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Reinventing Ramanand: Caste and History in Gangetic India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

William R. Pinch
William R. Pinch
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University
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Extract

According to Sir George Grierson, one of the pre-eminent Indologists of the early twentieth century, Ramanand led ‘one of the most momentous revolutions that have occurred in the religious history of North India.’Yet Ramanand, the fourteenth-century teacher of Banaras, has been conspicuous by his relative absence in the pages of English-language scholarship on recent Indian history, literature, and religion. The aims of this essay are to reflect on why this is so, and to urge historians to pay attention to Ramanand, more particularly to the reinvention of Ramanand by his early twentieth-century followers, because the contested traditions thereof bear on the vexed issue of caste and hierarchy in colonial India. The little that is known about Ramanand is doubly curious considering that Ramanandis, those who look to Ramanand for spiritual and community inspiration, are thought to comprise the largest and most important Vaishnava monastic order in north India. Ramanandis are to be found in temples and monasteries throughout and beyond the Hindi-speaking north, and they are largely responsible for the upsurge in Ram-centered devotion in the last two centuries. A fairly recent anthropological examination of Ayodhya, currently the most important Ramanand pilgrimage center in India, has revealed that Ramanandi sadhus, or monks, can be grouped under three basic headings: tyagi (ascetic), naga (fighting ascetic), and rasik (devotional aesthete).4 The increased popularity of the order in recent centuries is such that Ramanandis may today outnumber Dasnamis, the better-known Shaiva monks who look to the ninth-century teacher, Shankaracharya, for their organizational and philosophical moorings.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 549 - 571
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 This essay is based on research conducted between 1986 and 1988, made possible by grants from the Fulbright-Hays program of the U.S. Department of Education and the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Jennifer Saines, R. S. Khare, Walter Hauser, William B. Taylor, Edith Turner, Vera Schwarcz, and to anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions. Of course, I bear all responsibility for any errors of interpretation and fact.Google Scholar

2 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1912–1927), s.v. ‘Ramanandis, Ramawats,’ 570.Google Scholar

3 For example, Peter van, der Veer remarks of a recent study of sant religiosity in north India that ‘Although the name of Ram is central to sant tradition and Ramanand is often said to be the guru of Kabir, there is no mention of the most important “Vaishnava” ascetic tradition of North India, that of the Ramanandis.’ Journal of Asian Studies 47, 3 (08 1988), pp. 678–9.Google Scholar

4 Peter van, der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre (London: Athlone, 1988), esp. chapter three.Google Scholar

5 See Surajit, Sinha and Baidyanath, Saraswati, Ascetics of Kashi: An Anthropological Exploration (Varanasi: N. K. Bose Memorial Foundation, 1978), pp. 49–52, 115, on the dramatic growth of the Ramanandi community vis-a-vis Dasnamis since the eighteenth century.Google Scholar

6 See Nicholas, Dirks, ‘Castes of mind,’ Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 56–78;Google Scholar and Bernard, Cohn, ‘The census, social structure and objectification in South Asia,’ An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 224–54.Google Scholar

7 See Bayly, Christopher A., ‘Peasant and Brahmin: consolidating traditional society,’ chapter five of Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), esp. 155–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kolff, Dirk H. A., Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

8 An important exception is Rosalind, O'Hanlon, Caste, Conflict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

9 I utilize the term Shri Vaishnava in this essay to refer to Ramanuja-oriented Vaishnavas; however, many who were to be distinguished after 1921 as either Ramanandis or Ramanujis would claim the title. Likewise, prior to 1918–1921 the term Ramanandi would have indicated individuals who would later be distinguished as either Ramanuji or Ramanandi. ‘Shri’ is an honorific, ‘revered.’Google Scholar

10 The kumbha mela is a major pilgrimage festival held every three years in four alternating locations: Allahabad, Ujjain, Haridwar, and Nasik.Google Scholar

11 On the debate itself, see van der, Veer, Gods on Earth, 103–7, who describes the controversy from the perspective of present-day Ayodhya.Google ScholarRichard, Burghart, ‘The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect,’ Ethnohistory 25, 2 (Spring 1978), esp. 131–4, analyzes the debate with respect to the question of the historical origins of the Ramanandi sampraday. I refer to both works in the pages below.Google Scholar

