The Guru in South Asia: New interdisciplinary perspectives

270 Pages·2011·2.541 MB·English

by  Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame

The Guru in South Asia
This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to
the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different
gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the essays collected in
this volume call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social
lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered
the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mystical
bodily practices. This book goes further and considers the social engagements and
entanglements of these spiritual leaders, not just on their own (narrowly denomi-
national) terms, but in terms of their diverse, complex, rapidly evolving engage-
ments with ‘society’ broadly conceived. The book explores and illuminates the
signifi cance of female gurus, gurus from the perspective of Islam, imbrications of
guru-ship and slavery in pre-modern India, connections between gurus and power,
governance and economic liberalization in modern and contemporary India,
vexed questions of sexuality and guru-ship, gurus’ charitable endeavours, the
cosmopolitanism of gurus in contexts of spiritual tourism, and the mediation of
gurus via technologies of electronic communication.
Bringing together internationally renowned scholars from religious studies,
political science, history, sociology and anthropology, T he Guru in South Asia
provides exciting and original new insights into South Asian guru-ship.
Jacob Copeman is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of
Edinburgh.
Aya Ikegame is Research Associate for the ERC-funded OECUMENE project
‘Citizenship after Orientalism’ at the Open University.
Routledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies Series
Series Editor:
Crispin Bates and the Editorial Committee of the Centre for South Asian Studies,
Edinburgh University, UK.
The R outledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies Series is published in association
with the Centre for South Asian Studies, Edinburgh University – one of the
leading centres for South Asian Studies in the UK with a strong interdisciplinary
focus. This series presents research monographs and high-quality edited volumes
as well as textbooks on topics concerning the Indian subcontinent from the modern
period to contemporary times. It aims to advance understanding of the key issues
in the study of South Asia, and contributions include works by experts in the
social sciences and the humanities. In accordance with the academic traditions of
Edinburgh, we particularly welcome submissions which emphasise the social in
South Asian history, politics, sociology and anthropology, based upon thick
description of empirical reality, generalised to provide original and broadly
applicable conclusions.
The series welcomes new submissions from young researchers as well as estab-
lished scholars working on South Asia, from any disciplinary perspective.
Gender and Sexuality in India
Selling Sex in Chennai
Salla Sariola
Savagery and Colonialism in the Indian Ocean
Power, Pleasure and the Andaman Islanders
Satadru Sen
Sovereignty and Social Reform in India
British Colonialism and the Campaign against Sati, 1830–1860
Andrea Major
Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial World
Rabindranath Tagore’s Writings on History, Politics and Society
Michael Collins
The Guru in South Asia
New Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame
The Guru in South Asia
New interdisciplinary perspectives
Edited by Jacob Copeman
and Aya Ikegame
First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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business
© 2012 Selection and editorial matter: Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame;
individual chapters: the contributors
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The guru in South Asia / Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Gurus—South Asia. 2. Religion and sociology—South Asia.
3. Religion and politics—South Asia. 4. Religion—Economic
aspects—South Asia. I. Copeman, Jacob, editor of compilation.
II. Ikegame, Aya, editor of compilation.
BL1055.G87 2012
206ʹ.10954—dc23
2011048939
ISBN: 978-0-415-51019-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-11625-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
For Susan Bayly and Mishko Hansen, with respect and gratitude
Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
1 The multifarious guru: an introduction 1
J ACOB COPEMAN AND AYA IKEGAME
2 The governing guru: Hindu m athas in liberalising India 46
AYA IKEGAME
3 The slave guru: masters, commanders, and disciples in
early modern South Asia 64
WILLIAM R. PINCH
4 The political guru: the guru as éminence grise 80
CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT
5 The gay guru: fallibility, unworldliness, and the scene
of instruction 97
LAWRENCE COHEN
6 The female guru: guru, gender, and the path of
personal experience 113
KAREN PECHILIS
7 The dreamed guru: the entangled lives of the amil and
the anthropologist 133
VEENA DAS
8 The mimetic guru: tracing the real in Sikh–Dera
Sacha Sauda relations 156
JACOB COPEMAN
viii Contents
9 The mediated guru: simplicity, instantaneity and
change in middle-class religious seeking 181
KATHINKA FRØYSTAD
10 The cosmopolitan guru: spiritual tourism and ashrams
in Rishikesh 202
MEENA KHANDELWAL
