THE SOCIOLOGY OF

RELIGION IN INDIA
Past, Present and Future

THE SOCIOLOGY OF
RELIGION IN INDIA
Past, Present and Future

Edited by
Ferdinando Sardella
Ruby Sain

ABHIJEET PUBLICATIONS
NEW DELHI 110002

socrel1\120
ABHIJEET PUBLICATIONS
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THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION IN INDIA: PAST, PRESENT

AND FUTURE
Preface

First Published 2013
© Reserved
ISBN 978-93-5074-047-7
[All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted
or used in any form or by any means, whether electronic,
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a brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.]
PRINTED IN INDIA
Published by J.K. Singh for Abhijeet Publications, New Delhi-
110002, Laser Typeset by Abhijeet Typesetters, Delhi and Printed
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xx
The idea for this volume came during the first conference
of the then newly-formed International Forum for the
Study of Society and Religion (IFSSR) organized by Ruby
Sain at the Department of Sociology at Kolkata’s Jadavpur
University, in collaboration with Åke Sander and
Ferdinando Sardella, both at that time from the University
of Gothenburg in Sweden. The three-days conference was
titled “The Interface between East and West,
Multiculturalism and Identity: What Can Sociology and
Religious Studies Contribute to the Making of a Better
Society?” and was held on June 10-12, 2009.
At that time the editors and Sander conceived of a
volume that would contain revised papers from the
conference and would also serve as an introduction to,
and reflection over, the study of religion in general and
sociology of religion in particular within the Indian context.
As time passed, more chapters were added/selected from
lectures and paper presentations held at Jadavpur
University and related to the subject. The chapter by Joseph
O’Connell was received during spring 2011 at the Oxford
Centre for Hindu Studies where he and the editors met as
visiting scholars. The Centre provided support and an

socrel-1\121
 (vi) (vii)
ideal setting for developing ideas about the concept of At last, we wish to dedicate this work to the memory
this volume. of Joseph O’Connell, who passed away in May of 2012.
The intention behind this book is to provide a thoughtful The editors had the privilege to associate with him and
input for contemporary discussions about the role of religion gain immensely from his vast professional experience as
in the modern world and about the field of the sociology well as his friendship.
of religion in particular—input that is specific, locally Uppsala, April 24, 2013.
grounded, and relevant for both Indian and Western Ferdinando Sardella
contexts. It also aims at being sensitive to contemporary, & Ruby Sain
as well as past, Western and Indian social and cultural
life, employing in a creative way a number of theoretical
frames that, historically, belong to the academic world of
the West, but which have now taken a life of their own in
the hands of Indian academic scholars. In doing so it
attempts to go beyond the hermeneutical lenses of
Orientalism and Occidentalism and to take seriously and
critically into account the unique history and culture of
India, as well as its rich religious life. The contributors
come from Europe, North America and India and have
carefully reflected on the past and its implications for a
balanced and productive understanding of religion and
society in contemporary India.
This volume is born from cooperation between Indian
and European universities initially facilitated by SASNET,
the Swedish South Asian Studies Network, and later by
the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. The outcome is
hopefully a beginning of a long-term collaboration for the
development of religious studies as a global field of research
and education.
We wish to thank Mrittika Ghosh, J. Hoyoung, Monojit
Mandal, Theresa Rothschadl, Mallarika Sarkar, Titasha
Sinha and Swami Narasimhananda for their contributions
in preparing this volume. We also wish to thank the Swedish
Research Council for funding that have allowed Sardella
to complete the editing of this volume at Uppsala University
in spring 2013.

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6. Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious 114
Experience
FEDERICO D’AGOSTINO
Part Two
Case Studies
7. Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre- 133
Colonial and Colonial Bengal: Estimates of
Gender, Caste, Geography
JOSEPH O’CONNELL
Contents
8. The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism: 166
The Case of Swami Vivekananda
xx FERDINANDO SARDELLA
9. Rethinking Krishna’s Eroticism: Nineteenth 188
Century Attitudes and Bhaktivinoda’s
Foreword Hermeneutical Strategies
ABHISHEK GHOSH
Preface
10. Gandhi’s Concept of Religion 224
Introduction 1
CHAITALI DAS
Part One
Contributors 233
The Study of Religion in India
1. Sociology of Religion: Main Topics and 11
Socio–political Relevance
ÅKE SANDER
2. The Sociology of Religion in India 59
SWAPAN PRAMANIK
3. Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions 72
GAVIN FLOOD
4. Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and 84
Postmodern Societies
RUBY SAIN
5. Religious Studies and the Knowledge Society: 105
Open Access as Contributing to an Open Society
CLEMENS CAVALLIN

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Introduction
FERDINANDO SARDELLA and RUBY SAIN
Religion in India is a fascinating field of study for scholars
of religion. Indic religions have an enviable history of
living traditions that span over millennia. India has
accommodated vastly different religious theologies and
practices, and despite a multiculturalism and religious
diversity that is difficult to match anywhere else in the
world, the country is today a well functioning secular
democracy. The study of religion in India is therefore of
great interest to research scholars from the West, as they
experience at home, from religious and secular quarters
alike, an increasing intolerance against religious diversity.
The academic study of religion, however, is not yet
fully developed in South Asia and the growth of the
sociology of religion and religious studies presents a number
of challenges.1 Relatively few universities in India and
other South Asian countries offer courses focused on the
subject—a heritage from the educational system
implemented during the colonial period—with few
exceptions such as the newly opened Centre for the Study
of Religion and Society at Jadavpur University in Kolkata,
socrel-1\1
2 The Sociology of Religion in India
and courses on Comparative Religion at the Institute of
Humanities and Social Sciences at Visva-Bharati University
in Santiniketan. Most of the extensive research done on
the subject is carried out by other departments of humanities
and social sciences such as Sanskrit, literature, philosophy,
or political science.
Religion as a political and social factor has increasingly
received global attention both in the academic world and
in the media since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Events linked to religion such as 9/11 attacks, the global
war on terror, the bombings in Bali, Madrid, and London,
as well as the crises following the publication of the
caricatures of Muhammad in Denmark have filled the
news around the world. The view that secularization would
end religion in the modern world has given place to
theories about the resurgence of religion in contemporary
societies such as Samuel P. Huntington’s controversial
“clash of civilizations” (see chapter 1).2 As a result, a new
interest in religious studies has emerged in several parts
of the world.
The field of religious studies in India has somewhat
suffered from the fact that religion is a sensitive territory
due to the threat of communalism and religious conflict,
to which religious, and above all, confessional education
are thought to contribute. Communalism and religious
conflict are indeed variables widely regarded as
undermining the very fibre of any modern secular state.
Examples of events that have inspired these concerns are
the communal riots during the struggle for India’s
independence, the conflicts between Hindus and Sikhs in
Punjab, and more recently, the Hindu-Muslim clashes about
the Ayodhya temple in North India, and the growth of
Hindu and Islamic nationalism.
On the other hand, there have been attempts by
philosophers and religious figures to overcome religious
tensions in the past, which have been both appreciated
and praised, at times outside India as well. Some examples,
Introduction
which in several cases have been discussed in this volume,
are—Buddha, Akbar, Rammohun Roy (chapter 8, 9),
Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda (chapter 8),
Bhaktisiddhanta (chapter 8), Tagore, Bhaktivinoda (chapter
9), Gandhi (chapter 10) and early Hindu-Muslim syncretists
such as Kabir. Religion has played a positive transformative
role not only at the individual level (micro) but also on
the social level (macro) through influential institutions
such as the Ramakrishna Mission, the Gaudiya Math
(chapter 8), the Brahmo Samaj, and through popular
phenomena such as the bhakti movement and folk religion
(chapter 4). Christian, Hindu, and Islamic missions,
although controversial, have also contributed to social
development and mass education. Whether welcomed or
despised, the overall role of religion has not waned in
India, and few would disagree that religion occupies a
significant place in South Asian culture, politics, and history.
For this reason, it seems appropriate to openly advocate
the need to include religion as a specific domain of research
and education within the frame of secular education.
As mentioned above, the sociology of religion is an
emerging field in India, with a history that bodes well for
the future (see chapter 2 for an overview). There are many
possible directions that could be taken. The study of
secularisation and the place of religion in secular societies
is an obvious path, keeping in mind that in India
secularisation plays a different role compared to the West
and other parts of the world. Secularisation in modern
societies and modernity itself takes many forms as Shmuel
Noah Eisenstadt has shown, and the place of religion in
the twenty-first century is not yet cast in stone.3
The title of this volume, The Sociology of Religion in
India: Past, Present and Future, points to the need for a
more comprehensive study of religion in educational
institutions and universities in India. It promotes, however,
a study that should not compromise the stringency and
neutrality of a humanistic and scientific approach. In this
regard, the relation between Religious Studies and Theology
3 4 The Sociology of Religion in India
should be carefully considered (see chapter 2). The study
of religion still suffers from the burden of the colonial
past, of Orientalism and local biases, and revisions and
novel approaches are therefore welcome.
The volume is divided into two parts, one that addresses
theoretical issues and another that consists of case studies
of practice, knowledge, and history. The first provides an
overview of the present state of the sociology of religion
and religious studies, explores theoretical issues related
to the field, and asks questions about the future of the
discipline. The second part explores the social and cultural
impact of select historical figures and movements in the
religious life of India. The relation between individual
agency and social structures is dealt with through a selected
number of historical case studies. The focus of this book
is India, and to some extent Bengal, which is the
geographical place that gave birth to this volume—a fact
that is mirrored in most of the case studies (chapter 6, 7,
and 8)—nevertheless some of the chapters also address
global issues and are of general interest for the discipline
as a whole (see chapter 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6). Next follows a
short description of the content of each chapter.
Åke Sander introduces the first section with a number
of reflections on the sociology of religion as an academic
discipline—its content, major themes, questions, and setup,
and the various ways in which it is taught and studied at
universities in the West. The chapter addresses the broader
question of how religious differences can be negotiated in
terms of identity, culture, and society as persons of different
background and religious belonging are presently brought
“closer” together due to globalisation, mass migration,
and modern information technologies.
Swapan Pramanik provides an overview of the
development of the literature in the field of sociology of
religion in India from its early beginnings to the turn of
the 21st century. Pramanik argues that the literature on
the sociology of religion began with two distinct groups
socrel1\2
Introduction
of European scholars: those engaged in studies of religious
texts and those interested in the observation and analyses
of beliefs and practices among living communities. These
two approaches later on shaped the historical development
of the discipline in India, which today asks questions
about the applicability of Western models of secularisation
to the study of religion in contemporary Indian society.
Gavin Flood raises the question of how religion is studied
and understood in the twenty-first century. He first offers
historical observations about the growth of religious studies
in Britain. He then explores Phenomenology as a theoretical
frame for the study of religion, and its potential for the
study of religion in India.
Ruby Sain presents an analysis of the concept of religion
in the modern and postmodern context as well as the
concept of folk religion. She begins with a review of several
important Western definitions of religion, which have
marked the beginnings of the sociology of religion and
the study of religion. She then explores the concepts of
postmodernity and globalisation. She suggests that Hindu
religions are semantically and structurally different from
the religions of the West, and need to be studied from a
different perspective, more authentic to their inner structure.
In the last section of the chapter she suggests that folk
religion is lived and transmitted by common people
generation after generation, and it is found in most regions
of the world. According to Sain, folk religion—through
rituals, worship, and prayer—still continues to satisfy the
emotional and religious needs of large sections of the
Indian population.
Clemens Cavallin discusses the postmodern period, taking
as a point of departure the theories of Jean-François Lyotard,
which address the global struggle for the resources of
knowledge. Access to knowledge is today as important as
access to energy, but according to Cavallin both are unevenly
distributed. Academic knowledge is not available for free,
but is most often sold through costly journals and books.
5 6 The Sociology of Religion in India
At the same time, grass roots movements champion open
access and free sharing, and actively work against the
monopoly of knowledge content. According to Cavallin,
future conflicts will be fought for control of knowledge
and information. The chapter explores this scenario as
well as the issue of global coexistence.
In the following chapter, Federico D’Agostino presents
the observation that the debate about the alleged eclipse
of the sacred and its new return is well alive, not only in
public space, but also in the sociological and anthropological
literature. What is missing in this discussion, he argues,
is the symbolic perspective on religious experience.
D’Agostino reviews the major theories related to this subject
and clarifies the concepts of the sacred and religious
symbolism with the help of evolutionary as well as
horizontal, vertical and linear models, which address the
re-emergence of religion side by side with the gradual
secularisation of modern and postmodern societies.
Joseph O’Connell inaugurates the second part by
estimating who and how many of those regarded as
Vaishnavas (in the tradition that goes back to Sri Krishna
Caitanya or simply Caitanya) were found in sultanate
and colonial Bengal, and how they were distributed in
terms of gender, caste, and geography. The chapter explores
several demographical sources of the Caitanya Vaishnava
devotees (often referred to as Gaudiya or Bengali
Vaishnavas). O’Connell draws upon the limited quantifiable
evidence provided by Vaishnava biographical and
hagiographical sources going back to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and upon statistical and descriptive
data provided by modern ethnological studies, as well as
census reports by the government of British India.
O’Connell’s chapter contributes to our current
understanding of the social aspects of the Caitanya
Vaishnavas of pre-independence Bengal and invites further
research on the history and development of that religion
in India.
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Introduction 7 8 The Sociology of Religion in India

Ferdinando Sardella argues that during the nineteenth daily life. Refuting the notion that his emphasis on
and twentieth centuries a majority of the Bengali middle Hinduism alienated Muslims from mainstream politics
class became influenced by nondualistic thought, which and paved the way for the partition of the country in
had its roots in early monistic philosophy but had been 1947, she emhasises instead Gandhi’s adherence to the
reshaped and revived by key personalities of Indian principle of secularism as well as his focus on tolerance
religious life, such as Rammohun Roy and Swami and communal coexistence.
Vivekananda. The chapter discusses some of the currents It is the editors’ cherished hope that this volume will
and influences that created a fertile ground for the contribute to the further development of the sociologyand
flourishing of nondualist views, which had, and still have, study of religion in India.
a profound impact on the development of what is known
as “modern Hinduism”. NOTES
Abhishek Ghosh deals as well with the intellectual history 1. For a review of the Sociology of Religion in India see also
of nineteenth-century Bengali intellectuals, but from a the introduction of Rowena Robinson (2004), Sociology of
different perspective—that of the pan-Indian Hindu deity Religion in India, New Delhi; London: Sage Publications.
of Krishna. With the rise of the Bengali middle class and 2. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996), The Clash of Civilizations and
the influence of Victorian puritan ethos, precolonial the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster.
literature describing Krishna’s plays with the female 3. See for example Eisenstadt, S.N. (2003), Comparative
inhabitants of Vrindavan such as the Bhagavata Purana Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Leiden: Brill.
became repulsive to many nineteenth-century Bengalis
and Indians. The chapter examines the views of Rammohun
Roy, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, and Swami
Vivekananda, contrasting them with the more tradition-
oriented ones of the magistrate Kedarnath Datta
Bhaktivinoda (1838–1914). Ghosh argues that Bhaktivinoda
framed an intricate theological system based on the
Bhagavata Purana to justify Krishna’s amorous play.
In the last chapter, Chaitali Das reviews Gandhi’s
religious thought as it evolved while he was in England
and South Africa, and the comparative study of religion
that he embarked. Das shows that through deep study,
examination of theological works, conversations and
correspondence with the learned, Gandhi concluded that
true religion was a matter of the heart rather than of the
intellect, and that genuine beliefs were those that were
totally lived. Gandhi’s concept of religion, Das suggests,
did not have much in common with organised religion. It
was in effect an ethical framework for the conduct of

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Part One
The Study of Religion in India

