Atheism and the Goddess: Cross-Cultural Approaches with a Focus on South Asia 303127394X, 9783031273940

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Atheism and the Goddess Cross-Cultural Approaches with a Focus on South Asia

Anway Mukhopadhyay

Atheism and the Goddess

Anway Mukhopadhyay

Atheism and the Goddess Cross-Cultural Approaches with a Focus on South Asia

Anway Mukhopadhyay Department of Humanities & Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

ISBN 978-3-031-27394-0    ISBN 978-3-031-27395-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my thanks to my colleagues, friends, students and the doctoral candidates working under my supervision for the various kinds of support and encouragement I have received from them. I would also thank my family members for their continuous support. I would thank my friend, Dr Sanjit Chakraborty, with whom I edited a special issue of the journal, Sophia, on the multicultural spectrum of atheisms. Thanks are due to the editors of Sophia—Purushottama Bilimoria, Patrick Hutchings and Saranindranath Tagore—and all the scholars and philosophers who contributed to that special issue. Some of the essays by these contributors, published in that special issue of Sophia, have been cited here, either to agree or to disagree with them. The entire engagement in this project was intellectually stimulating. Finally, I would thank Amy Invernizzi for her kind support throughout the process of making this book possible. Thanks are due to the peer reviewers as well for their valuable inputs. This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Ananta Charan Sukla (1942–2020), the founding editor of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics and an enthusiastic proponent of radical intercultural engagements in the fields of comparative cultural, literary and religious studies. It is a happy coincidence that, as I have come to know from his son, Sri Viraj Sukla, he was also deeply involved in the goddess-centred religious cultures of India and had first-hand knowledge and spiritual understanding of the Shakta traditions.

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Contents

1 Introduction: Religion, the Goddess and Atheism  1 2 Thealogy  and Atheism: Points of Convergence and Divergence 21 3 Is There a Tradition of Rejecting the Goddess? 45 4 Starting  or Ceasing to Believe in the Goddess: Faith Dynamics in India’s Living Goddess Traditions 73 5 Atheists and the Goddess103 6 Conclusion: A Goddessless World or Goddess as the World?127 Index133

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Religion, the Goddess and Atheism

Abstract  This chapter reinvestigates the connotations of the terms such as “religion” and “atheism” within the context of a multicultural and multi-religious world. How are these terms related to each other? When looked at from a cross-religious perspective, do they cancel each other out, or rather sensitize us to the complex ways in which “religious” and “atheistic” sensibilities may converge as well as diverge? Moreover, this chapter interrogates the ways the Goddess has often been excluded from the epistemologies of atheism as well as those of theism, thereby exploring whether we actually need an epistemic category of “a-thea-ism” to speak of the negation of the Goddess, which is not the same as atheism. The chapter underlines the main themes of the book and briefly introduces the chapters that follow. Keywords  Atheism • Theism • Religion • A-thea-ism • Goddess • Feminism • Theology • Thealogy • Gender • Universal Let me begin with a quotation from Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah that one may come across on several web pages related to goddess cultures in particular or religion in general: “A goddessless religion is half-way to atheism” (Fortune 1999, 153). I would like to take this statement not just as a point of departure for embarking on a discussion of “Atheism and the Goddess”, but also as a statement that can be problematized, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Mukhopadhyay, Atheism and the Goddess, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7_1

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deconstructed and renegotiated in a number of ways. However, before starting to explore the implications of such a statement, let me contextualize this quoted line within the overall framework of goddess discourse found in The Mystical Qabalah, the resonances (but not echoes) of which might be found in some of the critical arguments foregrounded in this book. Fortune writes: In the word Elohim we find the true key. Elohim is translated “God” in both Authorised and Revised Versions of the Holy Scriptures. It really ought to be translated “God and Goddess”, for it is a feminine noun with a masculine plural termination affixed. (1999, 153)

From this observation follows Fortune’s insistence that “we must worship the Elohim, not Jehovah” (1999, 153). A lot of interesting points begin to emerge from this observation when we seek to speak of the Goddess in the context of atheism. Let me begin with the most empirical issue and then move over to the intricate epistemological problems. When I type “goddessless”, the word processor asks me to check the term, underlining it in red. “Godless” is, of course, not a problem, but “Goddessless” is. While Fortune argues that, without the Goddess, a religion (it is evident that by “religion” she basically means theistic religion) will become quasi-atheist—as it will ignore half of the connotation of the word “Elohim”, religions in patriarchal monotheistic contexts, in general, are not really ready to see Goddesslessness as a problem. Outside the Abrahamic framework, there are religions where goddesses are present, but their function and metaphysical status vary from one context to another. A religion may have a number of goddesses but they may not be equal in status to “God”. On the other hand, there might be religious discourses where the Goddess is seen as equal to God (in the sense implied in Fortune’s rhetoric). Again, in certain religious epistemologies—such as certain Shakta discourses in Hinduism—the Goddess may in fact replace God as the supreme divine entity. However, in (theistic) religious language and in religious epistemologies in general, Goddesslessness is not a problem in the sense Godlessness is. Even though, as Fortune rightly points out, acceptance of the divine should clearly involve acceptance of the feminine as well as masculine aspect of the same, we are not used to seeing the erasure of the Goddess from religious discourse as a half-atheist gesture. In short, erasure of God is seen as atheism, but erasure of the Goddess is not even a concern because (theistic) religion is supposed to centre around

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God and not Goddess and hence the striking off of the Goddess or what Luce Irigaray would call a “female universal” (Martin 2000, 204, 219) is seen as a constitutive element of religion (patriarchal religion naturalized and hence not always acknowledged as such) rather than atheism. Fortune’s statement has extremely radical implications: if a goddessless religion is half-atheist, then most of the patriarchal religious discourses might be seen as half-atheist. This will, of course, radically alter our perception of “religion” and “atheism” and force us to appreciate the necessity to have a fresh understanding of these two terms. Graham Oppy has focused on the difficulty of framing pointed, singular definitions of terms like “religion” and “atheism” (2021, 517–519). However, he says that he has “stipulated” a specific meaning for the term “atheism”, that is, “‘atheism’ is the claim that there are no gods and there is no God”, whereas “‘agnostics’ are those who suspend judgement between ‘theism’ and ‘atheism’; and ‘innocents’ are those who have never considered whether there are gods or whether God exists” (2021, 521). Regarding “religion” and “atheism”, Oppy notes the differences between Western and non-Western forms of these categories, but he refuses to essentialize the differences as hopelessly incommensurate (2021, 520, 525–528). Features of “religion”, he notes, can probably be identified, even in the context of religious diversity, though he acknowledges that it is not probably judicious to believe that “we can give real or descriptive definitions of ‘religion’” (2021, 520). What is evident in Oppy’s discourse is, however, an apparently gender-neutral approach to “religion” and “atheism”, and he does not focus on the Goddess. The Goddess, thus, is not significant even in his understanding of the “agnostics” and “innocents” (in terms of the meanings stipulated by him to these terms). Godlessness is, of course, not to be exclusively categorized as atheism; one can live without God even without being a staunch atheist, as is evident from the categories of “agnostics” and “innocents” upheld by Oppy. It is understandable that the “innocent” may have no reason to be specifically bothered about the gender of the divine. However, one may wonder whether an agnostic would, within an atmosphere of patriarchal theologies, specifically think about the Goddess while suspending judgement between “theism” and “atheism”, especially when both of these categories bracket off the thea. In the context of the issue of “religion”, one may also focus on the religious “nones” who claim to have “no religion” (Lim et al. 2010, 596). Having no religion, however, is not necessarily the same thing as having

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no belief in any form of the divine. As Chaeyoon Lim, Carol Ann MacGregor and Robert D. Putnam observe, many religious nones have “some belief in God or a higher power” (2010, 599). In this case, at least apparently, religion and theism do not overlap. Now, the abstract “higher power” is different from the masculine gendering of the divine, and hence, from this statement, we do not come to know whether the apparent crossing out of “religion” by the “nones” may or may not sometimes replace “God” with “Goddess” in their private faith universes. In other words, can they sometimes be Godless and non-religious while at the same time embracing the Goddess? That possibility, at least theoretically, does remain. Focusing on the plurality of the figurations of the divine, Inigo Ongay de Felipe argues that “atheism” should in fact be plurally conceptualized, thereby enabling us to speak of atheisms: since “negative terms only attain their meanings by reflecting on the references they are the negation of”, de Felipe insists that “there will be so many kinds of atheisms as there are definite concepts of God which, given the variability of notions of the divine that the tradition has to offer, entails that the claim of atheism is just one that cannot be discussed in general” (2020, 167). Though de Felipe does not elaborate on the Goddess as an alternative universal in conceiving of the divine, he does refer to “Goddesses” while discussing atheism as a negation of the divine (2020, 169). However, while differentiating between two types of figuration of the divine (as god and as God) and discussing the distinction between two concomitant forms of atheism, he remains silent on which category of the divine the Goddess would exemplify (2020, 169–172). This theoretical formulation, nevertheless, makes us understand and acknowledge the fact that the negation of the Goddess as a female universal may in fact make us look for a different mode of theorization of the negation of the divine which is absent from the androcentric epistemes of atheism and theism. When placed on the multicultural spectrum of world religions, these problematics begin to assume an even more intricate shape. If a religion considers the Goddess to be the Supreme/Absolute and sees all possible manifestations of male divinities as subordinate to the Goddess, then, in a way, it is Godless (God being replaced with Goddess and “gods” being seen as emanations of the Goddess, in effect, turning all possible discursive formations of “God” into “gods”). Should we see it as a-theistic, then? Or, to put it otherwise, how would it be counted as a theist discourse if theism is seen as the celebration of God at the expense of the Goddess? If “religion” (in the conventional, Western sense of the term, conflating

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religion with theism [Gross 1999, 66]) is seen as the avoidance of Godlessness but not of Goddesslessness, then will a Goddess-centred religion count as religion, as far as the “malestream” discourses of religiosity are concerned? In that context, what will be the definition of atheism and what will be the definition of religion or even “theistic” religion for that matter? Should we then speak of a-thea-ism to denote the negation of the Goddess? However, in that sense, will not most of the religions appear to be coterminous with a-thea-ism? Would we then be forced to acknowledge that, within the patriarchal discourse of religion, a-thea-ism is the norm and atheism is the aberration? However, “religion” in its broadest sense, in multicultural, multi-ethnic contexts, may have diverse kinds of orientation to the divine: it may be grounded in singular, central male divinities (patriarchal monotheism built on the discourse of God the Father), singular female divinities (Goddess-centred monotheism or rather what might be called mono-thea-ism such as is found in certain discourses of Shaktism which nevertheless posit other divinities who are seen as but emanations of the Great Goddess), abstract ontological concepts of the transcendental Absolute (Advaita Vedanta grounded in formless, genderless, abstract Brahman) or even no divinity or ontological absolute at all (Buddhism and Jainism). It is in this larger sense of the term “religion” that we need to speak of the complex interconnections between the Goddess, atheism and religiosity. Robin Le Poidevin, in fact, reminds us that “theism is simply one form of religion” (1996, xx), and such a statement alerts us to the necessity to acknowledge that the semantic field of “religion” is much broader than assumed by Fortune. If we proceed from this position, we may insist that a religion may be Godless as well as Goddessless (or centred on the Goddess as well as—or, in some cases, rather than—God) and hence religiosity and the masculine form of the divine need not be seen as coextensive. However, the issue of “theism”—which is not really “simply” one form of religion but often oppressively projected as the form of religion—needs to be re-interrogated from the perspective of gender. We need to question the masculinist universality involved in the notion of “theism”, which thrives on the basis of the erasure and covert or overt denial of the “female universal”. Poidevin says: An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life without reference to such a being. A theist is one who asserts the existence of such a creator. Any discussion of atheism, then, is necessarily a discussion of theism. (1996, xvii)

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Certain significant problems emerge from this position. We need to notice the apparently ungendered nature of Poidevin’s “personal, transcendent creator of the universe”. Is it a creator or creatrix? This issue is important because, even in simple linguistic terms, the creatrix is often distinguished from the creator in certain languages such as Sanskrit. Cheever Mackenzie Brown underlines the problems of translating into English (the “androcentric aspects” of which are underscored by him [2002, 39]) the gendered epithets denoting supreme power which are attributed to the Goddess in a Shakta text such as the Devi Gita. Brown illustrates his point in this way: One relevant example is the term lord. In Sanskrit, ishvara and ishvari express the masculine and feminine forms, respectively, of a personal, divine ruling being. In English, such terms as “Female Lord”, “Queen”, “Lady”, or “Mistress” are all rather inadequate and misleading translations for ishvari. For instance, a literal rendering of the epithet Parameshvari (parama [“supreme”] + ishvari) as “Supreme Female Ruler” immediately raises the question, Who is the supreme, and possibly superior, male ruler? Accordingly, I have translated Parameshvari simply as “Supreme Ruler”, leaving no doubt about the unique and absolute authority of the Goddess. (2002, 39)

However, this kind of rendering into English of gender-specific Sanskrit terms in a Goddess-centred text is not an irresolvable issue for Brown as, while such gender-neutral translations “seem to slight or ignore the gender of the Goddess, there is little danger of forgetting her female nature in the Devi Gita, given the frequent references to her as Devi (literally, goddess) and as Mother” (2002, 39). Hence, there is a difference between Brown’s use of a gender-neutral noun such as “ruler” and Poidevin’s use of a similarly gender-neutral noun such as “creator”, as the former is situated within a constellation of gender-specific references to the supreme female divinity but the latter is not. Hence, it might be argued that the “creator” Poidevin’s theist upholds and his atheist denies is fundamentally a male one—God, to be precise. Graham Oppy, similarly, focuses on the “creator” while defining the “theist” who is, according to him, “committed to the claim that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, perfectly free, perfectly good, sole creator of the universe ex nihilo” (2006, 36). He, just like Poidevin, does not dwell on the gender dimension of this “creator”, but does specify that he is focusing on the “monotheistic god” (2006, 36) (and not the goddess, of course). It is, of course, evident that

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all these ultimate and absolute powers and qualities are associated with the male divinity here, making it impossible for the Goddess to be “omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, perfectly free, perfectly good”. As someone coming from a living goddess culture, a culture that accommodates a kind of Shakta mono-thea-ism within a largely polytheistic framework of Hinduism—where the Great Goddess is endowed with all the divine attributes mentioned by Oppy—I cannot but wonder: Am I a “theist”, or an atheist, then? The gender of the divine, in other words, does—obstinately—matter. It is, in other words, the male universal rather than the female universal which, here, grounds the discourse of divinity. Then, where is the place for the Goddess in these discourses of theism and atheism? Besides, if, as Poidevin suggests, all discussions of atheism are fundamentally discussions of theism, then the Goddess, being erased from the discourse of “theism”, is also erased from the discourse of “atheism” and hence she is simply struck off—she, in other words, does not matter. The “creator” does not actually subsume the “creatrix” within its semantic domain but rather excludes the latter and hence makes the “Goddess” a superfluous signifier in the philosophy of religion. Focusing on alterities in imagining the divine is something that has been foregrounded in much of the recent scholarship on the interface between gender and religion. Veronica Strang has contrasted the “subaltern ‘nature religions’ valorizing feminine principles” with the patriarchal monotheisms (2014, 108). Marilu Rojas Salazar has focused on panentheist spiritualities that facilitate the ecofeminist celebration of “immanent realism” (a la Mary Mellor), revolving around the principles of interdependence and interrelationality (2018, 93–95). While speaking of Mary Daly’s approach to the divine, Xochitl Alvizo says, “her very desire and commitment for women’s full participation in God that is Verb, requires that she—by her own philosophy, affirm every person’s be-coming regardless of gender or biological sex” (2012, 99). Alvizo, obviously, celebrates plural modes of imagining and being-with the divine. While criticizing the masculine figuration of the divine and questioning the idea of a transcendent God distanced from ecological immediacy, and presenting the Goddess as a loving entity who is organically connected with our embodied, earthly existence, Carol Christ, however, agrees with Judith Plaskow “that images of divinity must reflect the world’s diversity: female and male, both and neither, personal and impersonal, human and other than human” (2017, 98–100). Julia Watts Belser defines theology as “a grammar of the

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imagination” (2017, 112) and celebrates the plural theological imaginings that open up the vista of the divine to innumerable unique conceptions and perceptions: I recoil from the notion of the personal as a single, eternal essence. In my view, the personal God is not sin-gular, but infinite. … My God is a God of a thousand faces. … Each of us who glimpses God receives a knowledge of divinity that is unique and irreplaceable. … If the impersonal God is as vast and expansive as the ocean, then the personal face is a wave—rising up through the brief, brilliant arc of a particular life, before it touches sand and shore and is drawn back into the sea. (2017, 112–114)

Miranda Shaw, while promulgating that she conceptualizes the divine as the Goddess who is not just metaphorical but also a “living presence” to her, does not hesitate to proclaim, “I honor those who relate to the ground of being in other gendered and impersonal forms” (2017, 119). Judith Plaskow (2018), while discussing Max Strassfeld’s call for “transforming the field [that of Religious Studies] from a trans perspective” (75), recognizes and underlines the necessity for “transing and gendering Religious Studies”, acknowledging that, while feminist scholars of Religious Studies have pointed out and interrogated the “androcentrism and misogyny in the field” (76), one now needs to look at this field from the trans perspective as well (79–80). In all these cases, we witness an attempt at pluralizing the conceptualization of the divine and/or celebrating the plurality of such conceptions, in various terms including—prominently—those of gender. Precisely, in these discourses, theos is decentred and even thea is not presented as an alternative centre. However, does atheist discourse take into account these plural tropes of the divine and their concomitant onto-epistemic significance while dismissing “God” or “gods”? De Felipe’s arguments that I have already presented to the reader become absolutely pertinent here. If the divine is no more seen as singular, then how can we monolithicize theism and atheism? How can we endorse philosophical “atheism’s” arrogant, over-arching negation of all of these, without particularist engagement with each of them? Especially, how can we be insensitive to the gendered alterities emanating from the “grammar of the imagination”? Nevertheless, as is evident from the new horizons envisaged or foregrounded in the field of Religious Studies which has already been gendered, there are plural gendered figurations of the divine/sacred experience

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which do not just transcend but also interrogate the male-female binary and hence the theology-thealogy binary. However, as the present study is more limited in scope and concentrates on the interface between atheism and the Goddess, I shall not deal with the expansive plurality presented in the contemporary works in this field, but will rather work on and with the figure of the Goddess, in relation to atheism. This, however, does not mean that I am essentializing the “feminine”. My precise point is that, while discussing atheism, we should not just pay attention to the metaphorical renderings of the Goddess that are often prevalent in the Goddess movements in the West, but also look into those living goddess traditions where the Goddess is, as Miranda Shaw would probably concur, more than metaphorical, just as “God” is more than metaphorical in any patriarchal monotheism. Zachary Thomas Settle reflects on Mary Daly’s effective rupturing of the language of patriarchal theology, through the insertion of a new vocabulary and “performative” and liberatory word-­ play (2019, 23–39). It appears that the philosophical discourse of atheism too requires a similar rupture in its ostensibly self-unconscious androcentric language. It is the possibilities of such ruptures which this book seeks to look for and underscore. While I am aware of and appreciate the gender-neutral and gender-­ transcending figurations and formulations of the divine not just in philosophical thinking in the field of Religious Studies but also in various living religious traditions of the world in general and those in South Asia in particular, I think that re-interrogating atheism from the perspectives of all these religious epistemes would require a much larger and multifaceted project which the present study, unfortunately, cannot engage in. However, I strongly believe that the call for pluralizing atheism from the perspective of gender that this book presents would enthuse future scholars in taking up similar projects in the context of more plural and polyvalent genderings (or degendering, or transing) of the divine. Besides, there is enough reason to argue that the negation of the Goddess within certain androcentric theistic frameworks as well as her exclusion from atheistic thought is something that, in itself, calls for serious critical engagement. If a theistic discourse negates the possibility of the divine feminine, then the Goddess, as an excluded term, as an absence, indicates the dynamics of the gender politics of that religion. On the other hand, if an atheist refuses to take into account the history of the negation of the Goddess within the traditions of affirming “God”, then the resultant atheistic discourse ignores the nuances of gendered negation and affirmation within

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theistic thinking. The readiness or refusal to accept the hyphenation of the feminine and the divine, in both theoretical and practical terms, can offer templates of gendered figurations of the divine which may help us in thinking of the divine not just in terms of theology or thealogy but rather in terms of the nature of its gendering—is it oppressive and exclusionary or inclusive and non-­oppressive? Moreover, one may argue that the living Goddess traditions of South Asia may be seen as offering resources for more than thealogical thinking. They may be seen as presenting epistemologies which shatter gender binaries and modify the existing notions of masculinity and femininity (Mukhopadhyay 2020, 125–126). When the immanent-­transcendent Goddess in Shaktism is seen as embodied in all beings—male, female and also those outside this binary—and embodied in the world as a whole, then one may see this as an episteme that does not just feminize the universe but rather trans-es it. If an atheistic discourse does not engage with this complex function of Devi in the South Asian Shakta traditions, then its mapping of the “natural” and the “supernatural”, the divine and the non-divine remains incomplete and incomprehensive. In Hindu Shaktism, for instance, the Goddess is seen as viruddha-vakyartha-­sharirini, the embodiment of the meanings of paradoxical or contradictory statements (Shyamanandanatha 2014, 9). If this is the case, then the Goddess, within this tradition, can be seen as both supernatural and natural, earthly and celestial and so on. However, if we more radically reflect on her status as viruddha-vakyartha-sharirini, then we can probably state that she is both existent and nonexistent—contradictory enunciations involving affirmation and negation that become simultaneously valid. How would an atheist, whose job is to negate the existence of the divine, deal with a figuration of the divine that is open to (and immune to) both affirmation and negation? Though, in this book, I mainly deal with the Goddess and not the other (alternatively) gendered figurations of the divine, the South Asian Great Goddess, thanks to her peculiar ontological status, is a figure that is feminine but not just feminine, divine but not just divine. Precisely, the dynamics of this Goddess tradition operates on the basis of what might be called the logic of an ontological surplus. Hence, staging a friction between this deity and atheism might be productive in terms of rethinking gender and atheism in multiple ways, even though my focus is apparently on the “feminine” divine. The “Goddess”, in this context, becomes one of the many possible gendered alterities in the context of figuring/reconfiguring divinity and rethinking atheist discourse while keeping the discursive field open

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rather than closed to the other modes of gendered alterity different from both “God” and “Goddess”. It is now evident that, in order to speak of the relation between atheism and the Goddess, we need to carve out a new discursive space where the masculine universalism involved in terms like theism and atheism would be interrogated and radically renegotiated. Here, we also need to remember that feminist responses to “theism” have not been homogeneous. As Elizabeth Ursic observes, the approaches of women’s movements to religion have been diverse and, in this context, one needs to speak of “secular feminists, Goddess feminists, and religious reform feminists” (2014, 11). While the secular feminists “tended to reject religion altogether”, Goddess feminists did not reject religion per se but rather wanted to foreground the values and alternative symbols offered by Goddess religions that predated “Father-God monotheism” (2014, 12). Religious reform feminists tried to reform the existing frameworks of the “male-dominated religions” (2014, 12). A feminist theology such as the Sophia theology, for instance, urges Christians to emphasize the “feminine” dimensions of God, arguing that “Sophia is a scriptural way to explore the feminine face of God, or God Herself” (2014, 14–15). It is interesting to note that, between these three attitudes, there are differences in terms of approaches to religion, but all of them converge on one point: the critique of conventional “theism” as an androcentric discourse. One might say that a secular feminist would reject theism without looking forward to a thea-ism; the Goddess feminist would promote such a discourse of thea-ism; the religious reform feminist would seek to critically address theism, in effect hybridizing it with thea-ist sensibilities. However, interestingly, while the Goddess or at least her silhouette is present in the Goddess feminists’ and religious reform feminists’ discourses, she is not present in the secular feminists’ discourses of resistance to theism. In other words, it is only in this secular feminist discourse that we find complete Goddesslessness. Feminist atheism or atheist feminism—in the strongest sense of the word atheism—may be seen as coextensive with Ursic’s category of secular feminism and is obviously not just a feminist critique of religion but a radical denial of the Goddess as well as God. Atheism, in this case, obviously includes a-thea-­ ism. It would, hence, object to any affirmative response to the question of the efficacy of the Goddess in feminist politics. While exploring the interface between feminism and atheism, Christine Overall argues that the Goddess-centred feminist epistemologies are problematic in that they fail to give—rationally—any evidence in support of the existence of a Goddess

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(2007, 239–240). As she writes, “The mere convenience and greater moral acceptability of a non-sexist divinity are not enough to show that such a divinity exists” (2007, 240). Besides, she opines that “the cult of the Goddess is implicitly essentialist” (2007, 241). Overall in fact dismisses the feminist reconfigurations of divinity by asserting that “feminist reconstructions of God fail to avoid the kinds of moral, metaphysical, and epistemological objections that atheists have so successfully levelled at the traditional God” (2007, 241–242). Nevertheless, interestingly, she underlines the consistency between the position of a feminist pantheist and that of “negative atheism” which refuses to believe in “God as a personal creator” (2007, 245–246). Then, in those cases where Goddess faith may be seen as coterminous with pantheistic discursive formations, could we see an overlap between (negative) atheism and Goddess discourses? In other words, can the Goddess, if pantheistically conceptualized, be really reconciled with the atheist position, provided this position is that of “negative” atheism? In the later chapters, we shall explore this further. However, Overall’s treatment of the interface between atheism and the Goddess does not seem adequate when we probe deeper into this issue and look at the complex, multi-dimensional (and also cross-cultural) approaches to religion and feminism emerging from the works of Luce Irigaray and Rita Gross. In this context, it might be fruitful to look at Irigaray’s approach to the divine feminine. Irigaray takes as her point of departure Feuerbach’s belief that “God is the mirror of man; God is nothing else than the nature of man” (Hekman 2019, 118). As Susan Hekman insists, Irigaray believes that “[i]f God and man are identical, then women need a God that can provide them with the divinity that men already possess” (2019, 118). In this Irigarayan-via-Feuerbachian vision of divinity, the divine and the (gendered) human become one. In the context of our exploration of the relation between atheism and the Goddess, Irigaray’s position is interesting in that she takes as her point of departure an ostensibly atheist discourse such as Feuerbach’s which sees God as the illusion created by humankind, as “only the sum of the attributes that make up the greatness of man” (Lubac 1995, 29–30). This “atheist humanism” (Lubac 1995, 24), however, gives rise to a “female god”, in the context of the “sea change in feminist theory” called for by Irigaray (Hekman 2019, 119). Penelope Ingram notices how Irigaray’s position and that of the Goddess feminists converge on the point of defying “the androcentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition” (Hekman 2019, 121). Ingram “acknowledges that the goddess spiritualists look to the goddess tradition as the

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counter to this androcentrism, while Irigaray wants to embrace the values of the goddess tradition without adopting it unreservedly” (Hekman 2019, 121). In this case, we have an interesting and intricate re-­ constellation of religiosity, atheism and the Goddess. While Irigaray’s discourse of the female divine stems from Feuerbach’s atheist humanism it does not simplistically call for an erasure of religiosity per se but rather focuses on the necessity to restructure the paradigms and parameters of religiosity, by looking forward to a female divinity that is completely different from the patriarchal God and is “connected to the material world, to nature, and is sympathetic of the activities of embodied human subjects” (Hekman 2019, 122). In the following chapters we shall explore the deeper implications of this alternative model of (female) divinity with reference to atheist discourses. As we are trying to map the overlapping contours of atheism, feminism and Goddess discourses, it might also be pertinent here to refer to a unique feminist scholar who, probably, cannot be placed under the rubric of either of the three types of feminists listed by Ursic. Rita Gross identifies her position as that of a “Buddhist feminist”, and we need to underline the uniqueness of this position as Buddhism is “a non-theistic religion” (1999, 62, 65). Gross’s perspective, which is a religious perspective but not a theistic one may help us in understanding the complexities involved in renegotiating theism, atheism and goddess cultures in a multicultural context. It is for the same reason that it is necessary to look at Gross’s approach to goddesses, as this approach is non-theistic and feminist but does not square with what one might conventionally call an “atheist” approach. Gross, who underscores the importance of exploring “the religious experiences behind theological concepts” (1999, 66), does not dismiss the utility of goddesses in framing discourses of gender equity. She reminds us that even though goddesses may have been co-opted by patriarchy in different ways, it would be a mistake to see them as useless: “Though the presence of goddesses does not guarantee equity for women, their absence almost certainly guarantees inequity for women” (1999, 65). Here, non-­ theistic religiosity and sentiments oriented to, though not grounded in, the Goddess are hyphenated in a unique way. Gross’s non-theism is adequately distanced from theism and she unequivocally critiques the dominant theistic meta-structure influencing Western discourses on religion (1999, 66), but, unlike an “atheist” who might find Goddess/goddesses as well as God/gods superfluous, she underlines the utility of goddesses for people in general and women in particular (1999, 65).

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It is such complex modes of interface between religion, atheism and the Goddess which this book seeks to explore. One can claim with some certainty that the interface between atheism and the Goddess is an area that has remained under-explored so far. Moreover, ironically, even though goddess cultures or goddess religions are not part of millennia-old living traditions in the West, the scholarly discussions on the Goddess-centred discourses, especially in the context of the epistemological explorations thereof, tend to remain grounded in Western contexts (with a small number of exceptions). I strongly feel that without taking into account the living goddess traditions in non-Western locations and staging a dialogue (including dialogic friction or tension) between the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Western discourses of the Goddess and the millennia-­old living goddess traditions from non-Western locations, one cannot explore adequately the deeper implications of the interface between atheistic discourses and goddess epistemologies. This book, precisely, embarks on such an enterprise of interfacing atheism and the Goddess on a cross-cultural spectrum, drawing heavily on the living goddess traditions of South Asia and the complex forms of tension between the Absolute-as-­ male, the Absolute-as-female and atheistic sensibilities in that location. Various pertinent issues, including thealogy, Gaia theory, and the faith dynamics in living goddess traditions are taken up for detailed discussion, and a thematic re-assemblage of these issues under the rubric of “Atheism and the Goddess” is presented so as to facilitate a serious study of atheism within the context of Goddess-oriented systems of faith rather than in the “theistic” context which normativizes the figuration of the divine as a masculine universal. Religious Studies, in today’s pluralist context, needs to be sensitive to the necessity for rupturing the monolithic ideas about “religion”, “atheism” and the “divine”. Even though it is necessary to approach the Goddess from feminist perspectives, one needs to understand that “feminist” perspectives are not homogeneous, either. This book seeks to remain sensitive to the enormous heterogeneity that characterizes feminist theories and praxes and hence remains attentive to the multiple points of convergence, divergence and even explosive tussle between atheist discourses and politically charged Goddess epistemologies which emerge from the radical renegotiations of religion within the matrix of feminist discourses. Finally, I seek to underline the necessity to figure the Goddess outside the framework of feminist theologies as well, rather than permanently confining her to that framework. In fact, many of the instances discussed in this

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work reflect on the relationship between the Goddess and male subjects who deny or accept her existence. Precisely, when we speak of the living goddess traditions of South Asia, we should not merely focus on what the Goddess means to women but also reflect on what she may or may not mean to men. Chapter 2, “Thealogy and Atheism: Points of Convergence and Divergence”, deals with the points of convergence and divergence between thealogy and atheism. It underlines the way thealogy and atheism both undermine the privileged position of God the Father but notes how atheism—especially the most radical forms of atheism such as New Atheism— would discard the Goddess as well as God. However, a deconstructive reading of the interface between atheism and thealogy may productively problematize the issue and show us how atheism’s problem with the conceptualization of the divine as “supernatural” is also, directly or indirectly, addressed in thealogical discourses (often influenced by the Gaia theory), when such discourses equate the Goddess not so much with the supernatural domain as with the natural one. In this context, one nevertheless needs to remember that in the living goddess traditions such as Shaktism in Hindu traditions, the Goddess is figured as the metaphysical absolute as well as an immanent deity. While a milder form of atheism might be tolerant to the vision of an immanent divinity that, in a way, equates the human, the natural and the divine, Goddess-as-metaphysical-absolute will definitely be a problem for atheists. Precisely, atheism cannot accept the idea of supplanting God the Father with God the Mother. However, this chapter critiques atheism’s universalist approach to the notion of divinity, as the divine and the supernatural may not be coterminous across cultures. Besides, as Reid-Bowen insists, Goddess feminism’s conceptualization of divinity may be seen as informed by pantheistic rather than theistic terms and, therefore, a critique of Goddess feminism which interprets this divinity in theistic terms would be misleading (2016, 3). I, however, move away from the discourse of pantheism to promote the idea of a “SacredSecular” (Mani 2009, 1–4) figuration of the Goddess and try to examine how this mode of divinity may offer a space for “cohabitation” (in Judith Butler’s sense of the term [cited in duBois 2014, 12]) of theists, atheists and agnostics, rather than an unending agon between them. Chapter 3, “Is There a Tradition of Rejecting the Goddess?”, deals with an intricate issue that resonates with many of the concerns highlighted in the Introduction. While there is a tradition of rejecting God that informs the age-old discourses of atheism, it seems that it is difficult to speak of the

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epistemology and vocabulary of a tradition of rejecting, specifically, the Goddess. This difficulty emerges from the fact that “atheism” as a discourse does not underline the gendered nature of the theos it rejects and hence does not find it necessary to separately address the question of the differently gendered figurations of divinity which might involve not just gender shifts but also significant onto-theological shifts related to the issue of the relation between divinity, materiality and metaphysicality. It is in this context that I set out to discuss a non-Western discourse of “nontheism” such as Advaita Vedanta which puts forward ontological monism without lending absolute metaphysical status to a personal form of divinity (Frazier 2013, 372–373). As Frazier notes, “if one interprets atheism as rejection of a primary personal creator deity, then an array of atheist schools can be included within the range of Hindu orthodoxies” (2013, 372). She lists Advaita Vedanta as one of such schools (2013, 373). I, in this chapter, explore how Advaita Vedanta as a potentially non-theistic school can be seen as presenting a complex and multivalent discourse of rejecting the feminine divine even though the mode of “ultimacy” (Neville 2018, 3–5) it champions is undoubtedly genderless and not a masculine universal. I also highlight the tension between the powerful goddess traditions of India and the Advaita Vedantic programme of rejecting the divine feminine, in many cases leading to the Goddess’s forceful intrusion upon the life and consciousness of an Advaita Vedantin philosopher, such as Shankaracharya and Swami Vivekananda. An understanding of the complex history of the concept of maya (which might be seen as the main enemy of the Advaita Vedantin) would reveal the creative energy that maya stands for (Kakar 2008, 147–149). It is this creative power of maya which associates it with Shakti (the feminine divine energy) in later Shaktism. Shaktism, in fact, integrates both maya and Brahman, the Vedantic absolute, into the figure of Devi/Shakti and thus opens up the space for the divine feminine that a negative approach to maya (figured feminine) might seek to close off. Chapter 4, “Starting or Ceasing to Believe in the Goddess: Faith Dynamics in India’s Living Goddess Traditions”, dwells on a few instances in the context of South Asian goddess traditions which uphold the dynamic nature of belief or disbelief in the Goddess. In order to explore this, I draw on both historical documents and fictional texts. I focus on the dynamic nature of faith that we witness in Swami Vivekananda’s life and work—his sympathy for atheism, his focus on the abstract Brahman of Advaita Vedanta and the dialectic of defiance and surrender in his approach to the

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Great Goddess Kali. While in his young age, he did experience moments of atheist sensibilities, his struggle with Kali has a longer and more intricate history. It was Ramakrishna who forced him, a young intellectual hostile to Kali, to believe in her. In the later life of Vivekananda, we find a moment of ripeness, as it were, which involves complete acceptance of the Divine Mother, even though his metaphysical grounding in Advaita Vedanta taught him that the Self is all and omnipotent, second to none, and hence, according to this metaphysics, the goddess would, logically, be superfluous. Similarly, in the case of Tota Puri, Ramakrishna’s ascetic guru, we find a terribly defiant approach to the goddess who was unreal for Tota Puri, but who, ultimately, forced him to acknowledge her reality. As opposed to these instances of non-believer-turning-into-believer, we have the instance of Rabindranath Tagore who, despite inhabiting a religious atmosphere suffused with Shakta sensibilities and even despite absorbing occasionally the force of such sensibilities in his work, did not become a Shakta or a genuine believer in the Goddess as such. In his drama, Bisarjan and his novel Rajarshi, a priest of the Goddess, an apparently staunch Shakta believer, finally comes to reject the Goddess. Drawing on the observations of Robin le Poidevin (2021, 553), this chapter strongly insists that it is wrong to see faith or disbelief as fixed, immutable orientations. The believer might become a non-believer, and vice versa, due to specific or non-specific, abrupt or prolonged psychological, social or spiritual events or processes. I explore the specific psycho-spiritual dimensions of such transformations and underline the emotive force exerted by the faith dynamics on the human psyche. In the case of the Goddess, her maternal-feminine entity often inflects these emotional coordinates of faith in specific, gendered ways. Chapter 5, “Atheists and the Goddess”, seeks to present a cross-­cultural survey of intellectual and emotional responses of atheists to the Goddess in specific social, cultural and political contexts. I focus on the officially atheist Communist state of China which espouses the worship of the “folk” goddess Mazu and seek to explore the epistemological, political and cultural implications of this ostensibly paradoxical stance. I also underline the figure of Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and mystic who did conform to the largely atheist framework of Buddhism and yet was respectful and (mystically) responsive to Goddess Tara. This can, of course, be seen as another kind of “cohabitation” in Butler’s sense of the term—not that of the theist and the atheist in the same social world, but that of the atheist and the thea-ist in the same

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psychological world. Similarly, I explore the fictive goddess of Sigfried Gold who created a goddess and prayed to her, even though he did not believe in her. Finally, I deal with the fraught issue of “respect” in the context of the interface between atheism and the Goddess. Can one be respectful to other people’s beliefs even without sharing those beliefs? I underline how and why my approach to this issue is different from that of Simon Blackburn (2007, 180) and I juxtapose the quite divergent approaches of two atheists to the same Goddess, Kali: Armin Navabi, the founder of the Atheist Republic, and Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi atheist and feminist writer. I close this chapter by discussing two fictional texts, Devi and Nishithini, by Humayun Ahmed, a famous Bangladeshi writer. Devi depicts an atheist psychologist’s persistent refusal to accept the existence of a goddess whose presence and voice he seeks to dismiss as hallucinatory experiences of his “patients”, while Nishithini presents the moment when he finally comes to face the goddess in the midst of a very difficult situation, where she directly confronts his disbelief in a gently mocking tone. Chapter 6, “Conclusion: A Goddessless World or Goddess as the World?” sums up the explorations and analyses presented in the previous chapters and reflects on the possible future of the Goddess in a world that has been seen, in different geo-historic contexts, as ruled by God, deserted by God or even Godless, but has seldom been seen through the lens provided by the Goddess.

