Panel Organizer:

Dr. Gwilym Beckerlegge - Department of Religious Studies, The Open University, Manchester, UK

Abstract

The panel aims to bring together specialists from a range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences to explore the development of South Asian religious reform movements from the nineteenth century to the present. Although the majority of papers presented to recent meetings of the panel have covered movements within Hinduism and Islam, submissions relating to other South Asian religious traditions would be particularly welcome. Papers relating to transformations of South Asian religious reform movements outside South Asia will be considered as long as relevant connections are established and maintained to the South Asian context.

In order to encourage as wide a diversity of papers as possible, the panel is not organised around a specific theme/topic, other than the explicit reference points in the panel's title. Papers presented at recent meetings of the panel have examined problems in the representation of religious reform movements and their study, and religious reform movements in relationship to (among other things) historical personalities and texts, institutions and organisations, nationalism and the relations between religions, gender, philanthropy, education, and membership and proselytism.

Two volumes of papers given at previous meetings of this panel have already been published and a third volume is under consideration.
Send your abstract to the panel organizer

Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Reserach Library, Pondicherry, India
Changing Ideas of Hinduism during the National Movement

Cultural nationalism first appeared in India during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The same period saw a consolidation of the idea of a Hindu religion, and lively debates about what Hinduism was and ought to be. The relationship that developed between Hinduism and nationalism was variable and complex. Many scholars have studied the influence of Hinduism on Indian nationalism. The result has been the now somewhat clichéd narrative: "the rise of Hindu nationalism". I look rather at the influence of nationalist thought on the forms and practices of Hinduism. The years that saw the birth of cultural nationalism were marked also by movements of reform and religious revival. Rajnarain Bose was at once a Bengali cultural nationalist and a Brahmo who insisted that universalistic Hinduism was superior to all other religions. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, author of nationalistic novels like Anandamath, also attempted to find the inner truth of Hinduism through a revisioning of Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a radical leader of the Indian National Congress, gave a nationalistic turn to the Ganapati puja and insisted that Congress cut its ties with the movement of social reform. These nineteenth-century trends were carried over into the twentieth century. Mahatma Gandhi made socio-political activism and ahimsa compatible with mainstream Hinduism. He welcomed (and co-opted) the caste-reform and anti-untouchablity movements, thus altering the social basis of Hinduism. The acceptance of the forms of representative democracy by the Indian National Congress (and their later enshrinement in the Indian Constitution) opened the way to massive changes in the customary and legal relations between men and women and members of different castes. At least externally, Hinduism and its social basis probably changed more during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than at any other time of its history.

Alexey Kirichenko, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University,
Moscow, Russian Federation
External Validation and Modeling in Buddhist Reform Movements of Sri Lanka and Burma in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Nineteenth century saw a notable expansion of intercourse between Buddhist communities of Sri Lanka and Burma. A number of missions from Southern Sri Lanka sent to Amarapura and Mandalay in 1799-1813, 1860-1863 and 1870-ies brought higher ordination to the island and led to establishment of Amarapura, Ramanna and Shwegyin Nikayas there. Burmese monks were invited to Sri Lanka to consecrate sīmas perform ordination ceremonies and occasionally to adjudicate the disputes. In the early 20th century associations established at Sri Lanka and their activities (the emergence of the so called Protestant Buddhism) became a source of inspiration for Burmese Buddhists in shaping their movement for religious revival. The paper will analyse these interactions and examine the role of external source/model for Sinhalese and Burmese movements. It will look at the way each side perceived its counterpart and how this perception changed, how deep the interaction went and how issues relevant for Burmese saṃghaof the 19th century and Sinhalese Buddhists of the 19th – early 20th centuries appeared in the agenda of Sinhalese reformist nikāyasand Burmese associations, respectively. On the basis of such analysis I will also try to address the problem of developments in Theravada Buddhism as a translocal/interregional phenomenon.

Saji M Kadavil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
(Re) formation of identity and cultural hegemony in the late modernity: Reading on Dalit Christians in Kerala, India.

