Interpreting Ramakrishna (Kalis Child Revisited)

Description

Book Specification

Item Code:	NAD193
Author:	Swami Tyagananda &Pravrajika Vrajaprana
Publisher:	Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Edition:	2011
ISBN:	9788120835320
Pages:	432
Cover:	Paperback
Other Details	8.5 inch X 5.5 inch
Weight	510 gm

Book Description

Back of the Book

Interpreting Ramakrishna is a substantial and conscientious work of scholarly and religious reflection- our best resource for understanding Sri Ramakrishna today. Instigated by recent debates on his identity and significance, the book fruitfully invites us to the much longer perspective, a centurys worth of scholarship by devotees, monastic writers, and academic scholars. But this book also charts a path for fruitful reflection on Ramakrishna for the 21st century. We can only thank Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vrajaprana for providing us with critical scholarship that is honest, unpresuming, and deeply spiritual.

Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Prakmam Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School

Much has been written, pro and con, about Jeffrey J. Kripals controversial book, Kalis Child. Now the time may be ripe for a thoughtful overview of the many issues related to the controversy. Such a balanced overview is now available in Pravrajika Vrajapranas and Swamii Tyaganandas new book, Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kalis Child Revisited. Overall their treatment of the issues, thought clearly from their perspective as devotees of Ramakrishana, is balanced, scrupulously fair, and generous to all sides in the debate. The book will be well received, I think, by all participants in this on-going conversation and will surely elicit spirited but balanced responses from other participants.

Gerald Jemes Larson

Tagore Professor Emeritus Indiana University, Bloomington, and Professor Emeritus, Religious Studies University of California Santa Barbara.

Interpreting Ramakrishna Kalis Child Revisited is a responsible and balanced response to Kalis Child that returns the critical focus to the text sets it in historical and cultural context and issues a urgent call for constructive dialogue between scholars and insiders. It is a patient and elaborate illustration of the possible dangers and limits of cross-cultural studies. This is a welcome contributions to Ramakrishana that treads the uncommon middle ground between the extremes of the uncritical insider and the unexamined assumptions of the scholar.

Anantanand Rambachan

Professor and Chair, Religion Department Saint Olaf College.

About the Book

The Indian mystic Rarnakrishna. (1836- 1886) profoundly infhieced. not only Hinduism in India but also Western mterpretations of Hinduism Raniak-ishna has played a critical role in Indias religious revival and the growing influence of Hinduism in the West. While he has generally been viewed in the past century as an exemplar who taught interreligious harmony and individual spiritual striving, this view was shaken with the publication of Klis Child, with its provocative assertions of Ramakrishnas alleged troubled past and homoerotic proclivities. Was Ramakrishna a troubled mystic and hornoerotic Tntrik, whose secrets have been . hidden from public view? Inteipreting Ramakri.hna: KIIs Child Revisited offers both a spirited critique of Kaas Child as well as an in-depth examination of Ramakrishna scholarship over the course Of thern past century, identifying how Ramakrishna has been viewed according to the changing teiur.f the times Providing a thougjitful examination of the problematics inherent in. translation and interpretation, Interpreting Ramakrishna offers readers a new model for interpreting historical religious . figures that is consistent with rigorous scholarship while mamtainmg its rootsm mdigenous paradigms Interpretrng Ramakrishana is, according to Harvard professor Francis X. clonney, the best resource we have for understanding Sri Ramakrishna today.

About the Author

Pravrajikavrajaprana has been a nun at the Sarada Convent of the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Santa Barbara since 1977, taking her sannysa vows in 1988. She is the author of Vedanta: A Simple Introduction (1999) as well as other books, book chapters and articles on the Hindu traditions. Her writings have been. translated into a number of European and Asian languages. A frequent lecturer, she has presented papers at the American Academy of Religion, the East/West Philosophers Conference, and Boston Universitys Institute for Philosophy and Religion.

