Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance: Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism 0197603726, 9780197603727

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Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance

R E LI G I ON, CU LT U R E , A ND HISTORY SERIES EDITOR Robert A. Yelle, Ludwig-​Maximilians-​Universität München A Publication Series of The American Academy of Religion and Oxford University Press ANTI-​JUDAISM IN FEMINIST RELIGIOUS WRITINGS SCHLEIERMACHER ON RELIGION AND THE NATURAL ORDER Katharina von Kellenbach Andrew C. Dole CROSS-​CULTURAL CONVERSATION MUSLIMS AND OTHERS IN SACRED SPACE (Initiation) Edited by Margaret Cormack Edited by Anindita Niyogi Balslev ON DECONSTRUCTING LIFE-​WORLDS Buddhism, Christianity, Culture Robert Magliola THE GREAT WHITE FLOOD Racism in Australia Anne Pattel-​Gray IMAG(IN)ING OTHERNESS Filmic Visions of Living Together Edited by S. Brent Plate and David Jasper CULTURAL OTHERNESS Correspondence with Richard Rorty, Second Edition Anindita Niyogi Balslev FEMINIST POETICS OF THE SACRED Creative Suspicions Edited by Frances Devlin-​Glass and Lyn McCredden PARABLES FOR OUR TIME Rereading New Testament Scholarship after the Holocaust Tania Oldenhage MOSES IN AMERICA The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative Melanie Jane Wright INTERSECTING PATHWAYS Modern Jewish Theologians in Conversation with Christianity Marc A. Krell ASCETICISM AND ITS CRITICS Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives Edited by Oliver Freiberger VIRTUOUS BODIES The Physical Dimensions of Morality in Buddhist Ethics Susanne Mrozik IMAGINING THE FETUS The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture Edited by Vanessa R. Sasson and Jane Marie Law VICTORIAN REFORMATION The Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840–​1860 Dominic Janes

REAL SADHUS SING TO GOD Gender, Asceticism, and Vernacular Religion in Rajasthan Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli LITTLE BUDDHAS Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts and Traditions Edited by Vanessa R. Sasson HINDU CHRISTIAN FAQIR Modern Monks, Global Christianity, and Indian Sainthood Timothy S. Dobe MUSLIMS BEYOND THE ARAB WORLD The Odyssey of ʿAjamī and the Murīdiyya Fallou Ngom MUSLIM CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE POLITICS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN TURKEY Jeremy F. Walton LATINO AND MUSLIM IN AMERICA Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority Harold D. Morales THE MANY FACES OF A HIMALAYAN GODDESS Haḍimbā, Her Devotees, and Religion in Rapid Change Ehud Halperin MISSIONARY CALCULUS Americans in the Making of Sunday Schools in Victorian India Anilkumar Belvadi DEVOTIONAL SOVEREIGNTY Kingship and Religion in India Caleb Simmons ECOLOGIES OF RESONANCE IN CHRISTIAN MUSICKING Mark Porter GLOBAL TANTRA Julian Strube LAUGHTER, CREATIVITY, AND PERSEVERANCE Edited by Ute Hüsken

Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism Edited by

U T E H Ü SK E N

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hüsken, Ute, editor. Title: Laughter, creativity, and perseverance : female agency in Buddhism and Hinduism / edited by Ute Hüsken. Description: 1. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2022. | Series: Aar religion culture and history series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022018777 (print) | LCCN 2022018778 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197603727 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197603741 (epub) | ISBN 9780197603758 Subjects: LCSH: Women—Religious aspects—Buddhism. | Women— Religious aspects—Hinduism. | Women in Buddhism. | Women in Hinduism. | Buddhist women. | Hindu women. | Women Buddhist priests. | Buddhist nuns. Classification: LCC BQ 4570.W6 L375 2022 (print) | LCC BQ 4570.W6 (ebook) | DDC 294.3082—dc23/eng/20220517 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022018777 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022018778 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197603727.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents Acknowledgments  List of Contributors 

Introduction: Female Agency in Buddhist and Hindu Contexts  Ute Hüsken

vii ix

1

SE C T IO N 1 :   R E N EW I N G R E L IG IO N I N F E M A L E SPAC E S 1. Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground: Dynamics of Female Religious and Ritual Agency in Kalmykia  Valeriya Gazizova

23

2. “This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”: Creative Agency in Navarāttiri Kolu  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama

52

SE C T IO N 2 :   A P P R O P R IAT IO N O F M A L E SPAC E S 3. Body Politics and the Gendered Politics of Hindu Militancy: Shiv Sena Women and Political Agency in Western India  Tarini Bedi 4. Buddhist “Radicalism”: A Vehicle for Female Empowerment?  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund 5. Laughing on a Rooftop: Female Buddhist Agency as Local in Lumbini, Nepal  Amy Paris Langenberg 6. Right to Pray: Comparing Shani Shingnapur and Sabarimala  Shefali More

67 94

120 153

vi Contents

SE C T IO N 3 :   P E R F O R M I N G R E L IG IO N P U B L IC LY 7. Hindu Women and the Gendering of Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  Priyanka Ramlakhan

175

8. Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance? Training Girls in Sanskrit and Vedic Rituals  Ute Hüsken

192

9. “I Will Be the Śaṅkarācāryā for Women!”: Gender, Agency, and a Guru’s Quest for Equality in Hinduism  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli

215

SE C T IO N 4 :   R E SE A R C H ST R AT E G I E S 10. Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism: Methodological Reflections and Collective Commitments  Caroline Starkey

249

Index 

275

Acknowledgments This book grew out of an intense collaborative three-​day workshop on “Female Religious Agency,” convened by Ute Hüsken in 2018 at the South Asia Institute and generously funded by Heidelberg University. While some participants at the workshop could not contribute to this volume, their input during the workshop and in subsequent discussions was immensely helpful. Alongside the team of the Cultural and Religious History Department at the South Asia Institute, we would especially like to thank Malini Ambach, Kush Depala, Julie Pusch, and Anna Scarabel for their practical assistance during the workshop and their editorial assistance at different stages of the publication process. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Quoc-​Bao Do, whose editorial skills once again proved to be extraordinary, helping us toward this fine publication. We are also extremely grateful to Robert A. Yelle, who recognized the importance and potential of this volume and accepted it as part of the “Religion, Culture, and History Series” of the American Academy of Religion. We would like to say special thanks to Cynthia Reed and Sean Decker, and the Oxford University Press team, who shepherded us through the publication process. Moreover, we are very grateful for the helpful criticism by the two anonymous reviewers. Last, we contributors to this volume would like to thank all our families, friends, students, and colleagues, who have supported us throughout the process of putting this book together.

Contributors Tarini Bedi is Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an urban and political anthropologist who conducts research in South and Southeast Asia. Dr. Bedi has research interests in urban politics and infrastructures, religion, labor, and gender. She is the author of two books, The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India (SUNY Press, 2016) and Mumbai Taximen: Autobiographies and Automobilities in India (University of Washington Press, 2021). Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli is an Associate Professor of Religion/​South Asian Religions at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She received her PhD in West and South Asian Religions from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and has held teaching fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Emory’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and language and research fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, Wyoming Institute of Humanities Research, American Philosophical Society (Franklin Research Grant), and American Academy of Religion. In 2019, Dr. DeNapoli received a Global Religion Research Initiative (GRRI) Book-​Leave Writing Fellowship with the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. She’s been traveling to India and other parts of Asia and working with Hindu sadhus and gurus for over two decades. Dr. DeNapoli is the author of the book Real Sadhus Sing to God: Gender, Asceticism, and Vernacular Religion in Rajasthan (Oxford University Press, 2014). Currently, she is working on her next monograph titled “Female Agency: The Struggle for Gender Equality and Social Transformation in Hindu Society.” Iselin Frydenlund is Professor of the Study of Religion at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, and former Director and Fellow of the MF Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion (MF CASR). She specializes in questions relating to Buddhism and its societal impact, focusing on Buddhism, politics, nationalism, and violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. She also works on Buddhist–​Muslim relations in Buddhist-​majority states in Asia and is the principal investigator of the Research Council of Norway-​funded research project INTERSECT (“Intersecting Flows of Islamophobia”). Since 2016 she has also been heading an academic exchange program between MF and Myanmar Institute of Theology. Dr. Frydenlund regularly appears in national and international media on questions related to Buddhism and politics, and she frequently provides analysis for policymakers at home and abroad. She is the author of Buddhist–​Muslim Relations in a Theravada World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), coedited with Michael Jerryson; and she has recently edited (with

x Contributors Eviane Leidig) a Special Issue on “ ‘Love Jihad’: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male” (2022). She is currently working on a monograph on Buddhism as a political religion for the Scandinavian University Press. Valeriya Gazizova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asia Institute (the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia) of Heidelberg University. She is a scholar of Mongol and Tibetan religions, specializing in the history and anthropology of Buddhism among the Mongols of Russia in late modern and contemporary times. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research on religious transformations, new vernacular spiritualities, and ritual healers in postsocialist Kalmykia, southwest Russia. She has an MPhil in Tibetan Studies and a PhD in History of Religions from the University of Oslo, the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages. Prior to her appointment at Heidelberg University, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge, the Department of Social Anthropology. For her current research project on memory and gender dynamics among Kalmyk Buddhists, she divides her time between Heidelberg University and GSRL (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités) in Paris. Ute Hüsken is a Professor and Head of the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia (Classical Indology, South Asia Institute), Heidelberg University. Hüsken’s main research fields are Buddhist studies, Hindu studies, ritual and festival studies, and gender studies. Her major publications include “Die Vorschriften für die Buddhistische Nonnengemeinde im Vinaya-​Piṭaka der Theravādin” (Reimer, 1997), “When Rituals Go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual” (Brill, 2007), “Viṣṇu’s Children: Prenatal Life-​Cycle Rituals in South India” (Harrassowitz, 2009), and two edited volumes on the denial of ritual: “The Ambivalence of Denial: Danger and Appeal of Rituals” (edited with Udo Simon, Harrassowitz, 2016) and a special issue of the Journal of Ritual Studies (27, no. 1, 2013, edited with Donna L. Seamone). Together with Ronald Grimes and Sarah Pike, she edits the Oxford Ritual Studies series (Oxford University Press). Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama is an Associate Professor of Religion and Religious Education at the University of South Eastern Norway. She has a PhD in South Asian Studies with a specialization in Hinduism from the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo (2019). Her dissertation research focuses on aspects of play and roles and images of the feminine (goddesses and women) during Navarātri in Kāñcipuram. Ina’s academic interests include goddess studies, ritual, mythology, gender and religion, vernacular and Sanskrit textual traditions, and how Hinduism is taught in religious education in public schools and kindergartens in Norway. Amy Paris Langenberg is a Specialist in Classical South Asian Buddhism with a focus on monasticism, gender, sexuality, and the body. She also conducts ethnographic research on contemporary Buddhist feminisms, contemporary female Buddhist monasticism, and, more recently, sexual abuse in American Buddhism.

Contributors  xi Her monograph, Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom, was published by Routledge in 2017 as part of Critical Studies in Buddhism series. In addition, she has published articles in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, History of Religions, Religion Compass, and on more public platforms such as Tricycle and The Shiloh Project. Her current project is a collaborative book on sexual abuse in American Buddhism, to be co-​written with Ann Gleig (University of Central Florida) and published with Yale University Press. Melyn McKay is a Research Anthropologist specializing in women’s participation in religious nationalist movements, nonviolent and violent religious extremism, conflict transformation, and peacebuilding. She has designed and implemented numerous large-​scale qualitative research projects across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and east/​central Africa, specializing in conflict-​sensitive and remote data collection modalities. Dr. McKay undertook her doctoral work at the University of Oxford, for which she spent several years conducting ethnographic fieldwork with members of Myanmar’s hardline Buddhist “nationalist” group, “the Committee for the Protection of Race and Religion,” known by its Burmese acronym, “Ma Ba Tha.” Her thesis explores religious and lay Buddhist women’s motives for supporting and participating in the movement. Shefali More is a PhD candidate in Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. She has completed her MPhil in Vedic Studies and MA in Sanskrit Literature with specialization in Vedic Studies, both from University of Mumbai. Her areas of interest are Vedic ritual texts, Hindu mythology, adaptations of narratives across texts, and gender studies. Her current research focuses on the agency of inanimate objects in Vedic rituals. Priyanka Ramlakhan is a PhD Candidate in Religion at the University of Florida and a Visiting Professor of Humanities at Valencia College. Previously, she earned an MA in Public Administration from Nova Southeastern University. Her areas of specialization include global Hinduism, Caribbean religions, and gender studies. She has authored publications concerned with the textual, material, and performative Hindu traditions that have been reimagined in the Indo-​Trinidadian diaspora, in addition to examining the dynamics of guru–​disciple relationships within a Yoga community. Her ongoing research examines the authority and gendered practice of Hindu priestesses in Trinidad. Caroline Starkey is Associate Professor of Religion and Society in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds. Dr. Starkey’s research focuses primarily on the establishment, adaptation, and development of Buddhism in Britain. She was involved in the first national survey of Buddhist buildings (funded by Historic England, with Professor Emma Tomalin), and she is particularly interested in gender, authoring Women in British Buddhism: Commitment, Connection and Community (Routledge, 2020, and coediting the Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society (with Emma Tomalin), in 2021.

Introduction Female Agency in Buddhist and Hindu Contexts Ute Hüsken

Introduction: Women as Religious and Ritual Actors In most mainstream traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, women have for centuries largely been excluded from positions of religious and ritual leadership. However, this situation is about to change.1 As this volume shows, in an increasing number of late 20th-​century and early 21st-​century contexts, women can and do undergo monastic and priestly education; they can receive ordination/​initiation as Buddhist nuns or Hindu priestesses; and they are accepted as religious and political leaders. Even though these processes still largely take place outside or at the margins of traditional religious institutions, it is clear that women are actually establishing new religious trends and currents, are attracting followers, and are occupying religious positions on par with men. At times women are filling a void left behind by male religious specialists who left the profession; at times they are perceived as their rivals. In some cases, this process takes place in collaboration with male religious specialists; in others, it takes place against the will of the women’s male counterparts. However, in most cases we see both acceptance and resistance. Whether silently or with great fanfare, women grasp new opportunities to occupy positions of leadership on par with men. This volume sets out to explore such situations of pronounced change in the religious and ritual agency of women, looking at the dynamics unfolding as we speak, and thus theorizing on religious agency as a process. Based on in-​depth studies of culturally, historically, and geographically unique situations, the contributors to this volume look at the historical background, 1 See, for example, Hüsken 2016, 2017, 2018; Kawanami 2007; Salgado 2013; Itoh 2013; Collins and McDaniel 2010; Hüsken and Kieffer-​Pülz 2011; Bedi 2016.

​

​

2  Ute Hüsken contemporary trajectories, and impact of the emergence of new powerful female agencies in mostly conservative religious traditions—​a change, which paradoxically takes place while women’s rights in modern and liberal settings are being curtailed.2 From the case studies emerges that the female actors are often strikingly at ease not only with the progress but also with the drawbacks of their work toward greater independence and wiggle room within their religious traditions. This ease often is expressed through communal laughter, or tensions are “laughed off,” facilitating renewed efforts to change the situation (Langenberg, Bedi, Hüsken, Starkey). Many of the researchers contributing to this volume not only listened to this laughter but joined and shared this laughter, which expresses familiarity with the stumbling blocks, coupled with the deep knowledge that resistance will—​in the long run—​not be able to undermine the women’s perseverance (Hüsken, MacKay and Frydenlund, Bedi, DeNapoli, Langenberg, Gazizova, More, Starkey). Being accustomed to resistance, most women are well aware that they need to be creative, often reaching their goal not on a direct path, but through diversions and sometimes unorthodox means—​a creativity that transforms tensions into opportunities (Bedi, DeNapoli, Gazizova, Ilkama, Ramlakhan, Langenberg). This situation is highlighted through the title of this volume, “Laughter, Creativity, and Perseverance.” This title represents our common topic in many ways, and importantly also refers to us as researchers—​as our ongoing discussions, triggered by the 2018 workshop, and continuing over the subsequent work on the volume, are characterized by laughter, creativity, and perseverance as well (see Starkey, Chapter 10, this volume). This book draws on the scholarly expertise of a unique team of budding and seasoned scholars from the fields of South Asian studies, religious studies, anthropology, the study of political cultures, and ritual studies. Their case studies are specific situations in Kalmykia, in the Caribbean, in Nepal, in Sri Lanka, and in Myanmar, and in several parts of India (Varanasi, 2 Here I refer not only to the many covertly and openly misogynist policies the 45th President of the Unites States of America implemented at the time of writing (2020) but also to the fact that during the COVID-​19 pandemic “domestic labor is not being divided equitably. The pandemic has not thwarted our heteropatriarchal culture and its assumptions that the majority of emotional and family labor should fall in the laps of women” (see https://​www.aar​web.org/​AAR​MBR/​Publi​cati​ons-​and-​ News-​/​Newsr​oom-​/​News-​/​An-​Upd​ate-​on-​Jour​nal-​Pub​lish​ing-​and-​a-​Plea-​for-​our-​Dis​cipl​ine-​in-​ the-​Time-​of-​Pande​mic.aspx). Research from Washington University in St. Louis in 2020 “finds early evidence that the pandemic has exacerbated—​not improved—​the gender gap in work hours,” which is expected have long-​term, disastrous effects on women’s careers (see https://​sou​rce.wustl.edu/​2020/​ 07/​moth​ers-​paid-​work-​suff​ers-​dur​ing-​pande​mic-​study-​finds/​ by Sara Savat, July 13, 2020).

Introduction  3 Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu), where they examine spiritual, political, and social dimensions of newly emerging female agencies in multiple registers. The chapters are tied together by the common focus on Buddhism and Hinduism, which share linguistic and cultural histories. Importantly, both in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, processes of female religious empowerment are taking place after centuries of women’s exclusion, which is justified by reference to normative religious texts. And while these two religions originated in the Indian subcontinent, they are to be found everywhere on the globe today—​be it because of its massive and successful missionizing activities as in the case of Buddhism, or because of the mobility of its followers and representatives as in the case of Hinduism. In their contributions, the authors make little researched material accessible and use it for theorizing on women’s religious agency, taking into account not only the dynamics “intrinsic” to specific religious traditions in their local forms but also focusing on transcultural dynamics in these processes. In dealing with the individual case studies, the contributors are acutely aware that in spite of all similarities, the specific mode of gendering religious identities is not uniform, but—​as a historical, social, and political construction—​produces historically and culturally different models of being women (and men). While there are many differences between and also within these diverse religious traditions, the chapters share concerns and key questions, which underpin the analysis as a whole. Very precise connections between the contributions by scholars with varied research foci and disciplinary backgrounds were made in July 2018 at Heidelberg University, when many of the contributors met for an intense collaborative three-​day workshop.3 This scholarly exchange intensified in the time that followed, when the individual chapters were developed in conversation with each other (for details, see Starkey, Chapter 10, this volume). Collaboratively, this volume aims to advance and refine recent scholarship on the emergence of and resistance to female religious specialists in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, focusing on questions related to these women’s agency. The approach to “agency” is as diverse as are the case studies. Yet all contributors agree that an understanding of agency as “the capacity for autonomous action in the face of often overwhelming cultural sanctions and 3 The editor of this volume is very grateful to Heidelberg University for funding the workshop on “Female Religious Agency” and to the team of the Cultural and Religious History Department at the South Asia Institute, who helped organizing the event. While some participants at the workshop could not contribute to this volume, Ina Ilkama and Melyn McKay joined as contributors later.