References Alvizo, Xochitl. 2012. Celebrating and Con-questioning Mary Daly. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 28 (2, Fall): 98–100. Belser, Julia Watts. 2017. Grammars of the Imagination: Reflections on Jewish Goddess, Disability Ethics, and Theological Particularity. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2): 111–116. Blackburn, Simon. 2007. Religion and Respect. In Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, ed. Louise M. Antony, 179–193. New York: Oxford University Press. Brown, C. Mackenzie. 2002. Translator’s Note. In The Song of the Goddess: The Devi Gita: Spiritual Counsel of the Great Goddess, trans. C. Mackenzie Brown, 35–39. Albany: State University of New York Press. Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow. 2017. Two Views of Divinity in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2): 97–103.

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De Felipe, Inigo Ongay. 2020. New (and Old) Atheism(s) Reconsidered. In Atheism Revisited: Rethinking Modernity and Inventing New Modes of Life, ed. Szymon Wrobel and Krzysztof Skonieczny, 165–178. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DuBois, Page. 2014. A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Fortune, Dion. 1984. Reprint 1999. The Mystical Qabalah. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser. Frazier, Jessica. 2013. Hinduism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 367–379. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gross, Rita M. 1999. Immanence and Transcendence in Women’s Religious Experience and Expression: A Non-Theistic Perspective. In The Annual Review of Women in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, vol. 5, 62–79. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hekman, Susan. 2019. Divine Women? Irigaray, God, and the Subject. Feminist Theology 27 (2): 117–125. Kakar, Sudhir. 2008. Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World. New Delhi: Penguin/Viking. Lim, Chaeyoon, Carol Ann MacGregor, and Robert D.  Putnam. 2010. Secular and Liminal: Discovering Heterogeneity Among Religious Nones. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49 (4): 596–618. Lubac, Henri de. 1995. The Drama of Atheist Humanism. Trans. Edith M. Riley, Anne Englund Nash, and Mark Sebanc. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Mani, Lata. 2009. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique. London, New York and New Delhi: Routledge. Martin, Alison. 2000. Luce Irigaray and the Question of the Divine. London: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association. Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2020. The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Neville, Robert. 2018. Philosophy of Religion and the Big Questions. Palgrave Communications 4 (126): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-­018-­0182-­9. Oppy, Graham. 2006. Arguing about Gods. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2021. Defining ‘Religion’ and ‘Atheism’. Sophia 60 (3): 517–529. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-­021-­00843-­7. Overall, Christine. 2007. Feminism and Atheism. In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 233–249. New York: Cambridge University Press. Plaskow, Judith. 2018. Transing and Gendering Religious Studies. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 34 (1): 75–80. Poidevin, Robin Le. 1996. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. London and New York: Routledge.

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———. 2021. Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith: Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift? Sophia 60 (3): 551–566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-­ 021-­00864-­2. Reid-Bowen, Paul. 2016. Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy. London and New York: Routledge. Salazar, Marilu Rojas. 2018. Decolonizing Theology: Panentheist Spiritualities and Proposals from the Ecofeminist Epistemologies of the South. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 34 (2): 92–98. Settle, Zachary Thomas. 2019. Spinning Survival with Witch Words: What Mary Daly Taught Me about Theological Language. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 35 (2): 23–39. Shaw, Miranda. 2017. Weaving and Dancing Embodied Theology. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2): 117–121. Shyamanandanatha. 2014. Saptashati-Tattva: Shri Durga Saptashati ki Darshanika Vyakhya. Edited by Ritashil Sharma. Prayagraj: Kalyan Mandir Prakashan. Strang, Veronica. 2014. Lording It over the Goddess: Water, Gender, and Human-­ Environmental Relations. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30 (1): 85–109. Ursic, Elizabeth. 2014. Women, Ritual, and Power: Placing Female Imagery of God in Christian Worship. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

CHAPTER 2

Thealogy and Atheism: Points of Convergence and Divergence

Abstract  This chapter explores how the discourses of thealogy and those of atheism may sometimes converge as well as diverge. Thealogy and atheism both decentre God the Father. However, the most radical forms of atheism, New Atheism for instance, negate the Goddess as well as God. However, a deconstructive reading of the discourses of both atheism and thealogy may problematize the conventional understanding of these terms, as atheism’s critique of the divine as “supernatural” may be juxtaposed against the thealogical discourses that often equate the Goddess not with the supernatural but with the natural. However, while a milder form of atheism might be tolerant to the vision of an immanent divinity that equates the human, the natural and the divine, the Goddess-as-­ metaphysical-absolute (a notion prevalent in living goddess traditions such as Hindu Shaktism) will definitely be a problem for atheists. However, this chapter’s central emphasis is on a critique of atheism’s universalist approach to the notion of divinity: how can a singular form of atheism negate all modes of the divine without negotiating the radical alterity involved in the plural figurations of the divine across cultures? Keywords  Thealogy • Atheism • Goddess • Immanent • Transcendental • Supernatural • Gaia • Embodiment • Exclusion • Erasure • New Atheism • Scientistic

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Mukhopadhyay, Atheism and the Goddess, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7_2

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While atheism has often been seen as an interrogation of and a battle against God, the gender dimension of this discourse has not been sufficiently negotiated. Is the fight against God also a fight against the Goddess? Or is there something common between the ideological thrust of the battle against God the “Father” in atheism and the interrogation of the Divine Father in thealogy? Can the Goddess be seen as an entity radically different from the imperious transcendental that the atheists find embodied in God the Father and hence come to challenge? Or, can the Goddess be seen as “transcendental” as well as immanent and hence subjected to the same atheistic denial of transcendence to which God is subjected in non-theistic or anti-theistic arguments? However, in that case, would “atheism” be the proper word? Or, as I have argued already, would we rather need a word like a-thea-ism? With these queries, we embark on a difficult project of epistemologically, ideologically and even politically renegotiating and reorienting some of the fundamental issues involved in the discussions of and debates over atheism. Scholars have effectively illustrated how, when seen from a cross-­ cultural perspective, “atheism” begins to find its apparently singular reference point—that of a denial of God (or even gods)—deeply problematized (Frazier 2013, 367; Vallely 2013, 352–362; Skilton 2013, 340–349). However, one also needs to deconstruct the concept of atheism from the perspective of gender epistemologies. Michael Ruse tells us that, in the Western parlance, the term atheism, like theism, is mainly applied to the contexts of three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2015, 8). However, he adds that, since the term atheism has a Greek origin, it, somewhat “illogically”, refers “not just to those who deny the Abrahamic God, but to those who deny any and all gods” (2015, 8). He reminds us that the terms “atheism” and “theism” are derived from “the Greek word for god, theos”, and hence the connotation of these terms may involve “gods” as well as “a god” (2015, 8). Interestingly, in this discussion, the terms “god” and “gods” remain apparently ungendered. Similarly, Jan Bremmer, while speaking of atheism in ancient Greece, keeps referring to god/gods. Even when he speaks of Demeter, he clusters Dionysos and Demeter together under the rubric of “gods”, without underlining the gender-specific identity of Demeter as a goddess (2007, 15). It is evident that the category of “gods” underpinned by Bremmer may be seen as a sort of class here, as in the case of “deities”. However, this masculine universalization of a class is something which the theorists of the epistemology and ethics of “sexual difference” would interrogate powerfully. Here,

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one may be reminded of Adriana Cavarero’s insistence that, in the West, one needs to articulate a symbolic order that would adequately accommodate the larger epistemic implications of “sexual difference” rather than confusing “men’s spiritual history … with the story of Man”, thereby “denying central status to the male subject in his universalizing pretensions” (1995, 2–3). One might be tempted to replace Man with God (or even god) here and thus begin to interrogate the conspicuous absence of the Goddess (or goddess) from the universalizing discourses of atheism that may be, metonymically, compared to the usual tendency of “proof-­ readers and computer spell-checks” to identify “thealogy” as a “typographical error” (Raphael 1999, 9). In fact, the implicit androcentric thrust in atheism as a denial of “God” (figured as the divine masculine universal) needs to be highlighted with reference to the religious history of the Goddess. If the history of the divine is seen as the same as the history of God, then, of course, the atheistic denial will preoccupy itself only with God, taking that history for granted. On the other hand, if the history of the plural figurations of the divine across cultures is taken seriously and the history of the Goddess is seen as no less important than the history of God, then atheism cannot but acknowledge the lacunas in its discursive framework and engage in a dialogue with thealogy so as to make its epistemology more comprehensive. Precisely, one needs to question the masculine universalism involved in the centrality lent to God/god/gods in discourses on theism and atheism; it is necessary to radically interrogate the androcentric history of the divine and to negotiate with the feminine figurations of the divine. For Naomi Goldenberg, the implication of “thealogy” was crystal clear: it was the “feminist discourse on thea (the Goddess) instead of theo (God)” (Raphael 1999, 9). The sort of radical epistemological rupture caused by the “ethics of sexual difference” which was envisaged by Luce Irigaray, and also by Cavarero (Irigaray 2004, 7–10; Braidotti 1995, xiv–xvii), can be related to the “spiritual/political paradigm shift” which Melissa Raphael associates with the concept of “thealogy” (1999, 9). She argues that “the word ‘thealogy’ has named, and therefore empowered” such a paradigm shift “whose effects are not, as yet, fully calculable” (1999, 9). It goes without saying that one of the central projects of this book is to put forward the argument that one of the “effects” of the paradigm shift caused by “thealogy” could be the radical interrogation of atheism as a discourse and praxis that primarily negates theo, but remains indifferent to thea, thereby implying a hidden masculinist assumption about the ontology of

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the divine which strikes off the Goddess from all utterances about the divine—whether affirmative or negative. I want to underline the fact that, from a productive friction as well as conversation between atheism and thealogy, both of these concepts may benefit in ways unacknowledged so far—the epistemic contours of both of these terms may be expanded and radically renegotiated when we engage them in a creative tension. Since one cannot proclaim the non-existence of the divine without exploring, in a nuanced way, what the divine is, it is interesting and evidently fruitful to engage with the form of such exploration that we find in thealogy, something that we often find missing from the discourses of atheism. Thealogy, as we shall see in this chapter, certainly presents a mode of re-gendering of the divine; but, it is not just that. It is as much a re-ontologization of the divine as its re-gendering. Re-gendering may be seen here as more than a play of gender—it indicates a tropological shift and an ontological reorientation, involving semantic alterations that affect simultaneously the notions of the divine, the feminine, the masculine, the earthly and the other-worldly. In other words, the Goddess of thealogy ultimately becomes not a female God but rather an ostensibly “feminine” something that puts under erasure the received ideas about “God”. The invocation of the “feminine” here may be seen as a heuristic way to figure forth a radical alterity that does not just interrogate the male divinity but also problematizes the “divine” per se, in the conventional sense of the term. However, before embarking on the enterprise of dialogizing atheism and thealogy, we need to focus on the relationship between atheism and feminism. We have already observed in the previous chapter some of the intricacies of the interface between feminism and atheism. However, we need to explore this a bit more, before setting out to discover the points of convergence and divergence between thealogy and atheism. How does, for instance, feminist atheism differ from both theism and thealogy? Does feminist atheism engage with the thea more elaborately than masculinist atheism does? Or is even feminist atheism unwilling to engage with thealogy in a comprehensive way? On the other hand, could we see, in certain contexts, thealogy itself as an (imaginatively) atheistic stance? The following discussion would seek to shed light on some of these issues. It is interesting to note that “very little research has been done on the relationship between atheism and feminism” (Mahlamaki 2012, 62). As Tiina Mahlamaki observes:

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As a matter of fact, many feminists who identify themselves as atheists have experienced the culture of discussion within atheist circles to be quite masculine and misogynic; they perceive atheism as a project belonging to white western men. (2012, 62)

Of course, Mahlamaki does not deal with this issue in a simplistic way. She does not mean to argue that atheism in general is a project of white men or that feminism and atheism can never go hand in hand. However, she does make us look at the more complex aspects of the relationship between atheism and feminism, by sensitizing us to the intricacies involved in the interface between gender and religion and underlining the ways in which atheist discourses may be articulated within sexist frames. As Anja Finger reminds us, empirical research on atheist men’s approaches to gender indicates that it is possible to experience “an atmosphere in atheist circles in which sexist behaviour can occur”, as the atheist men’s unwillingness “to embrace a feminist or pro-feminist label for themselves” may point “to a half-hearted approach to gender and feminism” on their part (2017, 163). However, the issue is actually much more complex than the feminist or non-feminist or anti-feminist inclination of an atheist. Even when the atheist is a feminist or the feminist is an atheist, there might be plural ways of crossing out “God”. A feminist atheist may reject not only God but also all possible gendered or non-gendered figurations of the divine and thus be an atheist in the most radical and expansive sense of the term. On the other hand, she may wish to deviate from the androcentric discourse of atheism as well as the androcentric discourses of theism. She may create or figure forth her own Goddess, or other forms of divinity, or even a “postdivine” (Bilimoria 2017, 179) form of the “SacredSecular” (Mani 2009, 1–4). In this sense, Goddess feminism, especially that of a syncretistic type, may even sometimes overlap with atheism, with the Goddess feminist creating her own female divinity rather than finding out the Creatrix through some ulterior cosmogony, thereby, in fact, honouring what she creates rather than an a priori Creatrix. Hence, while Mahlamaki binarizes the religious feminists and the feminist atheists, one may argue that the “religious” feminists who “have founded totally new woman-centered forms of religion and spirituality” (Mahlamaki 2012, 62) are actually feminists whose atheism is differently voiced and framed than the atheism of “white western men”. When one worships the (female) divinity that is one’s own creation, then, in a way, this is a creatively atheist stance, shifting the function of creation from the Creator/Creatrix to the religious subject herself

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and refusing to situate the actual paradigm of “ultimacy” (Neville 2018, 3–5) in a myth that is not her own creation. As Sudipta Kaviraj (2021, 696) observes, in terms of the imaginative faculty of the human mind, doors might always open between theist and atheist worlds, and the imagination that may create God (or the Goddess, in our case) may be relevant to the atheist as well. In this context, we also need to note that religiosity and theism are not synonymous and hence one can be religious and atheist simultaneously (Chakraborty and Mukhopadhyay 2021, 509). Hence, we need to put forward the question: is it possible to speak of a thealogically framed atheism where the Goddess is the self-conscious creation of a feminist imagination? Creating one’s own Goddess might, indeed, be an exciting atheist project. One may remember here the peculiar case of the atheist Sigfried Gold. As Christine Wicker (2013) reports, believers and non-believers have both been puzzled to hear “about the amazing success of his [Gold’s] prayers to a goddess he created and doesn’t believe in”. Of course, the kind of creative atheism I have focused on does not necessitate disbelief in the goddess created, but, nevertheless, one might possibly draw attitudinal parallels between these two instances. In order to illustrate this point further, let me return to Cavarero once again. Rosi Braidotti insists that, unlike Irigaray whose thought focuses upon “the necessity of a woman-centered system of mediation to and representation of the divine”, Cavarero, in spite of her emphasis on the “symbolic recognition of the mother”, remains a “deeply secular thinker” (1995, xvi–xvii). In other words, Braidotti does not see Cavarero as a potential thealogian. However, in terms of the emotive force of Cavarero’s rhetoric, she does appear to be a philosopher who can fruitfully and meaningfully speak to and offer resources for thealogical projects. The last chapter in In Spite of Plato, titled “Diotima”, ends with these lines: Nonetheless, when at the final, most recent hour—having, for unfathomable reasons woven her way up to human logos via the feminine—it is her turn to know, then perhaps this female deity will demand that the splendor of her origins find grateful, knowing names in her daughters’ speech. (1995, 120)

Obviously, one may find thealogical resonances in this rhetoric. Even though, as Braidotti suggests, Cavarero may be inclined more towards secular sensibilities than to religious ones, her voice does resonate with

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those of the thealogists who locate the Goddess in the natural world, the realm of embodiment and materiality, rather than in the realm of metaphysical abstractions. The female deity imaged forth by her imagination may have a harmonious and not discordant relation with her “secular” feminist position. This deity may smoothly move through the doors between the theist and atheist worlds which Kaviraj speaks of. If rejecting theo—the male God, along with all the concomitant implications of (masculine) authority, patriarchal power, transcendence detached from what is earthly—is the essence of atheism, then thealogy, with its focus on the experiential rather than the ideal, its emphasis on immediacy rather than discursive mediation and its embracing of the natural environment rather than disembodied transcendence (Raphael 1999, 10) may have certain things in common with atheism. The commonality does not simply lie in the rejection of the transcendental male divinity, but rather in deeper issues. If the Goddess is seen as figuring forth whatever theism in a patriarchal context rejects as un-divine—nature, embodiment, immanence, earthliness, sensuosity—then, even the celebration of her very being might become a strong a-theist assertion. However, if she is seen as what mediates between the body and the spirit, the material and the metaphysical (Mukhopadhyay 2017, xvii, 28–29), then the thealogical discourse that celebrates her is not just a discourse that replaces God with Goddess at its centre, but rather one which reorients and re-interrogates all received notions of “divinity”, thereby opening up genuinely new possibilities of rearticulating and redirecting all existing theist and atheist discourses. In this sense, precisely, the Goddess can epistemologically, ideologically and politico-spiritually problematize both theism and atheism. In the following segments of this chapter, we shall see how a dialogue can be staged between thealogy and atheism. This dialogue may move in different directions, thereby exploring multiple levels and layers of the issues involved. As Julian Baggini points out, most atheists would believe that “there is only the natural world and not any supernatural one” (2003, 4). Even though one may associate atheism with physicalism (Baggini 2003, 4–6), Baggini insists that atheism is grounded “not in the specific claims of physicalism but the broader claims of naturalism” (2003, 7). Here, it is interesting to note that thealogy foregrounds the notion of nature as goddess and celebrates the natural rather than the trans-natural (Reid-Bowen 2016, 2–3). Paul Reid-Bowen, nevertheless, suggests that while thealogy

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is often anti-metaphysical in that it celebrates immanence, metaphysics need not be removed altogether from the fold of thealogical discourse (2016, 2). Hence, one might argue, there are points of divergence as well as convergence between atheism and thealogy. Nevertheless, we need to understand that the Goddess is neither wholly metaphysical nor wholly material; she may be seen as a mediatrix between materiality and metaphysicality. For the time being, however, we may concentrate on the emphasis on immanence which might bring atheism and thealogy close to each other. The celebration of immanence and the natural in thealogy does square with those atheist sensibilities which reject the supernatural world and celebrate—sensuously—the natural world. As Simon Blackburn observes: There are two directions in which people look for the meaning of life. One is beyond life itself; this is the transcendent and ontological option. … But there is another option for meaning, and for our interpretation of religious art, which is to look only within life itself. This is the immanent option. It is content with the everyday. There is sufficient meaning for human beings in the human world—the world of familiar, and even humdrum, doings and experiences. (2007, 189–190)

Blackburn’s insistence on immanence rather than transcendence, though grounded in an atheist position, comes close to the “SacredSecular” perspective of Lata Mani who, along with Ruth Frankenberg, has articulated fine thealogical discourses grounded in the Indic goddess traditions (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 161–163; Chakraborty and Mukhopadhyay 2021, 507–508). There are, then, possibilities of resonance between certain atheistic and thealogical assertions. However, whereas Mani draws on the tantric traditions, that is to say, specific Indic religious traditions, to put forward her model of an eco-thealogy (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 161–163; Mukhopadhyay 2018b, 21–22, 30–31), the Goddess feminists in the West often draw on “scientific discourses” such as the “Gaia theory” to figure forth their “thealogy of nature” (Reid-Bowen 2016, 3). It is interesting to note the problematic points of crisscrossing between thealogy and the (alternative) scientific discourses such as the Gaia theory. For this, let me turn to Michael Ruse’s musings on “science on a pagan planet”. In his book, The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet, he revisits the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, to foreground the dynamics of the discursive formation of science, and the tension

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between “science” in a less open-ended sense and a radical hypothesis such as the Gaia theory (2013, ix–x). He says that, as opposed to the dogmatically theist view that “only God has value, and all else derives from Him”, the Gaia theory presents “the extended sense of Earth as something with intrinsic value” (2013, x). Ruse who is an atheist (see Ruse 2018) finds this idea interesting (2013, x). He acknowledges that, during the 1960s, there was an overall ambience of intellectual and political churning in the West, and this included, among other things, “a fascination with ancient mysteries and movements, with more basic, more Earth-centered creeds, often (fitting in with the spirit of the times) less patriarchal and more female-sensitive and also less technological and more organic or ecologically friendly” (2013, 3). It is in this socio-cultural context that Ruse situates the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock and Margulis. He notes how the discourse of Gaia was simultaneously reviled by professional scientists and loved by the general public, philosophers and religious people who had been searching for the “vision” and “metaphor” of “Earth as an organism” (2013, 36–37). Mary Midgley, the British philosopher, was enthusiastic about Gaia and was critical of Richard Dawkins the New Atheist (Ruse 2013, 39). In fact, Dawkins had been a vocal critic of the Gaia theory (Ruse 2013, 27–28). Midgley’s discomfort with an atheist like Dawkins might remind us of Mahlamaki’s observation that women have often been uncomfortable with the reductionist and myopic paradigms of atheism (and, may we add, “scientism”?). Ruse chronicles how widely the Gaia theory found a resonance in the ecofeminist and other such movements which figured forth Earth as a maternal-feminine spiritual entity (2013, 138–140). While speaking of the Paganist or Neo-­ Paganist appropriations of Gaia, and focusing on the Western religious seekers’ quest for eco-friendly doctrines of faith in non-monotheistic cultures, Ruse says that, for those moved by a desire for eco-religiosity, “[v]alue lies in the earth itself, rather than in something conferred by a Creator God” (2013, 141). He also highlights the Goddess religions upheld by writers such as Starhawk (2013, 142). It is necessary to note that shifting the source of value from the “Creator God” to the earth itself may find some sympathy with atheists such as Blackburn or Ruse (though Blackburn prefers to be called an infidel [2021], and Ruse has of late shown sympathy for agnosticism [2021]), but they won’t be happy with the figuration of Lovelock’s Gaia as a Goddess. Ruse’s rhetorical tone (2013, 142–146)—evidently—does not sound to be supportive of Goddess religions or paganisms/neo-paganisms of the sort championed

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by Starhawk and others. In other words, between atheism and thealogy falls a penumbral shadow, even though both of these intellectual positions may be willing to decentre the “Creator God”. It is because of this that it seems relevant to focus on the following statement of James Lovelock (1999), where he foregrounds the complex way in which “faith” in Gaia may be equally distanced from atheism and theism: We can put our trust, even faith, in Gaia but this is different from the cold certainty of purposeless atheism or an unwavering belief in God’s purpose.

Referring to Vaclav Havel’s enthusiasm for “holistic science”, Lovelock (1999) says, “I do not think that president Havel was proposing an alternative Earth-based religion. He offered a way of life for agnostics.” However, as we have seen, imbuing Gaia with any spiritual significance might be problematic for softcore as well as hardcore atheists, although possibly not for an agnostic. It is true that what Lovelock proposes is apparently equidistant from theism and atheism and hence may have something to offer to both theists and atheists. However, the point is that one cannot be sure about a positive reception of this doctrine by atheists, especially when Gaia appears to be more than “holistic science”, bordering on Goddess religion. The issue might become all the more complex in the context of COVID-19. Joe Humphreys (2020) wonders whether, in our age of environmental awareness, God is giving way for Gaia who is “a deity even atheists can believe in”. He (2020) further wonders whether, as the maintainer of the equilibrium of our planet, she may be said to have something to do with COVID-19, a punishment meted out to humans for recklessly tampering with the natural environment. Humphreys (2020) presents us with the comments of John Dillon, a scholar of Greek, on this issue. Dillon says that Gaia, as per Lovelock’s theory, “is concerned to protect the climatic equilibrium that she has established over many millennia” and can even “eliminate” us if we try to destroy that equilibrium (cited in Humphreys 2020). That mode of scientific rationality which champions atheism would, it goes without saying, readily dismiss this line of thought as superstition. When Lovelock says that Gaia, if “angry”, would “evict” humans if they “do not mend their ways” (cited in Humphreys 2020), his rhetoric moves into the domain of the age-old discourse of angry gods/goddesses, and this sort of reconfiguration of Gaia as an angry and punishing Goddess would obviously alienate, all the

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more, those individuals who belong to that lineage of atheists which has underlined, through ages, the negative moral and psychological repercussions of the theological projection of angry and punishing deities. COVID-19 may have tremendously complex repercussions on our religious sensibilities. It can turn atheists into theists and theists into atheists. However, it is certain that no one will find comfort in the logic of a universal punishment, when the intense suffering caused by the pandemic forces the survivors as well as victims to grope for compassionate hands— (in many cases) divine as well as human. Nevertheless, one positioned in a postsecular (Tacey 2020, 1–4) age can, of course, seriously think over the following statement of Lovelock (1999): My proposition is that Gaia, in addition to being a theory in science, offers a world view for agnostics. This would require an interactive trust in Gaia, not blind faith.

Of course, such an “interactive trust” would be conditioned by many other factors. Lending, at least theoretically, an agency to the Earth is, of course, necessary for reorienting the scientific epistemology and correcting the scientistic hubris, but, more importantly, the agnostic may want to find out exactly which responses could be given by Gaia to suffering humans in moments of crisis. Especially, when blind faith is replaced by “interactive trust”, the religious subject as well as the agnostic may ask for warmer, more intensely palpable, forms of responses from Gaia, so as to have it confirmed that she is not just the female counterpart of the “hidden God” (Goldmann 2013, 35–36; Bilimoria 2022, 97–99, 107–108). Gaia finds a resonance in thealogy’s focus on embodiment as well, because the philosophy of Gaia would obviously negate that mode of spirituality which projects the spirit as disembodied (Rose and Szirom 2011, 44–48). Moreover, within the fold of thealogy, one may not shy away from declaring that “Goddess is life … Goddess is matter” (Rose and Szirom 2011, 47). Melissa Raphael focuses on thealogy’s enterprise of “the resacralization of female embodiment” (1996, 22). As she reminds us, “In thealogy a woman’s embodied finitude is holy” (1996, 23). This is, conspicuously, in conflict with the theist programme of reaching towards the infinite by transcending the “limitations” imposed by embodiment. Therefore, evidently, the tussle here is not just between a male god and a female one; it is rather a conflict between two different formulations

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and figurations of the divine, involving the interrogation of the meaning and value of finitude: is embodiment, limitedness or finitude compatible with the experience of divinity? If finitude is not what separates the human from the divine, then, in what ways do we redraw the boundaries between the human and the divine, the sacred and the secular, the concrete and the abstract? As Mikel Burley (2021) observes, instances of “embodied thealogy” are available across cultures, and he cites, especially, the case of the Hindu Divine Mother to illustrate the nuances of a focus on embodied experience in the context of devotion to the Goddess. Atheism would, of course, emphasize the value of embodied experience, rather than striving to gain a transcendental, disembodied experience. However, the sacralization of embodiment and materiality may or may not be present in atheist discourse. An atheist may even be willing to be indifferent to the category of the sacred; this category may not hold any specific meaning or significance for her. Hence, while one may wish to discover possible parallels between the thematic repertories of atheist and thealogical discourses, one also needs to underscore the prominent differences between them. In fact, it might be argued that thealogy has a unique territory of its own—it is neither theistic nor atheistic even though it may share certain traits of both theism and atheism. As Reid-Bowen argues, the Goddess feminists conceptualize divinity in pantheistic rather than theistic terms and, hence, a critique of Goddess feminism that reads this divinity in theistic terms is misdirected (2016, 3). However, I would like to argue that “pantheism” is also a limiting category to define or describe the deity of goddess feminists as there is apparently no unequivocally singular conception of divinity that drives the thealogical or goddess feminist programmes. Besides, we need to look at the concepts of theism and atheism from a cross-cultural perspective. It is not the case that all male deities across the world are conceptualized in essentially anti-immanentist terms. In fact, in Hinduism, there are ample theist discourses that envision God (figured in masculine terms) as immanent as well as transcendent (Gross 1999, 64–66; Bassuk 1987, 19; Lochtefeld 2002, 261; Knott 2016, 51–52; Wiebe 2007, 184). On the other hand, when we look at the living goddess traditions such as those in India, we find that the Goddess is seen as transcendent as well as immanent. She is equated in Hinduism with the ultimate transcendental reality (Brahman) even though she is also identified with the natural, physical world (Mukhopadhyay 2020, 57–58; Mukhopadhyay 2018a, 71–82). With reference to Vrinda Dalmiya’s reflections on the

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Bengali devotee-poet Ramprasad Sen’s approach to Kali the Hindu goddess, Burley notes how Kali’s devotees recognize the interrelatedness of living beings in Her world while also acknowledging her “liberative” power (2021, 13–14). This liberative power betokens the transcendental dimension of the Hindu Great Goddess, while the relationality informing her universe represents her immanent aspect. Rita Gross, speaking from a “non-theistic” position—that of a “Buddhist feminist”—insists that, rather than assuming an organic link between women and theologies of immanence, one should look into the complex ways in which transcendence and immanence emerge as interdependent in the domain of religious experience (1999, 62–67, 73). She insists that the problem is that “almost all Western discourse on religion, even in academic settings, assumes a somewhat theistic and transcendent stance” (1999, 66). Therefore, when we question the subterraneous universalization of theism in academic explorations of “religions”, and place thealogical discourses on a cross-cultural spectrum of goddess-centred discourses and practices across the planet, we find extremely complex tensions between theism, atheism and thealogy, and also those between the theoretical articulations of thealogy and the living goddess traditions. An understanding of the relation between atheism and the Goddess cannot but involve a proper and nuanced understanding of the points of convergence and divergence between theism, atheism, thealogical discourse and millennia-old living goddess traditions. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the Indic Goddess can embody paradoxical traits, and we may make contradictory statements about her which would be simultaneously true. Any binaristic theorization of the divine or the non-divine would, thus, fail to grasp the function of this Goddess in the faith universe of South Asia. If a-theism is the negation of theos: God/gods, then, technically, could thealogy be seen as a-theism, that is, could we see a mere replacement of God/gods with Goddess/goddesses as a-theism? But that would be a simplistic and even a fallacious proposition. As Raymond Converse points out, “the denial found in atheism” is not just the denial of a masculine deity but rather “the denial of the supernatural in any form” (2003, 3). Here, however, we need to pause for a moment and think of two epistemological possibilities for the place of the “Goddess” within atheism. If the Goddess is a supernatural entity, then her mere femininity will not carve a space for her within a-theism, even though atheism may be primarily a denial of God/gods, figured masculine. Hence, the female deities in living goddess traditions, often endowed with supernatural as well as

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earthly qualities, would be summarily rejected by an atheist. However, if she is seen as one with nature, and not as a supernatural entity, will she have a place within atheism—for atheists? This leads us to an epistemic aporia, as far as the relation between atheism and thealogy is concerned. Is nature-as-goddess acceptable to an atheist? If yes, then what is the element in this figuration that makes it acceptable to atheists? If no, then what is the target of the atheist denial here—the “sacrality” of nature or the personality superimposed on nature? Of course, the “supernatural” is not the issue, when we speak of nature being divine independently of a supernatural origin or agency. While discussing Peter Forrest’s idea of “God without the supernatural”, J.J.C. Smart observes that even atheists who are not convinced by Forrest’s arguments may come to admire this idea (1997, 24). However, Smart also insists that Forrest is “an anti-­ supernaturalist without being a naturalist” (1997, 25) and that Forrest’s God is “a personal and caring God”, who is also a creator God (1997, 24, 26). Hence, it seems problematic to claim that this idea would be admired by atheists, especially those atheists who are absolutely against any kind of non-naturalist position. Besides, Forrest’s God is conspicuously different from the figuration of nature-as-goddess. Nevertheless, reflecting on the atheist’s approach to nature-as-goddess is probably more challenging than understanding the probable atheist denial of Forrest’s God. It is necessary to highlight that it is not only atheism but also theism that often operates on the basis of a principle of denial. As Page duBois illustrates, theism, and especially monotheism, itself thrives on the principle of rejecting/denigrating/denying other gods (in many cases the gods denied are also other people’s gods) (2014, 8, 12–13, 17). Hence, the definition of atheism should be grounded in a systematic attempt to underline what it exactly “denies”. In this context, the “supernatural” is not a helpful term; would we call an atheist an atheist if she worships nature knowing fully well that it is natural and not supernatural? Would the epistemic framework of atheism, then, accommodate the “SacredSecular” entities? We are actually faced with a deeper problem here. The issue may, in fact, be the tussle between the vocabulary associated with a “being” and that linked to an “object” or inert thing. It seems that a reductionist form of science and a scientistic form of atheism may reject the Gaia theory not because this theory sees the Earth as a supernatural being but rather because such a discourse imposes the qualities of a living entity on the Earth, thereby blurring the borderline between matter and life, being and thing. If that is the case, then the issue will not be the “goddess” but