The paper attempts to understand the discourse of caste, identity, and cultural hegemony linkages by situating the socio-cultural practices of Dalit Christian in Kerala, India. The study also make an attempt situate the struggle and negotiation of the community to create their own space and to be constituent of the ‘traditional Christians'. It has generally been said that the categories of religion, language, region and caste have been rooted in the consciousness and the social relations of people at large. Historically, Dalit (oppressed) is the name, which the people belonging to those castes at the very bottom of India's caste hierarchy have given themselves. The label of Dalit Christian has not been of their own making or choosing; it is something, which has been inflicted upon them by others. The analysis focuses on a particular Dalit Christian community by looking at two images of knowledge like how others perceive them and how they are. The study tries to read in different theoretical perspectives includes posturing and domination of body in the household and work place, cultural capital and economic development and impacts of the religious practices such as recent phenomenon of retreat/evangelisation programmes etc. The analysis is based on the data generated in the course of primary survey in three villages of Kerala, India that relayed on qualitative research methods like ethno methodology and informal discussions. There is loss of traditional cultural practices and they lives in the dual social and psychological identity, Christian as well as Dalit, and have to live with the tensions built in to that dual identity and identity crisis. The diversity in the Dalit Christian groups and the ‘deprived cultural capital and power relations' prevents them from negotiating with their identity, economic and social incentives by the religious and government agencies towards their well being. The ‘renewal life' to them has not really changed that significa!
nt fact
of their lives, despite hopes and promises to the contrary. Moreover, naming based on the caste becomes emerging trend rather than what new religion offered to the Dalits, which was a new identity defined by religion besides by caste, as well as more egalitarian religious counter culture. The difference in the social habitués and the cultural capital makes dominant Christians to (re) construct new identity and social structure up on the Dalit Christians that have been elaborated over generations, which prevents mainstreaming the Dalit Christians.

Swapna Bhattacharya, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, India
Interpreting Buddhist Revival Movement in India during 1950s in the Context of a Resurgent, Neutral and Socialist Asia

The relevance of the paper can be interpreted in the light of India's "Look East" policy, which stresses our country's link with Southeast Asia. The year of Leiden Conference also coincides with 2,550 years of Lord Buddhas's Mahaparinirvana. In the historical researches, important religious movements in Asia, India in particular, have been interpreted mostly as purely domestic movements. External implications or repercussions have largely been either overlooked or neglected. The proposed paper wants to argue that the neo-Buddhist revival in India during the 1950s, led by Dr. B.R Ambedkar, has a unique external implication, at least for some of the neighboring countries, Myanmar (Burma) in particular. The paper will also highlight on similar conversion into Buddhism among some non-Burman races. It is important to note that Dr. Ambdekar was one of the members in the Indian delegation which went to Rangoon in 1954, when Burma or modern Myanmar organized the 6th Buddhist Council, to commemorate the 2,500 years of Lord Buddha's Parinirvana. It was held in The Kaba Aye (World peace Pagoda) near Yangon ( former Rangoon), which was built in 1952. Though Dr. Ambedkar declared his commitment to Buddhism earlier, he arranged the consecration for him and his followers in 1956, which took place in Nagpur. This unique mass conversion to Buddhism must have left its impact on Buddhist countries of Asia.

