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International Journal of Hindu Studies
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.247  Number of Followers: 7  Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)ISSN (Print) 1574-9282 - ISSN (Online) 1022-4556 Published by Springer-Verlag  [2468 journals]
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- Introduction
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PubDate: 2023-10-27
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- Gandhi and the Jews, the Jews and Gandhi: An Overall Perspective
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Abstract: Abstract Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)’s relationship with the Jews is explored in this article. The history of this relationship can be divided into two different periods. The first begins during his formative years in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, and the second, during his political activism in India thereafter. The article points out that Gandhi’s close Jewish associates in South Africa, although coming primarily from a Theosophist background, considered their support of Gandhi and his struggle to represent their core Jewish values. Still, Gandhi’s close Jewish supporters did not successfully influence Gandhi regarding Zionism. In retrospect, Gandhi’s objection to Zionism enormously impacted the Indian Congress Party’s position regarding Palestine. The article notes that although Gandhi opposed political Zionism, he supported Zionism as a spiritual movement that could be best realized “within.” Somewhat surprising and little-known fact was a desire on Gandhi’s part to mediate between the Arabs and the Jews in direct talks. Gandhi hoped the Zionist leaders would respond positively to his offer to mediate so that he could advance his teachings of nonviolence while also claiming to represent the Indian Muslims. The article discusses Gandhi’s call to German and European Jews to resist the Nazi regime by adopting Satyagraha, the consequent rift with Jewry that followed, and his silence after the Holocaust. Finally, the article also briefly explores B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956)’s views on the Jews and the Indian pariahs.
PubDate: 2023-10-24
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- Gandhi the Artist
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Abstract: Abstract Daya Krishna, one of the most original voices of contemporary Indian philosophy, writes that “Gandhi is as rare as…a Shakespeare or a Michelangelo” (1999). Mohandas K. Gandhi himself writes that “Jesus was, to my mind, a supreme artist” (1924). And Tridip Suhrud, Gandhian and Gandhi scholar, speaks of “Gandhi’s striving to lead the life of a ‘supreme artist’ ” (2018). The question raised in this article is this: If Gandhi was an artist, then what is his artwork' In reply, the author suggests that Gandhi himself is the artwork of Gandhi the artist. To substantiate this contention, Gandhi is depicted first as a “hunger artist,” in dialogue with Franz Kafka’s 1924 story of the same name, and second as a “death artist” crafting (determining, choosing) his death. Here the author draws on Ramchandra Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson and an intriguing philosophical voice, and examines Judah L. Magnes’s 1939 letter to Gandhi.
PubDate: 2023-10-16
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- Rebb Binyamin’s Gandhi: India, Islam, and the Question of Palestine
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Abstract: Abstract Rebb Binyamin (pseudonym of Yehoshua Radler-Feldman; 1880–1957) was a leading figure in movements that called for the establishment of a joint Jewish-Arab political framework in Palestine and that sharply criticized the Zionist cooperation with the British colonial authorities. In the early 1920s, he began exploring the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) as the basis for his critical approach toward the hegemonic Zionist discourse. In his writings Rebb Binyamin emphasized Gandhi’s refusal to reconcile himself to the British colonial “divide and rule” policies by creating divisions between Hindus and Muslims, the Indian anticolonial struggle that he led, and the way this struggle inspired the development of anticolonial movements in the Middle East. These aspects of Gandhi’s political repertoire were considered by Rebb Binyamin as a framework for the critical discussion of the ways in which the British colonial authorities perceived the Zionist movement as their representative and pointed to the fact that the Zionist-colonial partnership was an obstacle to the crystallization of Jewish-Arab cooperation. This article focuses on the ways in which Rebb Binyamin’s reading of Gandhi served as the basis for his critique of hegemonic Zionist discourse and practices.
PubDate: 2023-10-11
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- Thinking about Ethical Politics: Gandhi’s Spirituality versus
Levinas’s Philosophy-
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Abstract: Abstract In 1962, Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) was asked about the political implications of his ethics and the possible similarity between his philosophy and the writing of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948). They both were aware of the considerable tensions between politics and ethics. Both tried to construct ethical politics, and both thought about the ethical aspects of politics. The differences were obvious. Gandhi was an Indian thinker who embraced Hinduism, Christian ethics, Western philosophy, and Leo Tolstoy’s spiritual writings. Levinas was a Western philosopher with a traditional Jewish background, familiar with Russian literature. Gandhi was a social figure and political leader who based his attitude and activism on spirituality. Levinas was a phenomenological philosopher who based his perspective on ethics, underpinning his political philosophy. Nevertheless, this article suggests a philosophical study of Gandhi’s writings compared to Levinas’s teachings. This new perspective explains Gandhi’s philosophy by focusing on the establishment of the subject, the validity of ethics, the search for truth, and the epistemological stance. This study would structure Gandhi’s political position based on spiritual and ethical thinking. This could clarify three main principles of Gandhi’s doctrine: striving for the truth, self-control, and nonviolence.