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rather the personality of the Earth imaged forth in Gaia theory. As Eric Steinhart (2022) argues, the atheist might deal with the “gods” and “goddesses” in a different way than a theist would do: for an atheist, the Goddess would not figure as a divine person who demands devotion but rather as an impersonal power, “the power of nature to move from actualities to potentialities”. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, wants to give us “a flavour of Einsteinian religion” and presents quotations from Einstein that make it clear that Einstein’s understanding of nature was quite different from the anthropomorphic figurations of nature (2006, 15). I would like to argue that, although Dawkins remarks that “[p]antheism is sexed-up atheism” (2006, 18), the putative pantheism located by Reid-Bowen in thealogy does not guarantee that an atheist would readily accept thealogy as a desirable alternative to theism. The thea, Goddess, would remain a problem for the atheist, even though she may mediate between the categories of the “personal” and the “impersonal”. In this context, one may wonder whether the atheist’s objection to the figuration of the Earth as a living goddess is actually motivated by a deep-seated anthropocentrism that refuses to acknowledge “material agency” (Elvey 2023, 91) and sticks to an anthropocentric idea of agency. Anne Elvey (2023) underlines the necessity for “attentiveness to an Earth voice” which calls for “a creative ‘listening’” (44), and raises the question: “If Earth has a voice, if Earth has a plenitude of more-than-human voices, how might I listen?” (45). This question might not hold any meaning for the atheist who sees no merit in the thealogical celebration of the Earth. However, the thealogian might have an answer to this question, although it is a fact that it is not only the thealogian for whom the question is meaningful or who wants to address this question. A gesture of dismissal without a proper and profound critique of what is to be dismissed would obviously dilute the philosophical efficacy of its denial. In order to understand and acknowledge the difference between informed critique (and/or sympathetic understanding) and uninformed denial of other faiths (or faith(s) as the Other), we can turn to the points of similarity and divergence between duBois’s and Dawkins’s approaches to the category of the divine. The problem that duBois finds with the monotheistic God as a figure of patriarchal authority (2014, 12) is a problem which atheists, too, understand and often acknowledge. Dawkins proclaims, “I am also conscious that the Abrahamic God is (to put it mildly) aggressively male” (2006, 35). However, duBois’s and Dawkins’s perspectives are quite different. While Dawkins promulgates, “For brevity I shall

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refer to all deities, whether poly- or monotheistic, as simply ‘God’” (2006, 35), duBois suggests that the rejection of polytheism and naturalization of monotheism may be seen as involved in the process of hegemonizing the Western mode of modernity which may include the rise of atheism too. She says: When we naturalize monotheism, or see it as the telos, goal or end of religious development, perhaps a stage on the way to atheism, we accept the homologies that have governed Western modernity. (2006, 12)

DuBois goes on to show us how we can detect a functional convergence between God, “father” and the “superego” (2006, 12). This is something Dawkins might have corroborated too. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the pro-polytheistic position of duBois who champions religious plurality and tolerance, and the stance of Dawkins who rejects all forms of “God delusion”, in polytheistic as well as monotheistic contexts. DuBois insists that “the attempt to deny” the presence of polytheism “produces intolerant assumptions among monotheists and even atheists, who claim a moral superiority to polytheists” (2014, 8). Interestingly, while Dawkins places polytheism and monotheism under the same rubric without showing a nuanced understanding of their differences, Page duBois puts monotheism and atheism in the same cluster, as far as the anti-polytheistic prejudices in the West are concerned. Besides, unlike Dawkins, duBois offers a nuanced interpretation of the gender dimension of such prejudices. She notes how the anti-polytheistic stance in the West often appears to have a gender (as well as racial) dimension: “primitive peoples are seen as effeminate, weak, or devoted improperly to female divinities” (2014, 17). Could we say that this is reflected even in the Western atheistic dismissal of polytheism? While duBois writes positively about goddesses across cultures (2014, 146–148; 156–158), Dawkins does not think that the “female divinities” should be accorded any special value or exempted from the tag of “the God delusion”. With some finality, he underlines the central points of divergence between goddess-centred religiosity and the mode of atheism he promotes: More sophisticated theologians proclaim the sexlessness of God, while some feminist theologians seek to redress historic injustices by designating her female. But what, after all, is the difference between a non-existent female

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and a non-existent male? I suppose that, in the ditzily unreal intersection of theology and feminism, existence might indeed be a less salient attribute than gender. (2006, 35–36)

It is evident that Dawkins does not offer a nuanced reading of thealogy here and does not point out the radical differences—even in generic terms—between theological discourse and thealogical discourse, such as underlined by Raphael (1999, 10–11). Thealogy is, of course, not just a feminist appropriation of theology, and nature-as-goddess or Gaia is not merely a female “God/god” (in the sense Dawkins speaks of “supernatural gods” [2006, 20, emphasis Dawkins’s]). Especially, the last sentence in the quoted text, with its terribly ironic tone and a sexist word like “ditzily”, unfortunately, proves once again that Mahlamaki’s observation on the troubled relationship between feminism and atheism (already cited in this chapter) is accurate—that, indeed, “the culture of discussion within atheist circles” is often “quite masculine and misogynic”. As Anja Finger (2017) observes, the project of New Atheism exudes the spirit of an “intellectual masculinity” (156). Dawkins’s sarcastic attitude to the “non-­ existent female”, as Finger insists, “betrays an insensitivity for feminist concerns in religion” (158). As Finger elaborates: [M]atters of religion and atheism gain in complexity if pondered from gender-­relevant and gender-conscious perspectives. Feminist theology has concerned itself with far more than just the changing of pronouns for god. In fact, this theological project itself expresses an awareness of how language shapes consciousness and is hence part and parcel of feminist consciousness-­ raising, a connection not fully grasped by Dawkins’s witticism. (2017, 162)

It is obvious that Dawkins the New Atheist is not ready to engage in a more substantial and profound dialogue with thealogy, and hence, his “atheism”, representing “intellectual masculinity”, refuses to negotiate with the deeper nuances of the ontological and epistemological reframings of the “divine” occasioned by thealogy. An atheism, thus oriented, obviously impoverishes its own epistemologies and puts forward sweeping ontological claims that are not just problematic but often questionable. While he mocks the apparent privileging of gender over existence in feminist theology as far as the divine is concerned, he ends up betraying the way the non-existence of God claimed by him is itself gendered, and his

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atheism is but the gendered (read masculinist) crossing out of the gendered (read masculine) divinity, bracketing off the feminine from the entire scheme of atheistic negation. It is, as it were, the Atheist Son’s revenge on God the Father, with the Mother bracketed off with some finality that can be assumed only by androcentric arrogance. Cross-­ culturally speaking, it is also noticeable that, in the quoted passage, he takes it for granted that the Goddess is just a discursive product of feminist theology, without taking the pain to ponder over the multiple, age-old living goddess traditions that thrive outside the boundaries of his own culture, traditions where the Goddess operates independently of any feminist theology. In other words, he is not just insensitive to feminist theology; he is also arrogantly ignorant of the living Goddess traditions outside the West which may represent racial, cultural and even civilizational alterities. Exploring the history of gods and goddesses might help us in epistemologically reorienting or revising some of the received ideas about monotheism, polytheism, atheism and thealogy. As Thomas Romer argues, the biblical God “was not always ‘unique’, the one-and-only God” (2015, 2). Romer insists: “How did one god among others become God? This is the basic, and theologically fundamental, enigma” (2015, 2). DuBois too underlines the reference to a plurality of gods that is present in the Genesis 3.22–23 (2014, 3). In other words, “god”, “God” and even “Goddess” do not happen to be stable, unchangeable ontological categories. They find their denotations and connotations altered from time to time, in accordance with structural and functional shifts in religious discourses and practices in the socio-cultural milieus which they inhabit. However, one needs to historicize atheism in the same way as one would historicize religion. One needs to put forward the question: if God/god(s)/Goddess/ goddess(es) are a matter of plural figurations, then how can an atheism be so arrogantly homogeneous as to reject “divinity” altogether without paying attention to the alterities involved in the notion of the “divine”? If what you cross out is not a monolithic or homogeneous category, then how can your act of crossing it out be epistemologically tenable? This is the problem which might emerge specifically in the case of atheism’s approach to a thealogy that would project the Goddess as an entity mediating between a maternal-feminine personality and an impersonal, “SacredSecular” (I want to use this term here instead of “pantheist”) conceptualization—or rather experience (Raphael 1999, 10)—of the Earth.

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We need to be alert to the fact that one might find an intellectual, emotional and political continuity in the practice of rejecting deities—rejecting all gods/goddesses except one’s own “God” (in monotheism) and rejecting God as well as gods and goddesses (in atheism) may reflect interrelated sensibilities in terms of one’s adherence to the logic of exclusion. The logic, in fact, remains the same, as far as the process of othering is concerned. As far as you are concerned, I reject your God/gods. If you are a polytheist, then I, a monotheist, reject your gods and goddesses as false deities. If you are a monotheist, I, another monotheist, reject your God as the false one. If I am an atheist, I reject your God/gods/Goddess/goddesses, no matter whether you are a monotheist or polytheist or thea-ist. Thealogy, especially when grounded in an Earth-centred logic of inclusivity, or in the principle of interconnectivity (Mani 2009, 133, 173–180; Mukhopadhyay 2017, 161–163, 172), may interrogate this very notion of exclusion and erasure. It may champion a principle of cohabitation that, as Judith Butler insists, does not allow us to “choose with whom to cohabit the earth” (cited in duBois 2014, 12). Butler says, “To cohabit the earth is prior to any possible community or nation or neighborhood” (cited in duBois 2014, 12). As duBois, inspired by this concept of cohabitation, insists, we need to explore “how atheists, agnostics, monotheists, and polytheists might all inhabit the world together” (2014, 172). Thealogy may become capable of articulating such an inclusivist ethics of cohabitation, rather than being locked in a dialectic of theism and atheism. It may offer us a vision of divinity as caring but not demanding or punishing—the Goddess(es) upheld by it may not ask us, imperiously, for overawed recognition or worship, but may rather encourage us to lovingly respond to the earth on which we stand and may inspire us to believe that the sacred is, ultimately, nothing but the unsaleable (see Blackburn 2007, 192). The dialogue between thealogy and atheism that I have attempted to present in this chapter is, however, confined only to a theoretical level. Hence, this cannot but be an incomplete dialogue. In order to look at the interface between atheism (and also, more specifically, the denial of the Goddess or a-thea-ism) and devotion to the Goddess as felt experiences, we need to look at the traditions where the emotional as well as intellectual coordinates of devotion to the Goddess have had a long history, and hence the acknowledgement or denial of her existence has had specific repercussions in terms of feeling too—not just in terms of intellectual arguments. Besides, while atheism in the Western context is often seen in agonistic terms, as something that is in perpetual confrontation with

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theism, the Indic philosophical systems, despite their mutual differences and even skirmishes, represent a different kind of intellectual and religious ecosystem where non-theistic and theistic sensibilities cohabit the same milieu, crisscross, interact and even become occasionally hyphenated. Especially, as far as the Goddess in South Asia is concerned, she facilitates a radical heterogenization of both “theism” and “atheism”, by moving between them and subjecting them to serious epistemic shifts. The following chapters will explore these issues widely in South Asian and cross-­ cultural contexts.

References Baggini, Julian. 2003. Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. New  York: Oxford University Press. Bassuk, Daniel E. 1987. Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity: The Myth of the God-Man. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. Bilimoria, Purushottama. 2017. The Missing God of Karl Jaspers (and Heidegger). PragMATIZES—Revista Latino-Americana de Estudos em Cultura 7 (13): 179–192. ———. 2022. The Missing God of Heidegger and Karl Jaspers: Too Late for God; too Early for the Gods—With a Vignette from Indian Philosophy. In Living Without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism, ed. Sanjit Chakraborty and Anway Mukhopadhyay, 97–110. Singapore: Springer. Blackburn, Simon. 2007. Religion and Respect. In Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, ed. Louise M. Antony, 179–193. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2021. On Being an Infidel. Sophia 60 (3): 567–574. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11841-­021-­00844-­6. Braidotti, Rosi. 1995. Foreword. In In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, ed. Adriana Cavarero, trans. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Aine O’Healy, vii–xix. New York: Routledge. Bremmer, Jan N. 2007. Atheism in Antiquity. In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 11–26. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burley, Mikel. 2021. The Nature and Significance of the Hindu Divine Mother in Embodied Thealogical Perspective. Religious Studies. Accepted Version. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/174991/. Cavarero, Adriana. 1995. In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. Trans. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Aine O’Healy. New York: Routledge.

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Chakraborty, Sanjit, and Anway Mukhopadhyay. 2021. Atheisms: Plural Contexts of Being Godless. Sophia 60 (3): 497–514. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11841-­021-­00878-­w. Converse, Raymond W. 2003. Atheism as a Positive Social Force. New York: Algora Publishing. Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press. DuBois, Page. 2014. A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Elvey, Anne. 2023. Reading with Earth: Contributions of the New Materialism to an Ecological Feminist Hermeneutics. London: T&T Clark [Bloomsbury]. Finger, Anja. 2017. Four Horsemen (and a Horsewoman): What Gender Is New Atheism? In New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, ed. Christopher R. Cotter, Philip Andrew Quadrio, and Jonathan Tuckett, vol. 21, 155–170. Cham: Springer. Frazier, Jessica. 2013. Hinduism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 367–379. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldmann, Lucien. 2013. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine. Trans. Philip Thody. London and New York: Routledge. Gross, Rita M. 1999. Immanence and Transcendence in Women’s Religious Experience and Expression: A Non-Theistic Perspective. In The Annual Review of Women in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, vol. 5, 62–79. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Humphreys, Joe. 2020. God, Make Way for Gaia: A Deity Even Atheists Can Believe in. The Irish Times, 4 June. Accessed 29 July 2021. https://www. irishtimes.com/culture/god-­m ake-­w ay-­f or-­g aia-­a -­d eity-­e ven-­a theistscan-­believe-­in-­1.4265949. Irigaray, Luce. 2004. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. London/New York: Continuum. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2021. Can Nāstikas Taste Ā stika Poetry? Tagore’s Poetry and the Critique of Secularity. Sophia 60 (3): 677–697. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11841-­021-­00869-­x. Knott, Kim. 2016. Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lochtefeld, James G. 2002. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism. New York: Rosen. Lovelock, James. 1999. From God to Gaia. The Guardian, 4 August. Accessed 29 July 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/society/1999/aug/04/ guardiansocietysupplement5. Mahlamaki, Tiina. 2012. Religion and Atheism from a Gender Perspective. Approaching Religion 2 (1): 58–65.

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Mani, Lata. 2009. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique. London, New York and New Delhi: Routledge. Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2017. Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. 2018a. The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions: Devi as Corpse. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2018b. Nature Is Not Trash: The Dynamics of Food and Superstructure in the Eco-theography of Goddess Annapurna. In Ecocriticism and Environment: Rethinking Literature and Culture, ed. Debashree Dattaray and Sarita Sharma, 21–33. Delhi: Primus. ———. 2020. The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Neville, Robert. 2018. Philosophy of Religion and the Big Questions. Palgrave Communications 4 (126): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-­018-­0182-­9. Raphael, Melissa. 1996. Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ———. 1999. Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Introductions in Feminist Theology 3. Reid-Bowen, Paul. 2016. Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy. London and New York: Routledge. Romer, Thomas. 2015. The Invention of God. Trans. Raymond Geuss. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Rose, Patricia, and Tricia Szirom. 2011. Gaia Emerging: Goddess Beliefs and Practices in Australia. Gaia’s Ink. Google Books. Accessed 27 July 2021. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=gLOsJZ62rWEC&printsec=frontcover #v=onepage&q&f=false. Ruse, Michael. 2013. The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2015. Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. I’m an Atheist. But thank God I’m not a New Atheist. Premier Christianity, 25 September. Accessed 19 December 2020. https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/I-­m -­a n-­a theist.-­B ut-­t hankGod-­I-­m-­not-­a-­New-­Atheist. ———. 2021. Confessions of an Agnostic: Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Sophia 60 (3): 575–591. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-­021-­00851-­7. Skilton, Andrew. 2013. Buddhism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 337–350. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smart, J.J.C. 1997. Forrest on God Without the Supernatural. Sophia 36 (1): 24–37.

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Steinhart, Eric. 2022. Atheistic Gods and Goddesses. Spiritual Naturalist Society: Happiness through Compassion, Reason, and Practice, 27 January. Accessed 17 November 2022. https://www.snsociety.org/atheistic-­gods-­and-­goddesses/. Tacey, David. 2020. The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change. London and New York: Routledge. Vallely, Anne. 2013. Jainism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 351–366. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wicker, Christine. 2013. The Atheist and His Goddess: He Knew She Didn’t Exist but His Prayers Were Answered Anyway. Psychology Today, 28 October. Accessed 29 July 2021. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ pray-­me/201310/the-­atheist-­and-­his-­goddess. Wiebe, Steven L. 2007. Christian Theology in a Pluralistic Context: A Methodological and Constructive Inquiry in the Doctrine of Creation. New York: Peter Lang.

CHAPTER 3

Is There a Tradition of Rejecting the Goddess?

Abstract  This chapter deals with the following issue: while there is a tradition of rejecting God that informs the age-old discourses of atheism, it seems that it is difficult to speak of the epistemology and vocabulary of a tradition of rejecting, specifically, the Goddess. Such a reductionist mode of atheism does not find it necessary to separately address the question of the differently gendered figurations of divinity which might involve not just gender shifts but also significant onto-theological shifts related to the issue of the relation between divinity, materiality and metaphysicality. It is in this context that this chapter explores an Indic philosophical discourse, that is, Advaita Vedanta, the monist ontology of which rejects the ultimate reality of God while grappling with the inerasable apparition of the apparently feminine entity, maya, which is equated by Shaktism with the divine feminine. The chapter also explores the role of the Goddess in Advaita Vedanta and in the lives of certain male philosophers of this tradition— which underlines the friction between the philosophical negation of the Goddess and the intuitive understanding of her inerasable presence on the part of the male Advaitins. Keywords  Samkhya • Advaita Vedanta • Shankara • Gaudapada • Prakriti • Purusha • Shakti • Maya • Brahman • Tantra • Shaktism • Ishvara • Sri Ramakrishna • Swami Vivekananda • Pan-thea-ism • Thea-cide • Tota Puri • Divine Mother © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Mukhopadhyay, Atheism and the Goddess, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7_3

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Raising the questions such as this chapter does is absolutely necessary in the context of renegotiating atheism with reference to the Goddess. Atheism, we must remember, is not just an offshoot of “modernity”; it is a philosophical tradition, too, that has specific histories across diverse geo-­ cultural zones of the world. In India, for instance, one can trace a tradition of atheism which includes the Lokayatas (especially the Charvakas) of ancient India on one end of its spectrum and the Marxist thinkers of twentieth-­century India on another (Frazier 2013, 371, 375). When we speak of atheism in the strongest sense of the term, we, of course, do not just think of a Great Goddess or God; we rather ponder over the erasure of all supernatural entities (Converse 2003, 3). However, there is a difference between a gendered figuration of the divine and a gendered philosophization of the divine (and the non-divine). It is the latter which this chapter seeks to address. When we look at the Indic traditions, we find that it is problematic to speak of theism and orthodoxy in the same breath. While the Charvakas would obviously qualify as the staunchest atheists (in the strongest sense of the term), denying the existence of the Other World, the immortal Self and every form of invisible metaphysical entity (Shastri 2013, 11–15), the orthodox schools of Hindu thought, too, would manifest various modes of “non-theism” (Frazier 2013, 372). As Frazier observes, both Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta are orthodox Hindu doctrines that explain reality in a way that does not necessitate the centrality of a divine person. While Samkhya focuses on “a gnostic duality of matter and spirit”, Advaita Vedanta puts forward a metaphysical doctrine of “ontological monism” (Frazier 2013, 372–373). While Andrew Nicholson observes that there can be found “both theistic (sesvara) and atheistic (nirisvara) strains” in Samkhya (2017, 599), it does appear that the theistic readings of Samkhya, such as those presented by Vijnanabhikshu, are often unconvincing (Nicholson 2017, 602; Bhattacharya 2008, 115–118). Hence, Frazier’s view of Samkhya as a specimen of philosophical non-­ theism seems acceptable. There are some similarities between the ontologically privileged conscious entity in Advaita Vedanta (Brahman) and that in Samkhya (purusha). Both of these entities, however, diverge from the figuration of “God” in “Abrahamic theism” (Frazier 2013, 373). Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya are both significant systems of thought within the domain of orthodox Hindu philosophies. While Advaita Vedanta is most prominently associated with Shankaracharya who, according to Karl Potter, “flourished at the beginning of the eighth century” (1981, 15), there is a pre-Shankara history of this philosophical system

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too, and the “tradition” of Advaita Vedanta includes Gaudapada and his disciple Govindabhagavatpada, as well as Shankara who was the disciple of Govindabhagavatpada (Potter 1981, 9–14). One of the foundational texts of this tradition is the Mandukya Karikas, a commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, which is attributed to Gaudapada (Potter 1981, 12). Potter says, “If Samkara’s identification is to be accepted one would naturally place the Karikas no more than fifty to one hundred years prior to Samkara’s date” (1981, 12). However, as Potter observes, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact date of Gaudapada’s work (1981, 12–13). In the case of Samkhya, it is even more difficult to trace the exact historical periods in which the different phases of the development of Samkhya as a system of thought can be located (Larson 1987, 3–15; 43–48). The entire history of this development, as Larson claims, may span “more than two thousand years if one includes the Proto-Samkhya and Pre-Karika [that is, before Ishvarakrishna’s Samkhyakarika] traditions” (Larson 1987, 14). However, while the later texts of Samkhya philosophy refer to Kapila, Asuri and Panchashikha “as important precursors of Samkhya philosophy”, “all three teachers are lost to antiquity” (Larson 1987, 7). It can, nevertheless, be argued that the Samkhya philosophy as a system of thought is crystallized by “Isvarakrsna [referred to as Ishvarakrishna in this chapter], ca. 350–450, who composes a definitive summary of the Samkhya position, the Samkhyakarika” (Larson 1987, 13). There are obvious differences between the much older forms of Samkhya thought and the Samkhya philosophy delineated in the Samkhyakarika, as the Samkhya philosophy went through various conceptual modifications and shifts across centuries (Larson 1987, 3–18; 43–47). However, there are some specific “philosophical notions” that have been “continually attributed to Samkhya in the history of Indian philosophy” (Larson 1987, 43). In this chapter, I look at the traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya from the perspective of the Goddess-centred Shakta traditions—traditions that, thanks to the enigmatic nature of the Goddess, have been, arguably, the most eclectic and heterogeneous in the Indic religious and philosophical systems and even sometimes apparently self-contradictory. I try to explore how one can look back at the “non-theistic” traditions such as Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya from the perspective of the Indic Goddess cultures. As Bidhubhushan Bhattacharya (Saptatirtha) observes, both Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta propose that it is not essential to posit Ishvara (God) as the causative agent behind the emergence of the universe (2008, 122). This Ishvara—it goes without saying—is figured in masculine terms. As

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Bhattacharya argues, this atheistic stance of Samkhya had disturbed a theist philosopher like Vijnanabhikshu (the Samkhya philosopher from the sixteenth century CE) in such a profound way that he went on to insist that Samkhya could not be atheistic, atheism being a deplorable stance. Vijnanabhikshu, however, was a devotee of Vishnu and, hence, as Bhattacharya argues, his superimposition of a God (a male God, as I would like to point out here) on the essentially atheist doctrine of Samkhya in fact went against the grain of that doctrine (2008, 103–115). Interestingly, the divinity whose existence is the object of controversy here is not gendered feminine. However, while Samkhya insists on the duality of purusha (the conscious entity figured masculine) and prakriti (materiality figured feminine), tantric discourses diverge from the Samkhya conception of the jada (insentient) prakriti and associate it with the ontology of the Great Goddess as Shakti that combines both consciousness and the creative energy acting upon and through matter (Bhattacharya 2008, 68–69). The Samkhya prakriti is not an instance of “ultimacy” (Neville 2018, 3–5), but the Samkhya purusha is (Bhattacharya 2008, 176–179). The tantric discourses would, on the other hand, synthesize the duality of purusha and prakriti into a higher ontological category that is figured as the feminine divine. However, while referring to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya’s “extraordinary observation” of the connection between Samkhya and “Tantrism” in the context of the worship of Mother Goddesses, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya insists that “the Sankhya [Samkhya] system may turn out to be a more explicit philosophical re-statement of the theoretical position implicit in Tantrism” (1959, 359–360). Chattopadhyaya argues that Tantra (in its original form that influences Samkhya later on) offers a proto-materialist worldview and, despite its apparent focus on the magical, foregrounds, fundamentally, the magic of earthly (and fleshly) reproduction. That is where its emphasis on the feminine (including the feminine divine) comes from (Chattopadhyaya 1959, 277–307). However, as the speculations on the “originary” form of any system of thought are always problematic, we cannot take his arguments at their face value, though it is of course interesting to note Chattopadhyaya’s indirect problematization of the theist-atheist binary through the foregrounding of a religious framework that locates the sacred in the natural (figured, in many ways, as feminine) rather than in the supernatural. One may find a deeper understanding and interpretation of this “tantric” phenomenon in the writings of Lata Mani who finds in Tantra useful resources for figuring the “sacredsecular”. The “sacredsecular”, in Mani’s understanding, can shake the

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binaries of idealist/materialist and spiritual/material (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 161–163). Nevertheless, we have to look at the discourses of Samkhya as they are available to us, not those in their “original” form as imagined by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, although it is also true that there may be found discernible gaps, shifts and differences between “proto-Samkhya” and “classical” Samkhya (Pintchman 1994, 65). Some of the observations made by later scholars may, however, resonate with some of the arguments of Chattopadhyaya regarding Tantra, Samkhya and the feminine principle. As Tracy Pintchman observes, while it is not possible to argue that prakriti in Samkhya is “an unequivocally feminine principle”, it does apparently have feminine functions and is said to be endowed with shakti which is its capacity for self-transformation (1994, 85–87). Samkhya is a doctrine that rejects the conception of a redemptive Ishvara (Nicholson 2017, 613) but, interestingly, offers the occult potential for imagining a dynamic feminine principle that is not a personalized divinity but an abstract principle of self-­ evolving power. The embeddedness of the human individual in materiality and their liberation therefrom are both seen as involved in prakriti and not in purusha. Prakriti thus becomes the locus of one’s experience of spiritual freedom as well as unfreedom (Bhattacharya 2008, 178–179). Samkhya’s approach to the feminine principle is thus extremely paradoxical. Prakriti in Samkhya is active, dynamic and multi-modal in its function, but it is not what one might figure as the feminine divine. It is ultimately nothing but the opposite of consciousness, and the latter alone is the locus of transcendental bliss. Purusha cannot experience kaivalya (ultimate freedom) without its detachment from prakriti (Bhattacharya 2008, 177–178). In other words, the goddess-like (or “Gaia”-like [as explored in the previous chapter]) agency of prakriti in Samkhya is something that is ontologically distanced from purusha. Spiritual liberation is dependent on one’s getting rid of prakriti. Here, we have a peculiar tension between a covertly masculinist notion of salvation and an implicit acknowledgement of the power of the feminine which this philosophy, unlike Tantra, does not call a goddess and yet identifies as something which goddess cultures might see as mirroring the feminine divine. In the universe of Samkhya, prakriti is not what the male sage can wish away at his will, but it (or rather she) is what must be rejected if a final end is to be brought to the sorrow that this world stands for. While Vijnanabhikshu tries to argue that prakriti, being insentient, cannot be the causative agent behind the emergence of the universe and

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hence the existence of Ishvara must be posited, Samkhya does actually assume that prakriti is the material cause of creation and God need not be posited for explaining the emergence of the universe, though the reason for prakriti’s capacity for creation is its contiguity to the conscious purusha (Bhattacharya 2008, 114–117). It would be exciting to deconstructively explore the gender of the divine agent denied by Samkhya and assumed by Vijnanabhikshu who seeks to turn Samkhya theistic. While Vijnanabhikshu definitely assumes a male divinity, Samkhya transfers the function of such a possible entity to prakriti herself, thereby making her appear goddess-like. Hence, the atheism of Samkhya has a complex gender dimension: while it philosophically crosses out the possibility of a divine agent, irrespective of its gender, it ends up foregrounding a feminine principle as active as a goddess and yet denied ultimate transcendence. So, it could be seen as a tradition the philosophical imagination of which comes close to an (immanent) female divinity and yet robs it of its the(a)-logical status. As Pintchman argues, terms like prakriti, shakti and maya come to be ontologically associated with the Great Goddess only in the later texts of Hinduism, but, functionally, the Samkhya prakriti does “parallel” the roles played by female divinities in other scriptures (1994, 5, 114). One may, however, speak of these categories as prefiguring the Great Goddess in obscure but understandable ways, and hence, in this sense, we may speak of philosophical traditions that deny “ultimacy” (a la Neville) to these goddess-like “ontological” categories (Pintchman 1994, 7). After prakriti, we need to take up the term maya, one of the most complex and polyvalent words in Sanskrit. Pintchman observes that maya, “in Vedic and early post-Vedic contexts”, denotes “a power or ability associated with both creation and transformation” (1994, 88–89). She writes: [Teun] Goudriaan … notes that as power maya can be compared to or equated with sakti, whereas as material form it can be identified with prakrti. Sakti and prakrti represent successive stages in the process of manifestation. (1994, 89–90)

Pintchman notes that the connection between maya and the notion of “trickery or delusion of some kind” can be found in Vedic texts, too (1994, 90). As we know, it is this negative connotation of maya which has often been prominent in the popular theologies in Hinduism and has reached the West as a patently mystic and exotic concept. Pintchman rightly underlines “the significance and importance” of this term in

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Advaita Vedanta (1994, 91). Advaita Vedanta posits two dimensions of the ultimate reality and presents the Absolute/Brahman as essentially impersonal and without attributes and shape (nirguna and nirakara), while the saguna Brahman is said to be the personal form of Brahman with attributes which is, however, ultimately less real than the former. Hence, the supreme ontological status is accorded to the attributeless Brahman and not to the Brahman with attributes, the latter being identified as Ishvara/ God (Pintchman 1994, 92; Iammarino 2013, 162). As Pintchman observes, for Shankara, maya is the power whereby the nirguna Brahman assumes its saguna form as Ishvara/God and whereby Ishvara brings forth “the phenomenal-empirical realm” (1994, 93). This realm is, of course, ultimately unreal, as only Brahman is the a-dvaita or non-dual reality, and hence, everything that is the result of the action of maya—the phenomenal world as well as Ishvara himself—is unreal (Pintchman 1994, 94). Maya is equated in Advaita Vedanta with avidya/ignorance (Pintchman 1994, 94). Pintchman observes that, while there are certain similarities between the Vedantic conception of the nirguna Brahman and the Samkhya purusha, there are significant differences between these two systems of thought as well: For Samkara, māyā is neither real, nor unreal, nor both real and unreal, nor neither real nor unreal. Māyā is indescribable (anirvacaniya). But if we must describe it in some way, we can say that, unlike prakrti, māyā has no true existence but is a kind of illusion or delusion that is projected forth. In Advaita Vedānta, everything is ultimately based on a single, uniquely real principle, Brahman. Samkhya, on the other hand, is essentially dualist, for prakrti and purusa are both fully real and at the same time completely distinct. (1994, 96)

If we refer to our previous formulation—that maya, prakriti and shakti in the Indic schools of thought such as Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta might be seen as prototypes for the later Great Goddess—we may come to understand the difference between Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta in terms of their philosophical approaches to the goddess-like ontological categories. At one level, it can of course be argued that both Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya denigrate the feminine principle. Rita D.  Sherma explores the connection between the “philosophies of transcendence” in the Indic traditions and the “devaluation of the feminine principle” (1998, 101). She notes that the philosophical systems such as Yoga, Samkhya and Advaita

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Vedanta all devalue the feminine principle, associating it with the impure, the unreal, or, broadly speaking, the principle opposed to spiritual liberation (1998, 101–104). As Sherma rightly points out, it is only Tantra that synthesizes the spiritual and the material into the figure of the Goddess, thereby erasing the duality Samkhya insists on and defying the ontological rejection of the phenomenal world that Advaita Vedanta undertakes (1998, 105). As she observes, Shakta philosophy sees the “phenomenal world” as the “material manifestation of Sakti (in this context, the Universal Goddess)” (1998, 105). Similarly, Christopher Key Chapple insists that, unlike Advaita Vedanta, Tantra and Shaktism, “building on the principles of Samkhya”, do not hold the phenomenal world to be unreal or illusory but accept its reality (2008, 212). Interestingly, as one can observe, there is apparently a more organic connection between tantric Shaktism and Samkhya than between Shaktism and Vedanta, as the active prakriti, unlike maya in Advaita Vedanta, is real and active like a goddess, though it is figured as unconscious/jada. Hence, while Sherma is definitely right in observing the similarity between Samkhya’s denigration of the feminine principle and that in Advaita Vedanta, we need to underscore the different ways in which these two philosophies look at the goddess-like principles. While the Samkhya prakriti is the principle the (presumably male) subject is supposed to get rid of, she is, nevertheless, real. The goddess-like prakriti is denied a theological (or rather thealogical) status, but, ontologically speaking, she is not “nothing”. However, the Advaita Vedantic sage’s enlightenment depends on the nothingification, so to speak, of maya, on their ability to understand and appreciate the non-reality of maya and her functions. Hence, one may insist that, whereas the atheist Samkhya discourse accepts the existence of the goddess-like feminine principle of prakriti, while, of course, denying it/her a divine status, the non-­ theist philosophy of Advaita Vedanta brings the goddess-like maya down to the level of an ontological zero, claiming that both maya and its function, that is, Ishvara/God are non-real and would get dissolved, like specks of cloud, in the luminous flood of the Absolute Consciousness that is Brahman. In this sense, one may argue that, as far as the non-theistic Indian philosophical traditions are concerned, Advaita Vedanta is one tradition which programmatically denies even the minimal ontological status—let alone “ultimacy”—to a feminine principle which would, in later Hinduism (especially tantric Shaktism), become identified with the Great Goddess, when hyphenated to the magnificent semantics of “Shakti”.