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1 example, there is an urgent need to address the relation
Sociology of Religion
Main Topics and Socio–political Relevance
ÅKE SANDER
This chapter contains some reflections on the sociology of
religion—its content (major themes, questions, etc.), its
setup, and the various ways that it is conducted at
universities in the “so-called” West.1 As I have been given
to understand it, this is something that is not yet well
known in India.
At the outset, however, I must emphasise that what
follows should be taken as an indication of only one way
of pursuing this area of study. The chapter, in other words,
should be seen as an attempt to open a dialogue about
how, together, Indians, Westerners and others can develop
the study of the sociology of religion. By way of
introduction, I would also like to say that it is my
conviction—probably shared by all who have followed
occurrences in the “world of religion” over the last several
decades—that the question of the place and role of religion
in society has become one of importance in today’s
globalised world. This is largely because religion, in the
broadest sense, has come to play an increasingly significant
role in world events, making it more necessary than ever
socrel1\6
12 The Sociology of Religion in India
to address the following question: “How are we to negotiate
our religious differences in a time that has placed us in
closer proximity than ever before due to the effects of
globalisation, mass migration and modern information
technologies?” This is a matter that must be addressed on
both the global and the local level. On the global level, for
between the Islamic and the Western-Christian world,
unhelpfully characterised by Samuel Huntington as a “clash
of civilisations”. And on the local level we must confront
the increasing rise of tensions and conflicts between ethno-
religious groups in many locations, including India and
Sweden. Indeed there is a long list of local conflicts that
in one way or another involve religion as a significant
component, and that often manifest in terms of majority-
minority disputes.
Given this, all individuals (be they sociologists or not)
seem to be increasingly in need of answers to the question
posed above. The following presentation, which can be
viewed as one attempt to provide the basis for informed
answers through the medium of the sociology of religion,
is divided into four primary sections.
To begin with, I will indicate something about the
socio-political relevance of the sociology of religion in
today’s society and world: that is, why it is “unwise” or
even “dangerous” to leave “the religious factor” out of
our analyses of many of the social problems of our time.
Another way of saying this is to ask: “What is the value
of the sociology of religion to today’s society, and to those
that live within it?” Here we will also touch upon the
problem of the “cross-cultural application” (or universal
validity) of sociological theories and concepts, meaning
the extent to which theories and concepts that have been
developed in the “Christian West” are applicable in other
cultural and religious contexts. In this connection, it is
important to note that the debate over applicability strongly
involves the definition of the term “religion” itself.
Sociology of Religion 13
Then I will discuss what might be called “thinking
sociologically about religion”, or how sociologist at Western
universities generally view and think about religion. After
this I will outline some of the major topics of discussion
(or controversy) that have arisen within the field over the
last several years. Here I will touch upon such themes as
modernity (and its relation to postmodernity),
secularisation, religious pluralism (how society copes with
religious diversity and minority religions), globalisation
and the resurgence (revival or rediscovery) of religion
and religiosity, often in the form of so-called
“fundamentalist” movements. Finally, I will briefly describe
the main theoretical positions of the secularisation debate
that has been going on in sociology for the last several
years.
I. THE RELEVANCE OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF
RELIGION
Sociologists of religion obviously cannot guarantee that
their work will have practical value. But most of us, I
think, like to believe that our largely intellectual endeavour
might in some way help to improve a deplorable social
situation, or at least influence public opinion and the
policies of our respective politicians. I believe, in other
words, that as sociologists we should model ourselves
more after the Buddha than after the British Association
of Mathematicians, which is said to open all its meetings
with the following toast: “To pure mathematics, and may
it never be of use to anyone!” The Buddha, on the other
hand, is said to have declared that when a house is on
fire, the task is not to spend precious time debating about
how to put it out, but rather to take immediate and
appropriate action.
This notwithstanding, it must also be said that as
scholars we must have a strong inclination (if not an
obligation) to think carefully about a problem before
promoting our views even in words, what to speak of
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14 The Sociology of Religion in India
deeds. Useful and successful actions are always based on
the accurate analysis of a given situation, in combination
with solid theoretical knowledge.
As has been increasingly argued by numerous
sociologists and political scientists, the serious political
and religious climate of today’s world calls upon us to
exclaim, like the Buddha, that in very real ways our common
house is on fire. More explicitly, because of processes
often summarised under the headings “modernisation”
and “globalisation”, the “religious factor” has re-emerged
as a key element in many of the world’s arenas, thus
heightening the role of religion in both national and global
politics, as well as in our daily lives.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union,
and the end of the Cold War, this “religious factor” has
come to the fore with events such as the 1979 Iranian
revolution, the 9/11 attacks, and all that has followed in
its wake. Along with this, questions of growing importance
have been raised about terrorism and religious extremism
in particular, and about religious minorities, diversity,
pluralism and tolerance in general. So long as these
problems are not solved in generally agreed upon ways,
sociologists of religion will have much work to do. Indeed
a growing number of writers have emphasised the
importance of the study of religion and the need to
understand the various religious traditions (as well as the
relation between them). Thus it appears that the necessity
of developing a “practical” sociology of religion is more
urgent today than perhaps ever before.
Before moving on to the core of my presentation, I
would like to offer a few general remarks about the
underlying assumptions entailed in my way of looking at
social science in general, and the sociology of religion in
particular.
The first has to do with what is often known in sociology
as “value-neutrality”. Since Max Weber (1864–1929), it
has been the view of many social scientists that they, to
Sociology of Religion 15
the best of their ability, should work in an objective,
dispassionate way, bracketing all of their personal (or
subjective) biases, values, wants and opinions. Since at
least the 1960s, however, there has been a growing trend
within what is often referred to as “critical sociology”
which questions both the possibility and the desirability
of this “traditional” view. A major assumption within this
sociology is that all knowledge is shaped by its time and
place, that all understandings are social constructs, and
that there is no way for a social scientist to step out of his
or her time and social context.2 A subset of these sociologists
proffer an even stronger version of this non-objectivity
thesis: that instead of attempting to be objective and
dispassionate, it is rather the sociologist’s moral duty to
take a stand and be emancipative—to use the tools of his
or her trade for such purposes as improving conditions
for disadvantaged, disenfranchised or deprived groups
such as immigrants, religious minorities, women, gays
and the like.
My own position can be roughly summarised as follows:
while we scientists have a clear obligation to search for
the truth, I believe that Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was
right in noting that the truths we can access are rare, at
best, and never clear cut; I also believe that Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) was right when he singled out “power” as
being one of the major forces forming our societies and
social relations, and as being unequally distributed in all
societies. By saying this, I place myself as a “moderate”
among the members of critical sociology.3
The second, and possibly less controversial, of my
assumptions is that a major result of (post-) modernisation
and globalisation has been a dramatic increase in religious
pluralism; it is moreover my opinion that this pluralism
will continue to grow and become an even more important
social and political factor in more and more areas of the
world for the foreseeable future.
Bringing together the assumptions presented thus far
leads us to one of the important sociological questions of
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16 The Sociology of Religion in India
our time: How can we, as sociologists, contribute to enabling
the various religious (and secular) traditions to peacefully
coexist on this planet? My belief, as I have argued at
length elsewhere, is that mere tolerance is not enough.
We must also respect and learn from each other—a point
that Mahatma Gandhi is also said to have made.4
As a corollary, a third assumption is my belief that by
using its analytic and methodological tools, the sociology
of religion can both provide insight and frame solutions
relative to the question posed above. Here we are brought
back to the first of my assumptions: because I believe that
we can, I believe that we have an obligation to try. In this
regard, I am fully aware that the road to such a positive
end will not be easy since a majority of people tend to see
their norms, values and general way of life as the standard
measure, and to see their religious tradition as being
grounded in unquestionable, absolute truths.
Despite these challenges, it is still my belief—and I
will state it once again—that the sociological study of
religion can offer valuable insights concerning how we
can make peace with our diversity, and that it can provide
helpful tools for solving the unique problems of our rather
newly created multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious
world. In short, I believe that the academic study of religion
can provide valuable approaches to some of the serious
problems and dilemmas plaguing many modern nations
and cultures.
The Cross-Cultural Applicability and Validity of Western
Sociological Concepts
Today there is a wide-ranging and growing debate about
whether “Western–Christian” terminologies, taxonomies
and theories can be meaningfully applied to other cultural
and religious traditions.5 This debate strongly includes
the term “religion” itself. It is, for example, hard to find
a term in Arabic or Sanskrit that corresponds to the English
term “religion”. To a large extent, this is due to the fact
Sociology of Religion 17
that Hinduism and Islam are not the same kind of “systems”
as Christianity—a difference often expressed in terms of
orthodoxy vs. orthopraxis. As far as I am concerned, it is
justifiable to charge that throughout history most Western
scholars have uncritically and unreflectively considered
“Western-Christian” concepts to be the paradigm by which
religion and religiosity should be defined. This, however,
should not come as a surprise, since in all but more recent
times most social and other scientists have been Western-
Christian men, and most of the world’s civilisations have
been subject to the socio-political, economic, ideological
and cultural hegemony of the Christian West. At best,
this sort of “Western-Christian centrism” has been
misleading. Many, however, have further argued that such
a bias has been a major stumbling block to the achievement
of constructive dialogue between the world’s different
religious traditions. Yet others—such as most advocates
of so-called Orientalism and Post-colonialism—have argued
that the problem is not only intellectual and scientific, but
also political: that it is an expression of Western-Christian
arrogance and imperialism, which aims to define other
faiths and cultures on its terms instead of their own, all
for the purpose of religious or other forms of domination.
Whatever the truth may be in this regard, one thing is
certain: at present there is neither a conceptual nor a
theoretical-methodological framework by which cross-
cultural and cross-religious studies, descriptions and
comparisons can be conducted in a religiously, politically
and/or scientifically uncontroversial way. This is an area
that still requires a great deal of thought, attention and
consideration despite the fact that some solid scholarly
work has recently been done—e.g., King (1999), Macfie
(2001) and Turner (1994).
II. THINKING SOCIOLOGICALLY ABOUT RELIGION
In a nutshell, the sociology of religion focuses on the
interplay, or relationship, between institutional religion
and personal religiosity on the one hand, and the society
socrel-1\9
18 The Sociology of Religion in India
in which they exist on the other—along with its various
familial, educational, and political institutions.
This means that the sociology of religion always studies
religion in relation to the social contexts (micro to macro,
local to global) in which it necessarily exists and functions.
And since social contexts (culture and society) are constantly
changing, the sociology of religion also has a strong interest
in studying various kinds of religious change, both in
individuals and in religious institutions.
Every academic discipline has its particular focus area
or subject, as well as its particular “slant” on that subject.
Sociologists are (or at least should be), as Peter Berger
(1966:18) expresses it, “intensively, endlessly, shamelessly”
interested in humans—in people and how they feel, think,
value and behave, as well as in the various results of their
thinking and acting (group formations, institutions,
artefacts, etc.). And sociologists of religion in particular,
are interested in human thinking and behaviour that is
related to, motivated by and/or directed towards “religion”.
They are interested, in other words, in how religious people
feel, think, value and behave, individually and in groups,
in relation to their social context.6
What it is for a human being to be religious and what
it takes for an ideological and social system to be a religion
are controversial and much discussed topics. 7 For
simplicity’s sake, I here suggest that the notion of religiosity
presupposes:
1. that one holds a certain conception of and belief in
a transcendent reality that is beyond, or independent
of, human discretion.
2. that one considers knowing about and aspiring
towards this reality to be of great importance to
his/her life.
3. that one believes that the “right way” to live is to
live in accordance with the “will” of this reality, as
(s)he understands it, and thus makes a serious
Sociology of Religion
effort to embody the values and principles that
flow from that will.8
From these presuppositions it follows that a religion
(or religious tradition) is, to some degree, an institutionalised
conglomerate of individuals whose religiosity is of the
same form.9
In short, the sociologist of religion desires to study
those things that various individuals, groups and/or
communities believe to be true in the area religion, and
how these beliefs influence and shape their thoughts,
feelings, values and behaviour. In contrast to theology,
the sociology of religion is generally regarded as an
empirical study.10 This is because as sociologists we are
generally not interested in the normative question of which
among or within the various traditions is the “right” or
“true” system of beliefs (e.g., the “true” Islam, Christianity
or Hinduism); neither are we interested in normative
judgements as to the way individuals ought to live or
behave. Rather we are interested in studying all empirical
phenomena that constitute the world of religion: all that
the religious hold true, believe in and do as a consequence
of their religiosity. Our aim, in other words, it to describe,
interpret, analyze, understand and explain the entire
spectrum of, often contradictory, beliefs and practices that
have and do encompass human religious life, and, if
possible, to make predictions on the basis of this knowledge
as well. We want to know how the various religious
traditions function and are employed by living persons to
pursue happiness, fulfilment and success in life.
The empirical sociological study of religion begins
with the methodological assumption that whatever else
they might be, religions are first and foremost human,
historical, social and societal phenomena: that each religious
tradition grows from and acts upon the social life of its
participants. We begin, in other words, from the assumption
that, rather than functioning in isolation, each religious
tradition is integrally involved with its social context,
19 20 The Sociology of Religion in India
and each religious expression is a function of the cultural,
political, social and economic conditions—the time, place
and circumstances—under which human beings live. As
the context of a given religious tradition changes, so does
what it means to belong to and believe in that tradition.
This, of course, is just another way of saying that the
meaning of “being religious” is largely a function of a
great many empirical societal factors that are continuously
transforming. When these factors change—as they always
must—the religious tradition changes as well, along with
the meaning of being an adherent. Or to put it the other
way around: religious traditions take on new functions,
meanings and modes of expression when they are
confronted with new social and societal conditions that
require the provision of new answers as well as the
legitimization and confirmation of new identities. Of late,
the most significant example of this is provided by the
manner in which all religious traditions have had to
transform and adapt to the processes of modernisation,
globalisation and post-modernisation—a phenomenon that
has been especially noticeable as a result of global migration,
but that can also be seen when the “external world” invades
local communities via new technologies and modes of
communication. Over the last decades, the attempt to
track, describe and analyse these transformations and
adaptations has been a major aim of the sociology of
religion. Yet another way of putting this is that within the
field of sociology, religion and religiosity are primarily
viewed as dependent variables.
From this it should be clear that sociologists (and
psychologists) often provide explanations in the area of
religion and religiosity other than those generally given
by the adherents themselves: the behavioural scientist
generally explains religious beliefs and actions in terms
of responses to external contextual conditions and causes,
whereas the adherent generally explains these in terms of
his/her own “rational choices”.
socrel1\10
Sociology of Religion
The primary aim of the sociology of religion is to
understand and explain religion and religiosity without
making reference to transcendent or metaphysical factors
or causes. As social scientists we have to confine ourselves
to those elements of religion and religious life that are
immanently observable (or otherwise accessible). This
approach is what Ninian Smart (1973: 54) has termed
“methodological agnosticism”. Here it is crucial to
understand that this does not represent a reductionistic
stance. Social science, by virtue of being a science, is
incapable of either denying or confirming the existence of
a transcendent reality (a reality that is beyond our empirical
gaze and cognitive reach); nor is it capable of judging
whether or not (or to what degree) such a reality may be
active in the life of an individual or in the world at large.
Prudent scientific investigation thus calls upon the scientist
to “bracket” such considerations not on ontological, but
only on methodological (or epistemological) grounds—
that is, in recognition of the fact that such mysterious
aspects of reality are more or less impossible to study via
scientific methods.
Peter Berger (1974) expresses this point of view as
follows:
the scientific study of religion must bracket
the ultimate truth claims implied by its
subjects. /…/ gods are not empirically
available, and neither their nature nor their
existence can be verified through the very
limited procedures given to the scientists…
they are only available qua contents of
human consciousness.
And it is further confirmed by Hood et al (1996: 2):
Science has no calling to challenge religious
institutions and their doctrines. God is not
our domain; neither is the world vision of
churches. We do not enter into debates of
21 22 The Sociology of Religion in India
faith versus reason, of one theology versus
another, or of religion with science.
When social scientists adopt this bracketed approach
to understand and explain religion and religiosity, and
comprehend their effects on human thinking and behaviour,
they pursue explanatory factors on three levels: 1) the
macro level, which generally involves the examination of
religion and religiosity on both a global and a cultural (or
societal) scale; 2) the meso level, which generally involves
the examination of groups and institutions; and, 3) the
micro level, which generally involves the examination of
individuals in terms of both intra-psychic and somatic
factors. An individual’s personality, worldview and conduct
are formed by factors coming from all these levels, with
the influence of each factor becoming more or less important
depending on the specifics of the situation (time and
place). Within sociology and psychology there are various
understandings of precisely how these three levels are to
be explained. For present purposes, the following rough
description should suffice:
each human being is socialised into a specific
culture and society that strongly influences
how s(he) thinks, feels, values and behaves
(the macro level).11 Each human being is
also socialised into specific ethnic, religious,
political, etc. groups and institutions—with
their specific views, norms, values, manners
and customs—that likewise influence how
(s)he thinks, feels, values and behaves (the
meso level).
Finally, each human being undergoes a specific pattern
of socialisation and life experience over the course of his/
her development, the variations of which create a unique
interpretative pattern, meaning the largely unconscious
conceptual structure through which an individual selects,
organizes, constitutes and perceives his/her life-world.
As a result of these variations—especially those involving
socrel-1\11
Sociology of Religion
experiences of deprivation, crises and trauma—one
develops unique intra-psychic characteristics (e.g., interests,
cognitive skills, fears, preferences, emotional reaction
patterns and the like) that affect one’s ability to cope with
various situations and events. Also included within this
category are those general psychological conditions that
individuals such as Freud, Jung, Eliade, Antonowsky and
others have attempted to uncover—e.g., the fact that human
beings are “meaning seeking creatures” with an “ontological
thirst”.
But human beings are not only constituted in terms of
socializing and intra-psychic factors; they also have a
specific genetic “make-up” that is most often inherited—
a somatic component that also influences the way they
think, feel, value and behave. Over the years, largely as a
result of advances in neuroscience, this somatic component
has received increased attention within religious studies,
often under the heading of neurotheology or spiritual
neuroscience.12 One aspect of this concerns the person’s
gender; another concerns his/her theoretical, social,
spiritual, etc. intelligence; and yet another involves his/
her proficiency in skills such as athletic ability and
musicality.13 In addition to these, a certain percentage of
individuals are born with, and affected by, various genetic
deficiencies.
In broad terms, it can be said that sociologists tend to
focus on, and employ, theories and explanatory models
from the macro and meso levels (in that order), whereas
psychologists tend to focus on the micro and meso levels
(in that order). Both groups, however, tend to agree that
a comprehensive understanding must take into account
all three levels of explanation. They also tend to agree
that a complete knowledge of all the relevant factors on
all three levels should theoretically enable the scientist to
provide a comprehensive empirical explanation of why a
given individual in a given circumstance thinks, feels,
values and behaves the way (s)he does, and to predict
23 24 The Sociology of Religion in India
how (s)he will think, feel, value and behave in different
known situations. This, however, is no easy task. When it
comes to understanding and explaining many of the more
interesting questions regarding human religiosity, we are
still very much like the archaeologist trying to describe
the life of an ancient culture by examining 3000-year-old
potsherds at the bottom of a well.
Against this backdrop, I will conclude this portion of
my presentation by listing some of the primary areas of
research that sociologists of religion tend to be involved
in, and the “slant” they tend to take on their subject.
1) Sociologists of religion study social groups.
Because human beings are basically social animals,
religions are comprised of social groups, social collectives.
2) Sociologists of religion study social interaction.
Religion entails, almost by definition, the attempt to
bridge the gap between the immanent, empirically
knowable aspects of reality and those aspects that constitute
the transcendent, empirically impalpable and mysterious.
It also almost always involves the attainment of some
type of subjective experience of transcendence. On the
other hand, it also almost always entails this-world
interactions between human beings as well. For Émile
Durkheim (1858–1917), it was the last of these that was
the very core of religion.
3) Sociologists of religion study social institutions and social
structures.
According to many, religion is by definition a social
institution. This leads to the question of how religion and
other major social institutions influence each other. The
interplay between religion and society/culture has been
a focus of all the “founding fathers” of sociology—Karl
Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber, Èmile Durkheim and George
Simmel (1858–1918)—all of whom recognised that religion
socrel1\12
Sociology of Religion 25
played an integral role in the great changes that took
place in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
4) Sociologists of religion study social patterns.
How does belonging to or believing in a particular
religious tradition or institution affect a person’s behaviour?
This can include such matters as: Whether religious persons
tend to be more or less honest than the non-religious?
Whether Hindus tend to be more or less “healthy minded”
than Muslims? Whether women tend to be more or less
religious than men? Whether persons of today are more
or less religious than those of the past (the question of
secularisation)? Whether the members of minority groups
tend to be more or less religious than those of the majority
(the question of religious plurality)? Whether changes in
environment or context tend to make persons more or
less religious, or religious in different ways (the question
of migration)?
5) Sociologists of religion claim that an individual can be truly
understood only within his or her socio-historical context.
Everything about religion and religiosity has a strong
time-place (context) dependency. An individual’s personal
religious identity (or lack thereof) is greatly influenced by
where, when and among whom that individual is born,
raised and lives.14
6) Sociologists of religion are interested in the ways in which
individuals are shaped and influenced by their social environment
(corollary to 5).
This involves such matters as the degree to which
religious inclination (or faith) and religious environment
(meso to macro) shape the life and thought patterns of
human beings—meaning the manner in which they
understand their world, themselves and others. Sociologists
are fascinated by the impact of religion (one’s religious
tradition and one’s religious beliefs) on factors such as
socrel-1\13
26 The Sociology of Religion in India
sexuality, political opinion, personal identity, economic
activity, career choice, marital relations and so forth;
conversely, they are also fascinated by the impact of such
factors on religious identity.
7) Sociologists of religion are fascinated by deviances,
nonconformity and the ways in which people resist or change
the social forces that surround them.
How do new religious traditions begin, develop and
change? Many of those that have been responsible for the
founding of new religious movements (Weber’s “religious
geniuses”) have been “rebels” or “mavericks” relative to
a dominant tradition in their area: the Buddha, Muhammad,
Guru Nanak, Martin Luther, to mention just a few.15 (The
areas outlined under paras 6. and 7. are part of what is
often termed the structure vs. agency problem in sociology—
a problem that Giddens (1991) has identified as sociology’s
most fundamental dilemma.)
8) Sociologists of religion are fascinated by “the social construction
of reality”.
They see religion as a social phenomenon, and thus as
a “social construction”—a product of human psychological
and sociological processes. At least all religious expressions
are seen in this light—as human projections and projects.
The underlying or ultimate “cause” may be divine or
transcendent(al), but all its expressions are viewed as
formed and shaped in historical and cultural (i.e., human)
terms.16 This means that the sociological study of religion,
like the sociological study of any social structure, requires
one to penetrate that which is taken for granted as being
real or true in order to uncover the constructs that have
been shaped by human consciousness and embedded into
individuals’ understanding of their social world. One of
the operative motifs of sociology is to debunk the social
structures that it studies.
9) Sociologists of religion debunk.
Sociology of Religion 27
They are interested in exposing: 1) “common sense”
views; and, 2) various traditional religious truth claims.
With regard to the first of these, researchers can and have
disproved certain taken-for-granted notions about religion
and religious people, such as the notion that religious
adherents always blindly follow their leaders, or that
religious sects “brainwash” their members, or that Islam
is a fundamentally violent tradition. And with regard to
the second, some religious traditions have what might be
called “unusual” beliefs that are of an empirical nature—
for example, the Mormon belief that 2000 years ago Jesus
journeyed by boat from the Middle East to America, and
there established his first authentic church. The empirical
evidence for such a claim is, to say the least, extremely
weak. In terms of this and other such propositions, a
general formula of science is that the greater the
improbability of a claim, the stronger its supporting
evidence should be. Based upon this rule of thumb,
sociologists can, and should, call into question claims
such as the one just mentioned. On the other hand, it
must also be said that sociologists and psychologists should
be extremely careful not to offend people’s sensibilities or
destroy their religious faith; their only interests should be
to understand how it is that people can believe so strongly
in empirical ideas that lack even a shred of reasonable
evidence. Beyond this, sociologists do not involve
themselves in discussions regarding the truth or falseness
of religious claims that are of a trans-empirical, mysterious,
metaphysical nature (cf. methodological agnosticism). Most
religions, however, hold notions not only about the other
world, but about this world—this reality—as well. In such
cases, it is legitimate for sociologists to discuss and question
those notions.
10) Sociology of religion entails, as a corollary to 9, a critical
approach to understanding the world.
Sociologists take a largely skeptical approach to all
social phenomena, including those of a religious nature;
socrel1\14
28 The Sociology of Religion in India
they also adopt a questioning stance relative to such matters
as class, caste and gender. With respect to such concerns,
they tend to question the causes and consequences of
current arrangements, as well as to examine the potential
consequences of various alternatives. For better or for
worse, sociologists have over the years increasingly adopted
an “emancipator agenda” that calls upon them to stand
up for such things as social justice and the rights of
discriminated, disenfranchised and vulnerable groups in
society.
III. SOME MAJOR TOPICS OF DISCUSSION IN THE
FIELD OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Throughout the last half-century, two interrelated trends
(or themes) have been of particular importance to the
sociological study of religion: 1) modernisation,
globalisation and pluralisation; and, 2) secularisation.
The first of these concerns the fact that the world has
become dramatically pluralised as a result of such factors
as globalisation, modernisation, urbanisation, migration,
advanced information technology and mass communication.
Indeed, for more and more social scientists,17 globalisation,
and the increased pluralism that has followed in its wake,
represents the defining feature of the contemporary world—
including the world of religion. In today’s world, very
few places have remained unaffected by this pluralist
dynamic, and religion is no exception, both on the
institutional and on the individual level. At present, no
religious group can protect itself and its members from
exposure to the competing beliefs, practices and
practitioners of other religious groups and traditions. In
this new globalised climate, it is no longer possible to
unreflectively hold traditional beliefs and practices, or
treat them as obvious givens. Consequently, the
contemporary religious world has been characterised by
Peter Berger as “a… [global] market in which individuals
can, indeed must, make choices” (2008:13). In the area of
Sociology of Religion 29
religion, as in other areas of identity and lifestyle choice,
the culture (or life-world) of most of the planet’s individuals
has changed from “fate to choice”, from “monopoly to
market”, from “obligation or duty to consumption”—to
borrow some of the more commonly used expressions.
The meaning of “globalisation” is much discussed.
For our purposes, the following shorthand definition should
suffice:
Globalisation is comprised of economic,
social, political, technological, cultural and
religious processes that transcend the
territorial “container” of the national state.
While it is true that these changes have been in the
works for quite a long period of time, no one would deny
that over the last half-century, due largely to technological
advances, they have taken a qualitative leap that has
landed us in a novel historical situation identified by
numerous observers as post-modern times. According to
these observers, post-modern society is characterised by
changes in social stratification, identity formation and
economic polarisation that have given rise to a “post-
modern crisis”, and this, in turn, has become the context
and alleged cause of the manifold contemporary resurgences
of religion. To be more specific, a principal argument
among contemporary sociologists is that the social and
psychological consequences of post-modernisation and
globalisation have heightened the appeal and relevance
of religion: as a discourse used to justify political resistance,
as an anxiety-coping mechanism and as a network of
solidarity and community.
Some of the milestones of this post-modern realignment
have been the growing hegemony of neo-liberalism in the
1980s, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent
collapse of Soviet communism and the rise of Islam and
Muslims as a problem for the West, something that has
been primarily spurred by the terror attacks of 9/11 and
socrel-1\15
30 The Sociology of Religion in India
the various other events that have followed in its wake—
e.g., the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bombings (and/
or shootings) in Bali, Madrid, London and Mumbai, the
Taliban in Pakistan and so forth. Events such as these
have, according to many, contributed to the development
of a new geo-political, geo-economic, geo-cultural, geo-
ethnical and geo-religious reality. One result of all this
has been a general transformation of the world’s power
structure: what was once a binary division consisting of
two superpowers with respective spheres of influence
has now become a multiple division consisting of one
superpower and three rapidly strengthening rivals—India,
China and Russia. Some consider “the Islamic world” to
be a fourth such rival.18
Thus, despite the optimistic predictions of such thinkers
as Francis Fukuyama,19 the post Cold War era has witnessed
not the global victory of Western liberal democracy, followed
by social and political stability, but rather political
fragmentation, socioeconomic polarization and an increase
in the incidence of violence.20 The reason for this is that
identity factors such as ethnicity, religion and gender,
which have become prominent features of the world’s
contemporary political discourse, have produced largely
ideological conflicts that have been difficult to resolve.
Moreover, the various ideologists that champion their
own brand of identity factors invariably assert that they
are primordial, essential, and exclusive.21
Over the last decades, the emergence of “neo-tribal
movements”, the global “politicisation of culture, identity,
and religion” and the increase of “ethno-nationalist” politics
have prompted sociologists of religion, as well as political
scientists and others, to raise such questions as: “What is
the role of religion in a world increasingly dominated by
the conflicting forces of globalisation, multi-culturality,
multi-ethnicity and multi-religiosity (the contradictions
of which have affected the lives of millions of people)?”
“To what extent is religion part of the problem and to
what extent is it part of the solution?”
Sociology of Religion
In 1985 Robertson and Chirico observed that “the
virtually worldwide eruption of religious and quasi-
religious concerns and themes cannot be exhaustively
comprehended in terms of… what has been happening
sociologically within societies” and that “globalisation
enhances, at least in the relatively short run, religion and
religiosity”. Today it is evident all over the world that
these observations have proved true beyond their
expectations. It was these empirical developments that,
in 1999, induced Peter Berger to pen the following much
quoted words:
the assumption that we live in a secularised
world is false. The world today… is as
furiously religious as it ever was, and in
some places more so than ever. This means
that the whole body of literature by historians
and social scientists loosely labelled
“secularisation theory” is essentially
mistaken.
In 2001, Richard Neuhaus followed this with a bold
observation:
If the proverbial man or woman from Mars
asked about the most important single thing
happening on planet Earth at the beginning
of the twenty-first century, a very good
answer might be the desecularisation of
world history.
And in anticipation of Berger’s now famous statement,
Eugenio Trias proffered the following 1997 reflection:
If there in this new century exists one
relevant question, this is without doubt the
question of religion. After two centuries of
decline, religion has again become the talk
of the day; today it plays the main role on
the stage of world events.
31 32 The Sociology of Religion in India
Today there is general agreement among sociologists
of religion about the empirical reality of what has been
variously called “the desecularisation of the world” (Berger),
“the revenge of God” (Kepel), “the de-privatisation of
religiousness” (Casanova), “the return of religions”
(Riesenbrodt), “the return of the Gods” (Graf) “the spiritual
revolution” (Heelas & Woodhead) and so forth.
Today’s reality presents a number of challenging
questions, the answers to which have varied among leading
sociologist. Some of these questions are:
a) What are the origins of the worldwide resurgence of religion?
Most social scientists would agree that the resurgence
of religion is based upon various non-religious
developments, such as the ones already mentioned—e.g.,
modernity, globalisation, post-modernity, multiple
modernity, the post-modern crisis and economic polarisation
(a fairly comprehensive list can be found in Lambert 1999).
b) What is the likely future course of this religious resurgence?
There are basically four competing scenarios with regard
to what this future might be: 1) decline; 2) adaptation (or
reinterpretation); 3) conservative reaction (fundamentalism);
and, 4) innovation. Among these, only the first involves
secularisation.22
Beliefs about which of these scenarios will prevail
(among specific groups in specific contexts) vary according
to theoretical viewpoints. Since most sociologists tend to
believe that religion is to varying degrees a dependent
variable, they also tend to believe that religious
developments are linked to non-religious forces—a
perspective that leads to the understanding that the future
course of religion is at least partly dependent on and
determined by the course of various non-religious
developments (political, economical, etc.).
This makes the future course of religion, as well as its
place and role in society, dependent upon developments
socrel1\16
Sociology of Religion 33
and process that we have several times summarised with
terms like modernity, post-modernity, globalisation and
so forth—forces that seem to be placing an increasing
number of individuals and groups throughout the world
under an increasing amount of cultural, political, economic,
environmental and psychological deprivation, uncertainty
and stress, for which religion (in various forms and ways)
has become a potential antidote. From this it follows that
the future of religion will remain rather robust so long as
the world continues to be characterised by the types of
deprivations, inequalities and stress factors mentioned
above.23 In other words, as long as such grievances exist,
religion will likely have a role to play.
To the extent that religion is a dependent variable,
one can expect it to adapt and change as its socio-political
context transforms. Since this context appears to be ever
more rapidly changing, the same can be expected of religion.
This suggests that adaptation (or reinterpretation) and
innovation will be the most likely scenarios for the
foreseeable future.
However, because reinterpretation and innovation tend
to undermine the taken-for granted certainties that many
people need in order to live (especially in the realm of
religion), these processes are bound to meet with strong
conservative resistance. And it is this reactionary tendency
that provides the most common meso and macro level
explanation for the resurgence of various forms of
fundamentalism.24 As has been noted by Peter Berger
(1999), the lack of certainty “is an uncomfortable state of
affair, for many an intolerable one, and religious movements
that claim to give certainty have great appeal”. A common
feature of all forms of fundamentalism is that they provide
adherents with clear, simple and unambiguous answers.
The typical elements of a fundamentalist worldview have
been summarised by Altemeyer and Hunsberger as follows:
The belief that there is one set of religious
teachings that clearly contains the
socrel-1\17
34 The Sociology of Religion in India
fundamental, basic, intrinsic, essential,
inerrant truth about humanity and deity;
that this essential truth is fundamentally
opposed by forces of evil which must be
vigorously fought; that this truth must be
followed today according to the
fundamental, unchangeable practices of the
past; and that those who believe and follow
these fundamental teachings have a special
relationship with the deity (1992: 118).
Of course, the precise forms of these ongoing
adaptations, innovations and reinterpretations—as well
as the reactions to them—are still largely unknown; one
thing, however, that we can be fairly sure about is that
they will vary according to time, place and circumstance.
An informed assumption would be that the elite, powerful
and ambiguity-tolerant segments of the West will likely
gravitate towards individualised, subjectivised, “New Age”
forms of spirituality, whereas its weak, deprived and
ambiguity-intolerant segments (for example, minorities)
will likely gravitate towards various fundamentalist,
reactions.
When moving our analysis to the macro level, a similar
pattern emerges, but this time in terms of geographic
regions rather than individuals and/or groups. With the
ending of the Cold War and the increasing influence of
globalisation and modernisation, two broad responses have
emerged, both largely determined by degrees of power.
On the one hand, there has been the eager acceptance of
the results of these processes by powerful nations such as
the United States and Britain (or perhaps by the powerful
elites within them); on the other hand, there has been the
more negative response of less powerful nations, such as
those of the Muslim world, which largely perceive these
processes as the West’s attempt to impose neo-colonialism
and cultural hegemony upon the less developed world
(referred to by Ayatollah Khomeini as “West-toxification”
Sociology of Religion 35
and “Westomania”). In many non-western regions of the
world, Western culture is viewed as the embodiment of
materialism, secularism, self-centeredness, greed, and moral
degeneration.25 The reaction of such peoples generally
consists of a reversion to the fundamentals of their culture
and religion, which can sometimes include violent strains.
It was on the basis of this sort of observation that
Jeurgensmeyer (1993) concluded that a new Cold War
was emerging between the “secular nationalism” of
Christendom and non-Western religious communities. In
this regard he notes that significant sectors of the world
see in the processes of modernisation and globalisation a
Western bid not only for economic and cultural hegemony,
but for religious hegemony as well—an attempt to bring
Islam, Hinduism and other global religious traditions under
the aegis of Christendom. In Jeurgensmeyer’s view, the
West must understand that what from its vantage point
may appear like the “spreading of democracy and freedom”,
can appear like something quite different from the vantage
point of those on the receiving end of all this “goodwill”;
to be blind to this fact, he argues, is a serious error that,
rather than inhibiting, paves the way for politicised
nationalist and exclusivist religious resurgences. The more
recent upheavals in Pakistan are a case in point.
In summary, it appears that the primary predictions
of sociologists regarding the future of religion and religiosity
are as follows: neither religion nor religiosity are about to
disappear; rather, they will continue to adapt and transform
in ways that enable them to maintain relevance within
the various contexts that have emerged as a result of new
socio-economic-political realities (characterised by
globalisation, post-modernity, etc.). In this regard, religious
traditions can be expected to adopt more of a global,
transnational, and cosmopolitan orientation, as opposed
to one that is more local in nature, while religiosity (or
spirituality) can be expected to take on more of an
individualised, “subjective-life” and transnational character,
as opposed to one that is more “life-as”, collective and
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36 The Sociology of Religion in India
communal. It is also fairly certain that many “traditionalists”
and conservatives will interpret this latter trend as being
a type of secularisation. For this and other reasons, these
changes will provoke sometimes strong—or even violent—
conservative or fundamentalist counter-reactions that urge
for a resurgence of the local, traditional, “old time religion”,
considering it the only true form of religious expression.
In the long run, however, as new generations of persons
learn to live with the “twin crises” of globalisation and
multiculturalism, as they become more accustomed to the
new “post-modern” conditions of pluralism, unlimited
choice and so forth, the tendency towards adaptation will
likely win out over the tendency towards reactionary
resistance.
With this we return to our earlier questions: “What is
the role of religion in a world increasingly dominated by
the conflicting forces of globalisation, multi-culturality,
multi-ethnicity and multi-religiosity (the contradictions
of which have affected the lives of millions of people)?”
“To what extent is religion part of the problem and to
what extent is it part of the solution?” The short answer
given by sociologists is that in the post-modern environs
of our “global village” (a term coined by Marshall McLuhan,
1962: 31), religion can promote either discord, chaos and
conflict or harmony, stability and peace—it can either
facilitate the construction of a peaceful world community
or justify and promote violence between competing ethnic,
social and religious groups.26 For obvious reasons they
are also convinced that of the two antithetical trends
mentioned above, it is the trend toward adaptation that is
most likely to be relaxed and tolerant, and thus most
likely to lead to harmony, stability and peace. However,
it is still too early to determine which of these two trends—
or responses to globalisation—will ultimately prevail. What
can be said, to return to one of our initial assumptions, is
that cultural, ethnic and religious pluralism will more
and more serve as the basic precondition for life in our
global village, at least for the foreseeable future, and that
we all must learn to come to terms with this fact. Judging
Sociology of Religion 37
from the most recent decades, religious traditions will
profoundly figure into this process, not the least in terms
of their role in defining human norms, values and meanings.
As we move forward, the primary question will not be,
“Which religion is the truest?” Rather it will be, “How
can we enable the various religious and secular traditions
to peacefully coexist, both locally and globally?” While
there is no simple answer to this question, most sociologists
of religion like to believe that their work can provide
important insights and tools that will aid the struggle to
find viable solutions to the problems that all of us global
villagers now face.
With respect to future predictions, however, it is wise
to include a cautionary note: the history of our planet is
replete with unexpected upheavals and turns of events,
and religion has been no exception to this rule. For example,
had I been a European social scientist of the early 16th
century, with access to all the research tools available at
the time, I could hardly have anticipated the religious
earthquake that shook all of Christendom just a few years
later in the form of the Lutheran Reformation. Similarly,
not one social scientist in the mid 1970s had been able to
predict the 1979 Iranian revolution, nor in the mid 1980s,
the 1989 communist collapse, nor in the late 1990s, the
2001 terror attacks and all that followed in their wake. All
these events had dramatic effects on developments within
the field of religion and beyond, yet all had been unforeseen.
As such, the most that any social scientist can say is that,
at the moment, the available empirical evidence appears
to point in this particular direction, towards this particular
future.
Do the Resurgent Religions Differ in their Critique of
the Secular Order?
The answer to the question posed in the above subheading
is simply, “yes”, depending on the given belief-disbelief
system of the religious tradition in question, as well as
the culture, political, economic and social context within
socrel-1\19
38 The Sociology of Religion in India
which that tradition functions. For example, while the
Pope, the Dalai Lama and Osama bin Laden all agree that
there are problems with contemporary society that a
religious or spiritual approach could help to alleviate,
each one is likely to have his own list of troubling issues
and his own transcendent(al) blueprint for their avoidance.
It is also likely that each would support his version by
arguing that the sacrosanct texts of his tradition once
formed the basis of an early golden age in which the
proposed blueprint existed in perfection, only to have
been degraded over time by the very processes that they
currently oppose.27 This is the sense in which it can be
said that all three are similarly reacting to the processes
of modernisation and globalisation.28 On the other hand,
another difference between them lies in the varying degrees
to which their critique explicitly focuses on modernity
and globalisation, as well as the varying degrees to which
they are willing to use the results of these processes in
their own activities.
For example, the stance generally taken towards
modernity and globalisation by the Islamic resurgence is
far more severe than that generally taken by conservative
Evangelical Christianity. Neither group, however, has been
shy about utilizing the results of these processes, in the
form of advanced information and other technologies, for
purposes of propaganda and recruitment. They also hold
a similar outlook when it comes to enlarging the role of
religion and the religious elite in society; in other words,
they tend to link their belief in a heightened role for
religion to a number of contrastingly “non-religious” issues
such as national and international politics, economic
development, human rights, gender roles and social justice,
to mention only a few. The core idea of these and other
such groups is that there exists one, and only one, objectively
true and transcendently legitimate blueprint for all “true
believers” and for the society at large—including the global
village. And it is precisely this that makes them so difficult
to deal with in a widely diversified pluralistic environment.
Sociology of Religion 39
What must be recognized is that the problems we
grapple with today have plagued humanity for thousands
of years, and that there have always been suggestions for
“good solutions”, but no truly successful implementations.
It seems appropriate to end this section with the famous
Twelfth Rock Edict of Emperor Ashoka:
One should not honour only one’s own
religion and condemn the religions of others,
but one should honour others’ religions for
this or that reason. So doing, one helps one’s
own religion to grow and renders service to
the religions of others too. In acting otherwise
one digs the grave of one’s own religion
and also does harm to other religions.
Whosoever honours his own religion and
condemns other religions, does so indeed
through devotion to his own religion,
thinking “I will glorify my own religion”.
But on the contrary, in so doing he injures
his own religion more gravely. So concord
is good: Let all listen, and be willing to
listen to the doctrines professed by others.
IV. THE SECULARISATION DEBATE
One of the most frequent and hotly debated themes within
the sociology of religion over the last decades has been
the question of secularisation, which we have already
touched upon above. The term was coined by Max Weber
at the end of the 19th century to denote the process by
which religion—including its institutions, its leadership
and its ideas—would lose influence over society and societal
institutions (objective secularisation), as well as the minds
of its members (subjective secularisation). For Weber,
secularisation was viewed as an effect of the monumental
shift in the locus of authority from religion to science—
from faith to rationality, from divine fatalism to human
agency—that had begun with the Enlightenment. He called
socrel1\20
40 The Sociology of Religion in India
this process “the disenchantment of the world”, which
would henceforth be governed by rational principles rather
than superstition—i.e., religion. In his view, it was necessary
for modern society to be more and more institutionally
differentiated, with religion relegated to the private sphere.
Beginning for the most part with August Comte (1797–
1857), who insisted that being “modern” necessarily entailed
the replacing of God and the supernatural with the positive
or the scientific, the prime meta-narrative of the West has
been dominated by a distinctive epistemology that has
often been turned into an ideology; according to Eisenstadt
(2000), this epistemology embraced, above all, the notion
that human agency, and human agency alone, was the
primary determinant in humanity’s effort to forge a desirable
future on any and all levels.
From the mid 19 th century onwards, these ideas
gradually evolved into what has come to be known as the
secularisation thesis, which roughly claims that there is a
direct and strong correlation between developments within
the economic-material spheres of society and developments
within the sphere of the religious: the more a society
becomes modernised and enlightened, the more it will
become objectively and subjectively secularised; in time,
the influence of religion over society and societal
institutions, as well its influence over the minds of society’s
members, will diminish and finally disappear. When
transformed into an ideology, the secularisation thesis
holds that more than being irrelevant (which it is), religion
is severely detrimental to modern societies, and to the
scientific study of their character and composition.29
In accordance with the dominance of evolutionistic
currents of thought in Western academic institutions, and
the general euphoria about “progress”, secularisation was
seen from the 1950s to approximately the late 1970s as a
universal, uni-linear, unavoidable and irreversible
development. It should come as no surprise that, at the
time, the West considered itself to be at the vanguard of
a development that would gradually and progressively
Sociology of Religion 41
spread modernisation, Westernisation and Enlightenment
values all throughout the world.30 The whole world would
follow the development of the West, progressively
functioning more and more without reference to religion.
Wallace (1966) summarized the mood among sociologists
of the time as follows: “The evolutionary future of religion
is extinction”. In retrospect, we can now see that a number
of unforeseeable revolutionary events since the late 1970s
have proved that this prediction was dead wrong.
While modernisation and Enlightenment thinking have
exerted a strong secularising influence in the West, they
have simultaneously given rise to strong counter
movements in many other parts of the world. And even
the most sophisticated versions of secularisation theory
seem unable to account for this global resurgence of religion
as a force that is also capable of creating wholly secularised
human beings.
It seems obvious that neither the denial of an inherent
tendency within Western-style modernity towards
secularisation, nor the blind belief that modernity per se
inevitably leads to secularisation will do. On the one
hand, the global resurgence of both religious movements
and personal religiosity has cast serious doubts upon the
secularisation thesis as understood by most sociologists;
on the other hand, it would be ludicrous to deny the
occurrence of secularisation in most parts of the world,
particularly in terms of processes of rationalisation and
institutional and social differentiation. Many facets of
modern capitalism, bureaucracy, industry, science and
culture are simply incompatible with (traditional) religious
principles.
The inconsistencies and doubts that surround the
traditional secularisation thesis have caused researchers
to re-evaluate its correctness, especially in terms of its
being a universal principle. Today most sociologists of
religion are convinced that the supposed correlation
between modernity and secularisation and the supposed
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42 The Sociology of Religion in India
contrast between modernity and religion are far more
complicated than had been originally believed. As Peter
Berger summarized it (1999): “the empirical evidences
taken together provide a massive falsification of the idea
that modernisation and secularisation are cognate
phenomena”.
According to early proponents of secularisation theory
(e.g., Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Freud), conflict
characterises the relationship between religion and
modernity. While this more traditional view continues to
attract adherents (for example, Steve Bruce, 1966, 2002), it
has been increasingly challenged by more recent theoretical
developments, here roughly presented in terms of three
distinct hypotheses or approaches: 1) market economic or
rational choice theory (sometimes referred to as persistence
theory); 2) individualisation or subjectivisation theory
(sometimes referred to as separation theory); and, 3) cultural
or socialisation theory.
The primary proponents of the market economic or
rational choice approach are Rodney Stark and colleagues
such as William Bainbridge, Robert Finke and Laurence
Iannaccone. One of its principal ideas is that religiosity is
a fundamental aspect of human nature—or the human
condition. Thus while religious expression may vary
according to time, place and circumstance, to be human is
to be homo religious: “however much the context has
changed, the basic functions religion plays in human life
are essentially the same” (Greeley 1973: 16). In keeping
with this understanding, Berger (1999) has noted that
“the religious impulse has been a perennial feature of
humanity… It would require something close to a mutation
of the species to extinguish this impulse for good”.31
In contrast to Marx, Freud and others, a second basic
assumption of this theory is that human beings conduct
themselves as rationally within the realm of religion as
they do within any other societal realm; in other words,
regardless of their area of conduct—religious or otherwise—
Sociology of Religion 43
human beings are driven by the same basic principle: that
of maximising gain and minimising loss. This is sometimes
referred to as the “laziness principle” because it carries the
assumption that everyone everywhere strives to gain as
much reward for the lowest possible cost.32 With specific
regard to religion, the idea is that it functions as a market
that operates according to the same basic principle as any
other market: supply and demand. However, in contrast to
most other theories, it is the supply side, rather than the
demand side, that is of major importance: given that
everybody is religious “by nature” the demand for religion
is a constant. In other words, as the diversity of the religious
supply, the vigour of the religious market and the
competition of the religious providers increases, so does
the demand for and consumption of the religious product.
As with other areas of marketing, enhancing religious
competition in an unregulated, free and open market will
necessarily lead to a stronger religious economy and to
greater religious vitality—or so the story goes. While this
approach may help to explain the religious dynamics of
places such as the United States, as well as to contrast
those dynamics with the dynamics of religion in Europe,
its applicability to places such as India and the Middle
East is far more questionable.
The individualisation or subjectivisation approach, the
second of the three mentioned above, is primarily associated
with thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Thomas Luckmann,
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Grace Davie, Paul Heelas and Linda
Woodhead. The primary thrust of its argument concerns
the necessity of differentiating between the external,
objective or public side of religion on the one hand, and
the internal, subjective or private side on the other—i.e.,
of distinguishing between religion, meaning organised
participation in some form of institutionalised religious
practice, and religiosity, meaning participation in a form
of spirituality that is more individualised, independent
and self-oriented. In this regard, religion and religiosity are
seen as two “dimensions” that can develop independently
socrel1\22
44 The Sociology of Religion in India
of each other in relation to the context of the individual.
Theoretically then, the processes of modernisation can
have a secularising effect on the first dimension, while
having no such effect on the second. According to this
view, modern and post-modern persons are not necessarily
less religious than their parents and grandparents merely
because they no longer attend public church; it is just that
their religiousness is expressed in a different, more internal
and private, way. Grace Davie attempts to capture the
tension between these two dimensions in her now famous
expression: “believing without belonging” (1994: 93 ff).33
While this approach works fairly well in terms of
understanding and explaining what has transpired in
Europe (and other urbanised sectors of the world) for the
last 50 or so years, its applicability to places like (rural)
India and the Middle East is far less certain.
Finally there is the cultural or socialisation approach,
which is championed by such thinkers as Robin Gill and
Robert Inglehart. According to this theory, religious change
can be best explained by viewing religious beliefs, norms
and values as having a strong causal connection to religious
socialisation, the most important agents of which are
religious institutions. In other words, rather than being
an independent variable, religiosity is strongly dependent
upon participation in religion, or religious institutions.
Here the primary assumption of traditional secularisation
theory, that decreasing religious faith results in decreasing
participation in religious institutions, is turned on its head:
the causal connection between the two phenomena is still
thought to exist, but the direction of causality is reversed,
meaning that as the power of religious institutions dwindles
so does religious faith.
Of the four theories just summarised, the traditional
secularisation theory and the socialisation theory predict
the disappearance of religion (at least in Europe), while
the rational choice and subjectivisation theory predict
that religiosity, if not formalised religion, will continue to
exist, and perhaps even thrive.
Sociology of Religion 45
This notwithstanding, increasing numbers of sociologists
of religion have come to question the likelihood that any
one theory can provide a comprehensive, universal
understanding of today’s global and local occurrences in
the world of religion. Even our most abstract theories
require contextualisation. Along the lines of Grace Davie
(2002), it can be said that sociologists of religion are
increasingly convinced that different theoretical approaches
can be compared to different maps: while a map of the
Alps is of value to those that desire to travel across that
specific locale, it is useless for those desiring to travel
across the Rocky Mountains. Similarly, while rational choice
theory may be of value to sociologists of religion that
desire to comprehend the specific religious dynamics of
the United States, other types of theories may be more
appropriate (or more suitable) for those desiring to
comprehend the religious dynamics of India, the Middle
East, or Europe.
The main point here is to highlight the inadequacy of
the old Western assumption that we can formulate one
overarching theory that is applicable to all places, all
times, and all circumstances—e.g., to each and every
cultural, religion, region and nation of today’s world.
This narrow view can be seen, for example, in the notion
that the process of modernisation always and invariably
leads to Westernisation and secularisation, regardless of
where it occurs—a view that has lost credibility and been
increasingly replaced by Shmul Eisenstadt’s notion of
“multiple modernities”. In the words of Eisenstadt himself:
The notion of “multiple modernities”
denotes a certain view of the contemporary
world—indeed of the history and
characteristics of the modern era—that goes
against the views long prevalent in scholarly
and general discourse. It goes against the
view of the “classical” theories of
modernisation and of the convergence of
industrial societies prevalent in the 1950s,
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46 The Sociology of Religion in India
and indeed against the classical sociological
analysis of Marx, Durkheim, and (to a large
extent) even of Weber, at least in one reading
of his work. They all assumed, even if only
implicit, that the cultural program of
modernity as it developed in modern Europe
and the basic institutional constellations that
emerged there would ultimately take over
in all modernising and modern societies;
with the expansion of modernity, they would
prevail throughout the world (Eisenstadt
2000: 1).
Here Eisenstadt challenges the assumption that the
process of modernisation consists of one universal
manifestation, and that modernising societies are therefore
convergent. He also challenges the assumption that the
West is necessarily at the head of the modernising process.
Instead he sees the modern world as “a story of the continual
constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural
programs” (2000: 2). Eisenstadt’s next important point is
that each reconstitution occurs not in a vacuum, but rather
within the framework of a unique cultural, religious, social,
economic and political context, and that it is this context
that determines the outcome of the reconstitution. The
European form of modernity is, for example, constituted
and reconstituted in dialectical interaction with a context
comprised of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, the
Greek philosophical tradition, the French enlightenment,
British empiricism, German socialism and so forth. In an
analogous way, the Islamic, the Indian, and the Chinese
forms of modernity are constituted and reconstituted in
dialectical interaction with their respective historical
traditions, which significantly include the colonial
experience. This is the reason why the same general
processes of modernisation and globalisation (most notably
those pertaining to science and technology) can produce
different, sometimes even contradictory, results, depending
on the cultural context. And this is the reason that Eisenstadt
Sociology of Religion
can make the seemingly paradoxical claim that it is just
as modern for other cultures to violently oppose Western
modernity, as it is for them to benignly embrace it. Inglehart
& Baker (2000: 49) essentially make the same point:
Economic development tends to push
societies in a common direction, but rather
than converging, they seem to move on
parallel trajectories, shaped by their cultural
heritages. We doubt that the forces of
modernisation will produce a homogenised
world culture in the foreseeable future.34
One important consequence of viewing modernity in
terms of multiple possible outcomes, and of realising that
Western modernity is not the only game in town—i.e.,
some sort of global prototype—is the understanding that
Westernisation does not necessarily follow from
modernisation, and that the two notions should thus be
kept apart. This is relevant today when many movements
and ideological currents in non-Western societies are
expressing clear anti-Western—and apparently anti-
modern—opinions. The message is that these voices may
be nonetheless modern, even though they are in
disagreement with our own. Once the idea of multiple
modernities is accepted, it is not difficult to see that religion
has become a major defining factor relative to several
alternate expressions of modernity in many parts of the
world. Examples of this sort of attempt can be found in
both Islamic and Hindu movements. Modernity, in other
words, can come in both very secular and very religious
packages.
As can easily be seen, this way of looking at things is
crucial with respect to the sociology of religion and faces
up to the question at the heart of this portion of this
chapter: “Is secularisation intrinsic or extrinsic to the
modernisation process?” Over the years, a growing number
of social scientists have begun to move away from the
first, and to gravitate towards the second of these
alternatives. If they are right, this shift will have important
47 48 The Sociology of Religion in India
scientific and political implications. The question, as posed
by Grace Davie (2008: 143), is: “What are the consequences
of taking seriously the fact that for the great majority of
the world’s population in the twenty-first century, it is
not only possible, but entirely ‘normal’, to be both fully
modern and fully religious?” While there is no space to
dwell on this matter here, it is my conviction that whatever
those consequences may be, they will have a major impact
on the theories and paradigms we construct to better
understand the nature of the modern world. To the extent
this is correct, it restores the sociology of religion to its
rightful place at the centre of political and social scientific
spheres of interest—the place where its founding fathers
envisioned it should be.
AD FINEM
The sociology of religion covers a large territory that
includes many interwoven topics. Here there has only
been time to provide a very brief overview of some of
these immensely complex matters. Moreover, much due
to the extreme context-dependency of religion and its
relation to its social circumstances, my presentation has
not been very specific or concrete. For this there is no
alternative to a nuanced multi-factored case-by-case
approach: to examine a particular religious tradition (or
sub-tradition) in a particular place at a particular time.
This notwithstanding, I will conclude with one general
comment that I believe can be made with great confidence.
In words that echo Peter Berger’s (1999), it is as follows:
Those that neglect religions in their analysis of
contemporary affairs do so at great peril, and will also
likely encounter a few surprises along the way.
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NOTES
1. This chapter was initially delivered as a paper at the
International Conference on Interface between East and West:
Multiculturalism and Identity: What Can Sociology and Religious
Studies Contribute to the Making of a Better Society, Department
of Sociology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, June 10-
12, 2009. It should be noted that this text was prepared as an
oral presentation and has only been marginally adapted to
appear here as a written text. This also explains the relative
lack of references in the text. The bibliography, however,
contains a list of those works to whom I owe the most.
2. This, of course, is only a development of the Kantian idea
that we cannot know the world in and of itself (noumenon),
but only as it is filtered through the categories of our mind.
3. Here “moderate” means that while I believe that sociologists
should endeavor to make “a better world” (i.e., be “practically
useful”), I also I believe (along with Peter Berger, 2002) that
over the last decades the “ideological emancipator” agenda
has often been carried too far.
4. In this connection, I recommend that academics and policy-
makers alike read the collection of essays in Banchoff (2007)—
especially that of Casanova—and also in Modood (2007). From
the perspective of the so-called theology of religions, the works
of John Cobb are of interest, especially those from 1982.
5. This discussion cannot be even summarised here; only an ever
so slight “pointer” can be given. It is also a debate that to
some extent parallels discussions within the social sciences
(not least in anthropology) about the pros and cons of an
“insider” vs. “outsider” perspective—a discussion that is close
to, but not identical with, the emic-etic debate, often
characterised as the “going-native” debate.
Sociology of Religion 55
6. Apart from this, of course, sociologists are also very interested
in problems of theory and method, without which no
sociological or scientific study can be made. In one sense it
can be said that what distinguishes a sociologist’s (or any
scientist’s) description and explanation of human behaviour
from those of a non-professional layperson is that their
descriptions and explanations are made with the help of a
set of consistent and coherent theoretical, methodological and
conceptual tools—not the least what Herbert Blumer (1954:7)
refers to as “sensitising concepts”. These tools, in combination
with knowledge of how to use them, should allow the
sociologist to see more deeply, and hopefully more “truly”
than do non-professional laypersons—as does a pair of good
binoculars or a microscope. If this were not the case, there
would be no need for sociologists (or anthropologists or
psychologists). Our theories, methods and conceptual
apparatus are, in a sense, our only raison d’ être.
7. One of the first conceptual tools necessary to begin any
intellectual inquiry is a good definition of central terms. In
this regard, the controversies that swirl around even the best
definitions of terms like “religion” and “religiosity” pose a
serious obstacle to the scientific examination of these
phenomena. While this problem is not addressed here, I have
discussed it at length elsewhere (Sander 1988, 1994).
8. That this is an ideal type definition in the Weberian sense
should be clear.
9. As can be seen, I belong to the “camp” that views religiosity
as primary to religion.
10. Put simply, empirical studies of religion can be of basically
of two kinds: historical, which relies upon texts as its main
source of data; and, anthropological/sociological, which relies
upon the thoughts and actions of human beings. For a more
detailed discussion of this problem complex see Sander (2002).
11. As the processes of globalisation proceed, factors connected
to the global level become more and more important. For
example, it is simply no longer feasible for Muslims living in
Sweden or other European societies to “decide” what it means
to be a Muslim in isolation from the rest of the world.
12. For good introductions to this field, see McNamara (2006);
Newberg et al (2002, 2007); Joseph (2003); Stausberg (2009).
socrel1\28
56 The Sociology of Religion in India
13. The degree to which “nature” on the one hand, and “nurture”
on the other, factors into these and other areas is still a hotly
debated topic among scientists.
14. The British theologian John Hick (1989:2) expresses this
Durkheimian point as follows: “it is evident that in some ninety-
nine per cent of cases the religion which an individual professes
and to which he or she adheres depends upon the accidents
of birth”.
15. Ferdinando Sardella’s study on the Bengali bhadralok
Bhaktisiddhânta, a contemporary of Swami Vivekânanda,
which is mentioned in this volume in the chapter by the same
author can be seen as an example of this area of interest.
16. Zuckermann (2003:28) expresses this point as follows: “After
all, the extreme sociologist see 100 percent of all religions as
social constructions, while the religious fundamentalist sees
99 percent of religions as social constructions – all religions
except his or hers”.
17. Bauman, Beck, Berger, Beyer, Castells, Davie, Robertson, etc.
18. It is on the basis of these types of assessments, among others,
that analysts tend to broadly depict the world in terms of three
basic zones: 1) the Islamic world, characterised by
“humiliation”; 2) the Western world, characterised by “fear”;
and, 3) the South East Asian region, characterised by “hope”.
19. See Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History.
20. See the various published reports by the United Nation on
the state of the world. See also <http://
www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php; http://
www.worldometers.info/>.
21. Samuel Huntington’s more dire—and violent—prediction
in The Clash of Civilizations (1993, 1996) serves as a good
example of a future portrait that is quite the opposite of
Fukuyama’s. Already in the late 19th century, Emile Durkheim
observed that the emerging world system displayed two
separate and contradictory trends: increasing unity on the
one hand and increasing diversity on the other (Division of
Labor, 1893). This struggle still seems to be going on, not the
least in the “competition” between the forces of globalisation
and its various localizing backlashes, often driven by cultural,
ethnic and religious ideologies.
22. Although these processes can be characteristic of whole
societies, they can also differently characterize different
Sociology of Religion 57 58 The Sociology of Religion in India

segments of the same society. For example, the religiosity of 28. Rather than being pre-modern, fundamentalism is a typically
the urban elite might follow one particular trajectory and modern phenomenon; this is because it is a reaction in
the religiosity of minorities or uneducated rural populations specific response to modernity and globalisation.
might well follow others. 29. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Peter Atkins,
23. The following figures on the extent of these inequalities can Christopher Hitchens and Michel Onfray are some of today’s
be found in The World Distribution of Household Wealth (<http:/ more outspoken representatives of this ideology. An overview
/www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/ of the thought of this “militant group of atheists” can be
discussion-papers/2008/en_GB/dp2008-03/>): “The wealth found in Higgins (2007).
share estimates reveal that the richest 2 per cent of adult 30. It is not difficult to see how these ideas can be used by the
individuals own more than half of all global wealth, with developed West to legitimize the colonisation of
the richest 1 per cent alone accounting for 40 per cent of “underdeveloped” parts of the world.
global assets. The corresponding figures for the top 5 per
cent and the top 10 per cent are 71 per cent and 85 per cent, 31. Berger’s opinion that human beings are “incurably religious”
respectively. In contrast, the bottom half of wealth holders is held not only by protagonists of rational choice theory,
together hold barely 1 per cent of global wealth.” To express but also by thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, William
it more graphically, this would be equivalent to one person James, Mircea Eliade, Paul Tillich, Eduard Spranger, James
in a group of ten taking 99% of the total pie, leaving the B. Pratt, Rudolf Otto, Erich Fromm, Rollo May and Viktor
other nine persons to make due with the 1% that remains. E. Frankl, among others. Most adherents of so-called
attribution theory also hold this view.
24. Fundamentalism comes in many shapes; two that have been
particularly singled out in the literature, and are worth 32. Some rewards can only be offered by religion: e.g., eternal
keeping an eye on, are norm and value conservative existence, personal enlightenment, moksha and the like.
fundamentalisms and radical militant fundamentalisms. For 33. This concept, in combination with the concepts of “vicarious
a more detailed taxonomy of various kinds of fundamentalism, religion” and “the turn from obligation to consumption”,
see Understanding Islamism. Middle East/North Africa can be said to be the cornerstone of her analysis of religion
Report No. 37–2 March 2005, International Crisis Group, in the modern world.
Brussels.
34. See also Norris & Inglehart (2004); Davie (2007:106).
25. The following quotation from the Islamic ideologist Said
Qutb (1906–1966) nicely illustrates this perspective: “Humanity
today is living in a large brothel! One has only to glance at
its press, films, fashion shows, beauty contests, ballrooms,
wine bars, and broadcasting stations! Or observe its mad
lust for naked flesh, provocative postures, and sick, suggestive
statements in literature, the arts and the mass media!”
(Ruthven 2004: 37).
26. This view is supported by the fact that much of the best and
much of the worst that has occurred in human history has
been enacted “in the name of God”, and that even in our
post-modern times, religious traditions continue to provide
arguments both for and against the spilling of blood.
27. In other words, they include not only a utopia, but also an
archeotopia (Bartra 1992a, b, Sander & Andersson 2009).