PubDate: 2023-10-11
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- Mother of Compassion, Mother of Wrath: Reflections of the Hindu Goddess in
Mirrored Māhātmyas-
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Abstract: Abstract This article examines the goddess we find in the Devī Māhātmya (the debut of the Hindu great goddess within the Brāhmaṇic fold around fifth century CE) and that of the Bhadrakāḷī Māhātmya (a regional Kerala Purāṇa composed some thousand years later) to show that both texts present us with a vision of the Hindu goddess which transcends the breast-tooth binary characteristic of Western scholarship. Our analysis—resulting from a careful synchronic reading of the text of the Bhadrakāḷī Māhātmya—demonstrates the extent to which the Bhadrakāḷī Māhātmya, like its pan-Hindu forerunner the Devī Māhātmya, integrates the episodic wrathful aspect of the goddess within an ultimately compassionate stance. Moreover, we draw on fieldwork on the worship of Bhadrakāḷī in Kerala to demonstrate that this ethos well transcends the realm of text to inhabit the heart of the Devī’s devotees.
PubDate: 2023-08-31
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-023-09342-5
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- Book Reviews
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PubDate: 2023-08-31
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-023-09343-4
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- Voices from the Margins: Early Modern Nāth Yogī Teachings for
Muslim Publics-
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Abstract: Abstract The Avali Silūk (The Ultimate Song) and the Kāfir Bodh (The Wisdom of the Infidels) are lesser-known yogic granths, or treatises, in the early modern North Hindustani Nāth literary tradition. Erased from the modern literary canon in the mid-twentieth century, these multilingual teachings are crucial to understanding how the Nāth Yogīs conceptualized their complex relationships with Muslim communities around the time of the Nāth sampradāy’s foundation. Although the better-known Sabadī (The Sacred Utterances) attributed to Guru Gorakhnāth frequently speaks of the porous religious identity of early modern North Hindustani Nāth Yogīs, the Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh are the only two known discourses that highlight Nāth Yogī engagement with Islamic publics from a Nāth point of view. This article examines these teachings, explores possible motives for their erasure in the modern printed canon, and reconsiders how the Nāth Yogīs expressed their identity and relationship with Muslim publics in early modern Hindustan.
PubDate: 2023-08-04
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-023-09341-6
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- Rethinking the Early Sufi Romance: The Case of Cāndāyan
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Abstract: Abstract In the formation of vernacular North Indian literature in “Hindavī,” an important role is played by “Sufi romance” (premākhyān). The earliest love narrative known as Cāndāyan, written in 1379–80, by Maulānā Dāūd has been cited as evidence supporting arguments about the rise of literary vernaculars by scholars foregrounding religious and political factors in that process. The purpose of this article is to rethink the broader arguments by revisiting the historical circumstances at the time and through a close reading for affect. It invites a shift in perception by demonstrating Cāndāyan’s roots in folk narrative performativity. Concurrent with that, it is a revision of the view that the author, Dāūd, was a member of the sultanate elite. Closely reading the text’s aesthetic elements also creates a new perspective regarding who its audience was. Finally, the article explores what constitutes a vernacular emotional regime and the role of emotional communities in the emergence of Hindavī. It goes beyond the specific case study in looking for new ways to conceptualize the connections between regional centers of power and early devotional communities, highlighting their deployment of interlinkages through multiple networks of cultural production.
PubDate: 2023-06-26
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-023-09340-7
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- Book Reviews
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PubDate: 2023-04-04
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-023-09339-0
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- A Religion “Based Upon Principles, And Not Upon Persons”: The Heart of
the “Strategic Fit” of Swami Vivekananda’s Promotion of Vedānta'-
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Abstract: Abstract Adapting the SWOT matrix used in the study of the effectiveness of organizations, this article employs the notion of “strategic fit” to examine reasons frequently put forward to explain the positive reception of Swami Vivekananda’s message by sympathizers during his visits to the United States and England. The article suggests that Vivekananda maximized the strategic fit of his message by addressing prominent Christian theological concerns of the day, which would have impinged on many in his circle who retained their Christian identity. It is argued that, by recasting these concerns within the framework of his understanding of Vedānta, Vivekananda loosened, if not completely untied, the theological moorings of the religious way of thinking of his audience, as exemplified by his invitation that each person should accept Ramakrishna “in your own light” and his emphasis on the “most intensely impersonal” nature of the religion he offered. The article concludes that Vivekananda’s insistence on the “impersonal nature” of the religion he promoted, and the fluid interface between Hindu arguments and his idea of a universal religion, arguably left contentious questions for later generations of devotees to resolve.
