Panel No. 44

Panel Title: Religious Reform Movements in South Asia from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Convenor: Dr Gwilym Beckerlegge, Dept of Religious Studies, Open University, UK

    Tuesday 6 July, 13–18

Panel Abstract: The panel aims to bring together specialists from a range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences in order to explore the development since the nineteenth century of South Asian religious reform movements. Although the majority of papers presented to recent meetings of the panel have covered movements within Hinduism and Islam, submissions relating to other South Asian religions would also be welcomed. In addition to discussing problems in the representation of such movements and their study, papers presented at recent meetings of the panel have examined religious reform movements in relationship to (among other things) historical personalities and texts, institutions and organisation, nationalism and the relations between religions, gender, philanthropy and education, and membership and proselytism.

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

Paper Giver 1: Ferdinando Sardella, Dept. of History of Religion, University of Göteborg, Sweden

Paper 1 Title: Reforming sacred geography: Bhaktivinode Thakura and the two birthplaces of Krishna Chaitanya

Paper Abstract: The paper will discuss how Bhaktivinode Thakura, a high-ranking judge in the British administration of the late 19th century, and the father and spiritual mentor of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, a religious reformer, effectively constructed a new sacred geography for Navadipa, the birthplace of the Bengali saint Krishna Chaitanya (1486-1534). This allowed him to disconnect the reform movement he had founded from the seminal caste brahmanas of the area, and create a new casteless religious structure parallel to the medieval one of the local brahmanas. By this reform, Bhaktivinode Thakura challenged the established brahmanical control over pilgrimage sites, which was, and still is, a major factor for religious influence in the area.

Paper Giver 2: Gwilym Beckerlegge, The Open University, UK

Paper 2 Title: The iconic presence of Swami Vivekananda

Paper Abstract: Photography came to Calcutta not long before Ramakrishna and Vivekananda achieved prominence, making it possible for their legacy to be perpetuated through what Lawrence Babb has termed a ‘photo-iconographic’ tradition. The small collection of photographs of the major personalities associated with the birth of the Math and Mission has shaped their depiction both within the movement and more generally in commercially produced materials, including devotional posters, postcards, and three-dimensional images.
This paper explores various examples of the ways in which Vivekananda has been represented visually, ranging from the earliest photographs to more recent depictions on the Internet. The paper examines in particular different photographic images of Vivekananda within the context of the conventions that shaped portraiture within Indian and European styles of art. It raises questions about Vivekananda’s involvement in the creation of these representations, including the changes of dress recorded by photographs. The paper argues that the process of selection and manipulation of images, which has taken place within the Ramakrishna movement, reveals the value that followers have attached to photographs and explores the implications of this for the movement’s understanding of its own past.
Just as Ramakrishna has been given a different meaning in the popular religion of Bengal to that assigned to him within the Ramakrishna movement, so too representations of Vivekananda have been taken up and put to use in other contexts. The paper examines briefly representations of Vivekananda within the sangh parivar and examples of the emergence of the use of Viveananda as a ‘gobal’ icon.

Paper Giver 3: Diego Abenante, University of Trieste, Italy

Paper 3 Title: Nineteenth century Sufi reform and religious boundaries in southwestern Panjab

Paper Abstract: The aim of the paper is to analyse the development of some Sufi traditions, often identified as “revivalist shrines”, mainly belonging to the Nizami silsila of the Chishtiya order. The region chosen as the focus of the paper is the southwestern Panjab, approximately corresponding to the British districts of Multan, Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan, and to the territory of Bahawalpur State. The Chishti revival of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century is generally seen as a movement towards purification of Islam and the defence of Muslim political authority in a period dominated by a perception of decline of Muslim culture. The aim of the movement is supposed to be a reaction to popular Sufi practices, and the elaboration of a dimension that combined spiritual mediation and teaching with the maintenance of the centrality of religious law.
Without denying validity to this basic reformist message, we suggest to consider the movement not necessarily as a process towards a “high” Islamic tradition – as it might appear - rather as a process of “re-localization” of Muslim culture. The Chishti khanqahs founded in southwestern Punjab in the eighteenth century marked the re-emergence of a local tribal dimension, with the pirs generally belonging to local tribes of Rajput, Pasthun or Baluchi kinship. The original reformist message had to be translated into the local idiom for populations that were often at a very limited stage of islamization, and that tended to adhere to a folk-centred approach to Islam.
The region we are dealing with was not an empty social and religious space, rather it was structured by previous Sufi traditions, as the Suhrawardi shrine of Bahawal Haq or the Qadri of Musa Pak Shahid Gilani, that had since long mediated between urban communities and the pastoral-nomadic tribes of the doabs. In this context, the actual shape taken by the reformist Chishti cults resulted from the interaction, and the reciprocal influence, between “old” and “new” traditions; old Sufi cults were conditioned and led to accept almost part of the reformist message; on the other side, the reformist cults had also to adapt to the necessities and requirements of their popular audience.
We would see an overall religious scene in which there was not a sharp distinction between two approaches to Islam, rather a continuous tension between the popular Sufism of miracles and amulets, and the reformed Sufism.
With this paper, we propose to analyse these questions examining in particular some nineteenth century Urdu collections written by relatives and disciples of the saint Hafiz Muhammad Jamal (d. 1811), a figure whose popular image is linked to the memory of the defence of Muslim power in Multan against the growing Sikh influence in southwestern Punjab in the early nineteenth century.