Swami Tyagananda has been a monk of the Ramakrishna Order since 1976, receiving his sannsa vows in 1986. He is the head of the Orders branch in Boston and also Hindu chaplain at Harvard and MIT. He has edited and translated ten books including Monasticism: Ideals and Traditions (1991) and TheEssence of the Gita (2000). He has presented:papers at thern American Academy of Religion and givcs lectures and classes at the Veclanta Society and at Harvard, MIT, and other colleges in and around Boston.

Foreword

When I was approached to write this Foreword, my initial reaction was that I was not an appropriate choice. 1 do not know Bengali and though my indebtedness to the Hindu tradition is inestimable, it is not my primary tradition. On further reflection, however, I found myself warming to the invitation. My field is comparative philosophy and religion, and I have grown restive with what seems to be a growing trend in religious studiesusing religion for political ends. KJlis Child, I realized, would give me a tangible target on which to focus my thoughts on this topic.

The hijacking I am thinking of takes place both within and between religions. Within Christianity, politically correct has emerged to designate the political orthodoxy that reigns on campuses, which is the liberal stance on issues of race, gender and lifestyles. My concern here, however, is with the way this orthodoxy moves across religious boundaries, Klis Child being the case at hand. In devoting this Foreword to arguing that charge, I admit that I am crossing a field charged with landmines, but the matter is important so I persevere.

With his 1978 book titled Orientalism, Edward Said was the first visible non-Westerner to blow the whistle on this foul playtwo hundred years in which scholars laid down in Western mind a view of the non-Western world that purports to be accurate but actually is sharply skewed by Western assumptions. However much that book was needed, it is not a responsible book, for Said was victimized by his academic discipline, comparative literature, which in his generation was dominated by Michel Foucaults contention that truth is simply a cover for power plays, so in Orientalism Said plays his cards to put down the West and triumph over it.

The responsible treatment of this subject had actually been in place for over a decade when Said wrote Orientalism, but having been written by a less publicly visible figure, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, it did not receive the attention it deserved. In Nasrs book, the 1964 Gifford Lectures Knowledge and the Sacred, he uses his invitation to deliver those lectures to turn the tables responsibly on the West. What he says in effect is: For two hundred years we Orientals have been listening to what you Occidentals think of us. This is my opportunity to let you hear what we think of you. And without raising his voice, he proceeds to tell us.

All he and I ask for, really, is what everyone wants, the author of Kdli x Child, Jeffrey Kripal, included: fair play. The problem is how to achieve it, and in cross-cultural dealings the difficulties compound, for stepping beyond ones own culture is a little like trying to step out of the shoes one is walking in. The requirement for those of us who work at this problem and who are at the top of the multicultural heap is how to steer clear of imperialism, for there is cultural as well as national imperialism. I may be unusually sensitive to this requirement for I grew up in the China that European imperialists had carved up among themselves, and Shanghai American High School was located in the French Concession where on walks off our residential campus 1 would pass parks marked No dogs and Chinamen allowed. Be that as it may, when I decided to make comparative philosophy and religion my academic home, I vowed to do everything I could to try to deal fairly with the cultures I crossed over into.

How was Ito overcome the gravitational pull of ethnocentrism and do this? Early on I settled on three guidelines. First, target the profoundest texts in the tradition in question and do my homework by steeping myself in them. Second, to test my comprehension I would then seek out the greatest living exponents of the tradition, pilgrimage to them, and apprentice myself to them for as long as sabbaticals and vacations allowed. (In the case of Hinduism, the scholars were T. R. V. Murty and T. M. P. Mahadevan, while at home my local swami in St. Louis, Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna Order, stood in for them admirably.) My final step would be to run everything I wrote about the tradition past these mentors to check it for accuracy. Kripalwith whom I have had a brief exchange in The Harvard Divinity Bulletinthinks this last step would preclude criticizing other traditions, but not at all. I am a staunch believer in interfaith dialogue as a way religions can learn from one another, but only when critics withhold their criticisms until they have made sure that the targets at which they are aimed are rightly positioned.

