1 - Languages of Longing: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Letter-Writing

Summary

An Archive of Feelings

This chapter will look at the formative role of letters as a medium in constituting discipleship. It examines the guru-figures Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi and their relations with a cast of close Western disciples. In the context of high British imperialism, letters moulded sympathetic Western men and women into intimate disciples serving a range of Indian causes.

The cast of Western disciples gathered around these guru-figures came from a variety of lineages. C. F. Andrews and William Pearson were Christian missionaries (Anglican and Baptist respectively); Margaret Noble, Sara Bull and Josephine MacLeod were involved in various heterodox initiatives (some linked to Hindu eclecticism); Madeleine Slade was the daughter of a British Admiral. Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), C. F. Andrews and Mira Behn (Madeleine Slade), came to occupy major roles in Indian cultural and political nationalism. Western followers’ profound spiritual disquiet was rooted in the pervasive mechanisation of life produced by industrial modernity; gurus and ashrams constituted part of a larger ‘seeking’. All of them were attracted to some form of immanent spirituality that inhered in the figures of Vivekananda, Gandhi and Tagore.

The Modern Letter in Colonial India

The coming of the modern letter in India is intrinsically tied to the expansion of communication networks used to order empire. Building on an earlier system of dak, the rapid proliferation of postal networks scaled time and distance, emerging as key to imperial governance. The introduction of the Indian penny post in 1854, following its British counterpart in 1840, saw an explosion of postal communication over the next century. Aimed at aiding the unrestricted flow of information, a series of postal reform measures made post cheaper and hugely popular in India. From 43 million in 1860–1861 it increased to nearly 250 million in 1900–1901, a figure that included not only letters but also the cheap quarter anna postcards. The Indian Postal Service was one of the fastest to Indianise, with over half of the 214 senior appointments (ranks between Superintendent to Post Master General) being held by Indians. It marked the intensification of the postal system and its penetration deep into the countryside, integrating the empire as never before, with negligible violence. The rapid proliferation of postal networks spawned new literary publics and practices across a range of languages and populations.