socrel-1\29

2 in harmony with each another, but yet exist side by side.
The Sociology of Religion in India
SWAPAN PRAMANIK
In this chapter I will provide an overview of the historical
development of the sociology of religion in India up to
the turn of the 21st century, and present some of the literature
that has historically shaped the field. I believe that it is
important to examine the sociology of religion in more
detail. My reasons are twofold: firstly, in many cases it is
necessary to know the literature of this important subject
before undertaking a study of broad sociological issues
related to Indian society; secondly, contemporary scholars
need a more detailed account of the development of the
sociology of religion in India.
Though Indian society has been oriented toward religion
since ancient times, literature on the sociology of religion
has a rather late beginning. This field of inquiry began
with European travellers and missionaries, who initiated
the systematic study of religious texts and then explored
the religious behaviour of living individuals and
communities. The study of these texts and of the religious
behaviour of various Indian populations represent the
two broad spheres of growth in the field of the sociology
of religion from the later part of nineteenth century onwards.
What struck European travellers and missionaries was
socrel1\30
60 The Sociology of Religion in India
the multiplicity of beliefs, rituals, practices, customs, and
religious structures found in India, which differed from
the more monochromic normative structures of Christianity.
Indian religion is practised in a variety of forms—it is
multi-theistic in nature and pluralistic in orientation. A
great variety of customs, rituals, and practices may not be
European scholars who became interested in the
observation and analysis of contemporary beliefs and
practices conducted studies that were ethnographic in
nature and gave rise to a large amount of literature. Here
a special mention can be made of literature about the
tribes and castes of Bengal, which was written early on,
and provided a rich overview of the pluralistic nature of
Indian society.
These studies by early European scholars not only
explored Hindu communities, but also tribes and peoples
belonging to other religions. Over time, this ethnographic
research gradually led to the systematic mapping of beliefs
and practices. Some of these studies also attempted to
document a correlation between tribal beliefs and practices,
particularly in regard to animistic religions and Hindu
customs. For example, in the Census of India of 1901, Sir
Herbert Risley notoriously described Hinduism as a form
of animism transformed by metaphysics. The relation
between the dominant religious practices of the Hindus
and the customs of the tribes also intrigued them.
South Asian scholars also contributed to the body of
work on the sociology of Indian religions. For example,
the work of K. Chattopadhyay explored the beginnings of
religion and its practices, which he traced back to a single
source at the initial stages of human civilization. The
acculturation studies by S. C. Roy (1915)—who authored
well-known texts on the Oraon religion and the customs
of Chotanagpur—are also important.
Classical theoretical studies by scholars such as Émile
Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber have also made
The Sociology of Religion in India 61
important contributions to the sociological study of religion
in India. Durkheim was the first sociologist to undertake
a systematic analysis of the relationship between religion
and society, theorizing that the idea of god is the
personification of society itself (1915). According to him,
the idea of “strictness” associated with the norms and
rituals of religious observation were born of an attempt
to preserve society as a whole.
Marx also analyzed the role of religion, and his work
has been extensively used, and also at times misused.
Marx considered religion an “opium for the masses” (1970).
What Marx meant was that religion provides a kind of
smokescreen to divert the attention of the people from
the real issues of social conflict, ultimately serving the
interest of the dominant classes. Marx never denied though
the legitimacy of religion or in a sense the usefulness of
religion even within a class-conscious society. In addition
to a theoretical discussion about the role of religion, Marx
also made observations on the role that religion played in
India. For example, Marx discussed traditional village
society and the limitations that people experienced in
day-to-day life due to the boundaries set by their
territorialised religious society. He felt that Hinduism played
a negative and diminishing role in developing the human
personality and lamented that Hinduism had led man,
the best of nature’s creations, to worship animals such as
Hanuman. Needless to say, Marx’s understanding of
Hinduism was rather narrow.
The role of religion was analyzed in more detail by
Weber and his work contains two major elements. The
first one is his discussion of the role that religion has
played in Western society as presented in his volume The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958). The second
one is his discussion of the sociology of Indian religions
(1958a). He contrasted Asian religions—not only Hinduism
but to some extent even Buddhism and Confucianism—
with Christianity. Weber plainly stated that Hinduism,
because of its otherworldly nature and metaphysical
socrel-1\31
62 The Sociology of Religion in India
orientation, limited the development of a spirit of enterprise
and innovation, which was instrumental in the development
of capitalism in the West. He argued that the development
of capitalism in the West was facilitated by Christianity;
Hinduism instead stood in the way because it was opposed
to the spirit of entrepreneurship. Weber predicted that,
even after British rule ended, capitalism in India would
not be able to grow. He argued that whatever form of
capitalism developed in India, it would inevitably collapse
because of the otherworldly mindset of the Hindus.
Marx and Weber published their analyses of Hinduism
in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. However,
by the 1950s, scholars placed more emphasis on Weber’s
perspective. But already earlier on, Benoy Kumar Sarkar
(1917) had challenged Weber ’s contentions, arguing that
there were multiple facets of Hinduism. To describe that
religion is otherworldly or metaphysical in orientation
meant only to put emphasis on one aspect. For example,
the Hindu philosophy of Charvaka gave birth to the lokayata
tradition, which in turn played a major role in the
development of Hinduism. Weber ’s ignorance of the
traditions of India is still a bit surprising, even after
considering the limited information available to him at
that time.
M.N. Srinivas’s work on religion and society among
the Coorgs in South India (1952) analysed the dominant
and influential role played by indigenous religions, not
only in a local society, but also in its interaction with
mainstream Hinduism. His work showed that without
understanding the variety of orientations within Hinduism,
Indian religion as a whole cannot be properly understood.
Srinivas was of the opinion that one has to analyze the
role of Indian religion in the context of the local, the
regional, and the peninsular on one hand, and of the
national on the other. However, the principles and practices
that are used at one level would not necessarily be
applicable to another. Put together, these levels constitute
a multidimensional structure within a cohesive social system
The Sociology of Religion in India
that allow its members to have ample opportunities for
dynamic interaction. In addition to Srinivas, other reserchers
have explored the role of religion in the development of
Indian society. These authors have shown that throughout
history religion has created the basis for major social
transformations in India.
Redfield and Singer (1954) have worked on the cultural
role of the cities (see also Redfield 1955) and they have
analysed the binary relationship between orthogenetic
and heterogenetic forces, universalisation and
parochialisation, and the interaction between the small
and the great traditions. They have examined how, through
these interactions, various norms have penetrated Indian
society, both from group to group and from outside the
country to the inside. They have also studied the ways in
which society has evolved as a result of these complex
movements. Singer has suggested that tradition and
modernity in India do not just function as opposite forces—
rather, they operate to a large degree through adjustment
and adaptation. According to Singer, this is also true of
religion.
Louis Dumont has analyzed the caste structure in India
in terms of the religious principle of purity and pollution
(1980). In his view, the principle has permeated the structure
of caste and has made hierarchical divisions acceptable at
all levels of society. But there are other religious explanations
of the caste system, and Dumont’s theory has not been
accepted in its entirety. For example, the binary opposition
of pure and impure has been questioned by critics such as
Dipankar Gupta, who has studied the functioning of castes
as discrete groups. He has shown that a multiplicity of
traditions, rather than a unified one, has been at the core
of the caste system. Govind Sadashiv Ghurye—whose
works on Indian sadhus (1953), and religious consciousness
(1965) have made a valuable contribution to the sociological
study of Hinduism—emphatically describes god in his
classical work Gods and Men (1962) as a creation of man,
63 64 The Sociology of Religion in India
a product of society and culture. He notably stated that if
man had the shape of a horse he would have created god
in that form. Since man has created god, he suggests, the
image of ultimate divinity has naturally been made in a
human form. Ghurye argues that the origin of hundreds
of different types of gods in Indian society is related to
rich regional traditions and that each religion has played
a key role in the local development of its set of gods and
goddesses.
Ghurye was also the first scholar to draw attention to
the fact that although sadhus have renounced the world
(which is to say, they belong to “out of the world”), they
have many practices and believes that resemble caste-
based practices and sectarian stratifications, which exist
in other social groups. Therefore, though sadhus are “out
of society”, they still cannot operate independently of
social structures, and their religious lives need to be studied
in terms of the society in which they live.
In Hindu Society: An Interpretation (1968), Irawati Karve
has argued that Hindu society and the caste system have
been a joint product of social centripetal and centrifugal
forces. K.M. Kapadia in Marriage and Family in India (1966)
has analyzed the evolution of family institutions within
the frame of Hinduism. Baidyanath Saraswati (1979) has
discussed about the sadhus and the sacred organizations
of Kashi within the frame of Indian society. This approach
was initially developed by L.P. Vidyarthi (1961), who studied
the sacred complex of Gaya. Developments in the sociology
of religion span over several fields, and they provide a
comprehensive understanding of the pluralistic nature of
Hinduism as well as of other Indic religions.
Within the sociology of religion in India there has
also been further inquiry into the relationship between
religion and other institutional sectors of society, including
work on the relationship between religion and economic
growth, itself a part of the broader field of the sociology
of development. One of the questions raised is whether
socrel1\32
The Sociology of Religion in India 65
Hindu religions have played a significant role in the
economic development of India or not. M.S.A. Rao (1972)
in his classic work on religion and economic development
in India has written about the impact of culture on economic
planning and development. Family Structure in India (1994),
a volume edited by Patricia Uberoi, is an important work
on the role that the joint family has played in the
industrialisation of the country. Srinivas has described
how the norms of hierarchy of caste have covertly entered
into our domain of thought, and social and economic
practice. In Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (1962)
he has shown that the hierarchy of values associated with
various types of work owes its source to caste hierarchies.
Someone who does one type of work is not prepared to
change it for another because of the risk of lower esteem
and social value. If someone works as a jamadar (sweeper)
he will not work as a darwan (gate keeper), and one who
is a cook will not be prepared to work as a mali (gardener)
because of the different statuses attached to these
occupations. When we look at various types of work we
can see that based on caste hierarchy there is an inverse
relationship between manual work and social prestige.
According to Srinivas, the more manual work is involved
in a profession the lower its social prestige, and vice
versa. The hallmark of aristocracy in India is that people
do less manual work and instead supervise others.
There is a vast array of literature on religion and
secularism in India. One of the key questions raised is
whether secularism in the Western sense is relevant for
India or not. We can here refer to the work of Ashish
Nandy (1992), who has viewed Hinduism in India as all-
encompassing in nature and as making fewer distinctions
between the sacred and the secular compared to others.
Nandy argues that Hinduism is not so much a macro
religion, but rather a worldview. As a worldview, it
permeates and influences all aspects of an individual’s
life, not merely his or her relationship to god. Nandy
further suggests that the all-encompassing nature of
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Hinduism has helped in building a strong moral foundation
for Indian society. In the West, he argues, due to a strong
secular society, politics have been divorced from religion
and thereby become increasingly amoral. He questions
whether secularism as it is applied in Western societies is
at all meaningful in the Indian context and whether Indians
should uncritically champion the Western principles of
secularism, while knowing well that if the state is
disassociated from the moral and ideological framework
provided by religion it may instead embrace a culture of
violence, as already seen in a number of modern states.
Nandy studied as an example the part played by Gandhi
in Indian politics. The Mahatma admittedly helped develop
a strong ethical and moral foundation for Indian politics,
which can only be understood with reference to the role
that religion plays in Indian society. Nandy also suggests
that not only in India but also in other parts of Asia
religion has historically shown these positive trends. He
distinguishes between Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and
Confucianism on one side, which he regards as more
tolerant, and Christianity (and to some extent Islam) on
the other. The debate over secularism in Indian sociology
has thus been quite fruitful, and many valuable works
have been written on the subject.
Hinduism is gradually adapting itself to the forces of
modernisation and Milton Singer (1972) has called this
process “compartmentalised adaptation”. This means that
in some aspects of life Indians are seen to follow Western
values and in others they follow their own traditional
values. Yogendra Singh (1973) has suggested that
modernisation for most Indians is like a mask that they
wear while away from their families, but one that they
put off as soon as they return home. In his view, Indians
for some purposes are modern, and for others traditional,
but they have learned the art of harmonising the different
domains of public and private life. An interesting area of
study is thus to explore to what degree the average Indian
is culturally influenced by Western culture or by Indian
The Sociology of Religion in India 67
traditions, and what is the role of religion in this type of
adaptive adjustment. Within Hinduism, one can find a
remarkable degree of tolerance, pluralism, and multiplicity,
which rarely shows signs of tension in the encounter with
multiple religious communities. The Vaishnavas of Bengal,
for example, were born within Hinduism as a separate
group challenging the norms of caste. Hindus integrated
them by conveniently providing for them a separate space
and a “lower” caste status (see also chapter 7).
There is a rich literature about the role of
fundamentalism and the overt and covert behavioural
patterns of people that spread new right-wing notions of
what Hinduism is, represented often by the nationalistic
Hindutva. One major challenge in understanding new
forms of fundamentalism is assessing whether they are in
conflict with the notion of secularism or not. Indian civil
society is divided on this issue, and it has been a heated
topic of discussion for the last two or three decades. And
again, is the secularism under discussion a secularism in
the proper sense of the term? Or is it a pseudo-secularism?
Another section of the literature argues that Hinduism is
in fact not taking a fundamentalist turn, due primarily to
the tolerant norms contained in it. These norms are viewed
as casting a positive influence on day-to-day behaviour
and attitudes. According to this view, many Hindus are
not fully aware of these norms, although they consistently
implement them in their social life.
A challenging question though is how to analyze the
above mentioned phenomena in the context of modern
India: “Is this all a product of religion or of secularization?”
Let us for example look at the practice of yoga. Should we
regard it as a religious practice or is it to be divorced from
religion and analyzed purely as a secular practice? André
Béteille contends that we in India have somewhat reluctantly
responded to the growth of civil society groups or voluntary
organizations (NGOs). NGOs are not very strong in India,
but there are nonetheless a large number of such
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associations. Many of the associations in fact organize
religious activities, religious fairs and festivals, in which
members and other people participate vigorously. Some
of the festivals are Id, Durga Puja, or Saraswati Puja celebrated
in many schools in honour of the Hindu goddess of learning.
On a personal note, a few years ago at the North Bengal
University, the administration decided that since Saraswati
Puja was associated with Hinduism, and since there were
many non-Hindu students in the University, the festival
would not any longer be officially sponsored nor held on
campus. This secular perspective was perfectly justified,
but the authorities had to revoke their decision following
violent protests, even from the “leftist” student union.
The union’s point of view was that Saraswati Puja could
not be regarded as a religious festival since it was an
occasion for social gathering, and students participated
regardless of their religious orientation. The issue at hand
is how to define these festivals and religious practices
that in India permeate the lives of most individuals. Family
gatherings for example mostly take place during religious
events, despite the fact that they are often simply social
get-togethers. Should we view them as religious or secular?
The importance of Hinduism in understanding Indian
society comes from the fact that the Hindus of India
represent more than 80 percent of the population. I
remember in this regard a question posed by one of my
postgraduate students while I was teaching a course about
the social structure of India. The curriculum of the subject
dealt mainly with the social structure of Hinduism rather
than that of India. One of my non-Hindu students asked
me why the course was called “the Indian social structure”.
If the course was about the social structure of India, why
were religious minorities not included? What about the
practices, customs, and ceremonies associated with them?
It was indeed a logical query.
Still, a social or political structure cannot be discussed,
even in a secular framework, without taking into
The Sociology of Religion in India 69
consideration its main religious foundation. Such is the
all-encompassing role religion plays today, overtly or
covertly. If one analyzes the overall situation of India in
recent times one will find not a revival, but an attempt to
revive Hinduism, as well as a very strong Hindu normative
presence in people’s daily life. I was recently reading an
online article about how Internet is increasingly used by
various Hindu religious groups—and not merely by
fundamentalists and nationalists—who wish to present
Hinduism in an attractive and concise form. An increasing
number of television serials and channels are exclusively
devoted to religious content. In India more than 95 percent
of the people are in some way religious (as there is no
official estimate of how many people are agnostic or non-
religious, therefore this is a rough estimate). Unless the
sociology of religion and other disciplines take into account
the complex pattern of beliefs and practices of this vast
majority of the population, the study of Indian culture
and society is bound to be incomplete.
In the previous paragraphs I have tried to give a very
brief outline of the development of the literature of the
sociology of religion in India. Given that this literature is
not more than 115 years old there is ample scope for
research in this field, taking into account the pluralistic
framework of Indian society and the multiple orientations
of creed, ritual, rite, and practice of the people of India.
I have briefly discussed the relationship between religion
and economic development and to what extent our
economic development has been influenced by the norms
and values associated with religion. This, to mention one,
is a very fertile field of research, and I forecast that given
the way the sociology of religion is developing today, all
these complex issues will gradually be taken into
consideration, and some day the sociology of religion
will emerge as a separate discipline with exciting prospects
for the students studying this subject.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Béteille, André (1999). ‘Citizenship, State and Civil Society’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 34: 2588–2591.
Dumont, Louis (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and
Its Implications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Durkheim, Émile (1915). The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life: A Study in Religious Sociology. London, New York:
George Allen & Unwin; Macmillan.
Kapadia, Kanailal Motilal (1966). Marriage and Family in India.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Karve, Irawati Karmarkar (1968). Hindu Society: An Interpretation.
Poona: Deshmukh Prakashan.
Ghurye, Govind Sadashiv (1953). Indian Sadhus. Bombay: Popular
Prakashan.
––––. (1961). Caste, Class, and Occupation. Bombay: Popular Book
Depot.
––––. (1962). Gods and Men. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
Gupta, Dipankar (ed.) (2005). Anti-Utopia: Essential Writings of
André Béteille. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
Marx, Karl and O’Malley, Joseph J. (1970). Critique of Hegel’s
“Philosophy of Right”, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nandi, Ashish (ed.) (1992). Science, Hegemony and Violence: A
Requiem for Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rao, Madhugiri Saroja A. (1972). “Religion and Economic
Development”, in Tradition, Rationality, and Change: Essays
in Sociology of Economic Development and Social Change.
Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
Roy, S. C. (1915). The Oraon of Chotanagpur: Their History, Economic
Life and Social Organization. Ranchi: Bar Library.
Redfield, Robert (1955). ‘The Social Organization of Tradition’,
Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, 1: 13-21.
Redfield, R. and Milton, B. Singer (1954). ‘The Cultural Role of
Cities’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 3,
1: 53–73.
The Sociology of Religion in India
Sarkar, Benoy Kumar (1917). The Folk-Element in Hindu Culture:
A Contribution to Socio-Religious Studies in Hindu Folk-
Institutions. London: Longmans & Co., 1917.
Singer, Milton (1972). When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An
Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization: London: Pall
Mall Press.
Singh, Yogendra. (1973). Modernization of Indian tradition: a systemic
study of social change. Delhi: Thomson Press.
Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar (1952). Religion and Society Among
the Coorgs of South India. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
––––. (1962). Caste in Modern India: And Other Essays. Bombay:
Asia Publishing House.
Uberoi, Patricia (ed.) (1994). Family, Kinship and Marriage in
India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Vidyarthi, Lalita Prasad (1961). The Sacred Complex in Hindu
Gaya. Asia Publishing House: Bombay.
Vidyarthi, L.P., Jha, M., & Saraswati, B. (1979). The Sacred Complex
of Kashi: A Microcosm of Indian Civilization. Delhi: Concept
Publishing Company.
Weber, Max (1958). Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner.
––––. (1958a). The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and
Buddhism. Translated and edited by Haus, H. Gerth and
Don, Martindale. Glencoe: The Free Press.
71
3
Reflections on the Academic Study of
Religions
GAVIN FLOOD
In spite of predictions by the secularization thesis, religion
has not disappeared from the modern world and shows
every sign of thriving in a global context. Religion is
central to different people’s understanding of themselves
and is an important force in global politics. The development
of the Sociology of Religion in an Indian context, and the
academic study of religion more broadly, is a very welcome
development. India has such a diversity of religious
traditions and practices that it is somewhat surprising
that its serious academic study has been undertaken by
so few institutions. In this chapter I will raise a large
question, namely how can we understand religions in the
twenty-first century? After some preliminary historical
observations about the development of Religious Studies
I shall take up the idea not of Sociology, but rather of
Phenomenology as a way of studying religions and its
potential importance in the Indian context.
In the UK the academic study of religions has roots in
Liberal Theology (particularly the work of Rudolf Otto
who follows Schleiermacher) and in the philological study
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of ancient texts including Sanskrit texts. There was a chair
in Comparative Religion at the University of Manchester
in the mid-20th century but the kind of Religious Studies
that has come to dominate education in the UK began in
the 1960s with Ninian Smart, who developed a
phenomenology of religion. He founded the Religious
Studies Department at the University of Lancaster in 1967.1
In his many publications, Smart distinguished Religious
Studies from Theology, which he understood—and some
would say misunderstood—to be “preaching”. Religious
Studies is the detached, academic study of religions, a
“Science of Religion”, in which religion is studied along
with other human practices and institutions such as politics,
history and literature. While differentiating Religious
Studies from Theology, Smart did not want Religious Studies
to be reductionistic in so far he thought religion could be
understood at its own level without recourse to explanations
from Sociology or Psychology that sought to explain religion
in other terms—in terms of social or mental functions, for
example. Smart wanted to understand religion on its own
terms, to understand it on its own ground, and to this end
he developed the idea that religions contain various
dimensions through which they can be understood. These
dimensions he distilled into the ritual or practical, the
doctrinal or philosophical, the mythic or narrative, the
experiential or emotional, the ethical or legal, the
organizational or social, and the material or artistic. 2
Much of the kind of enterprises Smart was engaged in
has come under attack in recent years. A postmodern
critique has claimed that there is no neutral space from
which to study religions in an objective way. Accompanying
this critique in Religious Studies there has been general
fragmentation of the field into area-specific study. In many
ways this fragmentation was inevitable, as specializations
deepen and it has been a welcome antidote to earlier
universalising categories and over-simplification of complex
culture-specific histories. If Religious Studies is to survive
into the future and develop in places other than Europe
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74 The Sociology of Religion in India
and the USA, particularly in India and China, then it
needs to be able to discuss and articulate areas of shared
concern in forms of language that can be shared by different
disciplines concerned with religion. What was a welcome
and healthy reaction to earlier universalising claims that
made sweeping statements about religion, now threatens
to dissolve the discourse about religion into other disciplines
such as Politics, History, or Anthropology.
Arguably Religious Studies needs to reinvent itself in
new contexts and to become relevant to global concerns
about identity politics and the quest of human meaning.
Another important point is that Religious Studies is distinct
from Theology. The divide is quite wide in some universities
in the USA although much less so in the UK. Historically
Religious Studies came out of Theology often in reaction
against it and traces of a certain resentment remain in
some scholars’ work. Be that as it may, in an Indian context
Religious Studies does not need to prove itself against
Theology, as this is not taught in secular universities.
One approach advocated by Smart that has been
important in the development of Religious Studies in the
UK has been the phenomenology of religion. Rather than
Sociology, scholars such as Smart thought it to be important
to understand religions without explaining them in terms
of social function. In understanding religions and their
dimensions we perform a methodological agnosticism rather
than a methodological atheism that Peter Berger once
expressed as a characteristic of the Sociology of Religion.3
Arguably, some kind of phenomenology is important as a
first step in presenting an account of religions. What then
do we mean by this?
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION
So what is the Phenomenology of Religion? Smart described
it as structured empathy, which means the systematic
explication of religions in which scholarly endeavor is
marked by an empathy for the subject matter. This idea of
Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions 75
empathy came from the German word Einfühlung used by
the German Philosopher Edmund Husserl. Husserl is
regarded as the founder of philosophical phenomenology
and laid the foundations for the phenomenological method
that came to be used in the phenomenology of religions.
Husserl inherited a philosophical problem about how we
can understand the world. On the one hand the history of
philosophy had come up with idealism, the idea that we
cannot give an account of the world independently of
consciousness and in an extreme form that the world is
itself consciousness, and the other was realism, that we
need to give an account of the world independently of
consciousness. Husserl wished to circumvent this impasse
and thought we could do so not by focusing on the truth
or otherwise of the world but by focusing on appearances
to human consciousness and understanding them as
phenomena at the level of appearance. This entails various
ideas fundamental to phenomenology, particularly
intentionality, bracketing, essences, and the transcendental
ego, each of which we must briefly present an account of
as these ideas have been influential in the academic study
of religion.
For Husserl, intentionality means that consciousness
has an object; we are always conscious of something. The
‘I think’ or cogito of Descartes is always thinking about
something as a defining feature of thinking; there is always
an object of consciousness. The cogito has a cogitatum or
more accurately a flow of thoughts, the cogitationes.
Intentionality is the structure that the cogito has a flow of
objects, the cogitationes. This is the first presupposition of
phenomenology. Now in order to fully understand the
appearances to consciousness, we have to shift our view
from the ‘natural attitude’ in which we automatically
make judgements about the truth and falsity of appearances,
to the “phenomenological attitude”, which is, for Husserl,
a scientific understanding of the world. This suspending
the natural attitude, Husserl named by the Greek term
epoché or bracketing. Bracketing means the suspension of
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76 The Sociology of Religion in India
the question of truth behind appearances. That is, we do
not concern ourselves in the first instance about whether
something is true or not, but rather we focus our
phenomenological gaze on the appearance itself, without
raising questions about truth or falsity in order to
understand the appearance at the level of appearance.
Having bracketed the ontological question, the question
of the truth of appearances, phenomenology initially
becomes a descriptive enterprise. Not worrying about
whether our experience is true of false we are free to offer
a full description of what appears to us.
The third element of Husserl’s phenomenology is the
second phenomenological reduction, the eidetic reduction
or reduction to essences. Having suspended the question
of the being behind appearances in the epoché, and having
a full description, we can perform a second reduction to
the essence (eidos) of the phenomena that Husserl also
called an intuition. The intuition of essences allows us to
understand appearances at a deeper level. For example,
says Husserl, when I move around a house that is at first
unfamiliar, the more I come to know the house the more
I understand the essence of the house. However, I can
never come to the end of this process as I come to know
the house more deeply. Later phenomenologists and
existentialists were to criticize this move as being too
Platonic, although Husserl distanced himself from the
accusation of Platonism by arguing that the eidos of
phenomenology is not the eidos of Plato but simply the
intuition of the essence of the appearance necessitated by
the epoché. Developing this idea we can then apply the
eidetic reduction to ourselves and find that the cogito
cannot itself be subject to the epoché and we are left with
the essence of our self-experience that Husserl called the
transcendental ego: the intuition of the essence of the
self.4
All of this is important for the phenomenology of
religion but especially bracketing. The epoché was thought
Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions 77
to liberate human thinking from the constraints of being,
from existence or non-existence, and any human experience
can become the focus of phenomenological inquiry. Thus
we can have an inquiry into human emotion (Max Scheler),
aesthetics, an inquiry into human society with the
development of phenomenological sociology (Alfred
Schutz), and so the way is cleared for a phenomenological
inquiry into religion. From Husserl through the Dutch
Phenomenology of Van der Leeuw, phenomenology of
religion takes the epoché and the reduction to essences.
The focus of the phenomenology of religion becomes the
description of religious appearances and the arranging of
these appearances into essential types. The data generated
by the description of appearances is potentially vast and
so phenomenology develops the idea of categories of types
of appearances that belong together. The creation of
typology develops from description, thus we have
phenomenology putting religions into the categories
monism, monotheism, pantheism, panentheism, henotheism
and so on. Or we have the phenomenology of Eliade who
understood religions through the category of the sacred
and mapped religious appearances according to
mythological themes such as the axis mundi, the myth of
the eternal return, or the heroic mythic journey to the
other world.
The epoché is still regarded as being important in the
study of religions and has filtered into all areas of religious
education where however, it is misunderstood as the
suspension of subjectivity, the bracketing out of my own
values, belief, and experience. This, however, is incoherent
as phenomenology is fundamentally concerned with
intentionality (the cogito and its objects) and it is impossible
to bracket out the question of the being of the subject (as
Descartes discovered). What is meant by the epoché is the
suspension of the question of being behind appearances,
the being behind the objects of consciousness. It is not a
suspension of the being of the subject or the cogito but of
the being behind the objects of inquiry; we don’t ask
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78 The Sociology of Religion in India
questions about the existence or non-existence of the gods
but accept them as appearances in some human reality
that demands our scientific attention.
LOOKING BEYOND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF
RELIGION
But one of the main problems is that phenomenology of
religion has a certain baggage from the philosophy of
consciousness. Although Husserl wishes to move between
idealism and realism, his philosophy is nevertheless open
to an idealistic reading. Phenomenology never quite gets
away from a philosophy of consciousness. The philosophy
of consciousness we might contrast with the philosophy
of the sign that places emphasis not so much on
consciousness and the appearances in conscious awareness
but rather on the systems of signs within which human
beings find themselves; within language and within
societies. The term “philosophy of the sign” was coined
by the Marxist philosopher Voloshinov, to denote a semiotic
discourse that emphasises language, communication, and
inter-relationships. According to this approach, we should
not begin with the cogito, with the “I think” and
consciousness, but with human interaction because all
consciousness arises “only in the material embodiment of
signs”.5 This move away from consciousness to the sign is
arguably important and is closer to most contemporary
Sociology than Husserlian phenomenology. It is arguably
not enough simply to present a descriptive account of
religions, although this is a necessary and important first
step. What we need also is an account of the semiotics of
religions, the total systems of signs that comprise them,
and the recognition that all systems of signs need an
interpretant to make sense. There is always a triangular
relationship of sign, signified, and interpretant or
community of interpretants and so the semiotics of religion
is always historically and socially located. Although Husserl
did develop the idea of the “lifeworld” or an account of
Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions
culture, his philosophy was always too closely bound up
with consciousness. In a similar vein, the phenomenology
of religion has been too bound up with consciousness and
the emphasis on “experience” at the cost of understanding
religions as systems of signs, that texts are understood in
particular ways by communities of reception, and that
religions are bound up with power relations in history.
But arguably there is a place for both the philosophy
of the sign and the philosophy of consciousness in
understanding religions. On an anecdotal note, a few years
ago I co-taught a course with Professor Peter Ochs at the
University of Virginia in which we applied semiotic and
phenomenological ways of reading to Jewish and Hindu
scriptures, the Torah and Upanishads. Curiously we thought
that the Upanishads to be more open to a phenomenological
analysis than semiotical analysis. Conversely, we thought
the Torah to be more open to a semiotic analysis than a
phenomenological one. This points to both semiotics and
phenomenology still having an importance place in our
inquiry into religions.
In contrast to these approaches that seek to understand
religion rather than to explain it, we have different kinds
of reductionism, particularly eliminative reductionism,
which says that religion can be explained by science,
particularly brain science and biology, and cultural
reductionism that claims that religion can be explained
by power relationships within society. Richard Dawkins’
work would be an example of the former and many cultural
theorists such as Ron Inden would be an examples of the
latter. We might call the latter kind of reductionism “the
power view” and it has dominated Religious Studies for
several years. The French social philosopher Michel Foucault
was particularly important in this work. Talal Asad (1993),
Russell McCutcheon (1997) and Timothy Fitzgerald (2000),
who claim that religion is a purely post-colonial construction
and even that the academic study of religion or Religious
Studies is administrative fiction, have developed this kind
79 80 The Sociology of Religion in India
of cultural reductionism. With regard to the study of Indian
religions we have Balagangadhara’s The Heathen in His
Blindness (1994), Ron Inden’s Imagining India (1990), and
Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion (1999).
But arguably there is a case for a renewed
phenomenology of religion that seeks to understand
religions and their place in society at a first level of being
open and hearing what they are saying. Even if, in the
end, we wish to explain religions in terms of culture,
brains, or evolution, a first step must always be to approach
them with descriptive intent: to study, understand and
explain religions we need to understand what they hold
themselves to be, how they are practised and what they
are saying. Bracketing the question of the being behind
appearances is still an important first step expressed in
Anthropology as Geertz’s “thick description” or in textual
study as philology and establishing the boundaries and
transmission of the text. That there can be postcolonial
readings or other political readings of societies and texts
is not in question, but there needs to be an initial letting
be seen whatever shows itself to us. We need to study the
texts of traditions, study the social history of traditions,
study the communities of traditions, and study the claims
and doctrines of traditions. When we are studying Indian
religions, for example, we are studying traditions that
have developed sophisticated categories for well over a
thousand years and a phenomenological or even sociological
account has to take that historical development very
seriously. We need the objective study of religions along
with empathy and deep learning.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
By conclusion, there are three claims I would wish to
make. Firstly religion only exists within cultures (and of
course, the academic study of religions only exists within
cultures). This is a complex claim that cannot be so easily
reduced to the power view I have referred to above. Of
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course religion arises in social groups and of course it can
support the political status quo as it has done so often in
human history, but this is not the entire picture. Religions
offer ways of negotiating the complex journey through
life from birth to death and we need to understand that,
for not to understand religions as meaning-making
endeavours is to misunderstand them. We might even
say that the kinds of cultural forms that religions are, are
constrained by a text or group of texts set aside as sacred.
These texts that lay claim to human communities are
often regarded as revealed from a higher power and
religions are arguably prototypically communities formed
by a text or group of texts set aside and which have
semantic density and which give meaning to areas of a
community’s or person’s life that has semantic density
such as birth, marriage and death. But we must remember
that not all cultural arenas are necessarily religious, such
as secular battlefields as places of reverence or locations
where famous people have lived such as Shakespeare’s
Stratford on Avon or Amitabh Bachchan’s birthplace.
Secondly I would like to claim that text is the model
of culture. Texts, particularly sacred texts, pervade rituals,
traditions, and the practise of economics and politics. So
the study of texts and the ways they are received by
communities of reception are crucial to any academic
study. Texts create traditions, passion for living, and
frameworks of values within which people live their lives
in particular historical communities. Part of this claim is
that the religious communities enact the text. A text
composed usually in the ancient past is brought to life for
the present community, usually in ritual: the text from the
past speaks to the present. By text, we do not necessarily
mean something located in writing, a text can be oral/
aural as well. The point is that texts are available for a
present community and they are brought to life here and
now.
Thirdly the academic study of religions needs to be
pluralistic and dialogical, taking seriously the categories
81 82 The Sociology of Religion in India
and self-understanding of traditions along with outside
discourse coming from Sociology, Feminism, Critical Theory
and so on. The academic study of religions cannot offer
one voice and needs to clarify difference as much as finding
consensus. This is particularly true for India where the
religious field is so diverse.
In this short chapter I have not had time to develop
the problem of whether the outsider can understand another
religion or the idea of scientific objectivity in the study of
religions. Suffice it to say that the academic study of
religions is a broad area that needs to be objective, balanced
in its assessments, and convinced by the social and political
imperative to describe, and ultimately offer explanations
and theories of religion that will always remain in tension
and possibly conflict with the indigenous claims of
traditions. Within this broad field the phenomenology of
religions and the sociology of religions are central to the
way we understand religions and central to the public
discourse about religion and its importance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Asad, Talal (1993). Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Balagangadhara, S.N. (1994). The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia,
the West and the Dynamics of Religion. Leiden: Brill.
Berger, Peter (1967). The Sacred Canopy. New York: Doubleday.
Cox, James L. (2006). A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion.
London: Continuum.
Fitzgerald, Timothy (2000). The Ideology of Religious Studies. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Husserl, Edmund (1988 [1950]). Cartesian Meditations: An
Introduction to Phenomenology, translated by Dorian Cairns.
Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer.
Inden, Ron (1990). Imagining India. Oxford: Blackwell.
King, Richard (1999). Orientalism and Religion, Postcolonial Theory,
India and the Mystic East. London: Routledge.
socrel-1\41
Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions 83

McCutcheon, Russell (1997). Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse

of Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Sharpe, Eric (1975). Comparative Religion. London: Duckworth.
Smart, Ninian (1996). Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of
World Beliefs. London: Harper-Collins. 4
Voloshinov, V.N. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language.
Translated by L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik. Harvard
University Press.

NOTES
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and
1. For a history of comparative religion see Sharpe (1975) and
Postmodern Societies
Cox (2006).
2. Smart (1996), pp. 10–11.
RUBY SAIN
3. Berger (1967), p. 100.
4. Husserl (1988 [1950]), pp. 70–72.
5. Voloshinov (1973), p. 11.
If one does not want to be open to grave
misunderstanding, it is necessary to be aware
of confusing a free, private, optional religion,
fashioned according to one’s own needs and
understanding with a religion handed down
by tradition, formulated for a whole group
and which it is obligatory to practice.
—Émile Durkheim1

I
The subject of world religions is fascinating and complex.
From the earliest times down to the present, religious
beliefs have flourished and have produced countless
interpretations as well as rituals and symbols that are
often intriguing to a casual or outside observer. In the
following, I will first review a number of prominent Western
theories about the source and nature of religion in the
modern and postmodern context and reflect over their
relevance in the global and Indian context. In the second