Paper Giver 4: Dr. M.T. Kamble, Karnatak University, India

Paper 4 Title: Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dayananda Saraswathi – Shaping of the Renaissance Movement in Karnataka

Paper Abstract: The term ‘renaissance’ was originally used in European historiography to refer to the revival of Greco-Roman tradition for the reconstruction of Europe in every field of life. The term ’renaissance’ is borrowed from European historiography and used in modern Indian history of the 19th century.
The Indian renaissance was a product of the revival of the ancient traditions and also a process of synthesis of that tradition with the progressive ideas of the west. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dayananda Saraswathi were outstanding leaders of the Indian renaissance. Their impact was felt throughout Indian and Karnataka was no exception. This paper attempts to document the impact of these two leaders on the Kannada-speaking region in south India.
In linguistic and cultural context, Karnataka had been a Dravidian region. But the history of Karnataka indicates that this region saw a synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian traditions. Once again in the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, we see Karnataka seeking light from the north in creating its renaissance, borrowing ideas from Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Dayananda Saraswathi. In this paper, the nature of their impact will be examined in detail, using sources available at various centres of the Brahma Samaj and Arya Samaj in Karnataka.

Paper Giver 5: Hiltrud Rüstau, Humboldt University Berlin, School of Asian and African Studies, Seminar für Geschichte und Gesellschaft Südasiens, Germany

Paper 5 Title: „Kali the Mother“: Hinduism in the Eyes of Sister Nivedita

Paper Abstract: After a stay in India of a bit more than one year Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble, Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, 1867-1911) was officially invited to deliver a lecture on “Kali-worship” at the famous Kalighat Temple in Calcutta though it was a time when not at all everybody was allowed even to enter the temple. Nivedita was perhaps not the first European who in the public declared herself to be a Hindu at the beginning of the last century, but she was definitely one of the most prominent one.
In order to collect money for the school founded by her in Calcutta she lectured and wrote books on various topics of Indian culture in England and in the USA. After Vivekananda’s death she spent also much time on travels in India attending meetings, giving lectures and trying her very best to make her guru known and to spread his views all over the country.
Nivedita rightly said about Vivekananda’s address before the Parliament of Religions 1893 in Chicago: ‘…when he began to speak it was of “the religious ideas of the Hindus”, but when he ended, Hinduism had been created.’ (Sw. Vivekananda, Compl. Works, Calcutta 1989, Vol.1, p.X) The paper tries to answer the question how far Nivedita - a lady from the West – did contribute to the development of modern Hinduism and in which way she interpreted Vivekananda’s religio-philosophical views.

Paper Giver 6: Dietrich Reetz, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany

Paper 6 Title: The Deoband Universe: What makes an educational movement of Islam?

Paper Abstract: At a time when the inspiration of Deobandi thought for purist Islamic groups and radical militants across a number of countries in Asia and Africa has made sensational news after September 11, 2001 it is felt that the forms and objectives, the potential and impotency of the Deobandi educational movement have to be ascertained and assessed more factually and realistically. The paper is set to explore how the influence of the dar al-`ulam, the Islamic school of higher learning in Deoband, north India, radiates across the countries of South Asia and much beyond. It seeks to understand what are the ingredients of its religious school of thought; how does it function across cultural and political boundaries; and what institutions it has spawned. On the basis of recent field research at the dar al-`ulam Deoband in March 2004 the paper will venture to describe the formal and informal ways of coordination and norm setting, of cooperation and inspiration. It will look at the various forms of interaction, from the Deobandi madrasa network, to derived Deobandi institutions, to the ever expanding network of Deobandi graduates and to the manifestation of their local and translocal influence in other Islamic groups and organisations.

Paper Giver 7: Martin Riexinger, University of Freiburg, Germany

Paper 7 Title: The Reaction of South Asian Muslims to the Theory of Evolution

Paper Abstract: The first South Asian Muslim who has promoted the idea that mankind is the product of a process of biological evolution that started from lifeless matter seems to have been Sayyid Ahmad Khan. However his ideas are distinct from Darwinism insofar as he did not accept the common origin of life until a short time before his death.
Modernists in the early 20th century seem to have accepted Darwin’s concepts. Abu l-Kalam Azad showed no hesitation in presenting them to the readers of his magazine Al-Hilal. Due to his idea that the realms of science and religion are totally distinct he does not discuss the question whether this theory might challenge key concepts of the Qur’an.
Whereas the traditional scholars do not seem to have been interested in this subject, Islamists like Mawdudi reject the theory of evolution. His refutation is not exclusively based on the non-accordance with scriptural statements. He denounces Darwinism as symptom of the decadent, godless Western ‘culture of doubt’. According to him this concept is a result of ‘anti-spiritualist’ prejudice. Its materialist background allegedly paves the way for Marxism, the ‘glorification’ of the ‘struggle for survival’ is supposed to lead society into barbarity. Mawdudi’s writings on the subject betray the influence of Christian creationist literature. His attitude shows that the borrowing of modernist literary forms and the adoption of new media by Islamists do not entail a modernization of key concepts. Ideological followers of Mawdudi continue to follow his line of argumentation, the anti-Marxist aspects seems to have gained importance.
However the theory of evolution has never become a central issue in the ‘Kulturkampf’ against ‘unbelief’ as it has for American Protestant fundamentalists and conservative Muslims in Turkey. The latter, however, do consider Mawdudi as a source of inspiration.