Beginning with the early medieval period, this paper traces the development of Hinduism in devotional (bhakti) and tantric traditions. The paper examines the development of Śaiva, Śākta, and Vaiṣṇava traditions along with ideas about liberation, ritual, asceticism, yoga and devotion. There will be some exploration of Hinduism and Modernity and there may also be reference to major schools of Hindu philosophy such as Vedānta.
Archives: Lectures
Hindu Theology Seminar 1
Hindu Theology is an emerging field of academic inquiry. These two seminars seek to examine the boundaries and possibilities for such inquiry. According to the classical Christian definition, theology is ‘faith seeking understanding.’ Is this an adequate understanding of theology from a Hindu perspective? Is there a Hindu Theology or simply a proliferation of multiple theologies? Is faith seeking understanding simply apologetics or can the understanding come from an external discipline (such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, or neurology)? Is there a place for Hindu theology as an ‘insider’ discourse in the publically funded university? If disciplines are defined by their method and object, what is the object of Hindu theology? If God is unknowable can there be an inquiry into her? Or is the object of theology ‘revelation’ in which case Theology is concerned with history and culture? Is Hindu Theology a development in the English language of the ‘discourse’ (v?da) tradition of Sanskrit commentary or is it something different? These questions and others will be explored during these two seminars. Active participation is expected.
Strangers in the temple: An ethnographic study of the Nanakpathi traders in a Chinese textile city
This paper aims to examine the processes by which the collective migrant identity of the Nanakpathi (the followers of Guru Nanak) traders is inhibited even though these traders regularly get together in the Sikh Temple. I will explain this process through an ethnographic study conducted in the Sikh Temple at the Shaoxing county of Zhejiang province in China. Shaoxing is now the largest fabrics wholesale market in Asia, in which over 10,000 Nanakpathi middleman traders are based. These Nanakpathis are mostly Sikhs or Sindhis, specializing in the transnational trades of fabrics and having lived in China for some years. These Sikhs and Sindhis often visit the Sikh Temple for their individual religious needs. Based on my long-term observation in the Temple, I found these traders rarely interact with each other despite their public religious engagement in the temple. In other words, neither collective migrant identity nor substantial form of social organization has been formed among these young Nanakpathis. Drawing light from their business practices in China, I argue that these traders indeed have legitimate reasons not to make local Indian friends in the Temple, thereby enabling their middleman business to thrive.
Osho, spirituality and the politics of national identity: Examining intersecting discourses
Graduate Seminars in Indic Religions
The charismatic New Age mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931-1990), otherwise known as Osho, was a highly popular and prolific spiritual figure in the 20th century who counted thousands of individuals, both in India and around the world, as his followers. Born and educated in India, Osho offered his followers an iconoclastic spiritual philosophy that sought to liberate individuals from the shackles of mind and morality. His avowed emphasis on multiplicity, pluralism, anti-authoritarianism, and lack of institutional structure might suggest that his spiritual discourse stands in opposition to the discourse of Hindu nationalism, which stresses singular conformity to a religious ideal. However, I argue that even while emphasizing the apolitical, non-ethical, and transcendental nature of spirituality, Osho’s brand of spiritual discourse surreptitiously incorporates a Neo-Vedāntic worldview. This Neo-Vedāntic understanding always prefigures his commentaries on diverse South Asian texts and traditions. Through an analysis of the genealogy of modern spiritual movements in India, as well as a close reading of some of Osho’s own work, I will argue that Osho betrays his own claim of offering a truly neutral, emancipatory, and universal spirituality by demonstrably employing an epistemological framework conditioned by modern conceptions of Vedānta, and in so doing, effectively helps to consolidate Hindu nationalist discourse.
Hindu Women as depicted in the inscriptions of ancient Deccan: A Paradigm Shift in the Historiographic Perception of Hindu Women
The art of engraving inscriptions was popularised by the Mauryan Emperor Aśoka in India in 3rd century BCE and proliferated thereafter. A mammoth corpus of inscriptions engraved in different scripts and languages is available on a pan-India level covering a span of more than a millennium. Although Hinduism predates the period from which the inscriptions are available, especially the votive epigraphs constitute a significantly tangible source for reconstructing the history of women in India. The inscriptions were always a realm of the epigraphists. They preserve valuable data about women that is well-stacked in the milieu of time and space. Mostly votive, administrative, and eulogistic in nature they hold diverse information not only on the contemporary society and polity but also on the prevalent religious observances and the active involvement of women therein. However the inscriptions were never adequately sifted by historians in their quest for reconstruction of history of women in ancient India. The mythological characters restrained by the laws of the dharma-śāstrawere almost stereotyped as ‘the women of ancient India’. There has been a sustained and fruitful involvement of women in the growth and development of Hinduism in ancient India that was unfortunately never highlighted.
Dr. Mokashi has a Ph.D. from the University of Mumbai in Ancient Indian Culture. She is Associate Professor in the Department of History, R. K. T. College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra (affiliated to the University of Mumbai). Among her publications are Alaukikā (Mumbai: Param Mitra Prakashan, 2010) and Women in ancient Deccan: An Epigraphical Perspective 200BC–1200AD (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, forthcoming). She is a column writer for national dailies such as Lokasattā, Sanmitra and Garjana and editor of the monthly ‘Kāyastha Prabodhana’, Mumbai.
Puran Singh and the Sikh Critique of Singh Sabha Theology
Graduate Seminars in Indic Religions
The beginning of the twentieth century is a crucial moment for Sikhs. The colonization of Pañjāb in 1849 and the subsequent ascendency of colonial discourse placed a demand upon Sikhs to modernize their culture and traditions, and to define their religion in terms of a theology, or as Arvind Mandair has argued, as ‘ontotheology’. One prominent Sikh response to this demand is exemplified in the approach of Singh Sabhā, a late nineteenth century Sikh socio-religious reform movement centered in Pañjāb. Through intellectual activity, such as the wide scale publication of theological tracts and essays in Pañjābī, as well as missionary activity, Singh Sabhā sought to preserve Sikh tradition whilst simultaneously redefining and translating that tradition to fit the modernist ontotheological schema. Pūran Singh (1881–1931), a contemporary of Singh Sabhā scholars, resists the interpretation of Sikhī as a theology, and offers an alternative, non-discursive way of expressing Sikh experience. This paper argues that while Pūran Singh’s critique of Singh Sabhā’s theological definition of Sikhī resonates with a variety of different movements, particularly German Romanticism, he ultimately grounds his alternative vision of Sikhī in Sikh tradition itself, ultimately furnishing an indigenous critique of a colonial formation.