Bombay or Madras, even in Western-style nuclear families with their 2.2 children, folklore is only a suburb away, a cousin or a grandmother away….In a largely non-literate culture, everyone – poor, rich, high caste and low caste, professor, pundit or ignoramus – has inside him or her a large non-literate subcontinent. (532-533)

These few brief quotations and illustrations from this book barely scratch the surface of the material presented, and are introduced here in hope that readers will seek engagement with the thought of A. K. Ramanujan through these stimulating essays.