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However, the domain of Advaita Vedantic thought and, especially, experience is in fact much more complex than the reading presented above might imply. It involves paradoxes, contradictions and apparently mystic syntheses of philosophical positions and felt experiences that are not rationally reconcilable. In order to explore this philosophical system’s approach to the goddess in greater depth, we need to take three directions. First, we need to focus on the contradiction between the notion of maya as non-­ real and that of maya as shakti, both of which are found in Shankara’s philosophy. Second, we need to focus on the place of devotion in Shankara’s soteriology, and the status of Ishvara, along with its gender coordinates, in this system. Finally, we need to reflect on what Advaita Vedanta holds to be real, that is, Brahman, and explore the connection between this entity, equated with pure consciousness, and the Goddess, in the context of Shankara’s own life as well as the lives of some later spiritual figures within the Advaita Vedantic framework. As Pintchman observes, in the earlier texts of Vedanta such as the Brahma Sutras, the Gita and the Upanishads, maya does not unequivocally imply illusion. Rather, in such texts, especially in the Gita, maya might also imply shakti (1994, 96–97). She argues that Shankara himself was probably influenced by the intellectual ambience of his times which included tantric and Shakta ideas, and “elevate[d] the concept by describing maya as the divine, creative power (sakti) of the Absolute Brahman” (1994, 105). However, she adds that Shankara’s “understanding … appears rather late” (1994, 105). In the Introduction to his translation of Sadananda Yogindra Saraswati’s Vedantasara, Swami Nikhilananda acknowledges that maya in the Advaita Vedantic traditions also implies shakti, but emphasizes that “the one aim of Vedanta … is the eradication of Maya or Avidya (ignorance)” (1931, v–vi). Paul David Devanandan insists that the conception of Brahman in the Brahma Sutras is actually different from that in Shankara’s philosophy and hence Shankara’s take on maya is also different from the understanding of maya that Badarayana, the author of the Brahma Sutras, probably had (1954, 82–84). However, in Gaudapada’s Karikas on the Mandukya Upanishad, which deeply influenced Shankara, we come across the idea that the phenomenal universe— the “sense-world” which is the domain of becoming—is unreal and only the Atman (the Self as the Absolute Being) is real (Devanandan 1954, 85–86). Devanandan (1954) notes the influence of Buddhist philosophy, a more radically atheist doctrine than Advaita Vedanta, on Gaudapada

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who sees the phenomenal world as illusory, as maya (88), and underlines the interesting interpretation of maya in Gaudapada’s work: He uses the word [maya] with a freedom and latitude of meaning at times signifying magic, at other times the apparent dream-like nature of sense-­ experience, and also to indicate that any connection at all between the world and the Ultimate cannot be rationally sustained. It is all a mystery (maya), how this unreal, changing world of sense-experience could rest on the real, changeless Ultimate Principle. (1954, 87)

Devanandan argues that Gaudapada is probably more interested in “proving the unreality of the world” than in “establishing the sole reality of the Atman”, and hence, the term maya helps him in “establish[ing] the illusory multiplicity of life rather than the sole reality of the Ultimate” (1954, 87–88). Devanandan concludes: “It is the negative aspect of the formula of maya that fascinates the mind of Gaudapada” (1954, 88). One may be tempted to say that Gaudapada could probably intuit the mysterious power of maya, its goddess-like potential. In this respect, maya may seem more important than the (illusory) Ishvara, as it is actually she who is responsible for the emergence of the phenomenal universe. Gaudapada and Shankara are both ready to admit that maya remains an anirvachaniya (indescribable) puzzle that is rationally inexplicable (Devanandan 1954, 89). It is this puzzling status accorded to maya which, in later forms of fully fledged Shaktism, gives rise to the Great Goddess as an inscrutable female divinity. If probed deeply, maya in Advaita Vedanta would appear to be more powerful and more mysterious than even Atman, as she, though not real, actively obscures the reality of the Atman/Brahman. Brahman can be imaged forth as powerful only if maya is considered to be “its” shakti (Devanandan 1954, 89–90, 107; Pintchman 1994, 93–94). Nevertheless, it goes without saying that maya as shakti and maya as something illusive are two completely different ideas which, when fused, create more confusion than lucidity. We shall come back to this point shortly. As Devanandan points out, maya has a peculiar status in Shankara’s philosophy—“the entire world of illusion, Maya, is substantially Isvara (the ‘Highest Lord’) in multiple names and forms; Isvara manifest as various individuals is empirically real but transcendentally unreal” (1954, 102). Of course, this implies that, ultimately, Ishavra “too is not real” (1954, 102). Even though Devanandan’s equation of maya with Ishvara

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is a bit problematic, it is true that Advaita Vedanta’s project of ontologically crossing out theos is coterminous with its enterprise of underlining the status of maya as an ontological zero. Though maya is not seen by it as a goddess, she is definitely goddess-like, and hence one may say that this philosophical school asserts its non-theistic position by simultaneously crossing out “God” (who is in fact not really God in the monotheistic sense of the term—not ontologically valid, but rather God-like) and maya [the g(G)oddess-like feminine principle] as equally non-real (from the transcendental perspective). Shankara, Devanandan insists, was probably a Shakta and belonged to the Goddess-worshipping sect of Hinduism (1954, 107). It is ultimately the tantric doctrine of shakti which helps Shankara in connecting apparently irreconcilable and non-linkable entities: Brahman and Ishvara, Brahman and the phenomenal world (Devanandan 1954, 107). I would like to add that this is necessary for Shankara because, in Gaudapada’s and his own philosophical systems, Brahman appears completely powerless before the super-active, inscrutable maya that enforces the unreal on the real. What we need to notice here is that the phenomenal world of nature— “Gaia”, to be precise, is not something that the “sage” can simply wish away. The world cannot be dismissed as just illusory. It remains there, stubborn and refusing to disappear, and forces the non-theistic and theistic reason alike to acknowledge its presence which is more pressing than that of a “God” whom you can prove or disprove. In other words, the phenomenal world, when seen as a goddess-like entity or even as Shakti— the Goddess herself—presents a different sort of ontological problem than “God” does. Empirically observable, this Goddess baffles the theist who searches for God in invisible realms and also the atheist who fights that God. While the theist may wish to deny her “reality”, she would force her reality on the theistic consciousness; while the atheist may wish to place her, along with “God”, under the category of the unreal supernatural, she would imperiously reveal her difference from that “God”, asserting, obliquely, that she is neither “unreal” nor “supernatural”. There are interesting anecdotes indicating the way the Goddess forced her “reality” upon the non-dualist consciousness of Shankara, and it is to such stories that we shall turn in the last section of this chapter. Ultimately, one may argue, Shankara has to accept the world too, as the domain of Shakti rather than maya, even though he indulges in an unstable ontological compromise between Brahman and Shakti by suggesting that “the world is an appearance mysteriously caused and sustained by the inexplicable energy of

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Brahman, the Absolute, which, however, is not in the least affected by it” (Devanandan 1954, 113). Let us now move to the question of the status accorded to “God” by Shankara. As we have already noticed, Shankara’s Ishvara/God is ultimately as unreal as the phenomenal world in comparison to Brahman, the ultimate and only reality. However, this God is figured in masculine terms, as Ishvara, and not its feminine counterpart (Ishvari in Sanskrit) is presented as the relatively real and ultimately unreal divinity. Maya might be implicitly equated with the feminine divine only when shakti has to be brought into the discursive domain of Advaita Vedanta to solve the puzzle of maya, but the contingent “God” is not female in Shankara’s imagination. If we concur with Devanandan that he was a Shakta, then, ideally, his conception of God could be expected to accommodate the feminine, but that does not happen. One may, of course, argue that the Shakti of Brahman fills in this gap, but, as I have already insisted, Shakti is brought into the Shankarite framework of thought to resolve a philosophical conundrum and also, probably, to address, extra-rationally, his personal mystic experiences, as we would see later. Within the framework of imagining the space for “God” in Advaita Vedanta, we have an (ultimately unreal) divine person, but this person is male rather than female. Suthren Hirst in fact insists that the “Lord” who is predominant in the Shankarite discursive framework of figuring the relatively real God may be seen as Vishnu (2005, 129–131, 134–135). Hirst insists that if we see Shankara’s philosophical framework of Advaita Vedanta as a “way of teaching”, then we may find that the Lord as the “Inner Controller” would assist the “pupil”, devoted to him, in moving closer to the transcendent Brahman (2005, 129, 134–135). This Inner Controller, however, is not feminine, even though a similar approach to meditation on the transcendental reality or the Absolute Brahman is framed within the structure of devotion to a feminine deity in the Advaitic-tantric text, Tripura Rahasya where the Self and Brahman—which are, of course, ontologically the same—are seen as one with the Great Goddess Tripura (Mukhopadhyay 2020, 21–23). The Tripura Rahasya, interestingly, feminizes the Absolute—that is, Brahman. This is not what happens in the case of the Shankarite discourses of non-­ dualism, and the “Lord”, even as a relative form of reality, remains masculine. However, it is interesting to note that, at a different level, this male divinity under erasure is juxtaposed against Maya-as-Shakti which is the originator of this male divinity as well as the world out of Brahman. Starting with a position that attempts to bracket off the (divine) feminine

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principle, Shankara ends up being forced to uphold an inscrutable Shakti who cannot be dismissed as unreal or illusive or as what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak would call “fiction” (2001, 134). This fundamental tension between an attempt at rejecting the feminine principle and being coerced into accepting her is what emerges from time to time in the later history of Advaita Vedanta traditions, which I shall elucidate in the next section. Advaita Vedanta’s approach to “God” has been debated in various ways in the practical realm of sadhana and sadhakas in Indic spiritual traditions, but these debates have mainly centred around the jnana-bhakti (knowledge-­devotion) binary. However, the point I try to draw home here is that the issue of the Goddess in this context is not just a question of a conflict between devotional and rationalist approaches. While “God” in this philosophical doctrine is allowed to carve an affective niche within its largely rationalist system (Hirst 2005, 129–136), the Goddess threatens this rationalist system as a whole with some terrible force. The references to maya in Gaudapada’s and Shankara’s discourses indicate this, hinting at a radical rupture in reason, a bafflement apparently irresolvable. I would not go so far as to claim that the Goddess may be seen as the abject (a la Julia Kristeva; Keltner 2011, 44–45) of the non-theistic ontology put forward by Advaita Vedanta, but it can surely be claimed that she forces this philosophical system to undo the figuration of the feminine principle as a kind of annoyingly inerasable surplus, instead foregrounding a paradigm of the feminine as the essential corrective to all forms of reductive monism. Let us now turn to what is held to be absolutely real in Shankara’s doctrine: Brahman, or the Transcendental Consciousness. Veena R. Howard reminds us that the Advaita Vedantic emphasis on Brahman as the highest reality underlines the fact that Brahman transcends the gender binary and is neither male nor female, it being “grammatically referred to in the neuter, with the neuter pronoun tad” (2020, 14). As Shankara [Shankaracharya 2008] says in his Viveka-Chudamani: Jnatrijneyajnanashunyam anantam nirvikalpam. Kevalakhandachinmatram param tattvam vidurvudhah. (241) (The absolute reality which is the supreme state as indivisible consciousness, infinite, undifferentiated, and free from the imaginary trifurcation of knower-knowable-knowledge, is cognized by the wise. [Translation mine])

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Of course, here, it is clear that, being absolutely transcendental, Brahman is free from any gender identification. It is referred to in abstract terms. In some later Advaita Vedantic texts such as the Vedantasara, too, this genderless nature of Brahman is conspicuous: Akhandam sachchidanandam avammanasagocharam. Atmanam akhiladharam ashraye abhishtasiddhaye. (1) (I take refuge in the Self, the Indivisible, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, beyond the reach of words and thought, and the Substratum of all, for the attainment of my cherished desire. [Translation by Swami Nikhilananda])

However, interestingly, in the first verse of his Advaitasiddhi (1937), Madhusudana Sarasvati, one of the greatest philosophers in the Advaita Vedanta tradition after Shankara, refers to this abstract entity as Vishnu (1.1). Of course, there is ample scope for seeing Vishnu as an abstract cosmic or even a-­cosmic principle rather than a male deity, but in the context of the concrete figuration of Vishnu as a male deity in the Vaishnava vocabulary to which Madhusudana Sarasvati was affectively attached (Narasimhachary 2004, 5), one wonders whether he is covertly or even unconsciously masculinizing the abstract, genderless Brahman of Shankara. In fact, the monism propounded by Advaita Vedanta does not offer any scope for gendering the ultimate reality, as it is understood to be chinmatra, glossed by Sthaneshwar Timalsina as “awareness only” (2009, 3). As Timalsina observes: What makes Advaita Vedanta drastically different from other classical Indian philosophies is its acceptance of pure consciousness as the singular reality. This concept is essentially compatible with all Advaita approaches. Following this understanding, the self identical with Brahman is the immediately cognized awareness. (2009, 3)

However, as we have seen, the Tripura Rahasya figures forth this non-­ dual Absolute Consciousness in feminine terms, presenting it as the divine feminine named Tripura. If we admit that bhakti (devotion) may be a useful way to obtain the non-dual awareness (Hirst 2005, 132–133), then the affective “intentionality” (in the Husserlian sense of the term [Drummond 2007, 113]) that is the crux of the devotional approach in the Indic traditions might figure the non-dual awareness in either feminine or masculine

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terms. However, this femininity or masculinity is, in the final analysis, only provisional and even fictional. Now, if we believe that the ultimate reality is chinmatra, that is, nothing but pure consciousness, then how might it affect our awareness of gender(s)? Is it not supposed to dissolve all ontological figurations of gender? However, the inclusivity in terms of gender that was supposed to be fostered by this approach was apparently absent from Shankara’s own monastic enterprises. With reference to Ubhaya Bharati, the extremely learned woman who adjudicated the famous debate between Shankara and Mandana Mishra, I have observed elsewhere how Shankara’s mathas offered a space to the feminine deity and memorialized Ubhaya Bharati by deifying her, but failed to provide a space for flesh-and-­ blood women (Mukhopadhyay 2020, 31–33). Katherine K.  Young reminds us that Shankara “never married and established his order for men only”, while “the feminine principle occupied a low position in Advaita Vedanta”: “at the cosmic level, maya was the feminine principle of ignorance, and at the level of the path women were a snare” (1987, 70). Young, however, also acknowledges that “Samkara was soteriologically more accommodating of women in his commentary on the Gita” (1987, 70). Timalsina promulgates that Advaita Vedanta “brings theistic positions into crisis by challenging the establishment of ‘God’” (2009, xviii); I would insist that the Goddess brings the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta itself into crisis. Gayatri Spivak reads maya as “fiction” rather than illusion, which leads her to argue, “However the great goddess is made to occupy the place of power, it is always as fiction, not as ‘truth’” (2001, 134–135). Nevertheless, as I (2020) have argued elsewhere, the Goddess is not just fiction in Shaktism; she is also the Truth—in fact, the Advaita Vedantic Truth (50–52). Spivak’s formulation, however, gives us an interesting point of departure to renegotiate the problematic place of the Goddess in Advaita Vedanta. If maya is fiction, then one might see the concept of shakti in Advaita Vedanta as the power of fiction that all searchers for truth must take into account. However, we need to investigate whether the Shakti acknowledged by Shankara is really just maya-as-Goddess-as-fiction. I would insist that, for Shankara, Shakti-as-Goddess or even shakti as a goddess-like ontological category is not just fiction; she is rather the force that undermines the interpretation of the world as fiction. In other words, she problematizes the very binary of truth and fiction, Brahman and the phenomenal world, which informs the metaphysical reasoning of Advaita Vedanta. She problematizes the Advaitic ontology of the real and the

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unreal and claims philosophical recognition, not as fiction but as reality. One might in fact find interesting parallels between the philosophical problem set by maya or Shakti in the context of Advaita Vedanta and the mystic experiences of Advaitins where the Goddess made them acknowledge her presence and, moreover, her reality. There is a famous anecdote about a mystic experience of Shankara in Varanasi (Shastri 2009, 386). One day, at dawn, Shankara was going to the Manikarnika Ghat to take a bath in the Ganga. On his way, he saw a young woman mourning aloud, the corpse of her husband spread across the path. As the corpse blocked his way, Shankara requested the woman to move it aside so that he could go to the Ganga. However, the woman seemed so deeply aggrieved that she did not respond to his words and kept weeping bitterly. Shankara kept requesting her to move the corpse aside. After some time, the woman sharply reacted to Shankara and asked him why he did not ask the corpse itself to move aside so that it could remove itself from his way. Shankara was surprised and thought that she had gone mad due to unbearable grief. He told her that it was absurd to believe that the corpse could move on its own, as it was devoid of shakti/energy. The apparently ordinary woman told him sharply that there was nothing surprising about believing in the ability of the corpse to move on its own, as Shankara had himself propounded the theory that Brahman, the non-dual transcendental reality, devoid of all qualities and devoid of shakti (power/ energy), was the only reason behind the apparent existence of the world, everything else being maya. Wonderstruck, Shankara saw immediately after this that the woman and her dead husband were gone, and he came to understand that the Goddess of Varanasi, the Primordial Shakti, Annapurna, had herself appeared before him to teach him a lesson. He came to understand how absurd it was to try to dismiss as maya the feminine principle that brings the world into being, rather than seeing her as a real being. The Goddess here, one might argue, conspicuously demands a thealogical rather than theological recognition. She does not simply question the idea that she is fictive; rather, she demands the recognition of her power as the real cause behind a world that cannot be dismissed as ontologically superfluous. Brahman, which is “awareness only”, is presented by the Goddess as a corpse, if it is devoid of shakti. The crux of the lesson is not just an overwriting of maya with shakti; it is rather an overwriting of the fictionality of the (divine) feminine with her reality. As a result of his enlightenment, Shankara composed hymns in praise of the Goddess which

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did not figure her forth as maya or fiction but rather equated her with the Ultimate Reality (Shastri 2009, 386). This is reflected in Shankara’s Saundarya-Lahari (2006) too, which is an excellent hymn to the Great Goddess. Pushpendra Kumar, in fact, claims that Shankara “was an ardent worshipper of the goddess (Sakti)” (1986, 48). Referring to the influence of Tantra and Bhakti on Shankara, Kumar underscores the celebration of the maternal dimension of the divine feminine in Shankara’s hymns to the Goddess (1986, 49–50; 55–58). However, what is more interesting is that, according to the saints and mystics associated with or aware of the mystic paramparas (traditions) of Advaita Vedanta, right from the beginning, Advaita Vedanta has covertly acknowledged the feminine divine, even though its philosophy and ascetic traditions may apparently give the impression that it is an anti-feminine, if not an anti-feminist, tradition. This co-existence of “awareness only” and a feminine divinity is really surprising and ostensibly contradictory. As Shailendranarayan Ghoshal Shastri recounts, while he was engaged in the Narmada parikrama (spiritual journey along the banks of the holy river Narmada) that is of great spiritual significance in Hinduism, a sadhu named Pralayadas showed him the cave in which Shankara’s guru, Govindapada had undertaken his spiritual sadhana. Pralayadas told Shastri that Govindapada’s guru, Gaudapada (whose work and ideas have been mentioned earlier in this chapter), was a worshipper of Shri Vidya, the primordial Shakti. Pralayadas adds that both of the disciples of Gaudapada, namely, Govindapada and Brahmananda Thakur, were also worshippers of Shri Vidya. He tells Shastri that the transcendental wisdom obtained by Gaudapada and Govindapada and later on by Shankara would never be possible without the grace of Shri Vidya (Shastri 2009, 380–386). If this is the case, then one might be tempted to say that the puzzle of maya that Gaudapada as well as Shankara has to grapple with inevitably leads the non-dualist philosopher to a mystic recognition of the divine feminine, not as fiction but as intensely real. Is there an essential connection as well as tension between the radical, non-theological, non-theistic monism centring around the principle of “awareness only” and the imperious demand of the Goddess for the recognition of her reality? Does it lead to a covert acknowledgement of the supremacy of the irreducibly real Goddess over a fictional Ishvara/God? It needs to be noticed that, though the dashanami sampradaya of sannyasins, that is, the monastic order initiated by Shankara, did not originally include women, as Shankara “did not sanction sannyasa for women”

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(Jnanadaprana 2017, 16), women have finally been allowed to enter the Shankarite monastic framework, as I have come to know from my ongoing work on the ashrams of the sadhus belonging to the dashanami sampradaya in Varanasi. As Pravrajika Jnanadaprana notes, the Sarada Matha (named after Sarada Devi, the wife of Sri Ramakrishna, who is regarded by his followers as a manifestation of the Divine Mother herself), which Swami Vivekananda had dreamt of, eventually inducted female ascetics (sannyasinis) into the Puri sampradaya (part of the dashanami order) (2017, 11–16). Elsewhere, I have discussed in detail how this apparently revolutionary approach may be related to the high status accorded to women and the pivotal spiritual position of the Mother Goddess Kali in the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda movement (Mukhopadhyay 2020, 97–108). Might one not be tempted to see this as an outcome of the imperious demand for her recognition that the Goddess has always put forward to the Advaita Vedantins? I will explore in the next chapter, in some greater detail, how the Advaita Vedantins such as Tota Puri and Vivekananda had to face the same tension between the Advaita Vedantic Self-reliance and the imperious emergence of the Goddess as an irreducible alterity as was faced by Shankara. However, in the last segment of this chapter, I would briefly mention the peculiar cognitive frameworks involved in Sri Ramakrishna’s Advaita Vedantic sadhana under the guidance of Tota Puri and try to compare them with Vivekananda’s ambivalent approach to Goddess Kali. As Swami Saradananda observes, when Ramakrishna first met Tota Puri, the great Advaita Vedantin monk, in Dakshineshwar, the sannyasi asked Ramakrishna whether he would like to pursue sadhana on the Advaita path. Ramakrishna, ever loyal to his Divine Mother, Goddess Kali, responded that he would perform this sadhana if Kali commanded him to do so. It is said that he received the command from the Goddess and told Tota Puri so (Saradananda 2017, 164). Tota Puri, who had achieved the Brahman awareness, did not accord any divine ontological status to the Goddess who was nothing greater than maya for him, the “fiction”. Hence, though he was impressed by the profound spiritual inclination of Ramakrishna, he was not willing to accept the latter’s obsession with Goddess Kali as anything other than superstition (Saradananda 2017, 164–165). In the final phase of his Advaitic sadhana under Tota Puri’s guidance, Ramakrishna faced a serious problem. Whenever he tried to jettison all forms of nama-rupa (specific phenomenal entities with names and forms), he could jettison all phenomenal multiplicity from his

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consciousness, except the smiling form of Goddess Kali (Saradananda 2017, 168). The Goddess stood between the world of multiplicity and the transcendental domain that was chinmatra, “awareness only”—the apparently irreducible barrier between One and Many. However, in order to solve this problem, Tota Puri took up a piece of broken glass and forced it into the space between Ramakrishna’s eyebrows, as a result of which Ramakrishna could tear apart even the loved image of Kali from his consciousness with the sword of jnana (wisdom) (Saradananda 2017, 168). After this, the entire phenomenal universe dissolved into “awareness only” and Ramakrishna achieved samadhi (Saradananda 2017, 168–169). This is a very intriguing incident in that Ramakrishna sets out on the Advaitic path only after the Goddess instructs him to do so, but in the final, resultant phase of this askesis, he can achieve the wisdom, the final grounding in pure, transcendental awareness, only after literally cutting off the Goddess’s figure. Does the Goddess instruct him to engage in this sadhana knowing fully well that, as the outcome, she herself would be annihilated? Or is it rather the case that what seems to be the annihilation of the Goddess is actually not her annihilation but her sublation, so to speak, into the transcendental consciousness which can be, as in the text of the Tripura Rahasya, figured as the Goddess as well? In other words, does she actually teach him a more radical form of non-dualism which dissolves all epistemic and even empiric differences between the phenomenal universe as Shakti’s work and the undifferentiated awareness as an ontological domain free from the Goddess altogether? Does Shakti and awareness, the self and the world become one in this way—experientially, empirically? Is it pan-thea-ism rather than thea-cide? Robert Graves, while referring to this incident, makes a distinction between the approaches to the Goddess shown by Ramakrishna and Ramprasad, another famous poet and devotee of Kali admired by Ramakrishna himself. Graves writes: Though he [Ramakrishna] did not need to declare war on the Female, as Jesus had done, he set himself painfully to ‘dissolve his vision of the Goddess’ in order to achieve the ultimate bliss of samadhi, or communion with the Absolute; holding that the Goddess, who was both the entangler and the liberator of physical man, has no place in that remote esoteric Heaven. … Ramprasad had never allowed himself to be thus tempted from his devotion to the Goddess by spiritual ambition. He had even rejected the orthodox hope of ‘not-being’, through mystic absorption in the Absolute. (2010, 819–820)

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Jeffrey Kripal, on the other hand, underlines the fact that even Tota Puri’s enthusiastic Advaita Vedantic instructions could not whisk Ramakrishna away from his devotion to the Mother Goddess, and his devotional songs to the Mother would even bring tears to Tota Puri’s eyes (1998, 159). Kripal says, “That great knower [Tota Puri] was defeated. So was Vedanta” (1998, 159). Interestingly, it appears that neither Graves nor Kripal gets it right. While Graves believes that Ramakrishna ends up privileging the Advaita Vedantic “awareness” over the Goddess, Kripal believes that Ramakrishna’s Goddess defeats Advaita Vedanta. One who is aware of Ramakrishna’s overall spiritual orientation and closely reads the narrative of Ramakrishna’s grappling with Advaita Vedanta, as presented by Saradananda, comes to understand that he was not an Advaitin coming in contact with an obstreperous Goddess, but rather a Goddess-worshipper coming in contact with Advaita Vedanta, and hence, his Advaitic experience was framed by and grounded in Goddess spirituality. Unlike the Advaita Vedantin sadhakas or philosophers who may start their spiritual life by valorizing the principle of “awareness only”, Ramakrishna started his spiritual adventure with a strong belief in the Goddess—even a Goddess with a material form—and it was only through his sadhana that he came to experience that the Goddess could also be perceived as undifferentiated awareness. In the celebrated event of his obtaining the darshan (blissful vision or experience) of the Goddess, he had experienced her as rolling waves of luminous consciousness (Saradananda 2017, 65–66). It might be argued that this experience was probably not radically different from what he perceived in the Advaitic state wherein his experience was the same, though in the case of the latter, it was not referred to as the “Mother” (Bhasvaraprana 2022, 79). What he cuts off is in fact the mental form of the Goddess and not the Goddess per se who had herself instructed him to explore Advaita Vedanta (Frawley 2022). Interestingly, it appears that the Goddess as Shakti who might emerge as pure matter as well as pure consciousness (Chakraborty and Mukhopadhyay 2022, 59–61) is somehow different from the “God” Advaita Vedanta puts under erasure. Ramakrishna’s approach to Advaita Vedanta is probably essentially thealogical rather than theological. Hence, when we ponder over Saradananda’s insistence that, after Ramakrishna reached the crescendo of his Advaitic experience, the Goddess mystically conveyed to him the instruction to come down to the realm of relationality and multiplicity (Saradananda 2017, 88), we might actually find the readings of both Graves and Kripal fallacious. One might say that, precisely, what Ramakrishna learned was

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that the Goddess is not just maya or a worldly force; she is the transcendental awareness as well, and that, essentially, there is no difference between the abstract Absolute and phenomena, between the material and the spiritual. The “Goddess” might stand for the totality of experience, both this-worldly and other-worldly, and hence, she might be seen as both Brahman and maya, rather than as the female counterpart of Ishvara/ God. In a way, Ramakrishna names the totality of his religious and secular experience the “Mother” or the “Goddess”, and hence she ceases to be a mere concept or a divine “figure”. As a “SacredSecular” entity, Ramakrishna’s Goddess makes us ground even the transcendental awareness in this universe. Precisely, in Ramakrishna’s case, we see an interesting encounter between the Goddess and a doctrine that rejects her, from the perspective of a sadhaka’s thealogical sensibilities. As a result, what emerges is a non-­ dual experience of seeing the Goddess everywhere—rather than getting rejected as maya, she emerges as the all-pervading Ultimate Reality, thereby saturating with her presence the spiritual experience privileged by Advaita Vedanta, a doctrine that had apparently sought to exclude the divine feminine from its philosophical framework. As Jeffery D.  Long illustrates: Sri Ramakrishna claimed to perceive the Divine Mother’s presence everywhere and in all beings. This led to a behavior of ecstasy that many devotees regarded as eccentric. He would feed the food offerings, the prasād, left by devotees for the Goddess to a cat, saying he saw the Goddess in the cat no less than in other beings or in the image of the Goddess Kālı ̄ to which ritual worship was to be offered. The whole world of Ramakrishna was enlivened with the presence of the Goddess. The divine feminine, for Ramakrishna, pervaded everything. (2020, 155)

Indeed, here, Advaita Vedanta seems to have been totally feminized, and one may be tempted to argue that “the essential vision of reality experienced and then expressed by Ramakrishna is gynocentric and ultimately transcendentalist in its orientation toward gender”, as, “for Ramakrishna, the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta and the Kālı ̄ of Tantra are one and the same” (Long 2020, 153, 166). However, as Long notes, there seems to be some kind of incompatibility between this gender-egalitarian or rather gynocentric approach and the male-centred establishment which the Ramakrishna Order appears to be, thanks to its affiliation to the Dashanami

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Sampradaya initiated by Shankara, through the Advaitin Tota Puri, Ramakrishna’s instructor in Advaita Vedantic sadhana (2020, 156, 167–169). From Long’s reading, one may come to the conclusion that even the Ramakrishna Order’s ambivalence to femininity, involving genuine reverence for the Divine Mother as well as androcentric attitudes, may be seen as reflecting the tension between Advaita Vedanta and the divine feminine, a tension of the sort this chapter has sought to explore. Besides, as we have already seen, the accommodation of female ascetics (sannyasinis) within the Order of the Sarada Matha might be seen as an attempt at rectifying the residual androcentrism of not just the Ramakrishna Order but also that of the Shankarite tradition of asceticism as a whole, which might symptomatize the acknowledgement of the (human as well as divine) feminine. In the next chapter, Tota Puri’s and Vivekananda’s shifting attitudes to the Goddess would be dealt with in detail. However, while concluding this chapter, we need to briefly mention the ambivalent position of the Goddess in the spiritual life and mission of Swami Vivekananda. In The Master as I Saw Him, Sister Nivedita (1910) notes the two apparently irreconcilable attitudes of Swami Vivekananda: the attitude of an uncompromising Advaitin and that of a devotee of Kali (83, 87). She notes how Vivekananda spoke of his initial struggle with Kali, his adamantine attempts at rejecting her (1910, 86). Nivedita does not shy away from underscoring the essential philosophical incompatibility between Brahman and Mother, Advaita Vedanta and the Goddess (1910, 87). However, she is also aware of the possibility of the borderline between the two getting blurred: In truth it might well be that the two ideas could not be reconciled. Both conceptions could not be equally true at the same time. It is clear enough that in the end, as a subjective realisation, either the Mother must become Brahman, or Brahman the Mother. One of the two must melt into the other, the question of which, in any particular case, depending on the destiny and the past of the worshipping soul. (1910, 87)

In a way, one may say that, while in Ramakrishna’s case, the Goddess became Brahman, in Vivekananda’s case, there remained some residual conflict between the Goddess and Brahman. It was only being forced by some great mysterious power that he came to accept, with difficulty, the fact that the Goddess could become Brahman or Brahman could become the Goddess. Nivedita notes the tension experienced by Vivekananda in

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asserting that he believed in the Goddess as well as in the unitary reality of Brahman: “I cannot but believe that there is somewhere a great Power That thinks of Herself as feminine, and called Kali, and Mother And I believe in Brahman too” (1910, 87). I would like to argue that this is the tension which has been faced by Advaita Vedantic philosophers and monks across ages. While the fictional God could be dissolved into the undifferentiated light of consciousness, into the principle of “awareness only”, the Goddess stubbornly remained there, demanding recognition, not as fiction but as truth. Though Shankara’s Saundarya-Lahari (2006) apparently celebrates the Goddess’s beauty, we need to note that she has been a source of philosophical terror as well, as far as Advaita Vedanta is concerned. As Rilke would tell us, beauty is “the start of terror” (Rilke 2005, 5). However, terror can, as we know, also be the beginning of beauty. In the case of Ramakrishna, Goddess-as-­ beauty and Goddess-as-terror were held in balance. In Vivekananda’s case, terror bloomed into beauty, towards the end of his life, when Kali emerged as the resultant peace that could be brought in only by terror. Nivedita notes how Vivekananda peacefully surrenders himself to the Great Goddess towards the final stage of his life, knowing her to be one with “Terror” (1910, 65–70, 83–85). Brahman, if not just a passive philosophical abstraction, must teach the sage to live through terror, without imagining the terror to be unreal. It is this reality of terror which Vivekananda found in Goddess Kali, and accepting her and recognizing the terror inseparable from human existence—acknowledging the terror that cannot be reduced to any philosophical simplicity or rational solace—reached that point of beauty where the Whole involved death and darkness as much as life and light. In this chapter, I have tried to explore the ways in which Advaita Vedanta as a philosophical system seeks to exclude the Goddess from its rational framework of establishing the unitary reality of Brahman, but the Goddess, in her turn, makes that rational framework totter, forcing the Advaitin to understand that the realm of materiality and multiplicity cannot be dismissed or denigrated so easily, either in theory or in practice. As a result, while its non-theistic focus on God as fictional (and “unreal” [Nicholson 2020, 234]) is not shaken, its approach to maya and shakti, two tropological correlatives of the Goddess, begins to undergo a tension that persists even in the case of a “modern” Vedantin such as Vivekananda. I have sought to focus on the central philosophical tenets of classical Advaita Vedanta and its later philosophical ramifications, but I have also

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drawn on what Michael S. Allen identifies as “Greater Advaita Vedanta”, including vernacular as well as Sanskritic traditions and acknowledging the influences of Tantra, Yoga and Bhakti (see Raveh 2020, 368). One persistent problem faced by anybody speaking of maya in the context of Advaita Vedanta is that, while Advaita Vedanta describes maya as “neither real nor unreal” (Chakrabarti 2020, 458–459), it does declare Brahman to be the a-dvaita or non-dual reality, thereby crossing out the possibility of maya being “real”. Interestingly, the designation of maya as “neither real nor unreal”, when seen through the thealogical lens such as used by me, may be seen as a compromise compelled by the Goddess clamouring for her recognition as a reality. The Goddess’s philosophical rejection paradoxically leads to her re-affirmation in the Advaita Vedanta traditions, time and again, not just in terms of superficial religious affect but in deeper ontological terms, thereby re-saturating a space with her being wherefrom imperfectly wise men had sought to remove her. From our reading of this complex philosophical system, it is evident that this Goddess, of course, is not just a female counterpart of “God” (whose “cause-effect relation to the world is ultimately a fiction”, according to Advaita Vedanta [Nicholson 2020, 232]); she stands for a different ontological category.

References Advaitasiddhi of Madhusudanasarasvati, with the Commentaries. 1937. Ed. Anant Krisna Sastri. 2nd ed. Revised by Sivram Sastri Sintre. Bombay: Pandurang Jawaji/“Nirnaya-Sagar” Press. Bhasvaraprana, Pravrajika. 2022. Bhavaganga. Dakshineshwar, Kolkata: Sri Sarada Math. Bhattacharya, Bidhubhushan (Saptatirtha). 2008. Samkhya Darshaner Bibaran. Kolkata: Pashchimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshat. Chakrabarti, Arindam. 2020. Dream and Love at the Edge of Wisdom: A Contemporary Cross-Cultural Remapping of Vedānta. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta, ed. Ayon Maharaj, 445–471. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Chakraborty, Sudipta, and Anway Mukhopadhyay. 2022. Spiritual Materialism/ Material Spiritualism: Shakta Tantric Approaches to Matter. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 21 (2): 43–64. https://doi.org/10.25120/ etropic.21.2.2022.3897. Chapple, Christopher Key. 2008. The Goddess and Ecological Sensitivity: The Cultivation of Earth Knowledge. In The Constant and Changing Faces of the

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Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia, ed. Deepak Shimkhada and Phyllis K. Herman, 204–219. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. 1959. Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House. Converse, Raymond W. 2003. Atheism as a Positive Social Force. New York: Algora. Devanandan, Paul David. 1954. The Concept of Maya. Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Drummond, John J. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Husserl’s Philosophy. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. Frawley, David. 2022. The Goddess Kali and the Spiritual Heart. Vedanet.com, July 10. Accessed 17 October 2022. https://www.vedanet.com/ the-­goddess-­kali-­and-­the-­spiritual-­heart/2022/. Frazier, Jessica. 2013. Hinduism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 367–379. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graves, Robert. 2010. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. Ed. Grevel Lindop. London: Faber and Faber. Google Books. Accessed 18 December 2021. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_White_ Goddess/XHwaVK17cf0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+white+goddess+ramakris hna&pg=PA819&printsec=frontcover. Hirst, J.G.  Suthren. 2005. Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Howard, Veena R. 2020. Introduction: Gender Conceptions in Indian Thought: Identity, Hybridity, Fluidity, Androgyny, and Transcendence. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender, ed. Veena R.  Howard, 1–34. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Iammarino, Darren. 2013. Religion and Reality: An Exploration of Contemporary Metaphysical Systems, Theologies, and Religious Pluralism. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick. Jnanadaprana, Pravrajika. 2017. Swami Vivekananda’s Dream, Sri Sarada Math. Trans. Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana. Dakshineswar, Kolkata: Sri Sarada Math. Keltner, S.K. 2011. Kristeva: Thresholds. Cambridge: Polity. Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1998. Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2nd ed. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Kumar, Pushpendra. 1986. The Principle of Sakti. Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers. Larson, Gerald James. 1987. Part One: Introduction to the Philosophy of Samkhya. In Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Samkhya a Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy, ed. Gerald James Larson and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya, 1–103. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Long, Jeffery D. 2020. Gender in the Tradition of Sri Ramakrishna. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender, ed. Veena R. Howard, 151–171. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2017. Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. ———. 2020. The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Narasimhachary, M. 2004. Sri Ramanuja. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Neville, Robert. 2018. Philosophy of Religion and the Big Questions. Palgrave Communications 4 (126): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-­018-­ 0182-­9. Nicholson, Andrew J. 2017. Hindu Disproofs of God: Refuting Vedantic Theism in the Samkhya-Sutra. In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, ed. Jonardon Ganeri, 598–620. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020. Making Space for God: Karma, Freedom, and Devotion in the Brahmasūtra Commentaries of Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, and Baladeva. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta, ed. Ayon Maharaj, 227–253. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Nikhilananda, Swami. 1931. Vedantasara of Sadananda, with Introduction, Text, English Translation and Comments. Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama. Nivedita, Sister. 1910. The Master as I Saw Him: Being Pages from the Life of the Swami Vivekananda. London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Pintchman, Tracy. 1994. The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press. Potter, Karl H. 1981. Part One: Introduction to the Philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. In Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and His Pupils, ed. Karl H. Potter, 1–100. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Raveh, Daniel. 2020. Śaṅkaradigvijaya: A Narrative Interpretation of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedanta. In The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta, ed. Ayon Maharaj, 367–390. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Rilke, Rainer Maria. 2005. Duino Elegies: The First Elegy. In Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, ed. Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. A. Poulin, 5–11. Boston/ New York: Mariner Books. Saradananda, Swami. 2017. Shri Shri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga. Vol. 1: Purbakatha o Balyajiban, Sadhakabhava o gurubhava—Purbardha. Kolkata: Udbodhan. Saundarya-Lahari of Sri Sankaracarya. 2006. Trans. Swami Tapasyananda. Mylapore, Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math. Shankaracharya. 2008. Viveka-Chudamani. Trans. Shambhunath Pathak [Bengali]. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Shastri, Shailendranarayan Ghoshal. 2009. Tapobhumi Narmada: Uttartat (Akhanda). Vols. 1–5. Dhaka: Saidul Rahman.