Right positioning here begins with accurate translations of the documents the critic cites, as well as the cultural sensitivity to present that study in a contextually authentic way. The book in hand is devoted to a scrupulous report on places where Kripals conveniently adapted dictionary Bengali fails to meet these requirements.

Fair play requires that people who enter other cultures do so tactfully, and here the shortcoming of Kdlis Child becomes glaring. In arguing that Sri Ramakrishnas ecstatic mystical experiences were powered by his homoerotic libido, the book has offended Hindu sensibilities more even than did the tracts of early bigoted, poorly informed and polemical Christian missionaries.

It is hard to believe that this took Kripal by surprise. With his admirable empathy for the plight of homosexuals, Kripal must have known that it is a sensitive issue to address publicly even at home; if a candidate in an election campaign were to refer to his opponents lifestyle, it could cost him the election for being seen by the electorate as a low blow, foul play. Or put it this way: would Kripal have chosen to write his doctoral dissertation on the way the lifestyle of a beloved mentor powered the virtues that Kripal so respects? How, then, could he have thought that such discretion doesnt apply when one ventures onto foreign soil, especially since the meaning of sex is highly culture specific and almost incomprehensible to outsiders. Kripal doesnt even mention this decisive point, which raises the question of whether he was even aware of it.

Much more could be said, but it is not the mission of forewords to argue the case of their books, which in this case its authors do admirably. To put the best face I can on Kripals unfortunate book, perhaps it can serve as an object lesson on the way cross-cultural discussions should not proceed. I sincerely commend the authors of this book for their self- respect in standing up to KJlis Child wisely and with dignity.

PREFACE

Problematizing the way in which Indian religion has been represented within Western scholarship … is an exercise in calling into question the paradigms of knowledge and constellations of power that have continued to divide the world up into us and themmaintaining an asymmetrical relationship between the relatively powerful and the relatively disempowered.

The question which greets the publication of any book is, why was it written? There are several reasons for writing this book: First, despite the controversy which has accompanied Klis Child since its publication over a decade ago, little has been written to contextualize it within the body of Ramakrishna literature.

Second, while a great deal has been written about the furor which has dogged Klis Child, the discussion has moved increasingly away from the text itself. Illustrative of the controversy it continues to provoke, political philosopher Martha Nussbauni has recently weighed in on the subject in The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and Indias Future. Significantly, Nussbaum places the Kalis Child imbroglio within the context of Hindu right-wing extremism and the threat this holds to Indias history of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. This raises the question of how a book on Ramakrishna, of all the unlikely people, could have ended up in a book on Hindu extremism. A decade ago it is unlikely that anyone could have predicted this scenario. But Klis Child has taken on a life of its own, quite independent of the original text. To make sense of the reaction the book provoked and continues to provoke to this day, it is necessary to step back and examine the original text as well as the scholarship which preceded and followed it.

Third, it is important to examine the ways in which the Klis Child debate has changed over time. How and in what ways the controversy became transformed is an important study in itself.

Finally, in many ways the Kdli s Child debate embodies the tensions which exist between the believing community and the academic community, though these groups are not mutually exclusive. This tension is hardly unique to Ramakrishna studies or even Asian studiesthe same tension exists between the believing Judeo-Christian communities and the academics who study their religious figures and leaders. Yet when dealing with religious figures from the South Asian traditions, other factors figure into the equation, such as the power differential between the West and the rest along with the scuff marks of colonialism and residues of Orientalism.

It all began quietly enough. Published in 1995, Jeffrey J. Kripals Kalis Child: The Mystkal and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna was given the American Academy of Religions History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995, an honor which, when discovered, deeply rankled the insider community (by insider we refer to both ethnic Indian Ramakrishna devotees as well as a much smaller group of non-Indian Ramakrishna devotees). Klis Child was greeted with nearly universal praise by those within the academic (largely outsider) community. Later, the book would be buffeted by nearly universal condemnation from the insider community. Similarly, the author received both kudosby and large from the academic community in the Westand denunciation, which again came largely from the insider community. So heated did the controversy become that the author became the recipient of hate mail and even death threats. One cannot doubt that the truly frightening outpouring of venom the author received played a part in the consequent outpouring of support which he received from the academic community.

