A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism by Jyotirmaya Sharma (PDF)

Description

In this third installment of his comprehensive history of “India’s religion” and reappraisal of Hindu identity, Professor Jyotirmaya Sharma offers an engaging portrait of Swami Vivekananda and his relationship with his guru, the legendary Ramakrishna. Sharma’s work focuses on Vivekananda’s reinterpretation and formulation of diverse Indian spiritual and mystical traditions and practices as “Hinduism” and how it served to create, distort, and justify a national self-image. The author examines questions of caste and the primacy of the West in Vivekananda’s vision, as well as the systematic marginalization of alternate religions and heterodox beliefs. In doing so, Professor Sharma provides readers with an incisive entryway into nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indian history and the rise of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist movement. Sharma’s illuminating narrative is an excellent reexamination of one of India’s most controversial religious figures and a fascinating study of the symbiosis of Indian history, religion, politics, and national identity. It is an essential story for anyone interested in the evolution of one of the world’s great religions and its role in shaping contemporary India.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “A book of substance and importance, written in an engaging, straightforward style, illuminated by flashes of wit and, of course, by the author’s deep knowledge of the cultural background and historical record. Sharma’s scholarship is sound, well-informed, and well-presented. His book will become the classic statement about Vivekananda in this generation”―David Shulman, Hebrew University — David Shulman“An outstanding study of how and why Vivekananda re-defined Hinduism, and of how and why this redefinition became so influential. This is an invaluable work for anyone interested not only in the recent religious history of South Asia but also in the re-definition of religions in general over the past two centuries.”―Michael Puett, Harvard University — Michael Puett“This forcefully and lucidly argued book is the best brief and yet nuanced introduction to Ramakrishna’s thought that I know of, condensing and accessibly bringing together much recent scholarship. This will be an influential and important book.”―Ajay Skaria, University of Minnesota — Ajay Skaria About the Author Jyotirmaya Sharma is professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad, India. He was a Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden and his publications include Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism and Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A RESTATEMENT OF RELIGIONSwami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu NationalismBy JYOTIRMAYA SHARMAYale UNIVERSITY PRESSCopyright © 2013 Jyotirmaya SharmaAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-300-19740-2ContentsPreface…………………………………………………………..ixRamakrishna’s One-Fourth……………………………………………1Whose Society, What Religion?……………………………………….117The Fly and the Syrup………………………………………………191Index…………………………………………………………….285 CHAPTER 1Ramakrishna’s One-Fourth* * *In 1901, Swami Vivekananda narrates a very significantstory about himself and Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.The conversation, recorded in the diary of his disciple,Sharat Chandra Chakravarty, takes place in Belur Math ayear before Vivekananda’s death. The disciple asks afterVivekananda’s health, who, despite various illnesses,had been travelling extensively. Vivekananda tells thedisciple that his body might last for a few days morebut he was determined to work till the end and die inharness. ‘It is She who takes me here and there and makesme work without letting me remain quiet or allowing meto look to my personal comforts,’ says the Swami. The’She’ alluded to here is Goddess Kali. He further revealsthat a few days before Ramakrishna’s death, ‘She whomhe [Ramakrishna] used to call “Kali” [the Goddess Kali]entered this [Vivekananda’s] body,’ and it was She whomade him work relentlessly. Was this metaphorical, asksthe disciple. No, replies Vivekananda and begins to tellthe story of Ramakrishna and himself a few days beforeRamakrishna left his body. Ramakrishna summonedVivekananda and looked at him ‘steadfastly’, and, then,fell into a samadhi or trance. On seeing this, Vivekanandatoo felt ‘a subtle force like an electric shock’ passingthrough his body and soon lost what he calls outwardconsciousness. On regaining consciousness of his ownbody, he saw Ramakrishna crying. On being asked whyhe was weeping, Ramakrishna said to him: ‘Today,giving you my all, I have become a beggar. With thispower you are to do many works for the world’s goodbefore you will return.’ It was this power, concludesVivekananda, that constantly directed him to keep onworking.To say that the story of Kali entering Vivekananda’sbody, his trance, a weeping Ramakrishna’s passingon his powers to him is dramatic would be a grossunderstatement. Coming directly from Vivekananda,it bears the unmistaken imprimatur of legitimacy. Butit also serves to establish clearly the line of successionfrom Master to chosen disciple. Words and phrases suchas ‘works’ and ‘world’s good’, crucially embedded in thestory, also seek to establish the credibility of the future’improvisation’ of the Master’s faith that Vivekanandawould eventually undertake. For the devout and thefaithful, this account stands beyond doubt and reproach.Swami Nikhilananda follows this path of devotion andfidelity to a fault. In the introduction to the Englishtranslation of Mahendranath Gupta’s Sri Sri RamakrishnaKathamrita, he reproduces Vivekananda’s version of thestory verbatim. Ironically, the volume for which he writesthe introduction has a less dramatic account of the samestory. The narrator of the story in this instance is alsoVivekananda but the listener is Mahendranath Guptahimself, who not only records the conversation but alsodirectly participates in it.The date of the conversation between Vivekanandaand Mahendranath is 9 April 1887. Ramakrishna haddied in August the previous year. After dinner, the twomen, sitting in the garden of the Baranagore Math, beganto reminisce about Ramakrishna. At one point in theconversation, Vivekananda says to Mahendranath thatat Cossipore ‘he [Ramakrishna] transmitted his power tome’. His interlocutor is already aware of the story andindicates so. What follows in the course of the exchangebetween the two is crucial:Narendra: Yes. One day, while meditating, I askedKali to hold my hand. Kali said to me, ‘When Itouched your body I felt something like an electricshock coming to my body.’But you must not tell this to anybody here. Giveme your promise.M: There is a special purpose in his transmissionof power to you. He will accomplish much workthrough you. One day the Master wrote on a pieceof paper, ‘Naren will teach people.’Narendra: But I said to him, ‘I won’t do any suchthing.’ Thereupon he said, ‘Your very bones willdo it.’Three elements stand out in this version of the story,a narrative separated from its 1901 telling by fourteenyears. There is no mention, whatsoever, of GoddessKali entering Vivekananda’s body. The Kali in thestory is Kaliprasad Chandra, later known as SwamiAbhedananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna. Neither areany details of the actual transmission of Ramakrishna’spowers offered. In an earlier conversation withMahendranath on 25 March 1887, Vivekananda mentionsRamakrishna offering to exercise his occult powersthrough him and his refusal to accept any such thing.Between the conversations on 25 March and 9 April, aninstance of Vivekananda going into deep meditation andsamadhi is mentioned, but in both instances no directtransmission of occult powers occurs between Masterand the chosen disciple. In fact, the burden of the 9 Aprildialogue shifts primarily to questions of Vivekanandateaching people and doing work.While Ramakrishna had contempt for the idea of’work’ in the sense Vivekananda later sought to defineand convey, a more detailed analysis of this tensionbetween the two regarding the worth of work appearsin the next chapter. What is equally intriguing, however,is Ramakrishna’s offer to exercise occult powers throughVivekananda. Ramakrishna consistently believed thatpeople who sought siddhis or occult powers weresmall-minded people. He held in disdain people whoacquired powers that enabled them to cure illnesses, wincourt cases or walk on water. Neither did he approveof genuine devotees working towards such goals anddreaded acquiring them even for his own self. Hadhe got for himself occult powers, Dakshineshwar, hefelt, would have been transformed into a hospital or adispensary. To possess occult powers was troublesome.Once Hriday, Ramakrishna’s nephew, egged him on topray to Kali for bestowing Ramakrishna some occultpowers. In his childlike gullibility, Ramakrishna didexactly that. Here is his account of the consequences ofthe prayer:The Divine Mother at once showed me a vision.A middle-aged prostitute, about forty years old,appeared and sat with her back to me. She hadlarge hips and wore a black-bordered sari. Soonshe was covered with filth. The Mother showedme that occult powers are as abominable as thefilth of that prostitute.Ramakrishna resolved to pray henceforth only for purelove, not occult powers, ‘a love that does not seek anyreturn’.Totapuri, the renunciate who had initiatedRamakrishna into sanyasa, taught him of the perilsof possessing and holding siddhis through a coupleof stories. A man in possession of occult powers wassitting on the seashore watching a great storm rising infront of him. This caused him great discomfort and sohe decided to use his powers to quell the storm. A shipgoing full sail before the wind sank as a consequence ofthe storm’s abrupt end. All the passengers on the shipdied and the sin of causing their death fell upon him,resulting in loss of his occult powers. In another instance,God disguised as a holy man comes to a sage who hasoccult powers. God first encourages the sadhu to kill anelephant and then asks him to bring the elephant backto life. The sadhu manages to do both with the help ofhis siddhis. At this point, God, still in disguise, asks thesadhu what this act of killing and reviving the elephanthad done for him. Was he uplifted by it? Did the actmanage to help him realize God?Having narrated these stories, Ramakrishna comes tothe conclusion that occult powers lead to pride and pridemakes an individual forget God. A true seeker prays onlyfor pure love of God, just