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Shastri, Dakshinaranjan. 2013. Charvaka Darshana. Kolkata: Pashchimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshat. Sherma, Rita DasGupta. 1998. Sacred Immanence: Reflections of Ecofeminism in Hindu Tantra. In Purifying the Earthly Body of God: Religion and Ecology in Hindu India, ed. Lance E.  Nelson, 89–131. Albany: State University of New York Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2001. Moving Devi. Cultural Critique 47 (Winter): 120–163. Timalsina, Sthaneshwar. 2009. Consciousness in Indian Philosophy: The Advaita Doctrine of ‘Awareness Only’. London and New York: Routledge. Young, Katherine K. 1987. Hinduism. In Women in World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma, 59–104. Albany: State University of New York Press.

CHAPTER 4

Starting or Ceasing to Believe in the Goddess: Faith Dynamics in India’s Living Goddess Traditions

Abstract  This chapter dwells on a few instances in the context of South Asian goddess traditions which uphold the dynamic nature of belief or disbelief in the Goddess. In order to explore this, the chapter draws on both historical documents and fictional texts. Drawing on Robin Le Poidevin’s observations on the dynamic nature of faith, involving faith shifts—from atheism to theism and theism to atheism—this chapter focuses on the historical figures such as Tota Puri, Sri Ramakrishna’s instructor in Advaita Vedanta and Swami Vivekananda, as well as fictional texts of Rabindranath Tagore, so as to foreground the complex ways in which faith shifts in the context of goddess-centred religiosity may reveal not just their specific psycho-spiritual repercussions but also the evidently gendered ways in which the maternal-feminine entity of the Goddess often inflects the emotional coordinates of faith. Keywords  Faith shifts • A-thea-ist • Terror • Maya • Tota Puri • Vivekananda • Brahmoism • Kali • Sannyas • Birth-giver • Androcentric • Maternal-feminine • Marxists • World Mother When we speak of faith or the lack of faith, theism or atheism, we often take them as fixed categories of religious (or anti-religious) attitude. We tend to speak of “theists” and “atheists” in such a way as implies that they are probably fixed ontological categories—as if the same person cannot be © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Mukhopadhyay, Atheism and the Goddess, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7_4

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a theist at a certain point of time and an atheist at another. Nevertheless, intuitively, we do know that such attitudes often change over time, and hence, rather than synchronically arranging these categories as antithetical, we need to look at the possibilities of their diachronic interplay—the evolution of an atheist into a theist or vice versa. One might even be tempted to ponder over the possibility of the same “self” accommodating theism and atheism simultaneously (which is not the same thing as agnosticism), if we cease to believe in the “unified” self and embrace, with the poststructuralist thinkers, the idea of a plural, fluid self. Robin le Poidevin, in his essay, “Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith: Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift?”, explores how far the model of paradigm shift proposed by Thomas Kuhn in the context of revolutionary changes in scientific theory might be applied to the cases of faith shifts in the psychic lives of individuals. He observes that while major paradigm shifts in scientific theory are expressed through impersonal language, in the cases of paradigm shifts in faith: in religious contexts, though there may be an impersonal language in which religious doctrines and community practices are articulated, nevertheless the first-personal perspective cannot be eliminated. The religious viewpoint offers to transform my life. Equally, the loss of faith may occasion a personal crisis. Both the search for faith, and the abandonment of it, is a personal journey. Scientific paradigm shifts happen to scientific communities, even if it is also true to say that this may sometimes be driven by the scientific work and theorising of individuals. And when we ask whether different scientific paradigms are commensurable, we will most likely think of these in abstract terms, rather than as the belief states of individuals. In contrast, religious conversion or loss of faith is primarily something that happens to individuals, even if this may sometimes spill over into the communities of which these individuals are part (think of the charismatic preacher, or the influential sceptic). (2021, 553)

Of course, while speaking of “individual” experiences in terms of faith dynamics, Le Poidevin does not mean to dissociate the individual from their social context, nor does he imply that the personal and impersonal discourses in this context are wholly delinked. As he illustrates: So when we ask whether different religious viewpoints are commensurable or not, we can pose this in impersonal terms, as a question about religious propositions (theism versus atheism, for instance). Or we can pose it in

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­ ersonal terms, as a question about the individual thinker: can the person p who has gained, or lost, a faith, make an objective comparison between the state they are in now and the state they were in before? (2021, 553)

As is obvious from the lines cited here, Le Poidevin ponders over the diachronic dimension of one’s attitude to religious faith—how that attitude evolves. In other words, how can one compare the different moments in the history of one’s journey into or out of religious faith? Precisely, here, we are no longer mulling over static positions regarding faith; we are underlining the dynamic nature of faith. The venture of foregrounding faith dynamics rather than static positions of theists and atheists allows us to acknowledge the complex fluctuations involved in religious beliefs and the stirrings in the believers’ minds. Belief may evolve into non-belief, and non-belief may turn into strongly grounded faith. One can of course focus on the social, political and even economic contexts of such faith dynamics. One may think of faith dynamics in terms of psychological evolution. However, many such causal analyses of the evolution of faith might be reductionist and privilege certain factors while denying some others. Hence, I do not plan to offer any systematic causal explanation of the instances of faith dynamics in the religious history of “modern” India, pertaining to the Goddess, which this chapter deals with. I rather plan to look at the shifting semiotic, semantic and epistemic horizons of believers or non-believers in the Goddess and explore the ways in which we can map a separate cartography of “shifts” in Goddess faith in the context of such faith’s interaction with atheist or, especially, a-thea-ist sensibilities. This issue is, it goes without saying, all the more complicated by the fact that theism itself may sometimes thrive on a-thea-ism. In order to explore these scenarios, we shall first look at historical figures (Tota Puri and Vivekananda) and then move over to fictional figures that might be seen as occasionally reflecting and occasionally deviating from the religious attitudes inherited (but not necessary always embraced) by their historical creator (fictional characters in the works of Rabindranath Tagore). Tota Puri belonged to the dashnami sampradaya, established by Shankara, and was a staunch Advaita Vedantin. He had, it is said, attained Brahma-jnana, the ultimate spiritual experience of Brahman. Ever courageous and submerged in the bliss of the Self, he did not acknowledge the significance of Shakti (Vedananda 2017, 55; Bhandari 2014, 39, 50). In his Vedantic ontology, Shakti/Devi was, naturally, not a “reality”. His body was healthy and it was in this body that he had experienced

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nirvikalpa samadhi (the ultimate spiritual experience underlined by Advaita Vedanta) as well (Bhandari 2014, 44; Vedananda 2017, 56). Ever stationed in the ultimate wisdom, fixed in the transcendental Self that is unfettered by the limitations of the body, he would seldom let his mind waver from that point of transcendence or come down to the limiting experience of physicality (Vedananda 2017, 56). However, after spending quite a few months at Dakshineshwar and after instructing and guiding Ramakrishna in Advaita Vedantic sadhana, he suddenly started suffering from stomach ache and blood dysentery (Vedananda 2017, 56; Bhandari 2014, 44–46). He felt puzzled, and then pained, at the thought that his mind, fixed in the transcendental realm of Brahma-jnana, would be forced to concentrate on his body now and would have to be enmeshed in the painful and distracting bodily experiences (Vedananda 2017, 56; Bhandari 2014, 46–47). Finally, he decided to drown his body into the Ganga. One night, he tried hard to focus his mind on his transcendental Self, but could not concentrate, due to acute stomach ache. He decided to plunge into the Ganga and finish his bodily existence (Vedananda 2017, 56; Bhandari 2014, 47). Miraculously, even though he moved deeper into the river, he could not drown his body. It appeared that the level of the water of the Ganga had become such that he could not drown himself (Vedananda 2017, 56–57; Bhandari 2014, 47). Reaching the nadir of frustration, he suddenly achieved another enlightenment, different from his earlier, Advaitic one, and came to understand, as if in a flash, that without the agency of Shakti, the Great Goddess, one could not move beyond the bodily awareness; one could not even kill one’s body without her grace (Vedananda 2017, 57; Bhandari 2014, 48). The Self, he came to understand, could not control itself totally; it was, ultimately, subjected to the controlling power of the Great M(O)ther. While his earlier enlightenment gave him the experience of absolute transcendence, this enlightenment made him feel the intensity of the immanence of the Great Goddess. She was everywhere and in everything—in all experiences—in wisdom and ignorance, in disease and health, in life and death (Vedananda 2017, 57; Bhandari 2014, 47–49). Tota Puri, later on, shared his experience with his disciple, Ramakrishna, and acknowledged before him that he had to ultimately accept the reality of Shakti/Devi. Ramakrishna was happy to come to know that his Vedantic Guru, Tota Puri, too ultimately came to admit that Devi was not just a piece of fiction, she was as real as Brahman (Vedananda 2017, 57–58; Bhandari 2014, 50–51).

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What is interesting to note here is that Tota Puri’s acknowledgement of Shakti or Devi is coextensive with his acknowledgement of the undeniable claims of the body on the “Self”. The physical, the natural, the limited and limiting contours of earthly existence—everything that a patriarchal notion of transcendence would like to marginalize—keep exerting their pressure on the Self, and they cannot be experientially transcended by a living entity, even though, at the level of ideation, one may cross them out in a hundred ways. Apparently, the Goddess does not appear to him as a door opening towards transcendence, but rather as one shutting him off from his familiar experience of transcendence. It is, ostensibly, the grossest function of the Goddess as maya, much reviled by Advaita Vedanta, and yet, it becomes, in this context, an educative function of the Goddess, as Ramakrishna (and many Ramakrishna devotees) would see it (Vedananda 2017, 55–58; Bhandari 2014, 50–51). She teaches Tota Puri that she is always there and is irreducible to “fiction”. One has to accept her because she demands recognition experientially and not just notionally. She, almost violently, elicits from the Advaitic saint an acknowledgement that springs physically, not philosophically, as a result of something that is apparently as non-discursive and non-philosophical as acute stomach ache—and not the philosophical reflections of a quiet mind. While critically revisiting Parmenides’s focus on transcendence, Adriana Cavarero sees the obsession with transcendence, not just in Parmenides but also in later Western philosophical traditions, as coterminous with a “symbolic matricide” (1995, 37–38). She says: The realm of pure thought thus becomes the abode of the thinker who forgets that the world of appearances precedes whatever region the philosopher can choose as his own “true” abode, where nonetheless he was not born. …In effect the philosopher abandons the world of his own birth in order to establish his abode in pure thought, thus carrying out a symbolic matricide in the erasure of his birth. This act of matricide extends to everyone, insofar as all humans are born of woman into a world of appearances, a world where they, too, “appear” as they come forth from their mother. (1995, 38)

Cavarero’s observations are perfectly applicable to Tota Puri’s case, as the ontology of Advaita Vedanta and that of Parmenides have a lot of things in common, especially the suspicion and rejection of the world of appearances. Tota Puri’s spiritual training in Advaita Vedanta facilitates the symbolic matricide underscored by Cavarero. Forgetting the body one inhabits

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is also, indirectly, a process of forgetting the history of one’s embodiment which is undeniably related to their mother. The body one has can be traced back to their mother, and the denial of the body is obviously a denial of not just one’s own body but also that of its link to the mother’s body. Denying the world of appearances, including one’s own physicality, thus, becomes coextensive with the denial of the reality of the embodied mother whose womb had nurtured the infant’s body in its rudimentary stage. Ramakrishna’s Goddess, ultimately, rectifies the tremendous error involved in this symbolic matricide. She reminds Tota Puri of his body, which is “born of woman”, and thus, indirectly, of his birth—in this world—and also of the value of the feminine source of that body. He comes to learn that, rather than reviling the facticity of the body as a (feminine) conspiracy of maya, he should acknowledge the reality of this limitation and must humbly acknowledge the stupendous agency of Devi in running the world of not “appearances” but limited existents. That of course does not imply that a limited existent must not aspire for transcendence or the limitless. The Goddess’s lesson seems to be simply that the aspiration for the unlimited must take shape from within the matrix of limited phenomenal existence, acknowledging that matrix rather than seeking to annihilate it through ideation. If the paradigm shift in Tota Puri’s faith system is caused by the Goddess’s reminding him of his body and thus indirectly of his (physical) birth, in the case of Swami Vivekananda, it is conditioned by an acceptance of entropy and death—of “terror”, as we have already seen in the previous chapter. While Cavarero insists that “the patriarchal order that violates the maternal order lives in the house of death” (1995, 68), Vivekananda did not superimpose on Goddess Kali the patriarchal order living in the house of death. The figuration of death which he saw in Kali was of a different order. Cavarero says: [T]he centralization of death forces matricidal men to play death’s own card of self-annihilation. This is the annihilation of nothingness, the Parmenidean insistence that nothingness cannot be, so that ever-lasting being can be a remedy for the nothingness of death which had been placed at the center, owing to its promises of immense power. (1995, 105)

Vivekananda’s approach to nothingness and death is, however, much more complex. Exposed to the power of nothingness, death, disease and

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destruction, he knew very well how difficult it was to either deny that power or appropriate it into the fold of patriarchal philosophizing. Interestingly, for him, death, the masculine (Parmenidean, a la Cavarero, for instance) dissolution of which into “ever-lasting being” was not the final solution, was not located at the heart of a patriarchal order but rather, in its non-annihilability, was as adamantly irreducible as the physicality of the body born of a woman. Death, in other words, was as stubborn as the body that was born, demanding a more than philosophic recognition. It was, precisely, part of the maternal order (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 25), and Kali had the agency of causing both the “beginning” and the “end” of life, to appropriate the expressions of Cavarero (Cavarero 1995, 105). Nevertheless, it is important to look at his shifting approaches to Kali, and I shall attempt to provide a brief history of his struggles with her. Nivedita wonderfully captures the contradictions, tensions and dichotomies involved in the accommodation of the Goddess in his consciousness which was otherwise Advaitically oriented (1910, 83–88). Nivedita rightly underscores that, while the Swami was famous for his insistence on the non-dual experience of the Absolute, there were, paradoxically, “two elements in his consciousness” (emphasis added; 1910, 83). Before we move further in the direction of analysing the difficult process of accommodating Kali in his Advaitic consciousness, it might be relevant to underscore his approach to atheism. Nicholas Gier has noted that “Swami Vivekananda defended the atheism of Buddhism and Jainism” (2000, 2). Nemai Sadhan Bose reminds us: In fact, atheism for Vivekananda is not a problem. An atheist is more welcome than a believer if he only has faith in two other fundamentals. One is faith in himself. Swamiji explained, ‘The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself. But it is not selfish faith. It means faith in all because you are all.’ The second essential requirement is that of character. (1998, 284–285)

One needs to pay close attention to Vivekananda’s take on atheism here. As we have already noticed, some kind of philosophical traffic is always possible between the position of the Advaita Vedantin and that of the atheist. It appears that one element in his spiritual consciousness was akin to atheism, framed within Advaita Vedantic sensibility. The “new religion” he had in mind was apparently the one grounded in the principle of

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tremendous self-reliance, something with which Tota Puri would have gladly identified. And yet, as in the case of Tota Puri or many other Advaita Vedantins, he too came to understand that this focus on ostensibly unlimited self-reliance was ultimately fragile (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 24). There is a greater power that limits the self, and the other element in his consciousness, which Nivedita comes to explore and appreciate, was one that paid homage to that great limiting power which was, as I have observed elsewhere, closely aligned with this world, a world that obviously involved pain, terror and frustration (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 24–28). This power, we must add, is figured as feminine. Amiya P. Sen notes: By 1881–2, it would seem, a reading of Mill’s Three Essays on Religion, Hume, Spencer and the Scottish Common Sense philosophy had shaken the ‘boyish beliefs’ off the Swami, and led him through successive bouts of agnosticism, unbelief and philosophical skepticism. …Narendra’s [Vivekananda’s] skeptical frame of mind persisted at least until the spring of 1886, for it is barely a couple of months before he passed away, that Sri Ramakrishna could say with some confidence, that after him, the world could look up to Narendra for spiritual guidance. (2010, 93)

Sen argues that Vivekananda, then Narendranath (his name before his sannyas), was often overpowered by an agnostic orientation, though he, “at no stage, was completely overtaken by atheism or disbelief” (2010, 93–94). Narendranath’s acceptance of Vedantic thought went through various phases of reflexive negotiation and critical consideration and was not an uncritical acceptance (Sen 2010, 95–96). However, his reaction or response to Kali was “fairly perplexing” (Sen 2010, 95). Narendranath’s early association with the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj (Nivedita 1910, 83; Sen 2010, 93), obviously, signals his exposure to a theological tradition of patriarchal monotheism, and it needs to be underscored that the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj did not have a place for a feminine Absolute, its monocentric theology being grounded in a masculine conception of the divine and thus presenting a theological system that denies the Goddess (with its emphasis on a formless God who was however figured as masculine and not as a Goddess) (Gregg 2019, 64; Sadharan Brahmo Samaj; Kopf 1979, 265). Here, we should highlight that while Keshabchandra Sen accommodated the Mother Goddess in his “experimental” form of Brahmoism (i.e., the Nababidhan) (Kopf 1979, 265–266; Sen 2010, 93), Vivekananda

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did not affiliate himself to that form of Brahmoism but rather to the more conspicuously Goddess-denying establishment of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj (Sen 2010, 93). It is evident that, initially, Narendranath persistently refused to believe in Kali. As Nivedita tells us, he had told her: “How I used to hate Kali!” he said, “And all Her ways! That was the ground of my six years’ fight,—that I would not accept Her. But I had to accept Her at last! Ramakrishna Paramahamsa dedicated me to Her, and now I believe that She guides me in every little thing I do, and does with me what She will! …Yet I fought so long! I loved him, you see, and that was what held me. I saw his marvellous purity. …I felt his wonderful love. …His greatness had not dawned on me then. All that came afterwards, when I had given in. At that time I thought him a brain-sick baby, always seeing visions and the rest. I hated it. And then I too had to accept Her!” “No, the thing that made me do it is a secret that will die with me. I had great misfortunes at that time. …It was an opportunity. …She made a slave of me. Those were the very words—‘a slave of you’. And Ramakrishna Paramahamsa made me over to Her. …Strange! He lived only two years after doing that, and most of the time he was suffering. Not more than six months did he keep his own health and brightness.” (1910, 86)

Within the circles of the Ramakrishna Order, the narrative of Narendranath’s most transformative exposure to Kali’s divine power is quite popular. Let me present it briefly here: Narendra’s family suffered from acute financial crisis, and one day he went to Dakshineswar and urged Ramakrishna to pray on his behalf so that his financial troubles would end. …However, Ramakrishna was unwilling to pray for such things on behalf of Narendra, as he was soaked in the supreme bhakti which induces the devotee to love the Deity only for the sake of Him/Her and not for any material gain. Ramakrishna decided to play a trick on his disciple and asked him to go into the temple and pray to the Mother for material prosperity. When Narendra went into the temple, he found the Goddess alive. Mesmerized by the spiritual aura of the Mother, he requested Her to grant him “discrimination”, “detachment”, and “divine knowledge and devotion”. …As Isherwood puts it, “His heart was filled with peace. The universe completely disappeared from his consciousness and Mother alone remained.” …Ramakrishna, however, later on blessed him and said that his family would never suffer from the lack of plain food or clothing. (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 27–28)

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The baffling mystique of Kali was aligned with Ramakrishna’s palpable, human love, and it is the combination of these two which enslaved Narendranath to Kali. It was of course a bafflement to his rational faculty. While the early Narendranath would at best endorse an abstract philosophical discourse of “God”, he would not give any space to Kali in his consciousness. However, due to the paradigm shift in his faith, he came to become, gradually, an ardent worshipper of Kali. As he had himself enunciated, the most intimate reason for this shift was a “secret” not to be revealed. Swami Budhananda argues that, once she entered his consciousness, Kali never left him (2015, 6–7). Ramakrishna wanted to make Vivekananda the human instrument of Kali, and that is what he became (Budhananda 2015, 7). Ramakrishna responded as gleefully to Vivekananda’s acceptance of Shakti/Kali as he did to Tota Puri’s acknowledgement of her power (Budhananda 2015, 6–7). However, as Jeffrey Kripal has noted, Vivekananda, after the demise of Ramakrishna, had tended to profess a doctrine that denied primacy or prominence to Kali, as his Vedantism came to be predicated on the “rejection of the goddess” (1998, 26–27). Kripal argues that, at this time, Vivekananda came to reject the femininity exuded by Ramakrishna and Kali, instead focusing on the “manly” aspects of Shiva (1998, 26–27). “Ramakrishna once sung of Kali triumphantly astride the pale Siva. Now Narendra brags that, in the end, Siva reclaimed his rightful dominance over Sakti and made her a servant” (Kripal 1998, 27). As Nivedita notes, in England and America too, the Swami’s main focus was on the Upanishadic conception of Brahman and not on Kali (1910, 83). Nevertheless, it needs to be remembered that Vivekananda spoke on “Mother Worship” in one of his class talks in New York, where he sought to draw out the philosophical implications of Mother Worship (Vivekananda, “Mother Worship”; Mukhopadhyay 2017, 22, 27). Besides, in his talks collated in Inspired Talks, he often refers to the Divine Mother as one with the Ultimate Reality (2018, 43–44, 73–81). Largely, however, he focused mainly on Brahman and not on the Goddess, as far as his lectures in the West were concerned. Amiya P. Sen writes: In Vivekananda, interestingly, such conceptions (those of “God as Mother”) are manifest late and only after his visit to Europe and America. Letters written to friends and fellow disciples between the time he left the Barahnagar Math for his tour of upper India and his triumphant return to Calcutta in 1897 do not contain much reference to this. (2010, 97)

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Hence, one can fairly insist that, in Vivekananda’s case, the paradigm shifts in his faith dynamics, with respect to Kali, followed a zigzag path. It is, however, during his visit to Kashmir towards the end of his life, and, to be more specific, during the visit to Kshir Bhavani, that he came to manifest, most decisively, his whole-hearted self-surrender to the Goddess (Nivedita 1910, 65–71; Sen 2010, 97). It is at this time that he comes to state that the agency for everything lies only in the hands of the Great Mother (Nivedita 1910, 67–70). However, for him, the Goddess “more represented a cosmic totality than a personified image” (Sen 2010, 97). This totality, interestingly, would manifest death and terror as much as love. Death, of course, looms large on his consciousness: While on the outside, matters seemed to stand still, in his mind, the Swami experienced rapturous visions of the goddess Kali, dancing Her terrible dance of death. The poem ‘Kali, the Mother’ which Vivekananda composed is an invocation to seek the Mother, not so much in love as in death. …In seeking death alone did one gain eternal life and the goddess who wrought such tumultuous destruction was also the source of life and redemptive hopes. (Sen 2010, 97–98)

Obviously, this vision of death is different from the patriarchal order of death imaginary (aligned with the figurations of death-defying modes of eternal being) that Cavarero underlines. Vivekananda speaks and thinks from a living culture of Goddess worship where the Great Goddess is seen as encompassing the totality of existence—macrocosmic life as well as microcosmic life, entropy of cosmic existence as well as that of human existence. Therefore, like Tota Puri, Vivekananda too comes to acknowledge the limitations of the body as a mystically encoded message from the Goddess, the great power that imposes inescapable limits on the freedom that the Advaita Vedantin desires. He keeps referring to the “will” of the Great Goddess, the “Mother”, while alluding to his bodily illnesses, thereby affirming that a monism that does not recognize the embodied existence of the human self is an imperfect monism: rather than forcing oneself to call an illness an illusion one must rather see in it the inerasable agency of the Goddess (Shankar 2015, 218, 240–241). We see in Vivekananda’s spiritual life a shift from revulsion towards Kali to acceptance of her power; then, again, a temporary rejection of her supremacy; and finally a whole-hearted surrender to the Goddess. In all these phases, we actually witness diverse but interrelated psychological

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states manifesting different forms of tussle between an irresistible desire for absolute freedom and the recognition of a great power that imposes limits on that freedom. The male self, starting with its adventurous masculine heroism, comes to gradually understand and acknowledge the power of the feminine divine who is, simultaneously, loving and limiting; then, the heroic male ascetic hesitates again to accept her wholly, but, finally, he succumbs to her enthralling power and presence, acknowledging that certain forms of delimiting can be coterminous with enlightened living, if not with freedom. Paradoxically, acknowledging the limits of existence, and of intellection, may result in a sense of freedom as well, a freedom from the androcentric frameworks of figuring or actualizing absolute freedom. The accommodation of the maternal-feminine in the Advaitic male self-consciousness may apparently limit the freedom of that consciousness, but it can also productively reorient that consciousness to this world, to the interwoven web of beings that requires loving engagement (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 28–29). The most obvious external manifestation of Vivekananda’s acceptance of the Goddess is his selfless engagement with the poor and the destitute, those in need of help, those for whom philosophical abstractions of theism and atheism are less important than a warm and loving form of altruism which acknowledges and pays respect to the limits that the Other(s) have the right to impose on our freedom, limits that have often been imposed by the Great Goddess—as the Great (M) Other—on the disembodied theologies or ontologies that have emerged from time to time in India. While Kali as the Great Goddess becomes the maternal matrix of death, as opposed to the patriarchal “house of death”, “birth” is not denigrated by Vivekananda, either. While the Advaitin sannyasi/sannyasini is supposed to jettison all of their attachments to their life before taking the vow of asceticism, and hence to dissociate themselves from the history of their biological birth, Vivekananda, like Shankara the Advaitin, was respectful to that history and, even after becoming an ascetic, did discharge all his responsibilities towards his biological birth-giver, his mother (Shankar 2015, 11–103; Mukhopadhyay 2017, 22–23). In fact, towards the end of his life, his devotional orientation to the Goddess and his intensified sense of responsibility towards his mother came to occupy the same psychic space. It appears that he came to believe that the Goddess wanted him to “return” to his mother—thereby necessitating a respectful acknowledgement of the history of his “birth” rather than denying it (Shankar 2015, 76–77). Similarly, the suffering millions of India were not just a spectrum

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of ontologically ignorable “appearances” for him; they were intensely real (Shankar 2015, 104), as irreducibly so as the Goddess has appeared to be, again and again, in the history of Advaita Vedanta. The world, like the Goddess, was to be loved and not rejected, even though it was not and could never be exclusively “good”. As the Swami had pointed out in his speech on “Mother Worship”: If misery comes, welcome; if happiness comes, welcome. Then, when we come up to this love, all crooked things shall be straight. There will be the same sight for the Brahmin, the Pariah, and the dog. Until we love the universe with same-sightedness, with impartial, undying love, we are missing again and again. But then all will have vanished, and we shall see in all the same infinite eternal Mother.

It is this sentiment of Vivekananda which Nivedita, too, underscores in The Master as I saw Him (1910, 83–85). The Goddess, for him, was not just a theological means of getting relieved of sorrow; she manifested her face in sorrow. She was not the destroyer of pain, but pain itself (Nivedita 1910, 65–66). The later Vivekananda embraced the most challenging form of heroism—not the ascetic heroism of rejecting the world, but rather that of engaging with it—lovingly—even in its most terrifying and saddening aspects. This heroism was not masculine in nature, but rather slanted towards the feminine. After exploring the paradigm shifts in the faith dynamics of Tota Puri and Vivekananda, we now move to the paradigm shifts in faith exemplified by certain fictional characters created by Rabindranath Tagore, arguably the greatest Bengali writer in colonial India. Fictional figures, as we all know, are not just external emanations of their author’s psychological orientations, and hence, I will cautiously avoid the temptation of seeing Tagore’s fictional characters as authentically representing his own universe of faith. However, the fact remains that we cannot speak of these Tagorean characters’ approaches to the Goddess without reference to the relationship between the Goddess and the intellectual and spiritual traditions of Brahmoism inherited by Tagore. At the same time, it is necessary to pay close attention to certain minute details of the history of the religious cultures in the Tagore family that was definitely one of the most influential families in colonial Bengal. As David Kopf rightly points out, placing Tagore in his historical perspective is impossible without focusing upon his cultural and spiritual

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inheritance of Brahmoism (1979, 287–288). Kopf seeks to argue that Tagore’s “Hindu Brahmoism” sought to synthesize Hinduism and Brahmoism, as did some of his Adi Brahmo Samajist predecessors (1979, 298, 301). As Kopf suggests, “On the idea of Brahmoism as the true form of Hinduism, Rabindranath was following the general lines of Adi [Brahmo Samaj’s] cultural nationalism. But …Rabindranath took the whole of Brahmo history as the heritage of a renascent Hinduism” (1979, 300). However, Tagore was also clear enough that the unreformed Hinduism should not be championed: His argument was that Brahmoism and reformed Hinduism were similar— certainly not an unfamiliar argument among Adi Brahmos. But at the same time, he made it clear that status-quo Hinduism, filled with defects and abuses, must be altered in such a way that it reflected the “inner Hinduism”, that is, the true Hinduism. (Kopf 1979, 302)

Kopf reminds us that we also need to ponder over the difference between Tagore’s notion of reformed Hinduism and Vivekananda’s Hindu reformism: Perhaps the difference between Tagore’s Hindu Brahmoism and the most popular varieties of Hindu reformism can be better ascertained when set against Vivekananda’s objectives and influence. As we have already noted, Vivekananda also adapted the Brahmo heritage for the purpose of revitalizing Hinduism, but he had done so by compromising Brahmoism for the sake of mass appeal. …When one considers that Tagore was a guest of Unitarians in Boston at the time, and that he was strongly against emotionalism in religion, one is reminded of Protap Majumdar’s indictment of Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions. When one adds the similarity in Rabindranath’s and Protap Chandra’s low esteem of Bijoy Krishna Goswami’s emotionalism, then it is fairly obvious that both identified with the more classically elegant and rational tenets of the Brahmo faith rather than its popularized forms. (1979, 302–303)

As Brian Hatcher perceptively notices, within the frameworks of the conventional wisdom about “modern” Hinduism, Brahmo Samaj has often been associated with “the promise of reason, progress, and freedom” (2020, 4). Its “rational tenets” have been predicated, however, on a surreptitious exclusion of the feminine from the theological scenario, except in the oeuvre of Keshabchandra Sen. Of course, no one would

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claim that Tagore or his Brahmo predecessors were essentially misogynists. However, as we need to understand in this context, there might be a chasm between an apparently progressive attitude to gender in social terms and a patriarchal theology that keeps its “God” far above the “social” and hence above the “ethics of sexual difference” too. Raja Rammohan Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, for whom Rabindranath Tagore had deep respect throughout his life (Kopf 1979, 302), would conceptualize God as “man’s King and Master”, the “King of kings” (Hatcher 2020, 180). As Hatcher puts it, “Donning the dress appropriate to a Persianate ruler and accompanied by his court, the Raja would formally process to the court of his highest Lord, the one true God of the Brahmo faith” (2020, 180). The “true” form of the divine here, of course, is not accidentally the King and Master and Lord, rather than the Queen or the Mother. Debendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s father and one of the central figures in the history of Brahmoism, was fascinated with the grandeur of this “King”-ly tropology: The connection between the splendor of court and the new religious polity is captured once again by Debendranath, who wrote with particular fondness of what he remembered about the weekly gathering of the group that made up the earliest cohort within the Brahmo Samaj. (Hatcher 2020, 180)

It is interesting to note that the figuration of the divine as the “King”, and a metaphysicalization of the tropology of the King, His journey and His grace would pervade Rabindranath’s religious writings later on. Taking the liberty to approach this a bit cynically, I would venture to say that all of this becomes possible because of the cancelling out of the Queen and deletion of the spectre of the Goddess/Mother/feminine Absolute from the “court” of Brahmo faith. Emotive approaches to the Mother Goddess such as were exhibited by Ramakrishna and Keshabchandra would naturally be anathema to the “rationalism” of imagining a “classically elegant” King. Goddess Kali, for instance, would be the exact antithesis of whatever is tropologized by the “court” of the divine King of Brahmoism. Parthajit Gangopadhyay offers us a glimpse into the interesting history of Durga worship in the Tagore house at Jorasanko. Dwarakanath Tagore, Rabindranath’s grandfather and Debendranath’s father, was a close friend of Rammohan Roy and endorsed his monotheism. Yet, he would maintain the Hindu pujas in his family, including the yearly worship of the Divine Mother Durga (2015, 225–226). Debendranath had witnessed the pomp

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and grandeur of this worship in his childhood, though he gradually came to shake off all forms of idolatry (Gangopadhyay 2015, 225–226). Initially unwilling to hurt the religious sentiments of the other “idolatrous” members of the family, Debendranath decided to take up the project of stopping the ritual worship of the Goddess step by step. Both Jagaddhatri puja and Durga puja, worship of two major forms of the Goddess in Bengal, were finally discontinued by him in the Thakur Bari (Tagore mansion) at Jorasanko. Gangopadhyay tells us that Debendranath discontinued Jagaddhatri Puja first, and it took him a few more years to stop Durga puja in the Tagore house at Jorasanko (Gangopadhyay 2015, 226). Debendranath’s daughter, Saudamini, recalls how Sarada, Debendranath’s wife, would be saddened by her husband’s deliberate absence from the house during Durga puja (Gangopadhyay 2015, 226). After Durga puja was stopped in the Tagore house finally, Sarada would send offerings to the Goddess worshipped at the residence of Ramanath Tagore, without letting her husband know about it (Gangopadhyay 2015, 226). Even after Durga Puja was stopped in the Tagore mansion at Jorasanko, Vijaya Sammilani would be organized there, every year, on the evening of Vijaya Dashami. During this programme, the Tagore family would listen to the vijaya songs, that is, the Bengali folk songs representing the sorrow of Menaka, the mother of Goddess Durga, over the departure of her daughter from her house on Vijaya Dashami, when the Goddess’s idols are immersed in water. The women in that family would tearfully respond to these songs, signifying their emotional linkages with the all-pervasive emotive frameworks of autumnal Durga worship in Bengal (Gangopadhyay 2015, 227). It is interesting to note here that the women in the family would cling to the emotional frameworks of Goddess worship even after the male Brahmos had outgrown those frameworks. Does this not underline the necessity for speaking of gender in the context of critically reviewing any framework of “classically elegant” rationalism? And also the necessity to highlight the gender of the kings of reason? However, there was a darker side to Debendranath’s objection to the worship of the Goddess as well. It is said that he had stopped, forcefully, the ritual worship of Kali in his zamindari in Shilaidaha in East Bengal and even went so far as to torture the Kali worshippers by sending lathi-­ wielding musclemen (Chakrabarti 2008, 174). Of course, he had forcibly stopped the Rathayatra of Jagannatha as well (Chakrabarti 2008, 174), and hence it might be wrong to associate this repressive gesture of

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Debendranath only with his antipathy to the Goddess, but, in respect of the all-pervasive kingly aura of the male Brahmo God, his programmatic discontinuation of the worship of the Goddess in various contexts assumes a non-ignorable significance. As I have argued elsewhere, in order to project themselves as “rational” beings, devoted to none but the legitimate “God” who is not female, Brahmo ideologues such as Debendranath were propelled to fashion themselves as “matricidal” subjects who would be able to bury the dark and fierce Mother Goddess of Shaktism in the past and thus carve an “enlightened” future (Mukhopadhyay 2013, 18–19). Rabindranath’s approach to the Mother Goddess was more ambivalent and more complex (probably more open-ended too) than that of his father, though he never totally identified with the Shakta emotions and was critical of many aspects of philosophical and ritualistic Shaktism (Dasgupta 2002, 327). His God, ultimately, remains non-female. He is, however, able to respect and imaginatively and emotively relate to certain Shakta modes of feeling as those of the “Other”, thanks to his sensitive approach to alterity in general, as is evident from his letter to Indira Devi dated 5 October 1894, where he states that the natural, social and cultural circumstances of the autumn festival of Durga puja in Bengal create such an all-pervasive ambience of devotion and joy that he should not be so unfeeling and unimaginative as to dismiss the object of this devotion simply as a clay doll (Gangopadhyay 2015, 228). Of course, this is a sensitive understanding of the “idol” of Durga on the part of a great literary artist groomed in anti-idolatrous traditions. Nevertheless, we need to ask a more serious question: is the unease of Rabindranath or his father with the Goddess just a matter of their anti-idolatrous stance? Is it not wrong to believe that their stupendous intellect failed to distinguish between the Goddess and the icon/idol of the Goddess? The Goddess in Shakta and tantric philosophies is often assumed to be a formless deity—in fact, she is often figured in Shakta scriptures in such a way that she would appear to be the exact female counterpart of the male Absolute central to the Brahmo theological imaginary of Debendranath. Hence, it becomes apparent that cancelling out the female Absolute was indispensable for the androcentric theology of Brahmoism. As the discussion of atheism often undervalues the factor of the gender of the divine, we do not even try to distinguish between atheism and a-thea-ism, but, in the present context, it is absolutely necessary to foreground the theist a-thea-ism or a-thea-ist theism that the Brahmoism of Debendranath stood for.

