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The Hindu Renaissance and its Apologetic Patterns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Agehananda Bharati
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Abstract

An anthropological and linguistic analysis of the idiom of modern Hindu religious specialists and their followers, an audience which embraces all English speaking Indians and a large segment of the urban populations of India. The highly eclectic, quasi-secular and neo-Hindu ideology inaugurated by such charismatics as Vivekananda, other “Swamis” and interiorized by Indian nationalists, expresses itself in a highly stereotyped coded parlance, informed by Victorian English as well as by diffuse elements which could be described as a Hindu Protestant Ethic. Both systematic and conscious obfuscation of scriptural categories as well as complex but predictable patterns of dissimulation extending over virtually all types of cultural and social discourse—the caste-system, “superstitions,” the “scientific” base of Hinduism, political talk, etc., are adduced and investigated as paradigms of contemporary Indian parlance, which is not the grass-roots idiom, but which is gathering momentum as the forensic instrument of India's leadership and of Indian administrators, educators, and the Indian intellectuals.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , February 1970 , pp. 267 - 287
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1970

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References

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8 The term “intellectual” when applied to South Asians ought to be wider in its denotation than in its occidental reference; at the same time, certain semantic elements have to be added which are specific to the South Asian situation. Edward N. Shils's suggestions seem to be the most felicitous, see his The Intellectual between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1961), pp. 15–19.Google Scholar

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11 The compounded linguistic confusions in that charming event were at once entertaining and instructive: though the apogy of the litany (kīrtan) was more or less correct Hindi, the suffix-than in Hanuman-than was a purely Tamil-Malayalam addition. The standard version, chanted hundreds of times every day on similar occasions in Hindi speaking areas, runs bol sab sādhu santon kī (jai), bol vīr Hanutnān-jī ki (jai) “say ye Victory unto all sādhus, say ye Victory to the Hero Hanuman”.

12 I am referring to the tradition inaugurated by Gilbert Ryle, editor of Mind at Oxford, continued and perfected by such authors as the late J. L. Austin, R. H. Hare, and Stuart Hampshire.

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30 On the occasion of Rabindranath Tagore's Anniversary Celebration at Central Hindu College, Banaras Hindu University, 1952.

31 The word ‘saint’, when used by Indians, is a totally different sememe from the Euro-American Christian usage. Probably by an unconscious linguistic-phonetic analogy to the North Indian sant, English ‘saint’ is used by English speaking sadhus when they refer either to themselves or to other sadhus, and also by Hindu laymen when they talk about sadhus. The moralizing Christian notion that the term should have ‘genuineness’ as its semantic component is out of place. North Indians use the term sant or the English ‘saint’ quite unhesitatingly for any full-time religious specialist of the monastic type and a statement like ‘Sant so-and-so is a rogue…’ is not contradictory in the Indian and Indian-English language usage. Most pervasive in the Panjab, sant is the title of quite a few political leaders (e.g., Sant Fateh Singh). It is a term of professional ascription and reference, and not of hieratic content, analogous, say to “Dr. X” stating that the person has an M.D., and not whether he is a good or a bad physician.

32 See Marriott, McKim, “Social structure and change in a U.P. village,” Economic Weekly, IV (Bombay, 1952), 869–874Google Scholar; Singer, Milton, “The Indian Joint Family in Modern Industry,” Structure and Change in Indian Society, Singer, Milton and Cohn, Bernard S. (eds.) Chicago: Aldine Publishers, 1968), pp. 423–454Google Scholar; Srinivas, M. N., Religion and Society among the Coorgs in South India (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), passGoogle Scholar; Cohn, B. S., “Changing Traditions of a Low Caste,” Traditional India: Structure and Change (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 207–215.Google Scholar

33 Singer, Philip, Sadhus and Charisma, doctoral dissertation submitted to Syracuse University in 1961 (Bombay and New York: Asia Publishing House, 1970).Google Scholar

34 The bible of the Ārya Samāj, the book was first published in Hindi in 1880 (published by the long defunct Virajananda Press, Lahore). Since then, roughly forty imprints have been made in Hindi. The book has been translated into all Indian languages, and into most European languages [e.g., Pdt. Daulat Ram Dev Das Licht der Wahrheit (Berlin, 1927)]. It is the summation of the polemics of Swami Dayānanda, founder of the Samāj. For an excellent study of the role of the Swami, his followers, and the Samāj, see Jones, Kenneth W., “Communalism in the Panjab,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXVIII (11 1968), 39–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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36 Roy, Dilip K., The Subhash I Knew (Calcutta, 1952).Google Scholar