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Reflections on the Academic Study of Religions 85
part of the chapter I will discuss in some detail the
phenomenon of folk religion.
THEORIES ABOUT RELIGION
Karl Marx played a key role in the early understanding of
religion in the social context as he analysed religion in
terms of its role in class stratification. He argued that
religion represents human self-alienation when wrongly
understood and practised. To him religion was the heart
of a heartless world—a haven from the harshness of daily
life and an opium for the people. Marx thought that religious
beliefs had been imperfectly internalized in capitalist society
and had provided justifications for the inequalities of
distribution of wealth and power (see also chapter 2).
Ludwig Feuerbach in his famous book The Essence of
Christianity (1957 [1855]) suggested that religion consists
of ideas and values produced by human beings in the
course of their cultural development, which they mistakenly
projected into imagined divine forces or gods. He suggested
that human beings did not fully understand their own
history, but rather tended to attribute socially created
values and norms to the gods.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead”
still resounds in discussions about religion. The late
nineteenth-century classical philologist and specialist in
the language and culture of ancient Greece stated that
churches were only monuments for dead beliefs. Nietzsche,
however, was not dismissive of religion per se as Feuerbach,
and discerned two different types of religion. In the classical
period the believer focused on the Apollonian gods—i.e.
the idealized nature of spirits representing Reason,
Proportion, and Control; however, Apollonian gods
coexisted with the Dionysian gods, representing Emotion,
Intoxication, and Orgiastic ritualistic practices. The latter
gods were historically older, and were displaced by the
Apollonians, but the Dionysians retained their power among
the peasantry, and were worshipped at periodical, popular
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86 The Sociology of Religion in India
festivals. Christianity, according to Nietzsche, was a
development of the Apollonian religion of self control,
which resolutely repressed Dionysian practices.
One of Nietzsche’s most important successors in the
formulation of theories about religion was arguably
Sigmund Freud. According to Freud (1928, 1961), religion
was a projection of the basic psychological components of
the human self—the trinity of ego, id, and superego. The
ego according to Freud is the rational consciousness (like
Nietzsche’s Apollonian gods); the id is the unconscious
self revealed in dreams and neurotic symptoms and also
a reservoir of primal energies chiefly composed of sexual
lust and violent aggression (in effect, the Dionysian gods).
The superego is also an unconscious part of the self, but it
is the opponent and repressor of the id; it contains the
ideals of restraint, morality and it punishes moral violations.
When the superego is in command the human individual
feels guilty not only for sinful actions but also for illicit
thoughts and unconscious wishes.
Freud’s theories about religion were critiqued by Max
Weber, Karl Jung and others. In turn, Nietzsche’s ideas
about the understanding of the social sources of morality,
and Marx and Feurbach’s materialist views about religion,
were gradually replaced in the field of sociology by the
arguments of Émile Durkheim and others, although the
influence of their theories never really waned. Durkheim’s
theory of religion was generally regarded as broader, more
adequate, and more applicable to most historical and
geographical fields. Durkheim published The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life in 1912 where he expressed the idea
that religion was the worship of society itself, though it
may be disguised by myths and symbols. Society was an
abiding reality and had full control over men as they
depended upon it and revered it. Durkheim cited the
example of the aborigines of Australia and explained
religious totems as the embodiment of the ideals of the
clan.
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern...
Leszek Kolakowski (1982) has offered a classic analysis
of the way in which religion fosters the human existential
condition, and has suggested that religion is not only a
collection of statements about god, providence, heaven,
and hell, but also an awareness of human insufficiency: it
is lived in the admission of weakness. Although the message
of religious worship moves from the finite to the infinite,
the distance between religion and worship remains infinite.
About the crucial relation between religion and the empirical
world he writes:
We face two irreconcilable ways of accepting
the world and our position in it, neither of
which may boast of being more rational than
the other. . . . Once taken, any choice imposes
criteria of judgement which infallibly support
it in a circular logic: if there is no God,
empirical criteria alone have to guide our
thinking, and empirical criteria do not lead
to God; if God exists, He gives us clues to
perceive His hand in the course of events,
and with the help of those clues we recognize
the Divine essence (Kolakowski 1982: 194).
A well known physicist, Albert Einstein, had already
attempted a reconciliation of science with religion by stating
that science without religion was lame and that religion
without science was blind.
The role of religion in contemporary societies has
nonetheless remained controversial and ambiguous.
According to Peter Berger, a sociologist of religion,
contemporary global culture is dominated by two extreme
views—relativism and fundamentalism. However, none
of these are desirable; relativism claims that all questions
of truth are irrelevant, whereas fundamentalism claims
the sole possession of the absolute truth. Berger has raised
the question of if and how various traditions attempt to
find a middle position between these two extremes.
87 88 The Sociology of Religion in India
The role of religion is also complicated by the influence
of secular trends and the ideology of the secular, i.e.
secularism. According to Mattias Gardell:
Religion is a mode of social communication
that traffics in holistic issues (such as the
meaning of life), which explains in part the
worldwide contemporary fervent religious
revival. Paradoxical as it might seem,
globalisation simultaneously pushes
secularization and stimulates religious
revivalism. Secularization does not question
the extent of man’s belief in God but
questions the extent of religion’s ability to
exert public influence in society. The shift
toward functional differentiation gradually
diminished the field of competence between
god and the religious elite, in favour of other
experts such as secular physicians, scientists,
politicians, teachers, and attorneys. With the
global expansion of instrumental techniques
every society, irrespective of how religious
its citizens are, has in some measure been
secularized. From giant corporations down
to the local car mechanic, the overwhelming
majority of companies in the world are
governed by corporate, not religious,
concerns (Gardell 2003: 12-13).
The postmodern mind, however, agrees to issue a
permanent residence permit to religion, although it is
maltreated or sentenced to deportation by scientific reason.
The postmodern mind is more tolerant (since it is more
aware of its own weaknesses) than its modern predecessor,
but it tends to conceal and obscure the issue of definition
of what religion is, while pretending to clarify it.
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Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern... 89
RELIGION, GLOBALISATION, AND POST-
MODERNITY
Globalisation in the twenty-first century is radically
transforming social and economic relations and institutions
as globalisation itself is both a description of and a
prescription for an ideology, which currently dominates
public thinking, policy making, and political practice (Petras
and Vellmeyer 2001: 11-12). The term “globalisation” refers
to the widening and deepening of the international flows
of trade, capital, technology, and information within a
single integrated global market. As a prescription,
“globalisation” involves the liberalisation of national global
markets in the belief that the free flow of trade, capital,
and information can produce the best outcome for economic
growth and human welfare. Thus globalisation has ushered
India into a new kind of unprecedented social change.
The concept of “private” in the process of globalisation
has ultimately become more emphasised than the concept
of the “public”. In the era of postmodernity and
globalisation religion and the idea of god thus tends to
become the private domain of each individual.
But what is “postmodernity” within the frame of
globalisation? Postmodernity, together with postmodern
religion, has been variously conceived. Paul Heelas suggests
that
For some, the disintegration of the certainties
of modernity has left a situation in which
postmodern religion, Gnostic or New Age
spirituality, can develop. For others, the
distressing certainties of modernity have
resulted in the valorization of a premodern
past. For yet others, postmodern religion
belongs to that great countercurrent of
modernity, namely the Romantic Movement.
And then there are those who associate
postmodern religion with changes taking
place within the mainstream of capitalistic
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90 The Sociology of Religion in India
modernity. Rather than dwelling on these
and the many other—and often
contradictory—ways in which the term
“postmodern” has been applied to religion,
the primary aim is to develop an analytical
(and thus “modern”) way of looking at things
(Heelas 1998: 10).
He further argues that both differentiating and
dedifferentiating—that is the deregulation of the domain
of religion—are taking place within both modernity and
postmodernity. Furthermore, he suggests that:
Looking more generally at dedifferentiation
with regard to religion, just as modernity
has seen the development of the ethic of
humanity, so has it witnessed the ...
development of the spirituality of the
perennial.... Denominations, by definition,
are less exclusivist than sects—have come
to dominate mainstream religious life (Heelas
1998: 15).
Regarding the condition of postmodernity, Judith
Squires states that it
may be characterized by three key features:
the death of man, history, and metaphysics.
This involves the rejection of all essentialist
and transcendental conceptions of human
nature; the rejection of unity, homogeneity,
totality, closure, and identity; the rejection
of the pursuit of the real and the true. In the
place of these illusory ideals we find the
assertion that man is a social, historical, or
linguistic artifact; the celebration of
fragmentation, particularity and difference;
the acceptance of the contingent and
apparent (Squires 1992: 2).
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern... 91
Thus, as Seyla Benhabib notes, “postmodernism
presupposes a superliberalism, more pluralistic, more
tolerant, more open to the right of difference and otherness”
(Benhabib 1992: 16). This development naturally leads to
a deregulation of religion, and therefore, in the words of
Grace Davie, “religions, like so many other things, have
entered the world of options, lifestyles, and preferences”
(Davie 2000: 25).
Steve Bruce, however, provincialises these views and
understands the prevailing ethos of religious belief and
behaviour in modern societies as part of the industrial
democracy of western and northern Europe, North America,
Australia, and New Zealand (Bruce 1996: 19). He also
questions whether it is meaningful in this context to talk
about “postmodern” as distinct from “modern” religion.
The question also arises whether religion in modernity/
postmodernity should be theorized separately according
to geographical locations such as the West or India, treating
them as separate events with different trajectories and
histories, or not.
Paul Heelas has observed that the study of religion
within the frame of postmodern thinking includes the
question of whether religion is operating entirely beyond
the religious traditions of the past or not. Are religions in
postmodernity free from traditional values, truths,
ontologies, meanings, and rituals, and if so, are traditions
dying out? He concludes:
Perhaps some postmodernists have
translated their postmodernity into religious
practice, a religion of the micronarrative, or
micronarratives, with no real author;
dedifferentiated (deregulated) religion of
choice certainly exists; and there might well
be religions of pragmatism and
performativity rather than of transcendental
truth. However, against those who
emphasize the massive loss of tradition, or
of grand narratives, the argument is that
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92 The Sociology of Religion in India
traditions are in fact by no means as close
to death as is often made out to be, and
indeed in many contexts show signs of
considerable vitality (Heelas 1998: 15).
Religious traditions appear to be alive and thriving
despite predictions about their waning and death. However,
traditional religions are still viewed as a threat to modernity
and in many respects as the antithesis of postmodernity.
THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION AND THE ORIGINS
OF RELIGION
Religion has been present at every level of human society
from the earliest times. But where to find it and what is
it? How to define it? Geoffrey Parrinder argues that the
universality of religion in history and human geography
does not necessarily imply that all individuals are or
have been equally religious. Regarding the question of
religion, he points out that “speculations, as to how, when,
and why religion have flourished in the last hundred
years only” (Parrinder 1971: 9-12). The meaning, source,
and nature of religion is thus a modern question. Because
of the complexity and ambiguity of this phenomenon,
however, according to Zygmunt Bauman it has become
harder and harder to speak about it and offer a definition
of it: “religion belongs to the family of the curious, and
often embarrassing concepts, which one perfectly
understands until one wants to define them” (Bauman
1998: 55). One example is the definition found in the
Oxford English Dictionary, which says that religion is “the
recognition of superhuman controlling power, and especially
of a personal God, entitled to obedience”.2 Belief in a god
or gods is certainly found in most religions, but different
impersonal powers are also often revered, as well as human
leaders in civil religion (discussed below), or ancestors in
Chinese religion.
In 1871, Edward Burnett Tylor coined the word
“animism” to describe the early history of religion. Derived
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern... 93
from anima, the Latin word for “soul”, the theory of animism
suggested that primitive man had deduced that he
possessed an immaterial soul from dreams, visions,
delirium, and contemplation over death. Since the dead
appeared in dreams it was assumed that their spirits
continued to exist after death and that they might even
dwell in various objects. Tylor theorized that the dead
gradually came to be regarded as gods (Tylor 1871). About
the same time, the sociologist and philosopher Herbert
Spencer suggested that religion had its origins in the
alleged visions or appearances of the ghosts of the dead,
and the ancestors were then worshipped as gods. But
Tylor, Spencer, and others could not prove convincingly
that prehistoric men had thought in this way, and the
jump from ghosts or souls to divine spirits and gods was
based upon conjecture. Even if it had happened in that
way, there was no certainty that it was a universal
development. The theory of animism, in this form has
been virtually abandoned as a scientific explanation.
The Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade (1978)
commented that the modern historian of religion knows
that it is impossible to reach the origins of religion and
this is a problem which no longer concerns him or her.
The important task today is to study the different phases
and aspects of religious life, and to discover from these
the role of religion within mankind.
THE STUDY OF RELIGION
In my opinion, after this brief overview of Western theories
about the nature of religion, so much can be said: religion,
and here I will refer particularly to the Hindu context, is
the belief in, and a relation with, something holy or sacred.
This relation is filled with emotion and a feeling that the
objects of worship and reverence are above and apart
from the matters of ordinary life. Hindus worship an
animal such as the cow not because it is an animal (see
chapter 2 about Marx’ comments about the Hindu worship
of animal figures), but because of a host of superempirical
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94 The Sociology of Religion in India
attributes that this animal is thought to embody. Each
committed Hindu seeks a method of salvation or
redemption through connection with these powers, which
for him or her is the path of release from the bondage of
karma, that is the joy or suffering (s)he undergoes as a
result of past actions. In the Hindu context, a man conceives,
as it were, a double of himself, a second identity beside
the body. It is natural for a Hindu to think that at the
moment of death this second identity separates from the
body and stays as a spiritual self, as atman, before
reincarnating or proceeding toward ultimate liberation.
Durkheim used the term “mana” to describe a force
absolutely separate from any material force, which acts in
all kinds of ways, whether good or bad. He thought that
the greatest advantage and ambition of man lied in bringing
it under control and domination. However, T. N. Madan
suggests that the Sanskrit word “dharma”, roughly
equivalent but not equal to the word “religion”, refers to
something beyond human control, i.e. to the very principle
that maintains the universe (Madan 2006: 213). Dharma
includes cosmological, ethical, social, and legal principles
that provide the basis for the notion of an ordered universe
that Hindus try to patiently understand and adjust to.
“This patience, this steadfastness, this sincerity,” Sister
Nivedita writes, “is dharma—the substance” (1989). In
the social context dharma stands for the imperative of
righteousness in the definition of the good life. Religion
is then also one of the sources of morality. By observing
moral rules one may receive salvation and the blessings
of god or the gods. In this way, religious codes have
strengthened moral codes by connecting them with the
supernatural world. Manu prescribed the social and
religious orders of varnas and ashrams as ideals for protecting
society and social harmony, and inspired the householders
to follow dharma and avoid adharma (non-religion, disorder
or chaos). The duties of householders are very important
because they are regarded as the wheel of society and the
root of family welfare.
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern... 95
Religion in its folk and mainstream traditions is thus
part and parcel of the Hindu worldview, which believes
that god is everywhere and, differing here from the
Abrahamic religions, present in all living and inanimate
objects, whether tiny or big. Hinduism is based on the
belief about the multifarious forms of gods, though the
ultimate deity is generally regarded as one, bhagavan—
that is, the lord, possessing both impersonal and personal
attributes.
Indian sociologist Binoy Sarkar once remarked that
India could teach nothing but “sublime speculations of
an otherworldly character, the psychology of the soul, the
ethics of retreat from the struggles of life, and the metaphysic
of the infinite” (Bandyopadhyay 1984: 10). Émile Senart
also wrote, “The Hindu mind is very religious and very
speculative ... obstinate guardian of traditions, it is
singularly insensible to the joy of action and to the demands
of material progress” (1975). In opposition to that, Sarkar
wrote that the Hindu has no doubt always placed the
transcendental in the ground of his life’s scheme, but he
has never ignored the “positive background”; rather, it is
in and through the positive, the secular, and the material
that the transcendental, the spiritual, and the metaphysical
have been portrayed in Indian culture and history.
Literature, the arts, religious consciousness, industrial life,
political organization, educational systems and the social
economy of the Hindus have all sought to realize this
synthesis and harmony (Bandyopadhyay 1984: 11).
It is most often the case that humans are born within
a religion and depart from the world with funeral religious
rites. Throughout the course of life, most humans accept
local patterns of religion that shape their beliefs and
identities. We know that a religion is a system of beliefs
through which people organize and order their lives. These
beliefs define the code of behaviour that regulates personal
and social life (Fulcher and Scott, 2003). Religion forms
what Berger calls a sacred canopy (1969) and involves
specialised forms of communication and action—such as
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prayers and rituals—through which the secular world
becomes linked with the sacred world of a social system.
Hinduism is so intimately connected with Hindu
festivals that the former is most often described in prominent
relation to the latter. Most festivals among the Hindus do
have a religious significance—Hinduism is indeed grounded
in fasts, feasts, and festivals, in manifestations of sorrow
and joy, in games and dances, in sacrifices and banquets.3
In this era of globalisation, structural changes are taking
place in the sociological, psychological, political, and
cultural sphere in India as elsewhere, but still the religious
sphere in the subcontinent is everywhere to be seen. Both
rural and semiurban people, as well as migrant urban
dwellers of rural origin, retain the practice of Hindu
ceremonies and worship images of god, and, in doing so,
maintain a sense of continuity in the face of all structural
changes. For example, widely practised rituals such as
the pujas fulfil important human and social needs. They
are a break from the uniformity of life; they make Hindus
cheerful and playful, and exercise a healthy influence on
their lives.
FOLK RELIGION
In a differentiated and equality-based postmodern society,
the search for the truth is still innate to the human condition.
Humans are entitled to freedom of religion because their
right is rooted in the inherent dignity of the person and
not in the fickle will of the state. Compared to the modern
and postmodern context of differentiated societies described
above, where religion is generally institutionalised or
individualised, folk religion is transmitted directly from
generation to generation by common people in various
regions, places, or countries around the world. It has
great impact upon the political, economic, and cultural
development of various regions and continues to satisfy
the emotional and religious needs of the people. Folk
religion is organically related to local social structures,
family kinships, as well as village and community
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern... 97
organizations. Magical beliefs and practices play also often
an important part.
Folk religion stands in contrast to organized religions
or historical religions, in which founders, creeds, theologies,
and ecclesiastical organizations are prominent. Ethnic
religion refers to the religious practices specific to a
community. Folk religion and ethnic religion are similar
concepts, in fact they both are characterized by the absence
of proselytisation, which means that membership, as a
rule, is equivalent to ethnicity. Folk religion can also be
thought of as the practice of religion by laypeople, outside
the control of the clergy or the supervision of theologians
(i.e., outside organized religion). Don Yoder has defined
“folk religion” as “the totality of all those views and
practices of religion that exist among the people apart
from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical
forms of the official religion” (Yoder 1974: 1). There is
occasionally tension between the practice of folk religion
and the formally taught doctrines and teachings of a faith.
If “folk religion” is to be a meaningful category, there
must be though an institutional religion with a traditional
teaching or a professional clergy to contrast it with; it is
difficult to speak of folk religion as a meaningful category
in cultures that lack institutional religions.
The term is also applied to the blending of folk practices
with the rituals and beliefs of established institutional
religions (a phenomenon known as syncretism) or the
folk practices and beliefs found in local regions. Folk
practices among Christians are thus called “folk
Christianity,” in Islamic states “folk Islam”, among Hindus
“folk Hinduism,” and in West Bengal “folk Bengal” and
so on. The term is also used, especially by the clergy, to
describe the religion of people who otherwise rarely attend
religious worship, who do not belong to a church or
similar religious society, who have not made a formal
statement of faith in any particular creed, who do not
attend nor observe religious weddings or funerals, or
according to Christians, who do not baptize their children.
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98 The Sociology of Religion in India
Examples of folk religion would include perceptions of
religious imagery in natural phenomena, ancestor worship,
amulets, or protective qualities ascribed to religious objects
like the Bible or a crucifix; animism, or belief in spiritual
beings associated with landscape or specific human
domains, belief in traditional systems of magic, the blessing
of animals and crops (fertility rites), food, vehicles,
buildings, and other objects; rituals to ward off the evil
eye, curses, demons, witchcraft and so on.
The term “cunning woman” or “cunning man” refers
to professional or semi-professional folk-magic users. Such
people are also frequently known as wizards, wise men,
wise women, or witches. People in premodern societies
often chose to resort to the help of magic in situations of
misfortune or danger. Bronislaw Malinowski (1922), in
his classic study of the Trobriand Islanders of the Pacific,
described a variety of magical rites performed before any
hazardous canoe voyage was undertaken. But the islanders
omitted such rites when they were simply going fishing
on the safe and placid waters of their lagoons.
According to Mukerji, folk religion consists of social
traditions, in which people are naturally born, and that
internal and external forces cannot really change, since
these traditions have great power, and they survive by
small adjustments. In fact, precisely that ability to adjust
is the measure of the vitality of a living tradition (Mukerji
1979: 257).
The folk religion with the largest number of adherents
is found in China and approximately accounts for six
percent of the world population. Various “primal
indigenous” religions (animism, shamanism) account for
another four percent, but elements of folk religion exist as
a part of all religious traditions and should be regarded
as popular currents of those traditions rather than as
separate phenomena. Understood in this way, folk religion
is a phenomenon present in every society. One of its
natural functions is to answer to the human need for
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern...
reassurance in times of trouble and many of its rituals are
aimed at mundane goals such as averting misfortune or
healing the diseased. Many elements of folk religion
originate from animistic practices or fetishes, which is
inevitable considering its often worldly and pragmatic
goals. Folk religion often aims at divination and the line
between the practice of folk religion and the practice of
magic is rather blurred.
India’s folk religion is a traditional way of living and
so functions as an integral part of its culture. Though the
social system of India’s rural folk religion is a normative
orientation of group, sect, or caste life, it is not
“voluntaristic”.4 Folk religions transmitted informally in
a village or at times even in urban settings contribute to
maintain not only the traditions themselves but also the
cohesiveness and unity of the communities that practice
them, and ensure as well as their renewal and growth.
Worship and festivals (puja) for Bengalis/Hindus are
not individualistic but rather coordinative. A Hindu’s
individual pattern of life and choices is often firmly fixed
by his or her socio-cultural group and (s)he hardly deviates
from it except under severe economic strain. As D.P.
Mukherji has observed, “these traditions are the real
principle of dhriti, that is dharma, that holds, maintains,
and continues in the new traditions” (Mukherji 1955: 5).
In his opinion, if the group is the unit of action, aspiration,
and orientation—normative, affective, and cognitive alike—
then Indian social life is quite similar to the life of the
bees, that is regimented, in fact, almost communistic. One
of the reasons, Mukherji suggests, is that the Indian concept
of freedom is different from the idea of freedom in the
West. Its idea of man is a social being, purusha, and not an
individual, or vyakti (Mukherji 1955: 5-15).
One central theme in folk religion and folklore is the
relationship between male and female. At the level of
social structure and consciousness both these principles
are locked into a dynamic and dialectical relationship.
Thus, Harvinder Singh Bhatti writes:
99 100 The Sociology of Religion in India
Numerous mutually opposing stereotypes
may be found simultaneously operative in
any given culture. On the one hand the
female is conceived as a benevolent and
mysterious creation and on the other hand
as the most dangerous and imperfect.
Likewise, the male may be the primary
mover of the universe but [is] most
dependent and vulnerable at the same time”
(Bhatti 2000: 187).
In folk religion, goddesses appear to be associated
with earth, water, the moon, fertility, the underworld,
disease, and death, while gods seem to be primarily
associated with wind, thunderstorms, animals, forest fire,
sun, and drought. The whole gamut of folk religion,
mythology, and folklore is replete not only with the interplay
of male and female principles but also with other pairs of
opposing or complementary symbols.
Scholars such as David A. Martin have argued that
folk religion is only restricted to women, the old, or the
unskilled working class as “these people seem relatively
unimportant in shaping society, since they are peripheral
and subsidiary members of the world of work, power,
and politics” (Martin 1969: 3). A key characteristic of folk
religion is on the contrary the notion of power. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, a feminist and postcolonialist while
accepting the validity of the high texts of Brahmanical
tradition also proclaimed that “there is no great goddess”
and “when activated, each goddess is the great goddess”
(Spivak 2001: 122). But the power of folk deities is different
from social power, which is associated with status and
position within the framework of a social structure. Social
power is assigned to various positions and the holders of
these positions operate within the framework of clear
social rules. Their power is structurally defined. But folk
deities have attributes that make their powers ambiguous,
anomalous, and arbitrary. The folk conception of power
socrel1\50
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern...
has two distinct domains vaguely resembling the dichotomy
of sacred and profane. One of them is structurally defined,
while the other is undefined, occasionally recognized
through the structure, but essentially beyond its boundaries.
These two domains of power are not mutually exclusive;
they are dialectically related to each other. When material
authority becomes legitimized by social power, the other
domain becomes the place for spiritual, magical, or other
diffuse types of power. The ambiguity of this domain
enables the human mind to weave into it various
combinations of religious symbols. Folk deities, heroes,
and ancestors are often presented as representatives of
this spiritual power.
FOLK RELIGION AS A WORLDWIDE SOCIAL
PHENOMENON
There are several types of folk religion practised by a
wide variety of individuals. Robert Bellah (1967) has
underscored the importance of folk religion in secular
societies by coining the term “civil religion”. By that he
meant a type of religiosity prominent in modern states,
i.e. the folk religion of a nation represented for example
by the national flag, the national anthem, military symbols,
a political leader, etc. Civil religion stands somewhat above
folk religion in social and political status, since by definition
it permeates an entire social system, or at least a segment
of a society, and is often practised by state or regional
leaders.
Folk religion has grown alongside mainstream
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism for
thousands of years. It is not a static system rather it is a
dynamic force of social life, and generally does not engage
with modernity, postmodernity, globalisation, or
neoliberalism, except in the case of civil religion.
Nonetheless, folk religion has exercised a tremendous
influence on the lives and societies of man. The earliest
societies, of which we have evidence only through
101 102 The Sociology of Religion in India
archaeological remains, show clear traces of religious
symbols and ceremonies. Throughout history, folk religion
and religion in all its various manifestations have continued
to be a central component of the human experience and
have influenced in foundational ways our perceptions
and understanding of the societies and environment in
which we live. All available indices point to the likelihood
that this will also be the case in the future.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bandyopadhyay, Bholanath (1984). The Political ideas of Benoy
Sarkar. Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1998). “Post Modern Religion” in Paul Heelas
(ed.), Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. London:
Blackwell Publishers.
Bellah, Robert Neelly (1967). “Civil Religion in America”. Journal
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96 (1): 1–21.
Benhabib, Seyla (1992). Situating the Self: Gender, Community and
Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity.
Berger, Peter L. (1967). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological
Theory of Religion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Bhatti, Harvinder Singh (2000). Folk Religion: Change and Continuity.
Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
Bhaumik, Mani Lal (2005). Code Name God. New Delhi: Penguin
Books.
Bruce, Steve (1996). Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals
to Cults. New York: Oxford.
Davie, Grace (2000). Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates.
London: Oxford University Press.
Durkhiem, Émile (1976 [1912]). The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. London: Routledge
Publishers.
Eliade, Mircea (1978). The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and
Structures of Alchemy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Feuerbach, Ludwig (1957 [1855]). The Essence of Christianity.
New York: Harper.
socrel-1\51
Religion and Folk Religion in Modern and Postmodern...
Freud, Sigmund (1928). The Future of an Illusion. London: Hogarth.
––––. (1961 [1930]): Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated
by James Strachey. New York: Norton and Norton.
Heelas, Paul (1998). Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. London:
Blackwell Publishers.
Kolakowski, Leszek (1982) Religion: If There is No God: On God,
the Devil, Sin and Other Worries of the So-called Philosophy of
Religion. London: Fontana.
Kosambi, Dharmanand Damodar (1986). The Culture and
Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline. London:
Routledge & Kegan.
Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and
White Separatism. London: Duke University Press.
Fulcher, James & Scott, John (2003). Sociology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Madan, T.N. (2006). Images of the World: Essays on Religion,
Secularism and Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific:
An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes
of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge and Kegan.
Martin, David A. (1969). The Religious and the Secular: Studies in
Secularization. London: Routledge.
Mukherji , D.P. (1986). “Indian Traditions and Social Change”
in T.K. Oommen and Mukherji, Parthanath (eds.), Indian
Sociology: Reflections and Introspection. Bombay: Popular
Prakashan.
Mukerji, Dhurjati Prasad (1979). “From the Personality to the
Plane of Sociology”, in Mukhopadhyay, Amal Kumar (eds.),
The Bengali Intellectual Tradition: From Rammohun Ray to
Dhirendranath Sen. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi.
Parrinder, Geoffrey (1971). “Man and his Gods”, in Encyclopedia
of the World’s Religions. Feltham U.K.: Hamlyn Publishing
Group.
Petras, James and Vellmeyer, Henry (2001). Globalisation Unmasked:
Imperialism in the 21st Century. New Delhi: Madhyam Books.
Pickering, W. S. F. (1975). Durkheim on Religion. London: Routledge
& Kegan.
103 104 The Sociology of Religion in India
Pramanick, Swapan Kumar (1998). Sociology of G.S. Ghurye. Jaipur:
Rawat.
Senart, Émile (1975). Caste in India. New Delhi: ESS Publications.
Sister Nivedita (1989). Religion and Dharma. Kolkata: Advaita
Ashrama.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2001). “Moving Devi”, Cultural
Critique, No. 47: 120–163.
Tylor, Edward B. (1871). Primitive Culture: Researches into the
Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and
Custom. London: J. Murray.
Yoder, Don (1974). “Toward a Definition of Folk Religion”,
Western Folklore 33.1: 1–15.
NOTES
1. Pickering, W. S. F., 1975, Durkheim on Religion. London:
Routledge & Kegan, p. 96.
2. Source, www.oxforddictionaries.com, accessed on 2012-09-
01.
3. The Rig-Veda, the earliest Hindu text, refers incidentally to
the performance of rites and festivals. The very first sukta
(hymn) declares, “I glorify Agni, the high priest of the
sacrifice, the divine ministrant who presents the oblation
[to the gods] and is the possessor of great wealth.” Agni is
invoked as the agra, or the first of the gods; as the agrani,
or the leader of the heavenly host and as the prathama
devata, or the first of the gods. The Yajur-Veda more fully
discusses some of the performances of rites and festivals
briefly mentioned in the Rig-Veda.
4. Voluntarism in India is on the rise these days, particularly
among the urban middle classes.
socrel1\52

5 dominant theological traditions, nationalisms and the
Religious Studies and the Knowledge Society
Open Access as Contributing to an Open Society
CLEMENS CAVALLIN
The postmodern condition coincides, as argued by Lyotard
(1984), with the emergence of a knowledge society in
which a global struggle for the resources of knowledge
takes place. Both democratic and totalitarian regimes have
now understood that this is a new armaments race that
will provide the basis for future financial power. A central
issue in this process is access to knowledge, which is
parallel to access and affordability of energy. However,
access to both energy and knowledge is uneven in the
global system. For the most part, scientific and scholarly
knowledge is not available for free, but comes packaged
in costly journals and books. This makes it difficult for
institutions and individuals that are economically
disadvantaged to access the mass of information required
for participation in the new global knowledge society. At
the same time, there are movements that hint toward a
different scenario, i.e. toward Open Access publishing,
made possible by digitalisation and the internet.1
socrel-1\53
106 The Sociology of Religion in India
Academic knowledge about religion is present on the
battlefield for control of knowledge and information.
However, religious studies do not yet have a truly global
scope and structure, as the discipline has been initiated
only within certain national systems of higher education.
It has also developed in rather different ways due to local
contexts, mostly as a result of the relation to locally
secularity or confessionality of the state. In Sweden, for
example, the union between state and church was
abandoned in the year 2000, but the priests of the Church
of Sweden are still educated at state universities.
If the Swedish state has only recently become secular
by separating church and state, in India this has been the
case for a much longer period of time. In India, nevertheless,
contrary to Sweden, religious studies have not yet been
established as a common subject within the modern research
university. Religions are mostly studied one by one as
separate phenomena, and not as instances of a more general
category of “religion”, which would require a much more
substantial use of overarching theoretical analysis.
In order for religious studies to be able to grow in
India, besides structural and institutional changes, access
to good teaching material is essential. It is at this point
that the question of Open Access becomes important; and
as I will argue, the question of choice between an Open
Society or its competitors, i.e. The Global Marketplace or
The Totalitarian State.
THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM
The impact of globalisation within national systems for
higher education and research is increasingly experienced,
but not always appreciated by teachers and researchers.
During the early 21st century, this development, boosted
by sophisticated information technology, has reached a
new level of intensity and speed, which has caused a
number of concerns. Philip G., Altbach, Liz Reisberg, and

Laura E. Rumbley in a recent overview (2010) mention a
set of characteristics that according to them add up to a
global academic revolution, i.e. massification, globalisation,
the advent of the knowledge society, and role of the new
information technology. The combination of massification,
i.e. the increasingly higher percentage of persons entering
university education, with globalisation has opened up
for large-scale movements of students across national
borders, challenging the local character of education.
National university systems are struggling to handle the
situation, as well as related challenges such as quality in
relation to quantity, and the inequality of access in mass
education. In this context, Altbach et al. bring up an
important point:
China and India, which enrol only 20 percent
and 10 percent of their age groups
respectively, are still the world’s largest and
third-largest academic systems. Those
systems will be expanding rapidly in the
coming decades and may soon account for
close to half the world’s enrolment growth.
When China and India reach the present
levels of many Western countries at around
70 percent, or at least 50 percent, the world
of higher education and research will be
radically transformed (Altbach 2010: 31).
However, in the formation of a global knowledge system
the question of ownership of knowledge is crucial:
Intellectual property is a growing challenge
across higher education but especially in
research universities. Who owns knowledge?
Who benefits from research? The topic often
brings into focus the potential conflicts
between those who produce research and their
sponsors, who may wish to control the
knowledge and benefits that come from it
(Altbach 2010: 35; cf. Haviland & Mullin 2009).
socrel1\54
108 The Sociology of Religion in India
Many of the concerns caused by the globalisation of
knowledge stem from its being wedded to a neo-liberal
reform agenda in which the knowledge society is primarily
understood in financial terms. The production and transfer
of knowledge and skills are then seen in relation to their
impact on the economy. Forms of knowledge and education
that cannot be seen to provide visible financial outcomes
are slowly weeded out. This has brought about a decrease
of university autonomy in collegial forms of decision
making, and paved instead the way to a class of managers
that run sections of the university on the basis of quantitative
results. What is lost is thus the importance of forming
democratic citizens through education, the importance of
humanistic scholarship geared toward deeper knowledge
and insight about the human condition (see e.g. Nussbaum
1998). In its place the norm has become the Homo
Economicus, characterized by a relentless application of
instrumental rationality to achieve ever higher levels of
efficiency, and most often, for the sole purpose of satisfying
material needs.
UNEQUAL RESOURCES
Whether we like it or not, we are entering a phase in
which knowledge as a commodity is the hard currency of
the global education and research system. Access to that
knowledge can be very costly as is the case of many high
profile international journals and books. The financial
burden for institutions to keep up with cutting edge research
within a discipline is not negligible, and that is also true
for religious studies, which contains a multitude of multi-
disciplinary avenues. To this we should add that many
publications are in local languages and are circulated in
a very limited fashion without international distribution.
What are the consequences of high costs and
concomitant lack of access for the promotion of an Open
Society, and for the fostering of a democratic culture?
Religious Studies and the Knowledge Society 109
OPEN SOCIETY
The expression “Open Society” was coined by the French
philosopher Henri Bergson, but the most influential
formulation was made by the philosopher of science Karl
Popper during the Second World War in his book The
Open Society and its Enemies (Popper [1945] 2002). Its foil
was quite naturally the contemporary fascist and communist
states of Europe. Popper, who was born and raised in
Vienna, actually began to write the two-volume work in
1938 in New Zealand, at the time of Hitler’s invasion of
Austria.
Popper places the beginning of the transition from
closed to open society in ancient Greece, and suggests
that it appeared with the introduction of democracy. A
transition took place from tribalism to individualism and
civilisation, the latter characterised by critical rationality
in the shape of science combined with basic liberal principles
such as freedom, justice and equality, i.e. in essence, what
we today understand as the foundation of a liberal
democracy. One of the characteristics of a totalitarian society
is the will to control in detail the flow of information to
make sure that no criticism of the political establishment
or its ideology circulates.
New information technologies make it both more
difficult and easier today to regulate in detail the flow of
information. The tendency of totalitarian states is to restrict
the free flow of knowledge to the natural sciences and
technology. This totalitarian focus on the hard sciences is
parallel to the utilitarian perspective now increasingly
influential in liberal democratic states, which methodically
yokes the university system to what is seen as financially
useful.
OPEN ACCESS
While totalitarian states and the present narrow focus on
economic gain conspire against the ideal of a democratic
socrel-1\55
110 The Sociology of Religion in India
community of citizens founded on critical rationality and
open to all members, there are opposing forces that promote
Open Access, that is, the unrestricted access to knowledge
in electronic format and free of charge. In a report on
Open Access made by UNESCO for the European Union
the basic problem is formulated:
Knowledge is increasingly important for the
development of the individual and society
in an ever more globalised world. One of
the primary goals of UNESCO is therefore
to build up modern knowledge societies in
which all people can participate in
information and knowledge. At the same
time the protection of intellectual property
is a major concern, with the aim of ensuring
creativity as a core sphere of culture.
(German Commission for Unesco: 10)
The possibility for the globalisation of, for example,
religious studies is, thus, within reach. For this to come
true, however, the amount of Open Access religious studies
material must dramatically increase and local languages
should not be seen as the primary medium of scholarly
communication. In this scenario, the traditional role of
the humanities as guardians of a national cultural heritage,
including a local, national language, is of secondary
importance.
The most probable development is a bifurcation of
religious studies (both as education and research) into, on
one hand, a globalised anglicised system and, on the
other, a number of networks with local focus and flavour.
I have witnessed that in Sweden this process has become
a painful one for many, who for a long time have viewed
the national state as the natural framework for education
and research in the humanities. The massification of higher
education on a national level has also weakened old cultural
elites and their links to the academy, the media and the
“educated public”, creating further unrest.
Religious Studies and the Knowledge Society
Open Access is dangerous to the neo-liberal ideology
of the knowledge market, as it disturbs the relation between
demand and supply, i.e. by making supply unlimited and
free of charge. But it is also dangerous for the totalitarian
state and its guardians, who are forced to monitor and
screen it for potentially dangerous ideas.
But does an Open Society rest upon universal access
to knowledge, that is, does it require a high degree of
general literacy (i.e. competence) and above all open access
to all knowledge in order to function? If that is the case,
then there has never been any truly open society. Even if
we could imagine a country in which the literacy rate is
100% and all education is free, and all books and articles
are written in the same language (e.g. English), and freely
accessible online, functional differentiation and
specialisation operating on a global scale would prevent
complete access due to lack of competence. In such an
ideal society there would still be scientific elites organised
as guilds of experts that would manage specialised fields
of knowledge.
Regardless of the utopian character of a total access
for all citizens, we can probe the question of what is
required to achieve a global Open Access for religious
studies and its development into a global knowledge
system. I would like to suggest four key elements:
1) English as lingua franca
Scholars and academic institutions actively embrace
academic bi-lingualism in relation to English.
2) Open Access as standard
Universities and states reward researchers that make
their research and teaching material available through
Open Access (this has already begun in Sweden and the
EU).
111 112 The Sociology of Religion in India
3) Global humanities
The nature, function and role of the humanities in a
globalised world is redefined in order to lift the focus
from the national state to global society, thereby
disconnecting scholarly work from the anxieties arising
from national and ethnic identities.
4) Religion as a universal phenomenon
To avoid and overcome the differentiation of religious
studies into separate discourses on local religions (often
in the manner of a distinction between our religion and
their religions), one theoretically develops the approach
to religion as a phenomenon founded upon human nature
with particular religions as concrete manifestations of
this universal inclination.
CONCLUSION
The question of religious coexistence, tolerance and
acceptance is in many ways connected to teaching and
research in religious studies. However, if religious studies
is to make a positive contribution to this topic, it has to
detach itself from local contexts and establish a basic
transnational framework. Coexistence is not only a national,
but a global issue. This task is complicated both by the
will of totalitarian states to control the flow of information
within the social sciences and humanities, and by the
logic of the global market of knowledge. In its effort to
contribute to religious coexistence instead of strife and
ghettoisation, religious studies needs to embrace the
opportunity of Open Access and the alternative version
of globalisation that it nurtures. That is, if scholars of
religion want to support an Open Society rather than the
commodification of knowledge, or a totalitarian Closed
Society in either its secular or theocratic forms.
socrel1\56
Religious Studies and the Knowledge Society
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altbach, Philip G., Liz Reisberg, and Laura E. Rumbley (2010).
“Tracking a Global Academic Revolution.” Change 42, no.
2: 30–39. <http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/
login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=48674663&site=ehost-
live>
German Commission for UNESCO, European Commission,
Directorate-General for Research, Science, Economy and
Society (2008). Open Access: opportunities and challenges: a
handbook. <http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/
/document_library/pdf_06/open-access-handbook_en.pdf>
Haviland, Carol Peterson & Mullin, Joan A. (eds.) (2009). Who
owns this text?: plagiarism, authorship, and disciplinary cultures.
Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press [E-book].
Lyotard, Jean François (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A report
on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven (1998). Cultivating humanity: a classical
defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Popper, Karl (2002). The open society and its enemies. London:
Routledge.
Note
1. See e.g. the DOAJ site www.doaj.org, accessed on 2012-02-
01.
113
6
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious
Experience
FEDERICO D’AGOSTINO
The debate regarding the eclipse of the sacred and its
return to contemporary life is alive and well, not only in
the public sphere, but also in the sociological and
anthropological literature. What is often missing from
this debate is the symbolic perspective on religious
experience. This chapter will briefly present some of the
major theories on this subject, which are often used to
clarify the concept of sacred and religious symbolism.
In the sphere of the sacred we may want to distinguish
a vertical perspective, a horizontal frame, and an inner
direction. The vertical perspective refers to a kind of
“archeological” stratification in which the sacred is thought
to occupy the deepest layers of the human psyche and
society. Theories taking this approach include the
“grounding meanings” of Max Weber, the “ground bass”
of Robert N. Bellah, the “collective effervescence” of Émile
Durkheim, the “collective unconscious” of Sigmund Freud
and Carl Jung, and the “numinous” of Rudolf Otto. This
layer expresses the persistence of the sacred with respect
to the different forms and figures of its manifestations so
socrel-1\57
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 115
that there is a kind of asymmetry between this layer and
its manifestations. This asymmetry has given rise to the
hypothesis that the idea of the sacred develops cyclically
in society. The process of secularization has a minor
influence on this development, but has a greater influence
on its manifestations.
Sacredness is not inherent, per se, to an object or an
animal or a person, but it is rather a symbolic construction
arising from a relationship and institutionalisation during
which something or somebody is taken out of ordinary,
profane life and brought to a realm into which she or he
becomes a bridge, an offering toward a divinity or a
superior being. The dynamics of the sacred go from a
horizontal to a vertical relationship, which is then inscribed
in the structure of human beings and their persona, and
in the human situation.
This transition functions to include or integrate
something (a time, space, object, person, institution, or
situation) into a realm charged with religious meaning,
collective effervescence, or an interior relationship with a
transcendent being.
The connection that arises between separation and
integration does not have meaning unless there is a
transformation of the object/subject in terms of establishing
a new relationship of dependency on the transcendent.
Dependency presupposes or lays the groundwork for an
asymmetric relationship between inferior and superior
beings. It may also be the starting point of a journey that
later leads to a communion, an inclusion, or a symbolic
overcoming of that asymmetric relationship.
THE CONCEPT OF THE SACRED1
The concept of the sacred, according to Durkheim, has a
social origin and a sociological explanation. This concept
is strongly related to the idea of god and it is tied to the
collective representations that make up part of a society’s
culture. Durkheim describes the concept of the sacred as
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116 The Sociology of Religion in India
having four elements: (1) belief and respect, (2) dogmas
and myths, (3) sacred objects, and (4) cultural practices;
from the last comes the division between the sacred object
and the profane that is at the basis of most religious
ideas, practice, and organizations.2
Since Durkheim, a clear-cut division between the sacred
and the profane has dominated the sociological definition
of the religious dimension of society. However, though
the idea of the sacred that emerges out of collective
representation and sentiment is a powerful one, today we
see a much greater mixture of the sacred and the profane
emerging in social and cultural phenomena. Durkheim’s
clear-cut division is now subject to debate on a number of
levels such as the symbolic dimension of the sacred (in
which a continuum between the two points, rather than a
dichotomy, can be found), the interplay between the two
poles, and the possibility of looking beyond this duality.
The reduction of the sacred to a collective dimension also
neglects the interpersonal and invisible dimensions of
religious experience.
The idea of sacredness is seen by some scholars as one
that evolves over time in a given society. In the first
phase, the sacred infuses the society as a whole. Then a
dichotomy between the sacred and the profane develops.
Next, the two mix together, beginning an era of modern
hybridization. Eventually the dichotomy is overcome and
a mingling of the two concepts occurs, in which the profane
occupies the foreground while the sacred pervades like a
carsic river that suddenly appears and then mysteriously
disappears, the “ground bass” of the social realm, that is
a deep sonority that persists in spite of the melodious
development of the upper secular or otherwise register.
And finally, we see the shrinking of the social religious
sphere into a symbolic nucleus at the personal level leading
to three orientations:
A. Sacred life in primitive and archaic societies (to
use Bellah’s terms in relation to his scheme of
“religious evolution” 3 ) touches upon social
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 117
institutions and relationships, the cosmos, and even
objects. This ubiquity gives meaning and symbolic
value to social action, but not to the point of giving
up the rational management of daily life. Every
single and collective action is understood within a
framework that R. Panikar (1943) calls
cosmotheandric—a triangular perspective, whose
three corners include the cosmos, the human
condition, and divine powers.
B. A dichotomy between the sacred and the profane,
which occurs mainly during the period of modernity,
and in which the profane resembles the French
concept of laïcité. The dichotomy represents the
basic beginnings of differentiation between the
religious and the profane spheres (that is, the
political, economic, and cultural parts of society).
The ambiguity of the sacred is born of the possibility
of the transmutation of the quotidian into the divine.4
C. The shrinking of the societal perception of the realm
of the sacred, according to theorists, pushes it toward
the substratum of the unconscious. The reduction
of the sacred at the conscious level (where it is
understood to be found in concrete items, such as
objects, processes, and times) shifts the sense of
the sacred into the personal and collective
unconscious, where it is reconstituted in situations,
rules, and taboos. According to Durkheim,
The sacred is a concept associated with the
collective representations expressed in
religious symbolism and metaphors; religion
from the sociological point of view of
Durkheim contains a cognitive element
which has to do with the reality of society,
namely the way society thinks of itself.5 We
have however already seen that although
religious beliefs are not based on fact, they
do nevertheless express the social realities
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118 The Sociology of Religion in India
even when they interpret them by symbols
and metaphors.6
The later Durkheim insists though on the emotional
character of the experience of the sacred.
Secularization neither absorbed nor cooled the “magma”
of the sacred, which lies in the deep substratum of social
reality where the ambivalence of the sacred between holy
and demoniac is played out. Various theorists have given
various names to this substratum of the sacred as it emerges
at a certain moment in time: Durkheim’s “collective
effervescence”, Arnold van Gennep’s “turning points of
rites of passage,”7 Bellah’s perception of the “transcendent,”8
Abraham Maslow’s “peak experience,”9 Victor Turner’s
“communitas,”10 and Bernard Lonergan’s “horizons.”11
While the process of secularization affects the linear
development of religious consciousness and religious
institutions, it has less effect on the cyclical development
of the sacred, which operates on the platform of “ground
bass” mentioned above, where the sacred lies. In light of
this, speaking of “the return of the sacred” is less accurate
than speaking of the emergence of the sacred from its
more subtle formulation to an external manifestation and
expression at the micro and macro levels.
The dichotomy between sacred and profane can be
expressed in the symbolic sphere in terms of the dynamics
between rational and non-rational, or as a bridge between
conscious and unconscious. The polarity is foundational
to the scientific explanation of reality, though there are
instances of metamorphosis from one to the other. The
sacred, understood as a social, collective construction or
propriety, is flexible in the face of modernity and
postmodernity. It is often moved or displaced, so that
things conceived of as sacred are secularized while other
things conceived of as profane are sacralised. With respect
to the manifestation and figure of the sacred, which has
a high degree of transformation, the “ground bass” of the
sacred lies in a substratum, in an archaeology of “saviour”,
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 119
of emotion, of collective unconscious, which tends to persist
beyond the variations found in the manifestations of the
sacred. This geological energy, which is found in the very
depths of the human unconscious, can erupt in a positive
or in a negative way. The positive way leads to a search
for the absolute, engendering humility and devotion with
respect to the “numinous” (Otto).12 The negative way
becomes a transgressive force, capable of subverting the
cosmic, cultural, and social order. This is why the major
religions are preoccupied with controlling the sacred—to
use it, to manipulate it, to pay respect to it.
The personalization of the sacred is a phenomenon
that can be seen in the major monotheistic religions with
the emergence of a personal god. In the pantheistic
conception, the sacred has an impersonal aura of mystery—
it is “tremendous” (that is, worthy of trembling and terror).
The sacred oscillates also between two poles: sacred respect
and sacred transgression.13 This polarity fluctuates between
holiness and evil14, between cohesion and disintegration,
expressing the worldview from which it has arisen.
This “sacred of respect” is closely tied to power, but
here an invisible and irresistible power. Within this
conceived power we find the characteristics of the sacred
and the complementarity of sacred and profane reflected
in the relation between the sovereign and the people.15 In
order to establish social equilibrium, a relationship between
sovereigns and subordinates is required. The principle of
the sacredness of respect present in tribal societies has
been superseded by the sacredness of dependency in
developed societies.
Sacred transgression, which is expressed by the religious
feast or festivity, may be integrated in a theory about the
cyclical conception of society marked by growth and decline.
Sacred transgression abolishes sacred regulation, bypassing
the routines of daily life. As society and religion evolve,
the feast becomes secularised and the sacred becomes an
individual, not collective, experience. From this process
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of individualisation comes the great historical development
of religion—the emergence of the self from within the
conjoined links of collectivity and cosmos. The sacred
ends up in the mystical experience on one side and the
great disenchantment on the other side. The supreme
finality of life gives here rise to the sacred.
The ritual act transforms seemingly uncontrollable and
contingent events into a cultural order ruled by the norms
of the community; the sacred facilitates the overcoming
of the crisis and the affirmation of culture. To Angelo
Brelich, the sacred is a culturally bounded product that
must obey a fundamental rule that limits its manifestations
within precise boundaries and forbids human consumption
in order to desacralize what is left in nature for profane
use: “The concentration of the sacred in some parts of
reality (otherwise it is diffuse everywhere) is one of the
functional aspects for the (demarcation) limitation of sacred
times and sacred space.”16
Ernesto De Martino divides religious experience in
contemporary times in three moments:
1. The specific experience of the sacred is totally
different from the world and not reducible in rational
terms. The other is totally/radically different
according to Otto—his concept of the tremendous
and of respect for something totally other than
what is the usual and the familiar sphere, hidden
and in radical opposition to daily life, and always
capable of creating surprise. De Martino shares
with Otto the idea of the radical otherness of the
sacred, but in order to prevent the threat of the
sacred in daily life there is a “recourse”.
2. Myth increases the value of religious experience.
The meta-historical aspect of the numinous is
ritualized, not along the myth of eternal recurrence,
but through the historical consciousness of the
human condition and of eschatological, irreversible
time.17
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 121
3. The revaluation of religious experience from not
only the believer ’s viewpoint or through the
believer’s analysis of the irrational, but also through
an analysis of the deep rationality of religious life.
This is done in terms of the genesis and function
of religious life within the framework of the given
historical conditions of the individual and society.
In this respect De Martino criticizes Freud for the
reduction of religion to normality, and appreciates
Jung for understanding the sacred as a symbolic
bridge.
Finally De Martino emphasizes the necessity of investing
an object or living entity with sacredness, destined to a
meta-human departure from its “cyclical dynamics” into
an external manifestation and expression at micro and
macro levels. 18
The power of the sacred is connected with violence:
the dialectic between the sacred and violence generates
the sacrifice as a form of appeasement (according to René
Girard) that redeems the violence inherent in the sacred.
It is from this power that the human condition is shaped:
this violence is endogenous to the concept of thanatos/
eros (Freud)19 that occupies the primordial dynamics of
personal and collective control, and the constitution of
social reality. There is a play between violence and the
sacred, according to Girard, but in the sacred there is also
what is contrary to violence. Within the sacred there is
order and disorder, peace and war, creation and
destruction.20
The sacrifice expresses violence by choosing the victim—
the scapegoat that takes on the violence of a community,
establishes a connection with divinity, and shares with
the people pieces of the sacrificial victim. The violence is
the thanatos that is overcome by eros. The communion of
brothers accepts and partakes of the sacrificial victim.
The sacrifice is based on two premises: (1) the victim is a
substitute for all the members of the community; (2) the
scapegoat is in substitution of a sacrificial victim related
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to the original victim.21 In Christianity we experience a
parallel cycle of the sacred. Sacred violence is transcended
by love, which ends the violence and re-establishes the
sacred.22
THE SEMANTIC QUESTION ABOUT THE SACRED
The semantic dimension of the word “sacred” is impossible
to ignore, and the word exists in many different languages
and in various historical and cultural traditions. The history
of the word “sacred” is quite complex—it is derived from
the Latin word sacer (the pair of sacer and profanus) in the
style of Christian Latin, but it has also gone through
transformations, interpretations, and reinterpretations so
that European languages have iterations of the word such
as le sacré, il santo, the idea of the holy, and das Heilige.
In Latin the terms “sacer” and “sancting” derive from
the Indo-European root “sak”, which refers to a sanction
or a relationship that requires an offering upon penalty.
The term “sacer” indicates the objects or entities related
to the gods that were taken away from the profane sphere
in order to be consecrated; it also expresses a public act
of civitas. The centrality of “sacer” explains the great family
of words that stems from it, such as sacrum, sacrificium,
sacramentum, and sacerdos.
The word “sanctus” is the recognition of this consecration
and includes also the moral purity of the cult and its
infallibility. It is with this word that the Vulgate defines
“nagios” in the New Testament, and the biblical term
“qadosh” for sacralization, while the word “sacer” defines
“hieros,” which is related more to the hierophanies or
manifestations of the sacred in the world and thereby in
the modern situation.23
THE SACRED AND THE STAGES OF RELIGIOUS
EVOLUTION
The sacred needs though to be contextualized and redefined
within the various stages of a religious evolution. The
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 123
sacred is an integral part of all religious phenomena but
is comparatively larger and deeper, and thus is not precisely
the same as these phenomena. The notion of the sacred
therefore occupies many strata of social life not formally
defined as religious. In tracing the stages of the sacred, I
will next follow Bellah’s 24 seminal essay on religious
evolution, with some variations. The scheme contains
roughly the following stages: (1) the cosmological and
archaic stage; (2) the historical stage characterised by
sacrifice ritual; (3) the modern stage, which includes the
eclipse of the sacred and secularization; and (4) the
postmodern or contemporary stage, which implies a
fragmentation, the revival of the subconscious dimension
of the sacred and its metamorphosis.
The first is the cosmological and archaic stage. At this
point the sacred occupies the loci of social life as cosmic
religion. Our worldview is dominated by our experience
of the sacred, along with natural events and biological
transitions within family and community. Humans are
included into the global sacred, undifferentiated, affecting
social life. The self is included in this sense of wholeness.
The sacred does not have a person-figure of reference, but
is like an energy that penetrates all spheres of society as
a cosmic experience.
In the second and third stage (historical and modern)
there is the departure of the sacred from the universe and
the social environment into ritual. Sacrifice creates a bridge
between earthly words and sounds, and supernatural
realms. Historic religions have elements of archaic
cosmology but they also represent a demythologization
relative to archaic religions. The diffusiveness of primitive
and archaic religions is challenged by historic religious
symbolization, which leads to a clearly structured
conception of “self”.25 For the first time man can clearly
understand the fundamental structure of reality and through
salvation actively participates into it.26 The historical
ordering of archaic religions still dominates and has in a
greater sense a dualistic view of the sacred. The supernatural
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is above this world. It occupies the climax of the model in
respect to this world, but the dualism that arises expresses
itself in the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane
that was emphasized in Durkheim’s perspective. This
dichotomy expresses itself especially as the separation
between sacred time and space on one hand and profane
time and space on the other, which leads into the modern
stage.27
THE MODERN STAGE
The displacement of the dualistic view of sacred and
profane and their fusion into a new whole, in which the
archaic categories are outdated, becomes recomposed in
a new weltanschauung based on multiple realities, on the
shifting of sacredness from traditional time, places, objects,
totems, and supernatural beings to other objects and
subjects. In this scenario the dichotomy is still useful in
order to move into the forest of symbols, but after a short
journey, the sacred sinks underground. At this stage we
witness the formation of new idols and the absolutisation
of new objects and persons. Life is not any longer a one-
possibility thing, but has become an infinite possibility.
Modern man is “secular, materialistic, dehumanized and
in a deepest sense as a-religious appears fundamentally
misguided.”28 The sacred occupies the substratum of social
reality, as if it were the magma of a volcano, and in a way
that is conscious or unconscious it generates new forms,
new representations, new musical variations—like a carsic
river suddenly plunging into the ground and emerging
mysteriously in the middle of the forest of symbols.
According to Bellah
the fundamental symbolization of modern
man and his situation is that of a
multidimensional self capable within limits
of remaking the world and even the forms
that state the unalterable conditions of his
own existence.29
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 125
In the sacred we can distinguish a vertical perspective,
a horizontal as well as a linear framework. The vertical
perspective looks at the human condition in terms of
stratification, and the sacred occupies the deepest layer.
The deepest layer of the sacred has been described by
theorists ranging from Bellah, to the unconscious of Freud,
to the nominous of Otto, mentioned earlier. The sacred
displays persistence in regard to the various forms and
figures of its manifestations so that we can witness a kind
of asymmetry between the layer of the sacred and its
manifestations. This asymmetry is also tied to the hypothesis
that this layer or “magma” obeys a cyclical movement
upon which the process of secularization has small
influence, since the process of secularization follows a
linear historical movement. The sacred is not static with
respect to its religious manifestations, but rather has the
quality of inertia, of resistance, and an a-synchronic vitality
that flows into the ambivalence and liminality of the human
condition.
The ambivalence in relation to the profane is never
completely solved in the institutionalization of religious
phenomena, so that the ambivalence of the sacred is
channelled partially into various institutional frameworks
and partially flows into the liminality of the human
condition where it maintains its ambiguity. Following the
vertical perspective, the sacred moves cyclically, while
the horizontal metamorphosis and manifestations of the
sacred cleave to a linear conception that tends towards
the process of secularization.
There are three major Italian scholars who have
contributed to our understanding of the sacred: Ernesto
De Martino, Raffaele Pettazzoni, and Angelo Brelich. They
all refused to reduce the sacred to a mere mask that
conceals something else. De Martino reaffirms the autonomy
of the sacred, of the religious, and of myth in relation to
the idealistic, positivist, and materialist traditions. 30
According to Pettazzoni “man is the one who creates his
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ideal world, it is not the extra-human world which creates
the human world.”31 These Italian historians, however,
use as a reference point Mircea Eliade,32 who tends to
evaluate the sacred as an autonomous reality in almost an
ontological sense. Pettazzoni states that the sacred is the
product of a dialectical discourse. It is the antithesis to
the thesis of human reality and not a self-sufficient reality
without a link to the profane. According to him the dialectic
between the sacred and the profane allows to understand
the realm of the religious. Eliade portrays a double process:33
the symbolic construction of the sacred as antithesis,34
and the cultural dynamic by which the sacred is functionally
represented in reverse terms as the original chaos generating
the cosmos.
Brelich agrees with Pettazzoni, though he faces a
theoretical problem.35 Both agree about denying the sacred
an a priori reality, but instead they present it as a component
that is determined by and determines the ongoing process
of cultural development. The sacred is created by the
oscillation between what is determined and what
determines. In this sense they both reject Otto’s conception
of the sacred, which he argued was an ontological, a priori
category. To Otto history as a cultural force does not
influence the nature of the sacred.36 The concept of the
sacred is a constant challenge for the social sciences37
because even while developing concepts such as
secularization, desacralization, or the eclipse of the sacred,
many phenomena emerged and are emerging that should
be included in the realm of the sacred. In order to explain
the dynamics of religion, the concept of the sacred needs
to be carefully analyzed, not only within the frame of the
history of the social sciences (especially sociology), but
also as it continuously emerges in a variety of
unprecedented ways out of the magma of contemporary
society. The origin of the concept of the sacred starts from
the comparative study of religion, and, historically speaking,
during the Enlightenment, as scholars looked for a
humanistic foundation of religious sentiments—a
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 127
foundation devoid of theological undertones that could
form the basis for a civil religion to help foster social
order. The sacred has shown a vitality and asymmetry
tied to its cyclical movements upon which the linear process
of secularization has had limited effect. The ambivalence
of religious phenomena and of the sacred partially overflows
into institutional frameworks and areas of liminality. It
also enters into the interstices and habitus of daily life, as
well as the “ground bass” of popular culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bellah, Robert N. (1964). “Religious Evolution”. American
Sociological Review 29, no. 3 (1964).
––––. (1970). Beyond Belief. New York: Harper and Row.
Borgeaud, Philippe (2010). “Sacre/Profane”, in Régine Azria
and Danièle Hervieu-Lèger (eds.), Dictionnaire des faits
religieux. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Brelich, Angelo (1970). Prolégomènes, Histoire des Religions. Paris:
Gallimard.
––––. (1995). Introduzione alla storia delle religioni. Roma: Istituti
Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali.
Caillois, Roger (1939). L’Homme et le sacré. Paris: Gallimard.
Castelli, E. (ed.) (1974). Il Sacro: studi e ricerche. Roma: Istituto
di Studi Filosofici.
De Martino, Ernesto (1962). Furore, simbolo, valore. Milano:
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
––––. Storia e metastoria: i fondamenti di una teoria del sacro. Lecce:
Argo.
Durkheim, Émile (1899). “De la définition des phénomènes
religieux,” L’Année sociologique 2.
––––. (1957). Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. London: Routledge
& Paul.
––––. (1965). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York:
Free Press.
Eliade, Mircea (1949). Le mythe de l’éternel retour. Paris: Gallimard.
––––. (1952). Images et symboles. Paris: Gallimard.
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––––. (1957). Mythes, rêves, et mysteres. Paris: Gallimard.
––––. (1959). The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion.
New York: Harvest/ HBJ.
Filoramo, Giovanni (1998). “Sacro”, in Enciclopedia delle scienze
sociali. Roma: Treccani.
Freud, Sigmund (2006 [1920]). Opere, Vol. 1, Al di là del principio
del piacere. Roma: Gruppo Editoriale Espresso).
Girard, René (1972). La violence et le sacré. Paris: Éditions Bernard
Grasset.
Isambert, F. -A. (1982). Le sens du sacré. Paris: Minuit.
Lonergan, Bernard (1972). Method in Theology. New York: Herder
& Herder.
Maslow, Abraham (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton,
N.J.: D. Van Nostrand.
Massenzio, Marcello (1994). Sacro e identità etnica: senso del mondo
e linea di confine. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Otto, Rudolf (1994). Il Sacro: l irrazionale nell’idea del Divino e la
Sua relazione al razionale. Milan: Feltrinelli.
Panikkar, Raimon (1943). The Cosmotheandric Experience.
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.
Pettazzoni, Raffaele (1960). “Gli ultimi appunti” in A. Brelich
(ed.), Studi e Materiali di Storia Delle Religioni, XXXI.
Prades, José (1987). Persistence et métamorphose du sacré: Actualiser
Durkheim et repenser la modernité. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Ricœur, Paul (1969). The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon Press.
Ries, Julian (1995). Il sacro. Milano: Jaca Book.
Rosati, Massimo (2003). “The Making and Representing of Society:
Religion, the Sacred, and Solidarity among Strangers in a
Durkheimian Perspective”, Journal of Classical Sociology 3,
no. 2 (2003).
Tarot, Camille (2008). Le Symbolique et le sacré: Thèories de la
Religion. Paris: Éditions de la Decouverte, M.A.U.S.S.
Turner, Victor (1975). Simboli e Momenti della Comunità. Brescia:
Morcelliana.
van Gennep, Arnold (1908). Les rites de passage. Paris: E. Nourry.
Symbolism and the Sacred in Religious Experience 129 130 The Sociology of Religion in India