PubDate: 2023-01-14
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09331-0
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- Shifting Śāstric Śiva: Co-operating Epic Mythology and Philosophy in
India’s Classical Period-
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Abstract: Abstract This study accounts for disparate portrayals of divine destroyer Śiva in the normative Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata as opposed to Kālidāsa’s amatory Kumārasaṃbhava and Raghuvaṃśa by contrasting the primary and secondary Sanskrit epic authors’ respective reliances on the Mānavadharmaśāstra and the Kāmasūtra. By arguing, per Richard Johnson’s postpoststructuralism, that these mythological and philosophical differences deliberately reflect those poets’ specific sociohistorical contexts, this inquiry accounts more accurately for Śiva’s classical-epic depictions than do Stella Kramrisch’s and Wendy Doniger [O’Flaherty]’s investigations informed by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and Don Handelman and David Shulman’s researches influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s poststructuralism. The present work, in revising such prevailing Indological notions as Romila Thapar’s traditional construal of the “classical,” Donald R. Davis Jr.’s anthropocentric definition of puruṣārtha (human aim), and Sheldon Pollock’s unvarying characterization of śāstras (treatises), models a historically aware approach that appreciates the interrelationship of mythological philosophy and philosophical mythology.
PubDate: 2023-01-10
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09337-8
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- Swami Vivekananda and Knowledge as the One Final Goal of Humankind
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Abstract: Abstract In the opening lines of his essay “Karma-Yoga,” Swami Vivekananda claims that knowledge is the one goal of humankind. It is clear from the context of this claim that Vivekananda means to count knowledge—and spiritual knowledge in particular—as a final goal of humankind. His claim, then, is that spiritual knowledge is the one final goal of humankind. This claim seems inconsistent, however, with claims in other passages that count spiritual pleasure, freedom, and mokṣa itself as additional final goals. One interpretive strategy is to invoke Vivekananda’s kinship with Śaṅkara and count these states as ultimately identical. This interpretive strategy is problematic, however, for at least two reasons. First, several scholars advance convincing arguments against the view that Vivekananda’s nondualism is aligned with Śaṅkara. Second, reading Vivekananda as a nondualist in this context precludes further analysis that might be philosophically productive. The claim that spiritual knowledge is spiritual pleasure, for example, might be analyzed in terms of a part-whole relation. Part of spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman. To know the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman is to experience it, and to experience the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman is to attain spiritual pleasure. Part of spiritual knowledge, then, is spiritual pleasure. Other arguments might be advanced in support of the identity of spiritual knowledge and spiritual freedom as well, without simply assuming that Vivekanada disregards distinctions among these states.
PubDate: 2023-01-05
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09333-y
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- Religions as Yogas: How Reflection on Swami Vivekananda’s Theology of
Religions Can Clarify the Threefold Model of Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and
Pluralism-
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Abstract: Abstract This article has two purposes. First, it aims to reformulate the threefold model of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism that has become standard in the theology of religions. It will then give an analysis of Swami Vivekananda’s theology of religions that utilizes this reformulated model. Specifically, the article will argue for a differentiation of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism on three distinct levels: the level of truth, the level of salvation, and a third, increasingly important level in our current global situation, the level of social interaction. It will be argued that Vivekananda’s theology of religions is inclusivist with regard to truth and pluralistic with regard to both salvation and social interaction. It is hoped that the article will contribute both to the ongoing theological and philosophical conversation on religious diversity as well as advancing our understanding of the teachings of Vivekananda, whose thought has been characterized, variously, as pluralistic, inclusivist, and even as an articulation of Hindu nationalism. These varied interpretations arise partly from a failure to differentiate between the claim that many religions are true and the claim that many religions can lead their adherents to salvation, as well as a failure to give due attention to, or to cynically dismiss, the ethical claim of Vivekananda’s teaching that it is incumbent on all of us as human beings to cultivate an attitude of acceptance toward the religious other. Vivekananda’s teachings are thus at least as important in the twenty-first century as they were when he first articulated them.
PubDate: 2022-12-26
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09336-9
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- Introduction
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PubDate: 2022-12-24
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09332-z
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- Living in the World by Dying to the Self: Swami Vivekananda’s Modernist
Reconfigurations of a Premodern Vedāntic Dialectic-
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Abstract: Abstract This article is an exploration of the dialectic of this-worldly activism and the practice of self-effacement in Swami Vivekananda’s discourses. He often exhorts his audiences to cultivate the vigorous strength to live courageously in the world on the basis of their spiritual conviction that they are rooted in the true self (ātman) beyond all spatiotemporal limitations. The boundless ātman, to be realized by effacing the egocentric self, would become the imperishable source of their fortitude to live with fearlessness in a world of suffering. Since the ātman is not constrained by the egocentric bounds of the “I”, to become recentered in its illimitable heart is to move towards a universal morality. Through this return to one’s imperishable center of existential gravity, one transcends fear and hatred of the “other” as a radically alien being. While his socioreligious worldview is imprinted with aspects of Advaita as formalized by Śaṅkara, he also occasionally endorses the theocentric visions of Rāmānuja and Madhva and declares that all these Vedāntic pathways point towards the effacement of the ego and the generation of fearlessness.