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41 yātrā (Sanskrit) is the ‘Great Tradition’ vernacular term for ‘pilgrimage’; see Bharati, A. “Pilgrimage Sites and Indian Civilization,” Chapters in Indian Civilization, vol. I., Elder, Joseph W. (ed.) (Madison, Wis., 1967), pp. 85–100.Google Scholar

42 Majumdar, R. C., Swami Vivekananda: A Historical Review, (Calcutta: General Printers & Publishers, 1965), p. 138.Google Scholar

43 Ibid; see also Swami Vivekananda Memorial Volume, Majumdar, R. C. (ed.) (Calcutta: Swami Vivekananda Centenary, 1963)Google Scholar and Parliament of Religions (Calcutta: Swami Vivekananda Centenary Committee, 1963–1964)Google Scholar. These two volumes, containing contributions from a wide cross section of contemporary writers, provide excellent samples of Renaissance apologetic. (A very limited number of these books was printed; they are available at Advaita Ashrama, 4 Wellington Lane, Calcutta-12.)

44 literally “assembly of the good”; this is the most general term for any meeting, at a shrine or at home, where nonformalizcd religious group activities are carried out. The stress is primarily on bhajan and kīrtan (litanies, group chanting) and, secondarily, on kathā (reading and explanation of religious texts) and sermon.

45 A pervasive Indian-English neologism in Renaissance parlance. It is not clear to me which Indian term, if any, the word is supposed to translate; but its use is quite different from any British or American use of the word ‘realization’. The meaning of the Indian-English term is something like ‘consummation of religious experience’, Possibly, the term might first have been used by neo-Vedāntins in a semi-technical sense: if you realize, by an act of guided intuition, that you are one with the absolute (brahman), you have ipso facto reached the goal of religious life. The most striking example of this use is the tide of the collected works of Swami Ramtirtha, M.A., who followed Vivekananda's itinerary a short time after the latter's demise. See Swami Ramtirtha, M.A., “In Woods of God-Realization,” The Complete Worlds of Swami Ramtirtha, MA., 8 vols. (Delhi: IMH Press, 1910–1935).Google Scholar

46 Bhagavadgītā, IV, 7, 8Google Scholar. The passage means “whenever dharma degenerates, and when antidharma comes to prevail, I (i.e., the godhead) create myself anew—for the protection of the good, and the destruction of the wicked, I incarnate myself in every age.”

47 This is the ‘invocation for peace’ (śdntipāṭha) at the beginning of the Bṛhadāranyaka-Upaniṣad, though it occurs in other, later Upaniṣads as well. It means “this is (the) whole, that too is (the) whole, the totality of things is all this: and if you remove the whole from the whole, yet the whole remains.”

48 A takeoff from the Upaniṣadic formula vasudhaiva kuluṃbakam “the whole world, verily, is kin to us.”

49 Peace, A monthly journal devoted to Universal Peace, Totapalli Hills P. O., via Sankhavaran, Godavari Dt., Andhra State, India. Publisher & Editor: His Holiness Omananda, Swami, p. 345.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., p. 363.

51 Maharishi, Ramana, Sat-Darshana-Bhashya and Talks with Maharishi, compiled by “K.” (Madras: The Jupiter Press, 1953), p. 16.Google Scholar

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55 Virtually unknown outside Sindhi, Cutchi, and Gujarati speaking Hindu society, Chellaram (died 1946) has become the tutelary “saint” of the banya, Lohana, and odier castes in the area. His teachings differ in no way from those of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism; Chellaram himself like many Sindhis, was a sahajdhāri Nānakpanthi, i.e., a follower of Guru Nānak, not bearded and turbaned like die Panjabi Khālsā Sikhs. The legends told about Chellaram are in line with the semi-miraculous tales about medieval saints of the bhakti-tradition, of which he was a latter-day representative. See Chellaram, Dada, Niraguṇa Patra (Saproon, India: Niraguna Balik Satsang Mandal, 1964).Google Scholar

56 The repetition, silent or aloud, of a divine name or of a sacred formula (mantra); see Bharati, A., The Tantric Tradition (London: Rider & Co., 1965) pp. 101–164.Google Scholar

57 Control of the vital force (prāna), but more specifically, the various techniques of breath control, common to yoga and other psycho-experimental systems in India.

58 Meditative posture; as each human being has a different type of body, he has to find the āsana that suits him best for the sake of undisturbed meditation.

59 Sarasvati, Swami Sivananda, Bliss Divine (Sivanandanagar, see note 17), pp. 451–459.Google Scholar

60 Stace, W. T., Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1961), pp. 320–323.Google Scholar

61 See Bharati, A., “Gandhi's Interpretation of the Gita,” Gandhi and Gandhism: an International Symposium, Ray, S. N. (ed.) (Melbourne: The University Press, 1970).Google Scholar