4  Ute Hüsken structural inequalities” (McNay 2000) with its implied emphasis on autonomy and resistance against authority and hierarchy is at odds with both the field-​sites and participants.4 Based on the analysis of their case studies and on the self-​perception of the female religious actors, the contributors understand “agency” as present in both resistance and assertion. Moreover, the authors’ approaches to agency include considerations of actors, actions, and consequences, which are inherent not only in spectacular but also in subtle changes. Not surprisingly, many contributors to this volume rely on the seminal work of Saba Mahmood (2012) and Joanna Cook (2010), who have pointed to forms of agency in non-​Western religious environments, focusing on the way that women live and inhabit patriarchal norms, rather than enact and subvert them (Mahmood 2012, 23). Expanding on this understanding of agency, the contributors identify and analyze a variety of forms of “religious agency” among the women they work with, bringing to light paradoxes, inner contradictions, and emerging forms of agency, which are not easily accommodated within existing theoretical frameworks. Strikingly, in all case studies dealt with in this volume, the physical, organizational, and intellectual spaces are negotiated. In and through these spaces changes of female religious agency are expressed and performed. All but one contribution to the volume are therefore organized in the following three sections: 1: Renewing Religion in Female Spaces 2: Appropriation of Male Spaces 3: Performing Religion Publicly The volume closes with a chapter by Caroline Starkey, who takes a step back and deals with 4: Research Strategies and thereby discusses the researchers’ own positions and attitudes “in the field,” and how their political stances would, should, or could impact their research.

4 Laurie L. Patton speaks about agency as “the capacity to act with discernment—​that is, the capacity to choose a path of action and understand, according to the cultural norms of the day, the consequences of one’s actions” (Patton 2012, 369).

Introduction  5

Section 1: Renewing Religion in Female Spaces In many cases, women remain in “their own space” when changing religious traditions, rather than trying to appropriate the religious or ritual space that is considered a male domain. Valeriya Gazizova in her chapter “Exclusion, Secrecy and the (Under)ground: Dynamics of Female Religious and Ritual Agency in Kalmykia” explores the diversity of and controversy around female agency in the religious scene of Kalmykia, a republic in the southwest of Russia and the only region in Europe where Buddhism is historically practiced. Adopting Alfred Gell’s perspective (Gell 1998, 6–​7), Gazizova understands agency as the intention and the capacity to act in the world and change it.5 She looks at the “transportation” of religious transmission from male to female spaces and discusses the attendant religious transformations, arguing that the Kalmyk sociocultural construction of the female allowed for this development. While traditional Kalmyk society was characterized by male dominance and no Buddhist nunneries existed in the past, the Soviet and post-​ Soviet eras—​ undoubtedly traumatic in many ways—​ brought opportunities for women to reassert and reposition themselves as religious specialists and in certain cases even as religious leaders. Paradoxically, the state suppression of Buddhism facilitated the emergence of women as religious and ritual leaders, opening venues for female religious trends and currents. It is precisely a lower status of women as opposed to that of men in pre-​socialist Kalmykia, and their historical exclusion from the Buddhist establishment, that allowed them to become important transmitters of religious and ritual knowledge during the period. When Buddhism remained illegal in Kalmykia until the late 1980s, it became a secret activity practiced in an underground manner, both metaphorically and literally, being practiced in houses built halfway into the ground, and shifting to the marginal realm of women. Secrecy, concealment, and disguise, a strategy for evading political repercussion and a means of survival, foregrounded female participation in religion, as Gazizova shows. Since the late 1980s and during the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet regime, the Kalmyks reconstituted their ethnic, religious, and cultural heritage. At the same time, new ritual practices and religious groups appeared, in which women play leading roles. Gazizova takes the matsgta movement, women as säküstä healers, and the female 5 Similarly, Sax (2006, 2013) defines agency as the “ability to change the world,” and Ahearn (2001, 112) understands agency as “socio-​culturally mediated capacity to act.”

6  Ute Hüsken adherents of “cosmic Buddhism” or “new cosmic religion” (vozrojdenie) as examples to point out the contradictory status and a dual self-​identity of certain prominent female figures, who function simultaneously as guardians of traditions and agents of religious transformation. Challenging patriarchal structures and forging new religious forms, women have functioned as central agents of both religious continuity and change. Importantly, however, this special niche on the Kalmyk religious scene where women can fully participate and aspire to leadership positions is not in direct competition with the official Buddhist monastic community (sangha). While the women create and transmit new practices and thus initiate new spaces for female religious activities, they receive legitimacy as respected religious specialists by their asserted belonging to the local lineages of returnee lamas of the Soviet era. The fundamentally different relation of men and women to texts links the contribution of Gazizowa (Chapter 1) and of DeNapoli (Chapter 9): in Kalmykia, the secret transmission from men to women had to be oral since women were illiterate, which also resulted in a profound transformation of the texts; in DeNapoli’s case study of Mataji, the female religious leader, the “knowledge of the texts” is equated not with the knowledge of its letter, but of its meaning and with living according to the spirit of the text. Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama in the chapter “ ‘This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple’: Creative Agency in Navarātri Kolu” looks at the transformation of religious expression within female spaces effected by including new female actors. The spaces here are and largely remain “private” and domestic. Dealing with the South Indian practice of kolu, Ilkama explores how religious and ritual practices are important vehicles for maintaining cultural continuity and passing on ideas and practices, while at the same time renewing the same cultural and religious tradition. Ilkama shows how new female performers of the high-​caste domestic ritual kolu in the South Indian town Kanchipuram appropriate the ritual and in this process creatively add caste-​ specific practices to it, drawn from their own cultural resources. In Ilkama’s case study, a successful yet self-​appointed female religious specialist uses her position as an instrument of sociopolitical critique, transforming herself into an agent of change, enacting modes of protest and resistance. Ilkama uses this case study to reflect on the concept of agency, emphasizing the agentive power of creativity and innovation. While the ritual space is and remains female, it is fundamentally transformed: the house becomes the temple, and the housewife becomes the priest. For the female protagonist in Ilkama’s contribution explicitly emphasizes that the kolu, evoking the image of the

Introduction  7 colorful south-​Indian temple tower (gopuram), transforms her home into a temporary temple, thus transforming the private space of her house into the public space of a temple, and transforming herself from a housewife to a priest and embodiment of the goddess. During the ritual perfomances, when she is directly controlled by the goddess’s powers, she mediates between the goddess and her visitors, who seek advice regarding fertility, marriage, diseases, and evil spirits. With this and other examples, Ilkama shows how the new performers of kolu are not merely mimicking a higher caste ritual but are adjusting this ritual to their own caste-​specific background. Ilkama focuses on the creative agency with regard to the kolu display itself, and with regard to associated ritual practices. Ilkama shows that we need to acknowledge different types of female ritual agency. Here, as in other case studies in the volume, agency is more than resistance against oppressive structures and taking over roles traditionally reserved for men. Ilkama speaks of ritual or religious agency as the power of creativity and innovation, highly visible in the aesthetics of kolu. Here, religious agency is about gaining and exercising the power to influence how things happen, and this may take many forms; from subtle to more overt, while the agents oscillate from audience to main ritual performers. Agency clearly has to be defined and understood with relation to the lives and concerns of female performers in their specific settings, even though this might mean that women’s religious agency may as well contribute to the status quo regarding stereotypical gender patterns.

Section 2: Appropriation of Male Spaces In this section, the contributors deal with situations in which women start to occupy spaces that were previously considered male spaces. Tarini Bedi in her contribution “Body Politics and the Gendered Politics of Hindu Militancy: Shiv Sena Women and Political Agency in Western India” shows how performing hegemonic maleness lets “dashing ladies” appropriate traditional male spaces of activity, namely public policing and politics. This contribution’s empirical focus is on women of Shiv Sena, a right-​wing political party in Western India. Analyzing women’s vernacular embodied practices, called “dashing,” Bedi illustrates how agency in Hindu cultural nationalist movements is not simply the capacity to act, but the capacity to act with and through the body. In her case study, Bedi thus explores the connections between body politics (Harcourt 2009) and party politics and

8  Ute Hüsken shows how “political subjects are constituted within local lived systems of ethnic, gender and sexual difference.” One of Bedi’s interlocutors, Bala, moves around in a neatly folded sari on a motor bike, enabling her to function effectively in public. “Dashing,” the capacity to display public anger, is for Shiv Sena women like Bala the capacity to act through her dissenting public behavior. This practice of “dashing” allows the women to critique dominant forms of male power and to build political constituencies. Understanding agency through vernacular innovations such as “dashing” could also avoid the problem of trying to make sense of women’s political agency in terms of the conventional binary of feminine as distinct from masculine, Bedi suggests. The “dashing” body, Bedi argues, has multiple existences, or is the body multiple (Csordas 1990; Mol 2002), and this embodied presence of women can alter political outcomes (Aretxaga 1997). With her contribution Bedi shows how attention to embodied practices helps to understand the production of gendered political subjectivities. At the same time Bedi shows that we must also pay attention to the body politics of “intimate” Hindu religiosity. Women of Shiv Sena regularly also use intimate forms of embodied practices that are associated with women’s Hindu religious practices outside the male gaze. One of these is the haldi-​kumkum ceremony. While on the surface this ceremony entails praying for the long life of their husbands, Shiv Sena women use it also for building and strengthening their local, political community. Haldi-​kumkum is a site through which to express political will, as well as social and religious agency. Moreover, such events, away from the gaze of the Sena male cadre, tend to be personal political projects that engage gender interests which often are at odds with what conservative rhetoric might otherwise support. This strategic use of all feminine spaces for other-​ than-​ritual agenda connects Bedi’s and Ilkama’s case studies. Since the party presents contradictory and flexible messages about the place of women, Shiv Sena women find many ways to engage in political strategies censured for most Indian women. Moreover, Bedi finds that right-​wing political parties and right-​wing women are rarely fixed or ideologically coherent subjects—​a finding that is also confirmed by McKay and Frydenlund’s contribution. Focusing on the intersection of Buddhism, state politics, nationalism, and violence and the role of women, Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund in their contribution “Buddhist ‘Radicalism’—​A Vehicle for Female Empowerment?” deal with women who are affiliated with radical Islamophobic Buddhist organizations in contemporary Myanmar and Sri Lanka. McKay and Frydenlund take much-​needed first steps to explore why women sympathize

Introduction  9 with such ideologies, and why they actively and participate within such movements. In doing so, they draw, for example, on Saba Mahmood’s (2012) and Abu-​Lughod’s (2002) critiques of secular and Western feminism. This research points out that the position of women in nationalist or pious movements is far more nuanced than seen from a liberal feminist position. Buddhist nationalist groups have moved from the margins to the center of public life in postwar Sri Lanka and in transitional Myanmar.6 In Myanmar, leading Buddhist monks formed the “Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion,” generally known by the acronym MaBaTha, which has the aim of promoting Buddhist interests and the “national race.” In Sri Lanka, radical monastic groups such as the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU, formed in 2004) and its offshoot, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS, formed in 2012), are highly visible in national politics. The aim of MaBaTha, JHU, and the BBS is to promote Buddhist interests and the “national race” in general, and the perceived threat of Islam in particular. Nationalist movements across time and space have shown a particular concern for controlling the female body and female reproduction. Following similar Islamophobic tropes in Europe and India, the expected worldwide increase in Muslim population is presented as an existential threat to Buddhism. Muslim male sexuality is portrayed as aggressive and uncontrollable, and Muslim men are accused of raping Burmese Buddhist women. These Buddhist radical groups call for legal regulation of marriages between Buddhist women and non-​Buddhist men, and family planning policies for non-​Buddhists, including legal regulation of women’s reproductive health. In 2015, MaBaTha’s activism resulted in Myanmar’s four controversial “religious protection laws,” which regulate marriages between Buddhist women and non-​Buddhist men, allow the government to limit birth rates in economically depressed areas, outlaw polygamy, and make religious conversion of Buddhists administratively tedious. Although women’s groups in Yangon raised a feminist critique of these laws, they enjoy widespread popular support, including among women. Clearly, the trope that these women are poorly educated or guileless, manipulated, or exploited dangerously simplifies a much more complex situation and negates these women’s agency. The two authors therefore approach their question differently by highlighting the historical development and by listening to the women’s voices. The authors find that through their membership and activities within these organizations, the women are able to access broader lay and 6 This contribution was authored before the military coup in Myanmar in early 2021.

10  Ute Hüsken monastic networks, allowing them to operate translocally as “protectors of Buddhism,” a role and religious space traditionally reserved for men. This goes to show that the position of women in nationalist or pious movements is far more nuanced than seen from a liberal feminist position. The authors find that this “in some senses reflects Myanmar’s dichotomous modernity, mirroring the ways in which religious cosmology comes to shape the ethical register of self-​making in the context of rapid change and uncertainty.” Importantly, the chapter shows that only by listening to the women involved can we see the full spectrum of motivations driving members’ participation. The contributions by McKay and Frydenlund and by Bedi illustrate that what might, at first glance, seem to be one development is in fact many different processes, which need to be looked at in their own right. Buddhist and Hindu nationalist ideologies reinforce aggressive patriarchal structures but also offer spaces of new freedom for women with the blessing of the religious community (Dietrich 1996, 57). Women live in very different worlds, embedded in fundamentally different contexts, and become dedicated lay activists, priestesses, or political leaders for very different reasons. The intentions behind the processes can be diametrically opposed, even though they might look similar for the external observer. McKay and Frydenlund’s contribution, moreover, shows how, at times, a higher degree of gender equality within a religious tradition comes at the expense of other marginalized subjectivities (cf. Kim 2005, 78).7 This does not need to be an intentional act, since each shift of boundaries creates new insiders and outsiders. Here the tension and entanglements between cultural relativism and ideas of gender equality come into play (Okin 1999). An important challenge is to recognize not only differences and similarities between traditions but also the contradictions and conflicts among the women of one tradition. Amy Paris Langenberg in her chapter “Laughing on a Rooftop: Female Buddhist Agency as Local in Lumbini, Nepal” analyzes the appropriation of a monastic space by girls—​again a space that is “traditionally” only available to men and boys. Langenberg’s case study is the Peace Grove Institute, a small residential Buddhist community of 21 girls between the ages of 7 and 31 located in Lumbini (Nepal), site of the Buddha’s birth. Founded in the late 2000s, the institute also responds to social and economic conditions that 7 For example, recent research in Pune reveals that among Hindu priestesses (strī purohitā) some women aim for social reform and the “uplift of the downtrodden,” whereas others want to maintain the priestly office as a Brahmin privilege, and again others are members of nationalist right-​wing organizations, aiming at excluding non-​Hindus in the first place (Hüsken 2016).

Introduction  11 constrain and cause suffering among girls and women and, by extension, to the entire local community. The Peace Grove Institute provides a quasi-​ monastic, socially safe space for girls which allows them to delay marriage and to continue education. While Langenberg emphasizes the importance of the cooperation of the girls’ mothers for the success and local acceptance of the Peace Grove project, she also highlights how this institute is an ongoing creation of the Peace Grove girls themselves. In the Peace Grove context, the girls embody a ritual status in-​between lay life and ordination as a Buddhist novice (śrāmaṇerī). This semi-​monasticism ensures the families involved of their celibate daughters’ virtue without ruling out marriage as a future option. In her contribution, Langenberg explores the modality of female agency of the Peace Grove nuns within the disciplinary norms of female Buddhist monasticism, and within the educational and cultural environment of Peace Grove nunnery. Langenberg sees an otherwise less obvious dimension of Buddhist female agency at work, which she describes as aesthetic agency, detectable in the girls’ expressiveness, confidence, physical charisma, and mobility—​a significant manifestation of and precondition for the exercise of female power in gender-​conservative Lumbini (see also Langenberg 2018). Shefali More in her chapter “Right to Pray: Comparing Shani Shingnapur and Sabarimala” deals with the actual process, the legal proceedings and public repercussions of allowing women to enter und utilize Hindu places of worship in India which were previously strictly out of their reach. More presents a comparative analysis of two case studies: she compares the processes leading to the inclusion of women in the Śani temple in Shani Shingnapur (Maharashtra) and in the Sabarimala Ayyappan temple in Kerala. Especially in the early 21st century, India has repeatedly witnessed women challenging the religious authorities regarding the restrictions put on women’s entry in temples or access to specific parts of worship sites. Although these bans have been in effect for decades, only their public and “loud” challenge by women initiated a public discussion of these bans. In both instances discussed in More’s chapter, the challenged rules were modified after persist­ ent and active protest, not the least through the “#Right To Pray” movement. The chapter scrutinizes the arguments used by the authorities of the places of worship as well as the arguments used by the women who challenge the regulations, the legal complications in these matters when they are discussed in the public sphere and in court, and the role of social media, social activists, judiciary, and the state governments. Through the two case studies More is able to identify diverse strategies of the women to claim for themselves

12  Ute Hüsken male-​dominated religious space. Although the processes in both places have much in common, they are also different in important aspects. The processes pertaining to the Śani temple show that there are major differences of opinion among all the actors involved, and importantly that those women who closely relate to Śani as their deity opposed the change in tradition—​that is, to allow women’s equal access to this holy site. In contrast, the Sabarimala Ayyappan pilgrimage expresses a strongly felt local (Keralite) and strongly gendered identity: in Sabarimala the exclusion of women is understood to be a precondition of the masculine character of this pilgrimage. The aftermath of the Supreme Court’s judgment on women’s entry to the Sabarimala area and temple, moreover, highlights the difficulties in the on-​site execution of the court’s order. More also shows that the organized protest against the Sabrimala verdict has to be understood in the context of the then upcoming 2019 general elections, the huge number of pilgrims involved, and the massive amount of cashflow generated during the short pilgrimage season. She shows how the entanglement of actors, motives, and strategies played a central role in securing access for women to the two sites of worship and engages the concept of distributed agency, emphasizing that agency lies both with those female devotees who choose not to resist the religious traditions and with those who choose to resist.