Notes 31. Pettazzoni (1960), p. 32.

32. Eliade (1949, 1952, 1957).
1. Filoramo (1998), pp. 549–59.
33. Tarot (2008).
2. Durkheim (1899), p. 26). Cf. Prades (1987).
34. Borgeaud (2009), p. 111.
3. Bellah (1964), p. 374.
35. Brelich (1970), pp. 12–26; Brelich (1995) pp. 50–55, pp. 45–
4. Durkheim (1965), pp. 446–28. 46.
5. Rosati (2003), p. 183. 36. Otto (1984), pp. 113–14.
6. Durkheim (1957), p. 172. 37. Castelli (1974); cfr. Isambert (1982); Eliade (1959).
7. van Gennep (1908).
8. Bellah (1970), pp. 196–208.
9. Maslow (1968), pp. 103–14.
10. Turner (1975), p. 14.
11. Lonergan (1972), p. 235.
12. Otto (1994), pp. 17–22.
13. Caillois (1939), pp. 54–57.
14. See also the symbolism of evil in Ricœur (1969), pp. 164–
174.
15. Ries (1995), p. 32.
16. Brelich (1970), pp. 26-29; cfr Massenzio (1994), p. 43.
17. De Martino (1995), pp. 99–138.
18. De Martino, op. cit. pp. 99–138.
19. Freud (2006), pp. 173–251.
20. Girard (1972), pp. 357–58.
21. Ries, op. cit (1995), p. 25.
22. J. Ries, ibid., p. 28.
23. Filoramo op. cit, pp. 551–53.
24. Bellah (1970), pp. 32–33.
25. Bellah, ibid.
26. Bellah (1970), pp. 32–83.
27. Bellah, ibid.
28. Bellah, ibid.
29. Bellah, (1970), p. 42.
30. De Martino (1962), pp. 13–14.

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Part Two
Case Studies

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7 mundane social aspects while encouraging further research.
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-
Colonial and Colonial Bengal
Estimates of Gender, Caste, Geography
JOSEPH O’CONNELL
1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter attempts to estimate who and how many
were those in sultanate and colonial Bengal that were
considered Vaishnava in the tradition going back to Sri
Krishna-Caitanya (1486–1533), and how they were
distributed in terms of gender, caste and geographic
concentrations. It consists of five different probes into the
demographics of the very diffuse and diverse community
or constituency of those deemed to be Caitanya Vaishnava
devotees, nominal or committed (often referred to as
Gaudiya or Bengali Vaishnavas). It draws upon what there
is of limited quantifiable evidence provided by Vaishnava
biographical and hagiographical sources going back to
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and upon statistical
and descriptive data provided by modern ethnological
studies and the decennial census reports of the government
of British India. These five probes, while more quantitative
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134 The Sociology of Religion in India
than the reportorial and testimonial literature of the
Vaishnava writers themselves, are far from exhaustive or
rigorous. Their value is more suggestive and heuristic
than explanatory or definitive. Still, it may be hoped that
they can contribute to our current understanding of the
Caitanya Vaishnavas of pre-independence Bengal in their
The areas probed are: caste distribution among Caitanya
Vaishnavas in the sixteenth century; gender distribution
among Caitanya Vaishnavas in the sixteenth century; caste
distribution among Vaishnavas in Bengal in 1901; “upward
mobility” and “Hinduisation” of lower castes and tribes
in Bengal in relation to Vaishnava bhakti; geographical
distribution of Vaishnavas in Bengal as of the Census of
India 1931, Bengal.
2. CASTE DISTRIBUTION OF CAITANYA
VAISHNAVISM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The sacred biographies of Caitanya provide much
information on the social aspects of Caitanya’s nascent
devotional community, but they do so by the by. None of
the biographers attempts a sociological profile of the
community as such. Each biographer, moreover, writes
from a particular perspective within the community,
reflecting his own theological orientation and social
situation. Some are Brahmans and others Baidyas; they
include representatives of several disciplic branches and
doctrinal varieties of Caitanya Vaishnavas. Unfortunately,
none of the early biographers (unless we are to accept as
authentic the apparently spurious karca attributed to one
Govindadasa Karmakar) hailed from lower castes, and
none was a woman.
All the biographers concentrate their attention upon
the inner circle of Caitanya’s Vaishnava associates, most
of whom were, like the authors, males of upper castes.
Women, Sudras and sinners are often referred to, but
usually rather generically, as categories of persons especially
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 135
favoured by Krishna’s manifestation as Caitanya to save
the disfavoured. A few women, however, are discussed
frequently and in detail, and also a few devotees of low
social status. But, by and large, women and Sudras tend
not to be depicted individually and with historically specific
details. Such limitations circumscribe what sociological
and social historical conclusions may be drawn from the
biographies and other early texts, but even so there remains
much to work with.
Bimanbehari Majumdar’s invaluable Sri-Caitanya-cariter
Upadan includes a very informative enumeration of nearly
five hundred contemporary devotees of Caitanya for whom
Majumdar had established some identification.1 It was
possible in most instances for him to determine the caste
and in many cases the locale of those individuals. The
pattern that emerges is significant, though not really
surprising. Out of the 340 devotees whose caste could be
more or less determined, 239 (73%) were Brahmans, 37
(11%) Baidyas, 29 (9%) Kayasthas, 26 non-Brahmans from
Orissa, two Muslims, one each Subarnabanik, Bhuimali,
Sutradhara, Karmakar, Modak, Rajput, Parsi. Another 54
were sannyasins, the large majority of whom presumably
were (i.e., had been before renunciation) Brahmans. The
remaining 97 (including two with the title Hazra) were of
unknown jati.2 Even if many of those of whose jati is not
known were of lower caste, the predominance of the three
bhadralok castes, the Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas,
among Caitanya’s known associates is overwhelming.3
Several devotees of low-ranking caste and also the
Muslim, Haridasa, were, however, held in great esteem.
But, apart from serving as exemplars of saintly devotion,
such devotees of low social status rarely had leadership
roles within the Caitanya Vaishnava community as a whole.
Some served as gurus and preachers for their own caste
members, and some administered to those of other lower
castes, but seem not to have ministered in such ways to
members of higher castes. Nor indeed was much of the
mainline theological literature of the movement authored
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136 The Sociology of Religion in India
by devotees of lower castes. Those persons of lower castes
who most visibly contributed to the devotional culture
the Caitanya Vaishnava community at large were composers
and singers of short devotional lyrics (padavali). There
were as well, a number of upper-caste composers and
singers of padavali. One may also note the Vaishnava-
Sahajiya texts emerging in large numbers from the
seventeenth century onward. These hybrid (and generally
brief) socially transgressive Tantra-cum-Vaishnava texts
were indeed often the work of writers of lower castes.
The Vaishnava-Sahajiya phenomenon is not representative
of the mainline or orthodox/orthoprax Caitanya Vaishnava
community though it gained widespread popularity at
the margins of the Caitanya Vaishnava tradition largely
among non-elite strata of Bengali society.
3. GENDER DISTRIBUTION AMONG EARLY
CAITANYA VAISHNAVAS
It has been a persistent and proud claim of the Caitanya
Vaishnava community and its apologists that Krishna-
Caitanya bhakti is freely available to women, Sudras and
sinners, i.e., categories of persons traditionally excluded
from prestigious areas of Brahmanic Hindu religious life.
There is no doubt that women make up a large share of
public gatherings of Caitanya Vaishnavas and, nowadays
at least, are apt to be more in evidence than men at
functions in Vaishnava temples. I have the impression
that there are at present more women than men among
those who take formal initiation, diksa, in the Caitanya
Vaishnava tradition, but have not done a statistical study
to confirm this.4 Some women may also be found as gurus,
especially ministering to other women, and there are certain
Caitanya Vaishnava women who sing padavali-kirtan and/
or give readings-cum-discourses or pathas on Vaishnava
texts.5 On the whole, however, women are not very evident
in positions of leadership among Caitanya Vaishnavas at
present; nor, with a few striking exceptions, were they so
in the past.
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 137
Women are often reported to have been present at
activities involving Caitanya, and among his contemporary
associates there were a number of women who figure
prominently in his biographies and in later hagiographies.
But far fewer women than men are remembered by name.
Out of the more than 519 contemporary associates of
Caitanya identified by B.B. Majumdar on the basis of
early documents, only thirty-eight (7%) are women. Of
these, more than half (twenty-two) are known only by
virtue of being mentioned by one biographer as present
at Navadvip when Caitanya departed for Gaya. Of the
remaining sixteen, all but one are Brahman women; and
nearly all can be identified as wife, mother, daughter,
sister, sister-in-law, niece, or cousin of a prominent male
devotee (or of Caitanya himself).6 Several of these women
are described in the texts only insofar as they were related
to a better known male spouse or relative. Nevertheless,
several others are well known in their own right, and a
few were of distinct prominence within the nascent Caitanya
Vaishnava community.
The sixteen “identifiable” women in B. Majumdar’s
list are:7
1. Candramukhi: (Br, i.e., Brahman) daughter of
Suryadasa Pandit;
2. Damayanti: (Br) sister of Raghava Pandit;
3. Ganga: (Br) daughter of Nityananda;
4. Jahnava (alt. Jahnavi): (Br) daughter of Suryadasa
Sarkel, junior wife of Nityananda, guru of
Virabhadra and many others;
5. Kamalavati: (Br) paternal grandmother of Caitanya;
6. Lakshmi (priya): (Br) first wife of Caitanya;
7. Madhavi Devi: (Karana [Orissan Kayastha]) sister
of Shikhi Mahiti, saintly widow of Raghu Cakravarti;
may have authored Purusottamadeva-natakam in
Sanskrit;
socrel-1\69
138 The Sociology of Religion in India
8. Malini: (Br) wife of Srivasa (elder neighbour,
supporter and confidant of Caitanya at Navadvip);
9. Narayani: (Br) daughter of Srivasa’s brother, mother
of Vrindavanadasa;
10. Narayani: (Br) sister of wife of Srivasa Pandit;
11. Padmavati: (Br) mother of Nityananda;
12. Saci: (Br) mother of Caitanya;
13. Sita: (Br) daughter of Nrisinha Bhaduri, wife of
Advaita, guru of “Jangali” and “Nandini”;
14. Sri: (presumably Br) wife of Advaita;
15. Vasudha: (Br) daughter of Suryadasa Sarkel, senior
wife of Nityananda, mother of Virabhadra and
Ganga;
16. Visnupriya: (Br) second wife of Caitanya;
Among the above, mother Saci and the surviving second
wife of Caitanya, Visnupriya, are discussed frequently
and highly praised. They were foci of much devotion in
their day and have remained so—in literature, temple
images and personal piety—ever since. They are depicted
as exhibiting great devotion to Krishna-Caitanya and as
bestowing affectionate care upon fellow devotees. Saci is
said to have been a crucial factor in her son’s decision to
settle at Puri rather than at Vrindavan, but neither she nor
Visnupriya seems to have taken a leadership role in any
formal or administrative sense, not even granting diksa
initiation to disciples. It is otherwise with Sita, junior
wife of Advaita, and Jahnava (Jahnavi), junior wife of
Nityananda, both of whom were gurus in their own right.
Among Sita’s disciples were transvestite males known by
the feminine names Janguli and Nandini. A guru-disciple
lineage from Sita through Janguli and Nandini has continued
into the twentieth century at least.
Jahnava, childless junior wife of the elderly Nityananda,
also gave initiation and spiritual instruction to her own
disciples, male and female. Moreover, after the demise of
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 139
her husband, she took charge of guiding Nityananda’s
incipient hereditary lineage, even though her husband’s
son, Virabhadra, and daughter, Ganga, were born of her
elder sister, Vasudha. Jahnava proved to be an extremely
able and effective policy-maker and seems to have been
the single most energetic leader of the Caitanya Vaishnava
community of her generation in Bengal as the male
associates of Caitanya died off in the mid-sixteenth century.
She twice made the arduous trek to Vrindavan where she
was received with respect by the scholarly Gosvamins
there. She seems to have been instrumental in having
Srinivasa commissioned to go to Vrindavan to learn the
theology and practices of the Gosvamins and propagate
their mode of Radha-Krishna-bhakti upon returning to
Bengal. Jahnava shared with Narottamadasa responsibity
for organizing the important mahotsava festival at Kheturi,
on which occasion the dispersed branches of Caitanya
Vaishnavas came together and agreed to propagate bhakti
according to the Vrindavan Gosvamins theological system.8
A generation later, one Hemalata Devi, daughter of
Srinivasa, proved to be another influential leader of the
community and a prominent guru. After Hemalata,
however, we do not hear of women of such high profile
in the movement, though undoubtedly female gurus, ascetic
women and capable wives of male gurus continued to
exert influence within the Caitanya Vaishnava community.9
It may also be noted that among the hybrid Vaishnava-
Sahajiya practitioners a female adept may have considerable
prestige as consort of her male partner or in her own
right, and may serve as a guru of distinction.
It is relevant to point out that virtually all the Sanskrit
and Bengali authors and composers of padavali we know
of from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries are
males.10 If the Orissan widow, Madhavi Devi, did compose
the Purusottamadeva-natakam, she is a signal exception as
a female author of a Sanskrit text in the early Caitanya
Vaishnava tradition.11 The pattern of a preponderance of
male authors and composers in pre-modern Bengal is not,
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140 The Sociology of Religion in India
of course, confined to Vaishnavas. Even in the twentieth
century, female authors among Caitanya Vaishnavas
continue to be markedly fewer than males, though in
recent decades a number of women scholars, some of
Vaishnava orientation themselves, have chosen to write
on Caitanya Vaishnava religion and literature. It should
be noted, however, that when in the late nineteenth century
literacy rates were first recorded in Bengal, both male and
female literacy was somewhat higher among groups that
tended to be Vaishnava than among other groups of
comparable status, especially in middle to lower caste
rankings.
Such quantitative evidence of a lesser public profile of
women among Caitanya Vaishnavas need not tell the whole
story. It may reflect differentiation of roles, and not merely
rank order of authority and prestige. This point deserves
special credence in a community for which “softer” factors
such as mutual affection, accommodation and consensus,
and the female as ideal exemplar of devotion are so
positively valued. Women ordinarily are not excluded
from Caitanya Vaishnava devotional gatherings in public
or in private. There is no evidence in Caitanya biographies
and hagiographies of mistreated Vaishnava widows leaving
home to seek austere refuge in ashrams or dharmasalas
(and in later times such Vaishnava institutions—and the
Jati-Vaishnava sub-community as a whole—are reputed
to have provided refuge to women in need). The one
Vaishnava widow mentioned as living in retirement at
Puri (Madhavi Devi, possibly a Sanskrit author) was hardly
living in penury and disgrace; it was from her that the ill-
fated Chota Haridasa was directed to beg rice for Caitanya.12
There is no mention in the Caitanya biographical texts of
self-immolation by Vaishnava widows as ideal or practice;
nor of outcasting or otherwise harshly punishing “fallen”
women. The Jati-Vaishnavas, an anomalous “subcaste”
(jati) without “caste” (varna) whom I have discussed
elsewhere, have been both praised and criticized for
providing social as well as devotional refuge for widows
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 141
and “fallen” women.13 Literate women among the Jati-
Vaishnavas (and also women of the Nityananda Gosvamin
lineage) are said to have served as tutors to girls of the
distinguished Tagore family at Jorasanko.
Indeed, there are virtually no wicked females mentioned
in the sacred biographies and hagiographies of the
movement, though a number of wicked males are depicted.
Even the harlot sent to tempt (unsuccessfully) saintly
Haridasa is portrayed as having repented and become a
devotee. Rather, the corrupt male zamindar who
commissioned her is the villain of the piece.14 The threat
posed to male celibacy by female sexual attractiveness is,
however, stressed. But, significantly, the onus generally is
placed upon the men, especially those claiming to be
ascetics, to control their impulses and avoid compromising
situations.15
4. CASTE DISTRIBUTION OF CAITANYA VAISHNAVAS
IN 1901
For sociological study of nineteenth-century Vaishnavas
in Bengal, Ramakanta Chakrabarty has assembled an
impressive body of data which I do not attempt to
summarize here, but urge readers to consult directly.16
What I do offer are a few probes that I myself made
several years ago—using some of the same ethnographic
studies and census reports from which Chakrabarty has
drawn. The conclusions tend to be similar, though we
each have our distinctive emphases. To show where along
the broad spectrum of castes Bengali householders of
Caitanya Vaishnava orientation tended to be concentrated,
I have prepared a table. It incorporates the classification
into seven ranked classes of purity that was utilized in
Census of India, 1901: The Lower Provinces of Bengal and
Their Feudatories, edited by E.A. Gait. The scheme of status
ranking presented in that census volume set off waves of
protest and stimulated decades of efforts to upgrade their
status by castes dissatisfied with their assigned ranking.
The Government did not repeat this exercise of caste
socrel-1\71
142 The Sociology of Religion in India
rankings in subsequent Census Reports, but neither did
they agree to withdraw or correct that controversial but
influential classification.
Data from the Census of India, 1901, Vol. 6: The Lower
Provinces of Bengal and Their Feudatories, when complemented
by ethnological reports of the period, provide a Bengal-
wide profile of where among the Hindu castes those
professing Vaishnava bhakti were most concentrated at
the turn of the twentieth century. Admittedly, this offers
but a rough approximation of Vaishnava social demography,
even for the time of the 1901 census, what to speak of
extrapolating from it backward or forward in time. Still,
it may have some heuristic value. The table I have prepared
consists of two columns. Castes that in Risley’s Tribes and
Castes of Bengal (supplemented by other ethnological
sources) are reported to have been predominantly Vaishnava
in religious orientation appear in the column on the left,
and those that were not considered predominantly
Vaishnava appear on the right. 17 The column on the right
includes castes thought to be typically non-Vaishnava in
religious orientation, castes which were considered divided
roughly equally between Vaishnavas and non-Vaishnavas,
and those about which I could not gain adequate evidence
of overall religious preference. For each caste, I give the
population (rounded off in thousands) as recorded in Census
of India, 1901 for Burdwan, Presidency, Rajshahi, Dacca
and Chittagong Divisions, i.e., for Bengal proper.18 A “V”
beside a caste indicates that a minority of that caste is
reported by ethnological accounts to be of Vaishnava
orientation. An asterisk indicates that I found insufficient
information regarding overall religious preference of the
caste in question. The expression “caste” in this context
follows the usage in the Census of India, 1901 and is
somewhat ambiguous. Generally it refers to the jati or
endogamous group, not to one of the four grand categories
(varnas): Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Sudra. However,
the Brahmans are treated as a single ‘caste’ in this
enumeration, even though there are subgroups of Brahmans
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 143 144 The Sociology of Religion in India

(and of some other `castes’) that are for all practical purposes 558 Sadgop
discrete endogamous groups or jatis. The chart reveals 10 Sankhari
several interesting points, to be discussed below. 49 Tamli
Table I 305 Tanti
Caste: status, size, religious preference 394 {Teli, Tili}
Majority of members Not majority of members ___ ___
professing Vaishnava professing Vaishnava 2,763,000
orientation orientation
651,000
Class I Class IV
1,154 Brahman (V) (Clean castes with degraded Brahmans)
_____
1,154,000 1,927 Chasi Kaibartta
Class II 1 Goala
(Castes other than Brahman that rank above clean Sudras) _____
22 Khatri 978 Kayastha (V)a 1,928,000
110 Rajput (V) Class V
81 Vaidya (V) (Castes lower than group IV whose water is not taken)
___ ___ 107 Subarnabanik 46 Bhuiya
22,000 1,169,000 424 Sunri 327 Jugi (V)
Class III 168 Sutradhar 2 Lohait-Kuri
(Clean Sudras) 390 Vaishnava 4 Sarak* (V)
6 Surajbansi
118 Gandhabanik 161 Barui –– Swarnakar
389 Kamar 16 Kansari ___ ___
51 Karan 231 Khen (V) 1,089,000 385,000
28 Kastha 59 Raju*
274 Kumar 184 Sudra Golam* Class VI
–– Madhunapit (Low castes that abstain from beef, pork and fowl)
34 Malakar 28 Chasa Dhoba 1,015 Bagdi (V)
124 Modak 220 Dhoba 16 Baiti*
422 Napit 27 Doai 4 Berua
7 Patial 262 Jalia Kaibarta 0 Bhaskar

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Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 145 146 The Sociology of Religion in India

141 Kapali 49 Chain 0 Siyalgir*

221 Malo and Jhalo 16 Chasati* 43 Kora (V)
1,836 Namasudra (Chandal) 2 Ganrar (V) ___ ___
39 Sukli 25 Hauang 0 1,513,000
199 Tiyar 13 Kalu __________ ______________
0 Kan 8,775,000 7,095,000 Total
*
7 Karni
0 Kawali* a
. I am following the spelling of Risley in this table.
b
64 Koch and Rajbansi (V) . Inclusion of all Kaibarttas and Namasudras in the Vaishnava
11 Kotal column (following Risley) most probably inflates the Vaishnava
total considerably, but exclusion of the Vaishnava minorities in
21 Mech several “non-Vaishnava” castes offsets this.
0 Morangia*
8 Naik* POINTS ARISING FROM THE TABLE
254 Palia (V) 1. The majority of members of the three main bhadralok
61 Patni
castes (Brahman in Class I; Baidya and Kayastha
464 Pod (V) in Class II (“Castes other than Brahman that rank
26 Puro* above clean Sudras”) were not thought to be
26 Tipara Vaishnava. This may reflect, among other things,
____ ____ greater scope for individual difference among the
2,973,000 2,223,000 more literate castes of higher status, as well as
disinclination to identify overtly with any particular
Class VII
sect or cult, especially in the face of foreign and
(Unclean feeders) “Hindu reformist” criticism of traditional Vaishnava
24 Bhuinmali (V) and Sakta doctrines and practices. There were,
311 Bauri however, reported to be sizeable minorities, probably
127 Chamar close to half among the Kayasthas and Baidyas,
with Vaishnava inclination even in these bhadralok
160 Dom (V)
castes.
168 Hari
2. The Khatris and Rajputs listed in Class II were
111 Kaora
mostly North Indians resident in Calcutta. Though
31 Konai* often Vaishnava in religious orientation, they tended
6 Lodha not to be specifically of the Caitanya Vaishnava
121 Mal (V) tradition. Indigenous Bengali Hindu castes, on the
411 Muchi (V) other hand, if they were Vaishnava-oriented, were
for the most part Caitanya Vaishnava, though

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Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial...
individuals or families might cultivate additional
forms of Vaishnava (and other Hindu) piety as
well.
3. The large aggregation of “Clean Sudras” (Class
III) included merchants, artisans, craftsmen, some
agriculturalists, and other castes (e.g., the nava-
sakha, nine middle-status jatis) with whom upper
caste Hindus would tend to be in contact. They
were overwhelmingly Vaishnava of the Caitanya
persuasion. It was devotees of these castes (plus
the Subarnabaniks, gold-dealers and money lenders)
who most likely contributed the bulk of the economic
support for mainline Caitanya Vaishnava religious
and cultural institutions and activities.
4. Also predominantly Caitanya Vaishnava were most
of the castes in the next two classes down (Class
IV “Clean castes with degraded Brahmans” and
Class V “Castes lower than group IV, whose water
is not taken”). These comprised merchants and
money-lenders (notably the Subarnabaniks),
agriculturalists, and the anomalous group known
as Jati-Vaishnavas or Jat Boistom. Both the
Subarnabaniks and Jati-Vaishnavas strenuously
objected to being placed so low in the classification.19
5. The next set of “lower” castes (Class VI “Low
castes that abstain from beef, pork and fowl”)
included “impure” agricultural, fishing and hunting
castes. Some of these castes no doubt numbered
Vaishnavas among them, but most in this category
were not Vaishnava. The very lowest category (Class
VII, “Unclean feeders”) had no caste or tribe that
was known to be predominantly Vaishnava.
6. An especially interesting phenomenon is the
tendency for a clearly marked section of certain
castes or tribes (designated by asterisk), mostly in
Classes VI and VII, to be Vaishnava in religious
preference and to distance themselves religiously,
147 148 The Sociology of Religion in India
culturally and socially from the non-Vaishnava
remainder of the caste or tribe, and thereby to
present themselves as an upwardly mobile elite
group.
7. It is somewhat ironic that by 1901 (and presumably
much earlier) collective adherence to Vaishnava
bhakti by entire jatis (apart from the bhadralok castes)
or sectors of jatis had become so common. According
to Caitanya Vaishnava theology, bhakti is not
fundamentally a matter of heredity, family or jati,
but a personal response to the grace (kripa) of Krishna
or a saintly devotee. Nevertheless, a Vaishnava
head of household typically would use his influence
to assure the Vaishnava orientation of his
dependents; a Vaishnava image once installed in a
home would continue to be worshipped generation
after generation; guru-disciple relations would tend
to become hereditary. Intermarriage and
commensality within jatis, among other
considerations, also would favour maintaining
common religious practices.
5. UPWARD MOBILITY AND HINDUISATION OF
LOWER CASTES AND TRIBES THROUGH VAISHNAVA
BHAKTI
The table of caste distribution of Vaishnavas and the
ethnological accounts upon which it is based suggest a
broad pattern of phases by which indigenous tribes and
marginally Hinduised castes may have been drawn toward
a relatively more Brahmanic-Hindu way of life. Most of
the lowest castes and tribes surveyed in Bengal in 1901
were not predominantly Vaishnava. To the extent they
were within the Brahmanic Hindu sphere at all, they tended
to be more or less Shakta in religious orientation.
Phenomenologically, the distance from pre-Hindu rites
and practices to the animal sacrifices and ecstatic possession
rites of popular Shakta religion is not very great. Nor is
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Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial...
there much pressure to change eating and drinking customs.
There may be a modification (but not abandonment) of
symbolism—such as identifying deities of tribe or jati
with (or relating them to) deities of the wider Brahmanic-
Hindu pantheon. And a “degraded Brahman” might
provide some (non-Vedic) mantras and textual elaboration
for their ritual practices. But this need require of participants
themselves only minimal change in values underlying
the modified symbolism, in “Hinduised” sacrificial and
possession rituals and in patterns of eating and drinking.
Vaishnava involvement, by contrast, becomes
appreciable only among comparatively more “Hinduised”
(or “Brahmanised”) groups, those prepared to give up
animal sacrifice, meat-eating and alcohol-consumption
altogether. It is likely that in the transition from being
only marginally Hinduised to becoming more securely
within the Brahmanic Hindu sphere of influence, itinerant
Vaishnava Bairagis and lower status Vaishnava Mohantas
(heads of small akharas, religious hostels), were especially
effective. The Bairagi could wander about among socio-
culturally marginal peoples, and the more stationary
Mohanta could welcome such visitors to his akhara without
undue anxiety over contracting pollution. In their respective
ways, they could express in song and discourse the
superiority of Vaishnava values and practices over the
more violent and unseemly practices and mores of popular
Sakta and tribal ways of life.20 They could offer in place
of these practices the more refined and humane, but still
emotionally expressive, celebrations of Krishna-Caitanya
bhakti. They could provide the vegetarian mahotsava festivals
in place of sacrificial slaughter, Vaishnava kirtan in place
of gajan and other (arguably “obscene” or “crude”) songs.21
They could hold out the expectation of better reputation
within the wider Brahmanic Hindu socio-cultural system.
Those members of a tribe or low ranking jati wishing
to change their practices and values definitively in a
Vaishnava direction could go a further step and seek a
149 150 The Sociology of Religion in India
recognized Gosvamin, or his (often non-Brahman) delegate,
e.g., an Adhikari, as spiritual mentor or guru. In the process
they might reject even more elements of their previous
“degraded” lifestyle, seek initiation, and themselves become
the promoters of a Vaishnava mode of Hindu lifestyle
among others of their tribe or caste. At some point in its
rise in status, the “reformed” Vaishnava portion of a jati—
vegetarian, non-alcoholic, its marriage customs more or
less consonant with Brahmanic Hindu norms—might be
deemed pure enough to attract the services as purohits
(family priests, who might themselves be Vaishnava in
devotional preference, but not necessarily so) of Brahmans
not considered “degraded”. These complementary
ministrations of Vaishnava gurus and Brahman purohits
would draw the group yet more deeply into the general
Brahmanic Hindu sphere of influence.
Tangentially related to the phenomenon of a Vaishnava
subgroup differentiating itself from the non-Vaishnava
parent jati or tribe, is the emergence of smaller and larger
networks of gurus and disciples (usually concentrated
among lower castes) functioning religiously on the margin
of the mainline Caitanya Vaishnava movement. This is a
very interesting field for current research, in which Sudhir
Chakravarty, among others, has contributed several
interesting studies in Bengali.22 In English, it is Ramakanta
Chakrabarty to whom we may turn for the wide swath of
evidence he has assembled on what he calls “deviant
orders” and for initial interpretive guidelines. He also
discusses the spread of mainline Caitanya Vaishnava bhakti
among tribal peoples and lower status jatis. Sumanta
Banerjee and others are now studying particular groups,
often hybrids, on the margins of the Caitanya Vaishnava
tradition.23
6. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF VAISHNAVAS
IN BENGAL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Informed estimates of the portion of the Hindu Bengali
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Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 151 152 The Sociology of Religion in India

population that was Vaishnava, however vaguely defined, were situated.24 Surprisingly, however, the Census of India,
in the nineteenth century generally range from about one- 1931 (see Table II) disclosed that in the Burdwan and
fifth to one-third. From what ethnographic accounts are Presidency Divisions (embracing all of Rarh plus the east
available, it appears that by then most of those Hindus in bank of the Hugli) only 7% and 6% of the Hindu population
Bengal who considered themselves to be Vaishnava were of the respective divisions declared themselves to be
so in the specific sense of devotion to Radha-Krishna and Vaishnava.25 By contrast, in the northern Rajshahi Division,
Caitanya, even though they may have cherished other 24% of Hindus declared a Vaishnava preference, in the
modes of Vaishnava piety (e.g., to Rama, to Vishnu and east-central Dacca Division 32%, and in the south-eastern
Sri, to Krishna of the Bhagavad-gita) as well. The first and Chittagong Division 39%.
last (that I know of) official enumeration of individuals Table II
declaring themselves to be Vaishnava (or Sakta or of some
other Hindu sectarian or denominational preference) Percentage of Hindus in 1931 Census Declaring
throughout Bengal took place only in the second quarter Vaishnava and Sakta Preference*
of the twentieth century. The Census of India, 1931 reported Division Muslim Hindu Sakta(%) Vaishnava (%)
that only 29% of the Hindus declared any such preference
at all. Of these, slightly more than half (about 3,500,000 or Burdwan 1,222 7,104 665 (9%) 507 (7%)
16% of all Hindus) declared themselves Vaishnava. Almost Presidency 4,771 5,479 275 (5%) 331 (6%)
as many declared themselves Sakta; very few declared Rajshahi 6,640 3,721 458 (12%) 764 (21%)
themselves as Saiva or as some other specific type of Dacca 9,833 3,958 699 (18%) 1,289 (32%)
Hindu. Considering, among other things, the sustained
Chittagong 5,030 1,546 933 (60%) 610 (39%)
critique of Hindu “idolatry”, “superstition”, and
“immorality” in the rationalist climate of the nineteenth- A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, Tables, pp. 220-221. The percentages
century Bengal Renaissance and the growing secularity of are approximations (in thousands) from the absolute figures.
the twentieth (see also Chapter 9 in this volume), I suspect It should be noted that in Burdwan and Presidency
that the percentage of Hindus declaring a devotional or Divisions Hindus outnumbered Muslims, while in the
denominational preference in the Census of India, 1931 other three divisions Muslims were in the majority. It is
was markedly lower than would have been the case a also noteworthy that the distribution of those professing
century or more before. What is all the more interesting, to be Saktas followed rather closely the pattern for
and somewhat puzzling, is the marked variation—by region Vaishnavas, being low (9% and 5% of Hindus) in Burdwan
and by extent of urbanization—in incidence of those and Presidency Divisions—where Hindus were in the
declaring a specific (Vaishnava, Sakta or other) preference. majority—and higher (12%, 18% and 60% respectively) in
The heartland of Caitanya Vaishnava religion in Bengal those Divisions (Rajshahi, Dacca and Chittagong) where
traditionally has been in western Bengal, especially along Muslims were in the majority. In distant Chittagong
both banks of the Hugli River, the area surrounding Division, 99% of Hindus claimed to be either Vaishnava
Navadvip, Caitanya’s birthplace, much of Rarh (i.e., Bengal (39%) or Sakta (60%), whereas in Presidency Division
west of the Hugli), and southwestern Bengal toward Orissa. (which embraced metropolitan Calcutta) only 11% of Hindus
From this region came many of Caitanya’s prominent (6% Vaishnava and 5% Sakta) chose such a preference in
Bengali associates and this is where their traditional seats 1931. Only a miniscule percentage of Hindus declared