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We find various kinds of approaches to the Goddess in Tagore’s writings—sometimes positive, sometimes negative—and these approaches also vary in terms of the fierce or sustaining figures of the Goddess in Shaktism. In his songs, sometimes, he does give the impression that he is addressing the divine as Mother (see, for instance, song number 83  in The Song Offerings [Tagore 1914, 77]). However, we cannot speak of any paradigm shift in his faith dynamics with respect to the Goddess. There are multiple and varying approaches to her, but we cannot speak of any specific pattern of evolution of, or shifts in, these approaches over time. Certain fictional characters in his texts, on the other hand, show a particular pattern of evolution of their approaches to the Goddess, a pattern that is the obverse of what we have witnessed in the cases of Tota Puri and Vivekananda. To discuss this, we can take up two texts that deal with the same storyline within different generic parameters. Bisarjan is a play, and Rajarshi is a novel, but both of these works by Tagore deal with fictional characters who come to apparently lose their faith in the Goddess, within a narrative that is thematically centred on the bloody violence involved in the age-old practice of animal sacrifice to her. Interestingly, as William Radice points out, “It is not difficult to connect Bisarjan to Tagore’s most deeply held moral and religious ideas, some of them derived from his Brahmo heritage and its rejection of idolatry” (2010, 25–26). In Bisarjan, Gobindamanikya, the king of Tripura, under the influence of a girl, Aparna who loves animals and is horrified to see the blood of animals sacrificed to the Goddess who is the main deity of this kingdom, comes to realize that animal sacrifice is just a manifestation of the barbarism deep-seated in the human psyche (Tagore 1979, 17–22). Accordingly, the Goddess, who is referred to by the king as janani, that is, “mother”, begins to be figured in a different light by the king and he thinks that the Mother Goddess has herself sensitized him to the absurdity of the violence and brutality involved in animal sacrifice, by speaking through the voice of the girl, Aparna (Tagore 1979, 20–21). As a result, he declares that animal sacrifice would be banned in his kingdom and anyone insisting on this practice would be banished from Tripura (Tagore 1979, 21). Raghupati, the priest of the Goddess, is maddened with anger to find that his brahminical and priestly authority is being challenged by the king (Tagore 1979, 21–22, 27). The text makes it evident that Raghupati is more interested in maintaining his authority than in upholding the authority of the Goddess, though he keeps speaking of the Goddess’s authority—an absolute authority that the king should not tamper with—in order to impress it upon the subjects of

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the king and also on Jaysingha, his disciple and foster son, that it is Raghupati who is the true interpreter of the Goddess’s command and her most authentic spokesperson (Tagore 1979, 27–28, 40–44, 70–80). Jaysingha’s mind is torn between his spontaneous desire to accept the king’s perspective and his habit of respecting and accepting the authority of Raghupati, a father-like figure whom he has come to see as the genuine maintainer of the Goddess’s authority (Tagore 1979, 28, 56, 70–72, 104). This dilemma of Jaysingha is presented vividly in Rajarshi as well (Tagore 1961, 44–46). However, maddened with irrational rage to find his authority challenged by the king, Raghupati, in Bisarjan, engages in conspiratorial enterprises of having the king killed by the latter’s own brother and then, even going farther, tries to sacrifice to the Goddess Dhruba, a boy much loved by the king though he is not his own son (Tagore 1979, 50–52, 94–96). In Rajarshi, Raghupati instigates Nakshatraray, the king’s brother, to bring Dhruba to be sacrificed to the Goddess, more actively and directly than he does in Bisarjan (Tagore 1961, 59–61). The queen is presented in the text of Bisarjan as a woman apparently as irrational, selfish and obsessed with animal sacrifice as Raghupati is (Tagore 1979, 15–16, 30–37). She even instigates Nakshatraray to have Dhruba sacrificed to the Goddess (Tagore 1979, 87–89). Could we remember here the female members of the Tagore family who did not jettison their faith in the Goddess even after their male counterparts did? Aparna, the girl who is presented as the centre of sanity in Bisarjan, keeps urging Jaysingha to come out of the temple which she does not consider to be a spiritually productive space (Tagore 1979, 64, 93). Jaysingha is, however, emotionally attached to the Goddess as much as to Raghupati and is troubled by his intuitive understanding of the meanness of Raghupati and the violent measures he takes (Tagore 1979, 52–57, 63–66). He is utterly baffled by his foster father’s criminal propensities which the latter tries to justify by referring to the world as a “maha hatyashala”, a great hall of assassination (Tagore 1979, 52–54). Raghupati says that Mahakali, the Great Goddess of destruction, who runs the wheel of cosmic entropy, makes everyone understand that destruction and death are part of or rather central to the natural order (Tagore 1979, 54). Here, Raghupati’s vision of Kali seems to somewhat square with that of Vivekananda, though Vivekananda does not espouse an ethics of killing in Kali’s name but simply highlights the necessity to understand that she is as much present in death and destruction as in the creative and preserving functions of nature. In Rajarshi too, Raghupati tries to make Jaysingha

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understand and acknowledge this inescapable reality of the cycle of destruction that the world is (Tagore 1961, 22). However, in both Bisarjan and Rajarshi, Jaysingha responds to this with horror (Tagore 1961, 22–23, 1979, 54–55). It appears that Jaysingha is ready to accept the maternal function of the Goddess but not her destructive power. He is devastated by this philosophy of an immensely powerful female deity who orchestrates destruction and keeps saying that such a destructive Goddess cannot be anything but a rakshasi (demoness) (Tagore 1979, 55). Jaysingha refers to the destructive Goddess as rakshasi and pashani (as heartless as stone) in both the texts (Tagore 1961, 22–23, 1979, 55). This is a pivotal moment in the narrative presented by Bisarjan and Rajarshi when Jaysingha comes to question Raghupati’s interpretation of the Goddess and yet, unlike the king, does not seem to have the intellectual stamina to generate an alternative discourse on the Goddess. The narrator in Rajarshi explicitly states that Jaysingha gets baffled by the way his guru, Raghupati, robs the Goddess of her maternal function and presents her merely as blind and heartless Shakti (Tagore 1961, 25). In Bisarjan, it is from this moment onwards that Jaysingha keeps looking forward to a divine intervention through which the Goddess might clear his confusion and present herself as a loving and maternal deity rather than a blood-­ thirsty form of Shakti (Tagore 1979, 70–71, 89–93). Time and again, he comes to intuitively understand that the Goddess’s command presented before him by Raghupati is but his own command, and yet, with his critical consciousness chronically thwarted by his deep devotion to Raghupati, the father figure, he is unable to distinguish between the Goddess’s voice which he waits for but cannot hear and the voice of his father/master which he cannot trust and yet fails to repudiate decisively (Tagore 1979, 70–72, 73–81). It is interesting that Tagore’s rhetoric blurs the borderline between the Goddess and her idol, Aparna and Jaysingha referring to her as pashani, without distinguishing between the Goddess and her stone image (Tagore 1979, 55, 58, 93). It is not possible for Jaysingha to kill the king, though Raghupati wants this to be done, and his doubt about the efficacy of the instructions of Raghupati is deepened (Tagore 1979, 70–71, 75–81). Interestingly, he is unable to distinguish between his guru and the Goddess, and, though he seeks to hear the clear, doubt-destroying voice of the Goddess, he is unable to bracket off the psychological noise caused by Raghupati’s sinisterly powerful voice. As a result, gradually, he comes to believe that the Goddess is not a maternal figure at all, but rather a blood-thirsty one, and hence, unable to reject Raghupati, he comes to

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distance himself from the Goddess. Instead of Raghupati, the Goddess becomes the central object of his antipathy, though, at the initial stage of his psychological crisis, he is unable to come out as a full-fledged a-thea-­ ist. Although in Rajarshi, he once tells the king that he would like to look up to him as his guru (Tagore 1961, 44), Jaysingha is unable to embrace the king’s new approach to the Devi as one that can effectively overwrite Raghupati’s interpretation of the Goddess as a blind destructive force. In Bisarjan, the subjects of the kingdom of Tripura, under Raghupati’s influence, come to believe that the Goddess’s wrath, caused by the king’s arrogance, might culminate in disaster for the kingdom (Tagore 1979, 73–78). The king tries hard to explain to them that the Goddess is primarily a Mother who is characterized by love, not vengeance (Tagore 1979, 78). Raghupati, on the other hand, tells Jaysingha that the Goddess is ultimately the other name for mahamithya, the Great Falsehood, thereby grossly misrepresenting the concept of Mahamaya central to Shaktism (Tagore 1979, 80). Radice traces a “violent nihilism” in Raghupati’s assertions (2010, 27). It is at this point that Jaysingha comes to think that the Goddess does not exist in the idol and she does not exist anywhere in the universe, either: she is just mithya, a form of falsehood (Tagore 1979, 81). Later on, we find him imploring the Goddess to prove to him that she actually exists, that she is not a false entity (Tagore 1979, 89). He reminds the Goddess-as-falsehood (mayamayi mithya) that he has always offered his devotion and love to her, and hence she should be compassionate enough to turn into truth (satya) for Jaysingha’s sake (Tagore 1979, 89). The girl, Aparna, enters the scene once again, and Jaysingha explicitly states that the Goddess in the temple represents falsehood whereas Aparna embodies the truth (Tagore 1979, 90). At this point, Jaysingha’s utterances represent the typical atheist arguments in favour of a mundane human life lived well without deities (debatahin) (Tagore 1979, 91). “Aparna, girl, does the Goddess not exist?”, he asks (Tagore 1979, 91 [translation mine]). Aparna, once again, asks him to come out of the temple (Tagore 1979, 91). Jaysingha’s utterances regarding the Goddess are, however, framed in the form of questions (Tagore 1979, 89–91). It appears that he cannot still reconcile himself to the non-existence of the Goddess. He finds it painful that, in the midst of the beauty of nature, the Goddess is nowhere (Tagore 1979, 92). Then, once again, there emerges the peculiar confusion between the Goddess and her idol, Jaysingha lamenting that the stone image of the Goddess, which he had considered to be the Goddess, is not divine at all (Tagore 1979, 93). Unable to hear

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the voice of the Goddess either in his heart or in the midst of nature, he comes to subconsciously cancel out the possibility of the Goddess’s existence outside the idol, and, since the idol is not the Goddess but just an image of falsity, he equates the false idol with the false Goddess, non-­ existence of the Goddess becoming coterminous with the cruelty of heartless stones in his imagination (Tagore 1979, 93). Raghupati, waiting for Jaysingha to bring rajrakta (royal blood) for the Goddess, implores her to make this possible, so as to ensure that the Shakta devotee’s proud faith in the Divine Mother is not shaken (Tagore 1979, 102–104, 108–109). Eventually, Jaysingha kills himself before the Goddess, declaring that he is offering his own blood to Devi, as the blood flowing in his veins is royal blood too (Tagore 1979, 109–110). Raghupati, after seeing his beloved foster son dead before the idol of the Goddess, loses all his faith in the Goddess (Tagore 1979, 115–116). It has appeared throughout the narrative that his faith in the Goddess was not so deep-­ rooted and emotionally charged as Jaysingha’s, as he does not really see her as a significant form of divine alterity, instead using her as a medium of promoting his own authority. Nevertheless, at the end of Bisarjan, it becomes clear that Raghupati did believe in her, and his violent cancellation of that belief, on seeing the corpse of Jaysingha that the Goddess cannot revitalize, represents the paradigm shift in his faith, caused by a shock for which his own arrogance and obsession are responsible. He keeps madly imploring the Goddess to revive Jaysingha, though at this point he addresses her by using abusive terms such as rakshasi (demoness) and pishachi (female ghoul) (Tagore 1979, 114–115). The Goddess is, once again in this narrative, equated with her stony representation: Raghupati now calls her a “jada pashaner stupa” (mound of lifeless stone) (Tagore 1979, 114). The pashani (stone-like) Goddess, equated with her pashani (stony) image, cannot, obviously, revivify the dead Jaysingha, and hence, Raghupati decides to banish the Goddess from the temple and throws her out into the river Gomati (Tagore 1979, 115–116). When the queen reaches the temple and asks Raghupati where the Goddess is, he declares that she is nowhere, neither above nor below—she never existed anywhere in the universe (Tagore 1979, 116). He proclaims that, had the Goddess really existed anywhere in the universe, she would not have tolerated the worship of the pishachi or maharakshasi (great demoness) as the Goddess (Tagore 1979, 116–117). The world becomes blank before Raghupati now, just as it had become for Jaysingha. At the last moment in this play, Aparna appears once again and asks Raghupati to leave the

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temple (Tagore 1979, 117). Now he, just like the king, recognizes the true maternal figure in this girl, something the Goddess has failed to represent (Tagore 1979, 118). In the narrative of Rajarshi, however, we do not find a closure with the death of Jaysingha. Nor does Raghupati’s “enlightenment” emerge immediately after that tragic moment. He is punished by the king, Gobindamanikya (Tagore 1961, 65–66); after he is banished from Tripura, he starts scheming against the king in various ways (Tagore 1961, 68–102, 122–129). Finally, however, he comes to realize and admire the greatness of the king, the eponymous rajarshi (literally, a king who is like a rishi/ sage) (Tagore 1961, 170–172). However, as is the case in Bisarjan, in the novel, too, the moment of his enlightenment is coterminous, at least figuratively, with the moment of his throwing out the Goddess’s idol (Tagore 1961, 145–146). The narrator says that the stone idol of Kali embodied ajnanarakshasi (the demoness of ignorance) who is finally thrown into the water of the river Gomati (Tagore 1961, 146). Towards the end of Rajarshi, Raghupati tells Gobindamanikya that he has driven the blood-­ thirsty pishachi out of the royal temple of Tripura (Tagore 1961, 171). However, interestingly, we are later told that when, after a lot of political vicissitudes, Gobindamanikya eventually gets back his kingdom, Raghupati (now enlightened and convinced of the greatness of the king) takes up his priestly duty once again (Tagore 1961, 174). We are not told which deity he would be worshipping there, and, unlike Bisarjan which retains a Devi-­ saturated rhetoric to the end, replacing the Goddess with Goddess-like women (the [eventually] enlightened queen and Aparna) (Tagore 1979, 118), Rajarshi lets the Devi-rhetoric vanish into thin air. At the end, we are not told what or who replaces the Goddess in the royal temple, a narrative silence that somewhat obfuscates the closing point of the history of Raghupati’s faith shifts. Whereas Tagore’s rhetoric implies that Raghupati finally throws out his own (masculine) egocentrism while throwing out the Goddess, a thealogical deconstruction of the narrative would imply that the entire narrative actually robs the Goddess of her own place and voice. Raghupati speaks on behalf of her; Jaysingha’s struggle is with Raghupati’s voice that is coterminous with the Goddess’s silence; Jaysingha sacrifices himself actually to the aura of the patriarchal authority of Raghupati that he cannot overcome while apparently sacrificing himself to an unworthy and non-existent Goddess. There is apparently no serious quest—pursued through spiritual askesis—for the Goddess’s authentic voice that we come across in Jaysingha.

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However, evidently, the two texts discussed here figure forth a pattern of faith shifts centred on the banishment of the Goddess from a mode of religiosity where she was central. The king who represents “reformed” Hinduism in many ways does not apparently undergo such momentous faith shifts, as, for him, the Goddess does not have to undergo a transformation from the divine to the demonic. While Vivekananda gradually came to accept his “enslavement” to Kali and found this slavery meaningful, Raghupati comes to reject this after seeing the tragic outcome of Jaysingha’s inability to reject that enslavement. For Jaysingha, the non-­ existence of the Goddess is more a non-existence of the Mother than that of the Divine. This non-existence has obvious gender dimensions. It is the ostensible absence of the Mother in her that makes the Goddess demonic to Jaysingha, and hence the resultant a-thea-ism is not simply “loss of faith” but rather a gendered form of loss of a gendered faith. On the other hand, as Tagore had himself enunciated while speaking of Bisarjan, Raghupati is initially oblivious to the value of life (see Samanta 1979, 122). His obsession with killing and death—lacking the philosophical profundity of Vivekananda’s figuration of Kali as death—exemplifies, in a way, the male-centred discourse of death that Cavarero points out. However, when he comes to understand how precious life is after Jaysingha sacrifices his own life (as Tagore himself underlines [see Samanta 1979, 122]), Raghupati comes to revile the Goddess, who, rather than himself, is now blamed for the bloodbath. It is interesting that, while he comes to intuit the enormity of the self-destructive absurdity of his patriarchal authoritarianism (prabhutva/mastery, as Tagore points out [see Samanta 1979, 122]), Raghupati is not ready to punish himself. Rather, he decides to demonize the Goddess he has worshipped so far and throws her out, in a matricidal gesture (Mukhopadhyay 2013, 18–19)—so as to maintain his oppressive masculine authority even while apparently atoning for the disaster caused by that authority, by punishing, ironically for his own patriarchal sin, the female deity whose voice he did not want to listen to but rather cancelled out by imposing his own voice on her. While the a-thea-­ istic closure emerges in the case of Jaysingha in the form of self-sacrifice, Raghupati’s resultant a-thea-ism assumes the form of aggressive self-­ assertion. In both cases, however, the Goddess is reduced to a demoness. The non-existence of the Goddess is revealed to the male subjects, and she is blamed for having concealed this non-existence so far. Here, one might recall the arcana of maya that we have discussed in the previous chapter. The Goddess was, as it were, the “envelope” that hid her own unreality, to

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borrow the trope of Irigaray (Irigaray 2004, 71–78). Raghupati idealizes the femininity of Aparna at the end of Bisarjan, and it may be argued that he acknowledges the significance of the feminine not in the Goddess, but rather in the human female, after banishing the Goddess from his religious universe (Radice 2010, 26–27). Mikel Burley opines that while Tagore enunciated his “preference” for Brahmoism over popular Vaishnavism or Shaktism, he does uphold, in Bisarjan, a “vision” of the goddess as “the spring of loving compassion residing in human hearts, which may be embodied in benign individuals but not in graven images” (2017, 823–824). I would insist that what Burley sees as an alternative vision of the Goddess in the text is actually an idealized form of the feminine that is not the crystallization of but rather a reductive simplification of the extremely complex figure of the South Asian Goddess manifesting contradictory aspects. It involves a selective acceptance of only some of her aspects which correspond to that idealized form of femininity. In this context, it would be relevant to note that the terrible is seen here as incompatible with the feminine, and that is what makes the “femininity” of the Goddess abnormal to enlightened men: the king, Jaysingha, and Raghupati at the final moment of his enlightenment. It appears that the Goddess cannot really be seen, either by her devotee or by the angry a-thea-ist, as a (divine) feminine alterity; her femininity, rather, must square with the patriarchal articulations of the feminine function—loving motherhood, for instance. The Goddess is expected to prove her “authentic” femininity in a way “God” is not expected to prove his “authentic” masculinity, since the masculine, in the case of “God”, stands for the universal. The Goddess, here, is also associated in the imagination of her devotees with materiality—the stoniness of her idol, for instance. Hence, she becomes confined to the stone that represents her. When that stone is offered blood, she is said to be blood-thirsty; when that stone is thrown out, she, now the a-thea-ist’s demoness, is said to be banished. As Susan Anima Taubes observes: He who, seeking God, does not find him in the world, he who suffers the utter silence and nothingness of God, still lives in a religious universe: a universe whose essential meaning is God, though that meaning be torn in contradiction and the most agonizing paradoxes. He lives in a universe that is absurd, but whose absurdity is significant, and its significance is God. God, however negatively conceived, explains the world, explains the nothingness of God in the world. (1955, 6)

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Jaysingha’s a-thea-ism is of course akin to this kind of “religious atheism” (Taubes 1955, 6). However, in his case, this religious atheism (or rather a-thea-ism) is also grounded in the sadness of acknowledging a mother-less universe, so to speak. It is not a melancholy that rises from the recognition of the absence of the supernatural base of the natural; rather, it springs from the pain of the de-recognition of the (divine) maternal in the natural. On the other hand, Raghupati gets rid of this “absurdity”, because he, unlike Jaysingha, does not look for the maternal immanent in or pervading the natural. When he throws her idol out, he, as it were, tropologically performs the non-existence of the Goddess. Non-existent and false but present as stubborn stone, she (obviously equated with her image) is eventually thrown out—Raghupati, now an a-thea-ist hero, heroically revealing the falsity of the Goddess. As if, when her image is thrown out, the entire universe is purged of the falsehood that she was! Should we believe that the “play’s message” is that “idolatry is false but divinity is true” (Radice 2010, 28)? In the context of Bisarjan, should we ponder over “Tagore’s desire in discursive writings and his creative works not to deny that God exists, but to redefine what or who God is” (Radice 2010, 28)? In that case, should we conclude that redefining “God” is more important for Tagore than redefining the “Goddess”? That he wants to steer clear of atheism (Radice 2010, 28) while aesthetically entertaining the explosive a-thea-ism of his characters? Radice argues that while there is no unequivocal foregrounding of “atheism” in the play, one can observe in it “a seam of pure scepticism” (Radice 2010, 28). Should we say that this “pure scepticism” is reserved for the Goddess while (the monotheistic, male) God is exempted from its glare? The answer, it seems, is complex. I must reiterate here that the faith shifts in Bisarjan and Rajarshi, involving a move towards a-thea-ism, cannot be and should not be seen as totally corresponding to Tagore’s own universe of faith. Though Tagore inherited the a-thea-ist (mono)theism of Brahmoism, he was catholic enough to occasionally grant space to the Divine Mother in his imaginative universe. Hence, while discussing Bisarjan in Shantiniketan, he said, “Under the guise of a little girl, the Truth, entering the temple through the door of love, established the image of the World Mother” (translation mine) (Samanta 1979, 126). While at the end of Bisarjan and Rajarshi, we come to see that no benevolent female divinity is installed in the royal temple of Tripura after the banishment of the Goddess (equated with a demoness by her priest), in spite of the apparent deification of human females which is actually nothing but a benign masculine idealization of

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“femininity”, Tagore remarks, on his own play, that the authentic image of the World Mother replaces the false image thereof in the temple, at the end of Bisarjan. However, apparently, this authentic World Mother is not available to or important for Raghupati, after his a-thea-ist enlightenment. His idealization of Aparna as janani (mother) (Tagore 1979, 118) is obviously not the same thing as the acknowledgement of an authentic Divine Mother, independent of any manifestation, whether stony or human. Was this authentic World Mother permanently important for Tagore, either? In this chapter, I have sought to explore how the living goddess cultures of India reveal an interesting spectrum of faith dynamics involving momentous paradigm shifts in various individuals’ approaches to the Goddess. One might start as a Goddess-hater or Goddess-denier but end up as her devotee. On the other hand, one might start as a Goddess-­ worshipper and end up as an atheist and/or a-thea-ist. Supriya Chaudhuri has provided us with an interesting anecdote of two revolutionaries in colonial Bengal who took up arms against the British and were earnest devotees of Goddess Kali. Curiously, after their release from prison, these two men, Satyabhushan and Anilbhushan, became staunch Marxists and atheists (2021, 22). Of course, it seems that their faith shift was different from that of Raghupati or Jaysingha and was not just a shift from Shakta violence to ahimsa—as we know well, Marxists, in Bengal, have generally bypassed the Gandhian fetishization of ahimsa. It is in such micro-histories of the faith dynamics in the living goddess traditions of South Asia that we can find valuable resources for renegotiating thealogy, atheism and religion in general—resources which are not less important or useful than theological discourses or philosophical debates. The universe of faith is never static, and the “mountains” that the mind has (Harris 1982, 51) know how to move. The mobile contours of faith might involve volcanic eruptions, avalanches or restless quests for serenity. While the shifting contours of faith in God have been well documented across cultures, the intimate struggles, quarrels or dialogues with the Goddess in living Goddess traditions remain under-documented to this day. As we have seen, while for Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, loving the Goddess and loving the earth are in many ways coterminous, for Tagore’s Raghupati, opening oneself up to the world is possible only after rejecting the Goddess. However, one may wonder, is this really an opening up? Or a closure masquerading as opening? If Raghupati did not see the Goddess as ontologically enmeshed in the earthly things and beings, was it the Goddess’s fault? Or was it rather his imperfect understanding of the

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Goddess? It is also probably the manifestation of the gap between thealogy proper and patriarchal Goddess worship. Appropriating the Goddess without accepting and appreciating her alterity may be a form of worship of the Goddess as an “envelope” and may not be very far from violent a-thea-ism. Goddess-as-envelope overwriting thealogical substance might be monstrous and result in a monstrous a-thea-ist scream that robs the world of even an absent, silent or hidden Goddess who might still have been the centre of meaning and value for that world. Jaysingha’s position which slants towards thealogy more than Raghupati’s seems to place heavier demands on the Goddess than either a the-ist or a patriarchal Goddess-worshipper would do. If the Goddess of thealogy is closer to the earthly domain than the “God” of androcentric theologies, then one would expect her to be more vocal, more present, more perceptible than “God”. If she is closer to nature, and closer to those who are enmeshed in the natural, then she needs to be more responsive to them than “God” is—she needs to speak to them rather than ask them to interpret her silence. The expectations of her devotee might be different from those of the devotee of “God” (no matter whether that “God” is hidden or revealed). In other words, the “hidden” or absent Goddess might make the religious a-thea-ist more restless than the “hidden God” (Goldmann 2013) would make a religious atheist. Faith in the divine is not just a matter of imaginary constructions but rather an issue of imaginative intersubjectivity that might point towards the circuits of expectations involved in the relationship between the deity and the devotee. The devotee of the Goddess might expect her to make her existence immediately palpable, and hence her persistent silence or absence might readily be read as her non-existence. She cannot be granted the comfort of maintaining a philosophically legitimized silence, as she is expected to offer the devotee not a world of signs waiting to be decoded, but a world that is her Word audible, visible and touchable. If the “world” does not speak to her devotees, if her face is invisible in light, air or water, if her Word is not available through the world but points beyond it to some dark realm of transcendence, then she is as good as non-existent. If she is not everywhere, then she is nowhere.

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References Bhandari, Ajaykumar. 2014. Digambar Totapuri Baba (Dibya Jiban o Lila Kahini). Kolkata: Girija. Bose, Nemai Sadhan. 1998. Swami Vivekananda and the Challenge to Fundamentalism. In Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism, ed. William Radice, 281–299. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Budhananda, Swami. 2015. Thakurer Naren o Narener Thakur. Kolkata: Udbodhan. Burley, Mikel. 2017. “Mountains of Flesh and Seas of Blood”: Reflecting Philosophically on Animal Sacrifice through Dramatic Fiction. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85 (3, Sep.): 806–832. https://doi. org/10.1093/jaarel/lfx006. Cavarero, Adriana. 1995. In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. Trans. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Aine O’Healy. New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, Arindam. 2008. Mananer Madhu. Kolkata: Gangchil. Chaudhuri, Supriya. 2021. Sarba Juge Sanatane. Desh 65 (1): 20–23. Dasgupta, Shashibhushan. 2002. Bharater Shakti-sadhana o Shakta Sahitya. Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad. Gangopadhyay, Parthajit. 2015. Thakurbarir Durgotsab. In Mahishasuramardini Durga, 225–228. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. Gier, Nicholas F. 2000. Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Goldmann, Lucien. 2013. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine. Trans. Philip Thody. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Gregg, Stephen E. 2019. Swami Vivekananda and Non-Hindu Traditions: A Universal Vedanta. London and New York: Routledge. Harris, Daniel A. 1982. Inspirations Unbidden: The “Terrible Sonnets” of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Hatcher, Brian. 2020. Hinduism before Reform. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Irigaray, Luce. 2004. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. London and New York: Continuum. Kopf, David. 1979. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1998. Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2nd ed. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Le Poidevin, Robin. 2021. Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith: Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift? Sophia 60 (3): 551–566. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11841-­021-­00864-­2. Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2013. The Dialectic of Colonial and Indigenous Enlightenments in Three Novels from Bengal and Assam. Drishti: The Sight 2 (1): 16–22. ———. 2017. Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Nivedita, Sister. 1910. The Master as I Saw Him: Being Pages from the Life of the Swami Vivekananda. London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Radice, William. 2010. Sum ergo cogito: Tagore as a Thinker and Tagore as a Poet, and the Relationship between the Two. Asian and African Studies 14 (1): 17–36. Accessed 20 December 2022. https://journals.uni-­lj.si/as/article/view/2896/2533. Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. Thebrahmosamaj.net. Accessed 17 February 2022. https://www.thebrahmosamaj.net/samajes/sadharansamaj.html. Samanta, Kanai, ed. 1979. Granthaparichay. In Bisarjan, by Rabindranath Tagore, 120–128. Calcutta: Visva Bharati. Sen, Amiya P. 2010. Explorations in Modern Bengal c. 1800–1900: Essays on Religion, History and Culture. Delhi: Primus. Shankar. 2015. Achena Ajana Vivekananda. Kolkata: Sahityam. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1914. Gitanjali (Song Offerings). New York: Macmillan. ———. 1961. Rajarshi. Calcutta: Visva Bharati. ———. 1979. Bisarjan. Calcutta: Visva Bharati. Taubes, Susan Anima. 1955. The Absent God. The Journal of Religion 35 (1, Jan.): 6–16. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1201142. Vedananda, Swami. 2017. Ma Bhavatarinir Lila Mahatmya. Kolkata: Girija. Vivekananda, Swami. 2018. Inspired Talks. Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math. ———. n.d. Mother Worship [Fragmentary Notes of a Class Talk by Swami Vivekananda in New York]. Vivekananda.net, ed. Frank Parlato. Vivekananda. net. Accessed 20 December 2022. http://www.vivekananda.net/ByTopic/ M o t h e r Wo r s h i p . h t m l # : ~ : t e x t = T h e % 2 0 h i g h e s t % 2 0 o f % 2 0 a l l % 2 0 feminine,barter%2C%20love%20that%20never%20dies.

CHAPTER 5

Atheists and the Goddess

Abstract  This chapter presents a cross-cultural survey of intellectual and emotional responses of atheists to the Goddess in specific social, cultural and political contexts. The spectrum of atheists in dialogue or in friction with the Goddess, presented by this chapter, includes the officially atheist Communist state of China which espouses the worship of the “folk” goddess Mazu; Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and mystic who did conform to the largely atheist framework of Buddhism and yet was respectful and (mystically) responsive to Goddess Tara; Sigfried Gold who created a goddess and prayed to her, even though he did not believe in her. This chapter also deals with the fraught issue of “respect” in the context of the interface between atheism and the Goddess and juxtaposes the quite divergent approaches of two atheists to the same Goddess, Kali: Armin Navabi, the founder of the Atheist Republic, and Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi atheist and feminist writer. Finally, this chapter discusses two fictional texts, Devi and Nishithini, by Humayun Ahmed, a famous Bangladeshi writer, in which we come across an atheist psychologist’s persistent struggle with the inerasable presence of a goddess around him.

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Keywords  Lokayata • Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana • Prayer • Mazu • Chinese communists • Tara • Durga puja • Marx • Communist Party in West Bengal • Kali • Naxalite movement • Bangladesh • Humayun Ahmed • Misir Ali • Nastik (Bengali word for atheist) • Mystery • Clinical psychiatry • Auditory hallucination • Faith • Devi • Mahashakti • Secularism Haribhadrasuri relates to us the legend of an atheist Charvaka and his wife who is a believer in invisible, other-worldly realms of experience. The male atheist here instructs his wife in the science of dis-acknowledging the other world (Shastri 2013, 12–13). One may wonder what the situation could have been like, had the wife been a thea-ist and engaged in a dialogue with her husband on the points of friction between thea-ism and atheism. Could she have pointed out that the Goddess could be relevant even in a universe that existed without reference to the “other” world? That the Goddess could be the metaphor for the visible (pratyaksha) world and not the invisible one(s)? In his work Lokayata, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1959), while speaking of the ancient Indic discourses of materialism, focuses on the figure of the Mother Goddess that often emerges within a largely materialist or proto-materialist discursive framework (258–266, 269–321). Chattopadhyaya (1959) argues that the Indic materialist thought, especially in the context of the “Lokayata” epistemologies, has emphasized the female principle of prakriti: he underlines the “ideological emphasis on prakriti (prakriti pradhanya) of the Lokayata trend in Indian philosophy” and juxtaposes it against the “Vedic ideology” which he sees as “purusa-pradhana, or male dominated” (232). Could the Charvaka’s wife, in the legend related by Haribhadrasuri, have invoked the figure of the Goddess in the materialist context and used this figure as an argument for and not against materialism? Could the binaries her husband worked with have been radically altered through this sort of intervention? When we think of the connection between the Goddess and atheists— her interactions with them, their approaches towards her, their acceptance or rejection of the Goddess—we are faced with a lot of philosophical conundrums and paradoxes. These paradoxes might be illustrated through our cross-cultural exploration of the relationships between atheists and the Goddess. How do atheists envision the Goddess? How is their take on the Goddess similar to or different from their take on “God”? These are the questions with which we would concern ourselves in this chapter.

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Buddhism could be a fine starting point to initiate this discussion. While Andrew Skilton acknowledges that Buddhism, despite the presence of multiple deities in its cosmos, remains a strongly atheistic doctrine and keeps refuting the existence of any transcendent divinity, “assign[ing] no soteriological significance or role” to its deities (2013, 339–340), Miranda Shaw notes that Buddhism has had a long tradition of intimate spiritual interactions with goddesses, and these goddesses are not just “products of human intellect and imagination” (2006, 1–11). In other words, while Buddhism does not place at the centre of its metaphysics any “divine” being, instead focussing on “emptiness”, Shaw (2006) argues that it would be a folly to see the Buddhist goddesses as “unreal” or “non-­ existent” or simply as figments of human imagination (9–10). What we gather from this is that the Buddhist approach to the goddesses, especially in the context of Mahayana and tantric forms of Buddhism, is deeply complex, assigning neither absolute reality nor absolute unreality to their status as “divine” beings. Judith Simmer-Brown (2001), however, reminds us that the emptiness underlined in Buddhist metaphysics may itself be figured in feminine terms. She says, “Because the nature of all phenomena is ultimately found to be emptiness, Prajnaparamita, which is emptiness itself, is the mother” (2001, 86). The maternal-feminine, in this sense, remains alive even outside any framework of a solid theo/thea-ontology— even in emptiness. The Goddess, in this sense, may be seen as transcending the ontological status of God in theism; while God, when empty of his Godhead, ceases to be God, the Goddess in Buddhist goddess culture, remains a maternal-divine, liberatory force, even in her status as emptiness. However, apart from her status as emptiness, the Goddess also manifests as a figure of the spiritual instructress in Buddhism, especially in the form of Tara. It is Tara who enlightens Machig Labdron, the pioneer of the Chod meditation practice in Tibetan Buddhism (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 89–90), and it is she who, as I have noted elsewhere, drawing on the work of Vessantara, “may … be seen as the Originator of the new life of Tibetan Buddhism introduced by Atisha [Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana]” (Mukhopadhyay 2017, 93). It is only when Tara, his personal deity, allowed and enthused him to visit Tibet that Atisha decided to go to that land to spread Buddhist teachings (Vessantara 2004, 23; Mukhopadhyay 2017, 93). A largely atheist metaphysics centred on the underlining of emptiness and erasure of all foundationalist ontologies (Apple 2019, 79–94), thus, coexists with the belief in an interaction with a personal goddess who helps the “atheist” scholar in taking the right decision at the

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most crucial moment. Here, we see the peculiar “cohabitation” (in Judith Butler’s sense of the term [cited in duBois 2014, 12]) of the atheist and the thea-ist within the same psychic territory. A comparable though not similar context emerges in the case of the fictive goddess created by Sigfried Gold. Gold created a “goddess he … doesn’t believe in” (Wicker 2013). Interestingly, his prayers to this goddess about whose non-existence he was certain did work for him. As Wicker (2013) illustrates: Gold began drawing a 15-foot goddess decades ago. He named her Ms. X, after Malcolm X. Four years ago, depressed, drifting in his relationship with his family and overweight, he joined a 12-step program for overeaters. In response to the requirement that he turn his eating problem over to God, he began praying to Ms X in the morning, at night and before meals. He never believed she was real. Today, 110 pounds lighter, free of depression and happy in his family relationships, he credits prayer with delivering him. He still doesn’t believe she is real. But his prayers are real. And powerfully liberating.