Section 3: Performing Religion Publicly The third section focuses on case studies in which the public nature of the religious and ritual space appropriated by the female agents is a central aspect of change. Priyanka Ramlakhan in her chapter “Hindu Women and the Gendering of Ritual Authority in Trinidad” deals with two Hindu women in Trinidad whose religious activities (in two very different ways) take place in public, articulating a new gendered religious authority and ritual agency. In Trinidad, a diverse set of Hindu traditions that were predominantly informed by both Brahmanical and devotional traditions were initially transplanted through Indian indentured laborers, who settled in the country between 1845 and 1917. Here, the caste system, religious hierarchies, and gender roles underwent the most visible reformulations. While women have been structurally part of Hindu public practices in Trinidad since the early part of the 19th and 20th centuries, there still is a long history of their omission from positions of religious authority, being participants rather than religious

Introduction  13 specialists and leaders. This is particularly obvious in Sanātana traditions of Trinidad, which are informed by Brahmanical orthodoxy. Ramlakhan investigates the role of the paṇḍitā (priestess) and the nāū (priest’s assistant), which are currently two roles in which woman are asserting ritual agency that challenges the androcentric construction of Hinduism in Trinidad. Ramlakhan’s chapter explores the complexity of these roles through two figures: Geeta Ramsingh, a non-​brahmin married woman who was ordained as Trinidad’s first paṇḍitā, and Nirmala, a nāū (priest’s assistant) from a lesser known rural area of Trinidad. Nirmala at the same time is a ritual expert and healer whose śakti (power) is authenticated through her devotion to a local mud volcano goddess named Bālka Devī. The stories of Geeta and Nirmala exemplify a growing body of female religious leaders who are sought after for their religious and spiritual knowledge, and who have negotiated priestly positions distinct from their male counterparts. While Geeta works within a Sanskritic model of authority, Nirmala’s power is indigenously drawn from the local natural landscape and goddess. Both performance-​based models of authority underscore the diversity of gendered authority and capacity for agency. Yet neither Geeta nor Nirmala feels she needs to contest patriarchal constructions of local Hinduism directly. Instead, both women work within patriarchal structures to bring about change, sanctioned by what they view as an authentic tradition. Both women do not necessarily compete with their male counterparts because they are forging an entirely distinct space that is especially for women but also one in which men benefit, too. Ute Hüsken in her chapter “Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance? Training Girls in Vedic Rituals” deals with a Veda school (Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya) for girls in Varanasi, where daily public performances of the girls’ ritual agency is central to their policy. The Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya is a resident school for girls aged 8 to 22 years, hosting up to 100 girls from all over India. In this school, in-​depth practical and theoretical knowledge in Sanskrit, Pāṇinian grammar, and Vedic rituals is imparted to the girls, complemented by training in martial arts, yoga, music, and computer sciences. While traditionalists among the local Brahmins claim that women can and may not perform Vedic rituals, this school gives access to religious and ritual knowledge to girls, who since 2014 also publicly perform Vedic rituals every morning at Assi Ghat in Varanasi in the context of the educational-​ spiritual program Subah-​e-​Banāras. This chapter discusses the history and reception of this school and its activities in influential Brahmin circles in Varanasi, contextualizes this in light of discussions of female religious

14  Ute Hüsken agency (adhikāra) in ancient India, and presents some views of the school’s teachers and students on these matters. Which strategies do the women involved employ to integrate in a tradition that excludes them? What are the competing agendas of the diverse stakeholders, including the men involved in the processes? In many ways, the young women trained in Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya learn to claim public spaces that are traditionally monopolized by men. Similarly, they claim and appropriate fields of knowledge and practice that are traditionally only taken up by men, especially by high-​caste men. At the same time, the school undoubtedly closely associates with the ruling BJP party, and thereby at least implicitly teams up with a Hindu nationalist agenda, even though Hindu nationalist ideologies reinforce aggressive patriarchal structures. Paradoxically, it is this connection that allows the girls and women to occupy agentive spaces within these structures, with the support of important and powerful parts of the local communities. Interestingly, while the school has created a space where women challenge the patriarchal hold on the religion, and also resist the patriarchal structures, there is a shift in the objective from gaining ritual agency and becoming ritualists to being trained to get employment in higher education, be it in colleges or universities. This may stand in contrast with the initial objective of the school, which emerged out of the Ārya Samāj reform movement, aimed at reform of the religious landscape rather than generating employment opportunities for girls. The case of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya demonstrates that the investigation of female religious and ritual agency must take into account that gendered religious subjectivities cannot be separated from other positions such as caste, class, regional identification, education, and political agenda. Women’s experiences are as multifaceted as they are individual, negotiating within and shuttling back and forth between various contexts. Therefore, when engaging with these processes, an important challenge is to recognize not only differences and similarities but also the contradictions and conflicts among the women of one religious tradition, and to recognize “agency” as present in both resistance and assertion, which often go hand in hand. Antoinette E. DeNapoli in her chapter “ ‘I Will Be the Śaṅkarācāryā for Women!’: Gender, Agency, and a Guru’s Quest for Equality in Hinduism” explores the path and strategies of a female religious leader to acquire a space for a women’s ascetic group among the publicly exposed Akharas during the Kumbh Mela festival. She examines Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati’s contestation of male religious entitlement, privilege, and domination. The context is the high-​powered, high-​status religious leadership role of the Śaṅkarācārya in

Introduction  15 contemporary North India. By deliberately and carefully claiming both the title and authority connected to a Śaṅkarācārya for herself, Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati (called Mataji) demands gender equality and the fair inclusion of women in a religious institution that has traditionally excluded women and low castes from leadership roles. Mataji is a women’s rights advocate and a religious reformer, who is turning the institutionalized gender hierarchies of contemporary Hinduism upside-​down. She strategically calls herself svayambhū śaṅkarācāryā, “self-​made female Śaṅkarācāryā,” in contrast to an appointed position. She applies the svayambhū label to her leadership in order to focus attention to the transformative power of personal, and volitional, female agency within male-​dominated Hindu institutions. DeNapoli discusses the extent to which “feminism” is culturally appropriate for interpreting Mataji’s quest for gender equality in religion. Importantly, Mataji’s teaching women to live as they see fit is not advocacy for them to do as they please, particularly as it concerns their sexual autonomy. Rather, she teaches that women increase their power and authority by protecting their sexual and moral purity. In this regard, Mataji approaches the issue of religious gender equality from an ideological position that parallels conserva­ tive gender discourse. At the same time, her “conservative” woman-​led quest furthers “liberal” principles of women’s and human equal rights in Brahmanical Hinduism. Combining the frameworks of religion and rights, Mataji’s leadership promotes the empowering vision of the rights-​bearing female ascetic.

Section 4: Research Strategies The book closes with Caroline Starkey’s chapter on research strategies. During the workshop in Heidelberg in July 2018, the assembled researchers reflected on and discussed their own position and attitude “in the field,” and how their political stances would, should, or could impact their research. These discussions were continued by Caroline Starkey after the workshop with some of the participants, resulting in the concluding chapter “Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism: Methodological Reflections and Collective Commitments.” This chapter reflects these critical self-​reflective conversations of the authors featured in this collection about method and methodology in the study of women’s agency in Buddhism and Hinduism. Some key questions emerging from these conversations were as follows: How

16  Ute Hüsken do we, as researchers, understand agency in relation to Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and how do we talk about this concept with participants or with our data? How do our personal motivations, perspectives, and standpoints (including in relation to diverse forms of feminism) shape our approach and our relationships with research participants and data? How do we deal with challenges to our own understandings, and how do we work with this to improve our analysis? How do we find a balance between not providing a stage for religious propaganda or even for views harmful to others, while allowing dissenting voices to speak for themselves? How do we acknowledge the entanglement of academia and lived realities of the religious practitioners, and how do we make use of this entanglement, neither curtailing academic rigor nor religious sensibilities? Starkey aims “to untangle some of the key methodological issues we face in studying female agency in Buddhism and Hinduism ( . . . ) in dialogue with other scholarship on feminist method.” She reports that central to the research methods of all contributors to this volume was the idea of “deep listening,” local theorizing, and foregrounding the voices and self-​identifications of the interlocutors—​sometimes alongside active engagement. All contributors acknowledge the entanglement of academia and lived realities of the religious practitioners, which always bears in itself the danger of curtailing either academic rigor or religious sensibilities. While feminist research often starts with the implicit understanding that the researcher shares a political agenda with the women whose lifeworlds she engages with, the researcher often stands to be corrected (see also Cheng 2007; Cook 2010; Kawanami 2013; Salgado 2013). In fact, our interlocutors often do not share our political commitments.8 Rather, in most settings under investigation in the chapters of this volume, one encounters a strong resistance to “feminism” or to what is seen as a “feminist agenda.” “Feminism” in these rather conserv­ ative contexts is often “discredited as an attack on the cultural authenticity of non-​West societies and a corrupting influence” (Ahmad 2015, 2; Dietrich 1996, 46). Here, Starkey cautions that the researcher’s projection of her own political agenda and preconceived framework is likely to prevent her from truly hearing the voices of her interlocutors. Moreover, we detect a multiplicity of voices and outlooks within the communities we look at. More often than not, the researcher’s own approach is “challenged and changed in the process of the research.” 8 This bears in itself the potential to lead to a situation characterized by Avishai, Gerber, and Randles as “the feminist ethnographer’s dilemma” (2012, 406).

Introduction  17 It is these complexities that will keep the feminist researcher, and the research on religious feminism, engaged. The contributions to this volume demonstrate the need to acknowledge that both religion and feminism come in various forms, and that we therefore have to carefully scrutinize and contextualize the relations of the various female religious specialists to feminism(s). The one size that fits all does not exist. It is understood that each of the topics addressed in this volume deserves an even deeper transdisciplinary conversation, which we hope to get going. This volume does not propose a uniform theory of gender and religion but aims to provoke and stimulate debates by providing new perspectives on agency in religious contexts. The dialogue needs to continue among those who attempt to accommodate Asian feminisms, those who see “traditional religion” as the only possible framework within which a feminist impulse, true to the traditions and societal norms of non-​Western societies, can develop and thrive, and those feminists researchers who deem organized religion and with it religious feminism as divisive, inherently flawed, and even dangerous. This volume aims at fostering a well-​informed dialogue beyond religious, ethnic, national, and gender boundaries, not glossing over differences in views and approaches, explicitly integrating and representing them, relating them to each other, and analyzing them with reference to their respective contexts.

References Abu-​Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3: 783–​790. Ahearn, Laura. 2001. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109–​137. Ahmad, Ambar. 2015. “Islamic Feminism—​A Contradiction of Terms?” FES India Paper. Friedrich-​Ebert-​Stiftung India, New Delhi (12 pp.). https://​libr​ary.fes.de/​pdf-​files/​bue​ ros/​ind​ien/​11388.pdf Aretxaga, Begona. 1997. Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Avishai, O., L. Gerber, and J. Randles. 2012. “The Feminist Ethnographer’s Dilemma: Reconciling Progressive Research Agendas with Fieldwork Realities.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42, no. 4: 394–​426. Bedi, Tarini. 2016. The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India. Albany: SUNY Press.

18  Ute Hüsken Cheng, W-​Y. 2007. Buddhist Nuns in Taiwan and Sri Lanka: A Critique of the Feminist Perspective. London: Routledge. Collins, Steven, and Justin McDaniel. 2010. “Buddhist ‘Nuns’ (mae chi) and the Teaching of Pali in Contemporary Thailand.” Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 6: 1373–​1408. Cook, J. 2010. Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Csordas, Thomas J. 1990. “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology.” Ethnos 18, no. 1: 5–​47. Dietrich, Gabriele. 1996. “South Asian Feminist Theory and Its Significance for Feminist Theology.” Concilium 1: 101–​115. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harcourt, Wendy. 2009. Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development. London: Zed Books. Hüsken, Ute. 2016. “Hindu Priestesses in Pune: Shifting Denial of Ritual Agency.” In The Ambivalence of Denial: Danger and Appeal of Rituals, edited by Ute Hüsken and Udo Simon, 21–​42. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Hüsken, Ute. 2017. “Theravāda Nuns in the United States. Modernization and Traditionalization.” In Buddhist Modernities. Re-​inventing Tradition in the Globalizing Modern World (Routledge Studies in Religion), edited by Hanna Havnevik, Ute Hüsken, Mark Teeuwen, Vladimir Tikhonov, and Koen Wellens, 243–​258. New York: Routledge. Hüsken, Ute. 2018. “Translation and Transcreation: Monastic Practice in Transcultural Settings.” In Reading Slowly: A Festschrift for Jens E. Braarvig, edited by Lutz Edzard, Jens W. Borgland, and Ute Hüsken, 257–​272. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Hüsken, Ute, and Petra Kieffer-​Pülz. 2011. “Buddhist Ordination as Initiation Ritual and Legal Procedure.” In Negotiating Rites, edited by Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert, 255–​ 276. New York: Oxford University Press. Kawanami, Hiroko. 2007. “The Bhikkhunī Ordination Debate: Global Aspirations, Local Concerns, with Special Emphasis on the Views of the Monastic Community in Burma.” Buddhist Studies Review 24, no. 2: 226–​244. Kawanami, Hiroko. 2013. Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-​ Burma: Building a Community of Female Faithful. Leiden: Brill. Kim, Nami. 2005. “‘My/​Our’ Comfort Not at the Expense of ‘Somebody Else’s’: Toward a Critical Global Feminist Theology.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 21, no. 2: 75–​94. Langenberg, Amy. 2018. “An Imperfect Alliance: Feminism and Female Buddhist Monasticisms.” Religions 9, no. 190: 1–​24. Mahmood, Saba. 2012. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McNay, L. 2000. Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Mol, Annemarie. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press. Okin, Susan Moller. 1999. “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, edited by Susan Moller Okin, Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha Craven Nussbaum, 9–​24. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Patton, Laurie L. 2012. “The Enjoyment of Cows: Self-​Consciousness and Ritual Action in the Early Indian Gṛhya Sūtras.” History of Religions 51, no. 4: 364–​381.

Introduction  19 Salgado, Nirmala S. 2013. Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice: In Search of the Female Renunciant. New York: Oxford University Press. Sax, William S. 2006. “Agency.” In Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, edited by Jens Kreinath et al., 473–​482 Leiden: Brill. Sax, William S. 2013. “Agency.” In Ritual und Ritualdynamik. Schlüsselbegriffe, Theorien, Diskussionen, edited by Christiane Brosius, Axel Michaels, and Paula Schrode, 25–​31. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

SECTION 1

RE N EWING R E LIG ION IN F E MA L E SPACE S

1 Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground Dynamics of Female Religious and Ritual Agency in Kalmykia* Valeriya Gazizova

Introduction A republic in the southwest of Russia, Kalmykia is perhaps the only region in Europe where Buddhism is historically practiced by its titular population, the westernmost branch of Mongolian peoples.1 Since the late 1980s and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet regime, the Kalmyks have been going through a reconstitution of their ethnic, religious, and cultural heritage, which suffered considerable damage during the communist era and particularly during their deportation to Siberia and Central Asia (1943–​ 1957). The destruction of the Buddhist establishment by Stalinist purges in the 1930s and the half-​century-​long rupture in its continuity could not have passed without consequences, with novel developments and profound transformations shaping the Kalmyk Buddhist scene. An increasing participation of women in these renewal processes is undoubtedly among them, as religious practices, categories, and organizations have appeared where women not only outnumber men but also play leading roles. This chapter looks at the dynamic processes associated with female religious agency and

*The research and writing of this chapter were supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation

Program in Buddhist Studies and undertaken during my postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Social Anthropology (Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit) of the University of Cambridge. I thank Ute Hüsken, Caroline Humphrey, and Isabelle Charleux for their insightful comments on the earlier version of this paper. 1 The Gelugpa (Tib. dGe lugs pa) order of the Tibetan variant of Mahāyāna Buddhism has been the most widely spread form among the Kalmyks (for an overview of Buddhism in Kalmykia, see Gazizova 2017).

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24  Valeriya Gazizova leadership in Kalmykia, by focusing on the categories of religious specialists where women predominate and which I see as particularly representative of Kalmykia. While illustrating the sociohistorical conditions that may have foregrounded female involvement, leading to new religious institutes and movements, I shall also try to tease out what is in the Kalmyk sociocultural construction of the female that allowed for the development of these phenomena. Not unlike other Mongolian groups, the institutions that preserve and propagate Buddhist knowledge among the Kalmyks have been historically considered a male prerogative. Scholars tend to connect the emergent reevaluation and repositioning of female agency in the sphere of religion foremost with the opportunities brought by the postsocialist period of religious revival (Tsomo 2015; Havnevik 2015). My opening argument, however, is that it is the Soviet era—​particularly with its anti-​Buddhist policy in Kalmykia from the early 1930s onward—​that initiated these transformations, at least in the Kalmyk context. One obvious, albeit superficial and contested (Buyandelger 2013), reason is that Kalmyk women, as well as women throughout the former Soviet space, benefitted from the state policy to end illiteracy and implement compulsory education. Undoubtedly disruptive for the traditional foundations of Kalmyk society, the decades of Soviet power—​together with collectivization and elimination of nomadic economy, repression of the sangha and abolition of Buddhist public worship, several changes of alphabet, and a substantial loss of the national language2—​ provided more equal opportunities for men and women. The social status of women was generally elevated, with women occupying important positions in education and administration. I suggest that it is the state persecution of Buddhism throughout several decades that foregrounded female participation in religion in the first place and facilitated the development and proliferation of specific, if not uniquely Kalmyk, religious categories for women. This ethno-​historical context provides us with a case study of religio-​cultural innovations generated through state suppression. To understand these processes, one needs to have at least a brief look at the construction of the female in pre-​revolutionary Kalmykia and the relationship between the Buddhist establishment and Soviet authorities.

2 For the ethno-​linguistic situation in Kalmykia, see Guchinova (2006, 60–​76).

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  25

Women and the Underground: Innovation by Exclusion “Sorry, Valerie, but first I must give arshan3 to men. Though you are my guest from abroad, you are a woman, and a woman is not a human being (Rus. chelovek). This is how it has always been here,”—​said lama Baldji-​Nima when we were driving back from a big worship at the site of Khosheutovskii Khurul (the only Kalmyk Buddhist temple to have partly survived the Soviet era). As the only woman in the car and at that time a researcher at a Norwegian university, I was quite surprised, not to say confused. “A Scandinavian would definitely debate this,” I said. “Who cares! Then we would throw her in the Volga as an offering to nagas,” he replied and all men in the car roared with laughter. Baldji-​Nima went on in a serious tone: “My grandmother, and it was she who raised me, taught me that men should always be treated first and then women eat what is left.”

This anecdotal account, apart from the joke about offering a noncontent Westerner to the “Volga nagas,” renders what one may see as the “traditional” Kalmyk rural perception of what a woman is—​or rather of what she is not—​that still persists today. Although local ethnographers maintain that a Kalmyk woman historically had a certain degree of freedom, being allowed to travel independently, conduct her domestic economy without a husband, participate in festivals, and attend some religious services together with men, her social status was much lower than that a man (Guchinova 2006, 98–​100). That her principal roles consisted of taking care of the household is reflected in the Kalmyk word gergn, “woman” or “wife” (literally “belonging to the ger,” nomadic dwelling). Women were excluded from formal Buddhist positions, with no nunneries ever existing in Kalmykia. Girls, approximately until the age of 12, that is, premenstrual virgins, often helped in khurul (Kalmyk monasteries and temples) with embroidering tangkas (Tib. thang ka, Buddhist iconographic depictions) and other sewing works. Then it was only after the age of 41, that is, when considered no longer in the reproductive age, that women were permitted to take the lay vows and help in monasteries. Since monasteries were virtually the only centers of education, Kalmyk women remained predominantly illiterate. The religious and ritual exclusion of women extended beyond the Kalmyk Buddhist establishment into popular worship. Women were prohibited 3 Here, sweets and biscuits empowered by ritual.