India is often "blamed" for having neglected her Buddhist heritage and for not been able to keep her own religion. But, all through colonial period, Buddhist institutions in various parts of India maintained contact with Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia. During the period of decolonization and nation-building, India's commitment to Buddhism never showed any sign of negligence and became an important instrument for creation of a cultural India which automatically legitimize her authority on the given territorial boundary. One of the major thrusts will be on Indian people's continuous engagements with Buddhist scholarship. The paper will highlight on how Buddhist associations and organizations in India ( special reference to Eastern India) contributed to this mission. It is due to this may be that all the Buddhist countries of South and Southeast Asia still look at India for their intellectual, emotional and spiritual inspiration. The paper will place some of the most important events of the history of South & Southeast Asia, in 1950s, describing important events of the Buddhist Revival in India, arguing that for a large number of political leaders ( like U Nu and Jawaharlal Nehru) and social reformers ( like Dr. B.R Ambdekar ), Buddhism became an inspiration for survival from neo-imperialism and communism. The Middle-Path preached by Lord Buddha was considered to be the safest path for domestic and external peace and stability. Among the Asian leaders, it was U Nu, the first Prime Minister of Burma who really revolutionized the ideology of Marxism by giving his socialist interpretation of Buddhism, where Lord Buddha's message of social justice made orthodox Marxism "superfluous". Nehru, a close friend of U Nu, appeared to be impressed by the philosophy of neutrality (not passivity) embedded in the Buddhist doctrine. The idea of Panchsheel has a clear Buddhist connotation. Perhaps the close collaboration between U Nu and Jawaharlal Nehru, taking China as a partner, can be seen as an effort to inspire the Communist China to look back to her Buddhist past, an effort which once Rabindranath Tagore undertook. The important events like Socialist Conferences in Rangoon ( 1953) and Bombay ( 1956), Bandung Conference of 1955, the spirit of Non-alignment, Democracy, active Neutrality and peaceful Co-existence--- all drew direct inspiration from a common Buddhist past. This policy of getting together in the face of defensive pacts like SEATO and NATO, is extremely significant. The Buddhist revival of Indonesia in 1950s led by Jinarakkhita must have also impressed the thinkers and policy makers in India. Dr. Ambedkar, should be seen as product of his age, rather than as a "Messiah fallen from the heaven".
The partition of India, unprecedented in the history of colonialism, made both the people, the Hindus as well as Muslims, deeply disappointed. Therefore, at least for a considerable number of Indian people, especially the downtrodden from the Hindu society, Buddhism remained to be the only hope. The paper will try to relate various important political events of 1950s that took place in the region of South and Southeast Asia, placing them within the context of Buddhist revival in India and elsewhere in Asia. India enjoyed a special status in those days as it neither declared any religion as state religion, nor promoted one, but, went beyond the Hindu-Muslim schism, as if re-asserting her Buddhist past!

Brian Hatcher, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, United States
The Tattvabodhini Sabha and Vedantic Theism: Discourses from Early Colonial Bengal

In 1839 a group of Bengali Hindu elite began to gather in Calcutta with the purpose of sharing and propagating their faith in a non-idolatrous form of worship. Throughout 1839-40 the group, known as the Tattvabodhini Sabha, met weekly to worship and hear discourses in Bengali from a variety of members on the best way to promote a rational and morally responsible mode of worship. In their discourses, the members called upon ancient sources of Hindu spirituality while simultaneously advancing a species of modern theism they referred to as ‘Vedanta.' These discourses were subsequently published in 1841 under the title Sabhyadiger vaktrta ("Discourses by Members"). This text, which marks the earliest extant publication of the Tattvabodhini Sabha, has gone unnoticed since that time.

As expressions of the spiritual vision of the earliest Tattvabodhini Sabha, the discourses of Sabhyadiger vaktrta provide important evidence for thinking about the development of modernist Hindu discourse in the 1830s. These discourses reveal a group indebted to the earlier work Rammmohan Roy, yet also acting with an independent identity and sense of purpose. Under the leadership of their founder, Debendranath Tagore, the Sabha would begin to articulate a vision of this-worldly worship grounded in an ethic of personal industry, moral diligence, and theistic devotion.

Working off my recent translation of Sabhyadiger vaktrta, this paper situates the theology of these hitherto unknown discourses against the backdrop of religious and social change in early colonial Calcutta. A central concern is to demonstrate how these discourses served to legitimate an ethic of worldly religion among Calcutta's emergent bourgeoisie. In so doing, this paper prompts reflection on how the theistic Vedanta of the Tattvabodhini Sabha helped set the stage for forms of religious belief and practice that would increasingly come to characterize modern Hinduism.