Yet in a sense, the hostile outcry and the protective response only served to muddy the waters about what the text actually had to say. This condemnation/support motif prefigured a trend that would replay in the years to come: after the Klis Child controversy simmered down, the Paul Courtright/Ganea controversy arose, followed by the James Laine/Shivaji controversy.2 This has presented no small difficulty for the present authors, who have found themselves unwillingly lashed to the mast of Hindu fundamentalism,right-wing Hindu extremism and Hindutva polemic. Indeed, more than a decade after Ka!is Childs initial publication, it is difficult to re-imagine the original circumstances into which the book fell.

Since that time, Klis Child has been effectively yoked to the Paul Courtright/James Lame controversies, which, like Klis Child, elicited a fevered response from the Hindu community. It should be noted that Ramakrishna devotees were to a great extent either ignorant of or not interested in either controversy; in fact, most Ramakrishna devotees remain unaware of the Klis Child controversy since most of them have little interest in what Western academics have to say about Hindu religious figures. Unfortunately, the polemic which has attended the Kripal/Courtright/Laine controversies has resulted in an us versus them paradigm, with core issues being obscuredopponents being branded as either aligned with Hindutva or armed with Western hegemonic motivations. Yet the issues at stake were never so simple as to be reducible to questions of Hindutva agendas or Western hegemony.

The interpretative waters surrounding Klis Child became further muddied by the works being drawn into a discussion of the cultural acceptance of homosexuality, by the accompanying charges of homophobia leveled at those who contested Kripals theses, and by the discussion of the question whether the academy should be the locus for. human liberation movements. Yet lost in the ascending din was the fact that the focus of the debate had shifted away from the text itself. Lost in the furor were the primary issues of whether the theses presented in KdIis Child were sustainable and whether the book presented material that could withstand critical scrutiny. These nuts and bolts of scholarship became almost extraneous to the debate, as issues of Hindutva and Indian democratic values, academic freedom, homophobia, and human sexual rights, and Hindu religious sentiments and religious orthodoxy took center stage. In such a highly polarized environment, created by years of controversy which was associated with multiple issues and multipleoften belligerentrespondents, contesting Ka!i s Childs theses became in itself prima facie evidence of Hindu extremism and homophobia.

Indeed, one must think long and hard before walking into this controversy at all. First, since the author of Klis Child has already been the recipient of a concerted hate campaign, it seems particularly graceless to question his scholarship. If nothing else, one risks the impression of being considered a bad sport. Hasnt he been put through enough? Further, by questioning the theses in Klis Child, we are well aware that we risk being branded yet again with the stamp of Hindutva, guilt by association having already been used to discredit arguments against Klis Child. For the sake of transparency we need to clarify that we both self-identify as socially and politically liberal, sharing no agenda and having no truck with the Hindutva crowd except for a deep love for India (which most South Asia scholars share as well). While this kind of avowal seems unnecessary, because we have already been labeled with a Hindu right-wing agenda tag, the declaration must be made in bold large print.

Yet- eruitnly as far as the present authors are concernedthe lemu wa never one of right-wing (or left-wing) agendas, nor was it ever a matter of Ramakrishnas (or anyone elses) sexual preference. The Issue was whether Kli s Child withstood critical scrutiny: Were the theses presented in the book tenable? Did the texts quoted in Kali s Child say what they purported to say? For all scholars, whether identifying themselves as outsiders or insiders, Hindus or non-Hindus, the real question at stake should be whether Kalis Child withstands critical scrutiny.. If it does, theninsider or outsiderlet the chips fall where they may. If the book does not withstand critical scrutiny, then issues of Hindutva, Indias democracy, academic freedom, human sexual rights, etc.although deeply importantremain nevertheless peripheral to Klis Child.