26  Valeriya Gazizova from making the ritual fire, killing sacrificial animals, and ascending sacred heights, such as burial mounds where Kalmyks conducted annual worship. These prohibitions widely persist today, the increasing female leadership on the religious scene notwithstanding. In various ritual contexts, men receive priority. During circumambulations of Buddhist constructions and natural objects perceived as sacred, men always go first, this also being the case during a distribution of blessed substances, as the episode from my fieldwork illustrates. Historically, a Kalmyk woman followed numerous avoidance customs in her daily life, particularly after marriage; she was not to step over weapons and hunting implements, to start a conversation with her older male in-​ laws, or to eat together with her husband—​to name just a few. In common with other Mongolian groups, a Kalmyk woman was prohibited from pronouncing the name of her husband and older male relatives from her husband’s male line. According to the established patterns of name giving, Kalmyk and Mongolian personal names often coincide with the names of animals, natural phenomena, and other aspects of daily life. Consequently, a wife was also not allowed to say the words that coincided with the names of the male relatives from her husband’s agnatic group. Hence, a special “female vocabulary” developed, which often was intelligible only to the members of one particular household. Calling her husband and older male relatives aava, “old man,” or kӧgshä, “elder,” is still common in Kalmykia, particularly among the older generation. While scholars advocate different reasons for the taboos traditionally imposed on young wife among Mongolian groups, including those of the politico-​economic and sexual nature (Humphrey 1993), one overarching explanation for numerous prohibitions for women is the perception of women as “impure” on the account of the biological particularities of the female body due to its reproductive functions. Childbirth and menstruation were both perceived as possessing the powers of defilement. Furthermore, being “unclean” and “half-​human,” a woman was believed to have a closer connection with the forces of the underworld. Accordingly, if she pronounced the name of her husband, it could supposedly be heard by malevolent entities of the lower realm, giving them an opportunity to steal his life-​force (Kalm. ämn). This construction of females as polluting and as gateways for entities of the underworld was also typical of Tibetan societies (Huber 1994), having an impact on religious exclusion of women and their ritual specialization.

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  27 Soon after the advent of the Soviets, Buddhism itself became excluded by the communist ideology as “counterrevolutionary,” and monastics were classified as “exploiters of the working class.” Mass arrests of monks followed throughout the 1930s and by World War II all Kalmyk monasteries (approximately 100) had ceased to exist. In contrast to Buryatia, another “traditional Buddhist republic” of Russia, Buddhism continued to be illegal in Kalmykia until the late 1980s, although two Orthodox Christian churches and three Protestant groups legally functioned there throughout most of the communist era. However, Buddhism among Kalmyks did not disappear altogether, acquiring new forms in the context of Soviet society. It became a secret activity practiced in an underground manner. Dissident returnee monks who had received a Buddhist education—​either in Russia or abroad—​before the 1930s played an essential role. Having survived labor camps and the deportation, they came back to Kalmykia and covertly continued conducting rituals, healing by means of Tibetan Buddhist medicine, transmitting prayers, and giving initiations. When saying that Buddhism in Soviet Kalmykia moved underground, several meanings of “underground” come to the fore. Not only the obvious metaphoric connotation of “functioning secretly against the existing regime” but also its literal meaning, that is, “situated beneath the surface of the ground,” actualizes here. Upon their return, Kalmyk “secret Buddhists” lived and practiced in dugout houses, built halfway into the ground. Dugouts were particularly common after the deportation, functioning as a cheap dwelling for the returnees whose homes had been confiscated. Furthermore, as was the case during periods of persecution of Buddhism in Tibetan areas, Kalmyks buried Buddhist texts, images, and ritual paraphernalia in the ground in the 1930s and 1940s to preserve them for the future.4 Monks buried images and texts in kurgans—​old burial mounds abounding on the Volga steppe. Up to this day, people continue to come across Buddhist artifacts hidden in the ground throughout Kalmykia (for a Buryat parallel, see Bernstein 2013, 89–​124). Among the recent findings is a large collection of Buddhist images discovered in a mound near the village of Shatta in 2016. The Kalmyk land is thus perceived as empowered with these hidden objects, many of which are still to be unearthed. The ground itself is fulfilling an important mission of concealing and enabling a possible rediscovery of the tangible Buddhist heritage. 4 Still, a substantial part of Buddhist texts and art objects were confiscated and destroyed.

28  Valeriya Gazizova The meaning of the “underground” as “subterranean” is directly connected with the main concern of this volume, that is, female agency. Adopting Alfred Gell’s perspective which he applied to art (Gell 1998, 6–​7), I define agency as the intention and the capacity to act in the world and change it. In Mongolian and Kalmyk cosmologies (if it helps to distinguish the two), the ground as the body of the world is often conceived as feminine—​Mother Earth, conceptualized as “Mother Uterus” (Kalm. Ütkn Eke), whose union with the Father Sky, or Eternal Blue Heaven (Kalm. Kӧk Mӧngkin Tenggr), gives life to everything in the world. In the Tibetan Buddhist idiom, the earth, also being equated with the female nature, appears ambivalent. On the one hand, it is the realm of powerful cavernous forces, akin to primordial chaos, which can be malevolent and dangerous and therefore need to be kept under the control of a more structuralized establishment. The founding myth of the localization of Buddhism in Tibet (with Tibet undoubtedly regarded as the Buddhist motherland of the Kalmyks) is based on the trope of taming and dominating the indigenous forces that abide in the ground (Gyatso 1989). Accordingly, while perceived in Tibetan—​and hence Kalmyk—​Buddhist cosmology as a female organism, the ground simultaneously serves as an abode for an infinite number of entities, male and female, defined as “owners of the land and water” (Tib. klu, sa bdag; Kalm. ezn). This reinforces the aforementioned description of numerous prohibitions for women, who thereby appear not merely as connected with the underworld, but as representing the (under)ground. On the other hand, the ground is associated with fertility, receptivity, preservation, and memory. Just as the Kalmyk steppe became the locus of concealment of Buddhist texts, art, and ritual objects, Kalmyk women became carriers of religious practices and lineages during the decades of “underground Buddhism,” for they began—​more so than men—​receiving texts, vows, and initiations from dissident lamas and undertook ritual activities that used to be conducted by monks, despite their previous systematic exclusion from monasteries. It was less dangerous for women to perform ritual services, since former monks continued to be under the surveillance of the local KGB organs. Accordingly, when saying that Buddhism went underground, it equally implies in the given context that it shifted to the domain of women, that is, from the level of a dominant social institution to the marginal realm that was to be domesticated and structuralized in the very founding myth of Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Removed from the organized setting of a monastery to the underground, the religious and ritual activity experienced profound

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  29 transformations. The Kalmyk context illustrates how new religious forms and institutes have sometimes been founded by exclusion. The prohibition and exclusion in the given case led to alternative positive actions, initiated by intensified intentionality. This intensification occurred precisely because of the conditions of exclusion, with the forbidden and excluded marked as significant by the act of prohibition itself.

The Matsgta Movement: Liquid Prayers and Underground Group Ministering An integral part of what is now defined as the local form of Buddhism are groups of female practitioners, now mostly of the older generation, known as matsgta or “those following the days of fast” (Kalm. matsg)—​the 8th, the 15th, and 30th lunar days of every month. While calendrical fasting is common in other Buddhist contexts, in Kalmykia it has developed into a communal practice for women, who not only observe the monthly fast but also gather on the aforementioned lunar days to chant prayers in a specific manner, conduct various group rituals, and view themselves as a tightly knit religious community. I shall focus here not so much on their practices, but rather on certain sociohistorical circumstances behind the development of this unique Kalmyk category of mostly female Buddhists. The idea of gathering covertly for worship originated in the Siberian exile, despite the danger of being arrested, and evolved into a regular underground practice in the 1960s. As a socioreligious phenomenon of the Soviet period, it is closely connected with the name of Erendjen Vaskina (1903–​1994) of the Don Kalmyks. Remembered by my interlocutors as “the mastermind of the matsgta movement,” her vivid role in Kalmyk history is locally explained by her “karmic predestination” as she had highly respected Buddhists in her family line. Her uncle was Dambo-​Dashi Ulyanov (1844–​1913), a monk and emchi (a doctor of Buddhist medicine) of Erketenevskii Khurul, known for his pilgrimages and compositions, particularly The Prophecy of the Buddha about the House of Romanovs and a Brief Sketch of my Journey to Tibet in 1904–​1905 (personal communication with Erendjen’s son, Vladimir Vaskin, a well-​known local sculptor; also see Andreyev 2001). When in Siberia, Erendjen received a substantial number of Buddhist texts that had been recited in monasteries of the Don Kalmyks from her brother Kiirb Badakov (1891–​1946), an ex-​monk and artist. According to

30  Valeriya Gazizova the family narrative, their father gave an oath to send his first surviving son to become a monk, as his children had been dying at birth. Hence, Kiirb lived in Erketenevskii Khurul until the beginning of the anti-​religious campaigns in the early 1930s. He was then compelled to renounce his monk’s vows to escape imprisonment and lived in disguise thereafter, hiding from authorities under a false name. A few years before death, he found his sister, Erendjen, who lived at that time with her three children in Novosibirsk Oblast (the place of her “special resettlement” during the exile), and gave her the prayers, together with the fasting vows. It had to be done in secret and at night. Legally considered a criminal and hiding from the Soviet law, Kiirb could not risk being seen visiting his sister, as this could result in both of them being arrested and condemned to corrective labor camps. This secret transmission had to be oral because Erendjen was illiterate, as was then the case with most Kalmyk women. To preserve the texts in their material form, Kiirb wrote them on papers that he rolled into scrolls and installed in self-​made hand prayer drums. Cylindrical in shape with a handle that turns, and chains allowing one to spin it by rotating the wrist, a prayer drum or prayer wheel (Tib. ma ni chos ‘khor) is a widely used ritual implement in Tibetan Buddhism. Filled with scrolls with prayers, when the cylinder is spinning, the texts inside it are believed to be recited, blessing all sentient beings and accumulating merit for the person turning the wheel. Kiirb made prayer drums for his sister and close acquaintances from tins in which stewed meat was sold, the only material available then. They would sheathe the tins with velvet, or other fabric, and decorate them with things at hand—​a form of underground Buddhist handicraft of the Soviet era. In this context, prayer drums functioned not only in their usual capacity as a “skillful means” activating a mute recitation of the texts inside them but also as a type of time capsule intended to deliver messages from the past and preserve the Dharma for the future. Decades later, post-​Soviet Kalmyk Buddhists who read Tibetan opened some of these drums and copied the texts hidden inside them. Reportedly possessing prophetic talents, Kiirb predicted the fall of the Soviet rule and entrusted his sister with a mission of maintaining the continuity of Kalmyk Buddhism, at least in some form. Both her memory and the prayer drums which he had made became repositories of khurul ceremonial texts. Beginning from the time while still in exile, Erendjen passed them on, also orally, together with the fasting vows. Oral transmission had certain advantages in the given circumstances, since texts concealed in one’s

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  31 memory could not be confiscated and destroyed, as was the case with most religious materials of the Kalmyks. However, it also led to significant textual transformations. The received prayers were mostly in Tibetan, with certain mantras in Sanskrit. Illiterate, Erendjen and her followers unintentionally changed the Tibetan originals, phoneticizing and largely distorting the initial variant. Passing them further on, more distortions occurred. Consequently, the texts recited by matsgta groups today are incomprehensible even to Tibetan monks working in contemporary Kalmykia. Although Erendjen reportedly knew a short summary of each prayer, neither she nor her followers understood the entire texts they were reciting. Hence, the content and form of the prayers chanted by matsgta remain totally “secret,” being unintelligible to not only the outsiders but also to the practitioners themselves. Erendjen’s granddaughter, Delger Sangadjieva, an artist and art historian, related that when she was a schoolgirl and Buddhism was still a “forbidden” topic, her grandmother dictated to her numerous texts in an unknown language and made her write them down in large Cyrillic block letters. Although Delger did not understand then what she was writing and why she had to do it, she could not disobey her grandmother and had to have enigmatic dictations evening after evening. These “cryptic” writings were later distributed among grandmother’s acquaintances, while Delger still keeps some of them at home as family relics. Literate members of Erendjen’s group were also involved in copying the texts. A decade after the end of the Soviet period, one of Erendjen’s students, Nina Dandyrova, fulfilled the last will of her then already late teacher by having published a collection of 66 prayers—​in what had become their final, highly phoneticized form—​which she had received from Erendjen. Entitled Ik düütsng matsgin mörgülin nom (“Collection of prayers for the big fast worship”), this volume now functions as the ritual manual for matsgta groups, venerated among them as canonical. Accordingly, the texts have made a complicated half-​century-​long journey. Initially given by a monk in the Tibetan original to an illiterate devout, passed on orally for several decades, and hence undergoing constant transformations, they received their final fixed variant—​as if having finally solidified or perhaps crystalized from a liquid, constantly changing, condition. The published compilation is generally regarded in Kalmykia as a record or a type of repository of social memory and ethno-​religious history, also being an object of academic research for local linguists and ethnographers. A group of women centered on Erendjen began to gather covertly to chant prayers (mostly those received from her brother) already in Siberia.

32  Valeriya Gazizova Apparently, they could not meet three times a month, as their gatherings could be interpreted as “anti-​Soviet activities of peoples” enemies’ in the Stalinist idiom and punished by imprisonment. In fact, Erendjen spent about a month in prison for travelling to Novosibirsk without official permission. Categorized as “special settlers” (Rus. spetsposelentsy) during the exile, Kalmyks were prohibited from leaving the place of their resettlement and kept under surveillance. As Delger explained, recollecting conversations with her grandmother: They started gathering in Siberia, but rarely and not systematically. It was too dangerous in Siberia. What are you talking about! Conducting group rituals in Kalmyk! Even speaking Kalmyk was dangerous in Siberia. Yet they gathered. I think they did it to survive. You know, when someone died or was ill, people wanted to have at least a short prayer read. There must have been Kalmyk monks somewhere in secret . . . but where? Kalmyks were dispersed . . . torn apart. (October 2018)

When the Kalmyks were officially pardoned by Khrushchev and allowed to return to their home on the Volga steppe, Erendjen and her group continued meeting secretly at different homes, most of them having settled in or around Elista, the administrative center of Kalmykia. By the late 1960s, their gatherings had developed into a specific calendar practice. Besides the fast days, they conducted common worship on major Buddhist holidays, such as the day of Maitreya or the Buddha’s first sermon. Lists with addresses where their worships were planned to be held were made months ahead. People, including those outside their group, invited them to chant prayers in their homes, especially if a family member had recently died or was ill. Meeting at different addresses has become another distinction of the matsgta. In the Soviet period, an important reason for gathering at different homes was not to compromise one particular address by connecting it to what was then defined by authorities as “illegal religious activity,” being a necessary condition of their underground functioning. According to the Kalmyk archival sources, similar groups of women gathering at different private homes on particular lunar days and ministering to the needs of others began to function throughout the republic in the 1970s–​1980s. What Delger definitely knew already then, in the 1970s, was that she was not to tell anyone at school about her grandmother’s dictations and

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  33 particularly about women regularly meeting in their house in Elista. She still remembers these “secret” gatherings: They would come around six in the morning and don traditional Kalmyk dresses. My grandmother always wore a special belt when praying. Do you know the meaning of the belt for Kalmyk women? Unmarried girls wore it . . . maidens. When a married woman puts on the belt, it is as if she becomes innocent again. What I did not understand then was why they rinsed their mouths before praying. I do now. They did it to cleanse their speech—​you never know what she might have said the day before or while on the bus to the worship. They prayed for several hours, as if singing plangently, sitting on the floor with rosaries and prayer drums. They ate before noon. Their food was simple, like rice or boiled potatoes. We also made bulmyg5 and Kalmyk tea.6 Other people I did not know came to help in the kitchen—​they did it to earn merit. (October 2018)

Delger’s description of matsg worship in the 1970s appears largely identical to its contemporary variant, with its key elements requiring a brief explanation. The fast followers generally observe the five lay Buddhist precepts (i.e., to avoid killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and alcohol) and additional prohibitions on the days of the fast. The latter involve foremost restrictions in diet, including eating only until noon and only what is considered “white food” (Kalm. idän), that is, dairy and vegetable products. They also abstain from watching TV and other entertainment on these days, while some observe what they see as “more ascetic restrictions,” such as sleeping on the floor. The fast supposedly purifies (at least to some extent) one’s body and mind, with prevenient cleansing procedures, like rinsing one’s mouth, also perceived as significant. Wearing a ritual belt (Kalm. büs), usually made of white fabric, when praying or conducting rituals is not uncommon among Kalmyks. An essential item of the traditional male and maiden dress in the past, in the contemporary ritual setting the belt is believed to separate the upper part of the body, regarded as “clean,” from the “dirty” lower half containing reproductive organs. This ritual separation is deemed necessary when addressing deities.

5 Dessert made of cream, sugar, flour, and fruit. 6 Boiled with milk, salt, and spices.

34  Valeriya Gazizova A notable feature of the matsg worship is that prayers are sung by the entire group in unison to melodies reminiscent of those of Kalmyk folk songs and the Jangar epic, with certain parts recited in the manner of a tongue twister. Whether these melodies were typical of pre-​revolutionary khuruls on the Don or whether they represent a later development seems problematic to ascertain. While the form and meaning of the chanted texts remain “esoteric” in the sense of being incomprehensible even to the participants themselves, the manner of performance appears locally familiar. The entire ceremony may remind one of a folk concert, or perhaps a festival, having such elements as national costumes, folk tunes, strict arrangement of procedures, a “white food” feast, and a solemn atmosphere. The order of the worship, however, is similar to that in khuruls. Accordingly, in Kalmykia, a fast observance spontaneously developed into a specific female group practice, combining features of pre-​revolutionary Kalmyk liturgy and revitalization movements. Kalmyk matsgta groups, whether in the Soviet era or after, occupy an intermediate position between Buddhist monastics and folk religious groups. Functioning outside the official Buddhist establishment, these women observe the fast, keep lay precepts (as is the case with most Kalmyk “monastics”), and officiate by means of what they regard as canonical Buddhist texts. Regarding themselves as devoted Buddhists, the contemporary matsgta women regularly visit khuruls, participate in Buddhist festivals, revere lamas, and go on pilgrimage, including to the Tibetan exile community in India (Tsomo 2016).

“Those Having Guardians”: Concealment and Transmission of the Buddha Presence Another visible tendency in Kalmykia is a growing number of religious practitioners referred to by the term säküstä, meaning “those having guardians,” who accept the patronage of Buddhist deities by means of a distinct initiation ceremony, observe numerous prohibitions, and perform various rituals.7 While the number of practitioners having divine patronage largely surpasses that of professionally trained Buddhists in Kalmykia, a frequently articulated opinion is that the category of säküstä, although not limited to 7 Also called medlegchi, or “those who know,” they supposedly receive knowledge and powers from their guardian deities and hence “know” how to heal illnesses or solve other problems of those resorting to their help.