12 April 1920: 185–92.Google Scholar

13 Farquhar's view reflects the difficulty scholars have had in trying to date Ramanand. He also advances the interesting hypothesis that Ramanand was in fact a member of a now extinct Ramchandra-worshipping order of South India. This latter argument has been rejected by a number of scholars, most notably perhaps by Shrikrshn Lal, ‘Swami Ramanand ka Jivan-Charitr’ [a biography of Ramanand], in Pitambar, Datt Barthwal (ed.), Ramanand ki Hindi Rachnaen [Ramanand's Hindi verse] (Kashi: Nagari Pracharani Sabha, 1955), 40–2.Google Scholar

14 Sita Ram to George Grierson, 29 June 1920, Mss.Eur.E.223.XI.93—correspondence with Sita Ram, India Office Library and Records (IOLR). Sita Ram was a retired magistrate and deputy collector of U.P. who became associated with Allahabad University and eventually authored an important Hindi-language history of the town of Ayodhya, entitled Ayodhya ka Itihas (Allahabad: Hindustani Academy, 1932);Google Scholarhe and Grierson had begun corresponding in 1904 and would continue to do so until the mid 1930s. The letter would be published in the following year.Google Scholar

15 Farquhar, , ‘The Historical Position of Ramanand,’ 191.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 185.

17 Grierson was so esteemed by Indian scholars that, a full quarter century after his departure from the subcontinent and retirement to England, the Bihar and Orissa Sanskrit Association conferred upon him the title of ‘vagisha,’ eloquent master. See Grierson to Dr. Bari Chand Shastri (acknowledging the honor), 30 September 1921, Grierson Mss, IOLR.Google Scholar

18 Sant is often translated as ‘saint,’ though the two are etymologically distinct. Though cumbersome, ‘truth-exemplar’ would be an accurate translation. See John Hawley, Stratton and Juergensmeyer, Mark, Songs of the Saints of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 3–7.Google Scholar

19 See, for instance, The Bijak of Kabir, tr. by Hess, Linda and Singh, Shukdev, with notes and essays by Hess (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), 19–21.Google Scholar

20 He is characterized as such in passing by Hawley, John Stratton, ‘The Sant in Sur Das,’ in Schomer, Karine and McLeod, W. H. (eds), The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), 192 and footnote 1.Google Scholar

21 Vaudeville, Charlotte, Kabir, vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 36, footnote 3 (see also pp. 113–14).Google Scholar

22 Burghart, , ‘The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect,’ 121–39.Google Scholar

23 Translated: Bhaktamala: text, commentary, and list of names (Kashi: Chandraprabha Press, 1903–1909). For the life of Ramanand, see pp. 413–32. The list of names comprises noted contemporary Ramanandis associated with the author—more on which below. Bhagvan Prasad's Bhaktamala was cited favorably by George Grierson in many of his contributions to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics; similarly, Grierson was prominent among those warmly acknowledged in the conclusion (p. 1331) of Bhagvan Prasad's own work.Google Scholar

24 Sita Ram to Grierson, 29 June 1920, Grierson Mss, IOLR.Google Scholar

25 Rasik best translates as aesthete. The rasik strand of devotion emphasizes heightened emotion, the use of the senses, and (often) a focus on Sita as a means of access to Ramchandra; thus many rasiks, Bhagvan Prasad included, assumed the role of handmaidens to Sita. For more on rasiks, see van der Veer, Peter, Gods on Earth, 159–72;Google Scholar on rasiks as practitioners of Vaishnava devotion and performance, see Philip, Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 309–21.Google Scholar These important works rely in part on the detailed study of Prasad, Bhagwati Sinha, Ram-Bhakti men Rasik Sampraday [the rasik sampraday in Ram bhakti] (Balrampur: Avadh Sahitya Mandir, 1957).Google Scholar

26 Shri Bhaktamala (1903–1909), 420 and 432, respectively. Bhagvan Prasad noted the incorrect view of Wilson and others that Ramanand was fifth in descent from Ramanuja; in fact, according to the Bhaktamala, he was twentieth (see also p. 414). Grierson reproduces Bhagvan Prasad's criticism in his contribution to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. Ramanandis, Ramawats (see the bibliographical note on p. 571).Google Scholar

27 Bhagvan, Prasad cites Tapasvi Ram, along with other bibliographic sources, in Shri Bhaktamala (1903–1909): 426. Tapasvi Ram (1815–1885) was not only renowned for his scholarship and elegant Ramchandra-centered poetry, but was Bhagvan Prasad's father.Google Scholar For more on Tapasvi Ram, see Shivpujan, Sahay, Hindi Sahitya aur Bihar [Hindi literature and Bihar], vol. II (Patna: Bihar Rashtrabhasha Parishad, 1963), 5–7, esp. fn. 3, and 57–66.Google Scholar