Because Kalis Child became so much more than a book in the intervening years between its publication and the present books publication, it has been extremely difficult to unglue the text of Klis Child from later controversies involving Western academics and the Hindu community. However, in order to understand either the book or the ensuing controversy, we must first pull out the text from its subsequent accretions. In this book we unravel Kripals work from the controversy by returning to Klis Child as text, in addition to closely studying the scholarship which provided its backdrop. From this vantage point we can see where the controversy began, how and in which ways the debate changed course, and in ,vhich direction we are headed.

Why did the debate surrounding KaIis Child become so heated and why was there so little neutral ground? Certainly much of the antagonism surrounding the controversy was due to the fact that the academic and insider communities each viewed themselves as the appropriate location for the most authentic interpretation of Ramakrishna. Both the academic community as well as the insider community viewed themselves as the sole possessors of the credentials necessary for assessing Ramakrishna. As a result, it was not only the criteria and the methods by which to assess a Hindu religious figure that became contentious issues but also who was deemed a valid authority.

Ramakrishna literature has historically been dominated by two models, that of the insider communitythe emic approach which exclusively employs insider literatureand that of the academic community, the outsider or etic approach. Each of these models has produced its own literature. The academic community has often written off insider literature as hagiography, thus dismissing serious studies by insiders on their own tradition. On Ihe other hand, academic literature on Ramakrishna has generally failed to attract the attention of the insider community Kalis Child being the singular, notable exception. The publication of Klis Child and its reception by the academic community dramatically pitted the insider community (which we must remember included only those who were aware of the controversy) against not only the books author but also a significant group of South Asia scholars. In contrast, those within the insider community who were aware of Klis Child greeted the book with near universal outrage and condemnation. In very short order the two independent and self-sustaining communities of Ramakrishna devotees and academicsgenerally complacent and isolated in their respective non-intersecting worldsexperienced a head-on collision.

Yet whether Ramakrishna is seen from the vantage point of Western academia or from the viewpoint of the insider community, the view of any religious figure when taken exclusively from any one side of the outsider/insider divide will only provide a partial glimpse of the subject in question. While Ramakrishna devotees will see Ramakrishna in one way, Ramakrishna scholars will very likely see him through a different lens. Yet both sides of the divide can benefit if they adjust their respective lenses to perceive what the other side has to offer. Only then can they locate a larger picture of not only the religious figure in question but also of those scholars and members of the insider community who inhabit the opposite sides of the divide. Both sides can gain from this endeavoi since neither community can claim complete knowledge of their subject.

While this book critiques Kalis Child, it was also written with the hope of creating a bridge between the two sides of the insider/outsider divide. We hope that this book will be one among many which will eventually create porous borders between the academic and insider communities. We see Kdlis Child as an opportunity for serious, constructive dialogue between academics and Hindu insiders.

This book is an attempt by two academically inclined monastics of the Ramakrishna Order to initiate a serious, constructive conversation between the academic world and the Hindu community. While most scholars of religion in the West are generally deeply respectful of the tradition they study, they often work from the stance of critical distance, willed or otherwise, and this is particularly true of the Hindu traditions. There is not a great deal of genuine close contact between scholars of religion and the Hindu believing community, and open-mindedue)rinnuns between those associated with the two groups are infrequ nt liiis is a loss for both sides of the divide. In order to share our respective visions and perspectives, a healthy dialogue needs to take place. In order for healthy dialogue to occur, forthright and respectful critiques also need to take place, particularly when it is perceived that some correctives are necessary to open and creative dialogue. As part of the project of creating space for dialogue, this book critiques Klis Child, honestly and respectfully and, just as importantly, it addresses a number of fundamental assumptions which not only supported Klis Childs major theses and fueled its positive reception in the academy but also undergirded earlier academic studies of Ramakrishna.

We have written this book neither to assign blame nor to demonize anyone on either side of the insider/outsider divide. While there has long been a hermeneutic of suspicion within academia, a similar hermeneutic has recently been created within the Hindu community as a perceived means of self-defense. These mutual suspicions have only added more mortar to the existing walls between the two communities. It is easy to demonize those who write books about Ramakrishna in ways found offensive by the Hindu believing community. It is equally easy to demonize those who would wish to ban those books and demoniac their authors. Rather than adding to the invective, it is much more productive, and much more interesting, to ask: Why do we see what we see? Why do we interpret the way we interpret?