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  35 women, constitutes a special niche created by women and for women. Indeed, women who “accept deities” outnumber men and have been playing a leading part in the current mass proliferation of this tendency. In what follows, I shall neither discuss the healing techniques of these practitioners, as they are a kaleidoscope of now mostly individually created practices, combining older methods by means of herbs and stones with new technologies, nor provide a classification of entities functioning as their guardians, as it has been done elsewhere (Gazizova 2016). I shall focus instead on the redefinition of the body and female agency within this religious milieu. The origin of the religious category termed here as säküstä cannot be reduced solely to the Soviet era of underground Buddhism. Scholars usually connect its genealogy foremost with the older Mongolian institutes of bӧ and udhn (routinely translated as “shaman” and “shamaness”) and their vigorous suppression in Kalmykia by the Buddhist establishment since the 17th century (Bakaeva 2003). However, the Soviet period undoubtedly created special conditions for its development into what I suggest seeing as a socioreligious movement, especially among women, with certain life histories deserving particular attention. Although there are different lineages through which the säküstä initiations have been transmitted, they appear to be traced back to Kalmyk returnee monks who reportedly bestowed the patronage of Buddhist deities to certain, often female, devotees. Among the most well-​ known and now ramified of these lineages is that of Yashkul, named after the village where Üülä Ochirova (1924–​2000), better known as Yashkul Haha,8 lived since 1968.9 Haha received her empowerment from Mandjiev Badma-​Halg (born 1890), a former Buddhist monk and emchi of Iki-​Bagutovskii Khurul, a monastery in the southeast of Kalmykia. He also completed a four-​year course of Tibetan medicine in Atsagatskii Datsan in Buryatia, the center of Tibetan Buddhist medicine in Russia, set up in 1913 by Agvan Dorjiev, a Buryat lama and Tibetan ambassador to tsarist Russia and later to the Soviet Union.10 It was from Agvan Dorjiev that Badma-​Halg received his ordination of a gelong (Tib. dge slong), a fully ordained monk. His connection with Agvan Dorjiev and several trips to Leningrad (the official name of Saint Petersburg from 1924 until 1991) became the ground for his arrest in 1935. He was accused 8 Haha means “paternal aunt.” 9 Kin terms implying respect entitled to elder relatives were used in reference to religious specialists, which is not so much the case today. 10 For Tibetan Buddhist medicine in the Soviet Union, see Sablin (2019).

36  Valeriya Gazizova of being a member of a “counter-​revolutionary group,” supposedly supervised by Agvan Dorjiev, which allegedly agitated Kalmyks for the need to help Japan in the event of war with the USSR to overthrow the Soviet rule and campaigned against the organization of collective farms. Badma-​Halg was sentenced to five years of forced labor in corrective camps, a typical punishment for repressed Buddhists in the Stalin-​era penal system (Dordjieva 2014, 77–​81). Almost immediately after his release, he was exiled again, this time in connection with the Kalmyk deportation of 1943, and was allowed to come back only in the late 1950s. Upon his return, he settled near Lagan, a town on the Caspian Sea, where he conducted rituals underground, including healing by means of Tibetan Buddhist medicine, in a small dugout. According to his last will, he was buried near his native village of Djalykovo at the site of the former Iki-​Bagutovskii Khurul. His grave became a pilgrimage site already in the late 1960s, with annual worships conducted there and miraculous recoveries reported. Haha grew up in the same village as Badma-​Halg and knew him since childhood. Her daughter-​in-​law, Natasha Mullaeva, gave the following account of Haha’s first initiation: In 1960, at the age of 36, she received initiation from the gelüng Badma-​ Halg. Although they had no family ties, he knew her parents as they were from the same village. He told her to get images of Aryabala11 and Tsagan Aava12 for her ritual. It was impossible to get these here, so she had them brought to her from Buryatia. It was extremely dangerous to give initiations at that time. It was illegal and had to be done in secret. (September 2018)

While receiving the tutelage of Avalokiteśvara and the White Old Man at her first initiation, Haha reportedly acquired as many as fourteen guardian deities, all belonging to the Buddhist pantheon.13 Throughout the Soviet decades, she represented a problem for the local authorities. In the Kalmyk National archives, her name appears several times in connection with what was then officially defined as “illegal religious cults and healing.”14 In 1968, 11 Aryabala is the Kalmyk name for Avalokiteśvara (Tib. sPyan ras gzigs), the bodhisattva of compassion. 12 Tsagan Aava, literally the “White Old Man,” is a deity venerated in Kalmykia as the owner of the land and all waters. 13 The empowerment of the same person can occur more than once, with new guardian gods summoned each time. 14 NARK (National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia), f. R-​309, op. 1, d. 2165, l. 28.

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  37 the police (Rus. militsia) of the Komsomolskii village, where she had settled after the deportation, received an anonymous letter informing them about Ochirova’s religious practice and people regularly coming to her house for rituals. This anonymous complaint (Rus. donos)—​in those years a widespread form of a secretive informing of authorities about activities that seemed illegal or potentially dangerous—​resulted in her having to move to neighboring Yashkul. There she continued to operate underground (also literally, as she lived in a dugout house at first) as a healer, prophesier, and advisor on various questions and virtually performed all functions of a lama, including funerary services. She was especially known for treating infertility, finding lost people and animals, and communicating with the dead. In the 1990s, when Buddhism was no longer illegal and a khurul was built in Yashkul, Haha and the village lama peacefully coexisted. People in greater numbers, including from outside Kalmykia, continued addressing her with different problems, even political questions. The president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumjinov, reportedly visited her twice, in 1999 and 2000, the transition years regarded as particularly difficult for the republic. In the summer of 1992, Haha accidentally fell in her yard and remained bedridden, attributing this accident to the wrath of her deities as she had violated numerous rules being obliged to conduct rituals clandestinely for many years. Bedridden, she needed attendants. The person who helped her daily was her daughter-​in-​law Natasha Mullaeva (born 1968), whose life with Haha resembled a full-​time daily ritual duty: I received my initiation from Haha in 1995 and was helping her during the last five years of her life. She could only sit or lie, but not walk. I was her legs and hands. She would say and I would do as she said. We worked like this from sunrise to sunset. It was no longer prohibited then, and people queued up since early morning. (October 2018)

In southeastern regions, Üülä Ochirova acquired a half-​legendary status, having been virtually deified. Not only were her photos kept on the altars of those considering her their teacher, it is also believed that she became Tsagan Därk (White Tārā) after death. A small altar-​house was also built in her memory in Yashkul. In fact, she is not the only underground female ritualist of the Soviet era recognized posthumously as an incarnation of a Buddhist deity, although such recognitions occur on the level of popular worship. Another well-​known case is that of Nohan Bochkaeva (1931–​1992), or Haha

38  Valeriya Gazizova Nohan, a healer from Iki-​Burul who is popularly correlated with Nohan Därk (Green Tārā). A Buddhist architectural complex devoted to Green Tārā and Haha Nohan was opened in her native village in the summer of 2019. Undoubtedly, Yashul Haha is remembered most for giving the säküstä initiations, commonly known as “accepting guardians” (Kalm. säküs avkh). While in the 1960s–​1980s it could not be done frequently, in the 1990s it acquired the scope of a religious movement, with Ochirova often portrayed as its founder. As mentioned above, she was not the only ritualist at that time giving similar empowerments, as there are different lineages of practitioners “having guardians,” most of which are said to stem from Kalmyk returnee (ex)monks. To what extent the empowerments given by the underground Buddhists in Soviet Kalmykia were identical to the contemporary rituals of “accepting guardians” remains to be documented, if at all possible. It is significant at this point to understand the transformative essence of this ceremony—​that is, new meanings it imparts to the self-​identity and body of the initiated—​as it has led to profound reconfigurations of female agency on the Kalmyk religious scene. The foci of the ritual are the appropriate images of Buddhist deities, placed in a prominent position on the altar, with certain offerings being obligatory.15 The process of “accepting guardians” reportedly consists of the introduction of deities into the body and mind of the initiated. My interlocutors have emphasized the importance of “cakras” and “channels” in the body functioning as the “doors and pathways through which deities enter.” Conceptualized as performed foremost to the body, although no physical changes become apparent, the ritual aims at transforming a person into a “holder for deities.” It is not just the patronage, but the presence of “actual” Buddhas that is perceived as invoked within the initiated. In this process, the person’s body becomes somewhat analogous to a material image or statue—​it becomes a support or receptacle (Tib. sku rten) of the sacred presence, with healing and visionary powers supposedly imparted together with it. Hence, the säküstä perceive themselves as “stable vessels for deities,” this emphasis on stability and continuity being crucial. “My deities are always in me. They give me powers by means of which I help others. I cannot take them off and then put them back on like a robe or a hat,” a 47-​year-​old 15 Besides sweets, pastry, or tea, common at most Kalmyk rites, essential offerings are certain parts of a sacrificial ram. When receiving her first empowerment from Badma-​Halg, Haha reportedly sacrificed a buck goat, whereas later she asked her followers to offer a ram, the male gender of the sacrificial animal being significant (Gazizova 2016).

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  39 säküstä from Elista, known for touch-​healing burns, explained. In this sense, these Kalmyk practitioners differ technically from shamans, who incorporate and expel spirits at will, or Tibetan oracles, who get temporarily possessed by their guardian gods (Diemberger 2005), being also incompatible with Tantric Buddhist meditators. The latter, while temporarily merging with a tutelary deity by means of a special visualization technique (Skt. sādhana; Tib. sgrub thabs), dissolve the entire visualization into emptiness at the end (Samuel 1993, 233–​236). Developing the idea of an empowered human body being analogous to a Buddhist statue, one can perhaps compare the Kalmyk ritual of “accepting deities” to that of Tibetan Buddhist rab gnas, or consecration of images, ritual objects, and so on. Translated from Tibetan as “to make permanent” or “[to make] the supreme abode,” rab gnas generates the lasting presence of the tutelary deity (Tib. yi dam) within a receptacle, thereby animating it for religious use (Bentor 1996). For Buddhist statues, the final consecration is preceded by several layers of the installation of relics, the most important of which in Tibetan—​and hence Kalmyk—​tradition are texts, conceived as the body of the Dharma. While Kiirb Badakov deposited “illegal” Buddhist prayers in his sister’s memory, which somewhat parallels the installation of relics of the Dharma in a receptacle, Yashkul Haha—​besides giving prayers of appropriate deities—​allegedly invited and sealed the “actual presence” of these deities in the people she initiated, turning them into consecrated receptacles. Just as an empowered religious image changes its immediate surroundings by imparting an auspicious cast of the holy presence,16 those “having deities” are meant to exert influence on people around them, not so much by solving their mundane problems, but foremost by being agents of preservation and transmission of what they regard as the “Kalmyk spiritual heritage.” Although “accepting guardians” supposedly entails obtaining healing abilities, only a relatively small number of the initiated regularly heal. In this idiom, having received divine guardianship, one becomes a guardian of Buddhism and Kalmykia, analogous to a class of wrathful deities protecting the Buddhist pantheon (Skt. dharmapāla; Tib. chos skyong). This function corresponds to the dictionary meaning of the term säküsn, that is, “a wrathful deity, defender of Buddhism.” As Haha’s assistant explained:



16 For agency of consecrated objects, see Gell (1998, 106–​154).

40  Valeriya Gazizova Those who have taken säküsn become säküsn. They defend Buddhas, defend the pantheon. They are like Buddhist militsiia. They control and influence the behavior of their family and friends simply by being present because they have deities inside them.

Natasha makes a paradoxical comparison with militsiia, the law enforcement authority in the Soviet Union that persecuted all types of Buddhist practices in Kalmykia for decades. Defending faith in her description is not an outward struggle, which in Buddhist parlance would be synonymous to karma (Tib. las), literally “action,” but the inner work of maintaining its continuity. This perception alludes to the Tibetan term of nang pa, meaning “inner activist” or “insider” and routinely translated as “Buddhist,” which is also used in present-​day Kalmykia to refer to lay Buddhist practitioners. An essential question remains. How has it been possible that a female body, traditionally constructed as “impure” and perceived as a conduit for cavernous forces, has become intrusted with the mission of concealing, preserving, and transmitting Buddhist deities? Significantly, it is the initiated body that becomes an instrument and agent of Buddhist renewal in the given context. The rationale here again relates to the aforementioned myth of the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet, the narrative treated in Kalmykia as a dominant explanatory paradigm of the relationship between the Buddhist institution and the spiritual nature of geography. Just as the land of Tibet, conceptualized in the myth as a wild demoness hostile to Buddhism, was subjugated by the erection of Buddhist images and temples at certain points on her body (Gyatso 1989), the introduction of deities by means of “accepting guardians” allegedly tames the unruly forces within the body. Although this subjugation—​whether in the Tibetan myth or during Kalmyk initiations—​ does not make the bodies male, it aims at purifying the body and transferring it to the realm of Buddhism. While the initiation itself appears as an act of purification, to maintain the alleged presence of deities continuously, one must observe so-​called purity of the body and mind, understood in this context as an extensive system of prohibitions, which includes foremost refraining from what is considered the ten basic offences in Buddhism, hence somewhat paralleling vows of a novice renunciant. These involve, besides the five lay vows, prohibitions against engaging in sexual activity, handling money, attending noisy celebrations, sleeping on high beds, wearing ornaments, and eating after certain time. Yashkul Haha reportedly emphasized the importance of avoiding

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  41 alcohol and sex life. Restrictions in diet include products considered “dirty,” for example, pork or chicken, and those imbued with additional cosmological meanings, such as the meat of animals traditionally prohibited from killing, one example being horsemeat due to the worship of equestrian deities. Besides, one must avoid actions and behaviors regarded as “polluting,” such as visiting cemeteries, gambling, swearing, or charging fees for rituals. Breaking the rules contaminates and hence disempowers the practitioner, rendering the person inappropriate for functioning as a vessel for deities and leading to the loss of healing powers. Moreover, it allegedly enrages the accepted gods, who in their turn are said to inflict punishment on the offender. My fieldwork indicates that such punishments may vary from a physical illness to a fire or flood in one’s house to a death in the family, sometimes taking rather mystical or visionary forms. A leader of one religious organization, which I feature later in this chapter, confessed that every time she disobeys her deities, she gets whipped with an invisible fire lash by Yamāntaka—​a wrathful manifestation of the bodhisattva of wisdom Mañjuśrī, whom with the establishment of the Gelugpas in Kalmykia merged with Erlik Khan, the lord of the underworld. The first time she was chastised was when she refused to conduct a worship ceremony on behalf of Kirsan Ilyumjinov, a task allegedly received from her deities. Yamāntaka reportedly hit her so hard that she fell on the ground, feeling burning pain all over the body, which was relieved by reciting prayers for Ilyumjinov for three consecutive days. As our trope of the (under)ground continues to unfold, it is now the lord of the underworld/​ underground who functions as the chief chastener punishing the initiated female body. In certain cases, it is the empowered body of the initiated that itself precludes its contamination by preventing the practitioner from transgressing the rules. A woman in her early 40s living in Elista related that after she “accepted” Buddha Śākyamuni, Green Tārā, and Amitāyus from Yashkul Haha in 1996, she could not physically leave her house to attend clubs or parties as her nose would bleed every time she was about to go out, compelling her to stay home. If she started a game of cards, her hands would itch severely, since cards represent “dirt” in this idiom. Accordingly, the empowered body may itself protect the Buddha presence inside it by working against the practitioner’s will and choice. Significantly, “accepting deities” and maintaining “purity” by following prohibitions has been functioning among Kalmyks as a potent means of healing. Dissident lamas of the Soviet era are reported to have given empowerments into certain practices

42  Valeriya Gazizova and prescribed “pure lifestyle” in order to treat various illnesses, including smallpox and tuberculosis. Contamination of one’s body by indulging in what is considered socially inappropriate appears here as the main cause of illness, whereas maintaining the Buddha presence through ritual purity and thereby maintaining a continuity of a local spiritual lineage functions as continuous self-​healing. This articulation of healing, purity, and socioreligious memory through specific initiations and ritual practices has definitely contributed to the proliferation of the säküstä movement, which began in earnest in the early 1990s when religion began to rise from the underground.

From the Underground to the Cosmos: Further Transformations of Female Ritual and Healing Agency “Those having guardians” appears as the most numerous category on the Kalmyk religious scene and continues to spread as more people of different age and social background (mostly Kalmyks, although not exclusively) “accept deities” in the aforementioned way, greatly outnumbering Buddhist monks and lay lamas in Kalmykia. Motivation to become säküstä and reasons for a proliferation of this category vary, this discussion being beyond the scope of this chapter. While some, especially single women of the older generation, want to devote their lives to religion, many of those “having deities” admit to having experienced difficulties and misfortune, including illnesses, impoverishment, and deaths in the family, before being initiated. In emic terms, these problems are attributed to the anticipation and wrath of deities who allegedly “whirl around” the person and demand to be accepted by inflicting problems. This preliminary affliction and the inevitability of receiving a new socioreligious role through “accepting gods” and maintaining a certain form of life reminds one of so-​called shamanic illness in Siberian traditions, as well as across the Himalayas and Inner Asia. One common local explanation is that it is the suppression of Buddhism and Kalmyk folk forms of ritual and healing during the Soviet decades that led to the anger of deities. Scholars elsewhere have shown that in postsocialist and postcolonial societies new conditions, together with difficulties and insecurities brought by political and economic changes, are first interpreted through the idiom of local beliefs (Buyandelgeriyn 2007). Proliferation of magical practices and popular worship as a means of dealing with emergent (foremost economic)

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  43 anxieties have been documented in such contexts (Ong 2001), with the former Soviet space being part of a larger pattern. Besides being interpreted as a way of coping with the new political and economic conditions, “accepting deities” and joining religious groups can be regarded as an attempt to fill in the ideological void left after the collapse of the communist ideals, representing a new way of creating values and a sense of belonging in the changed environment. As Baatr Elistaev, a married lama and founder of the Dharma Centre of Kalmykia, tried to explain the growth of säküstä groups since the 1990s: It has become a type of social rescue tendency (Rus. spasitelnaia sotsialnaia tendentsiia), a new socio-​religious construct that has been rapidly developing during the last 25 years. It is a relatively recent phenomenon. I see it as a reaction to the destruction of social ideological networks of the Soviet era. The so-​called Kalmyk ritual of “accepting deities” is a means of recreating a community, of becoming part of a social whole. (November 2018)

Indeed, what seems distinctive of the Kalmyk popular Buddhist scene, particularly “those having deities” and the matsg-​ta women, is its communal collective character. Practitioners belonging to these categories tend to form groups centered on a charismatic leader, usually a woman, who allegedly possesses greater visionary powers and often positions herself as a lineage holder of underground Kalmyk lamas of the Soviet era. Some of these groups register as religious organizations, receiving an official status. The proliferation of practitioners “having deities” and their groups has been definitely a visible part of a general religious renewal in Kalmykia, or what can be termed “post-​Soviet ethnic renaissance.” Concealed and developing underground during the time of so-​called secret Buddhism, it surfaced and rapidly spread in the 1990s with the advent of freedom of religious expression. Particularly disseminated among women, the säküstä movement has acquired significance as a means of expressing female religiosity, being a way in which Kalmyk women are creating a space for themselves in a predominantly male Buddhist world. In what follows, I shall illustrate further transformations of female ritual agency and novel developments within this niche of the Kalmyk religious scene, which simultaneously continue, albeit in a rather far-​reaching way, tendencies originating—​or perhaps planted in the (under) ground if to continue our trope—​during the decades of “secret Buddhism.”

44  Valeriya Gazizova

Figure 1.1  Members of Vozrojdenie are “cleansing the earth” at the energy spot Lightning (photo by V. Gazizova, September 2018, outside Elista).