PubDate: 2022-12-24
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09335-w
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- Hindu-Christian Dialogue on the Afterlife: Swami Vivekananda, Modern
Advaita Vedānta, and Roman Catholic Eschatology-
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Abstract: Abstract This article compares modern Advaita (nonduality) Vedānta and Roman Catholic afterlife beliefs, with special attention to the dialogue of Swami Vivekananda, formal Roman Catholic teachings, and Edith Stein. It draws also on other commentators and includes some brief reference to other forms of Vedānta. It analyzes significant congruences, parallels, differences, and critical issues. The article begins with a focus on essential similarities and contrasts in theological anthropology, situates these within the spiritual ideals of modern Advaita Vedānta mokṣa and Catholic Christian redemption, and relates them to conceptions of heaven, purgatory, hell, and reincarnation, between the two traditions. It also draws into the dialogue a view of rebirth espoused in the modern Christian Hermeticism of Valentin Tomberg.
PubDate: 2022-12-22
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09334-x
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- From Good to God: Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Virtue Ethics
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Abstract: Abstract This article argues that Swami Vivekananda developed a distinctively Vedāntic form of virtue ethics that deserves a prominent place in contemporary philosophical discussions. After showing how Vivekananda motivated his own ethical standpoint through a critique of deontological and utilitarian ethics, the article outlines the main features of his Vedāntic virtue ethics and his arguments in support of it. The article then compares the differing approaches to the problem of moral luck adopted by Vivekananda and by the contemporary philosopher Michael Slote. By means of this comparison, the article identifies some of the potential philosophical advantages of Vivekananda’s Vedāntic virtue ethics over other ethical theories.
PubDate: 2022-12-21
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09330-1
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- The Happiness that Qualifies Nonduality: Jñāna, Bhakti, and Sukha in
Rāmānuja’s Vedārthasaṃgraha-
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Abstract: Abstract The great eleventh-century figure, Rāmānuja, belonged to the Śrīvaiṣṇava community that worshiped the divine as Viṣṇu-with-Śrī, the Lord-and-Consort. But he also embarked on a project to develop an interpretation of the first-century Vedāntasūtra, which presented the supposedly core teachings of the major Upaniṣads, traditionally the last segment of the sacred corpus of the Vedas. Rāmānuja sought to reconcile the devotional commitments of Śrīvaiṣṇavism—which was built on the human yearning for the divine that was incomprehensibly Other while graciously accessible—with the conceptual demands of the Vedānta in which a profound identity between the individual self (ātman) and the impersonal, ultimate explanatory principle (brahman) was taught. This reconciliation of difference and identity came to be called “Qualified Nondualism.” In his earliest work, the Vedārthasaṃgraha, one of the ways Rāmānuja points to reconciliation is through identifying a single state of consciousness as both cognition of nonduality (the Vedāntic project) and the emotionally valent experience of happiness (the supreme expression of the human encounter with the divine). It does not seem that he systematically pursues this conception of how a state can be both cognitive and affective, and such an analysis will require independent philosophical analysis. Thus, this article argues that if a state of consciousness were indeed both cognitive and affective in this way, we would have a full explanation for how the devotional approach of a human being to Viṣṇu-with-Śrī can also be the self’s realization of identity with brahman.
PubDate: 2022-12-13
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09328-9
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- Celibate Seducer: Vedānta Deśika’s Domestication of Kṛṣṇa’s
Sexuality in the Yādavābhyudaya-
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Abstract: Abstract Vedānta Deśika produced his monumental poetic biography of Kṛṣṇa in a time when Kṛṣṇa-centered devotionalism was expanding to become perhaps the dominant mode of bhakti across South Asia. Central to this phenomenon is the growing popularity of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and especially of its exploration of Kṛṣṇa’s erotic play with the gopīs in his youth. Troubled by the unrestrained and seemingly adharmic sexuality of Kṛṣṇa, Deśika used the literary techniques and narrative paradigms of the mahākāvya to assimilate but also domesticate this increasingly important Bhāgavata episode: Kṛṣṇa’s eroticism remains central but confined within more conventional marital norms and is thus made dharmically and theologically acceptable. Once he has resolved these dharmic problems, however, Deśika is happy to explore the soteriological, devotional, and paradoxical dimensions of erotic love with Kṛṣṇa.
PubDate: 2022-12-10
DOI: 10.1007/s11407-022-09327-w
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