If nothing else, Kdlis Child and the controversy surrounding it have amply demonstrated that Ramakrishna and Ramakrishna studies remain significant and relevant issues today. While Ramakrishna died well over a century ago, both Ramakrishna and Ramakrishna studies continue to provoke interest, debate and vigorous discussion. Academic exploration, continuing historical research and increasing levels of cultural awareness have augmented both the allure and the debate surrounding Ramakrishna, a process that will certainly continue in coming years.

Interpreting Ramakrishna examines Ramakrishna scholarship from its inception over a century ago and contextualizes Klis Child within that framework in the first chapter. Utilizing original source texts and historical findings, we examine both past and current Ramakrishna scholarship within its cultural and historical perspective. We closely study Klis Child as text in the second chapter and, in the next chapter, we analyze the history and the many-sided implications of the controversy surrounding the book. We examine the factors involved in the debate surrounding Kalis Child, which in turn serves to demonstrate what elements are at play when religious figures from the Hindu traditions are placed in the context of modern Euro-American scholarship. In the fourth and the fifth chapters, we take a closer look at the issues of interpretation and translation within the context of Kalis Child. The final chapter gives us the opportunity to share our vision of the future of. Ramakrishna studies.

Throughout the course of this book we have found it difficult to avoid cultural/geographic generalizations such as West and East as well as Western and Eastern. Edward Said famously condemned the exoticization of the mystic East as unreconstiucted colonialism. Obviously, the East can be considered East only in relation to the West. It goes without saying that the West can only be West to the extent that there is an East as an antipodal geographic/cultural location. While we are aware that the use of these artificial dichotomies presents a minefield, we nevertheless have chosen to employ these generalizations because they still retain some usefulness. What is important is that we acknowledge their inherently problematical status.

On a similar note, we employ the terms insider and outsider, sometimes in the context of the Hindu traditions but more often in the context of the Ramakrishna movement. These terms point to a dichotomy that does not always exist. There are a large number of Westerners, academics among them, who are insiders. There are also a large number of Indian academics who are outsiders, as their methods of assessing Hindu religious figures reflect their adherence to the methods of their Western academic training rather than their Hindu religious upbringing.

As to why we persevere in the use of these problematic generalizations, we state in our defense that our study begins with Ramakrishna scholarship in the 1 880s, when polarized thinking about East and West as well as about insider and outsider was, by and large, firmly in place. With the passage of time, the traffic across these cultural and geographical borders has greatly accelerated in both directions, making these boundaries increasingly fluid, but the categories, although increasingly difficult to define, nevertheless continue to exist. Thus, the generalizations that we employ are just thatgeneralizations. We are well aware that they are hopelessly vague when used for mapping out categories that often have, no hard and fast borders.

This book is an outgrowth of many years of involvement in the Kalis Child debate. Pravrajika Vrajapranas book review of Kalis Child, published in the Bulletin of Hindu Christian Studies in 1997, was an early foray into the controversy. Swami Tyagananda came upon the issue only upon his arrival in the United States in 1999, when he began his work at Harvard.4 When questioned by a faculty member about Kalis Child, Swami Tyagananda read the book and immediately began thinking about writing a response to the issues raised in the book. At this point it seemed advantageous to join forces. As a result, Pravrjika Vrajaprana was actively involved in preparing the manuscript of Kalis Child Revisited, or Didnt Anyone Check the Documentation?which was a four-month, breakneck effort to create a response to Klis Child, photocopies of which were informally distributed at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. While we had anticipated there might be some interest in our rebuttal, we were astonished by how much interest there actually was. Kalis Child Revisited soon morphed into a David-and-Goliath encounter when our Kinkos-photocopied response was refuted in a lengthy essay by Jeffrey Kripal in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Kripal, 2000/2001) and was r