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Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 153 154 The Sociology of Religion in India

Saiva or any other denominational or sectarian preference Table III-b

apart from Sakta and Vaishnava, even though the majority Population of the Cities
of temples of any size in western Bengal are for Siva.26
City: Total: Hindu: Muslim:
The disparity in percentages of Hindus claiming a
denominational or devotional preference becomes even Howrah 224,000 173,000 48,000
more striking when we look at the Census of India, 1931 Calcutta 1,196,000 822,000 311,000
returns for three major cities in Bengal, the districts
immediately surrounding them, and their respective Dacca 138,000 80,000 57,000
encompassing divisions. We find that the percentage of * A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931. Bengal and Sikhim, Part 2, Tables
professing Vaishnavas among Hindus comes down from (Calcutta: Central Publications Branch, 1932), ‘Imperial Table XVI,
33% in Dacca Division to 29% in Dacca District and to pp. 220-221.
19% in Dacca City. In Presidency Division, the percentage
It is, of course, possible that error(s), such as inconsistent
falls from a modest 6.4% in the Presidency as a whole to
ways questions were posed, may have vitiated the results,
a mere 1.5% in 24 Parganas District surrounding Calcutta,
though any merely computational error very likely would
and a paltry 0.34% (ca. 3,000 individuals) in Calcutta (a
have been caught and corrected. But even a poorly phrased
city of 1,196,000)! Similarly, the percentage drops from 7%
question or bias by some of those posing the questions
at the Burdwan Division level to a mere 0.5% in Howrah
ought not to have generated so pronounced a variation
District, to a microscopic 0.03% (ca. 50 individuals out of
between responses from urban, “suburban” and rural areas;
224,000!) in the city of Howrah. The figures for those
nor between responses from Hindu-majority western
indicating a Sakta preference are more or less parallel, as
divisions and Muslim-majority eastern divisions of Bengal.
Table III-a indicates. Can these figures be accurate? If so,
Why, then, the dramatic disparities?
what do they mean?
Looking first at the disparities between rural and urban
Table III-a
responses, especially the astounding drop-off of those
Percentages of Hindus Vaishnava or Sakta Preference professing both Sakta and Vaishnava orientation by 1931
Arranged by Division, District and City* in the Calcutta-Howrah metropolis, must we presume
some pervasive rejection of centuries-old religious traditions
Constituency: Sakta: Vaishnava:
not only among the elite bhadralok but involving the Hindu
Burdwan Division 9.0% 7.0% population at large? In the urban areas, especially Calcutta-
Howrah District 2.0% 0.5% Howrah, many British and elite Bengali bhadralok spokesmen
Howrah City 0.6% 0.03% had been outspokenly critical of traditional Vaishnava
Presidency Division 5.0% 6.4% and Sakta values and mores for over a century. In such
24 Parganas District 4.0% 1.5% urban environments, avowal of either Vaishnava or Sakta
Calcutta City 0.7% 0.36% identity might well have seemed regressive on religio-
Dacca Division 17.0% 33.0% cultural and social grounds, and in some circles personally
Dacca District 7.0% 29.0% embarrassing. But, on the other hand, as Hindu religious
Dacca City 7.5% 19.0% nationalism gained momentum late in the nineteenth
century and on into the early twentieth, there was a

socrel-1\77
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 155
tendency to reclaim values in theretofore partially
discredited Hindu religious traditions.27 The Shakta tradition
in Bengal, was appealed to during the Indian nationalist
movement for motivating heroic service for the Mother
Goddess, incarnate as Bengal or as Bharat-Mata. The
Caitanya Vaishnava tradition was appealed to for its reputed
(if exaggerated) espousal of social equality and ethical
reform. Why then, despite these more favourable nationalist
sentiments, there was such a reluctance of urban Hindus,
even in the lower social strata, to declare themselves
Shakta or Vaishnava (or any other denominational or
devotional type of Hindu) remains an intriguing puzzle.
Could relentless critiques by foreigners and Bengali
Indian “reformers” of idol-worship, sexual immorality,
mindless rituals and exploitive priests and gurus have
sunk in so deeply that even nationalist attempts at
rehabilitation were to no avail? Had in fact the leadership
and general level of performance of Vaishnava bhakti actually
sunk so low? Had “non-sectarian” conceptions of Hindu
religion gained overwhelming acceptance down to the
grassroots population? Or had religion in general been
rejected by the vast majority of Hindus in Calcutta and
Howrah in favour of secular commercial and political
aspirations? Were there specific campaigns being waged
by interest groups in Calcutta and Howrah at the time of
the census to dissuade respondents from giving positive
answers to the question of denominational or sectarian
preference within the generic Hindu category? Was there
a shared misconception (but limited to Calcutta and
Howrah?) that to profess being Vaishnava or Shakta mean
denying that one was Hindu? Had the quite substantial
efforts of scholars of Vaishnava religious and literary texts
and Vaishnava religious leaders (traditionalist, revivalist,
reformist) in Calcutta in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries had little impact? Had reformists among
the Vaishnavas themselves unwittingly done more harm
than good to the public image of Vaishnavas by strident
attacks on hereditary Vaishnava gurus, Jati-Vaishnavas
socrel1\78
156 The Sociology of Religion in India
and Sahajiya Vaishnavas? I don’t know. All of these
suggestions seem to have some prima facie plausibility.
Yet none may capture the most significant dynamics. I
have concentrated my own research on Caitanya Vaishnava
devotion in relation to Bengali society in pre-colonial Bengal.
So I but offer here this striking phenomenon of a collapse
(actual or only apparent?) of popular and elite self-
identification as Vaishnava or Shakta to those many scholars
for whom colonial Bengal holds special attraction and for
whom there must be ample documentary evidence available
for research.
As for the other marked disparity, i.e., between the
Hindu-majority divisions of West Bengal and the Muslim-
majority divisions of East Bengal in incidence of professing
Vaishnavas and Shaktas, we have another striking
phenomenon that invites serious investigation. Again
multiple prima facie explanations come to mind. One quite
plausible, if only partial, explanation is that by and large
the Hindu population in East Bengal, being farther
(geographically and in terms of communication) from the
more sophisticated metropolitan center of Calcutta in West
Bengal was less likely to have been influenced by the sort
of factors already proposed for undermining traditional
faith and practice among Vaishnava Hindus in Calcutta-
Howrah. Furthermore, among Hindus in East Bengal the
proportion of those who were of non-elite class and status
was greater than in West Bengal, and these may be
presumed to have had less inclination to depart from the
traditional religious patterns of rural Bengal as noted by
various observers in the nineteenth century and earlier in
the twentieth.
Another, somewhat more speculative but still plausible,
partial explanation is that, in regions where they were in
the minority, Hindus may have felt less secure, especially
by 1931, when communal tensions had been building for
some time. Hence they may have sought to reaffirm
whatever traditional religious and social identities remained
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 157
to them, be they Vaishnava or Sakta. From what we have
seen above of the distribution of Vaishnavas by jati in the
Census of India, 1901 combined with evidence from gazetteers
and ethnological surveys, it is evident that Vaishnava
identification had become merged with jati in many middle
and lower status jatis. Similar identification of Shakta
religion and jati was reported to be widespread among
jatis of even lesser status. Amid conditions of insecurity,
the retention, if not indeed accentuation, of such religious-
cum-jati identification would seem likely to have been
occurring and hence the relatively greater affirmation of
Vaishnava and Shakta orientation among Hindu
respondents in Eastern Bengal in the 1931 census. Moreover,
any shared sense of insecurity as a minority may have
made even the more “reformist” Hindu critics in eastern
Bengal less inclined to criticize the alleged religious failings
of fellow Hindus, Vaishnava or Shakta.
Even if these proposed explanations do carry weight,
we are still left to ask how it was possible that throughout
the Chittagong Division virtually all Hindus (99%) reported
themselves to be either Vaishnava (39%) or Shakta (60%)?
Chittagong Division is farther away from Calcutta and
the rest of West Bengal and the Hindu population in
Chittagong Division in 1931 was less than half that in
Rajshahi and Dhaka Divisions and the ratio of Muslims to
Hindus (3.25 to 1) in Chittagong was greater than in
Dhaka (2.48 to 1) or Rajshahi (1.78 to 1). Accordingly, we
would expect both general factors just proposed—insulation
from the “corrosive” factors of “sophisticated” metropolitan
Calcuttta, and anxiety of a “threatened minority”—if
operative, to be intensified in Chittagong Division. We
would expect to have a higher percentage there reporting
Vaishnava or Sakta religious preference. But that 99% of
Hindus would do so, whereas in Dhaka Division only
50% did, and in Rajshahi Division only 33% is quite
remarkable. This phenomenon too merits close study by
those concerned with late colonial history in Bengal.
However, till now, predominantly rural East Bengal before
socrel-1\79
158 The Sociology of Religion in India
independence 1947 has tended to be neglected by scholars
more comfortable with urban Calcutta and the profusion
and convenience of documentary sources available for its
study.
7. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
The British censuses, gazetteers, district reports and official
ethnological studies of India span a period of more than
fifty years. They have their limitations, no doubt, and
merit systematic scrutiny for their organization, content
and implications. But they do provide a remarkably
thorough and systematic body of empirical information,
organized and interpreted with varying degrees of
theoretical sophistication. They may be used in conjunction
with what can be learned from the quite ample textual
sources arising from various religious movements, castes
and literary circles before and during British rule. If so,
there would seem to be scope for significantly enhancing
our understanding of socio-cultural life, and in particular
its religious aspects, in pre-colonial and colonial Bengal.
If, in addition, we complement both these types of
documentary sources with documentary and field research
on post-colonial Bengal, through anthropology, the academic
study of religion, and other relevant disciplines, we may
expect commensurately richer understanding both of
contemporary life in the region and of its prior history.
In particular, there is much scope for new research on
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Vaishnava religious
history in Bengal. The invaluable Vaisnavism in Bengal by
Ramakanta Chakrabarty has opened up many points of
entry into nineteenth-century Vaishnava developments in
Bengal hitherto neglected by scholars. Surely there is need
for a comparable survey of Caitanya Vaishnava (as, of
course, of other religious) developments in the twentieth
century in Bengal as well. There is available a great deal
of as yet unresearched documentary evidence, published
and unpublished, and there are many Vaishnava individuals
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 159
and institutions that would likely respond cooperatively
to sensitive and well-conceived proposals for research on
their respective histories and recent experiences. Shukavak
Dasa’s (Brian Marvin’s) study of Caitanya Vaishnava
revivalist, Kedarnath Datta (Bhakti Vinode Thakur) is one
example of promising research on Vaishnava religion in
relation to Bengali social and cultural life in modern India,
as is Ferdinando Sardella’s yet more recent research on
Bimala Prasad Datta (Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, see chapter
8).28 One would also expect that current thinking and
research in the areas of gender studies and subaltern
studies will be better grounded and gain greater depth
and texture to the extent that they incorporate pertinent
evidence from colonial and pre-colonial vernacular religious
texts and other reflections of popular religious life in
Bengal.
Untapped sources for reconstructing the social history
of pre-colonial Bengal are more severely limited, consisting
primarily of religious and other literary texts. However,
as more of these texts are examined for what they can tell
us, directly or implicitly, of the social characteristics of
the groups that produced, used and preserved them and
of their environing social contexts, and as scholars
concentrating on different corpuses of such texts compare
and integrate their respective findings, more precise religio-
cultural and social patterns may be discerned. The results
of the five probes reported in this article are in themselves
quite limited empirical contributions. But they constitute
building blocks by which more elaborate structures may
be constructed and they raise questions and point to some
plausible, if as yet hypothetical, resolutions.
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NOTES
1. B. Majumdar (1959), pp. 605–706.
2. B. Majumdar (1959), p. 567.
3. This expression (meaning refined people, gentlemen) is usually
used for those elite Bengali Hindus who interacted with the
British in and through Calcutta. For the most part these
modern bhadralok were comprised of Brahmans, Kayasthas
and Baidyas. The same three elite castes seem to have
dominated Hindu socio-cultural life in Caitanya’s time and
probably much farther back. Many worked with Persian-
medium Muslim regimes much as their descendants would
with the English-medium British regime. They dominated
the leadership positions among Caitanya’s contemporary
associates and continued to be prominent in leadership roles
thereafter within the mainline Caitanya Vaishnava community
of devotees. J. O’Connell (1993a).
4. To give but one of many observed instances of female
predominance at modern day Vaishnava functions, at the
1992 annual guru-purnima, when disciples pay their respects
and may make a financial offering to their religious preceptors,
the number of women in the long line attending upon
Madhusudan Das Babaji, Mohant of the Pathbari Ashram at
Baranagar near Calcutta, was several times that of men.
5. D. Wulff (1985).
6. In a society where most girls were married at or before
puberty, virtually any adult female devotee, as a matter of
course, would be some man’s wife or widow, whatever
eminence she might attain in her own right, as several did.
Some of Caitanya’s most prominent associates, e.g., Advaita
and Nityananda, had two wives simultaneously, though
none that I know of had more than two at any one time.
Caitanya himself took a second wife after the first had died.
socrel1\82
164 The Sociology of Religion in India
7. For this extremely informative compilation, again see B.
Majumdar (1959), pp. 621–706.
8. E. Dimock (1989 [1966]) and H. Sanyal (1989) have credited
Jahnava with having introduced left-tantric sahajiya practices
(sadhana) into the core of the movement, but I find this
interpretation faulty, as argued at some length in J. O’Connell
(2003), pp. 404–436. On the contrary, her role was one of
leadership in making the orthodox Vrindavan Gosvamins’
theology dominant in mainline Vaishnava circles in Bengal.
See also R. Chakrabarty (1985), pp. 154–155; J. O’Connell
(1970), pp. 254–273, 435–442; (1989); (1993b).
9. For a fascinating recent account of women as well as men
among Vaishnava Gosvami families, see M. Case (2000).
10. In S. Sen (1935) we find the name Syamapriya, which may
indicate a female composer, though it may also be a short
form of Syamapriyadasa (or some other male name). All
other of some 180 composers have male names. In B.
Majumdar (1961) and (1966 [1961]) we find no female
composers.
11. H. Das (1957), 1311, 1624.
12. She is said to have been praised by Caitanya as, along with
Svarupa, Raya Ramananda and Sikhi Mahiti, one of only
three and a half devotional “vessels“ (patra) of Radha’s
group (gana) of devotees. Krishnadasa (1956), CC 3.2.106.
13. J. O’Connell (1981), pp. 13–28.
14. Krishnadasa (1956), CC 3.5.98–142.
15. There is, for instance, the troubling case where a young
ascetic, Chota Haridasa, was ostracised by Caitanya for
having been sexually attracted to a pious widow at Puri
from whom he had been sent to beg rice. When Caitanya
refused to restore him to his company, despite entreaties by
devotees on his behalf, Chota Haridasa drowned himself at
Prayaga. Krishnadasa (1956), CC 3.2.104–172.
16. R. Chakrabarty (1985), Ch. XIX.
17. H. Risley (1891); J. Wise (1883), (1893); Bengal District Gazetteers,
esp. Khulna (1908), Howrah (1909), Midnapore (1911), Jessore
(1912), 24 Parganas (1914), Murshidabad (1914), all edited by
L.S.S. O’Malley; W. Hunter (1875–77).
18. This allows us to exclude large areas of eastern India (e.g.,
Orissa, Bihar, Assam, tribal areas in the northeast) that had
been administered as part of the Bengal Presidency.
Demographics of Caitanya Vaishnavas in Pre-Colonial... 165

19. For Jati-Vaishnavas, see A. Das (1986), (1993); and J. O’Connell

(1982).
20. For the Bhumij example, see S. Sinha (1968).
21. See Laladasa, Bhakta–mala (n.d.), no. 92, p. 286 for one such
episode; the adaptation of Manipuri dance and romance to
Vaishnava themes is also relevant.
22. Cakravarty (1986), (1989), (1992); for earlier studies, see A.
8
Datta (1907–1911).
23. R. Chakrabarty (1985), Chs. XIX, XX; also H. Wilson (1861/
1958); S. Banerjee (1993), (1999).
24. H. Das (1948), (1951a), (1951b); M. Adhikari (1925); R.
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism
Chakrabarty (1985).
The Case of Swami Vivekananda
25. A.E. Porter, Census of India, 1931, pp. 220–21.
26. Enumerating Hindu temples might be expected to provide
a reliable ground for assessing relative Vaishnava, Sakta
and Saiva influences throughout Bengal in different periods.
FERDINANDO SARDELLA
But the lack of a systematic survey of the whole region
makes such comparisons inconclusive. J. Wise (1883) wrote
that a “carefully prepared list of 384 temples and shrines in On the occasion of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary
the Dacca District” showed that “seventy-four per-cent belong
of Swami Vivekânanda (1863–1902) it is quite appropriate
to Krishna in one or another of his numerous forms and
only twenty-one-per-cent to Kali, Durga and Siv“. On the
to explore his remarkable achievements and the context
other hand, H. Sanyal (1968) found that among the and significance of his contribution.
approximately one thousand Hindu temples he had examined In this chapter I will explore the development and
personally in West Bengal, scarcely more than one hundred growing impact of the philosophical current to which
were dedicated to Vaishnava deities.
Vivekânanda contributed the most, i.e. non-dualistic or
27. For specifics on the impact on the Caitanya Vaishnavas of monistic (advaita) Vedanta. The chapter will furthermore
the Bengal Renaissance and early Hindu/Indian nationalism, explore some Indic and European intellectual currents
see R. Chakrabarty (1985), Ch. XXII.
that during the 19th and 20th centuries created a fertile
28. S. Dasa (1999); F. Sardella (2013). P.R. Das (1997), K. Goswami ground for an embracing of advaita Vedanta as a “core”
(1993), H. Basu (2009), R. Manring (2005), E. Dimock & T.
philosophy of modern Hinduism by most of Bengal’s
Stewart (1999), Jason Fuller, Jan Brzezinski and others,
including some mentioned earlier in this essay, represent a
intellectual and cultural elite (known as the bhadralok).1
variety of promising approaches to research on Caitanya This in turn had a significant influence in shaping the
Vaishnavas in colonial and post-colonial Bengal. mainstream religious understanding of the Hindu middle
class in India during the colonial period, an influence that
can still be felt today.
This nondualistic orientation had further practical
implications for the spread of humanistic, rationalistic
and egalitarian ideologies because of its emphasis on the

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The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 167
equality of all human beings. Indeed, it is likely that the
partial embracing of a similar ideology by Gandhi and
several other prominent leaders of the nationalist movement
facilitated the purpose of invalidating the notion of a
racial hierarchy, and indirectly encouraged resistance against
Western colonial domination.
The impact of this orientation went beyond the shores
of India. In 1893 Swami Vivekânanda presented a
nondualistic reading of Vedanta to the World Parliament
of Religions in Chicago that was exceedingly well-received,
and quickly became the West’s standard understanding
of the philosophical base of Hinduism, an impact that can
still be felt today.
At the outset, however, it is important to point out
that Vivekânanda’s nondualistic orientation quickly
achieved widespread popularity and thereby obscured
other contemporary currents within Hinduism in Bengal
that gained prominence later on. One example is represented
by the Vaishnava movement of Bhaktisiddhânta Sarasvatî
(1874–1937), the son of Bhaktivinoda (discussed in chapter
9), and the founder in 1918 of what came to be known as
the Gaudiya Math, the forerunner of a global movement
that counts among its present offshoots the Hare Krishna
movement (ISKCON).2 The teachings that Bhaktisiddhânta
propagated were inspired by the life of the Bengali mystic
Caitanya (1486–1534). Bhaktisiddhânta’s teachings were
deeply theistic, presenting the highest truth or “Supreme
Godhead” as personal rather than impersonal, formal rather
than formless.3 In this regard he championed Hindu iconic
bhakti practices, as well as the ultimate reality of the form,
qualities, abode and pastimes of a Supreme Being, Krishna,
not on the basis of popular emotionalism, but on the basis
of a sophisticated Vaishnava philosophical understanding
that posed a direct challenge to nondualistic views. The
influence of the religion that he represented, Vaishnavism,
was though waning in Bengal and had become less popular
among the urban middle-class (see chapter 7). The revival
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168 The Sociology of Religion in India
that he set in motion bore fruit only many years later. The
life and works of Bhaktisiddhânta, who as Vivekânanda
was a kayastha by caste and a “Datta” by lineage—the
civil name of the former was Bimala Prasad Datta and of
the latter Narendranath Datta—and who grew up in the
same area of North Calcutta during the colonial period
have been discussed in detail elsewhere and need not be
repeated here.4
For now, before entering into the subject of this chapter
in greater detail, it is sufficient to briefly address some
theoretical issues.
THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS SOCIETY DILEMMA
Some of the major cultural currents that led to the powerful
flourishing of nondualist ideas among the Hindu middle-
class in Bengal began with Rammohun Roy, and were
advantaged by the supporting role of British colonial culture,
as will be shown below. Because of the complexity of
these phenomena, however, and the way they were
intertwined with each other, it is rather difficult to
distinguish individual agency from the social context in
which they grew.
One of the most intriguing issues in sociology is in
fact the question of how to theoretically explain the agency
of the individual person (the micro level) in relation to
the influence of society (the macro) (see also chapter 1).5
The discussion that has aroused from this question is
known as the “agency versus structure debate”. Those
who argue for the primacy of human agency tend to
assume a greater degree of free will for the individual,
while those who emphasize a social model tend to explain
human action as a product of social relations. Berger and
Luckmann have explained the debate in terms of a difference
between subjective and objective views. Those who have
a subjective approach, that is who advocate the primacy
of the subject, hold theories that focus on the individual,
while those who have an objective approach understand
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 169
society as less dependent on individual agency.6 Two
examples may illustrate this point. Anthony Giddens (1984)
has described social structures as merely “rules and
resources” that agents creatively use in their social life,
thus allocating more weight to personal agency.7 Pierre
Bourdieau, on the other hand, has stressed the role of the
“habitus”, arguing that a person’s perceptions, judgement,
and behaviour are closely shaped by his/her place in the
social system.8 I suggest that agency and social structures
are not contradictory but complementary, since human
action is naturally constrained and restrained by social
structures, but is also not entirely determined by them.
Social structures and institutions are relentlessly shaped
and transformed by the acts of individual agents as much
as most individual subjects construct their life worlds
within the border of a structured society.
RAMMOHUN ROY AND THE BRAHMO SAMAJ
The foundation of a nondualist approach within what is
often labelled as “modern Hinduism” 9 was laid by
Rammohun Roy (1774-1833),10 who is also credited with
having inaugurated the Bengali Renaissance, a well-known
movement of reform and revival that extended throughout
the 19th century and was pivotal in shaping a larger “Hindu”
awakening. The end of the 18th century was a time of
great social, cultural and political turmoil in Bengal as
the old system of Islamic polity gave way to British rule,
and Muslims, Hindus and Christians negotiated new roles
under the patronage of the Company. Christian missionaries
took it upon themselves to critique Hindu customs as
unethical and particularly repressive of women; in response,
brâhmanas such as Rammohun Roy were determined to
show that Hindu culture and society could be made
compatible with Western values.
In his religious orientation, Rammohun Roy firmly
rejected the worship of images and the performance of
temple rituals, and fought alongside the missionaries against
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170 The Sociology of Religion in India
the abuses of caste and sati, but for different reasons.11 In
particular, he concluded that the avoidance of Hindu
representations of the divine was the key to the unification,
modernisation and regeneration of Hindu culture.12 In
this he was opposed by bhadralok Vaishnavas who disagreed
with his vision of an impersonal and aniconic God, as
well as by traditional non-dualists who considered the
worship of images to fulfil an important function relative
to the religious imagination of the Hindu masses (Killingley
1986: 148). He seemingly strove, based upon his reading
of advaita Vedanta later on in his life, to find a meeting
point with European ideas of a formless God as creator
and maintainer, and he externally adopted and integrated
the iconoclastic sensibilities of the Christian and Muslim
traditions that were familiar to him.
Early in his life Roy was drawn to such foreign
innovations as the unique status given to reason and
science in secular European thought and the ethical
monotheism propagated by Christians and Muslims alike;
and it is thought that the assimilation of such ideas may
have contributed to some degree to his eventual alienation
from the iconic religious practices of his Vaishnava father.
In 1815 Roy published Vedântasâra, a major study on the
Vedanta that drew an immediate polemical response from
more traditional Hindu quarters in the form of the
Vedântacandrikâ, published in 1817.
The degree to which European and Islamic ideas
ultimately influenced Roy’s thought is difficult to assess.
Although throughout much of his life he embraced many
ideas that stemmed from outside his Hindu upbringing,
in his later years he appears to have creatively sought
inspiration more from within the basket of Indic religions.
In the end he seemingly adopted a Vedântic non-dualistic
orientation, and it was upon this advaitic framework that
the Brahmo Sabha was founded. After Roy’s death, however,
the Sabha (then known as the Samaj) was transformed
into a theistic institution by his successor, Debendranath
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 171
Tagore, who purged the organization of almost all its
Shankara Vedantic elements by 1850 (Kopf 1979: 106).
This change of philosophical direction was challenged
twenty years later when a branch that had managed to
retain its non-dualistic orientation decried theism as being
over-emotional. By then Keshub Chandra Sen had
incorporated into the Brahmo Samaj various devotional
practices inspired by Caitanyaite Vaishnavism and the
dissenting non-dualistic section was determined to distance
itself from his approach (Kopf 1979: 251).
EARLY INDOLOGISTS
Although the Calcutta Oriental School at Fort William,
built to promote the learning of India’s languages and
history, gradually came to an end during the 1830s, it left
one long-lasting impression: the notion that what was to
be known as “Hinduism” was synonymous with the early
philosophy of the Upanishads, and particularly with non-
dualism, echoing a view that had already become well-
established in Europe. As for the numerous iconic elements
within various Indic traditions, these were viewed as
sectarian degenerations that appeared during the later
Purânic period.13 For early European Indologists, the Vedic
texts became the window through which the entire history
of the Indic religions could be understood, anticipating
the approach of Dayânanda Sarasvatî and the Arya Samaj.
Because of the focus on early texts such as the
Upanishads, which Western Indologists interpreted as
conveying an essentially non-dualistic perspective, the
view emerged that despite their great variety of deities
and religious forms, all Indic religions “express the same
basic truth” and all Hindu paths lead to the same impersonal
goal of brahman.14 This conclusion was later reinforced
when the study of the Vedânta Sûtra was taken up in
earnest and Shankara’s advaita Vedanta philosophy became
more widely known. These occurrences, however, tended
to overlook the fact that the school of Vedânta has a
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172 The Sociology of Religion in India
number of branches, of which ten are considered prominent
(Agrawal 2001, p. xxxiii).
Despite the later discovery by various Indologists and
Christian scholars of profound iconic, dualistic strands,
the reduction of Indic philosophy to an impersonal essence
has permeated popular Western culture ever since, and
has become the dominant understanding in Bengal and
other parts of India as well. Arvind Sharma, has recently
estimated that “three-fourths of modern Hindu intellectuals
subscribe to it” (Sharma 2005: 51). But this anticipates our
narrative.
The propensity among key sections of the bhadralok in
the 19th and early 20th century to consider non-dualism as
the philosophical core of Hinduism may have been
influenced at least to some degree by yet another important
factor: the presence of the Protestant missions, a plurality
of institutions that stood for a diversity of approaches
and visions. As a point of departure, the nature of this
influence will be described below, with particular emphasis
on the British side of the equation. This, however, is not
meant to imply that a comprehensive understanding of
this highly complex phenomenon can be achieved in this
way. As mentioned earlier, the bhadralok internalized and
responded to the influences of these missions in highly
personal and independent ways, and this is an important
side of the narrative as well.
THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
To properly comprehend the importance of this impact, it
is important to remember that the majority of missionaries
were not wandering preachers in search of Indian converts,
but institution-builders that presided over churches, schools
and hospitals. The encounter with the “Hindoos” occurred
not in the open air, but in structured institutional settings.
The earliest Protestant-Hindu encounters occurred in Bengal
with English and Scot missionaries. William Carey, Joshua
Marshman, and William Ward established a press in
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 173
Serampore in the early 19th century and ventured to publish
a large amount of vernacular literature—including early
Bengali and Sanskrit translations of the Bible—while initially
possessing only rudimentary formal educations. They came
to interpret Indic religions according to the sensibilities
of their time, and in terms of such notions as “Pantheism”
or “Polytheism”, assuming these religions to be non-
different from the religions of Greece, Rome and the “pagan”
civilisations of the Old Testament.15 They viewed the
worship of iconic representations as mere “idol worship”,
and condemned a number of Hindu customs as immoral
on the basis of their own Protestant ethics.
Although these first Protestant missionaries lacked
classical training in Indian philosophy and thought, they
nonetheless ventured on their own to acquire a superb
proficiency in Sanskrit and other vernacular languages
with the help of hired pandits. These individuals, however,
gave them a highly brâhmanic and Sanskritized image of
Indic religions.
Ward authored an extremely influential study of the
‘Hindoo’ world entitled View of the history, literature and
religion of the Hindoos: including a minute description of their
manners and customs. In the third edition of this work,
printed in London in 1817, he suggested that brahman—
which he called the Divine Spirit—was at the core of the
theology of the Hindus:
The whole system of Hindoo theology is
founded upon the doctrine that the Divine
Spirit, as the soul of the universe, becomes,
in all human beings, united to matter; that
spirit is insulated or individuated by
particular portions of matter, which it is
continuously quitting, and joining itself to
new portions of matter; that the human soul
is, in other words, God himself (Ward 1817,
vol. 1, p. 1, ff.).
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174 The Sociology of Religion in India
While acknowledging the pervasiveness of Vaishnavism
in Eastern India, Ward lamented the tradition’s alleged
ethical shortcomings:
Nearly one half of the Hindoo population
of Bengal are Voishnâvâs, composed
principally of the lower orders: great
numbers are religious mendicants. Almost
all Hindus in Orissa are Voishnâvâs…the
distinguishing vice of this sect in impurity,
as might be expected…from the obscene
nature of the festivals held (Ward 1817, vol.
1, p. 219).
He also characterized Vaishnavism in purely
homogenous terms, with neither nuance nor reference to
the fact that Vaishnava bhakti in Bengal has both a non-
dualistic and a dualistic tradition, as well as an orthodox
mainstream and an erotic-tantric orientation (Das 1997:
30). It was this sort of partial understanding that served
to shape 19th century Protestant perceptions of Indic
religious life.
The sensibilities, attitudes and perceptions mentioned
above strongly inclined Christian scholars to embrace
Shankara’s advaita as the religion of India rather than for
example “iconic” and “erotic” Vaishnavism, with reference
to the popular worship of Râdhâ and Krishna. The
influential Scottish missionary W. S. Uruquhart, principal
and professor of philosophy at both the Scottish Church
College and the University of Calcutta, researched the
indigenous impact of Râmânuja’s Vaishnava theology as
compared to the theology of Shankara. In 1928 he concluded
that
there can be little doubt that the pre-
eminence must be assigned to Shankara. So
far as counting of heads goes, it has been
estimated even by a follower of Râmânuja
that out of the total number of Vedantins 75
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism
per cent. are adherents to Shankara, and
only 15 per cent. of Râmânuja, while the
remaining 10 per cent may be distributed
among the minor sects also laying claim to
the name of Vedantins. And that this
popularity is not merely accidental, but is
based upon and justified by a considered
estimate of the significance of Shankara’s
teachings, is evidenced by the opinion of
leading scholars, even down to the present
day (Uruquhart 1928: 64-65).
Without questioning Shankara’s obvious importance
to India’s religious life, it should nonetheless be mentioned
that Uruquart’s estimate relied heavily upon the opinions
of a literate priestly elite representing what Axel Michaels
has termed “Brahmanic-Sanskritic” Hinduism, and did
not take into account the greater popularity of Vaishnavism
at the middle and lower societal level in India (2004: 21-
22). Although Protestant missionaries were certainly aware
of the devotional (or bhakti) strands within Indic religion,
these strands were most often perceived as non-dualistic
in essence, and thus their distinctive religious significance
was rarely sufficiently explored (Oddie 2006: 270-71).16
The impulse of both Protestant and secular culture to
characterise Hinduism as a non-dualistic Brahminical
“religion” only served to heightened criticism of iconic
forms worship—a criticism that began during the period
of Islamic rule and found fresh expression in the writings
of Rammohun Roy and a number of Hindu advocates of
advaita Vedanta.
WESTERN ESOTERICISM AND OCCULTISM
Apart from the influence of the Christian missions, there
was another less visible but rather intriguing channel
through which ideas born of Christianity made an impact
on the sensibilities of the bhadralok—that of Western
esotericism and occultism.17 These currents’ view of religion
175 176 The Sociology of Religion in India
as being primarily individual and rational constituted yet
another basis for the emergence of modern Vedanta. Western
esotericism, which was initially based on Christian ideas,
spread its influence in India through the medium of the
Freemasons, who established the first Masonic lodge in
Calcutta in 1730. Open to both the British and the educated
indigenous population, Freemasonry introduced the
fundamental concepts of western esotericism to the Indian
intelligentsia. Its teachings were based on faith in an abstract,
formless supreme being and a code of conduct that exalted
honour, brotherly love, charity, honesty and openness to
men of all religions. These ideas helped to strengthen the
bhadralok drive towards universalism, tolerance and an
ethics of duty and work, which found its purest expression
in the Brahmo Samaj, perhaps the most complete
embodiment of the progressive aspirations of the bhadralok
at the time. However, with the arrival of the Enlightenment,
the notion that a personal God was the source of the
natural world was gradually replaced by the view that
nature was essentially mechanistic and that natural events
were based on the laws of cause and effect, without external
intervention. According to Wouter J. Hanegraaff, this more
secularised view brought about the transformation of
esotericism into occultism. Hanegraaff has identified four
primary reasons for this transformation: 1) the post-
enlightenment worldview that sets out to interpret the
cosmos as being based on “laws of causality”, as opposed
to older interpretations based on “correspondences”; 2)
the modern historical study of world religions; 3) the rise
of evolutionism based on a popular belief in the power of
progress; 4) the popular impact of religious types of
psychology (Hanegraaff 1998: 403-10). From about the
late 1870s onward India was introduced to occultism among
others by the Theosophical Society.
While Western esotericism (influenced by Christian
“spiritualism”) and occultism were by no means a pivotal
force in Indian cultural life, it can be reasonably stated
that it contributed to form the receptivity of educated
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Bengalis some of whom were Freemasons. It created, in
other words, an environment conducive to the notion of
a formless God that was only approachable by means of
abstract symbolism, and not by images and form.
The above discussion suggests that the rise of modern
non-dualist Vedanta was shaped by indigenous reflections
on the early history of Indic religions, on the influence of
the Islamic period, and on the validity of Hindu customs
and rituals; perhaps most importantly, however, it may
have emerged through interaction with European culture
and religious thought. Although the many ramifications
of this profound rethinking of Indic culture and religion
are often difficult to map and weigh,18 this much can be
said: from the 19th century onward, the idea that non-
dualism was the core of “Hindu religion” gradually took
hold, but not without resistance from Vaishnava and other
quarters of society. Despite these opposing voices, which
indicated that the bhadralok was not cohesive in its response
to modernisation and reform, colonial needs for rational
production and political management generated a climate
of widespread opposition to iconic, theistic pre-colonial
Indic religions, viewed as irrational and superstitious.
The promotion of advaita Vedanta as the most genuine
and essential face of Indian religion gradually helped
also to counteract allegations of “Hindoo” irrationality
and idolatry, and also enabled Indians to approach European
culture with a sense of Indic dignity and pride. And of all
the members of the Bengali renaissance that were
responsible for the 19th and 20th century popularization of
this vision, both in India and abroad, perhaps no one
contributed more than Swami Vivekânanda. Through
Vivekânanda, the English speaking world came more than
ever before to display
an increasing tendency…not only to identify
‘Hinduism’ with the Vedanta (thus
establishing an archaic textual and canonical
locus for the Hindu religion) but also a
177 178 The Sociology of Religion in India
tendency to conflate Vedanta with Advaita
Vedanta… Advaita, with its monistic
identification of Âtman and Brahman,
thereby came to represent the paradigmatic
example of the mystical nature of the Hindu
religion (King 1999, p. 128).19
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
For Vivekânanda there was no other God beside the jîva,
an understanding that was foundational for his approach
to religion and society. For this reason he raised the path
of humanitarian seva to new heights of institutional
sophistication, in pace with the changing needs of modern
society. From 1894 onwards, his call to help the poor
intensified with the introduction of the term “daridra
Nârâyana”, poor Nârâyana.20 Apart from its socio-political
implications, the expression was also a theological statement
about the nature of humanity, inspired by an essentially
non-dualistic understanding of the ultimate oneness of
all beings. On its basis, advaita and “Practical Vedanta”
were designated as superior to bhakti, and the ingredients
for pûjâ were designated as food for “the Living God who
dwells in the persons of the poor” (Vivekânanda 2006,
vol. 4: 404).
Towards the close of the 19th century this message
rang true with a large section of Bengal’s young bhadralok,
who saw Vivekânanda’s advaita teachings as a potential
means for the creation of lasting peace, tolerance and
understanding, and thus regarded him as a major influence
for the future of modern India. This was especially so in
comparison to traditional Vaishnavism, which they viewed
as placing too great an emphasis on otherworldliness and
bhakti, and not enough on action (karma) and knowledge
(jñâna). Because of this they viewed Vaishnavism as having
little relevance to the political and social changes that
had been brought about by India’s contact with modernity.
Ascetic mysticism and otherworldliness were not viable
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The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 179
alternatives in the eyes of the mainstream bhadralok, whose
hope for a possible synthesis of Hinduism and science
(i.e., European culture) led them in a different direction.
Subhash Chandra Bose, for example, found Vivekânanda’s
monistic universalism far more suited to political and
social emancipation than what he considered to be
Vaishnavism’s otherworldliness. He explained in his
autobiography that
My headmaster had roused my aesthetic
and moral sense—had given a new impetus
to my life—but he had not given me an
ideal to which I could give my whole being.
That Vivekananda gave me…The religion
that he preached––including his conception
of yoga––was based on a rational philosophy,
on the Vedanta, and his conception of the
Vedanta was antagonistic to, but was based
on, scientific principles. One of his missions
in life was to bring about a reconciliation
between science and religion, and this, he
held, was possible through the Vedanta
(Bose, et al. 1997, p. 37).
In 1893, with the aid of funds collected by various
patrons, Vivekânanda journeyed from India to the United
States to present his Indic religious perspective to the
World’s Parliament of Religions, set to convene in Chicago,
Illinois. And while he may have lacked formal traditional
training in a classical school of Vedanta, his presentation
of non-dualistic universalism was received with great
enthusiasm by the audience since it offered, to some degree,
a non-sectarian and all-inclusive vision. At the meeting
he presented advaita Vedanta as the core of Hindu thought:
Perfection is absolute, and the absolute
cannot be two or three. It cannot have any
qualities. It cannot be individual. And so
when a soul becomes perfect and absolute,
it must become one with Brahman, and it
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180 The Sociology of Religion in India
would only realise the Lord as the perfection,
the reality, of its own nature and existence,
the existence absolute, knowledge absolute,
and bliss absolute (Vivekânanda 2006, Vol.
1: 13–14).21
His view was that the formless feature of the Absolute
was higher than the personal one (e.g., the form and
personality of a supreme deity), which eliminated the
distinction between self and God.
Vivekânanda’s eloquent presentation of advaita
universalism as the main core of Hindu philosophy has
been perpetuated throughout the 20th century by Indian
scholars such as Satischandra Chatterjee of Calcutta
University and one time Indian president Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan.22 In a speech delivered in Calcutta on
January 20th, 1963, Radhakrishnan described the impact
of Vivekânanda’s writings as follows:
When I was a student in one of the classes,
in the matriculation class or so, the letters
of Swami Vivekânanda used to be circulated
in manuscript form among us all. The kind
of thrill which we enjoyed, the kind of
mesmeric touch that those writings gave
us, the kind of reliance on our own culture
that was being criticized all around—it is
that kind of transformation which his
writings effected in the young men in the
early years of this century (Radhakrishnan
1973: 97).23
He also wrote with rare clarity of an advaitic program
for pan-Hindu unity:
The [advaita] Vedanta is not a religion, but
religion itself in its most universal and
deepest significance. Thus the different sects
of Hinduism are reconciled with a common
standard and are sometimes regarded as
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism
the distorted expressions of the one true
canon (Radhakrishnan 1927: 23).
Privileging advaita implied, however, downplaying,
directly or indirectly, popular expressions of devotional
practice, and in particular the dualistic bhakti strands of
Hinduism that, according to advaitic thought, were
subordinate to the ultimate non-dual experience. Even
Gandhi, as mentioned earlier, maintained a non-dualistic
stance, although he attempted a reconciliation with dualistic
currents:
I am an advaitist and yet I support dvaitism
(dualism). The world is changing every
moment and is therefore unreal, it has no
permanent existence. But though it is
constantly changing, it has something about
it which persists and it is therefore to that
extent real (Gandhi and Kumarappa 1950,
p. 55).24
CONCLUSION
The creation of modern advaita Vedanta as the mainstream
understanding of Hinduism of the urban Bengali bhadralok
gradually developed from the writings of Rammohun
Roy to the progressive rationalism of the Brahmo Samaj,
to the well-known and much respected non-dualistic
universalism of Swami Vivekânanda, and has today taken
many directions within the dynamic field of what is
popularly known as modern Hinduism, no matter how
broadly or restrictively the concept is used. Nondualism
has been further consolidated during the 20th century by
the writings of individuals such as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
and Mahatma Gandhi, and today remains the standard
understanding of Hinduism among the majority of educated
Indians and most Westerners. Swami Vivekânanda’s
contribution stands on its own as one of the defining
moment in the religious life of Bengal. At the same time,
there is a need to explore in more detail the history of
181 182 The Sociology of Religion in India
modern Hinduism both in Bengal and beyond, in order to
recognise the personalities and institutions that, although
less known, have also contributed with their agency and
institutional initiatives to the growth of Hindu religion
and the religious life of Bengal, India, and now increasingly
so, the world. One such less known example is
Bhaktisiddhânta Sarasvatî.
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Pennington, Brian K. (2005). Was Hinduism Invented? Britons,
Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Prakash, Gyan (2005). Science between the Lines. In Shahid
Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds.) Subaltern Studies 9:
Writings on South Asian History and Society. Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 59-82.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (1927). Hindu View of Life. Oxford:
George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
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Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (1973). Our Heritage. Delhi: Hind
Pocket Books.
Ray, Ratnalekha (1973). Change in Bengal Agrarian Society Ca.
1760-1850. A Study in Selected Districts. Ph.D., University
of Cambridge.
Robertson, Bruce Carlisle (1999). Raja Rammohan Ray: The Father
of Modern India. Delhi; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roy, Rammohun (1820). The Precepts of Jesus the Guide to Peace
and Happiness, Extracted from the Books of the New Testament
Ascribed to the Four Evangelists. Calcutta: Baptist Mission
Press.
Roy, Rammohun (1832). Translation of Several Principal Books,
Passages, and Texts of the Veds, and of Some Controversial
Works of Brahmunical Theology: London.
Salmond, Noel A. (2004). Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy,
Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics against
Idolatry. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Sardella, Ferdinando (2013). Modern Hindu Personalism: the History,
Life, and Thought of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati. New York;
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sharma, Arvind (2005). Modern Hindu Thought: An Introduction.
New Delhi; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jonathan H. Turner (2005). “A New Approach for Theoretically
Integrating Micro and Macro Analysis”. In The Sage Handbook
of Sociology, Craig J. Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan S.
Turner (ed.). London: Sage.
Urquhart, W. S. (1919). Pantheism and the Value of Life, with
Special Reference to Indian Philosophy. London: Epworth Press.
Urquhart, W. S. (1928). The Vedanta and Modern Thought. London:
Humphrey Milford.
Ward, William (1817). A View of the History, Literature, and Religion
of the Hindoos; Including Translations from Their Principal
Works. London: Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society.
Vivekânanda, Swami (2006). The Complete Works of Swami
Vivekananda. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama.
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 185
NOTES
1. Nondualism in its Shankarite form denies the ultimate form
and personality of both God and the individual living being,
eliminating all distinctions that may be drawn between the
two. On the platform of liberation (mukti), both are seen as
manifestations of the divine all-pervading oneness known
as brahman. It also views the world as unreal whenever the
full awareness of brahman is absent from the consciousness
of the observer.
2. One element of the historical significance of the Gaudiya
Math is that it is the forerunner of the International Society
for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as
the Hare Krishna movement.
3. The distinction between non-dualistic and theistic approaches
was not always openly emphasized. On the other hand, the
issue was discussed by virtually all prominent Hindu leaders
of the period, and it was therefore, at least to some degree,
a noteworthy point of contention.
4. This chapter constitutes a brief introduction to the recently
published monograph by the author titled Modern Hindu
Personalism: The History, Life, and Thought of
Bhaktisiddhânta Sarasvatî (2012). The interested reader is
referred to that publication.
5. Turner (2005).
6. Berger and Luckmann (1967).
7. Giddens (1984).
8. Bourdieu and Nice (1984).
9. The term “Hinduism” has been questioned from several
quarters, and ultimately it does obscure the diversity and
pluralism of Indian religions. Although it has a meaning in
relation to other religions, it is important to keep in mind
that religion in India functions on the level of folk religion,
Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, as well as the brahminical
lineages of learning and other innumerable forms, rather
than under a unified umbrella. If nowhere else, modern
Hinduism, often in the shape of a diffuse nondualistic
religiosity, is found among the urban educated middle class.
The chapter traces the early history of this urban, middle-
class religiosity as it took shape during the colonial period.
socrel-1\93
186 The Sociology of Religion in India
10. While there are a number of spellings for Rammohun Roy’s
name (e.g., Râmamohana Râya, Rammohan Roy, Ram Mohan
Roy), I have decided to use the spelling used by Salmond
(2004).
11. Rammohun wrote that “the greater part of the Brahmins, as
well as other sects of Hindoos, are quite incapable of justifying
that idolatry which they continue to practice… I have forsaken
idolatry for the worship of the true and eternal God”, Roy
(1832: 3).
12. Roy stated that “[t]he public will, I hope, be assured that
nothing but the natural inclination of the ignorant towards
the worship of objects resembling their own nature, and to
the external forms of rites palpable to their grosser senses,
joined to the self-interested motives of their pretended guides,
had rendered the generality of the Hindoo community (in
defiance of their sacred books) devoted to idol worship; -
the source of prejudice and superstition, and of the total
destruction of moral principle, as countenancing criminal
intercourse, suicide, female murder and human sacrifice”,
Roy (1832: 26).
13. See also Dhar (1977: 31–32).
14. This understanding was less relevant for German indological
scholarship because it was more focused on the Vedas.
15. William Ward compared Hindu theology with Greek
philosophy and found that “the agreement betwixt these
opinions and those of the Greek philosophers is very
remarkable”, (Ward 1817, vol. 1: i–ii). The identification of
Vedântic advaita with pantheism was still prevalent in the
early 20th century, see the Scot missionary Urquhart’s work
on Pantheism and Indian philosophy (1919).
16. During the second part of the 19th century, however, as
their knowledge of India increased and their experiences in
the field matured, Protestant missionaries gradually began
to doubt the idea that the essence of Hinduism consisted of
a kind of brâhmanic pantheism.
17. Antoine Faivre has defined Western esotericism in terms of
the following six categories: 1) the presence of concrete and
symbolic correspondences between the macrocosm and the
microcosm; 2) the living nature, i.e. the universe is hierarchical
The Hindu Turn Towards Nondualism 187

and plural and permeated by spiritual forces; 3) imagination

and mediations, i.e. the use of the ‘inner eye’ for creative
imagination and the possibility of mediation between higher
and lower worlds; 4) experience of transmutation, i.e. the
inner alteration of the subject while traversing from one
plane of consciousness to the next; 5) the practise of
concordance, i.e. the existence of a gnosis (knowledge) that
is at the core of all the “exoteric” religious traditions; and
9
6) transmission, which refers to the passing of knowledge
from a master to a disciple through initiation and according
to certain set rules (1994: 10–15).
18. For a discussion on the major strands of English liberal and
Rethinking Krishna’s Eroticism: Nineteenth
conservative thought in relation to India up to 1857, see
Crawford (1987: 19–35).
Century Attitudes and Bhaktivinoda’s
19. This ‘tendency’ was nonetheless more prominent in the Hermeneutical Strategies
English speaking world than in countries like Germany.
See, for example, Rudolf Otto’s study of Christianity, Shankara
and Vaishnavism, where he favourably compares Christianity
ABHISHEK GHOSH
and Vaishnavism in relation to the theory of grace (1930).
20. Nârâyana is a name generally associated with Vishnu and
Vaishnavism.
There was a recent incident, perhaps an urban legend,
21. This is a quote from an address delivered on September 11,
1893. circulating among my friends about a court case that
some members of a Christian group filed against Vaishnava-
22. Satischandra Chatterjee and Dhirendramohan Datta published
a standard introduction to Indian philosophy that still remains
Hindus in Europe (including non-Indian practitioners)
in use at Indian universities, i.e. Chatterjee and Datta (1950) concerning their efforts to spread their religion of devotion
to Krishna among the local population. The Christian
23. Speech delivered on January 20, 1963 in Calcutta.
priest presented her case strongly and argued vehemently
24. Gandhi effortlessly blended Christian theology and ethics claiming that the Vaishnava tradition of Krishna bhakti
as well as Vaishnava theism with advaita.
was a despicable and degraded version of Satan worship.
She claimed that Krishna was, according to traditional
Sanskrit sources, a debauchee and a characterless god
who had illicit relations with more than sixteen thousand
women at a time and thus his worship should be legally
banned in a country that had the privilege of being majorly
based on Judeo-Christian values. The judge listened
carefully and then gave the opponent a chance to respond.
The defendant started by asking the question whether
she was an ordained nun who had taken the vow of
chastity and celibacy. “Yes”, she responded. The defendant

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Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 189
then asked, “When you took your vows, you did commit
to become a bride of Christ the rest of your life. Can you
please repeat your vow here?” The nun refused and kept
silent.
“Your honour”, argued the defendant, “Krishna is said
to have only 16,108 wives who, according to the very
same Sanskrit legendary sources she cites, initially were
captive in a harem of some notorious king called
Narakâsura, literally meaning ‘an anti-god from hell’. After
Narakâsura got killed in a battle against Krishna, the
women approached Krishna to be their husband and he
apparently married them all. Now, talking about nuns
and their vow of celibacy and chastity, there had been
more than sixteen thousand of them through the last two
millennia of the Christian ministry who have been betrothed
as a bride of Christ. That means Christ must be quite a
few times more degraded than Krishna—despite my respect
for him as a messiah—considering how many women
across the various denominations and sects he has taken
up as brides without even properly marrying them like
Krishna did”. For the nun, the judge and the other people
present, the point was apparently driven home. And in
terms of this chapter, although I can’t testify the accuracy
or credibility of this story, what follows in the rest of the
chapter is an ‘out-of-court’, real-life, religio-cultural debate
on the degraded nature of Krishna and a particular
Vaishnava theological defence that unfolded in nineteenth-
century Bengal.
KRISHNA AND THE BHÂGAVATA PURÂNA
The sacred love story of Râdhâ and Krishna found in the
Bhâgavata Purâna has been popular in South Asia since
the tenth century but its reception has varied.1 The narration
of this esoteric love play (lîlâ)2 has not only attracted
serious exegesis among the dualistic, personalist
philosophical schools of Vedanta,3 but has also given rise
to widespread cultural interest among the literary, pictorial
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190 The Sociology of Religion in India
and performative arts of South Asia.4 The Bhâgavata tells
that Krishna is not an ordinary human lover but the ultimate
personification of god. The core of the text praises Krishna’s
amorous play with the rural girls (gopîs/gopinîs) of Vraja5,
and especially with an unnamed heroine, i.e. Râdhâ,
described as Krishna’s “best worshipper”.6 The zenith of
the narrative is a nocturnal circular dance (râsa-lîlâ), where
several gopîs leave behind everything they ever cared
for—homes, husbands, and children —in order to be united
with Krishna. They find Krishna playing on his flute hidden
in the forest groves of Vraja under a beautiful autumn
moonlight. When they arrive, Krishna mystically expands
himself to be personally close to each of them, thus
reciprocating with their devotion. Krishna then dances
with them all night to their hearts’ content. The Bhâgavata
portrays this particular lîlâ as the pinnacle of divine love
and spiritual perfection.7 The texts also explains that Vraja
is the primary mystic place of Krishna’s divine lîlâ and
that the gopîs are Krishna’s eternal devotees playing in
the role of ordinary wives, mothers, sisters etc.
The text claims that Krishna is bhagavân svayam,8 i.e.
the Supreme Person, descended in a sweet personal form
that hides his godhead-ness for the sake of tasting loving
relationships (rasa) with his beloved devotees.9 It further
asserts that the other prominent conceptions of divinity
found in the Vedas or the Upanishads, i.e. the impersonal
brahman (the substratum of everything) and the indwelling
paramâtman (the supreme self within each being) that jñânis
(seekers of knowledge) or yogins (ascetics) pursue through
austerities and penance, are merely external manifestations
of Krishna, the divine person. And in this scheme, not
only is this personal vision of god the sweetest (madhura),
but Krishna’s amorous lîlâs and a personal relationship
with him (shringâra) are regarded as even more attractive.10
Krishna’s apparent moral transgressions are considered
sacred and sweet by his devotees—in the text as in life—
because they take place within the frame of unselfish
devotion to god or bhakti. Krishna is the little child who
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 191
steals butter to evoke his mother ’s love, the boy who
playfully hides the clothes of his female devotees—as
they take a bath in the river—to increase their affection,
and the center of the râsa-lîlâ, dancing his way into his
devotees’ hearts.
Recitation of Krishna’s plays as described in the
Bhâgavata and meditation upon them became a prominent
aspect of the theology and praxis of the Vaishnavas11 of
Bengal and Vraja around the fifteenth- and sixteenth-
centuries due to, among others, the efforts of Caitanya
(1486–1533).12 Caitanya was regarded by his followers as
a combined avatara of Râdhâ and Krishna. He practised
public, loud singing of Krishna’s names accompanied by
dancing (sankirtana) as well as quiet intimate recitation of
the names of god (japa) and meditation on the lîlâs of the
Bhâgavata.13 These practices, he believed, led ordinary males
or females, who were “trapped” in mortal bodies, to
experience love for god in the mood of the gopîs of Vraja,
and to the achievement of the highest goal, i.e. direct
participation in Krishna’s divine lîlâ.14 Caitanya’s movement
was relatively successful in its expansion in the certain
regions of India—especially Bengal and Vrindaban and
by the nineteenth century Vaishnavism claimed a following
of approximately one fifth to one third of the Bengali
population.15 Caitanya’s efforts have had a great impact
and the narrative of Râdhâ-Krishna found in the Bhâgavata
has through generations of devotees become deeply
embedded in the cultural fabric of Bengal.
The theology of Caitanya Vaishnavism and Krishna’s
popularity in the religious life of Bengal was, however,
met with suspicion and aversion during the colonial period.
In retrospect this was inevitable since Bengal was one of
the first loci of India’s encounter with Europe and the
encounter between Britain and India affected the status of
several indigenous traditions like Caitanya’s tradition of
Vaishnavism. Bengal absorbed Victorian Puritanism not
only through colonial and missionary channels but also
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through a new western educated, indigenous elite often
called “the bhadraloks” (or, in Bengali, bhadralok).16 Many
westerners and western educated bhadraloks perceived
Krishna as vulgar and depraved, and this phenomenon
turned out to be a watershed in the history of Caitanya
Vaishnavism in Bengal. For the bhadralok, Krishna’s amorous
tale was a source of embarrassment as much as it was a
fodder for the criticism of the missionaries. Many began
to agree with the missionaries and regard “Hinduism” as
the home of deviant practices such as idol worship and
debauchery, of which Vaishnavism was considered as a
primary example. Krishna’s life story, the religion that
had grown around him, as well as the enactment of his
amorous lîlâ by some of his non-orthodox tantric
worshippers was viewed as a sample of the immorality,
promiscuity, blind faith, and idol worship rampant within
Hinduism. Moreover, Krishna’s “cult,” as it was called,
was regarded as the archetype of the primitive state of
Indian religions. A 1835 court judgement from another
part of India clearly revealed such perceptions:
It is Krishna the darling of 16,000 Gopees;
Krishna the love hero-the husband of 16000
princesses…. This tinges the whole system
(of Hinduism) with the strain of carnal
sensualism, of strange, transcendental
lewdness.17
For the missionaries, this was a religious occurrence
that needed to be eliminated as part of their “civilizing
mission”, and for many leading bhadralok, it was an issue
to be handled as part of their reform of Hinduism. Others,
such as Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda (1838–1914)—himself
a member of the bhadralok class—did not subscribe to any
of these views.
Bhaktivinoda was born in Birnagar, a village north of
Calcutta, in the family of a Shâkta landholder,18 and he
spent his early days in a rural setting, moving to Calcutta
later in his teens to receive a good education in the
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 193
metropolis. During his Calcutta years, he became very
active in student intellectual circles and came to know
some of the important personalities of the Bengal
Renaissance. He was drawn to the Brahmo Samaj and
Christian ideas through the Tagore family that he often
visited, and through influential missionaries such as
Alexander Duff and Charles Dall.19 Slowly climbing up
the social and cultural ladder, he was a second generation
bhadralok, fitting well into the cultural matrix of the
nineteenth century, and engaged in the prominent debates
of his time through his prolific writing. In the rest of the
chapter, I explore the unique example of Bhaktivinoda,
who straightforwardly addressed contemporary
perspectives about Krishna and the Bhâgavata Purâna
without rejecting Krishna’s so called “eroticism”. To
historically situate my analysis, I will look at his arguments
in the context of the critique of Hinduism and of Krishna
by the missionaries, and the views of three well known
bhadralok, i.e. Rammohun Roy (1772–1833), Bankimchandra
Chatterjee (1838–1894), and Swami Vivekananda (1863–
1902). After briefly exploring the historical context of the
missionaries’ proselytising efforts in Bengal and the onset
of the Hindu reform movement, I shall turn to these
individuals’ attempts to reinterpret or censor Krishna’s
“eroticism”, and contrast these efforts with the thought of
Bhaktivinoda. I will argue that Bhaktivinoda carried out
a reform that did not imply purging the text of its amorous
elements through denial or reinterpretation, as Rammohun
and Bankimchandra did, nor creating a new reading through
the lens of advaita Vedanta (nondualism or monism), which
Vivekananda pursued (see also chapter 8); he tried instead
to interpret the lîlâ of Krishna on the basis of the theology
and epistemology presented in the texts of the tradition.
MISSIONARIES, THE BHADRALOK, AND THE
“PROBLEM” OF KRISHNA
The paradox of Krishna’s ontological status and the case
of his “illicit” amorous relations were not novel to
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nineteenth-century Bengal, for they had been discussed
in the Bhâgavata itself.20 In the text Shûka replied to a
question regarding Krishna’s amorous play by stating
that the apparent moral transgressions seen in the lives of
higher beings (îshvarânâm), who did posses divine status
and strength (tejas), did not actually taint them, since
their acts were not human. Their actions were like a fire
that consumes everything, and yet remains unaffected
itself. Shûka warned that someone who is not in such a
position—that is ordinary humans—should not imitate
them, for that would lead to degradation and destruction;
Shûka’s arguments though were not taken into serious
account in nineteenth century Bengal.
In the eyes of western or westernized observers—that
is, the British, the missionaries and many among the
bhadralok—the character and behaviour of Krishna could
not be accommodated with the sacred teachings of the
Bhagavad Gîtâ; his words and deeds were incompatible,
one lofty and the other unethical. To make things worse,
Krishna’s alleged lack of character seemed to play out in
the daily lives of his devotees, many of whom belonged
to groups such as the Sahajîyâs and the Kartâbhajâs, who
at times imitated Krishna’s plays through ritual sex. As
Laird notes, “[the missionaries’] basic theological rejection
of Hinduism was confirmed by what they regarded as the
shocking ethical and social practices of its adherents”.21
Philips Maurice, a well-known Anglican Evangelist in
India and a member of the London Missionary Society,
expressed this concern in the following words:
The divine lord of the world became partially
incarnate for the establishment of virtue and
repression of its opposite. How did he, the
expander, author and guardian of the
bulwark of righteousness, practice its
contrary, the corruption of other men’s
wives? With what object did the Lord of the
Yadus (Krishna) [sic] perpetrate that which
was blamable?22
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 195
Compared to the Mahâbhârata, what made the Bhâgavata
worse was that while the divinity of Krishna was ambivalent
in the Mahâbhârata, in the Bhâgavata he stood out as the
supreme personality of god (svayam bhagavân). For
Bankimchandra, the Krishna of the Mahâbhârata was a
“moral man” who asked his friend and devotee Arjuna to
rise up from sloth to fight against injustice, in a way
echoing the call of the Hindu nationalists for struggle
against the exploitations of the Raj. The Krishna of the
Bhâgavata Purâna was but an innocent village boy frolicking
in the forests of Vraja.23 Surely Krishna was too important
a deity for the Hindus to be completely disposed of,
Bankimchandra may have thought, but how could these
incompatibilities be reconciled?
The missionaries hoped that post-Enlightenment
rationalism would challenge what they viewed as the
regressive attitudes of the Hindus and that the Hindus
would ultimately come to realise that Protestant Christianity
was a better option. This tactic failed to make many converts,
but moved the bhadralok into creatively negotiating their
position in relation to European culture, religion, and
society. Although the response of the bhadralok took many
trajectories, the most prominent one was a search for
answers in the Upanishads and an embracing of advaita
Vedanta as the core of Hinduism (see chapter 8).24 They
felt that subscribing to monistic Hinduism would give
them a new sense of self respect and standing. In order to
take this step, the bhadaralok looked back into the exegetical
views presented by the theologian Shankara (9th–10th
century) and found in it elements that could be directly
adapted to the nineteenth century.
The worldview exposed by Shankara can be briefly
summarised as follows: the phenomenal world that we
perceive is actually an illusion (mâyâ) and does not exist
in the ultimate sense. Although we need to perceive this
illusion for practical (vyâvahârika) purposes and for the
sake of ethical judgement, the world is ultimately false,
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and the only true reality is the infinite impersonal
substratum, brahman. When the veil of illusion is removed
through spiritual knowledge (jnâna), all names, forms,
identities as male or female, material qualities and activities
cease to exist, and the false sense of “being” in the world
as a separate individual dissipates in the undifferentiated
oneness of brahman, just as the space within an earthen
pot merges into outer space when the pot is broken.
In nineteenth century Bengal, Shankara’s advaita Vedanta
gained new currency and many among the bhadralok,
beginning with Rammohun Roy subscribed to it, at least
to some degree. The missionaries and the early British
scholars of India (the early orientalists, not to be confused
with the later ones), began to regard nondualism as the
normative core of Hinduism (see chapter 8). This new
orientation gave the bhadralok a chance to present to non-
Hindus a unified core of their religion among the plethora
of Hindu traditions, and an opportunity to sidestep the
issue of Krishna’s amorous play by presenting it as a
deviation from “true” Hinduism.
THREE PERSPECTIVES AMONG THE BHADRALOK
Rammohun Roy was one of the earliest activists advocating
Hindu reform during the late 18th and early nineteenth
century. His earliest efforts were aimed at bringing together
selected features of Hinduism and Christianity.25 He was
born in a pious Vaishnava family26, and early in his life
his own “reverence for Vishnu… was so great that he
would not even take a drop of water without first reciting
a chapter from the Bhâgavata Purâna”.27 But this devoutness
was not to stay. Through study of Islam and interaction
with Christian missionaries such as Carey, as well as
involvement in the EIC’s administration, his attitudes
towards his family religion began to change. After retiring
from his work at the East India Company, he began a full-
time career as a free-lance religious and intellectual debater,
challenging some of the most foundational tenets of
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 197
Hinduism through publications and letters. He created
an institution, the Brahmo Sabha, that became very
influential later on under the leadership of the Tagore
family, who developed it into the Brahmo Samaj.
Rammohun’s overarching critique against idolatry
certainly applied to the Vaishnavas and so did his criticism
of the Bhâgavata, as evidenced by his well-known work
Gosvâmîder Sahita Bicâra [Debate with the Vaishnava
Leaders]. In this work he claimed that the intellectualized
Krishna of the Chândogya Upanishad was not the Krishna
that his contemporary Vaishnavas worshipped; for
Rammohun the Bhagavad Gîtâ gave greater stress to
knowledge rather than to “blind” devotion.28 But beyond
that, Rammohun viewed the Bhâgavata Purâna—and its
portrayal of Krishna—as anti-intellectual and morally weak.
He stated that this had caused great damage to Hindu
society, not only by diverting the attention from the more
deserving nondualist message of the Upanishads, but also
by presenting an unethical prototype of god, i.e. Krishna,
to millions of people, who delighted in hearing and
meditating on his image and lîlâ.
With this in mind, he began to challenge one of the
foundations of Vaishnavism, i.e. the claim that the Bhâgavata
Purâna is a “natural commentary” of the Vedanta Sûtra,
the canonical text of Vedanta philosophy. He wrote in his
Gosvâmîder Sahita Bicâra:
It can be easily and rationally deducted that
the Bhâgavata is not a natural commentary
of the Vedânta Sûtra… After stealing the
clothes of the cowherd maidens (gopîs),
Krishna asked them to become his servants,
to do whatever he told them to and to
personally come to him naked, smiling, and
then he would give them their clothes back.
[or]… Their cheeks rubbing against his (in
their circle râsa dance), they would take a
chewed betel leaf from Krishna’s mouth.
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Why don’t educated people objectively
analyze which Shruti (revealed text) or Sûtra
(philosophical aphorisms) of the Vedanta
supports such immoral acts?29
For Rammohun, Caitanya’s movement was a negative
development in the history of Bengal, and the depravity
and superstition prevalent among its adherents was largely
due to the immoral religious texts that the Vaishnavas
followed and propagated. The solution for him was not
only to discontinue popular practices like image worship,
found in innumerable Krishna temples in Bengal, but also
to reject the recitation, hearing of and meditation upon
Krishna’s lîlâs. The alternative was to take up the advaita
ideal of the Upanishads. In 1817 he wrote the following in
his book In defense of Hindoo Theism:
the most adored of the incarnations, the
number of whose devotees is exceedingly
great. His worship is made to consist in the
institution of his image or picture,
accompanied by more females, and in the
contemplation of his history and behaviour,
such as his perpetration of murder upon a
female of the name of Pootna; his compelling
great number of married and unmarried
woman to stand before him denuded; his
debauching them and several others, to the
mortal afflictions of their husbands and
relations; his annoying them, by violating
the laws of cleanliness and other facts of
the same nature. The grossness of his
worship does not find a limit here. His
devotees often personify (in the same manner
as European actors upon stages do) him
and his female companions, dancing with
indecent gestures, and singing songs related
to his love and debaucheries… The stories
respecting him, which are read by his
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 199 200 The Sociology of Religion in India

devotees in the Tuntras, are of a nature that, He never became loyal to the Raj as Rammohun did,
if told of any man, would be offensive to despite the fact that he worked in the colonial
the ears of the most abandoned of either administration. But like his predecessor, Bankimchandra
sex...30 took up the task of Hindu reform and had an approach to
Krishna’s eroticism similar to Rammohun’s, but with a
Brahmoism, the religion that he institutionalised as
significant difference. While Rammohun had wanted to
the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, was the natural antidote to
purge Krishna from Hinduism, Bankimchandra wanted
this problem. The main objective was to unite Hinduism
to purge Krishna’s eroticism from the life and character of
by going back to its “Vedic” roots and its understanding
Krishna. He thought that Krishna had the potential to
of a formless, attribute-less God. He explains his
become a national hero, considering his immense popularity
understaning of god in a 1915 work, the Abridgement of the
in India. In his view, the Bhagavad Gîtâ was a clarion call
Vedânt (Vedântasâra):
that could awaken India’s population to rebel against
The Ved begins and concludes with three British domination and exploitation, but only if Krishna
peculiar epithets of God, viz., first OM; could be freed from Puranic “infamy”. To this extent, he
second TUT; third, SUT. The first of it wrote:
signifies ‘That Being, which preserves,
Krishna is Godhead Himself…. But how can
destroys and creates! The Second implies
they look up to this God? They meditate on
‘That only being, which is neither ‘male nor
him as a thief in his boyhood, stealing butter,
female!’ The third announces ‘The true being!’.
an adulterer in his youth, leading
These collective terms simply affirm, that
innumerable cowherd women away from
ONE, UNKNOWN, TRUE BEING, IS THE
the path of chastity, and a rogue and cheater
CREATOR, PRESERVER, AND DESTROYER
in his maturity, unfairly killing people like
OF THE UNIVERSE!!!31
Drona. Is this the character of God?33
Rammohun’s contribution went beyond his institution:
To solve this apparent contradiction, he set out to
his idea of making advaita Vedanta the essential core of
extract the “real Krishna” from the literary tradition through
Hinduism caught the attention and imagination of many
a kind of selective historical-critical process, and wrote
among the bhadralok, who began to see the potential of
two monographs: Krishna-caritra (The Legend of Krishna)
this ideology in presenting a unified core beyond the
in 1886 and Dharma–tattva (The Truth of Dharma) in 1888.
diversity and pluralism of Hinduism. In fact, Advaita
The former directly dealt with the problem of Krishna’s
Vedanta began to be seen as the “unifying philosophy of
“immorality”, while the latter dealt with the principles of
modern Hindu India”. 32 Rammohun’s work spanned
religion, Krishna being mentioned only incidentally. In
through the early phase of the nineteenth century, and
Krishna-caritra he systematically treated devotional literature
inspired several cultural nationalists in the subsequent
such as the Harivansha and the Brahma-vaivarta-Purâna—
decades such as Bankimchandra.
besides the Bhâgavata—and argued against what he regarded
Well-known as one of the early nationalist voices, as “imaginary” depictions of Krishna in favour of those
Bankimchandra came to prominence by covertly expressing that portrayed him as a noble hero. He downplayed not
dissent against British rule through literary compositions. only the description of Krishna of the Puranic literature,