as Radha did and just as thegopis did. There is no motive or desire for possessingoccult powers beyond pure love of God. In a subtlerestatement of the idea of acquiring and possessingoccult powers, Ramakrishna plays with the conventionalmeaning of the words ‘siddhi’ and ‘siddha’. For him,siddhi was not one of the normally understood eightoccult powers that one could acquire but attainment ofone’s spiritual goal. Following this, a siddha was onewho has a firm conviction in the existence of God andin God being the sole instrument of all action. A highercategory of siddha was one who had not merely seenGod, but spoken intimately to God as Father, Son, orBeloved. To underwrite his rejection of acquiring andpossessing occult powers, Ramakrishna would oftenquote Krishna’s words to Arjuna: ‘Friend, if you wantto realize Me, you will not succeed if you have even oneof the eight occult powers’.If occult powers were instrumental in leading a trueaspirant away from God and were comparable to the filthof a prostitute, it is incomprehensible why Ramakrishnawould want to transfer his occult powers to Vivekananda.But the story of the transfer of Ramakrishna’s powersto Vivekananda has acquired an indelible mystique inthe popular imagination, especially so because the morefamiliar version of the story comes from Vivekanandahimself. To quibble over its authenticity leads nowhere.But as a story, about Vivekananda and his Master,told directly to a disciple, and believed, absorbed anddisseminated by other disciples and devotees, it remainsa singularly important moment in the Ramakrishna-Vivekanandacorpus. And it is crucial in understandingthe manner in which Vivekananda distanced himself fromthe central core of Ramakrishna’s teachings, remodelledRamakrishna and then sought to build his model ofHinduism on the basis of his radical restatement ofRamakrishna.* * *Every element that constituted Vivekananda’s creationof Hinduism as religion lies embedded in this narrativeand requires careful unscrambling. Firstly, there isthe element of Vivekananda’s tortured, ambiguousand fraught relationship with the figure of Kali. WhileKali was central to Ramakrishna’s conception of whatconstituted faith and his ideal of bhakti, Vivekananda’sattitude towards her iconic status remained ambivalent.Next, there is the emphasis on ‘work’, and moresignificantly, the importance of ‘work’ for a sanyasi.Here, the sanyasi must not ‘remain quiet’ and mustnot look to his ‘personal comforts’. Vivekananda notonly seeks to restate the ideal of renunciation, but alsoattempts to redefine the role of religion in relation to theworld. Another significant element is Vivekananda’sunquestioned acceptance of the instance of Kali enteringhis body. As someone who rejected the prophetic andrevelatory traditions within other religions and heraldedhis reading of Ramakrishna’s Hinduism as scientific,this ready acceptance of Kali’s entry into his body issurprising. While it is no surprise that Ramakrishnalooked at him ‘steadfastly’ and fell into a trance,Vivekananda losing outward consciousness is unusual;Vivekananda had little sympathy for Ramakrishna’strances and often termed them as hallucinations. Also,having stated that ‘She’ whom Ramakrishna used tocall Kali entered his body, he does not actually directlyacknowledge Kali entering his body but equates thatexperience to a subtle force like an electric shock. Equallypuzzling is why Ramakrishna, who was a sanyasi,would feel like a ‘beggar’ after having given his ‘all’to Vivekananda. And having given his ‘all’, wouldRamakrishna exhort Vivekananda to ‘do many worksfor the world’s good’, especially when he consistentlyrejected even the slightest suggestion that a spiritualseeker and a sanyasi ought to have any role in directlyalleviating misery in the world? Some of these questionsrequire careful consideration for a better understandingof Vivekananda’s definition of religion and his fashioningof Hinduism as religion.Vivekananda was plagued to the end of his life bythe question of Kali worship and its place in the religionthat he sought to preach and disseminate. There was,indeed, an inherent tension between what Vivekanandapreached and what he claimed to privately believe.Despite the fact that Kali had entered his body and wasconstantly pushing him to do good for the world, Kali’sworship was not part of the religion that he preached tohis disciples and audiences across the world. In a letterto Miss Mary Hale, dated 17 June 1900, Vivekanandais categorical in rejecting Kali worship as part of thereligion he preached:Kali worship is not a necessary step in any religion.The Upanishads teach us all there is to religion.Kali worship is my special fad; you never heardme preach it, or read of my preaching it in India. Ionly preach what is good for universal humanity.If there is any curious method which appliesentirely to me, I keep it a secret and there it ends.I must not explain to you what Kali worship is, asI never taught it to anybody.Kali worship, then, is reduced to a personal fad, a curiousmethod, and a secret that is not to be shared with anyone.Nor is any explanation for nursing this secret fad to beentertained. More significantly, neither is Kali worship anecessary step in any religion that he preached or part ofone that could be taught universally, nor is it somethingthat could