Within the broader säküstä milieu, there is a separate movement of practitioners with divine patronage who proclaim themselves adherents of “cosmic Buddhism” or “new cosmic religion,” represented foremost by an organization registered in 2001 in Elista under the name Buddhist Community “Revival” (Vozrojdenie; see Figure 1.1). Their objectives include restoring what they see as the “ancestral traditions of the Kalmyks,” while also propagating a new faith that would reconcile conflicting religions under the threat of a global apocalypse. The head of the organization states that over 2,000 people have joined the movement, with five small prayer houses functioning throughout Kalmykia. The movement is centered on the worship of the deity known as the White Old Man (Kalm. Tsagan Aava; Rus. Belyi Starets), although this has been significantly reconceptualized. While historically venerated among the Kalmyks (and Mongols) as the lord of the earth and water protecting herds and granting long life, and included in Buddhism as a protector of the Dharma in the 17th century, the followers of the movement identify the White Old Man as the highest cosmic intelligence and creator of the universe. Revering gods and saints of different systems which they may

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  45 know, the adherents envisage these figures as manifestations of the White Old Man. The latter is also envisioned as having multiple forms, the most important of which is that of the Cosmic White Elder, also addressed as Father Creator and described as the “universal fire.” I shall not elaborate further on their reinterpretations of this deity as it has been done elsewhere (Humphrey 2014; Terbish 2018; Gazizova 2018), but I shall underline other distinctive aspects of this movement which are also recurrent themes of this chapter—​ that is, female religious empowerment, production of incomprehensible prayers, and correlation between the female and (under)ground. The head of Vozrojdenie, Galina Muzaeva (born 1962), is a Kalmyk woman from a small village in northern Kalmykia. Other members of her group call her bagshi (teacher) and see her as a manifestation of Maitreya (the future Buddha), commissioned by the White Old Man to save the world.17 Similarly to self-​legitimating narratives of other Kalmyk religious activists, Galina asserts having received her first empowerment from a respected Kalmyk lama who conducted rituals underground during the Soviet era. In her case, it was Zodva Natyrov (1896–​1994), a former Buddhist monk and emchi. According to his autobiography, from 1916 until 1925, he studied Tibetan Buddhist medicine at Maloderbetovskii Tsannid Chöra Khurul, the main educational center for Kalmyk monks established in 1907 with the help of Agvan Dorjiev. Soon after he completed his education, he renounced his monk’s vows, married, and joined one of the newly organized collective state farms (NARK, f. R-​309, op. 1, d. 2174, l. 49–​50).18 It is now locally emphasized that—​unlike other “underground lamas” featured in this chapter—​Zodva fought in World War II on the Russian side, the point being particularly significant in the current era of so-​called “postsocialist nostalgia” and re-​romanization of the Soviet. His photos on the altars of devotees show him wearing military medals earned in the war. Still, he was arrested right after World War II on his return to Elista for being a Kalmyk and deported to Siberia, where he lived as a “special settler” until 1958. Zodva is known for giving the mantra of the White Old Man and empowerments into practices of this deity, particularly to women, with a number of charismatic female ritualists claiming to be his students.

17 For Galina’s life history, see Gazizova (2018). 18 Oral accounts state that it was his teacher, Lora Bagshi (1891–​1958), a doctor of Tibetan Buddhist medicine, who having predicted the oncoming repressions, advised Zodva to disrobe and marry to escape being arrested.

46  Valeriya Gazizova Galina came to Zodva in 1993, when Buddhism was rapidly rising from the underground, among other trajectories of its renewal. Yet Zodva’s wife remained suspicious of people coming to their house for ritual services, having developed this protective attitude during the decades of anti-​ Buddhist policy. It was reportedly that Zodva himself insisted on talking to Galina, despite his wife’s initial inhospitality. Galina asserts that besides giving her the prayer and depiction of the White Old man, he told her that her own “power was much stronger than [Zodva’s] and was yet to develop.” Moreover, he allegedly predicted that she would be receiving new prayers directly from the White Old Man. Indeed, since around the late 1990s, Galina and other members of her group claim to have been receiving messages and ritual texts, including healing prayers, from the cosmos in what they define as the “sun language”—​a cluster of unintelligible syllables rhythmically resembling Tibetan and supposedly carrying immense healing properties. The “sun prayers” can allegedly cure various illnesses and solve all types of problems in contemporary society—​from alcoholism and infertility to war conflicts and ecological catastrophes. Within this Kalmyk movement of so-​called cosmic Buddhists, there is a distinct type of practitioners—​referred to as “contactees”—​who are purportedly contacted by the White Old Man, often through his cosmic messengers, to be passed on texts in the “sun language,” as well as their translation in Russian or Kalmyk (Gazizova 2018). Although the adherents do not claim to understand the “sun language,” they believe in its sacred origin and healing power. This perception corresponds to the traditional attitude toward Buddhist texts—​while most Kalmyks do not know Tibetan or Sanskrit, they not only attend Buddhist worship because listening to the recitation of Buddhist texts is believed to be auspicious and merit-​gaining, but also venerate Buddhist texts as a form of material embodiment of the Dharma and keep sutras, in Kalmyk and Tibetan, on the altar. Given the contemporary sociolinguistic situation, with a substantial part of the Kalmyk population not knowing their native language, Kalmyk remains as incomprehensible for many Kalmyks as Tibetan. Significantly, it is precisely the incomprehensibility of the “sun language” that is regarded as attesting to its sacred nature, which reiterates the tendency spread in Inner Asia of sacralizing a text, whether written and oral, as something incomprehensible (Arzyutov 2018). I also suggest seeing this ritual-​linguistic practice of Kalmyk “cosmic Buddhists” not merely as a parallel, but perhaps as a continuation of the pattern of transmission of religious texts maintained by Erendjen and matsgta

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  47 women, with initial secret transmission, incomprehensibility, perception as sacred/​canonical, and textualization through publication being key elements in both cases. These “solar texts” are not kept secret as Vozrojdenie publishes books as parts of the cycle The Sacred Precepts of the White Old Man, with eight volumes having been published by 2018. Besides healing prayers, the cycle features autobiographical accounts of Galina and other adherents, reports of their visions, their conversations with the White Old Man and other nonhuman beings, for example, trees and the ground. Although prayers in the “sun language” are represented as available to everybody, the role of “contactees” obtaining them—​another interstitial category combining elements from distinct spheres (e.g., Buddhism, New Age, Russian cosmism, Mongolian shamanism, Theosophy, etc.)—​is said to be limited exclusively to women, with men not even contacted by deities for this purpose. Galina also emphasized that the majority in her group are women. While some regularly heal and receive new texts, others simply observe a “pure life” and attend group worships. When asked why it is mostly women who join her group and are entrusted with transmitting new prayers, Galina replied: Now is the time of Buddha Maitreya. This is the time of women. Women’s power is much greater . . . it is of a higher level, I would say. Women can endure more, they are stronger. I think this time will give still more strength and power to women. (October 2018)

Members of Vozrojdenie maintain that Maitreya—​the successor of the historic Buddha Śākyamuni—​will or rather has already come in a female form, associating the future Buddha with their leader Galina. The figure of Maitreya has been employed by numerous sects and movements of nonorthodox nature for over 1,000 years, with different transformations of the canonical version of the Maitreya myth known. While envisioning Maitreya as female has never been typical of Kalmykia, this reinterpretation significantly foregrounds and further transforms female religious agency, with women receiving new potential and unique abilities (e.g., transmitting healing prayers from the cosmos) and, together with them, a new range of responsibilities. The latter include tasks which are perceived as surpassing the level of individual therapies, being intended for the good—​if not survival—​of the Kalmyk people and ultimately of the entire world.

48  Valeriya Gazizova During my last conversation with Vozrojdenie in the autumn of 2018, I discovered that their regular ritual work includes what they define as healing the ground by purification. As Galina explained: We continuously cleanse the earth. Every spring and autumn, we do purification rituals. You know, everything bad that is happening now, all explosions, floods, fires—​it all comes from there, from the ground, from the core of the earth, because it is polluted. People have polluted it by centuries of terrible actions and thoughts. Our job is to remove all this negativity so that there will be no more cataclysms, wars, etc. We start here in Kalmykia and then we must move on. (October 2018)

“Contactees” claim to be continually receiving (usually during their morning prayer) assignments from deities regarding the next purification worship—​ they are given a certain day and time when it must be conducted, texts which are to be chanted and, most importantly, a particular place on the steppe where they must perform the rite. As my fieldwork indicates, these worship sessions—​which are conducted in a group, the more participants the better, all wearing ceremonial white robes—​involve chants in the “sun language” and recitations of well-​known mantras, such as Om mani padme hum or the Tārā mantra, fire rituals, continuous circumambulations, and food offerings to various types of nonhuman beings. After the worship, the stretch of land where it has been conducted supposedly becomes what the adherents call an “energy spot” (Rus. energeticheskaia tochka). It is usually an open place on the steppe about 50 meters in diameter, which Vozrojdenie marks by laying out pebbles in the form of lotus flowers. Having been purified by rites and chants, these spots allegedly begin to accumulate great curative powers in case of illnesses, bad luck, and other misfortunes, as well as induce healing abilities in people. Accounts of miraculous recoveries and attaining clairvoyance after rolling on the ground in these places abound; rituals conducted there are said to improve climatic conditions, for instance, by causing rain during periods of drought. Accordingly, every year, several new “energy spots” are created by Vozrojdenie, with over 20 having been founded throughout Kalmykia by 2018. The Kalmyk steppe is hence envisaged by the adherents as a continuously growing network of “energy zones” that are constantly channeling healing powers from the cosmos. Significantly, the task of healing the ground is believed to have been entrusted by the deities foremost to women. One can

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  49 follow the dynamics of female religious and ritual agency in Kalmykia, at least in the popular Buddhist scene. Traditionally conceived as associated with, if not representing, the (under)ground and untamed forces of the underworld, women were constructed as polluted and excluded from the Kalmyk Buddhist establishment. During the period of the Soviet state anti-​Buddhist policy, Buddhism and forms of popular worship were transferred underground, with women becoming important custodians and defenders of religion, functioning as both agents and locus of Kalmyk socioreligious memory. With religion resurfacing since the late 1980s, it is women who are now perceived, at least in certain circles, as more spiritually powerful and better ritually equipped for emergent religious activities and tasks. An important aspect with regard to “cosmic Buddhists” is the changed self-​awareness of their female adherents and their continuous self-​empowerment. Perceiving themselves as strongly connected with the earth, which allegedly gives then additional strength and endurance as opposed to men, and also ritually purified and empowered by what is defined in this idiom as “accepting deities,” it is women now who receive new powers and take on the role of the main ritual agents, their bodies now functioning as instruments of healing and purification.

Conclusion Paradoxically enough, the state suppression of Buddhism facilitated the emergence of women as religious and ritual leaders among Kalmyks, opening venues for female religious trends and currents. It is precisely a lower status of women as opposed to that of men in presocialist Kalmykia, and their historical exclusion from the Buddhist establishment, that allowed them to become important transmitters of religious and ritual knowledge during the period when religion itself was marginalized and excluded. Historically “muted” by numerous taboos and impelled by tradition to devise “secret vocabularies,” Kalmyk women became guardians of new forbidden topics and creators of new “sacred” texts. The theme of esoteric texts in incomprehensible languages as a means of maintaining and transmitting religious knowledge is hardly peripheral in either clandestine practices during the Soviet era or contemporary religious movements distinctive of Kalmykia. The mode of secrecy, concealment, and disguise, being the strategy for evading political repercussion and a means of survival, foregrounded female participation in

50  Valeriya Gazizova religion. Feminization of the Kalmyk religious scene has inevitably involved a certain degree of both transgression of traditional female gender norms and decanonization of Buddhist practice. Challenging patriarchal structures and forging new religious forms, women have functioned as central agents of simultaneously religious continuity and change. The socioreligious categories and movements featured in this chapter constitute a special niche in the Kalmyk religious scene where women can fully participate and aspire to leadership positions without having to compete with the official sangha. The latter continues to consist exclusively of men, with women still having no recognized status in Kalmyk Buddhist institutions. Situated outside the formal Buddhist system, as there is no established place for these female practitioners in the hierarchy of nuns, monks, and the like, they are perhaps better situated within what one can call “folk Buddhism” or “popular worship.” However, it is precisely their functioning beyond the official establishment that allows for greater personal expression and creativity than their monastic counterparts. Attitudes of the contemporary Kalmyk sangha toward these female influences vary from strong condemnation to sympathy and support, with the general opinion that their activities are Buddhist only in their veneer. Although the women featured in this chapter have undoubtedly played significant roles in the modern history of Kalmyk Buddhism, none of them had any formal Buddhist training in official institutions. While transmitting new syncretistic practices and initiating new forms of religious empowerment for women, they receive legitimacy (at least in certain—​and quite extensive—​ circles) as respected religious specialists by their asserted belonging to the local lineages of returnee lamas of the Soviet era.

References Andreyev, A. 2001. “Russian Buddhists in Tibet, from the End of the Nineteenth Century—​1930.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland 11, no. 3: 349–​362. Arzyutov, D. 2018. “Voices of the Land, Samizdat, and Visionary Politics: On the Social Life of Altai Narratives.” Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia 57, no. 1: 38–​81. Bakaeva, E. 2003. Dobuddiiskie verovaniia kalmykov. Elista: Jangar. Bentor, Y. 1996. Consecration of Images and Stupas in Indo-​Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Leiden: Brill. Bernstein, A. 2013. Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Exclusion, Secrecy, and the (Under)ground  51 Buyandelger, M. 2013. Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia. Chicago: University Press. Buyandelgeriyn, M. 2007. “Dealing with Uncertainty: Shamans, Marginal Capitalism, and the Remaking of History in Post-​ socialist Mongolia.” American Ethnologist 34: 127–​147. Diemberger, H. 2005. “Female Oracles in Modern Tibet.” In Women in Tibet, edited by J. Gyatso and H. Havnevik, 113–​168. London: Hurst & Company. Dordjieva, G. 2014. Repressirovannoe Buddiiskoe Dukhovenstvo Kalmykii. Elista: Izdatel’stvo Kalmytskogo universiteta. Gazizova, V. 2016. “Accepting Divine Patronage: Kalmyk Folk Religious Specialists and their Guardian Deities.” Inner Asia 18, no. 2: 265–​287. Gazizova, V. 2018. “From Buddhism to “Cosmic Religion”: Religious Creativity in Kalmykia.” Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia 57, no. 1: 5–​37. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Guchinova, E.-​B. 2006. The Kalmyks. London: Routledge. Gyatso, J. 1989. “Down with the Demoness: Reflections on a Feminine Ground in Tibet.” In Feminine Ground: Essays on Women in Tibet, edited by Janice Dean Willis, 33–​51. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications. Havnevik, H. 2015. “Female Temple Founders, Ritualists, and Clairvoyants in Post-​ Socialist Mongolian Buddhism.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 34: 35–​52. Huber, T. 1994. “Why Can’t Women Climb Pure Crystal Mountain? Remarks on Gender, Ritual and Space at Tsa-​ri.” In Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, edited by P. Kvaerne, 350–​371. Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. Humphrey, C. 1993. “Women, Taboo and the Suppression of Attention.” In Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society, edited by Sh. Ardener, 73–​92. Oxford: Berg. Humphrey, C. 2014. “A Politico-​Astral Cosmology in Contemporary Russia.” In Framing Cosmologies: The Anthropology of Worlds, edited by A. Abramson and M. Holbraad, 224–​243. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ong, A. 2001. “The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia.” In Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader, edited by E. Castelli & R. Rodma, 346–​365. New York: Palgrave. Sablin, I. 2019. “Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism in the Soviet Union: Research, Repression, and Revival, 1922–​1991.” In Healers and Empires in Global History: Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge, edited by M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja, 81–​114. Cambridge: Cambridge Imperial and Post-​Colonial Studies Series. Samuel, G. 1993. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Terbish, B. 2018. “‘I Have My Own Spaceship’: Folk Healers in Kalmykia, Russia.” Inner Asia 20: 132–​158. Tsomo, Karma L. 2015. “Transition and Transformation: Buddhist Women of Buryatia.” In Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society, edited by V. Wallace, 261–​279. New York: Oxford University Press. Tsomo, Karma L. 2016. “Prayers of Resistance: Kalmyk Women’s Covert Buddhist Practice.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 20, no. 1: 86–​98.

2 “This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple” Creative Agency in Navarāttiri Kolu Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama

Introduction This chapter investigates the domestic ritual known as kolu, performed in South India during the festival Navarāttiri (Skt. navarātri).1 While this festival commonly is associated with the goddess Durgā and her battle with the demon Mahiṣa, home celebrations of kolu are centered upon the benevolent “Lakṣmī-​ like” powers of the goddess, as well as the creativity of the women who craft memorable doll displays in her honor.2 Keeping and participating in kolu is believed to bestow auspiciousness to (married) women, who for nine nights, during the Tamil month of Purāṭṭaci (September/​October), are the main performers and audience of this ritual. During home celebrations of Navarāttiri, families erect elaborate tiered altars (Ta. kolu) filled with colorful clay dolls (Ta. pommai) of various sizes, mainly representing figures from Hindu mythology, and Indian history and traditions. These kolus are, for nine nights, worshipped by women as the embodiment of the goddess, who is often installed ritually among the dolls in a pot (Ta. kalacam). During Navarāttiri evenings, women dress in their finest clothing and do what is often called “kolu hopping” along with their children to view the displays at the homes of friends and relatives, where they sing and recite in her praise, and receive auspicious food and gifts. This chapter presents the kolu of Mrs. Selvi, a middle-​class non-​Brahmin woman who is new to this ritual practice.3 While kolu, until recently, has been 1 The material in this chapter is taken from a larger study on Navarāttiri which builds upon ethnographic research carried out in Kanchipuram in 2014 and 2015. Parts of the descriptions of Mrs. Selvi’s kolu practice are also published in Ilkama (2021). Names are pseudonymized. 2 Navarāttiri is celebrated in most South Indian temples, too, some of which are sites for elaborate public rituals and displays. See Ilkama (2018). 3 While Mrs. Selvi’s caste unfortunately is not known to me, I presume that she is from a non-​ Brahmin community due to her household’s ritual practices (including possession and prophecy),

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“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  53 reserved to Brahmins, more and more people across caste distinctions now adopt this ritual, for different reasons. I investigate, based on the changes which occur when kolu moves to such new households, how Mrs. Selvi’s recently acquired ritual practice is a creative agency, and how Mrs. Selvi can be understood as a reformer of this ritual. Finally, I argue that we need to acknowledge different types of female ritual agency—​as agency is more than resistance against oppressive structures and taking over roles traditionally reserved for men. While this is rather a secular conception of the term agency,4 I speak of ritual or religious agency as the power of creativity and innovation, also highly visible in the aesthetics of kolu.