Raphaël Voix, University of Paris, Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, Paris, France
Advocate of a Universal Religion or Struggle for a World Dictatorship? Ananda Marga's Dilemma

This paper will consider the Saiva religious movement Ananda Marga. Founded in 1955 by a Bengali kayastha of a lower middle-class family, Ananda Marga has since become a world-wide organisation. It involves a few lakhs of devotees in different parts of the world, but the greater number remains established in India and it is based in Kolkata.

Like many other South Asian religious groups, it spread through teaching yoga, building schools and doing some relief works, while disseminating the message of a universal religion. Besides, it has developed a strong political ambition: fighting for the establishment of what they call a "dictatorship of spiritual revolutionaries". This paper will address the basis of this dichotomy.

Firstly, it will explore the ideal society that the group intends to build first in West Bengal and then throughout the world. This will be done through the analysis of the founder's ideology and of its influences, within the particular historical context of the time : the newly independent India in the process of Nation-building. Secondly, it will describe the different means used by the group to implement this ideal society. These include contesting elections and implementing local projects. The movement has also been accused of being involved in a number of violent affairs. Finally, this paper will try to elucidate to what extent this group is rooted in the Bengali culture and which are its distinctive and innovative elements.

The information used for this paper have been gathered during fieldwork conducted since 2002 in India (West Bengal, Maharastra and Bihar) and outside India (Germany, Switzerland), within the framework of my PhD studies in Anthropology. More particularly, I have taken part as an observer to numerous meetings of the group and interviewed a great number of samnyasin and laymen followers. I have also collected articles from local newspapers and questioned Indian government representatives in order to understand the way they deal with the movement.

Taymiya Zaman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, USA
Muslim Communities, International Citizens: The Tabligh Jama`at and Islamic Revivalism

In 1917, Maulana Mohammad Ilyas, a scholar and mystic, began his career as a teacher in Mewat, India. He is reported to have spent much time in seclusion and prayer, and to have designed a curriculum according to which he taught his students. By 1926, Maulana Ilyas had begun training groups (jama'at) of students to visit houses in Mewat for the purpose of inviting Muslims to Islam. Within forty years, Maulana Ilyas' Tabligh Jama'at had become the largest transnational religious movement in the world. However, the Tabligh Movement remains understudied because it sees Islamic revival as the revival of Islam in the hearts of individual Muslims. This radical notion of social change, which is introspective and sealed off to outsiders, is not easily incorporated into the intensely public narrative of political history. This paper examines the methods of the Tabligh Movement that have contributed to its success in creating a discursive community united by the views that its participants hold about space and time. These views and their practical application provide us with an answer as to how the Tabligh Movement has ensured its survival in spite of the challenges posed by rapidly changing historical, political, and social contexts.

Gwilym Beckerlegge, The Open University, Department of Religious Studies Manchester, United Kingdom
Developing Neo-Vedantic Theory: a Study of the Ramakrishna Movement

The Ramakrishna Math and Mission are commonly treated as the prime example of a Neo-Hindu movement. Apart from a modern organisational structure, the movement adheres to a form of Neo-Vedanta philosophy, is heavily involved in seva (organised philanthropy), and draws selectively upon earlier Hindu tradition. The history of its founding is closely bound up with the history of the resurgence of Hinduism associated with the early phase of the nationalist movement. The exposure to western influences of one of its inspirational figures, Swami Vivekananda, has raised questions not only about the source of the key influences that shaped the movement but also about its relationship to Hinduism. These broad characteristics are often said to typify Neo-Hindu groups more generally.
Questions about the Ramakrishna movement's handling, under Vivekananda's influence, of traditional Hindu ideas and theories have been paralleled by criticisms of the coherence and limitations of the Neo-Vedanta theory that underpins the movement's philosophical analysis of, and philanthropic response to, social problems.
This paper will identify examples of the movement's theory-building and examine criticisms levelled against the coherence and effectiveness of its positions. In so doing, an attempt will be made to determine whether such criticisms address distinctively the novel, or neo-, nature of this expression of Hinduism, or merely re-state critical arguments that have long been directed against the effectiveness of earlier forms of Hindu philanthropic activity. Modern Hindu teachers, and the organisations they have created, have often been treated as pale reflections of an ancient tradition, with little evident thought given to the nature of the particular challenges they have faced. In examining the ideas associated with the Ramakrishna movement, the paper aims to consider its beliefs and practice in relationship to the problems that it has set itself to address.