11 The literary guru: the dual emphasis on bhakti and
vidhi in western Indian guru-devotion 222
JEREMY G. MORSE
12 Continuities as gurus change 241
DANIEL GOLD
Index 255
Contributors
Lawrence Cohen is Professor of Anthropology and of South and Southeast Asian
Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of N o Aging
in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things , winner of
the Victor Turner Prize, J.I. Staley Prize, and American Ethnological Society
First Book Prize; editor (with Annette Leibing) of the collection T hinking
about Dementia ; and author of numerous essays.
Jacob Copeman is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of
Edinburgh and formerly a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge.
He earned a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in
2007. He is the author of V eins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious
Experience in North India (Rutgers University Press, 2009), and editor of
Blood Donation, Bioeconomy, Culture (Sage, 2009). He has published articles
in Body & Society, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Modern
Asian Studies, Social Analysis, Terrain , and elsewhere.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins
University. Her authored books include L ife and Words: Violence and the
Descent into the Ordinary and Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspec-
tive on Contemporary India . Her edited and co-edited books include M irrors
of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia; Social Suffering ;
and Violence and Subjectivity .
Kathinka Frøystad is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthro-
pology, University of Bergen, Norway. Her research focuses on the interface
between religious plurality, spiritual change and social stratifi cation with
primary reference to North India. She has done fi eldwork in Kanpur, Delhi and
Haridwar, and her recent publications include B lended Boundaries: Caste,
Class and Shifting Faces of Hinduness in a north Indian City (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2005) and various articles on freedom of expression
and spiritual appeals to scientifi c authority.
Daniel Gold is Professor of South Asian Religions at Cornell University. He has
written on perceptions of the guru and succession issues in the Hindi sant tradi-
tion and on the laicization of yogic traditions among the householder Naths of
x Contributors
Rajasthan. His more recent work has dealt with problems of aesthetics in
analytic writing about religion and with popular religion in the mid-sized
Central Indian city of Gwalior.
Aya Ikegame completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of
Edinburgh in 2007 and is currently a Research Associate in the EU-funded
project ‘Citizenship after Orientalism’ at the Open University, UK. Previously
she held JSPS and ESRC-funded research fellowships in Japan and the UK.
Her publications include numerous articles on the social and political anthro-
pology of south India, as well as a co-edited issue of the I ndian Economic and
Social History Review on Indian princely states published in 2009. An ethno-
historical study of Mysore princely state, entitled P rincely India Re-imagined ,
is to be published by Routledge in 2012.
Christophe Jaffrelot is Senior Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS in
Paris. He teaches South Asian politics at Sciences Po, Princeton, Yale and
King’s College. Among his most recent publications are H indu Nationalism: A
Reader , Princeton (NJ)/Princeton University Press, 2007; with L. Gayer (eds),
Armed Militias of South Asia: Fundamentalists, Maoists and Separatists ,
London/Hurst, New York/Columbia University Press, New Delhi/Foundation
Books, 2009 and Religion, Caste and Politics in India , New Delhi/Primus,
London, Hurst, New York/Columbia University Press, 2010; and with
L. Gayer (eds), M uslims of India’s Cities: Trajectories of Marginalization ,
London/Hurst; New York/Columbia University Press; New Delhi/Foundation
Books.
Meena Khandelwal is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women’s
Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research on gender and Hindu renuncia-
tion in Haridwar and Rishikesh has resulted in several essays; a monograph,
Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation (Albany: SUNY
Press, 2004); and a volume co-edited with Sondra Hausner and Ann Grodzins
Gold, titled W omen’s Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and
Singers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Her current research interests
include Indian diaspora, transnational migration, and transnational feminism.
Jeremy G. Morse has spent several years in India during the past decade
conducting research into the history and development of guru-devotion. He
received his Master of Arts from the Divinity School of the University of
Chicago in 2004, and he is currently writing his doctoral dissertation in the
History of Religions there. He has taught at Loyola University Chicago, and
has given conference papers and lectures on South Asian religions.
Karen Pechilis is Professor of Religion and NEH Distinguished Professor of
Humanities at Drew University. She is the author of T he Embodiment of Bhakti
(1999) and Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti
Saint of India (2011), and the editor of T he Graceful Guru: Hindu Female
Gurus in India and the United States (2004).