28 Bhavishyottarkhand can be translated as ‘the section on events that are going to occur in the future.’ The edition of the Agastyasamhita used by Bhagvan Prasad was published in 1879 by the Suryya Prabhakar Press, Kashi.Google ScholarBakker, Hans, Ayodhya (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1989Google Scholar), has argued that the Agastyasamhita (or hymns of Agastya) was of central importance in the development of Ayodhya as a pilgrimage center. Agastya himself was a Vedic sage, or rishi, who figures in both the Ramayan and Mahabharat and is thought generally to have been responsible for rendering the southern peninsula hospitable for Aryan culture (see Nilakanta Sastri, K. A., A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, third ed. [Madras: Oxford University Press, 1966], 68–81).Google ScholarThe mytho-geographic symmetry here should not go unremarked, in that the point of contention in 1918–1921 was whether Ramanand should be regarded as the sole originator of bhakti or merely its transmitter to the north from the south.Google Scholar

29 Shri Bhaktamala (1903–1909), 414–32.Google Scholar

30 ‘Shri’ is an honorific that precedes the name; 108 is an auspicious number that indicates the number of times the prefix ‘shri’ occurs before the name, or, in other words, the extent of veneration due the individual.Google Scholar

31 Of or having to do with smriti, remembered law (that contained in the dharmashastra texts), as opposed to sruti, revealed knowledge (that contained in the Vedic texts).Google Scholar

32 Grierson, (p. 570) was of the opinion that the mantra was om ramaya nama; however, om namo narayanaya is also a likely possibility. After 1918, the former would indicate allegiance to the radical faction, whereas the latter to the Ramanuji faction.Google Scholar

33 Sri Bhaktamala (1903–1909), 421–2.Google Scholar

34 On the significance of commemoration as a way of extending the past into the future, see Casey, Edward S., Remembering: A Phenomonological Study (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1987), 216–57 and passim. I am grateful to my colleague Vera Schwarcz for this reference.Google Scholar

35 Sahay, Shivnandan, Shri Sitaram Sharan Bhagvan Prasad ji ki Sachitra Jivani [an illustrated biography of Shri Sitaramsharan Bhagvan Prasad] (Patna: Khadgavilas Press, 1908), 5–6.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 35

37 Stein, Burton, ‘Social Mobility and Medieval South Indian Sects,’ in Silverberg, J. (ed.), Social Mobility in the Caste System in India (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 92.Google Scholar

38 Veer, Van der, Gods on Earth, 102.Google Scholar

39 Dharnidharacharya, Swami, Shri awadhavamshiya kshatriya martandah [honourable awadh-lineage kshatriyas of the sun], second ed. (Chapra: Awadhvamshi Kshatriya Sabha, 1936; first ed., Allahabad: n.p., 1930), 143–4. This publication is a caste identity pamphlet, a fact of no small importance given the religious identity of the author.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 149.

41 Kishore Das, Awadh [‘Shri Vaishnava’] (ed.), ‘Shri Ramanand Sampraday ke Vartman-Vidvan’ [Contemporary Scholars of the Ramanandi Sampraday], RamanandGranth-Mala ka Shri Ramanandank [The Ramanand Number of the Ramanand-BookSeries] (hereafter Ramanandank) I, 5–6 (1935–1936), 62.Google Scholar

42 Veer, Van der, Gods on Earth, 103.Google ScholarSee also ‘Shri Ramanand Sampraday ke Vartman-Vidvan,’ Ramanandank, 62, where a similar committee (named Puratatvanusandhayini Samiti) is described as having been formed in 1918 at the urgings of Sitaramiya Mathuradas, another leading Ramanandi of Ayodhya. This committee also leaned toward the independent position.Google Scholar

43 Veer, Van der, Gods on Earth, 104.Google Scholar

44 Burghart, , ‘The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect,’ 131–2.Google Scholar

45 Shyamsundar, Das, ‘Ramavat Sampraday,’ Nagaripracharani Patrika n.s. 4 (1924): 329. Shy. Das was also an editor of the journal. (For this information I am grateful to Francesca Orsini of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.)Google Scholar