be for the good of humanity. But before Kalibecame his fad and secret, Vivekananda’s relationshipwith the goddess was deeply fraught.’How I used to hate Kali’, Vivekananda recalls in aconversation with a disciple. He hated her and hated ‘allher ways’. This was what he calls the ‘ground of my sixyears’ fight – that I would not accept Her’. The fightwas with Kali and with Ramakrishna; any reconciliationwith Kali would also mean accepting Ramakrishna. WithRamakrishna, the ‘fight’ lasted all the years Vivekanandahad known him, between 1881, when he first met hisfuture Master, and 1886, the year Ramakrishna died.Before going into the reasons for his initial hatred andeventual ‘acceptance’ of Kali, a word needs to be saidabout the dynamics that come into play between a GreatMaster and his disciples.Vivekananda deified Ramakrishna but was neverobliged to follow either his guru’s life or thoughts.Following the example of charismatic religiousleaders in the past and their devotees, Vivekanandaused his adoration of Ramakrishna to justify his ownreformulation of religion and of what he believed tobe Hinduism. He continued to claim that all he didand said was in the spirit of Ramakrishna’s teachingsand represented the Master’s essential spirit. He gaveRamakrishna’s faith a theological face and a preacher’senergy, shedding all the intricate complexity and intensereligious emotion that is the hallmark of Ramakrishna’spure devotionalism. When challenged by his brothermonks about altering Ramakrishna’s faith, he oftengot enraged and indulged in what can safely be calledpetulant and self-righteous outbursts:What do you know? You are an ignorant man …Your study ended like that of Prahlada at seeingthe first Bengali alphabet, Ka, for it remindedPrahlada of Krishna and he could not proceedfurther because of tears that came into his eyes …You are sentimental fools! What do you understandof religion? You are only good at praying withfolded hands, ‘O Lord! how beautiful is Your nose!How sweet are your eyes!’ and all such nonsense …and you think your salvation is secured and ShriRamakrishna will come at the final hour and takeyou by the hand to the highest heaven … Study,public preaching, and doing humanitarian worksare, according to you, Maya, because he said tosomeone, ‘Seek and find God first; doing good inthe world is a presumption!’ … As if God is suchan easy thing to be achieved! As if He is such afool as to make Himself a plaything in the handsof an imbecile!Bhakti and the primacy of attaining God as outlined byRamakrishna are to be brushed aside. But Vivekanandaalso seems to know God’s mind and even God’sdistaste for imbeciles. The outburst above is not merelyone where Ramakrishna’s idea of bhakti in its puredevotional form clashes with Vivekananda’s credo ofstudy, public preaching and doing humanitarian work;Vivekananda’s religious nationalism appropriates andrefashions Ramakrishna beyond recognition:You think you have understood Shri Ramakrishnabetter than myself! You think Jnana is dryknowledge to be attained by a desert path, killingout the tenderest faculties of the heart! YourBhakti is sentimental nonsense, which makes oneimpotent. You want to preach Ramakrishna asyou have understood him, which is mighty little.Hands off! Who cares for your Ramakrishna? Whocares for your Bhakti and Mukti? Who cares whatyour Scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hellscheerfully, if I can rouse my countrymen immersedin Tamas, to stand on their own feet and be meninspired with the spirit of Karma-Yoga … I am nota servant of Ramakrishna, or anyone, but of himonly who serves and helps others, without caringfor his own Bhakti or Mukti!Familiar themes of making Indians more manly, thesignificance of raising Indians from tamas and makingthem self-reliant are all present in this second outburst.What is more significant is also the outright rejectionof any possible version of Ramakrishna other thanVivekananda’s own. Romain Rolland cites witnessesto such frequent outbursts and says that after thesefulminations, Vivekananda would go to meditate. Afterhe emerges from the meditation, he tells his brothermonks of his unfinished work for his motherland and hisundelivered message to the world. In the same breath, hespeaks of being a slave of Ramakrishna; he was someonewho was doing Ramakrishna’s work and Ramakrishnawas tirelessly making him do his work. What wasRamakrishna’s ‘work’? Could Vivekananda really doRamakrishna’s work? Answers to these questions havebeen attempted below. Still crucial is the need to ask if the’six years’ fight’ between Ramakrishna and Vivekanandaever resolved. Could any such reconciliation reallyhappen without an acceptance of Kali? (Continues…)Excerpted from A RESTATEMENT OF RELIGION by JYOTIRMAYA SHARMA. Copyright © 2013 Jyotirmaya Sharma. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

Keywords

Free Download A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism in PDF format
A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism PDF Free Download
Download A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism 2013 PDF Free
A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism 2013 PDF Free Download
Download A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism PDF
Free Download Ebook A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism