International Journal of Hindu Studies最新文献

Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the biological body as a “natural” datum and gender (masculine or feminine) is a second-order sociocultural construction that is superimposed as an ideological superstructure on this “natural” base. On the other hand, feminist advocates of sexual difference such as Judith Butler call into question the sex/gender distinction and insist that the sexed body, like gender, is socially constructed. This article brings these contemporary feminist interlocutors into conversation with sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authorities who developed a distinctive discourse of embodiment in which they frame the categories of sex and gender in relation to devotional desire in their ontological theories of bodily identities. The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, materiality, and gender on both the human and divine planes and challenges prevailing body theories by positing bodies beyond matter, personhood beyond matter, and gender beyond sex.

This article analyzes the complex ways in which religious practices influence the formation of identity and community among tirunaṅkais, male-to-female transgender people in Tamil Nadu. I argue that tirunaṅkais draw on longstanding religious resources to enact nonnormative identities that operate outside of the secular constructions of the modern subject that undergird governmental “uplift” efforts as well as the liberatory projects of Western feminist scholars such as Judith Butler. I focus in particular on three arenas in which tirunaṅkais negotiate their identities in specific religious and social contexts: the kinship network, the annual Kūttāṇṭavar festival, and public rituals associated with Hindu goddesses in Tamil Nadu. The tirunaṅkai kinship network deploys multiple religious rituals while at the same time transcending boundaries of religion, caste, and class in its inclusivity. The enactment of marriage and widowhood at the annual festival to Kūttāṇṭavar foregrounds the divinity of the male-female form that tirunaṅkais emulate. Serving as vehicles of the divine who embody particular goddesses through ritual possession in public temple spaces provides affirmation of their ritual efficacy and power to mediate between the human and divine worlds.

Drawing on the seminal work of feminist and queer theorist Judith Butler, this article compares the practice of gender impersonation in the South Indian dance form of Kuchipudi with American drag performance. While impersonation in Kuchipudi and American drag performance arise from radically distinct gendered, cultural, and religious contexts, the juxtaposition of these two seemingly disparate spheres generates a useful framework for comparison that illuminates new ways of interpreting gender and caste in contemporary South India. Focusing on the Kuchipudi dancer Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma and the drag ball performer Venus Xtravaganza, this article analyzes the gender and caste norms of Kuchipudi dance in Telugu-speaking South India while outlining the limitations of Butler’s theory of gender performativity.

This article explores the ways in which the sexed body and its gendered subjectivity are constructed and expressed by Vaiṣṇava devotional poets of both sexes. In short, it is an experiment to see if a reading of bhakti poetry alongside gender theory can allow us to gain a better understanding of both fields. What happens when a bhakti poet chooses to speak as a man speaking as a woman, as opposed to a woman speaking as a woman? In the final analysis, neither the male poetic voice nor the female poetic voice necessarily offers a more direct or essential experience of bhakti, but rather both are expressions of the possible but inevitably contingent modes of experiencing oneself as a devotee. From a gender theory perspective, to choose to speak in a male poetic voice necessitates an imagining of the subjectivity of the Other, whereas the taking on of a female poetic voice forces the paradox of the Other becoming the Self.

Arvind Sharma has made immensely significant contributions in the fields of both comparative religion and the study of Hinduism through his methodology of “reciprocal illumination” and his prominent role in international conversations on women and religion, religion and human rights, freedom of religion, and religious tolerance and conflict. Aware of the power of religion and its negative valuation, especially post-September 11, he displays a deep commitment to fostering interreligious understanding, arguing for religion as an essential and positive partner in envisioning and actualizing human flourishing, upholding human dignity, and engaging in global ethical cooperation, and equally he demonstrates Hinduism’s potential contribution both to these endeavors and to moving the field of comparative studies beyond its Western, Christian, and colonialist origins and assumptions. This essay details these contributions and Sharma’s place as an interpreter of Hinduism for those inside and outside the tradition in our time.

Abstract

The Brahma Kumaris are a Hindu religious movement whose membership consists almost exclusively of women and whose devotional practices revolve around notions of purity and celibacy. They also hold a cyclical apocalyptic eschatology, believing that the world will end in utter disaster in the near future, just as it has done in countless times past. In order to achieve their religious goals with respect to the apocalypse, the Brahma Kumaris must engage in recruitment on a massive scale. This article examines the marketing of the Brahma Kumaris. It argues that, in order to usher in the end of the world and spare others a painful post-apocalyptic fate, the Brahma Kumaris host a number of retreats and programs aimed at attracting the public to their movement. These retreats and programs, however, have little to do with celibacy and apocalypticism, but instead focus on self-help, stress reduction, and increasing self-confidence. The article examines the ways that the Brahma Kumaris brand their determinedly ascetic, apocalyptic, and predestinarian movement as a meditative tradition which offers self-help tools for the frenzied modern public. It also considers how scholars should theorize about the marketing of religious groups that have a radically different set of internal theologies than those they present to the public.

In his work, Arvind Sharma daringly asserts the fundamental place of spirituality in Mohandas K. (“Mahatma”) Gandhi’s personal life and social and political activism. Sharma avoids any theoretical frameworks to elucidate Gandhi’s spirituality; but rather, he takes the reader through events in Gandhi’s life, his personal practices, and political actions that had synthesized the spiritual and political through living the apparent paradox of a saint-politician. Critiques of Gandhi’s spiritual practices attest to the fact that he remains a challenge to scholars as well as practitioners of nonviolence who seek to separate his political theories, nonviolent strategies, and social concerns from his spiritual commitments. Sharma claims that discerning the truth of his life—mixed as nīr (political, social, mundane) and kṣīr (spiritual, service, love, quest to see God)—mandates not ignoring his “Mahatma side” (kṣīr), the primary source of his fearlessness and strength (mental, physical, and public), notwithstanding many critiques that may render it as only an aberration.

Using a case study of Arvind Sharma’s thinking on striyaḥ (women), a subject he claims he has not written about aside from the topic of sati, this essay analyzes the epigrams and prefaces found in his fifteen edited books on women as a point of departure to tease out his larger scholarly project: not only to understand why India became colonized and Hinduism moribund, but also how to overcome their lingering effects without alienation from past culture. Toward this end, the essay focuses on how Sharma tackles stereotypes by restoring complexities to the historical record, using the multiple methods of religious studies, taking on the mantle of engaged scholar as a “threshold response,” and entering the public sphere on issues of justice and affirmative action. Juxtaposition of pivotal events recorded in his autobiography with these scholarly discussions suggests that his cryptic insights on women’s history and liberation is core to his thought, a case of “reciprocal illumination” as it were. All this raises the question of whether Sharma is a Hindu apologist or a reformer.

This essay explores the role of the Advaita Vedānta philosophy of Hinduism in Arvind Sharma’s numerous works on Indian philosophy. It argues that the viewpoint from which he approaches the various traditions he studies is deeply informed by the Advaita Vedānta tradition. It argues that this is not an especially problematic stance, so long as it is clear that this represents his specific point of view as a scholar and is not being falsely represented as an “objective” perspective. It shows that Sharma is indeed open about his affinity for Advaita Vedānta. The essay then engages with various controversies associated with Advaita Vedānta in the modern period, particularly the question of “neo-Advaita” or “neo-Vedānta,” both of which are shown to be problematic terms. The essay then concludes with a broad overview and appreciation of Sharma’s work on Indian philosophy: a body of work which constitutes a major contribution to scholarship even as it advances a particular perspective on the traditions to which is applied (a fact which is true of all scholarship, even that which claims to be “objective” or “neutral” with regard to the subject matter with which it engages).

This essay presents Arvind Sharma’s concept of “reciprocal illumination” as an innovative defense of interreligious comparison, showing that the comparative approach is still meaningful despite its currently widespread critique. In discussing Sharma’s concept, the essay focuses on the internal diversity of religious traditions, asking whether “reciprocal illumination” is possible because religious diversity is apparently not entirely at random but displays recurrent patterns and structures of a fractal nature. The existence of fractal patterns would explain very well not merely why “reciprocal illumination” is possible at all, but especially in what sense it fosters interreligious learning as part of the growing field of interreligious theology. The latter aspect is investigated by relating Sharma’s three types of “reciprocal illumination” to Catherine Cornille’s recent classification of six forms of interreligious learning. It will be argued that interreligious learning and reciprocal illumination are likely to lead to a radical change in religious self-understanding, perceiving one’s own tradition as a unique, internally diverse, and equally valid part and component of a larger diverse web of religious phenomena.