Mrs. Selvi’s Kolu One of the most memorable kolus I visited during my field research on Navarāttiri was that in the maternal home of Mrs. Selvi,5 a computer science teacher in her early 30s. This particular kolu stood out to me not so much because of the doll display itself, which was similar to several kolus throughout Kanchipuram in terms of size and range of dolls, but because of the ritual practices Mrs. Selvi and her mother had incorporated, as they were relatively new to “keeping (Ta. vai) kolu” at the time of my fieldwork. Their kolu consisted of seven steps covered by white cloth and a purple sari, which dominated the modest living room. The dolls displayed on the steps, and also on the floor surrounding it as well as on a separate table, mainly represented deities such as the ten avatāras of Viṣṇu, Gaṇeśa, and various goddesses, interspersed with several sets depicting cultural or religious scenes such as weddings, palm leaf meals, and religious processions. Next to the steps, three quite large, self-​manufactured dolls depicting Aiyappaṉ, Ardhanareśvara, and Rajarajeśvarī loomed over a floor scene crowded with baby dolls, plastic fruit, and stuffed animals. In the hall their family deity being Aṅkāḷa Paramēcuvarī ammaṉ (a deity commonly associated with lower castes), and the fact that the male members of the household wore no sacred threads (which indicates initiation into Vedic studies, reserved to the three upper varṇas). 4 Sociological implications of agency are closely connected to free will and, therefore, to a large extent, to resistance. In these terms, if a person must act in a prescribed way, such as following prescribed ritual rules, and does not act independently, one can hardly speak of agency (see, e.g., Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994; Weber 2010). 5 Mrs. Selvi married a few years back and keeps a kolu in the home she shares with her husband since 2015, in addition to assisting with her mother’s kolu, where their main celebrations take place.

54  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama leading into the living room, the floor was covered with several children’s toys, in addition to a cricket match and several sets forming village scenes. It is a common feature of kolu that toys and scenes from everyday life are arranged on the floor while deities occupy the higher steps, so that the display mirrors aspects of hierarchies prevalent in many forms of Hinduism. The goddess herself had been invoked in a pot which was placed on the kolu’s top step, flanked by images of the Tamil goddesses Mīnākṣī and Kāmākṣī. This elaborate display, which was arranged by Mrs. Selvi and her mother, was the ritual focus during the nine-​night festival, as the two women performed daily pūjās, sang devotional songs, and received female guests. Particularly auspicious married women (Ta. cumaṅkali)6 visited, who were presented with specially prepared food (Ta. cuṇṭal; i.e., pulses) and auspicious gifts, including a sari blouse piece, flowers, turmeric, vermillion, and betel nuts (referred to in Tamil as tāmpūlam). The mother and daughter also worshipped their young niece/​grandchild (Ta. kaṉṉi pūjā) each evening, since it is widely believed that the goddess visits in the form of a kaṉṉi or a cumaṅkali during Navarāttiri. As I sat down in front of the arrangements along with my research assistant, I started my interview as usual by asking a general question about why Mrs. Selvi keeps kolu for Navarāttiri. She quickly cut me off and replied that instead of talking about the significance of kolu, she would narrate her life story. Her narration soon turned toward how she performs and embodies the goddess during Navarāttiri evenings: “Do you know ampāḷ aruḷ vākku (lit. ‘prophecy speaking of the goddess’)? That comes into my body. I am getting three deities into my body.”7 Indeed, Mrs. Selvi told me, it was the goddess who urged their family to keep kolu in the first place, possessing her 7–​8 years back: “After getting Ampāḷ on my body, Ampāḷ told [us] to keep kolu. [ . . . ] This is not a home; it is a temple. So it will look like a temple.” I was intrigued, since this was my first time hearing about a connection between kolu and deity possession, which indeed would be unlikely to experience in a Brahmin context, where the ritual of kolu originated. Closely

6 Cumaṅkali is a married woman whose husband is still alive and who has given birth to children. She is the archetype of Tamil beauty and domesticity. This utterly auspicious status is nurtured and reaffirmed through the woman’s ritual actions, such as fasts and prayers, which in turn ensure her husband’s long life. 7 Mrs. Selvi is possessed by the goddesses Aṅkala Paramēcuvarī and Karumariyammaṉ and the god Lakṣmīnarasiṃha. Apart from during Navarāttiri, she sometimes gets possessed on ritually auspicious full-​moon days (Ta. amāvācai) and Tuesdays.

“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  55 connected to this family’s “new take” on kolu, including possession and prophecy speaking, Mrs. Selvi’s mother will pour the water from the pot on the top kolu step over her possessed daughter in order to “cool the goddess’s anger” at the festival’s final day of Vijayadaśamī, when the goddess is thought to succeed in killing the buffalo demon. Thus, all the powers of the goddess merge in Mrs. Selvi at the end of the festival.

Mrs. Selvi’s Performance I will only summarize Mrs. Selvi’s narrative, which legitimates the family’s practice of kolu as well as Mrs. Selvi’s performances of prophecy and possession: While in college, Mrs. Selvi was severely mentally and physically ill. She behaved strangely, hardly ate, and treated her parents, whom she did not recognize, badly. Her father wanted to consult a psychiatrist, but her mother desired to solve the problems through ritual: she performed a pūjā for her daughter, and as a result, fierce goddess Aṅkala ammaṉ manifested in Mrs. Selvi’s body. It turned out she had been affected by black magic (Ta. ceyviṉai), and the goddess drew out the ghost (Ta. pēy, picācu), the cause of the problems. Thus, the goddess chose to inhabit in the body of Mrs. Selvi, who, after some initial reluctance, chose the goddess, too, and accepted her presence, welcoming her into her body through performing possessions and prophecy speaking regularly. A few days after our interview, I returned to the home of Mrs Selvi’s mother and sat in front of the kolu along with several other guests. The goddess decided to reveal herself to us when Mrs. Selvi’s mother chanted the Mahiṣāsura Mardinī stotram. Hearing the chanting, Mrs. Selvi’s body started to gently rock back and forth as a blissful expression fell over her face. The goddess was welcomed into Mrs. Selvi’s body as her mother sprinkled her with sacred water and smeared her face, arms, and feet with turmeric powder, and placed a large vermillion mark (Ta. pottu) on her forehead. She was offered a plate of fruits, a sari, and a spear (Ta. vēl), which she tucked into her sari blouse, before she was garlanded and handed a bundle of nīm leaves. Her mother continued to sing devotional songs as she waved the āratī flame in front of Mrs.-​Selvi-​as-​the-​goddess and rang a bell (see Figure 2.1). Soon, a young woman among the guests, clad in a red sari and beautifully adorned with lots of jewelry and jasmine flowers in her hair, approached the goddess with a plate with fruit, incense, and a sari. The woman had a

56  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama

Figure 2.1  Mrs. Selvi as the goddess, in session with clients amidst her kolu dolls (photo by Ina Ilkama, 2015).

conversation with the goddess, all the while looking deeply moved, joining her palms and almost inaudibly whispering her questions and replies to the goddess. It appeared she had trouble with her husband and approached the goddess for the second time in order to find a solution so that her family would not fall apart. The woman revealed that her husband had not gone much to the temple, which was among the remedies that had been previously prescribed by the goddess. The goddess stood her ground: “If you follow whatever I say without failure, you will get whatever you want! [ . . . ] When I prescribe a remedy for someone, they have to follow it! If they don’t, what can I do?” The woman continued asking for the well-​being of her brother and his wife, and a baby on the behalf of a friend. The goddess seized the opportunity to campaign for more visitors: “If she is hungry, can you eat for her!?” And so the session continued, before finally I myself was called before the goddess in order to ask for her advice. While Mrs. Selvi’s mother introduced me as a foreigner and nonbeliever, the goddess assured me: “Those who stay near to god do not know the value [of me], but those who are far know my value.”

“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  57

New Performers, Ritual Innovation, and Cultural Continuity The kolu establishes a sacred space where women, and especially cumaṅkalis, are intermediaries between the goddess and her worshippers, perform and embody the divine, appropriate her auspicious powers, and act as ritual specialists, hosts, and guests. In addition to the “regular” kolu visitors, common across Tamil Nadu during Navarāttiri season, Mrs. Selvi receives special “clients” during each of the festival’s nine evenings, who sponsor a pūjā and darśana as they approach the goddess for advice on particular problems, as I have described. These problems usually concern fertility, marriage, disease, and getting rid of evil spirits. Other guests come to donate specific dolls or sets to Mrs. Selvi’s kolu in order to fulfill a prayer or vow (Ta. vēṇṭutal) to the goddess. These are in particular wedding (Ta. kalyāṇam) sets, when wishing to marry, and what was referred to in English as “baby shower” (Ta. cīmantam; the prenatal rite of parting the hair) sets or baby Kṛṣṇa dolls, when wishing to conceive. While the majority of the Brahmin families that I visited during my field research had not heard of such votive kolu dolls, buying particular dolls for particular prayers and keeping them in one’s own kolu or donating them to others, including temple kolus, have become a very common practice specific to non-​Brahmins. Indeed, according to several doll makers in Kanchipuram, these dolls are currently among the most popular ones at the market. While some people vow to start keeping kolu themselves if their request is fulfilled, these dolls also enable people who do not keep kolu themselves to take part in the tradition. While the kolu essentially is a domestic ritual,8 it is at the same time a ritual that blurs the distinctions between the private and the public, as people open their homes and invite friends, family, and neighbors during Navarāttiri evenings, and others may also show up or join in the celebrations unannounced. In contrast, the everyday access to a home is often restricted in comparison to the public sphere of a temple. The kolu thus provides an auspicious arena for socializing—​maintaining and even developing friendships between women, which is what I believe is one of the reasons for its growing popularity. This “publicization” of the home is perhaps even

8 Kolus do in fact today move out of the domestic sphere as they have started to emerge in temples and other public spheres such as banks and schools at least since the 1990s.

58  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama more evident in the case of Mrs. Selvi, who sets herself up in the public role of a priestess,9 receiving clients who sponsor pūjās in addition to her other, regular Navarāttiri guests. As emphasized by Mrs. Selvi, the kolu, evoking the image of the colorful South-​Indian temple tower, the gopuram, transforms her home to a temporary temple. Indeed, kolu is an increasingly popular ritual practice in contemporary Tamil Nadu. While keeping a kolu in the 20th century was a hereditary practice among certain high-​caste families, especially Brahmins, more and more people, such as Mrs. Selvi’s family, have for the past couple of decades started keeping kolu, and many of them are extremely passionate and affectionate about their displays. While social aspects such as gender (kolu is by large a women’s ritual), marital status (kolu should be started after marriage), and economic status (one needs to be able to fulfill the economic requirements of buying new dolls and gifts annually) still play into the ritual’s performance, this is challenged by castes from several strata of society who are starting to keep kolu. Mrs. Selvi attributes their kolu practice to the goddess herself, but it is common to either have witnessed Brahmins’ kolus, to have witnessed other people in one’s own community who recently started keeping kolu and prospered, or, as I observed in the home of Mrs. Selvi, by donating dolls to other people’s kolus, vowing to start keeping kolu yourself if the goddess fulfills the wish. However, it should be emphasized, as exemplified by the case of Mrs. Selvi, that these new performers of kolu are not merely mimicking a higher caste ritual, but they are adjusting this ritual to their own caste-​specific background, for example by blending it with possession and prophecy.10 Evidently, the adoption of this ritual is a creative and dynamic practice rather than straightforward imitation. Elsewhere I have linked the popularity of kolu to the increased religiosity characterizing India’s urban middle class (Ilkama 2018; see also Wilson 2018).11The possession scene described above took place in such a typical middle-​class home (evident by markers of middle class such as furniture/​ goods, and the participants’ clothing). Home celebrations of kolu in this way 9 It should be emphasized again that Mrs. Selvi is married and has an income as a teacher; that is, she follows her expected life course. However, as shown by other scholars (e.g., Allocco 2013; Flueckiger 2006; Erndl 2007), pursuing the role of a medium successfully could offer a woman an alternative to marriage and provide her sustenance. 10 Other examples are the offering of meat and alcohol to the kolu common among the silk-​weaving Pattonōli community of Kanchipuram, and the more widespread practice of donating dolls for particular prayers, probably contributing to the recent growth in temple kolus. 11 Kolus also receive increasing attention in the media (for instance, popular TV channels and newspapers hold kolu competitions) and are represented online on blogs and in YouTube videos.

“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  59 serve as a negotiation of prestige and power among one’s neighbors, friends, and community, and enable the hosting families to highlight their expendable wealth through a ritual display of conspicuous consumption. The number of dolls, the number of steps in one’s kolu (while nine is the ideal number, corresponding to the nine nights, odd numbers ranging from three to eleven are common), and the gifts for visitors communicate a family’s ability to accommodate a ritual rich in its materiality. However, the cultural construct of belonging to the middle class is not defined by economic status alone but also is performed (see, e.g., Fernandes 2000), for example by the ritual practices one decides to partake in. To start the ritual practice of kolu from scratch more often than not happens on women’s initiative, and thus on their economic terms. Mrs. Selvi’s family spends 50,000–​60,000 INR ($720–​ $850) every year for their kolu, and they clearly want the fame of their kolu to spread. Therefore, they celebrate the affluence that has been given to them by the goddess Lakṣmī with an abundant display, at the same time aspiring for increasing future prosperity. Let us also consider the arrangements of the dolls: the aesthetics of kolu is particularly intriguing, as it may include social critique referring to the present, as well as glorification of the past. Kolu has the potential to neatly balance the new and the traditional, modern trends and heritage. Most women want their displays to be unique and memorable, while still fitting a common “form.” Thus, several of the popular kolu dolls and sets highlight what is regarded as traditional and Tamil, what Hancock (2001, 9) calls “heritage,” making reference to local, regional, and national pasts, and evoking nostalgia. These include elaborate rural or village tableaux, religious rituals such as processions of deities and weddings, and replicas of pilgrimage sites. Mrs. Selvi and her mother, too, had several such kolu sets in their display, including the setup of a village scene, and they had themselves fashioned a replica of the Sabrimala hill. At the same time, many women chose a more controversial theme for their kolu, or parts of their kolu (not Mrs. Selvi, though). Some of the themes I have encountered in media and online include women’s rights, organ donation, environmental issues, solar power, India’s traffic situation, terrorism, war, and corruption.12 Such themes reflect issues from contemporary media13 and voice opinions about both the present and 12 Here, kolu resembles the often controversial theme-​based paṇḍals (temporary structures built for venerating the Goddess) of the Bengali Durgā Pūjā, another regional celebration of this festival (see McDermott 2011). 13 For instance, the sale of Jayalalitha dolls (Tamil Nadu’s chief minister for over 14 years) increased rapidly after her death in 2016.

60  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama the future. Often the creators of such innovatively themed kolus enter kolu competitions hosted by various media. Through such themed kolus, women raise their voices and attempt to create awareness about issues of concern to them, including sociopolitical critique. In this way, aesthetics are a means to innovate and to reinterpret ritual, even though the ritual still is considered to stay the “same.”

Kolu, Female Ritual Agency, and Power What is religious or ritual agency, and what do we mean by power and empowerment in specific contexts exemplified by kolu? It is women, both the new performers such as Mrs. Selvi as well as the women in families who have kept kolu for generations, who shape and control the kolu tradition, ranging from ritual practices to aesthetics. As several scholars have pointed out (e.g., Pintchman 2004, 2007; Wadley 1980; Pearson 1996), women’s rituals tend to reflect and negotiate issues, concerns, and values relevant to women’s lives. This is also the case with kolu, which by and large revolves and evolves around the auspicious status of the cumaṅkali, whose status is cultivated and performed exactly through rituals such as kolu. This emphasis on cumaṅkali-​ hood, of course, does not mean that kolu is not or may not be empowering for women. While my female informants, including Mrs. Selvi, did not use the English term “empowerment,” in interviews, they frequently pointed to the importance of Navarāttiri for them as women. In particular, they would emphasize and cherish the “feminine space” of the kolu as an arena to meet, socialize, and talk among women, dressed up nicely, as an occasion to worship and sing together and to enjoy the displays. Many women also emphasized the importance of their connection to and association with the goddess who is worshipped, also in human form. The goddess is a source of power (Ta. cakti) into which women actively tap during the festival.14 Mrs. Selvi in addition speaks as the goddess, based on the authority of her life story, which connects to her recently adopted kolu practice. Importantly, these aspects are closely connected to the goddess’s benevolent powers, embodied in fertility and auspiciousness and the ideal of the cumaṅkali. Indeed, kolu is among the most significant annual rituals for many women in contemporary Tamil



14 See also Pearson (1996, 10–​11), for similar thoughts on vratas.

“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  61 Nadu, in which they ritually renew their auspiciousness and gain and enact power as cumaṅkalis. Kolu facilitates religious agency and empowerment in so-​called traditional female roles, including those performed in the domestic sphere. This might be the most important lesson to learn from looking at female agency in the context of the kolu ritual: It is important to acknowledge forms of female agency that go beyond notions of “struggle” and “resistance” against patriarchy. The term “agency” needs to be understood in a broader sense than women taking over roles that are traditionally reserved for men. If we define agency as the “ability to change the world” (Sax 2006), its connotations are to change, transform, influence, and affect how we understand “agency” as expressed and enacted by kolu, revolving and evolving around creativity and innovation. The active and creative powers of women are recognized in the Hindu tradition as śakti, shared between women who engage in ongoing and reciprocal relationships with the goddess (Allocco 2013, 102), such as the one maintained in kolu. Here, religious agency is about gaining and exercising the power to influence how things happen, and this may take many forms; from subtle to more overt, the agents oscillate from audience to main ritual performers. Agency clearly has to be defined and understood with relation to the lives and concerns of Mrs. Selvi and other female performers of this specific ritual. This means that women’s religious agency may as well contribute to the status quo regarding stereotypical gender patterns such as conforming to the cumaṅkalī ideal, prominent in Tamil Nadu, as this agency may contribute to a challenge and transformation of these patterns—​this is no contradiction.15

Conclusion The kolu doll display and connected ritual practices provide a public and “temple-​like” space, a center of power, within the home, which is controlled and shaped by women. This space provides the performers and visitors with ritual authority in association with the goddess, and it reinforces their status as auspicious married women. Mrs. Selvi, too, taps into the goddess’s source of power and achieves fame in her neighborhood, creating a space where 15 For instance, see https://​www.womens​web.in/​2016/​10/​occ​upy-​navra​tri-​chal​leng​ing-​ster​eoty​ pes-​creat​ing-​awaren​ess/​.

62  Ina Marie Lunde Ilkama fellow women are given the opportunity to deal with their personal or family problems, as her kolu provides the stage for her evening sessions as a medium. Mrs. Selvi’s kolu is an example of how new performers of a high-​caste ritual may creatively add to the ritual, including caste-​specific practices, from their own cultural resources. To take up a ritual is a dynamic process, and in this case one that is more complex than what the terms “Sanskritization” or “Brahminization” account for. In kolu, women are agents of change and continuity, as they renew and develop ritual practices as well as aesthetics, while at the same time it is considered crucial to conform to what was characterized as cultural and religious continuity and heritage. In this context, agency should be understood to encompass much more than taking over men’s roles, more so emphasizing the agentive power of creativity and innovation.

References Allocco, Amy. 2013. “From Survival to Respect. The Narrative Performances and Ritual Authority of a Female Hindu Healer.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29, no. 1: 101–​117. Erndl, Kathleen. 2007. “The Play of the Mother. Possession and Power in Hindu Women’s Possession Rituals.” In Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, edited by Tracy Pintchman, 149–​158. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fernandes, Leela. 2000. “Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 20, no. 1: 88–​104. Flueckiger, Joyce. 2006. Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hancock, Mary. 2001. “Festivity and Popular Memory in Southern India.” South Asia Research 21, no. 1: 1–​21. Humphrey, Caroline, and James Ladilaw. 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press/​Oxford University Press. Ilkama, Ina Marie Lunde. 2018. The Play of the Feminine. Navarātri in Contemporary Kanchipuram. PhD thesis, University of Oslo. Ilkama, Ina Marie Lunde. 2021. “Female Agency during Tamil Navarātri.” In Nine Nights of Power: Durgā, Dolls and Darbārs, edited by Ute Hüsken, Vasudha Narayanan, and Astrid Zotter, 165–​190. New York: SUNY Press. McDermott, Rachel Fell. 2011. Revelry, Rivalry and Longing for the Goddesses of Begal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals. New York: Colombia University Press. Pearson, Anne Mackenzie. 1996. Because It Gives Me Peace of Mind: Ritual Fasts in the Religious Lives of Hindu Women. New York: SUNY Press. Pintchman, Tracy. 2004. “Courting Krishna on the Banks of the Ganges: Gender and Power in a Hindu Women’s Ritual Tradition.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 1: 23–​32.