Thamburaj Dharmaraj, St. Xavier's college, Department of Folklore, Tamilnadu, India
Tamil Buddhism: Religious Discourse of the Broken People

During the early years of twentieth century, Tamil speaking mass of the Indian subcontinent came across a religious discourse called ‘Tamil Buddhism' from a native scholar and traditional medicinal practitioner called Iyothee Thasar (1845-1914). He was increasingly identified as a social reformer who struggled against the practice ‘untouchability' and the concept ‘caste'.

Iyothee Thass started his dynamic socio-political career by instituting Sakya Buddhist society at Madras as a result of his experimentation with the truths of Buddhism. With the effect of these experiments he conceived the idea, ‘Tamil Buddhism'. The idea of Tamil Buddhism burgeons to construct an alternative discourse on Indian culture as a reply to the 'India' patronized by Vedic tradition.

In all the discourses on Tamil Buddhism, he invariably gave emphasis to and evidently had corroborated that the so-called 'untouchables' had an age-old contradiction with the Brahmins. Hence, the animosity of Brahmin community transposed the social stratum of ancient Buddhist from ritual masters to 'untouchables'.

The thoughts of Iyothee Thass orbit around sole trait, reinterpretation. That means, reinterpreting the history, religion, literature, tradition, etc. In this context, his illustriousness in literature, linguistics, and history supports him in the construction of a grand discourse called Tamil Buddhism. His expertise in languages like Pali and Sanskrit other than Tamil dispenses radically interesting vestiges for this project.

Therefore the disgusting socio-cultural reality of dalits in present day Tamilnadu is not because of their origin as perplexed by Brahminic traditions, but through the political annoyance as well as the cowardliness of Brahmins, the dalits were inscribed as untouchables. Iyothee Thass spent most pages in his writings for arousing the consciousness of being transgressed. Similarly he desired to cognize the dalits about their Buddhist antecedents. Once the historical fallacy is reasoned out by the 'ancient Buddhists', he visualized the reinvention of tradition that affects the rescue from the castiest context.

Despite Iyothee Thass accomplished as a multifarious personality till his unanticipated demise on May 5th 1914, mysteriously the modern historians forgot him. He published a weekly magazine titled ‘Tamilan' from 1907-1914 through which he disseminated his ideas. The proposed article on ‘Tamil Buddhism: Religious discourse of the broken people' tries to fathom the socio cultural significance of the religious movements of dalit communities.

Lidia Guzy, Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Religionswissenschaft, Berlin, Germany
From Non Brahmin Priests cum Musicians of the Goddess to Ascetics of God Alekha- Some Reflections on Mahima Dharma (Orissa/India) and its Religious Transformations

The Mahima Dharma doctrine and practice illustrates a dialectic transformation process from a local ascetic reform and religious cult to the brink of becoming an institutionalised religion. Actions of religious substitution of local concepts as well as of the integration of local beliefs into a new philosophy seem to interplay with the implementation of the script in order to organise and systematise a monastic order. The ascetic religion rejects the dominant Brahmin tradition on the one hand; on the other hand it alludes to its dominant ritual features. On the one hand ascetics of Mahima Dharma religion (sampradaya) carry out ritual functions similar to Brahmin priests and deny the existence of the Goddess; on the other hand they continue to perform the ritual functions of former local non Brahmin priests of local goddesses. The differences between local forms of belief and worship in Mahima Dharma asceticism are a) the rejection of blood s!
acrifices in ritual worship and b) the negation of the existence of the Goddess within the ascetic theology. Instead of the Goddess Mahima Dharma, ascetics venerate the concept of sunya and the God Alekha, the void, the absolute and the unwritten. The theology and ritual practice of the void substitutes and integrates the theology of the goddess. The paper aims to describe the recent transformation processes of Mahima Dharma.