46 First edition 1927, p. 18;Google Scholar cited in Shrikrishna, Lal, ‘Swami Ramanand ka Jivan Charitra’ [A biography of Swami Ramanand], in Barthwal, P. D. (ed.), Ramanand ki Hindi Rachnaen [The Hindi Work of Ramanand] (Kashi: Nagari Pracharani Sabha, 1955), p. 43.Google Scholar Bhagavadacharya's 400-page work is in Sanskrit and Hindi and aims to correct the hagiographic ‘deficiencies’ of Ramanandi tradition; it was later re-issued as ShriRamanand-Digvijavah (Ahmedabad: Adhyapika Shrichandandevi, 1967)Google Scholar, but, unfortunately, without the author's preface. See also Burghart, ‘The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect,’ p. 133.Google Scholar

47 Shrimadramanand-digvijayah (1927), 18;Google Scholar cited in Lal, , ‘Swami Ramanand ki Jivan Charitra,’ 43.Google Scholar

48 Das, Avadh Kishor, Ramanandank, 75–6.Google Scholar

49 Veer, Van der, Gods on Earth, 104.Google Scholar

50 Ahmedabad: Swami ShriRamcharitracharya Vyakaranacharya. The contentious circumstances surrounding this work are recounted by Bhagavadacharya in the introduction, pp. 1–42 (and esp. 1–7).Google Scholar

51 SriRamanandabhashyam Ayodhya: Swami Shribhagavadacharya-Smaraksadan, 1963?).Google ScholarThough the publication gives no date, the quote is taken from Bhagavadacharya's preface (pp. 5–18) which is dated August 26, 1963. The text purports to be Ramanand's commentary of Badarayana's Brahmasutra, describing thereby Ramanandi dualist doctrine. See the postscript, pp. 201–6, for sampraday reactions to the impending publication of this volume.Google Scholar

52 The proceedings of this festival were published as SwamiBhagavadacharyaShatabdiSmritiGranth [A book commemorating a century of Swami Bhagavadacharya] (Ahmedabad: Shrichandanbahin ‘Sanskritibhushana’, 1971).Google Scholar

53 Sahay, , Shri Sitaramsharan Bhagvan Prasad-ji ki Sachitra Jivani, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

54 Brajendraprasad, , Shri Rupkala Vak Sudha [The Essence of Shri Rupkala's Sayings] (New Delhi: Dr Saryu Prasad [Brajendrapasad's son], 1970), p. 14. Rupkala was Bhagvan Prasad's nom de plume when composing religious poetry.Google Scholar

55 Prasad, Bhagvan, Shri Bhaktamala (Lucknow: Tejkumar Press, 1962), p. 283.Google Scholar

56 These factions are described by Kishor Das, Avadh in Ramanandank (1935–1936), 74.Google Scholar

57 Ghurye, G. S., Indian Sadhus (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1964), p. 168.Google Scholar

58 These disagreements over caste in the sampraday are manifest in the contradictory interpretations of Peter van der Veer and Richard Burghart, particularly Gods on Earth, 172–82, by the former; and ‘Renunciation in the Religious Traditions of South Asia,’ Man n.s. 18,4 (1983): 641–4, by the latter.Google Scholar

59 Gods on Earth, 106.Google Scholar

60 I explore this history in greater detail in Peasants and Monks in British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), esp. Chs 3 and 4.Google Scholar

61 Nevertheless, there was clear and significant ideological change taking place in these overlapping social spheres. The question is, how to characterize this change most accurately. An important clue is that Arya, which increasingly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries connoted a racial category, was gradually supplanting individual commitments to the more socially restricted caste groups. While all Aryas (including shudras) were conceived of as equal since they were thought to have descended from an ancient people, to be kshatriya was to be first—politically—among equals in colonial society. The desire for such precedence in an egalitarian ethos is best understood as a function of racial ideology. Louis Dumont describes this ‘serious and unexpected consequence of egalitarianism’ succinctly: ‘In a universe in which men are conceived no longer as hierarchically ranked in various social or cultural species, but as essentially equal and identical, the difference of nature and status between communities is sometimes reasserted in a disastrous way: it is then conceived as proceeding from somatic characteristics—which is racism.’ Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 16. See also, in the same volume, Appendix A, ‘Caste, Racism and “Stratification”: Reflections of a Social Anthropologist,’ pp. 247–66. What we may be seeing here, then, are the indications of a periodic flux between hierarchical and egalitarian world views, during which the language of caste is forced to accommodate itself to the meanings inherent to race.Google Scholar

62 The phrase is from Kolff, , Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, 181.Google Scholar

63 Such as Sitaramsharan Bhagvan Prasad himself, who prior to his retirement to Ayodhya worked for many years as an inspector of schools in the education department in Bihar.Google Scholar