It is interesting to note the contrast between existence and efficacy here or rather that between ontology and “function”. The goddess, though non-­ existent, is able to perform her role as a deliverer for the atheist. Of course, unlike Atisha, Gold does not work with a goddess grounded in a tradition; his goddess is created by him, and her fictitiousness, thus, is more than conspicuous to him. Nevertheless, what is interesting here is the gender of the fictive deity created by him. Rather than creating a male god, he creates “Ms. X”, a feminine entity. While it appears that Gold’s main focus is on the prayer made by him rather than on the ontological details of the fictional deity fashioned by him, it does remain a significant point that the addressee of his prayer is a female deity rather than a male one. Is there any connection between the efficacy of his prayer and the gender of his (fictive) deity? Might it be the case that the atheist’s unconventional prayer is more compatible with a feminine deity than with a male one? That the feminine deity represents a more fluid form of sacrality than a male deity does, which is compatible with the atheist sensibility? Is Ms. X, then, a non-“supernatural” goddess who can appeal to the atheist without disturbing the epistemic denial of the “supernatural” to which the atheist is committed? Or, more cynically, could we say that the male atheist’s male ego is satisfied with his capacity for creating a female deity who would be

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assigned a provisional reality by him? Is that the reason why the fictional goddess works better than a fictional god? The answer is not certain. What is, however, certain is that it is necessary to gender the trope of prayer-in-­ the-domain-of-the-postdivine which Purushottama Bilimoria underscores (2022, 107–109). Another peculiar instance of “atheists” upholding a “goddess” is the Chinese communists’ growing interest in Mazu, a folk goddess, “a sea deity believed to protect sailors and fishermen” (Lim 2010). As Louisa Lim (2010) observes: The Communist Party once regarded worshiping folk goddesses like Mazu as rank superstition. But now, she is a money-maker, co-opted and harnessed by local officials. Far from being banned, Mazu is being used by China’s communist leaders for their own political and economic ends.

These political ends include the betterment of their cultural relations with Taiwan (Lim 2010). As Lim (2010) observes, the “atheist” communists are allowing the public worship of Mazu by claiming that it is a “cultural” affair rather than a religious one. It is interesting to note that, while “God” has often served as a transcendental signifier easily identifiable with the discourse of religion, goddesses have often escaped the “transcendental” aura of religion, by aligning themselves with the earthly, the mundane. The terrestrial domain inhabited by them can obviously be seen as the domain of the “secular”, and thus, their ability to move between the sacred and the secular is something that might make them lesser personae non-gratae in the “atheist” eyes than a supreme male deity. Mazu may be seen, less cynically, as not just a political tool for the Chinese communists but rather a deity closer to Gaia, whom, as we have already seen, Joe Humphreys identifies as “a deity even atheists can believe in”. As Lim (2010) observes: Even the island’s top Communist Party official, the Meizhou party secretary, Zhuang Yonghui, admits to worshipping. “Of course I believe in Mazu,” he says, denying any contradiction with the communist creed of atheism. “Mazu’s not a religion. It’s a popular belief, so there’s no contradiction with the Communist Party’s stance on not believing in religion.”

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Of course, a staunch atheist is supposed to deny “popular belief” as much as “religion”, and hence the Chinese communist cited by Lim evidently contradicts himself. These types of contradiction, however, appear to be quite interesting in the context of the peculiarity of the hyphenation between the Goddess and atheism. We can make a few guesses from this specific case of hyphenating goddess culture and organized atheism, which seems to be a contradiction. It is apparent that Mazu is not really seen as a female counterpart of the transcendental male absolute. She is not the Goddess, the feminine Absolute. She is, rather, a popular goddess, who, from the empirical understanding of her cult, proves to be a human female apotheosized, a woman made into a goddess (Lim 2010). However, interestingly, Zhuang Yonghui does not underline the humanness of Mazu in order to justify his “belief” in Mazu. He does not claim that respecting Mazu is a way of respecting the woman who was attributed the status of a protectress who could save fishermen and whose “fame grew, even after her death” (Lim 2010). Precisely, the respect shown to Mazu is not shown to the human female behind the goddess, but rather towards the goddess herself. However, at the same time, it becomes clear that she is not like “God” and hence need not be crossed out as vigorously by the atheist as the latter would be. One might faintly perceive a compromise here: the goddess can be tolerated by the atheist when she is not like God. This generic (and gender) difference within the larger epistemic matrix of “divinity” needs to be underlined, when we try to uncover the mystery of the atheist tolerance (or even acceptance) of a goddess. In this context, it would be relevant to refer to the persistence of the Goddess in West Bengal, India, under the communist regime in the past. While the communist regime in West Bengal officially asserted its “secular” stance, the communists would often set up book stalls near Durga puja pandals during the autumnal Durga puja festival. The same scenario could be observed during Kali puja as well. One can of course reflect on the irony of communist leaders and cadres selling Bengali translations of Marx’s Capital near Durga puja pandals, but one needs to remember that they did not consciously or programmatically projected the selling of such books as an educative enterprise meant to counter the idolatrous belief of the Bengali Hindus in the Goddess. It was, rather, a curious case of cohabitation of the sort duBois foregrounds. As Supriya Chaudhuri (2021) tells us, several communist leaders and ministers in West Bengal used to indirectly patronize certain Durga Puja organizations (23).

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The Communist Party in West Bengal was not, however, officially kind to the Goddess, and it severely criticized Subhas Chakraborty, a communist leader of Bengal, when he visited the Tarapith temple and offered ritual worship to the Goddess there in 2006 (Gupta 2009, 148–153). Later on, Chakraborty, however, did not hesitate to claim to be a great devotee of Goddess Tara (Correspondent, The Telegraph 2009) and, to probably offer a secular apologia for his devotion, proclaimed: In China, there was once an emperor who had a wife called Tara. At that time, the feet of women in China were fettered. Tara told the emperor she would leave him if he did not free the women. The emperor freed the women and people started worshipping Tara. (cited in Correspondent, The Telegraph 2009)

This narrative, it goes without saying, has nothing to do with the actual myths and legends surrounding the Tarapith temple and its deity. Chakraborty possibly felt the necessity to legitimize his stance by humanizing Tara. He adopted a method the celebrators of Mazu did not. As Supriya Chaudhuri reminds us, it was known widely that on the wall of the house of Charu Mazumdar, the celebrated leader of the ultra-left Naxalite movement in West Bengal, there was placed a picture of Goddess Kali (2021, 23). In the same vein, Chaudhuri recounts the case of a communist doctor, Narayan Roy, who could not bring himself to remove a large picture of Kali from his chamber (2021, 23). Kali, precisely, did not leave the terrain of Bengali communism. It is, however, necessary to note that every atheist would not be interested in tolerating the Goddess. As we have already seen in Chap. 2, Richard Dawkins is utterly dismissive of the idea of replacing a male God with a female one. However, we need to deal with the issue of “respect” in this context, as, within the plural world today, we are often confronted with the problem of a disrespectful denial of what the “others” believe. The atheist Self, when it constitutes itself with reference to an Other that can be devalued, may turn solipsistic too. In his essay, “Religion and Respect”, Simon Blackburn (2007) insists: When people do things differently, sometimes it is fine, but sometimes it is not. This is especially so with overt signs of religious affiliation. By all means be apart, if you wish, but don’t expect me to jump up and down with joy….

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We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a liberal society we do not seek to suppress them or silence them. But once we are convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot respect in any thicker sense those who hold it—not on account of their holding it. We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one. We would prefer them to change their minds. (180)

The problem with this approach is that, here, the atheist self’s conviction or credo becomes so imperious that it does not hesitate to deny the non-­ atheist other’s right to respectful recognition. Toleration here is conspicuously divorced from respect; the atheist tolerates the believer simply because the latter cannot be “suppressed” or “silenced” in “a liberal society”. As it is not possible to suppress or silence them, you tolerate them without giving them respect. One would fail to understand how this approach might be differentiated from that of religious intolerance. However, refusing to show respect to the (believing) Other is certainly different from actively showing disrespect to them, though the borderline between these two approaches might dangerously get blurred more often than not. One might passively wish “them to change their minds” (emphasis added), but one might also go so far as to actively and aggressively disrespect them, in order to force them to “change their minds”. It is in this context that we can juxtapose two atheists in terms of their approaches to the Hindu goddess Kali. We would first focus on Armin Navabi’s derogatory comments on the Hindu goddess Kali. Navabi, the Iranian-Canadian atheist who founded the Atheist Republic posted a picture of Kali on Twitter on 3 September 2020 and referred to her as a “sexy” goddess (Abraham 2020). Navabi has a notorious track record of not even respecting “other” belief systems “in the minimal sense of tolerating”. He had started “a new controversial social media campaign called ‘DesecrateTheQuran’” and “shared a video where he was seen tearing the Arabic version of the Quran. After tearing up the Quran, Navabi also spat on the book and further tore the pages to throw it away” (Abraham 2020). As an ex-Muslim, he obviously sees himself as different and dissociated from the practising Muslims who are othered by his atheist self. However, while Dawkins mocks the idea of upholding a goddess-centred form of religiosity by proclaiming, “But what, after all, is the difference between a non-existent female and a non-existent male?” (2006, 35–36), we need to

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underline, in Navabi’s case, the “difference” between the atheist negation of the male God of the Quran and the atheist negation of the Hindu goddess Kali. For Navabi, it appears, there is a “difference between a non-­ existent female and a non-existent male”. In this case, the “non-existent female”, unlike the “non-existent male”, can be subjected to sexist and gendered ridicule. There are sacred books on Kali unknown to Navabi; but, rather than enquiring about her sacred books, or desecrating them, he decides to desecrate her. This is, of course, a gendered desecration. It is her bodily dimension, her physical profile as a female entity which becomes the target of Navabi’s ridicule. Even though “non-existent” in the atheist’s eye, she remains a female in Navabi’s view and, therefore, is subjected to sexist ridicule in a way a male God is not. One might juxtapose this approach against the approach of a feminist atheist like Taslima Nasreen to Goddess Kali. It is apparent that Nasreen, the noted Bangladeshi writer, does not believe in any form of divinity—be it male or female—and she does not speak of a female-centred religion but rather denies the necessity for religion per se (Dattagupta 2016). However, when the Bangladeshi player, Shakib Al Hasan, under pressure from the Islamists, apologized for his participation in the worship of Kali in Kolkata in 2020, Nasreen wrote on Twitter: Sakib Al Hasan should not have apologised for attending Kali puja in Kolkata. His apology will strengthen the Islamists to kill Muslims whoever visit puja mandap or sympathise with Hindus. He should have said what he did was right, love should be celebrated and hate should be rejected. (ABP News Bureau 2020)

It is obvious that, whereas she is seen as an uncompromising and staunch atheist, her approach is radically different from not just Navabi’s but also Blackburn’s. It is not the case that she believes in the divinity of Kali; however, she refuses to disrespect those who believe in Kali. Hence, Hasan’s apology comes to her as a shock, as she believes that Hasan’s respect towards another religion should have been celebrated. It is by championing Hasan’s right to respect Kali that she underscores her faith in one’s right to respect other belief systems, other points of view. While she is often taken to task for sharply criticizing Islam, she does not hesitate to promulgate:

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When temples are broken in Bangladesh or mosques are destroyed somewhere else, I protest because religious freedom is necessary, but there should also be freedom to not believe in religion or to criticise it. (Dattagupta 2016; emphasis added)

It might be argued that it is her atheist feminism which aligns her with the Butlerian focus on a pluralist cohabitation of divergent beliefs and practices (including atheist credos), rather than with the exclusionary ethos (often in terms of gender as well) championed by many of the male atheists who do not hesitate to disrespect “religious freedom”. Nasreen’s voice often resonates with those of the freethinking intellectuals of Bangladesh who are bold enough to strongly criticize the problematic aspects of the existing religious systems around them. At the end of this chapter, it would be interesting to note how the celebrated fictional figure of a Bangladeshi freethinker and atheist, in two fictional works of Humayun Ahmed, an immensely popular writer in Bangladesh, comes to face the Goddess in uncanny ways and is engulfed by her alterity, an alterity so powerful that it cannot be reduced to any theoretical articulation of her “non-existence”. The first of these works is, interestingly, titled Devi (The Goddess). The central figure whose function in these two narratives is to (try to) solve apparently perplexing and mysterious phenomena is Misir Ali, a part-time teacher of clinical psychiatry at the Dhaka University (Ahmed 2016a, 339). Ali proclaims that he does not believe in ghosts; he also enunciates that he does not believe in the existence of souls and is a nastik (the Bengali word for atheist) (Ahmed 2016a, 341). In Devi, Anis, the husband of Ranu, a young woman who hears disembodied feminine voices and is apparently “abnormal”, approaches Ali (Ahmed 2016a, 323–327). Ali begins to psychoanalyse Ranu and comes to believe that she is capable of “extra-sensory perception” (Ahmed 2016a, 336–339, 344). Ranu has peculiar powers: she involuntarily envisions things that come to happen later on (Ahmed 2016a, 336). Ali thinks that the events of her early life that Ranu confesses to him must be verified and hence he visits the places associated with her childhood (Ahmed 2016a, 343–346, 349–351). After his investigation is over he comes to think that he has been able to come up with a logical explanation of Ranu’s apparently supernatural experiences. Ali tells Ranu that he now knows that, in her childhood, a man named Jalaluddin attempted to molest her in a temple—a traumatic experience that stuck to her subconscious and hence started giving rise to

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various sorts of hallucinatory experiences. Ali thinks that this traumatic experience happens to be the root cause of the asukh (disease) Ranu suffers from (Ahmed 2016a, 355). Ranu, however, tells him firmly that the narrative that he has articulated from the bits and pieces of the stories of her childhood is not completely perfect. She promulgates that Jalaluddin did not take her to the temple; she used to visit the temple herself to see the beautiful idol of a goddess placed therein (Ahmed 2016a, 355). Ranu forces Ali to tell her exactly what Jalaluddin has confessed to him (Ahmed 2016a, 356). Ali says that, according to Jalaluddin, when the latter was about to molest her, the idol of the goddess suddenly rushed towards Ranu and merged with her, thereby making her body emit flames. Jalaluddin has also confessed to Ali that it was this supernatural phenomenon which frightened him and, as a result, made him flee (Ahmed 2016a, 356). Ali tells Ranu that he is a rationalist and hence does not believe in anything supernatural. He adds that, as he believes that everything is logically explainable, Jalaluddin’s narrative can be rationally explained too—as the narrative of a miscreant whose guilt-ridden mind, swayed by the awe that is generally inspired by temples in the minds of uneducated people, presented before him a hallucinatory experience (Ahmed 2016a, 356). Ranu, however, keeps believing that the goddess had really entered into her, as a result of which she became excessively beautiful (Ahmed 2016a, 356). Ranu reminds Ali that, after that incident, the idol of the goddess was never found again in that temple (Ahmed 2016a, 356). She believes that she now looks like the idol of the goddess and, though Ali seeks to rectify this belief (which he obviously considers to be a false one), Ranu remains firm in her belief (Ahmed 2016a, 356). The narrative of Ahmed’s novel deliberately seeks to keep the “mystery” open-ended (Rahman 2018). However, even though sometimes it appears that a logical explanation is possible, the over-arching framework of supernatural experiences (which others are forced to share with Ranu) creates an ambience of suspense which seems to mock the confident rationalism of Ali (Rahman 2018). Ranu tells her husband that she used to visit a temple in her native village where the idol of a goddess named Rukmini was installed. She tells him that she used to childishly chat with the goddess (Ahmed 2016a, 358). It needs to be remembered here that both Ranu and Anis are Muslims and hence Ranu is by no means affiliated to the faith system where the Hindu goddess has a proper religious significance. However, it appears that she had made an affective bond with the goddess which went beyond the religious difference between the Muslim

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girl and the Hindu goddess. While Ranu speaks to her husband about her bond with the goddess, she suddenly bursts into laughter. Immediately, Anis hears the sound of anklets. Ranu asks him whether he can hear the sound of anklets (Ahmed 2016a, 358–359). If this is a hallucination, then, of course, the husband and the wife hallucinate jointly and simultaneously. Ranu tells him that she used to sing for the goddess (Ahmed 2016a, 359). Anis finds that Ranu is feverish and tries to soothe her by distracting her mind from the memory of the goddess, but Ranu starts singing gently. She sings a tune that the narrator describes as supra-terrestrial, as something that belongs to some other world (Ahmed 2016a, 359). Misir Ali, curious about the temple, visits the ruins of the temple and gathers some more information about the goddess who was once worshipped at that temple. He comes to know that a Hindu family, after receiving a divine instruction in a dream, had set up this temple. However, immediately after the establishment of the temple, crises started befalling the family. Then, to appease the goddess, they sacrificed a virgin girl in front of the temple. The Goddess, however, was not appeased, as the family did not get rid of its disasters even after the human sacrifice (Ahmed 2016a, 359–360). The local Hindus, Ali comes to find, consider the temple to be ominous and avoid visiting it. Misir Ali visits the temple too but does not find anything genuinely supernatural there (Ahmed 2016a, 360). Anis comes to Ali to tell him that he has started hearing the supernatural sound of anklets, along with his wife. Ali tries to make him understand that it is but a case of “induced auditory hallucination”, but Anis insists that Ali himself will hear the same sound if he visits their house. Ali firmly states that he will not have any such experience as he is a staunch rationalist (Ahmed 2016a, 365). When Ali visits Ranu’s house, she tries to make him understand that she can really have a premonition of what is going to happen, but Ali ignores it (Ahmed 2016a, 368–369). Towards the end of the narrative, however, Ranu’s supernatural experiences evidently overpower the rationalist explanations Ali would like to offer. When Ranu’s neighbour, Nilu, is trapped by a psychopathic man through his romantic overtures, Ranu hears the Goddess’s voice around her, once again (Ahmed 2016a, 372–373). She tries to force herself to believe that, as Ali has suggested, such voices are nothing but cases of “auditory hallucination” (Ahmed 2016a, 373). However, gradually, she comes to understand that the voice is known to her and so is the sound of the anklets; and a young girl’s mysterious voice tells her that Nilu is going to face a danger which is even greater than the one faced by Ranu in her childhood (Ahmed 2016a,

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373). Then, the narrator directly takes us to the scene where the psychopathic man is about to reveal his nasty self to Nilu (Ahmed 2016a, 374–375). In other words, the sequence of events in the narrative, towards the closure, conspicuously validates Ranu’s perspective, rather than Ali’s. When Anis returns home, Ranu tells him that Nilu is in great danger (Ahmed 2016a, 375). Then, they decide to visit Misir Ali. Ranu asks Ali if he believes her. The rationalist Ali replies that he neither believes nor disbelieves her. However, he adds that he does not believe anything so easily. Ali tells her that he can think of taking any concrete action only if Ranu can supply him with the address of the psychopathic man who has abducted Nilu (something Ranu has come to know supernaturally) (Ahmed 2016a, 376–377). However, Ranu does not know the address of the abductor of Nilu and hence she decides to leave Ali’s place (Ahmed 2016a, 377). As Puja Sen Majumdar points out, Ranu understands that “the men around her” who are exclusively dependent on “reason” won’t be of any help to Nilu (2021, 59). Once she is back to her house, Ranu’s health deteriorates. She keeps visualizing the psychopathic abductor who is about to kill Nilu. Ranu now seems to have become almost identified with the goddess-as-a-young-girl who used to accompany her. She says that her companion, that is, the goddess, will now take her to the abductor of Nilu (Ahmed 2016a, 378–379). At this point, even the neighbouring woman who visits Ranu comes to hear the mysterious sound of anklets (Ahmed 2016a, 379). Ranu, as it were, mystically journeys to save Nilu from her abductor and hence has to leave her mortal body. Therefore, just before taking us to the climactic scene, the narrator relates to us the death of Ranu (Ahmed 2016a, 380). Nilu, as well as her abductor, suddenly hears the sound of anklets. The man is taken aback, and he hears the laughter of a young girl (Ahmed 2016a, 380). Nilu feels that a young girl, wearing anklets, is moving around her. While moving around her, she touches Nilu once, and Nilu suddenly gets rid of all fear (Ahmed 2016a, 380). The narrator’s effectively suggestive rhetoric—using the tropes of the supra-terrestrial sound of anklets and the intense fragrance of flowers floating in from some other world—makes us understand that the Goddess, now one with Ranu and assuming the form of a wilful girl, saves Nilu and punishes her abductor (Ahmed 2016a, 380). The postscript, interestingly, tells us about Misir Ali’s surprise and unease on finding a mysterious resemblance between Ranu and Nilu, when he sees Nilu, who is his student, sitting in his class (Ahmed 2016a,

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381). After Ranu’s death, and after Nilu’s getting saved by the Goddess-­ merged-­into-Ranu, Nilu becomes the visible remnant of not just Ranu but also the Goddess. She is now “someone who is all there: Nilu, Ranu and the devi” (Majumdar 2021, 59). However, although Ali is baffled by the presence of what we may identify as the Goddess-in-Ranu-in-Nilu, he does not acknowledge the “Goddess” till now. In this narrative, interestingly, the gender of the atheist becomes significant. The Goddess’s specifically feminine mystery (Majumdar 2021, 58–59) is, as it were, handed out to a male atheist who first refuses to see it as mystery and then, finally, gets devoured by it when the dead Ranu, who said she was inhabited by a Goddess, re-emerges before him, in the form of Nilu. This narrative is not the narrative of an atheist turning into a thea-ist, as Ali by no means turns into a “believer” at the end of the story. However, the narrative powerfully presents the limits of reason and also the gendered nature of androcentric reason which might objectify the female possessor of “extra-sensory perception” by reducing the endless complexity of her female subjectivity to the status of a psychiatric “patient”. The male psychiatrist’s rationality fails to grasp the secret of the empathetic bonding between women and also between woman and goddess— which might be enacted even in a domain outside the conventional epistemology of “faith” (Majumdar 2021, 58–59). The Goddess, in fact, is essentially dislodged from the faith system to which she supposedly “belongs”. The Hindu Goddess begins to make sense in the lives of Muslim women, whereas the Hindus themselves see her as ominous. In terms of his approach to the believers, Ali is obviously closer to Nasreen than Navabi. However, it does not appear that he is really able to show adequate “respect” towards the Other’s experience, even though his rationality is of course not too ossified to accommodate empathy. He seems to believe that even extraordinary experiences can be explained rationally, without radically widening the contours of “reason”. This confidence, however, gradually begins to be defied by the Goddess-in-Ranu, although Ranu’s mystic capacity for foreseeing future events is explained by him in terms of psychiatric explorations, rather than in terms of the mystique of the Goddess. In a recent essay, Michael Ruse focused on the necessity to acknowledge the “mystery of existence” (2021, 588), which drives him to accept the position of the agnostic as a valid one: “I find myself pushed towards a middle position, agnosticism. Belief will not do. Non-belief (of an absolute kind) is no better” (2021, 589). Does the Goddess, through her mystic interactions and resultant identification with Ranu, turn Misir

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Ali into an “agnostic”? To explore this, we have to look at the sequel of Devi, titled Nishithini, where Ali “meets” the Goddess in a more direct and compelling way. At the beginning of Nishithini, Ali meets Nilu who looks like Ranu, and he even mistakenly addresses her as Ranu. He finds it mysterious that Nilu carries traces of the dead Ranu. This leads him to think that nature keeps creating mysteries which is the task of rational humans to demystify (Ahmed 2016b, 387). Nishithini centres around the story of a psychiatric patient named Firoz whose disease seems to be a case of multiple personality disorder (Ahmed 2016b, 391–396). However, Nilu is a prominent presence throughout the novel, and it appears that she has acquired special powers since her being saved from the psychopathic murderer (by the Goddess) (Ahmed 2016b, 406–408). The psychopathic murderer had died while trying to kill her, and Nilu’s father intuits that the death was mysterious—a mystery that cannot be solved (Ahmed 2016b, 408). Nilu herself, however, believes that it is the Goddess who saved her from the murderer (Ahmed 2016b, 434). She tells Ali that, just as Ranu had told him that a Goddess inhabited her, she would now like to make the same statement before Ali (Ahmed 2016b, 434). She reminds him that there are a lot of mysterious things in the world. Ali, however, brushes this away by asserting that all the apparently supernatural things can be explained with reference to natural laws. He even goes so far as to say that even if the Goddess comes out of Nilu and greets him, he will not believe in her existence but will rather look for a possible rational explanation for this experience (Ahmed 2016b, 434). Ali tells Nilu that he would explain such an experience as nothing but hallucination. He tells her about a student he met in England, who would see Jesus Christ after taking LSD. He confidently relates it to Nilu’s (and also Ranu’s) case, probably categorizing all these experiences as religion-induced hallucination (Ahmed 2016b, 434). Nilu then tells him clearly how she was saved by the Goddess when the murderer was about to kill her. She confesses that she saw the Goddess too, who took a splendid female form, adding that, since then, the Goddess has accompanied her mystically (Ahmed 2016b, 434). Ali tells her that even this experience can be rationally explained and offers the following explanation: when Nilu heard Ranu’s account of the Goddess accompanying her, the trope of the Goddess went into her unconscious, as this trope has a “romantic flavour”; when Nilu herself faced a crisis, the “Goddess” came out of her unconscious as a case of “stress induced hallucination” (Ahmed 2016b, 434–435). Nilu then questions him how he would explain

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the death of the psychopath. Ali, no less confident, tells her that the murderer’s death can also be explained rationally—as a death caused by his sudden fall on the floor which led to brain injuries or some other reason like this (Ahmed 2016b, 434–435). However, it is revealed that, thanks to her awe-inspiring special powers, Nilu has come to know that Firoz has turned into a psychopath and will attempt to kill Misir Ali (Ahmed 2016b, 435). She, it appears, also knows the real identity of the domestic help of Ali that he has been moving heaven and earth to find out (Ahmed 2016b, 435–436). There is something in Nilu’s voice which inspires awe and surprises Ali. He feels that he does not know this girl; as if, the familiar girl has become unfamiliar—an unknown person (Ahmed 2016b, 436). This evident alterity of Nilu (just like that of Ranu in Devi) is presented as an open-ended mystery in the narrative, an alterity that Nilu equates with the Goddess while Ali persistently refuses to do so, even though he cannot but face the undeniable reality of this mysterious alterity that defamiliarizes the familiar girl. At Nilu’s home, Ali experiences the mysteries that the characters in Devi used to experience: fragrance of flowers, sound of anklets, uncanny whispers (Ahmed 2016b, 436–437). He is astonished, and yet, while he feels like shouting, he restrains himself and tells himself firmly that there cannot be any mystery in the world (Ahmed 2016b, 436–437). He intuits the presence of someone gazing at him, and yet he forces himself to deny the possibility of the presence of anyone from a different world in front of him. He wants to conclude that all such experiences are but the outer manifestations of the dynamics of the subconscious (Ahmed 2016b, 437). He wants to instil courage in himself and says, “There is no place for mystery on this planet” (translation mine) (Ahmed 2016b, 437). While in Devi we see an obstinately rationalist Ali, in Nishithini, it appears that, despite himself, he has started believing in the extraordinary power acquired by Nilu (Ahmed 2016b, 445). Firoz, it appears, is possessed by the self of a man who died long ago, and the violent spirit of that man seeks to turn Firoz into a psychopath, a serial killer (Ahmed 2016b, 450–452). Zahid, Nilu’s father, intuits the mysterious presence of the entity Nilu would define as the Goddess; he smells the fragrance of flowers and hears the ringing of anklets. Nilu appears to speak to someone else, just as Ranu used to do in Devi (Ahmed 2016b, 453). Zahid feels profoundly uneasy in the presence of his mysterious daughter from whose room unknown female voices are heard and who is often surrounded by the intense fragrance of champa flowers all of a sudden (Ahmed 2016b, 454).

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When Ali is about to be attacked by Firoz who is, as it were, possessed by a violent, chthonic spirit, Nilu becomes feverish. She keeps speaking to her Goddess, which the doctor considers to be nothing but feverish delirium. Zahid hears his daughter speaking to the unknown presence, smells the fragrance and hears the ringing anklets. He seeks to normalize things by having recourse to Islamic texts (Ahmed 2016b, 459–460). The frenzied Firoz enters Misir Ali’s room and strikes him with an iron rod, thereby triggering forth the climax of the narrative (Ahmed 2016b, 461–462). Intense pain numbs Misir Ali’s senses and he feels that he is oscillating between life and death. It is in the midst of this experience that he hears the voice of the Goddess. She calls him by his name and asks him to look at her (Ahmed 2016b, 462). The peculiar sight before him, the presence of the Goddess, the possibility of which he keeps negating even at this moment by thinking that she is a “hallucination”, offers the most powerful fictional representation of the encounter between the atheist and the Goddess. The Goddess asks Ali if he knows who she is, advising him to keep speaking to her so that he can be oblivious to his intense pain (Ahmed 2016b, 462). She says, “I am that Goddess. You don’t believe in me. However, are you believing in me now?” (translation mine). Ali, even at this moment, adamantly holds on to his disbelief, proclaiming: “You are a figment of my imagination. Wishful thinking. What is this Goddess business?” (translation mine). The Goddess reminds him that it is she who has saved him and then bursts into laughter (Ahmed 2016b, 462). Ali notices that her smile is wonderful, and he cannot but appreciate her sweet melodious voice. The intense smell of champa flowers spreads in the room. Ali keeps thinking that it is nothing but hallucination (Ahmed 2016b, 462). Ali finds that the Goddess looks like a flesh-and-blood woman. He wishes to touch her, wondering whether the fragrance is coming from her body (Ahmed 2016b, 462). Burdened with intolerable pain, Ali, panting for breath, tells her, “Devi, lessen my pain” (translation mine). The Goddess wittily asks him, “Then, are you believing in me?” (translation mine). Ali says, “No” (Ahmed 2016b, 462). The Goddess then asks him why he thinks that the Goddess is an ontological impossibility. She puts forward these questions to Ali: Why are you not ready to believe in me? Is everything rationally explainable in this world? The sky, the endless clusters of stars? Do you mean to say that there is no mystery anywhere in this universe? What is infinity? Is the answer

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to this simple question known to you? Tell me, do you know it? (Translation mine) (Ahmed 2016b, 463)

Misir Ali asserts that humankind is capable of knowing everything, and generation after generation, human rationality will keep expanding the horizon of knowledge. The Goddess remarks that Ali is a peculiar man (Ahmed 2016b, 463). He, however, keeps requesting her to lessen his pain. The Goddess finds it amusing that he does not believe in her and yet asks her to lessen his pain (Ahmed 2016b, 463). The Goddess then forecasts his future: he will be taken to hospital; he will get cured; and, afterwards, he will get married to Nilu (Ahmed 2016b, 463). In fact, throughout the novel, there are scattered references to the growing romantic interest between Ali and Nilu (Ahmed 2016b, 387, 432–433). The Goddess asks him to remember her if he gets married to Nilu (Ahmed 2016b, 463). Misir Ali keeps appreciating the supra-terrestrial beauty and the splendid voice of the Goddess, and yet keeps considering it to be a hallucinatory experience. He thinks that his marriage with Nilu, even if it becomes a reality in future, will not prove the Goddess’s existence. It is difficult to prove any such thing, he thinks. The Goddess moves away, spreading the fragrance of champa flowers all around, anklets ringing around her feet (Ahmed 2016b, 463). Interestingly, the closure of the novel does not let us believe that the appearance of the Goddess before Ali was just a hallucination, as we are told that Firoz, when he met the police, told them that he had been cured by “someone” whom he met at Ali’s home (Ahmed 2016b, 463). This someone, one can assume, is the (feminine) alterity whom the unusual female characters of Devi and Nishithini—Ranu and Nilu—identify as the Goddess. As we have noted, the “Goddess” in these two narratives appears to be a cluster of mysterious subjective experiences, but this cluster of experiences is shared by multiple subjects. Would that make her presence an objective reality? The narrator does not claim this, but he uses this narrative device to foreground the mystery that Ruse underlines. Can we say that the Goddess seeks to make Ali the atheist an “agnostic”? Here, the struggles of the atheist are presented within a narrative framework that is evidently— and heavily—gendered. The mystery to which the female characters such as Ranu and Nilu have access is not recognized as a mystery by Ali, even when he has a first-hand experience of it, at the end of Nishithini. Is this

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the hubris of human rationality or that of masculinist rationalism? While a rationalist atheist might not like this sort of gendering of “reason”, the narratives of Humayun Ahmed, centring around the confrontation between a male atheist and a feminine mystery, provide ample scope for such gendering (Majumdar 2021, 58–59). Sigfried Gold’s goddess did not represent an alterity as radical as that represented by the Goddess Misir Ali faces: Gold’s goddess was his creation. Ali, though he thinks that the Goddess is but a figment of his imagination, knows, at least subconsciously, that she is not the product of his imagination. The Goddess, even if she is really a hallucinatory entity, is transmitted to him by flesh-and-­ blood women: she does not emerge from a man’s brain (Majumdar 2021, 58). “Misir Ali has no power over her” (Majumdar 2021, 59). While Ali thinks that, as a psychologist, he will be able to cure the diseased Firoz, it ultimately appears that it is the Goddess who cures both Firoz and Misir Ali. The closure of the narrative of Nishithini gives us the impression that it is the Goddess who keeps alive the dying Ali’s elan vital by continuing to speak to him. Moreover, while Devi presents the Goddess as saving women from (aggressive) men, Nishithini changes this apparently gender-­ specific role of the Goddess as a saviouress. In the second novel, she saves men or rather cures them. Nevertheless, while women who are practising Muslims accept her reality, the male atheist does not. The Goddess, I repeat, is dislodged from her immediate religious ecology here: she is not a Hindu Goddess saving Hindu women. Rather, she is a Goddess who saves women and men, irrespective of their religious affiliations, as a trans-­ religious presence, a mystery that need not be categorized in “theological” terms. Is this the most exciting form of friction between thealogy and atheism? The Goddess confronted by Misir Ali might make sense to the “agnostics” like Ruse. She might also reaffirm the principle of cohabitation underscored by Butler and duBois, by bringing atheists as well as men and women from different belief systems into her fold. As the two novels of Ahmed make clear, the mysteries of the mind and the mysteries of the universe crisscross, correspond and converse with each other. Frustrating all attempts of proving or disproving them, they might continue to survive and transmit themselves—from subject to subject, from culture to culture, from religion to religion and even from belief to non-belief. These mysteries keep flowing just below the surface of the non-mysterious, around the ostensible nucleus of the quotidian. As Motiur Rahman (2018) notes, the enthralling narratives of Devi and Nishithini foreground the blending of

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the familiar and the unfamiliar, the magical and the mundane, underscoring the mysteries of the “otherworldly” experiences in and of this world that cannot be “grasped” by Ali’s “Napoleon-like confidence” grounded in scientific rationalism. While Ali thinks that his general atheism would and should naturally include a-thea-ism, the Goddess makes him understand how she is different from “God” and much more complex than “Him”. Apparently ghostly rather than regally transcendental (Majumdar 2021, 58–59; Rahman 2018), she comes to the atheist and the Muslim woman (the latter being formally distanced from any active goddess-­ centred religion) through the fragrance of flowers and ringing of anklets, through sensory experiences that are by no means “transcendental”. In fact, the way the Goddess emerges in these two texts may remind one of Sudipta Kaviraj’s assertion that a theist world and an atheist world may exist side by side, “with a door through which we can communicate constantly—particularly when we face grief or need a language for the ineffable” (2021, 696). The repeated references in these two texts to the Goddess apparently belonging to a “different universe” (anya bhuvan [Ahmed 2016a, 359, 380; Ahmed 2016b, 437]) may validate the assertion of Kaviraj. However, I would like to add that, in Ahmed’s texts, it appears that it is the Goddess who moves through both of these worlds and can open the “door” to which Kaviraj refers. It is interesting to note that the recognition that the Goddess apparently demands from Ali at the end of Nishithini is not a religious recognition. She asks him to believe in the mysteries of the world in general and not to believe exclusively in her. One may say that she is the representative of all the mysteries that one may come across in this world and hence not an exclusively “divine” figure in the “theological” sense of the term. These mysteries are “sacredsecular” (Mani 2009, 1) in nature, and hence, she may speak meaningfully to the atheist as well as to the theist and not just to the theaist. She may be (unsuccessfully) crossed out by impatient atheists (and also theists) who refuse to listen to her. However, if one listens to her patiently, one may gain something, even without becoming a theaist. As we have seen in this chapter, atheists across cultures do not and cannot have a singular or homogeneous approach to the Goddess. There are, naturally, points of convergence and divergence between their approaches, and such approaches may vary in terms of the general religious and philosophical atmospheres from which they emerge. However, while pondering over the atheists’ attitudes to the Goddess, one cannot help focusing on the gendered nature of subjectivities. Gender, in this context, becomes an

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important frame of reference for critically revisiting belief and disbelief and, specifically, belief or disbelief in the Goddess. I would like to bring to this chapter a closure that would probably validate this assertion, by referring to two articles that were published in the Bengali magazine Desh in November 2021. This special issue of Desh was centred on Goddess Kali. In one of these articles, Jashodhara Roychoudhury underlines the symbolic significance of Kali, and the narratives and tropes of the Goddess in general, in the life of a secular Bengali feminist like her (2021, 18–19). She insists that the Goddess is so closely enmeshed in the Bengali cultural life that even secular writers cannot avoid the symbology of the Goddess and even a secular woman like her finds inspiring resources for feminine self-­ assertion in the Sanskrit texts on Devi, including the Devi Sukta which, pronounced by a female sage, asserts the glory of the (feminine) “I” (aham) (2021, 19). The celebration of this all-pervasive, vast I-hood by a female sage, Roychoudhury avers, is contagious—it appeals even to those women like her who may not be particularly religious. This vast feminine I-hood, celebrated in the goddess traditions of India, “gladdens” her (Roychoudhury 2021, 19). Her secularism, as she insists, has never had any conflict with her fascination with the symbolic resources offered by the Indic goddess cultures (2021, 18). Finally, to close this discussion, I would refer to the article of Supriya Chaudhuri in the same issue of Desh, where we find a reference to an atheist husband and a believing wife. Chaudhuri tells us that though he is an atheist, his wife happens to be one of the organizers of a Kali puja that takes place near his house. He asserts that, though he does not participate in the rituals of the puja, he does visit the site of the puja. When he hears the priest chanting the mantras of Kali, he cannot but feel that, setting aside the debates over theism and atheism, belief and disbelief, the worship of this “Mahashakti” (Kali as the Great Power) will continue through ages (2021, 23). I began this chapter by alluding to an atheist husband and his believing wife who was instructed by him in the philosophy of disbelief. I end this chapter with reference to a different sort of couple: though Chaudhuri is an atheist he does not consider it his masculine right or responsibility to make his wife an atheist, while it is also true that his wife does not force him to become a worshipper of Devi. However, there is a respectful cohabitation of the different faith universes of the man and the woman here, and the man, though he does not become a theist (or even theaist), partakes of the ethics of cohabitation which may be a corollary of what we may identify as his wife’s thea-ism. In a way, he intuits that the Goddess

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goes beyond the binaries of belief and disbelief, atheism and theism—she belongs to this world and calls for an earthly recognition of her presence. Note:  Humayun Ahmed’s Devi has been recently made into a film. Prabal Bhowmik (2023), in an essay on this film, reads, in Lacanian terms, Ranu’s exposure to the Goddess as her experience of being “invaded by the Other jouissance” (32). Bhowmik (2023) argues that Ranu’s “mystic” union with the Goddess can be seen as an instantiation of “the uncanny real of femininity” that is inaccessible and incomprehensible to the men around her (32–33, 35). Misir Ali’s rationality cannot access or explore this, as the Goddess here “remains the incomprehensible Other” to the androcentric “domain of law, language, and logic” (Bhowmik 2023, 35).