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especially the one found in the Bhâgavata, but also the
devotional works of poets such as Jayadeva, Vidyâpati,
and Candidâsa. He believed that the amorous play
associated with Krishna in Vraja was a later fabrication
and was meant to be discarded, or at best to be interpreted
symbolically as a metaphor of the noble Krishna of the
Bhâgavad Gîtâ.
Through a reductionist-hermeneutical process of textual
analysis based on reason and ethics he constructed a “new”
puritanical Krishna, taking the Mahâbhârata as the most
important canonical text. He wrote:
I have studied the Purânas and the historical
materials to the best of my ability, with the
purpose of ascertaining the real character
of ShrîKrishna [sic] as described in the
Purânas and history, and I have come to the
conclusion that the current sinful anecdotes
about ShrîKrishna [sic] are without any
foundation and if these were discarded, what
we are left with is of utmost purity, sanctity
and grandeur.34
For Bankim Chandra, the amorous plays of Krishna in
the Puranic literatures were at best “rupakas” or metaphors
used to designate “tattvas” or spiritual truths. He interpreted
these through the lenses of an ethical and a critical-historical
perspective that not only denied the historical possibility
of the lîlâs, but also their ontological reality.35 According
to him, the rasa lîlâ or circular dance of Krishna with his
devoted female friends was only a “tattvâtmaka rupaka” or
a metaphor representing spiritual truth, thus ultimately
unreal.36 The rasa lîlâ was meant to point to the oneness
between the self and god (abheda); the girls were imagined
characters that showed the way to knowledge of the
undifferentiated that led to merging into Absolute Reality.
If Bankim Chandra’s approach to Krishna was guided
by his intention to awaken national awareness,
Vivekananda’s representation of Krishna was more clearly
201 202 The Sociology of Religion in India
philosophical and advaitic. Vivekananda was one of the
chief advocates of a modified version of advaita Vedanta—
often called “neo-Vedanta”—that stressed “applied
religion”. It was guided by the principles of ontological
oneness of humanity with divinity and of service to
humanity as being equivalent to service to the divine.37
Like Bankimchandra, Vivekananda was proud of the ancient
heritage of India. He set out to defend the texts and
traditions of Hinduism through the hermeneutical lenses
of advaita Vedanta, and he also viewed Krishna’s amorous
play in that light.
Vivekananda showed appreciation for Krishna and
the Bhagâvata Purâna, but he had also imbibed the basic
sensibilities of his time and he therefore criticised the
sensual practices of the tantric Vaishnavas of his time and
the alleged moral decadence found among the Vaishnava
communities. He advocated chastity on the basis of
Caitanya’s life:
Shri Caitanya was a man of tremendous
renunciation and had nothing to do with
women and carnal appetites. But, in later
times, his disciples admitted women into
their order, mixed indiscriminately with
them in his name, and made an awful mess
of the whole thing.38
Unlike Bankimchandra, Vivekananda did not find any
contradictions between Krishna’s political and devotional
character; according to him these were just two traits of
the same personality. Although he agreed that there might
have been interpolations and extrapolations in the Hindu
texts that caused discrepancies in the portrayal of Krishna,
but he regarded these as external.39 The contemporary
“mess” among the Vaishnava communities did not affect,
as I mentioned, his appreciation for the devotional love
play of Krishna in the Bhâgavata Purâna. According to
him, the representation of Krishna in Vraja was the highest
conceptualisation of love, whereas the message of the
Gîtâ belonged to a “lower stratum:40
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The highest thing we can get out of him
[Krishna] is Gopijanavallabha [lover of the
gopis], the Beloved of the Gopis of Vrindaban.
When that madness comes in your brain,
when you understand the blessed Gopis,
then you will understand what love is. When
the whole world will vanish, when all other
considerations will have died out, when you
will become pure-hearted with no other aim,
not even the search after truth, then and
then alone will come to you the madness of
that love, the strength and the power of
that infinite love which the Gopis had, that
love for love’s sake. That is the goal. When
you have got that, you have got everything.41
This praise of devotion (bhakti) in Vivekananda’s work
is however related to his background in advaita Vedanta.
Although Vivekananda’s understanding is closer to that
of Bhaktivinoda, their philosophical frameworks
substantially diverge. Vivekananda had a strong nondualist
perspective, whereas Bhaktivinoda’s point of reference
was the schools of dualistic thought. For Vivekananda,
there was no difference between Krishna/Râdhâ/brahman
and the individual jiva/âtman (self): all differences were a
product of illusion, which meant that the lîlâ was also
ultimately unreal. Reflecting this understanding, his work
Parâbhakti (the highest devotion) states that
We all have to begin as dualists in the religion
of love. God is to us a separate Being, and
we feel ourselves to be separate beings also.
Love then comes in the middle, and man
begins to approach God, and God also comes
nearer and nearer to man. Man takes up all
the various relationships of life, as father,
as mother, as son, as friend, as master, as
lover, and projects them on his ideal of love,
on his God. To him God exists as all these,
and the last point of his progress is reached
203 204 The Sociology of Religion in India
when he feels that he has become absolutely
merged in the object of his worship. We all
begin with love for ourselves, and the unfair
claims of the little self make even love selfish.
At last, however, comes the full blaze of
light, in which this little self is seen to have
become one with the Infinite. Man himself
is transfigured in the presence of this Light
of Love, and he realises at last the beautiful
and inspiring truth that Love, the Lover,
and the Beloved are One.42
From Bhaktivinoda’s point of view, such an
understanding compromised the original message of the
Bhâgavata, since for Vivekananda meditation on Krishna’s
lîlâ was only a stepping stone towards nondualist liberation.
BHAKTIVINODA’S WORLDWIEW AND RESPONSE
As his contemporaries, Bhaktivinoda also initially imbibed
the predominant nineteenth century attitudes towards
Krishna and the Bhâgavata Purâna. He recalled them in an
essay called “The Bhâgavat: Its Philosophy, Its Ethics and
Its Theology”:
When we were in college, reading the
philosophical works of the West and
exchanging thoughts with the thinkers of
the day, we had a real hatred towards the
Bhâgavata. That great work looked like the a
repository of wicked and stupid ideas,
scarcely adapted to the nineteenth Century,
and we hated to hear any arguments in his
favor… Greedily we poured over the various
commentaries of the Tattwa Bodhini Sabha43,
containing extracts from the Upanishads and
the Vedânta, but no work of the Vaishnavas
had any favour with us.44
Bhaktivinoda gradually changed his stance about the
esoteric love play of Krishna and the Bhâgavata. During
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his middle-age, Bhaktivinoda “accidentally fell” on a copy
of the Bhâgavata and studied the works of the Bengali
Vaishnava school, and later accepted Caitanya as his
“Eastern Saviour”. He then set out to present Krishna and
the Bhâgavata to his nineteenth century contemporaries.
His stance clearly went against what was expected of
him and his social status. His mentors were prominent
bhadralok such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar 45 and
Kashiprasad Ghose, and his cohorts included Keshub
Chandra Sen, a post-Rammohun Brahmo reformer, who
became one of the most prominent religious figures of
Bengal. By 1857, Bhaktivinoda had become an intimate
friend of the Tagore family, especially Dvijendranath, the
Brahmo leader, 46 and had begun to study western
philosophers such as Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Hume and
Voltaire. He was educated by missionaries such as
Alexander Duff, and at one point he was also attracted to
Unitarianism; he worked as a respected magistrate and
was a colleague of Bankimchandra. He had a position
and social status to which virtually every bhadralok aspired.
As he grew up among bhadralok reformers it is natural to
assume that he would have upheld their values, including
their perceptions of Krishna. On the contrary, he clearly
advocated explanations that supported devotion to the
Krishna of the bhâgavata.
For Bhaktivinoda, there was more value in negotiating
the differences between modern and traditional views
rather than simply outright rejecting texts and traditions
that for centuries had been preserved in India. For this
reason he did not reject the Puranic corpus as Rammohun
had done before him nor denied its validity using textual
analysis as Bankimchandra had done; he chose instead a
“middle path” between the extremes of nineteenth century
modernism and Puritanism on one hand and the literal
acceptance of the Bhâgavata on the other:
When the stream of reason joins the river of
ancient faiths, the stagnant mosses of illusion
are swept away. And with the gradual flow
205 206 The Sociology of Religion in India
of time when this unwanted stench will
disappear, the knowledge of the Indians will
bloom again… Recently, many people of our
country are studying foreign books (shâstras)
and sciences (vijnâna) and trying to derive
it’s essential purport. Looking into the old
Indian shâstras… they suddenly lose faith
accepting some foreign religion (vijâtiya
dharma) or invent some similar dharma,
establishing them under various labels. The
regrettable part is that they abjure the
perfectly habitable and wonderful palaces
that the ancient sages (mahâjanas) created
through hard work and waste their lives
creating new ones, just because they couldn’t
understand [what their ancestors made for
them].47
Bhaktivinoda devised new ways of addressing the
problem of Krishna’s “eroticism” by systematising canonical
Vaishnava theology while attempting to make sense of it
in a modern context. He first aligned Puranic history with
western historiography through a method that he named
“adhunika-vâda” or “the modern view”. In line with this
approach, he reviewed the historical sections related to
cosmic and cyclical time of the Bhâgavata Purâna in light
of western understandings of linear time, and presented
the results in a Sanskrit and Bengali work called the Krishna
Samhitâ. His basic premise was to accept the historical
perspective of the Bhâgavata that related to India’s history
as factual, but yet not cast in stone. History, he reasoned,
was after all peripheral to the real focus of the Bhâgavata:
the presentation of the metaphysical world of Krishna.48
In order to make the Bhâgavata accessible to the bhadralok,
Bhaktivinoda to some extent followed a Darwinian line
of thought. He was perhaps one of the first among the
bhadralok to juxtapose the concept of gradual evolution of
man from aquatic to higher species with the twelfth century
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notions49 of the avatars of Vishnu described by Jayadeva
in the Gîta-Govinda. In the Krishna-Samhitâ Bhaktivinoda
wrote:
When the living entities accept the position
of fish, the Lord accepts the fish incarnation,
Matsya. Matsya is without a danda (spinal
cord). When the living entities gradually
accept the position of vajra-danda (shell), the
Lord incarnates as Kûrma (tortoise). When
the vajra-danda becomes a meru-danda
(amphibian spine), the Lord incarnates as
Varâha (boar). When the living entities accept
the combined position of human and animal,
the Lord accepts His incarnation as Nrsimha
(lion-man)… When the living beings develop
tendency for argument, the Lord appears as
Buddha. And when they are atheistic, the
Lord comes as Kalki… After consideration
the sages have divided the history of living
entity’s advancement into ten periods of
time. Each period has different symptoms,
with each successive mood superior to the
previous. Each progressive mood (bhâvnâ-
lakshana) is described as an incarnation.50
It was through the acceptance of Western linear time
and the theory of evolution adjusted to the Hindu idea of
reincarnation and divine descent, he felt, that his modern
attempts to look at the Bhâgavata would attract the attention
of the bhadralok. To a large extent he was right. His
publications were well received in Bengali intellectual
circles and he became a prominent figure in the Bangiya
Sâhitya Parishada, the main cultural hub of the bhadralok
in Calcutta between the nineteenth- and mid-twentieth
centuries.
In terms of addressing the “problem” of Krishna,
Bhaktivinoda used a relatively remote exegetical method
from an early canonical text of the Vaishnava tradition,
207 208 The Sociology of Religion in India
the Caitanya Caritâmrita by Krishnadâsa Kavirâja Gosvâmî,
and made it a central part of his arguments.51 A few
verses of this early seventeenth century text indicated
that the theology and praxis of bhakti could be divided in
three categories:
Knowledge of one’s relationship with God
and his creation (sambandha), the process of
devotion (abhidheya) and love of Krishna
(prayojana) [... these] are the three goals (artha)
that all the [Vedsnta] sûtras culminate in.52
Although these verses in the Caitanya Caritâmrita are
not meant to be an explicit meta structure for the theology
of the text, Bhaktivinoda made this a framework for all
that he wrote regarding the worldview of Vaishnavism.53
In a presentation of the essential role of this three-prong
system, he wrote:
The whole of this incomparable work
[Bhâgavata] teaches us… the three great truths
which compose the absolute religion of man.
Our Nadia preacher [Caitanya] calls them
the sambandha, abhidhaya and prayojana, i.e.,
the relation between the Creator and the
created, the duty of man to God and the
prospects of humanity… These are the
cardinal points of religion and the whole
Bhâgavata is, as we are taught by Caitanya,
an explanation both by precepts and
example, of these three great points.54
For both Krishnadâsa and Bhaktivinoda, sambandha
meant the realization of the relation between three elements:
Krishna, jîva (the living entity) and prakrti (Krishna’s external
potency of creation, i.e. the world of matter and its subtle
energies). Abhidheya was a natural outcome of sambandha,
and implied the participation in the process of bhakti,
while prayojana was the love that arose due to self-realization
and engagement in bhakti.
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Bhaktivinoda’s work opened up the possibility of
bringing together the Vaishnava Vedântic understanding
of the ontological nature of the jîva with the aesthetic and
“erotic” aspects of Krishna’s lîlâ. Bhaktivinoda stressed
the necessity to initially study the first nine cantos of the
twelve volumes of the Bhâgavata, which deal with
philosophy and theology, before proceeding to the five-
chapters-long narration of Krishna’s circular dance (râsa-
lîlâ) in the tenth canto. As a result, even before the reader
began to read about Krishna she had to undergo a
foundational training about the relation (sambandha) between
five key components of reality, i.e. the jîva, mâyâ (illusion
or misrepresentation of the truth), prakrti (material potency),
kâla (material time) and Ishvara (Godhead), which is
presented and discussed in the first nine cantos.
Furthermore, to gain a complete understanding, the
reader needed to engage in the practice of devotion.
According to Bhaktivinoda, this was the only method to
fully grasp the inner nature of bhakti as outlined by Caitanya
and his followers, the Gosvâmîs of Vrndâvana, and the
later tradition. A deep understanding of the Bhâgavata
would result in the ability to taste its deeper spiritual and
emotional content, or rasa, whereas a superficial reading
would only confer a shadow or just intellectual stimulation.
For a practitioner, the loving affairs of Râdhâ and Krishna
were an attainable metaphysical reality, a real lîlâ being
enacted in an intimate spiritual dimension within and
beyond this world, and once a trained sâdhaka (practitioner)
was freed from the shackles of material lust and greed
and gained proper emotional and spiritual credentials
(adhikâra), she could easily grasp it.
This leads to the next question: who, according to
Bhaktivinoda, had the qualifications (adhikâra) to meditate
on and discuss the play of Râdhâ and Krishna? Bhaktivinoda
classifies his audience in two groups: those who were
“essence grasping” (sâragrâhi) and those who were “burden
bearing” (bhâragrâhi).55 The bhâragrâhis were the shallow
critics who rejected tradition, as many of his contemporaries
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tended to do, whereas sâragrâhis were able to extract the
useful core contained in it. Regarding the bhâragrâhi he
wrote:
“Begin anew”, says the critic, because the
old masonry does not answer at present…
Progress certainly is the law of nature, and
there must be correction and development
with the progress of time… Now if we are
to follow our foolish critic, we are to go
back to our former terminus and make a
new race, and when we have run half the
race, another critic of his stamp will cry
out, “Begin anew”.56
Among the sâragrâhi, he saw three categories of spiritual
seekers: the neophytes, whose faith was weak (komala-
sraddhâ) and who tended to interpret religious texts literally,
without understanding their real purpose. Secondly came
the intermediate devotees (madhyama-adhikâri), who knew
how to discriminate between reality and illusion on the
basis of religious texts but also engaged in intelligent and
open inquiry; and last came the self-realised devotees
(uttama-adhikâri), who had direct access to the lîlâ of Râdhâ
and Krishna.57 The rationale behind it was that since
Vaishnavas were bound to be meek and humble almost
by definition (following the instructions and example of
Caitanya),58 it would be impossible for any of them to
claim to be qualified enough to discuss the most elevated
amorous play between Râdhâ and Krishna. Bhaktivinoda
thus hoped that this would protect the amorous lîlâ from
misrepresentation and misuse at the hand of neophyte
devotees.
Bhaktivinoda praised the inquisitive approach to
religion of the bhadralok and gave it a higher position than
the approach of the neophyte komala-shraddhâs, but he
also argued for a higher level that allowed the perception
of reality in full, i.e. in both its material and spiritual
aspects. Without coming to the level of an uttama adhikârin,
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism
any unnecessary criticism or rejection of the “erotic” aspects
of lîlâ would only be premature. Bhaktivinoda explained
the importance of perception and proper consciousness
in an autobiographical letter to his son, where he also
described his own experiences of the daily activities of
the Jagannâtha temple in Puri:
The magnificent height of the Jagannatha
temple aptly is matched by the worship
going on there. Each and every lîlâ you
witness there mesmerizes your heart [citta].
My son Lalu, if you ever witness these lîlâs
only with a pure heart [shuddha-citta] some
day, you would be able to comprehend what
it means in reality.59
Krishna’s lîlâ was situated on a supra-mundane reality,
beyond the range of sensory experience, and the relation
between the spiritual and the material worlds could be
understood through a verse of the Bhâgavad Gîtâ (15.1-2)
that compares the world to an inverted banyan tree. In a
similar way, Bhaktivinoda understood the world as an
expansion of the spiritual dimension, but also as a reverted
and distorted version of it, similar to the original but also
in many respects different.60 He elaborated on this point
in the Krishna-Samhitâ:
The condition of masculinity or femininity
in the phenomenal world is a distorted
reflection of the state of the enjoyer and
enjoyed in the transcendental realm.
Searching through all concordances
(abhidhâna) we don’t find the proper language
to explain this non-material lîlâ of the loving
union (samyoga) with the supreme living
force. Because of this, the language used to
describe the relation between the sexes [in
this world] is used provisionally used to
indicate this relationship. There is no anxiety
or obscene thinking in this. If out of fear of
211 212 The Sociology of Religion in India
this obscene we stop, then there cannot be
an exposition of this supreme truth. Thus,
the only way to describe the transcendental
realm Vaikuntha, we have to use phenomenal
states of this material realm that are
reflections of the genuine experiences of that
realm. There isn’t any other way to present
this subject.61
Bhaktivinoda advocated the firm reality of this world
as well as that of the transcendental realm. He suggested
that the love play of Krishna was ultimately real, but it
was understandable only on a metaphysical plane of
consciousness. The capacity to grasp it was dependent on
personal progress and practice. This approach differed
from Vivekananda’s, who externally accepted the idea of
Krishna’s erotic lîlâs, but in effect stripped it of ultimate
legitimacy through a nondualist perspective. Krishna, in
Bhaktivinoda’s view, was a transcendental sentient person
and his love was qualitatively different from the love of
human experience.
CONCLUSION
Early British settlers and administrators felt that it was
inappropriate to comment on Hindu religious affairs, but
Evangelical missionaries eventually did so. Influenced by
western thought, bhadralok leaders made efforts to purge
Hinduism from what they perceived as irrational and
immoral. Rammohun Roy took the path of rejecting Puranic
descriptions of the character of Krishna. Bankimchandra
embarked on a textual reevaluation, which led him in
some respects to a similar conclusion, i.e. that the Krishna
of the Purânas was a product of popular imagination.
Vivekananda and Bhaktivinoda accepted the Puranic
representation of Krishna, but Vivekananda’s engagement
with Vaishnavism was only tangential compared to
Bhaktivinoda’s.
Bhaktivinoda rather than rejecting the Bhâgavata went
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deep into the texts of the tradition and extracted some of
its theological structures in order to argue in favour of
Krishna’s lîlâ. His presentation of Caitanya Vaishnavism
was chaste and thus in tune with nineteenth century
sensibilities compared to those of the Sahajîyâs, the
Kartâbhajâs and similar groups.62 Bhaktivinoda dealt with
the most controversial sections of the Bhâgavata first by
creating a common ground with modernity through
âdhunika-vâda, the modern view. He then employed a
formula to conceptualize bhakti as a hierarchy of spiritual
seekers based on the level of their devotional realisation.
In this way, Bhaktivinoda envisioned that the bhadralok
could experience the metaphysical dimension, and to that
end, he presented Vaishnavism in tune with their
sensibilities. He rejected the public reproduction and
imitation of Krishna’s amorous play in art, literature, and
religious practice common among Vaishnava groups in
Bengal, arguing that these were sensual, immature and
perverted.
Bhaktivinoda’s thought is far more subtle and nuanced
than what I have been about to present here, but I have
shown some key aspects of his philosophical thought and
his response to the contemporary social and cultural context,
to the extent the length of this chapter has allowed.
Lastly, I have come across some primary sources that
give a sense of his success during the late nineteenth- and
early twentieth century. One year after he passed away, a
meeting was arranged at the Bangiya Sâhitya Parishad—
at the time the cultural hub of the Bengali intelligentsia—
for the first celebration of his memorial. The crème-de-la-
crème of the bhadralok participated and positively
acknowledged his influence in their lives.63 Bhaktivinoda
also managed to attract prominent media people like the
owner of one of the largest English newspapers in colonial
India, the daily Amrita Bazar Patrika. In Calcutta and in
rural areas across Bengal he envisioned and established
an infrastructure for the revival of the recitation of the
names of Krishna. Reflecting over the impact of his
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contribution, Hugh Urban has concluded that:
Perhaps the most powerful among... [the]
reformist movements was begun in the
nineteenth century by the enigmatic British
civil servant and Vaishnava convert
Bhaktivinoda Thakura (Kedarnath Datta,
1838-1914), and his son Bhaktisiddhanta
Saraswati (d. 1937), the founder of the highly
conservative movement of the Gaudîya
math.64
Through his efforts, Bhaktivinoda not only attempted
to preserve the age-old tradition connected to the worship
of Râdhâ and Krishna in Bengal, but also revived its
ancient and pre-modern teachings without compromising
their conceptual and theological foundation.
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De, Sushil Kumar (1961). Early History of the Vaisnava Faith and
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––––. (1989). “Lîlâ”. History of Religions 29, no. 2: 159–73.
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King, Richard (1999). Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory,
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Laird, Michael Andrew (1972). Missionaries and Education in
Bengal, 1793-1837. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Phillips, Maurice (1903). The Evolution of Hinduism. Madras:
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Potts, E. Daniel (1967). British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793-
1837: The History of Serampore and Its Missions. London:
Cambridge University Press.
Raghavan, V (1963). Prayers, Praises and Psalms: Selections from
the Vedas, Upanishads, Epics, Gita, Purânas, Agamas, Tantras,
Kavyas & the Writings of the Acharyas and Others. Madras:
G.A. Natesan.
Robertson, Bruce Carlisle (1995). Raja Rammohun Ray: The Father
of Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sardella, Ferdinando (2013). Modern Hindu Personalism: The History,
Life, and Thought of Bhaktisiddhânta Sarasvatî. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Schweig, Graham M. (2005). Dance of Divine Love: The Râsa Lîlâ
of Krishna from the Bhâgavata Purâna, India’s Classic Sacred
Love Story. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Sharma, Arvind (2002). Modern Hindu Thought: The Essential
Texts. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Stanley, Brian (1992). The History of the Baptist Missionary Society,
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Urban, Hugh (1998). The Poor Company: Secrecy and Symbolic
Power in the Kartabhaja Sect of Colonial Bengal. University
of Chicago.
NOTES
1. Bryant (2007), pp. 4–9.
2. Lîlâ is a spontaneous and joyful act, performed in a state of
rapt absorption comparable to that of “an artist possessed
his by creative vision or to that of a child caught up in the
delight of a game played for its own sake“, Hein (1995), p.
15; Dimock (1989).
3. Vedanta is one of the classical philosophical schools of
Hinduism and is related to the more ritualistic Uttara-
Mimâmsâ. By the 8th–10th century, Shankara propounded
the philosophy of oneness—or “Advaita“—which caught
the imagination of the brahminical intelligentsia. It asserted
the ontological one-ness of the individual self with a
nonpersonal absolute reality, brahman. In the following
centuries several philosophers such as Râmânuja, Mâdhva,
Vallabha and Caitanya critiqued Shankara’s soteriology and
worldview. They individually developed an alternative
“dualistic“ reading of Vedanta that gave prominence to the
difference between the personal aspect of godhead (îshvara)
and the individual metaphysical self (jîva) as well as the
loving relation between them (bhakti). See Flood (1996), pp.
224–250.
4. For a discussion about Krishna as a pan-Indian deity from
the tenth century onwards, see Bryant (2005).
5. Vyâsa et alt. (1983), Shrîmadbhâgavatapurânam 1.1.20, p. 15;
Vraja or Vrindavan is a town about 100 miles south of Delhi
where Krishna is said to have spent his childhood and
adolescence. See Haberman (1994).
6. Vyâsa et al. (1983), 10.30.28. The commentarial tradition
identifies her as Râdhâ, but the text itself only states
“ârâdhitâ“, which refers to the best of Krishna’s worshippers.
For further information see Schweig (2005), pp. 232–233.
7. Ibid., pp. 152–172.
8. Vyâsa et alt. (1983), 1.3.28, p. 19.
9. The word “rasa“ does not have an equivalent in English. It
can have a variety of meanings ranging from sap, taste,
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 219
flavour to humidity and is different from “râsa“, which
refers to a circular dance. It’s also important to note that
although Krishna was well known for his part-human-part-
divine character in the Bhagavad Gîtâ and the Mahâbhârata
period before the Bhâgavata was finalised, Krishna’s aspect
as a lover gathered prominence with the composition of the
later purânas. There are references to sacred love in the
works of the ninth century Tamil mystic Andal. She composed
poems in which she imagines herself to be a cowherd girl
craving to marry Krishna, yet always living in the pangs of
separation.
10. The “sweetness” of Krishna’s lîlas are perhaps best described
in the famous eight verses of the “Madhurâshtaka” by the
sixteenth century mystic Vallabha. See Raghavan (1963), p.
255.
11. Vaishnavas are usually known as devotees of Vishnu or of
one of his incarnations. Vaishnavism is one of the most
popular traditions of Hinduism in India. In Bengal and in
Vraja, Krishna was worshipped sometimes as the source of
the incarnation (or avatara) of Vishnu rather than as an
incarnation of Vishnu, but his devotees are nonetheless known
as Vaishnavas.
12. Caitanya was a mystic of devotion known for his public
dancing and singing of Krishna’s sacred names. He was a
proponent of the Bhâgavata Purâna and shringâra rasa, i.e.
amorous or conjugal love of god, which he viewed as the
highest form of devotion. He is regarded as the combined
incarnation of Râdhâ and Krishna by the Vaishnavas of
Bengal. See Krishnadâsa, Dimock, and Stewart (1999).
13. Though Râdhâ-Krishna bhakti had already been presented
by predecessors such as Jayadeva, Candidâsa and Vidyâpati
through lyrics such as Gita Govinda and Padâvalis, it was
Caitanya who actually popularised Krishna in the Eastern
regions of India. See De (1961), pp. 26–77 and Chakravarti
(1985), pp. 52–121.
14. Regarding the system of meditation where the aspirant
imagines himself to be a lover, friend or parent of Krishna,
see Haberman (1988), pp. 61–86.
15. Chakravarti (1985), p. 384. He quotes the census figures of
1881 and 1901 to corroborate these statements. See also
chapter 7.
socrel1\110
220 The Sociology of Religion in India
16. These bhadraloks emerged as a new western educated social
class flourishing along with the expansion of the British
East India Company’s rule of the Indian subcontinent.
Broomfield describes them as: “A socially privileged and
consciously superior group, economically dependent upon
landed rents and professional and clerical employment,
keeping it’s distance from the masses by its acceptance of
high caste prescriptions and its command of education:
sharing a pride in its language, its literature culture, and its
history; and maintaining its communal integration through
a fairly complex institutional structure that it had proved
remarkably able to adapt and augment to extend its social
power and political opportunities“, Broomfield (1968), pp.
12–13. Furthermore, the bhadralok on the one hand responded
to the European criticism of Indian culture and religion,
while at the same time they became religious authorities for
the colonial administration, which needed interpreters for
its own understanding of indigenous law and customs. As
a result, the bhadralok explored Hinduism for improving
their own as well as the colonial administration’s
understanding of religion, and in the process became pioneers
of Hindu revival and reform.
17. Bombay Supreme Court (1862), p. 213. Although this particular
case was fought against the Vallabha-Vaishnavas in Bombay,
it is representative of the situation in Bengal and other
parts of India.
18 Shâktism or the worship of the goddess as the supreme
being was very popular in Bengal.
19. While Dall was a missionary of the American Unitarian
Church, Duff belonged to the Church of Scotland.
20. Vyâsa et alt. (1983), 10.33.26–28. The commentators of this
section of the Bhâgavata write that there were many people
listening to the conversation reproduced in the text, who
did not understand the reason for Krishna’s rasa dance and
questioned its ethical value. Thus king Parikshîta asked
Shuka this question.
21. Laird (1972), p. 55.
22. Phillips (1903), p. 71.
23. Vraja or Vrindavan, the location of Krishna’s childhood plays,
and Mathura, his birthplace, are mentioned in the Bhâgavata
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism
and many other Hindu texts. They are still well visited
places of pilgrimage.
24. I am particularly indebted to Ferdinando Sardella for this
analysis. For more details see Sardella (2013), pp. 14–53.
25. Sharma (2002), p. 6. It is important to note, however, that
the miracles of Christ did not appeal to Rammohun. He
thought that the New Testament was more important for
presenting the moral teachings of Christ.
26. Robertson mentions that Rammohun’s father claimed descent
from Narottama Dutta, a famous follower of Caitanya. But
the hagiographical texts dealing with Narottama such as
Narottama Vilâsa, Prema Vilâsa and Bhakti Ratnâkara, only
mention him as a celibate monk. Nonetheless, Rammohun’s
Vaishnava background, which he rejected later in life, is
quite apparent. See Robertson (1995), p. 10.
27. Chakravarti (1985), p. 415.
28. Chakravarti (1985), p. 416.
29. Roy (1818), pp. 51–52.
30. Roy and Bose (1885), p. 117.
31. Ibid, p. 19.
32. Sardella (2013), pp. 71–73.
33. Chattopadhyaya (1886), p. 1.
34. Ibid.
35 In his Krishna Caritra, Bankimchandra began a search for
the historical Krishna. For further details about the topic of
the historicity of Krishna, see Kosambi (1962), pp. 12–41.
36. Chattopadhyay (1972), p. 542.
37. In his scheme of things bhakti had its own prominent space,
though relegated to the place of a type of jñâna (knowledge).
Vivekananda’s own guru, the mystic Ramakrishna (1836–
1886), was hailed during his times as a bhakti saint and he
deeply appreciated the latter’s bhakti orientation.
38 Vivekananda (1955), V. 3, p. 344.
39 Vivekananda (1955), V. 3, p. 259.
40. Vivekananda (1955), V. 3, p. 260.
41. Ibid.
221 222 The Sociology of Religion in India
42. Online Resource: Vivekananda, “Conclusion: Parabhakti or
Supreme Devotion”, Complete works of Swami Vivekananda,
<http://www.ramaKrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/
volume_3/lectures_and_discourses/
unity_the_goal_of_religion_frame.htm>
43. This association was formed in 1839 by Debendranath Tagore
and was a forerunner to the Brahmo Samaj. It attracted
members who later became Brahmo leaders.
44. Bhaktivinoda (1936), p. 5.
45. Vidyasagar was one of the foremost proponents of modern
education in Bengal.
46. Dvijendranath Tagore’s father Maharshi Debendranath was
one of the main successors of Rammohun Roy. He helped in
popularising the Brahmo Samâja.
47. Bhaktivinoda (1879), pp. 4–5.
48. Chakravarti (1985), pp. 46–47.
49. By the time of the Bhâgavata, the theory of avatâra-vâda
was already refined to some extent, but a first systematic
chronology is found in the twelfth century text Gîta Govinda
of Jayadeva Goswamin.
50. Bhaktivinoda (1879), 3.6–11, pp. 88–89.
51. The Caitanya-Caritâmrta was composed in Bengali and Sanskrit
in the late sixteenth- or early-seventeenth century in Vraja.
52. Krishnadâsa Kavirâja (1999), Caitanya-Caritâmrta 3.20.124–
1.
25. Other instances of this threefold category are also found in
1.7.146; 2.20.143; 2.22.103.
53. For a complete list of Bhaktivinoda’s publications, see Dasa
(1999), pp. 283–295.
54. Bhaktivinoda (1936), p. 27–28. Since this general pattern is
followed in all his seminal works, it was easy for him to
devote the initial chapters of his books to exploring the
ontological position of the living beings (jivas), their relation
to the world around them, and the identity of the supreme
personality of godhead, Krishna. The middle chapters would
include soteriology, i.e. various descriptions and analysis of
the process of bhakti. The last chapters would deal with the
esoteric aspects of bhakti, and dealt with the spiritual love
between Râdhâ and Krishna.
socrel-1\111
Rethinking Krishna's Eroticism 223

55. Bhaktivinoda (1892), p. 2.

56. For Bhaktivinoda, Rammohun and Bankimchandra fell in
this category due to their rejection of the Bhâgavata Purâna.
He wrote that “not to say of other people, the great genius
of Rammohan, the founder of the sect of Brâhmoism did
not think it worth his while to study this ornament of the
religious library“. Bhaktivinoda (1936), p. 2. This does not 10
mean that Bhaktivinoda claimed that Rammohan never read
the Bhâgavata, but rather, that the latter did not find the text
worthy of attention. Though Bhaktivinoda did not write
anything about Bankimchandra in this essay, it would be
reasonable to assume that he would have placed him Gandhi’s Concept of Religion
somewhere between the sâragrâhi and bhâragrâhi, due to
Bankimchandra’s selective reading of the narrations of
Krishna. CHAITALI DAS
57. Bhaktivinoda (1879), pp. 3–5.
58. Only eight verses composed by Caitanya are reproduced in
a book by Rûpa Gosvâmî called Padyâvali. In the third verse
Caitanya requests his followers to be more humble than a
blade of grass and more tolerant than a tree; only with this Paradoxical though it may seem today, it is true that
state of mind one could engage in bhakti and sing Krishna’s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, though born and brought
names. up in a devout Hindu household steeped in Vaishnavism,
59. Bhaktivinoda (1896), pp. 143–144. was not very well informed about the religion of his birth
60. Bhaktivinoda (1892), pp. 325–326 till a very late age in his life. He has admitted in his
autobiography that from his sixth or seventh year, till his
61. Bhaktivinoda (1879) p. 121.
sixteenth, while he was at school, he was taught all sorts
62. Vaishnavism had two trends: the first was more orthodox of things except religion. Even when he arrived in London
and stressed ethics, while the other focused on left hand
in 1888, at the age of nineteen, his knowledge about
tantric practices. For a discussion on Sahajiyâ Vaishnavism,
see Dimock (1989). Hinduism was still very meagre. It was only towards the
end of his second year’s stay in England, when he came
63. Vidyavinoda (1937), pp. 1–9.
across two theosophical brothers who invited him to read
64. Urban (1998), p. 242. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was Edwin Arnold’s translation of the Gita with them, did he
a member of the Gaudiya Math and was influenced by
realize with shame that he had not read the Gita either in
Bhaktivinoda’s systematic theology, which he adopted while
transplanting Caitanya Vaishnavism to the West in the 1960s.
Sanskrit or in his mother-tongue, Gujarati. On reading
He later founded the Hare Krishna movement in New York the Gita for the first time he was deeply impressed and as
in 1966. he says, “The book struck me as one of priceless worth”.1
On the recommendation of the theosophical brothers,
Gandhi also read Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia,
which enumerated the life of Gautam Buddha. While in

socrel1\112
Gandhi's Concept of Religion
England, Gandhi was introduced to the Bible by his English
friends and he mentions in his autobiography that the
New Testament, particularly the Sermon on the Mount,
went straight to his heart.
Gandhi’s religious quest, which began in England,
found fulfilment in South Africa, where he arrived in
1893. When Gandhi was interviewed by the attorney Mr.
A. W. Baker, who wanted to ascertain his religious views,
Gandhi replied, “I am a Hindu by birth and yet I do not
know much of Hinduism and I know less of other religions.
In fact, I do not know where I am, and what is and what
should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of
my own religion and as far as I can, of other religions as
well”.2
What is remarkable about Gandhi is that even at a
time when his knowledge about Hinduism was still limited,
he still felt a sentimental bond with the religion of his
birth, as is evident from an incident which occurred in
Gandhi’s life while he was in South Africa. Some Christian
missionaries, who were also his friends, were trying their
best to convert Gandhi to Christianity and wanted him to
renounce Hinduism, which they viewed as filled with
superstition and blind faith. One of Gandhi’s friends, Mr.
Coates, asked Gandhi to remove the Vaishnava necklace
of Tulsi beads which Gandhi’s mother had put around his
neck. But he refused to do so. The necklace was a symbol.
Gandhi could no more discard Hinduism than the necklace
he was wearing without sufficient reason, both having
come down to him from his beloved parents.
Just as his Christian friends were endeavouring to
convert Gandhi to Christianity, so were his Muslim friends
like Abdulla Sheth trying to induce him to study Islam.
He purchased Sale’s translation of the Koran and began
reading it. He also accepted other books about Islam.
It was during this time that Gandhi began religious
correspondence with Edward Maitland whose books The
Perfect Way and The New Interpretation of the Bible impressed
225 226 The Sociology of Religion in India
Gandhi. Similarly, Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is within
You also left a lasting impression on him.
When under pressure from Christian Missionaries in
South Africa, Gandhi began correspondence with some of
his friends in India, eminent among whom was
Raychandbhai or Rajchandra. It was Rajchandra who gave
a sense of direction to Gandhi’s religious quest. He advised
Gandhi to be patient and to study Hinduism more deeply.
Rajchandra wrote to Gandhi: “On a dispassionate view of
the question I am convinced that no other religion has the
subtle and profound thought of Hinduism, its vision of
the soul, or its clarity”.3 He sent Gandhi books on Hinduism
which had a profound impact on him.
In this way, Gandhi’s religious quest carried him in a
direction unthought-of by his Christian friends, but as he
admitted in his autobiography, “though I took a path my
Christian friends had not intended for me, I have remained
for ever indebted to them for the religious quest that they
awakened in me”.4
In his religious quest, three eminent personalities
influenced Gandhi the most: Rajchandra, Leo Tolstoy and
John Ruskin. Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is within You
exposed to him the contradictions of organized religion
and made Gandhi prone to resist the proselytizing efforts
of the missionaries in South Africa. The value of a life of
simplicity and the dignity of manual labour was brought
to him by Ruskin while Rajchandra reinforced Gandhi’s
faith in Hinduism.
It was in South Africa that Gandhi made a comparative
study of a number of religions and came to the conclusion
that there was an underlying unity among them. For the
rest of his life he emphasized the need for co-existence
and tolerance among various religious communities. God,
Allah, Rama, Narayana, Ishwar and Khuda, he felt, were
all descriptions of the some being. In this way, the study
of comparative religion, the reading of various theological
works, and many conversations and correspondences with
socrel-1\113
Gandhi's Concept of Religion 227
learned religious figures brought Gandhi to the conclusion
that true religion was more a matter of the heart than of
the intellect, and that genuine beliefs were those which
were practised in their totality in everyday life.
Hindus and Hinduism, during this time, were going
through a very transforming time, having to resist the
pressure of Christian missionaries, who were actively
engaged in proselytising. While the Hinduism of the
educated elite tended to be abstract and mystical, at the
popular level Hinduism tended to be more ritualistic.
Gandhi challenged many age-old notions and practices.
He did not hesitate to reinterpret traditional beliefs and
reject practices that run against his reason and conscience.
Hinduism, he believed, had the power to rejuvenate itself.
Gandhi’s revisionist strategy and his encounter with
Hindu orthodoxy is worthy of further note. He usually
did not give unqualified allegiance to scriptural authority,
but rather, claimed the right to interpret religious texts in
the light of reason, morality and common sense. His
insistence on the autonomy of human reason and conscience
in the interpretation of religious texts, ideas and practices,
not only for himself but for all religious people, makes
him, according to B.R. Nanda, one of the most daring
religious reformers of his time.5
Gandhi was to confide years later to a group of Christian
missionaries that “Hinduism as I know it entirely satisfies
my soul, fills my whole being and I find solace in the
Bhagavad Gita which I miss even in the Sermon on the
Mount”.6 Ultimately his understanding of Hinduism was
reduced to a few fundamental beliefs in the supreme
reality of God, the unity of all life and the value of love
(ahimsa) as a means of realizing God. There was no scope
for exclusiveness or narrowness in this bedrock religion.
He believed that Hinduism offers room for the worship
of all the prophets of the world and was not a missionary
religion in the ordinary sense. In Hinduism, he believed,
everyone could worship God according to his or her own
conviction or dharma and live in peace with other religions.
socrel1\114
228 The Sociology of Religion in India
In a 1927 article entitled ‘Why I am a Hindu’, Gandhi
put forward two reasons that attracted him to Hinduism:
I have found it to be the most tolerant of all
religious…. Its freedom from dogma… gives
the rotary the largest scope for self-
expression. Not being an exclusive religion,
it enables the followers of that faith not
merely to respect all the other religions, but…
to admire and assimilate whatever may be
good in the other faiths. Non-violence is
common to all religions, but it has found
the highest expression and application in
Hinduism…. Hinduism believes in the
oneness not of merely all human life but in
the oneness of all that lives.7
The fact is that Gandhi’s concept of religion did not
have much in common with what generally passes as the
dogmas and rituals of organized religion. Without these
accretions, the religion of Gandhi was simply an ethical
framework for conduct in daily life. He wrote in 1920:
Let me explain what I mean by religion.... It
is not the Hindu religion, which I certainly
prize above all other religions, but the
religion which transcends Hinduism, which
changes one’s very nature, which binds one
indissolubly to the truth within and which
even purifies. It is the permanent element
in human nature which… leaves the soul
restless until it has found itself.8
It has to be borne in mind, however, that Hinduism,
as interpreted and practised by Gandhi did not mean that
he considered it superior to other religions. On the contrary,
he preached about the unity of religions. The various
religions, he said were ‘as so many leaves of a tree; they
might seem different but “at the trunk they are one”'.9
Throughout his life therefore, Gandhi continued to
Gandhi's Concept of Religion 229
emphasize the need for coexistence and tolerance between
the adherents of various faiths.
Gandhi has been criticized from various quarters that
his undue emphasis on Hinduism alienated the Muslims
from mainstream nationalism and paved the way for the
partition of the country in 1947. It has been alleged that
his use of terms such as “Ramarajya”, “Sarvodaya”,
“Swaraj”, “Ahimsa” and “Satyagraha”, or the singing of
the hymn “Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram”, had strong
Hindu overtones, which led the Muslims to believe that
independent India would be a land of Hindus in which
the Muslims would be marginalized. Such an allegation
does injustice to the beliefs of the Mahatma who had all
through his life fought for Hindu-Muslim unity and who
ultimately fell a victim to a Hindu nationalist.
Countering that allegation, B. R. Nanda has pointed
out that Gandhi’s use of terms such as “Swaraj” or
“Sarvodaya” had little religious significance.10 They were
derived from Sanskrit, but since most Indian languages
were derived from Sanskrit, it made it easily intelligible
to the public. Had Gandhi translated these terms in English,
they may have sounded more modern and secular, but
the public would have failed to comprehend them, except
for a tiny urbanized, English educated minority.
Similarly, when Gandhi used the term “Ram Rajya”,
he only used it as an equivalent for the English term
“Utopia”. Hence, when Gandhi referred to Ramarajya as
the goal of the Indian freedom struggle, he only meant an
ideal society which was free from inequality, injustice,
and exploitation. The public, to whom he usually addressed
his writings and speeches, knew instinctively that when
Gandhi spoke of Ramarajya he was not referring to the
monarchical form of government in ancient India, but to
an ideal society which was free from exploitation.
B.R. Nanda has further showed how Gandhi adopted
a secular approach by holding his prayer meetings, not in
temples, but under the open sky, and how these prayer
socrel-1\115
230 The Sociology of Religion in India
meetings became a symbol of religious harmony by
including recitations from Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh,
Parsi, and Buddhist texts. The prayers that were recited
in his prayer meetings were not selected from the religious
text of any particular religion, but from the religious texts
of a number of alternative religions. In the months preceding
the partition of the country, his prayer meetings were
aimed at encouraging tolerance and communal harmony.
Even his staunchest critics have given him credit for his
secular approach and we find that the Marxist activist M.
N. Roy, who had ridiculed Gandhi’s religious approach to
politics, ultimately conceded that he had failed to detect
the secular approach of the Mahatma beneath his religious
terminology, and that Gandhi’s message had been “moral,
humanist, cosmopolitan”.
Gandhi’s commitment to secularism becomes evident
from a statement he made at a time when the partition of
India—along supposedly “religious” lines—seemed
imminent. Replying to a Christian missionary who had
asked him whether religion would be separate from the
state after independence, Gandhi said,
If I were a dictator, religion and state would
be separate. I swear by my religion.… But it
is my personal affair. The state has nothing
to do with it. The state would look after
your secular welfare, health,
communications, foreign relations, currency
and so on but not your or my religion. That
is everybody’s personal concern.11
From this it is clear that in the opinion of Gandhi, in
independent India all people would have the right to
practise any religion they chose to identify with, and the
state would not dictate the forms of worship.
From the above analysis, we can safely conclude that
Gandhi’s religion was an intensely practical one. Religion,
to him, did not imply subscription to dogmas or conformity
to ritual, but rather it implied an abiding faith in the absolute
Gandhi's Concept of Religion 231 232 The Sociology of Religion in India

values of truth, love, and justice and a persistent endeavour NOTES

to realize them in real life. When S. Radhakrishnan asked
1. Gandhi (2001), p. 76.
him to state his view of religion, Gandhi reported, “I often
describe my religion as the Religion of Truth.... of late, instead 2. Ibid., p. 121.
of saying God is Truth, I have been saying Truth is God, in 3. Ibid., p. 136.
order more fully to define my religion”.13 To seek his God, 4. Ibid., p. 137.
Gandhi did not retreat into the mountains or withdraw into 5. Nanda (2002), pp. 18-19.
a monastery, but rather engaged himself in the service of
6. Harijan, 28 September, 1935.
mankind. For Gandhi, sanctity and service of man were
inseparable. He said 7. Young India, 21 October, 1927.
8. Young India, 12 May 1920.
My motive has been purely religious.... I
9. Nanda, op. cit., p. 21
could not be leading a religious life unless
I identified myself with the whole of 10. Nanda, ibid., p. 27
mankind…. The whole gamut of man’s 11. M.N. Roy, Independent India, February 1948.
activities today constitutes an indivisible 12. Harijan, 22 September 1946.
whole; you cannot divide social, political 13. Radhakrishnan (2001), p. 337.
and purely religious work into water-tight
14. Ibid., p. 342.
compartments. I do not know any religion
apart from human activity.14
Throughout his life, Gandhi practised this religion,
aiming at “wiping every tear from every eye”, and we
can still look upon him as one who sought to unite mankind
through a religion of truth, love, unity and brotherhood.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gandhi, M. K. (2001). An Autobiography or the Story of My
Experiments with Truth. New Delhi: Penguin books.
Nanda, B. R. (2002). In Search of Gandhi, Essays and Reflections.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (2001). Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and
Reflections. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House.

Periodicals
Harijan
Independent India
Young India

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Contributors
zz
FEDERICO D’AGOSTINO is professor of Sociology of
Culture and Religion at University of Rome III where he
has been Chair of the Degree Program in Sociology and
Social Work. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology at University
of California, Berkeley with prof. R. Bellah, N. Smelser
and A. Dundes (anthropologist) with a thesis called “The
Images of Death and Symbolic Construction of Reality in
a Southern Italian Town”. He has been a visiting professor
and scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where
he gave a course on Sociology of Religion, at the University
of Alberta, Canada where he gave two courses on Sociology
of Religion and Sociology of Deviance. He has also been
invited to give conferences or short courses at University
of Saint Petersburg (Russia), the University of Pernambuco,
Recife (Brasil), the University of Warsaw and Krakow
(Poland), The University of Joensuu (Finland), and he has
also been visiting professor at John Cabot University in
Rome. His major works are: The Symbolic Imagination and
Social structure (with an introduction by R. Bellah), The
Grammar of Development (with an introduction by A.
Touraine), The Dynamics of Rational and Non-Rational in the
Process of Social Change (introduction by S.N. Eisenstadt),
socrel-1\117
234 The Sociology of Religion in India
The “Ground Bass” of Religiosity in a Southern Italian Region.
He is a member of Italian Sociological Association,
International Sociological Association, American
Sociological Association and Russian Sociological
Association.
CHAITALI DAS is the head of the Department of
History, Maharani Kasiswari College, Kolkata. Her area
of interest is Gandhian studies and she is currently working
on a doctoral thesis, which consists of a historiographical
study of Gandhian nationalism.
CLEMENS CAVALLIN is a lecturer in Religious Studies
and more specifically, History of Religions, since January
2007 at the department of Literature, History of Ideas and
Religion at the University of Gothenburg. He received his
Ph.D. in 2002 in religious studies at the University of
Gothenburg with the thesis “The Efficacy of Sacrifice”,
which analyzed the perception of sacrifice in Vedic literature,
Hinduism’s oldest texts. From 2003 to 2006 he worked as
first lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the
University of Bergen, Norway. His research after his
dissertation work has focused on two new areas: ritual
theory and Catholic religiosity. He has also taught widely
on various religions (especially from South and Southeast
Asian), and about theory and methodology of religious
studies. He is presently active in his department’s work
in India with a focus on field courses and broad partnerships
with various Indian universities. Since January 2009,
Clemens is Director of Studies at his department for the
subjects of Religious Studies and Theology.
ABHISHEK GHOSH has done his B.A. in English from
Calcutta University, a M.St. from Oxford University and
is presently a doctoral fellow completing his doctoral
thesis at the Department of South Asian Languages and
Civilisations at the University of Chicago. His present
research focuses on three contemporary Vaishnava exegetes
and the way they engaged their tradition of Krishna bhakti
with their contemporary worlds. His general academic
Contributors
interests include History of Religions, History of Ideas,
Modern Hinduism, and the history and theology of the
Caitanya Vaishnava movement. His previous publications
include articles on Oriya and Bengali Vaishnavism in the
Journal of Vaishnava Studies as well as book chapters in
Contemporary Hinduism (ed. Pratap Kumar, Equinox) and
A Companion to the Bhâgavata Purâna (eds. Ravi M. Gupta
and Kenneth R. Valpey, Columbia University Press). He
currently teaches at the Asian Classics Program at Graham
School at his home university and has offered a variety of
courses on Classical and Contemporary Hinduism, Science
and Religion, Comparative Religions, Buddhism and other
Asian religions.
GAVIN FLOOD is Professor of Hindu Studies and
Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford where
he is also the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for
Hindu Studies. Among other publications he is the author
of Introduction to Hinduism (1996) and The Ascetic Self:
Subjectivity, Memory, Tradition (2006); and editor of the
Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003).
JOSEPH O’CONNELL, Ph.D. (Harvard, Comparative
Study of the Major World Religions, 1970) was Professor
in the Study of Religion, as well as Emeritus at the
University of Toronto, Canada. He was also visiting
Professor of World Religions and Culture at the University
of Dhaka in Bangladesh. His teaching has focused mainly
on the history of religion in South Asia. His research has
focused on the Hindu Vaishnava religion and its social
implications in pre-colonial Bengal as well as on the
distinctively Bengali aspects of the Islamic tradition. Among
his publications are: “Religious Movements and Social
Structure: The Case of Caitanya’s Vaishnavas in Bengal”
(1993); “Toward a History of Religion in the Bengal Region”
(2006); “The Bengali Muslims and the State: Secularism or
Humanity for Bangladesh?” (2000); “Academic Study of
Religion in Bangladesh: Challenges and Opportunities”
(2009); and the following edited volumes: Organizational
235 236 The Sociology of Religion in India
and Institutional Aspects of Indian Religious Movements (1999);
Sikh History and Religion in the Twentieth Century (with M.
Israel, W.G. Oxtoby, W.H. McLeod, J.S. Grewal, 1988); Jain
Doctrine and Practice: Academic Perspectives (2000);
Rabindranath Tagore: Reclaiming a Cultural Icon (with K.M.
O’Connell, 2009).
SWAPAN PRAMANIK is currently Professor and Vice-
Chancellor of Vidyasagar University and former Professor
of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University
of Calcutta.
RUBY SAIN is currently Associate Professor in the
Department of Sociology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
She has previously been the Head of the department of
Sociology for two terms (2004–2006 and 2009–2011). She
is author and co-editor of several books and articles. She
is the founder of the Jadavpur University Journal of Sociology
and Centre for the Study of Religion and Society at Jadavpur
University. She has delivered lectures as guest faculty
and visiting fellow at the University of Oxford, University
of Manitoba, University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Åbo
Akademi (Finland), University of Barcelona, University
of Dhaka and Benaras Hindu University. For her
contributions to the Social Sciences, she has received the
National Science Day Award on February 22, 2012 and an
award from the All India Media Persons Welfare Association
(AMPWA) on February 26, 2012. Her areas of interest are
Sociology of Religion, Medical Sociology, Indian Sociology,
sociological theories and methodologies.
ÅKE SANDER is currently Professor of Behavioural
Studies of Religion (which includes the Sociology of
Religion), and head of research at the department of
Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University
of Gothenburg in Sweden. He has previously been the
Director of the Centre for the Study of Cultural Contact
and International Migration at the same university. His
research and teaching has focused on the changing roles
and functions of religion and religiosity, especially in relation
socrel1\118
Contributors 237

to the Islamic tradition and the Muslims. His research has

also addressed issues related to migration and the meetings
that take place among cultures and religions in a changing,
global, post-modern and pluralist world.
FERDINANDO SARDELLA is a research scholar at
Uppsala University in Sweden, where he is the director of
the Forum for South Asian Studies in the Humanities and
Social Sciences. He is the Coordinator of the project “Bengali
Vaishnavism in the Modern Period” at the Oxford Center
for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford, where he
is also a fellow. He is an external expert for the Centre for
the Study of Religion and Society located at the Department
of Sociology at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. His area
of research is classical and modern Hinduism and he has
contributed specifically to the subject of modern
Vaishnavism and its global development. His first
monograph Modern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life,
and Thought of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati has been published
by Oxford University Press in 2013. Sardella has received
the Donner Institute Prize for Outstanding Research in
the field of Religious Studies in 2010 from the Åbo Akademi
in Finland. He has taught and teaches courses on Religion
and Science, Indian Philosophy, Modern Hinduism, Asian
religions, the history and development of bhakti, New
Age, yoga, and new religious movements around the world.

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