References ABP News Bureau. 2020. Famous Bangladeshi Author Taslima Nasreen Criticizes Shakib Al Hasan For Apologizing After Islamist Threats. News.abplive.com, 17 November. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://news.abplive.com/sports/ cricket/shakib-­al-­hasan-­gets-­death-­threats-­taslima-­nasreen-­slams-­shakib-­for-­ apologizing-­over-­attending-­kali-­puja-­in-­kolkata-­1391172. Abraham, Bobins. 2020. Atheist Activist Armin Navabi Who Tore Up Quran Angers Hindus By Calling Goddess Kali ‘Sexy’. India Times, 5 September. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/atheist-­ activist-­armin-­navabi-­who-­tore-­up-­quran-­angers-­hindus-­by-­calling-­goddess-­ kali-­sexy-­522084.html. Ahmed, Humayun. 2016a. Devi. In Misir Ali Samagra, ed. Humayun Ahmed, vol. 1, 317–381. Kolkata: Kakali Prakashani. ———. 2016b. Nishithini. In Misir Ali Samagra, ed. Humayun Ahmed, 383–463. Kolkata: Kakali Prakashani. Apple, James B. 2019. Atisa Dipamkara: Illuminator of the Awakened Mind. Boulder: Shambhala. Bhowmik, Prabal. 2023. Locating the Disruptive ‘Real’ of Femininity: A Reading of Debi: Misir Ali Prothombar. In Thematizations of the Goddess in South Asian Cinema, ed. Anway Mukhopadhyay and Shouvik Narayan Hore, 28–36. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Bilimoria, Purushottama. 2022. The Missing God of Heidegger and Karl Jaspers: Too Late for God; too Early for the Gods—With a Vignette from Indian Philosophy. In Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism, ed. Sanjit Chakraborty and Anway Mukhopadhyay, 97–110. Singapore: Springer.

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Blackburn, Simon. 2007. Religion and Respect. In Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, ed. Louise M. Antony, 179–193. New York: Oxford University Press. Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. 1959. Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House. Chaudhuri, Supriya. 2021. Sarbajuge Sanatane. Desh 89 (1): 20–23. Correspondent, The Telegraph. 2009. Subhas, the Tara Devotee. The Telegraph Online, 25 February. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://www.telegraphindia. com/west-­bengal/subhas-­the-­tara-­devotee/cid/505004. Dattagupta, Ishani. 2016. There’s No Equality Under Any Religion, Says Taslima Nasreen. The Economic Times, 2 August. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/theres-­no-­equality-­under-­ any-­religion-­says-­taslima-­nasreen/articleshow/53242900.cms?from=mdr. Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press. DuBois, Page. 2014. A Million and One Gods: The Persistence of Polytheism. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Gupta, Suman. 2009. Tarapither Tara Maa. Kolkata: Dip Prakashan. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2021. Can Nāstikas Taste Ā stika Poetry? Tagore’s Poetry and the Critique of Secularity. Sophia 60 (3): 677–697. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11841-­021-­00869-­x. Lim, Louisa. 2010. China’s Leaders Harness Folk Religion for Their Aims. NPR, July 23. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://www.npr.org/2010/07/23/128672542/ chinas-­leaders-­harness-­folk-­religion-­for-­their-­aims. Majumdar, Puja Sen. 2021. Feminine Sexuality and Sexual Trauma in Bengali Horror Fiction: The Emergence of the Goddess. In Horror Fiction in the Global South: Cultures, Narratives and Representations, ed. Ritwick Bhattacharjee and Saikat Ghosh, 50–61. New Delhi: Bloomsbury. Mani, Lata. 2009. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique. New Delhi: Routledge. Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2017. Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Rahman, Motiur. 2018. The “Things in Heaven and Earth”: Devi and Nishithini. The Daily Star, 24 November. Updated on November 24, 2018, 10.41 AM.  Accessed 20 December 2022. https://www.thedailystar.net/literature/ news/the-­things-­heaven-­and-­earth-­1664329. Roychoudhury, Jashodhara. 2021. Pratiki Shyama ar Sei Sarbabyapi Aham. Desh 89 (1): 16–19. Ruse, Michael. 2021. Confessions of an Agnostic: Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Sophia 60 (3): 575–591. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-­021-­00851-­7. Shastri, Dakshinaranjan. 2013. Charvaka Darshana. Kolkata: Pashchimbanga Rajya Pustak Parshat.

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Shaw, Miranda E. 2006. Buddhist Goddesses of India. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Simmer-Brown, Judith. 2001. Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. Boston and London: Shambhala. Skilton, Andrew. 2013. Buddhism. In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse, 337–350. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vessantara. 2004. Female Deities in Buddhism: A Concise Guide. New Delhi: Rupa. Wicker, Christine. 2013. The Atheist and His Goddess: He Knew She Didn’t Exist but His Prayers Were Answered Anyway. Psychology Today, October 28. Accessed 13 May 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pray­me/201310/the-­atheist-­and-­his-­goddess.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion: A Goddessless World or Goddess as the World?

Abstract  This chapter sums up the explorations and analyses presented in the previous chapters and reflects on the possible future of the Goddess in a world that has been seen, in different historical and geo-cultural contexts, as dominated by God, abandoned by God or even Godless, but has seldom been seen through the lens provided by the Goddess. The chapter interrogates the culture of reducing living beings to machines and proposes that, in our technocratically oriented age, there may ultimately be some relevance of figuring the earth as the Goddess, as a being rather than a thing. Keywords  Gangamma • Shaktas • Creatrix • Hindu Great Goddess • Patriarchal religions • Biophobia • Mechanization • Thea-ism • Goddessless • Respell • Disenchanted • Oikos • Earthly • Co-imagining • Ecosophy • Rational • Being-like In her book, When the World Becomes Female, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger (2013) explores the cultural dynamics of the annual festival (jatara) of Gangamma, a significant South Indian goddess, where: the goddess manifests in various forms, substances, and persons—and the world is imagined as female, a world in which the goddess is triumphant, the

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human female is the unmarked category, and men become women to appear before the goddess. (2)

This immediately reminds one of the trope of the Goddess-as-the-World that is quite familiar to the Shaktas, the Hindu Goddess-worshippers. Figured as the world as well as its creatrix, the Hindu Great Goddess is often seen as encompassing the transcendental and physical realms, and hence, her earthly body is no less important than her transcendental dimension. Can she be imaginatively seen, through the “secular” lens, as the world that has become female? However, will that not be just a gendering of the world and nothing else? Probably not. Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor argue that it is an epistemology grounded in “the Great Cosmic Mother” which can “respell the world”: To respell the world means to redefine the root of our being. It means to redefine us and therefore change us by returning us to our original consciousness of magical-evolutionary processes. This consciousness is within us, in our biology and in our dreams. It works on subliminal levels, whether or not we are aware of it, because it is the energy of life and imagination. (1991, 425)

They (1991) insist that patriarchal religions promote biophobia, whereas the Goddess commands: “Love life, for it is what it is” (emphasis in the original, 430). They tell us: To return to harmony—to return to the Goddess, to become lovers of the Goddess once again—we must realign our gestures into those of dancers. We must become beings who do not wish to control life, but only to listen to its music, and dance it. This is not easy to do, it might be impossible. But it is our only alternative to mass death—whether by war, or by total global mechanization. (1991, 430)

In fact, the Goddess, in today’s world, would be invoked not to intervene in the dialectic of “God” and a godless world but rather to intervene in the dialectics of life and machines. A Goddessless world, in other words, is not what an atheist “humanist” may celebrate as a material world “liberated” from God; a Goddessless world may in fact dangerously come close to a lifeless world where machines are held to be “man’s” crowning triumph. The sort of mass death, especially the metaphoric one through “total

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global mechanization”, envisaged by Sjoo and Mor, should not be seen as an absurd dystopic vision; it might indeed be the future that is not far from us. Programmatic attempts at mechanically controlling life or annihilating it often emerge as one of the most sinister external manifestations of the ideologies of scientism and technocracy. If an obsession with dominating the Other is reflected in both patriarchal religion and patriarchal technocracy, then we really need to underline the difference between theism and thea-ism in the context of re-imagining the future of atheism in a world obsessed with machines. Should we revisit the “world” and reimagine it as the Goddess, or should we rather be satisfied with the Goddessless world, the Goddesslessness of which might not be a concern for either patriarchal monotheism or androcentric forms of atheism? A Goddessless world is probably not just a “disenchanted” world in the Weberian sense of the term; it is one which is doomed to be a thing or an assortment of things, instead of being able to emerge as a being or a web of beings. The World-as-Goddess or the Goddess-as-the-World, on the other hand, remains open to the imaginaries of an oikos—psychic as well as material—that is irreducible to the status of an object. The Goddess as the world may well be the matrix of “cohabitation”, a “SacredSecular”, material-­spiritual entity that may operate, simply, as “the guardian of life” (Lovelock 1999) in the face of a civilization that has come to celebrate a culture of trivializing life. Throughout this book, we have followed the silhouettes of that Goddess who teaches the male metaphysician that this world is not an illusion and inspires the male atheist to revisit his epistemology and recognize the mysteries of earthly existence. As we have observed, faith is dynamic in nature: neither faith nor faithlessness is bound to be immutable. If this is the case, then there are endless passages possible between a Goddessless world and the Goddess-as the-world, and we, poised between the thrill of machines and the inexhaustible enchantment of life, are always left with a choice. In the patriarchal cultures of the past and the present (including those that have appropriated the Goddess without celebrating her thealogical potential), Goddesses’ worlds have often been “minor” worlds, subjugated to the major worlds that have been God-ruled or Godless. However, when we release the minoritized Goddess-worlds into the vaster domain of re-imagining our planet in future, we find that the Goddess has a lot of imaginative resources to offer to us, resources that have been neglected in both oppressively theist and oppressively atheist discourses. When we understand that the world assists us in imagining it in newer ways, that is,

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when we acknowledge that we keep co-imagining the world with itself, and when we cease to see the cosmos as waiting to be impregnated with meaning by the (masculine) human subject, we come to recognize that our humanity consists in our capacity for an intersubjective engagement with the world rather than in our ability to transcend or dominate it. It is at this moment that the world might appear to be a being or, at least, being-like. It is probably by refusing to see the world as a thing that we come to enable ourselves to resist the objectification of beings, whether human or non-human. Sjoo and Mor focus on the principle of interconnectedness at the heart of the universe and foreground the Cosmic Mother’s capacity for making the Self and the Other fuse, ecstatically, into the One (1991, 429). The Goddess as the World, thus, teaches us how to live within an interconnected web of existence, how to co-celebrate the “isness” of the Self and the Other, as Devi Amma, the Mother Goddess of Frankenberg and Mani (2013, 12–18), would put it. She might remind us that we are to use machines and not to be governed by or to emulate them; she might teach us to love life anew, again and again. The world, if seen as a goddess-like entity, might facilitate “ecosophy”. Ecosophy, as Raimon Panikkar understands it, inspires the human subject to have “a dialogical attitude towards the Earth, seeing it as a Thou” (Komulainen 2005, 173). Of course, the scientistic view of the planet may not approve of its status as “Thou”, but denying this Thou might gradually result in the objectification of all beings inhabiting the earth, including humans. That might be the ultimate cost of celebrating a Goddessless world and of banishing the idea of the planet-as-Thou. The world we would like to see in future might be Goddess-like, or Goddessless, depending upon our choice. However, that choice will have significant implications, especially for those who do not want to consider imagination to be antithetical to reason and, for whom, beings are irreducible to things—in both rational and imaginative terms.

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References Flueckiger, Joyce Burkhalter. 2013. When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Frankenberg, Ruth, and Lata Mani, comp. 2013. The Tantra Chronicles: Original Teachings from Devi, Shiva, Jesus, Mary, Moon. Latamani.com. Accessed 20 May 2022. https://www.latamani.com/the-­tantra-­chronicles. Komulainen, Jyri. 2005. An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion? Raimon Panikkar’s Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Lovelock, James. 1999. From God to Gaia. The Guardian, 4 August. Theguardian. com. Accessed 29 July 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/society/1999/ aug/04/guardiansocietysupplement5. Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor. 1991. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. New York: Harper San Francisco.

Index

A Abject (Julia Kristeva), 57 Abrahamic God, 22, 35 Abrahamic theism, 46 Absolute, 5–7, 15, 16, 51, 56, 57, 63, 65 Absolute Consciousness, 52, 58 Adi Brahmos, 86 Advaitasiddhi (by Madhusudana Sarasvati), 58 Advaita Vedanta, 5, 16, 17, 46, 47, 51–61, 64–68, 76, 77, 85 Advaita Vedantic sadhana, 76 Advaita Vedantin, 62, 64, 67, 75, 79, 80, 83 Advaitic, 59, 62–64, 76, 77, 79, 84 Agnostic, 116, 117, 120 Agnosticism, 116 Agnostics, 3, 15 Ahmed, Humayun (Bangladeshi writer), 18, 112–122, 124 Alterity, 89, 94, 97, 100 Androcentric, 23, 25, 38 Androcentric reason, 116

Androcentrism, 8, 12, 13 Angry gods/goddesses, 22–36, 38–40 Anirvacaniya, 51 Annapurna, 60 Anthropomorphic, 35 Anti-immanentist, 32 Anti-polytheistic, 36 Anti-religious, 73 Anti-supernaturalist, 34 Anti-theistic, 22 Appearances, 77, 78, 85 Askesis, 63, 95 Asuri, 47 A-thea-ist theism, 89 Atheism, 1–18, 22–40, 104, 107, 108, 121–124 Atheist Republic, 18, 110 Atheist(s), 73–75, 79, 93, 99, 100, 104–124 Atisha Dipankara Shrijnana, 17, 105, 106 Atman, 53, 54 Attributeless Brahman, 51 Avidya, 51, 53 Awareness only, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Mukhopadhyay, Atheism and the Goddess, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27395-7

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134 

INDEX

B Barahnagar Math, 82 Being-like, 130 Belief, 4, 12, 16, 18, 74, 75, 94, 105, 107, 108, 110–113, 116, 121, 123, 124 Belief systems, 110, 111, 121 Believers, 75, 79 Bengali, 108, 109, 123 Biophobia, 128 Birth-giver, 84 Bisarjan (play by Rabindranath Tagore), 90–99 Blackburn, Simon, 18, 28, 29, 39, 109, 111 Brahma-jnana, 75 Brahman, 5, 16, 46, 51–60, 62, 65–68, 75, 76, 82 Brahman with attributes, 51 Brahma Sutras, 53 Brahmo faith, 86, 87 Brahmo ideologues, 89 Brahmoism, 80, 81, 85–87, 89, 97, 98 Braidotti, Rosi, 23, 26 Buddhism, 5, 13, 17, 105 Buddhist feminist, 33 Buddhist goddess culture, 105 Buddhist goddesses, 105 Buddhist metaphysics, 105 Budhananda, Swami, 82 Burley, Mikel, 97 C Cavarero, Adriana, 23, 26, 77–79, 83, 96 Chakraborty, Subhas (a communist leader of Bengal), 109 Charvaka(s), 46, 104 Chattopadhyaya, Bankimchandra, 48 Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad, 48, 49, 104

Chaudhuri, Supriya, 108, 109, 123 Chinese communists, 107, 108 Chinmatra, 58, 59, 63 Chod meditation, 105 Clinical psychiatry, 112 Cohabitation (Judith Butler), 15, 17, 39, 106, 108, 112, 121, 123, 129 Co-imagining, 130 Communist, 17 Communist Party in West Bengal, 109 Communist Party (of China), 107 Confidence, 116, 122 Cosmic Mother, 130 Cosmogony, 25 COVID-19, 30, 31 Creator God, 29, 30, 34 Creatrix, 6, 7, 25, 128 D Dakshineshwar, 62, 76 Daly, Mary, 7, 9 Darshan, 64 Dashanami sampradaya/Dashnami sampradaya, 61, 62, 65, 75 Dawkins, Richard, 29, 35–37, 109, 110 Deity, 10, 15, 16, 22, 26, 27, 30–33, 36, 39, 56, 58, 81, 89, 90, 92, 95, 96, 100 Demeter, 22 Desh (Bengali magazine), 123 Devanandan, Paul David, 53–56 Devi, 6, 10, 16, 75–78, 93–95, 119, 123 Devi Amma, 130 Devi (fictional work by Humayun Ahmed), 18, 112, 116–118, 120, 121 Devi Gita, 6 Devi Sukta, 123 Devotee, 77, 81, 94, 97, 99, 100

 INDEX 

Disbelief, 119, 123, 124 Disenchanted, 129 Divine, 2–10, 12–16, 23–26, 31–35, 37, 38, 46, 48–50, 52, 53, 56, 58, 60–62, 65, 66, 105, 114, 122 Divine Father, 22 Divine Mother, 17 Divine Mother Durga, 87 Divinity, 24, 25, 27, 32, 38, 39 DuBois, Page, 34–36, 38, 39 Durga puja, 88, 89, 108 E Earth, 29, 31, 34, 35, 38, 39 Earth-centred, 39 Earth voice, 35 Eco-religiosity, 29 Ecosophy, 130 Einstein, 35 Einsteinian religion, 35 Elohim, 2 Embodiment, 27, 31, 32 Emptiness (in Buddhist metaphysics), 105 Enlightenment, 76, 95, 97, 99 Enslavement, 96 Ex-Muslim, 110 F Faith, 29–31, 33, 35, 73–100, 111, 113, 116, 123, 129 Faith dynamics, 73–100 Faithlessness, 129 Faith system, 78 Female deity, 106 Female divinities, 25, 36 Female sage, 123 Female universal (Luce Irigaray), 3–5, 7 Feminine, 2, 6, 7, 9–12, 16, 48, 49, 56–61, 65–67

135

Feminine deity, 106 Feminine mystery, 116, 121 Feminine principle, 49–52, 55–57, 59, 60 Feminism, 24, 25, 37, 112 Feminist, 8, 11–14, 18 Feminist imagination, 26 Feminist theology, 11, 14 Fiction, 76, 77 Fictional god, 107 Fictional goddess, 107 Finger, Anja, 25, 37 Flesh-and-blood women, 121 Fortune, Dion, 1–3, 5 Foundationalist ontologies, 105 Frazier, Jessica, 16 G Gaia, 49, 55 Gaia theory, 28, 29, 34, 35 Ganga, 76 Gangamma, 127 Gaudapada, 47, 53–55, 57, 61 Gender, 3, 5–10, 13, 16, 22, 24, 25, 36, 37, 106–108, 112, 116, 122 Gender binaries, 10 Gendered, 111, 120, 122 Gendered desecration, 111 Gendered philosophization, 46 Gendering, 4, 8–10, 128 Genderless, 58 Geo-cultural, 46 Geo-historic, 18 Gita, 53, 59 God as Mother, 82 The God Delusion (book by Richard Dawkins), 35 Goddess, 1–18 Goddess-as-beauty, 67 Goddess-as-terror, 67 Goddess-centred, 33, 36, 47

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INDEX

Goddess-centred religion, 122 Goddess-denier, 99 Goddess feminism, 15, 25, 32 Goddess-hater, 99 Goddess Kali, 78, 83, 87, 99, 109–111, 123 Goddessless, 1–3, 5, 127–130 Goddesslessness, 2, 5, 11 Goddess-like, 49–52, 54, 55, 59, 130 Goddess religion, 29, 30 Goddess-worlds, 129 Goddess-worshipper(s), 99, 128 Godless, 2, 4, 5, 18, 128, 129 God the Father, 5, 15 Gold, Sigfried, 18, 26, 106 Goswami, Bijoy Krishna, 86 Govindabhagavatpada, 47 Graves, Robert, 63, 64 Great Goddess, 5, 7, 17, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 59, 61, 67, 76, 83, 84, 91 Great Goddess Tripura, 56 Great Mother, 76, 83 Greater Advaita Vedanta (Michael S. Allen), 68 Gross, Rita, 5, 12, 13, 32, 33 H Hallucination, 114, 117, 119, 120 Hallucinatory, 18 Hallucinatory experience, 113, 120 Haribhadrasuri, 104 Al Hasan, Shakib (Bangladeshi player), 111 Havel, Vaclav, 30 Hidden God, 31, 100 Hindu, 128 Hindu Brahmoism, 86 Hindu Divine Mother, 32 Hindu Great Goddess, 128 Hinduism, 2, 7 Hindu reformism, 86

Hindus, 108, 111, 114, 116 Hirst, Suthren, 56–58 Holistic science, 30 Horizon of knowledge, 120 Human, 128, 130 Husserlian, 58 I Idealist/materialist, 49 Idol, 113 I-hood, 123 Imagination, 105, 119, 121, 128, 130 Imaginative, 129, 130 Immanent, 15 Impersonal, 35, 38 Incomprehensible, 124 Indic goddess cultures, 47 Ineffable, 122 Inner Controller, 56 Inspired Talks (book by Swami Vivekananda), 82 Intellectual masculinity, 37 Intersubjectivity, 100 Irigaray, Luce, 23, 26, 97 Isherwood, Christopher, 81 Ishvara, 47, 49–56, 61, 65 Ishvarakrishna, 47 Isness, 130 J Jada, 48, 52 Jagaddhatri puja, 88 Jatara, 127 Jehovah, 2 Jesus Christ, 117 Jnana-bhakti (knowledge-devotion) binary, 57 Jnanadaprana, Pravrajika, 61, 62 Jorasanko, 87, 88

 INDEX 

K Kaivalya, 49 Kali, 17, 18, 33 Kali puja, 108, 111, 123 Kapila, 47 Kaviraj, Sudipta, 26, 27 Kripal, Jeffrey, 64, 82 Kshir Bhavani, 83 L Liberal society, 110 Living Goddess traditions, 9, 10, 14–16 Logic, 124 Lokayata (book by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya), 104 Lokayata(s), 46, 104 Long, Jeffery D., 65, 66 Lord, 56 Loss of faith, 74, 96 Lovelock, James, 28–31 M Machig Labdron, 105 Machines, 128–130 Mahamaya, 93 Mahashakti, 123 Mahlamaki, Tiina, 24, 25, 29, 37 Male atheist, 104, 106, 112, 116, 121 Male deity, 106, 107 Male divinity, 50, 56 Mandana Mishra, 59 Mandukya Karikas, 47 Mandukya Upanishad, 47, 53 Manikarnika Ghat, 60 Mani, Lata, 48 Margulis, Lynn, 28, 29 Marxist(s), 46, 99 Masculine authority, 96 Masculine universalism, 23

137

Masculinist rationalism, 121 Masculinity, 59 Material agency, 35 Materialism, 104 Materialist, 104 Materiality, 27, 28, 32 Material-spiritual, 129 Maternal-divine, 105 Maternal-feminine, 17, 29, 38, 105 Mathas, 59 Matricidal, 78, 89, 96 Maya, 16, 50–57, 59–62, 65, 67, 68, 77, 78, 96 Mazu (Chinese folk goddess), 17, 107–109 Mazumdar, Charu, 109 Mechanization, 128, 129 Mediatrix, 28 Metaphysicality, 28 Metaphysicalization, 87 Metaphysics, 105 Midgley, Mary, 29 Misir Ali (fictional character in Humayun Ahmed’s works), 112, 114–116, 118–121, 124 Modernity, 36 Monotheism, 34, 36, 38, 39 Monotheistic, 2, 6 Mother, 6, 15 Mother Goddesses, 48 Ms. X (goddess created by the atheist Sigfried Gold), 106 Mystery, 108, 113, 116–121 N Nababidhan, 80 Nama-rupa, 62 Narendranath (pre-sannyasa name of Vivekananda), 80–82 Narmada parikrama, 61 Nasreen, Taslima, 18, 111, 112, 116

138 

INDEX

Nastik, 112 Natural, 10, 15 Natural laws, 117 Naturalism, 27 Naturalist, 34 Nature, 27, 28, 34, 35 Nature-as-goddess, 34, 37 Nature religions, 7 Navabi, Armin (Iranian-Canadian atheist), 18, 110, 111, 116 Neo-Paganist, 29 New Atheist, 29, 37 New religion, 79 Nicholson, Andrew, 46, 49, 67, 68 Nikhilananda, Swami, 53, 58 Nirakara, 51 Nirguna, 51 Nirisvara, 46 Nirvikalpa samadhi, 76 Nishithini (fictional work by Humayun Ahmed), 18, 117, 118, 120–122 Nivedita, Sister, 66, 67, 79–83, 85 Non-belief, 75, 116, 121 Non-believers, 75 Non-divine, 46 Non-dualism, 56, 63 Non-dual reality, 51, 68 Non-existent, 105, 106, 110, 111 Non-female, 89 Non-human, 130 Non-naturalist, 34 Non-religious, 4 Non-“supernatural,” 106 Non-theism, 46 Non-theistic, 13, 16, 22, 33, 40 Nothingification, 52 O Objectification, 130 Oikos, 129 Ontological, 5, 10, 16

Ontological category, 48, 50, 51, 59, 68 Oppy, Graham, 3, 6, 7 Orthodox Hindu doctrines, 46 Orthodoxies, 16 Other, 129, 130 Other-worldly, 104 P Paganist, 29 Panchashikha, 47 Panikkar, Raimon, 130 Pan-thea-ism, 63 Pantheism, 32, 35 Paradigm shift, 74, 78, 82, 83, 85, 90, 94, 99 Paramparas, 61 Parliament of Religions, 86 Parmenidean, 78, 79 Parmenides, 77 Patriarchal, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, 77–80, 83, 84, 87, 95–97, 100 Patriarchal monotheism, 129 Patriarchal religions, 128 Personal goddess, 105 Philosophy of religion, 7 Pintchman, Tracy, 49–51, 53, 54 Planet-as-Thou, 130 Poidevin, Robin Le, 5–7, 17, 74, 75 Postdivine (Purushottama Bilimoria), 25, 107 Practising Muslims, 110, 121 Prajnaparamita, 105 Prakriti, 48–52, 104 Prakriti pradhanya, 104 Pralayadas, 61 Pratyaksha, 104 Pre-Karika, 47 Pre-Shankara, 46 Primitive, 36 Primordial Shakti, 60, 61

 INDEX 

Proto-Samkhya, 47, 49 Psychologist, 18 Psychopathic, 114, 115, 117 Puja, 111, 123 Purusa-pradhana, 104 Purusha, 46, 48–51 R Radice, William, 90, 93, 97, 98 Rajarshi (novel by Rabindranath Tagore), 90–93, 95, 98 Ramakrishna, 17, 62–67, 76–78, 81, 82, 87, 99 Ramakrishna Order, 81 Raphael, Melissa, 23, 27, 31, 37, 38 Rathayatra of Jagannatha, 88 Rational, 130 Rationalism, 87, 88 Rationality, 116, 120, 121, 124 Reason, 107, 115, 116, 118, 130 Reid-Bowen, Paul, 27, 28, 32, 35 Religion, 1–18, 107–109, 111, 112, 117, 121 Religiosity, 5, 13, 26, 36 Religious, 73–75, 85, 87, 88, 90, 97, 98, 100, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 121–123 Religious atheist, 100 Religious conversion, 74 Religious ecology, 121 Religious faith, 75 Religious freedom, 112 Religious history of “modern” India, 75 Religious nones, 4 Respect, 108–111, 116 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 67 Romer, Thomas, 38 Roy, Narayan (a communist doctor), 109 Roy, Raja Rammohan, 87

139

Roychoudhury, Jashodhara, 123 Rukmini (a goddess), 113 Ruse, Michael, 22, 28, 29, 116, 120, 121 S Sacrality, 34, 106 Sacredsecular/sacredSecular, 25, 28, 34, 38, 48, 65, 122, 129 Sadhakas, 57, 64 Sadhana, 57, 61–64, 66 Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 80, 81 Sadhu, 61, 62 Saguna, 51 Samadhi, 63 Samkhya, 46–52 Samkhyakarika, 47 Sannyasa, 61 Sannyasinis, 62, 66 Sanskrit, 123 Sanskritic, 68 Sarada (Debendranath’s wife), 88 Sarada Devi, 62 Sarada Matha, 62, 66 Saradananda, Swami, 62–64 Saudamini (Debendranath’s daughter), 88 Saundaryalahari, 61, 67 Scepticism, 98 Scientific, 74 Scientific rationalism, 122 Scientistic, 31, 34, 130 Secular, 107–109, 123, 128 Self, 46, 53, 56, 58, 63, 74–77, 80, 83, 84, 130 Sen, Amiya P., 80–83 Sen, Keshabchandra, 80, 86 Sen, Ramprasad, 33 Sesvara, 46 Sexist, 25, 37 Sexlessness, 36

140 

INDEX

Sexual difference, 22, 23 Shakta mono-thea-ism, 7 Shakta philosophy, 52 Shakta(s), 2, 6, 7, 17, 47, 53, 55, 56, 128 Shakti, 16, 48–57, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 75–77, 82, 92 Shaktism, 89, 90, 93, 97 Shankaracharya (Shankara), 16, 46, 47, 51, 53–62, 66, 67 Shankarite, 56, 62, 66 Shaw, Miranda, 105 Sherma, Rita D., 51, 52 Shri Vidya, 61 Simmer-Brown, Judith, 105 Skilton, Andrew, 105 Sophia, 11 South Asia, 9, 10, 14, 15, 33, 40, 99 South Asian, 40 South Asian goddess traditions, 16 Spiritual instructress, 105 Spiritual/material, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 61–66 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 57, 59 Starhawk, 29, 30 Strang, Veronica, 7 Superego, 36 Supernatural, 10, 15, 27, 28, 33, 34, 46, 48, 55, 106, 112–114, 117 Superstition, 107 Supra-terrestrial, 114, 115, 120 Supreme female divinity, 6 Symbolic matricide (Adriana Cavarero), 77, 78 T Tagore, Debendranath, 87, 88 Tagore, Rabindranath, 17, 75, 85–87, 90–99 Tagore, Ramanath, 88 Taiwan, 107

Tantra, 48, 49, 52, 61, 68 Tantrism, 48 Tara, 105, 109 Tarapith temple, 109 Terror, 67, 78, 80, 83 Thakur Bari (Tagore mansion), 88 Thea, 3, 8, 23, 24 Thea-cide, 63 Thea-ism, 5, 11, 22, 39, 75, 89, 96, 98, 100, 104, 122, 123 Thea-ist, 75, 89, 104, 106, 116 Thealogian, 26, 35 The(a)-logical, 52, 60, 64, 65, 68, 129 Thealogy, 10, 14, 15, 22–40, 99, 100 Theism, 3–5, 7, 11, 13, 22–27, 30, 32–35, 39, 40, 105, 123, 124 Theist a-thea-ism, 89 Theist-atheist binary, 48 Theists, 73–75 Theological, 121, 122 Theology, 3, 7, 9–11 Theo(s), 8, 16, 22, 23, 27, 33 Theo/thea-ontology, 105 Tibetan Buddhism, 105 Timalsina, Sthaneshwar, 58, 59 Tota Puri, 17, 62–64, 66, 75–78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 90 Transcendence, 22, 27, 28, 33 Transcendent, 5–7 Transcendental, 107, 108, 122 Transcendental consciousness, 57, 63 Transing, 8, 9 Trans-natural, 27 Tripura Rahasya, 56, 58, 63 Twentieth century India, 46 U Ubhaya Bharati, 59 Ultimacy, 26, 48, 50, 52 Uncanny, 112, 118, 124 Universal, 97

 INDEX 

Unreal, 17 Upanishads, 53 V Varanasi, 60, 62 Vedantasara (work by Sadananda Yogindra Saraswati), 53, 58 Vedantism, 82 Vedic, 104 Vessantara, 105 Vijaya Dashami, 88 Vijaya songs, 88 Vijnanabhikshu, 46, 48–50 Vishnu, 48, 56, 58 Viveka-Chudamani, 57

141

Vivekananda, Swami, 16, 17, 62, 66, 67, 75, 78–80, 82–86, 90, 91, 96, 99 W Web of existence, 130 West Bengal, 108, 109 Western, 3, 4, 13, 14 World, 127–130 World-as-Goddess, 129 World Mother, 98, 99 Y Yoga, 51, 68