“This Is Not a Home, It Is a Temple”  63 Pintchman, Tracy. 2007. “Introduction.” In Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, edited by Tracy Pintchman, 149–​158. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sax, William. 2006. “Agency.” In Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, edited by Steven Engler, Kim Knott, P. Pratap Kumar, and Kocku von Stuckrad, 473–​ 481. Leiden: Brill. Wadley, Susan S. 1980. “The Paradoxical Powers of Tamil Women.” In The Powers of Tamil Women, edited by Susan S. Wadley. Syracuse, NY: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Weber, Claudia. 2010. “Prescribed Agency—​A Contradiction in Terms? Differences between the Tantric Adhikāra Concept and the Sociological Term of Agency.” In Body, Performance, Agency, and Experience, edited by Angelos Chaniotis, Silke Leopold, Henrik Schulze, Eric Venbrux, Thomas Quartier, Joanna Wojtkowiak, Jan Weinhold, and Geoffery Samuel, 59–​86. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Wilson, Nicole Alyse. 2018. “Kolus, Caste and Class: Navarātri as a Site for Ritual and Social Change in Urban South India.” In Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navarātri Festival in South Asia, edited by Caleb Simmons, Moumita Sen, and Hillary Rodrigues, 237–​256. Albany: SUNY Press.

SECTION 2

A PPROPR IATION OF MA L E SPAC E S

3 Body Politics and the Gendered Politics of Hindu Militancy Shiv Sena Women and Political Agency in Western India Tarini Bedi

Introduction Between 2005 and 2015, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with women affiliated with the Indian political party Shiv Sena (Shivaji’s Army). At the time, Shiv Sena was allied with the right-​wing politics of Hindu nationalism and with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).1 As I followed my interlocutors’ political and social interactions, I was attentive to how these women used their bodies and how they saw their bodies as sites of political communication and political agency. In particular, Shiv Sena women’s widespread use of the term “dashing” to cultivate what Wendy Harcourt (2009) calls “body politics” was striking. For Harcourt, body politics is the call to take the body seriously as both the site and the agent of politics (Aretxaga 1997; Harcourt 2009). This chapter examines how the communicative language of dashing both as speech and action resides in and is deployed by Shiv Sena women through their bodies. Through an ethnographic focus on the intersecting party politics and body politics of Shiv Sena women, I explore how women inhabit, talk about, and cultivate lived bodies and embodied agency through what they call “dashing.”2 Anthropologists have written about the connections among bodies, subjectivities, and agency for decades (Csordas 1990; Turner 1995; Wolputte

1 The state-​level electoral alliance between the two parties has since broken up, and Shiv Sena has joined an alliance with several opposition parties. 2 See also Bedi (2016).

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68  Tarini Bedi 2004). For instance, Turner’s (1995) concept of bodiliness suggests that the body is built through material and social practices and cannot be separated from questions of subjectivity and agency. What Csordas (1990) calls the “paradigm of embodiment” is the study not of the body itself but of culture and self in terms of embodiment. On gendered political subjectivities in particular, scholars argue that accounts of political subjectivity must look into how these are produced and into the vitality of the body in this process (Aretxaga 1995, 1997). This means asking how political and gendered subjects are constituted not just in the abstract but within systems of ethnic, gender, and sexual difference that are configured in local places, within local constraints and locally available imaginaries of political authority. Further, feminist approaches to conservative and religious nationalist women and to politicized femininities also move us beyond singular, ideological motivations and explore the embodied relationships women have with spaces, networks, and subcultures that surround them (Aretxaga 1997; Banerjee 2012; Blee and Creasap 2010). The vitality and volatility of dashing bodies, or what Elizabeth Grosz (1994) calls corporeal feminism, are especially important here. In this chapter, I draw from these various strands of feminist, anthropological, and corporeal approaches to women’s political agency. While I describe many instances of public behavior on the streets, I am equally interested in how women engage with other female bodies in less “public,” intimate, ritual spaces and practices. Many of these practices draw from Hindu religiosity but cannot be reduced to religiosity alone. The religious rituals I describe here are the Hindu haldi-​kumkum ceremonies. These are associated with domestic spaces but are used by Shiv Sena women as places to stake claims to political authority. By looking at the connections between public and intimate politics or body politics and party politics, I also look at the spatial practices they engender. Anthropological work connecting bodies and spatial practices see space not simply as reflection of social discourse or geographical space but as interface between actors’ strategies and social and political constraints in which they find themselves (Moore 1996; Wolputte 2004). In such understandings space is not a given but rather a shifting bodily relationship to other bodies, spaces, and geographies (Lovell 1998). Dashing, as it operates in the lives of Shiv Sena women, illuminates these complexities of body spaces (Csordas 1990; Wolputte 2004). Feminist approaches to politics across disciplines share the sensibility that the body, its materiality and its lived and spatial dimensions, are vital

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  69 to political urgencies of the contemporary world (Farquhar and Lock 2007a; Harcourt and Escobar 2005; Myers 2015). Therefore, accounts of the political mobilization of women of the right wing must consider how women inhabit and experience bodies, how essentialist categories of the body both constrain and enable women’s politics and women’s political behavior, and how women’s embodied “presence” can alter political outcomes (Aretxaga 1997). However, in cultural nationalist and religious-​nationalist movements, embodiment is tied to socially constructed ideas of male and female bodies that shape the roles of men and women in nation-​building. Nationalist projects are gendered and normalizing of male and masculine tropes of power (Bacchetta 2002; Enloe 1998). Scholars of Hindu nationalism in India argue that the prominent trope of the martial warrior has created a “masculinization” of the Hindu nationalist project (Banerjee 2012). However, rather than being erased from the Hindu nationalist project, women created spaces for themselves to negotiate culturally dominant ideas of masculinity and femininity in powerful and visible ways (Banerjee 2007; Sen 2007). This process where women take on “masculine” traits to become citizen-​warriors defending the nation is one aspect of politicized femininity (Banerjee 2007). This form of cooption operates in many articulations of Hindu-​nationalist politics. However, dashing seems to do something different for Shiv Sena women. While it often calls on religious and ethno-​historical tropes that are broadly rooted in Hindu imaginaries, it is not explicitly tied to a nationalist project to defend an imagined Hindi nation. Rather, it is tied to local problems of urban caretaking, electoral politics, and cultivation of political personas that have the capacity to act or to be agents. Undoubtedly, politicized femininity troubles politics shaped by dichotomies of gender. It is based on images of chaste and virtuous women who are expected to support and/​or be protected by male warriors. Therefore, day-​to-​day political participation in Hindutva is equated with being a warrior and measured by involvement in violence against the enemy. Here I complicate the relationship between politicized femininity and political militancy. I do so by illustrating that, in the everyday life of conservative parties, “dashing” acts as a resource that is given meaning not through the trope of a “warrior” protecting the nation, but rather through one of urban caretaking, policing, and rural patrol. This unfolds in the context of perceived expansion of women’s opportunity in electoral politics through electoral reservations for women and minorities at several levels in India’s political system. This has led political parties to recruit and court

70  Tarini Bedi women as electoral candidates. Dashing also seems to expand women’s spatial mobility and political enjoyment. Based on this, I make three main arguments. First, I argue that right-​wing political parties and right-​wing women are rarely fixed or ideologically coherent subjects. Intersections between incremental promises of power and political mobility (party politics) at the lowest levels of the political party, and associated subjective and embodied shifts that women experience as dashing (body politics) reveal less about ideological structures that guide nonliberal politics and more about motivations, pragmatics, and local forms of power that they confer on adherents. Second, while public performances of “dashing” are often expressed through things like public events and public behavior, I suggest that we must also pay attention to the body politics of “intimate” Hindu religiosity. These are events that Shiv Sena women organize that take place in what are otherwise considered “private” or domestic spaces. Such feminized events like haldi-​kumkum ceremonies which are rooted in Hindu religiosity are also integral to the building of political alliances and to production of “dashing” subjects. Third, I suggest that close attention to connections between body politics and party politics extends the scholarship on both politicized femininity and on Hindu nationalist women in India (Bacchetta 2004; Banerjee 2012; Katju 2005; Menon 2010). Finally, I conclude by arguing that a close analysis of Shiv Sena women’s dashing can illustrate how agency in Hindu cultural nationalist movements is not simply the capacity to act but the capacity to act with and through the body. This provides a more nuanced perspective of how female bodies are drawn into the Hindu nationalist project and how the dashing body shapes and grounds political subjectivity and the everyday life of building political constituencies.

Dashing as Language and Action: “Everyone Can Hear Me Coming!” On a warm February afternoon, I was eating lunch in Rajguru Nagar, on the outskirts of Pune in Western India. At the head of the table sat Bala.3 Bala previously held elected positions in the village council of her village. When I met her, senior Shiv Sena party leadership in Pune preempted the chicanery of other political parties (whom were rumored to have eyes on recruiting 3 Pseudonyms.

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  71 her)4 by appointing Bala to the coveted position of party District Chief. In a system where electoral tickets are allotted through a dense network of political favors, this appointment was critical. It meant that while Bala no longer ran for elections herself, no one in the district could gain electoral nominations in Shiv Sena without being endorsed, supported, and blessed by her. Many reiterated stories of Bala’s effectiveness as a political fixer. She was respected and dangerous or respected largely because she was dangerous. I was advised, “If you really want to see Shiv Sena’s dashing,5 you must visit Bala’s constituency.” When I finally got a hold of Bala, she insisted, “Come today. I will come to the bus-​depot on my bike to pick you up.” Convinced I had heard wrong, I blurted out—​“What did you say? You will come on your what?” Bala laughed, “My bike, my motorcycle. That is how you will recognize me. I will be the only lady in a nice sari and a bike.” As I came to know Bala better, we tore across her district on this noisy motorcycle for months. Bala was always the driver. Her sari was always pinned beautifully in all the right places, her imitation Pierre-​Cardin sunglasses always perched perfectly on her face while she loomed fearlessly over the glistening handlebars. Behind her, I clung tightly to her waist, woefully uncertain about how to position my own body. Occasionally, we had a third rider, Chandana, one of Bala’s junior party workers. Chandana was being groomed by Bala as a political candidate for future elections. Chandana made no secret of her desire to be seen by constituents as associated not just with Bala’s political clout, but with Bala’s dashing. In these cases, I rode sandwiched between both of them, trying to forget about the precarious ride by focusing on the deliberative advice from Bala to Chandana floating through the deafening roar of the bike. This bike was a hallmark of Bala’s political persona and facilitator of her physical mobility. It was also crucial to how she managed her own body. By association, it also enabled Chandana’s mobility and her own dashing embodiment. Finally admitting my fear of riding so fast on the bike, I gently asked Bala why she did not take the bus on occasion. She smiled: “On my bike, I am like Shivaji,6 like Rani [queen] of Jhansi7 on my

4 At lower-​levels of the political system, it is common to lure locally powerful cadre from other political parties. 5 When quoting directly, I write English terms used by informants when speaking in Marathi in italicized font to mark their significance. 6 Maratha warrior king. 7 Celebrated as an icon of feminine courage.

72  Tarini Bedi horse. Sometimes I take the bus, but mostly I like to take the bike. That way everyone can hear me coming. That is what makes me dashing.” My bike rides with Bala provoked me to think carefully about what Bala and other Shiv Sena women call “dashing.” For Bala, on her bike, “dashing” was a form of external performance, and it also articulated her own relationship to and observances of what her body could do. This relationship between embodied imaginaries of political effectiveness—​the noise and public visibility of “riding” in social and spatial milieus where riding is a form of dissent for women—​and dangerous and religio-​mythologically inflected dimensions of political persona, illuminate multiple existences of the publically dissenting body (Csordas 1990). For Bala, the corporeal experience of riding in the presence of her electoral constituents as well as her junior party workers reinforces her political authority. But it also seems to do something for Bala’s own sense of agency over her physicality, and her capacity for body politics (Harcourt 2009). As Bala’s example suggests, dashing has discursive and performative dimensions. Therefore, we must consider links between bodily and discursive and performative practices (Bourdieu 1977; Butler 1990b, 1993; Wolputte 2004). In this sense, anthropologists find a way out of the dualism of the body as object-​subject (Foucault 1988; Grosz 1994; Mol 2002; Mol and Law 2004). It is not simply that we have a body and that we are a body but that as part of daily practices we speak our bodies and we also do (our) bodies (Mol and Law 2004, 45) as Bala and other Shiv Sena women “do [their] dashing.” What Bala cultivates here as the body politics of dashing also resonates with what Farquhar and Lock (2007b) call “hybrid terrain” and the multiple existences of lived bodies. Lived bodies are “assemblages of practices, discourses, images, institutional arrangements, and specific places and projects” (Farquhar and Lock 2007b, 1). Insofar as dashing acts through the body, the body becomes an assemblage of political possibility. The body is what Marcel Mauss saw as the “first and most natural tool of man” (Mauss [1934] 1973: 75) and what Harcourt and Escobar (2002), drawing from feminist theorist Grosz (1994), call the “place closest in.” Therefore, the dashing body has multiple existences, or is the body multiple (Csordas 1990; Mol 2002). It was striking that women like Bala used the English “dashing” when otherwise describing their politics in Marathi. I initially thought English was for my benefit. I soon realized that Shiv Sena women regularly used these English words with each other and their constituents to describe a particular

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  73 engagement of their bodies with political and public space. I found that the term was used when the vernacular becomes incapable of elaborating embodied and linguistic demarcations between “ordinary” and “exceptional,” and between conventionally masculine and feminine terms of embodiment. Therefore, deliberate use of English is socially and politically meaningful. Undoubtedly, inflection of Indian vernaculars with English guides subjectivities and social action (Bhatt 2001; Jeffrey 2010). Fashioning public political identities is pertinent for the women here. What women call “dashing” is expressed in English but has become part of the vernacular. Dashing operates in and through different “places”—​the body or “place closest in” (Grosz 1994; Harcourt and Escobar 2002), the body of the party, public space of the city, and spatial and emotive dimensions of home. In conceptualizing body politics, Harcourt and Escobar (2002, 10) acknowledge that men also have bodily experiences; however, history and culture render their experiences with their bodies differently. The language of dashing is also invoked by male Shiv Sena party workers to describe what Hansen (2001) notes as masculinized domains of violent action in Shiv Sena. Indeed, both Hindu nationalist politics and Indian nationalism tie masculinity and embodied practices to production of modern nationhood (Alter 1992). One could argue that the language of dashing and its association with masculinity and Hindu-​nationalist militancy is a strategy for women to exercise agency but only through “gender-​supplemental” strategies (Bacchetta 2002). However, I suggest that women become subjects even when speaking in a language that conventionally excludes them. Therefore, where language fails or excludes, women seek to produce political efficacy through bodily orientations of dashing. Aretxaga, in her study of nationalist women in Ireland, argues that women disrupt dominant representations through “signifying practices” (Aretxaga 1997; Butler 1990a). They signify because they are deployed within a shared universe of meaning; they provoke a sliding of signifiers and “trigger new forms of representation and knowledge” (Aretxaga 1997, 20). Dashing exists within this shared universe of meaning. However, particular practices cultivated as dashing are animated by women themselves. Shiv Sena women do perceive opportunities for high-​level legislative power as more limited and short-​lived than those enjoyed by men, which makes dashing more imperative in anticipation of fleeting chances at formal power. Also, in a society where women’s public lives are under intensive surveillance, the body politics of dashing make it easier for women to function effectively in public if they are seen as publically dangerous. The

74  Tarini Bedi vitality and authority of danger are articulated through bodies that dissent or are exceptional in some way.

Women and the Hindu Right Shiv Sena is a political party, affiliated with Hindu-​nationalist (Hindutva) politics in Western India. Hindutva is a political agenda that calls on Hindu religious discourse in matters of governance and state affairs (Hansen 1999; Jaffrelot 2005). Hindutva invokes unity of the Hindu community and sees minorities, particularly Christians and Muslims, as outside the Hindu nation (VanderVeer 1994). The contemporary Hindu-​nationalist movement is a loose coalition of ideological and electoral units known collectively as the Sangh Parivar (Hindu Nationalist Family). The prominent ideological units are the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Self-​Service Volunteer Organization, hereby RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, hereby VHP). The national-​level Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, hereby, BJP) is the electoral arm of these ideological units. Shiv Sena has been electorally allied with the BJP in the state of Maharashtra since the late 1980s. Hindutva has mobilized women in unprecedented ways and brought large numbers of women into the public sphere often as militant, political actors (Bacchetta 2002; Menon 2010; Sahgal 2007). Like most Hindu nationalist groups, Shiv Sena has a women’s wing, called the Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi (Women’s Front). Prominence of Hindu nationalist women in the 1980s and 1990s produced rich and extensive scholarship (Menon 2010; Sarkar 1998; Sen 2007; Setalvad 1995). Because of a formal political alliance, and the fact that Shiv Sena participated in large-​scale, anti-​Muslim violence, it is difficult to separate the party from broader ideologies of the Hindutva movement. Similarly, it is assumed that the women’s wing is ideologically comparable to other women’s wings of the Sangh Parivar. I argue here that distinctions are significant. They are significant because Shiv Sena women see their public lives differently. Shiv Sena women go to great lengths to distance themselves and their public identities from other Hindu nationalist women. Much of this revolves around what other women are not: they are “not dashing,” are disconnected from local communities, and limited in their involvement and readiness to take action—​to “do dashing” on behalf of their constituents. Dashing therefore delineates different kinds of politics practiced by different

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  75 kinds of women with different bodily engagement with political constituents and political space. Dashing is therefore not an explicitly ideological project but a politically expedient one (see Figure 3.1). Most scholarship on women’s wings of Hindutva-​allied organizations reveals little about women’s desires for legislative or electoral power (Kovacs 2004). Unlike organizations such as the VHP or the RSS, which are ideological units, Shiv Sena is concerned with electoral power and with a range of formal, semi-​formal, and informal local brokerage and authority. The party cadre chooses political positions that are beneficial to this articulation of authority even if they are ideologically inconsistent. Through this, they widen political space to encourage a wider range of ordinary people (men and women) to participate in and make demands on the political process through the political party and charismatic, dashing leaders. Shiv Sena women are important both to the party’s pursuits of electoral power and local, informal authority. In terms of the former, they have become important as the Indian constitution mandates reservation of electoral seats for women at the village, district, and city levels. In terms of the latter, Shiv Sena recruits its female foot soldiers in poor urban and urbanizing neighborhoods where the formal state

Figure 3.1  Shiv Sena rally, Mumbai, 2006 (photo by Tarini Bedi).

76  Tarini Bedi does not reach. Given that women bear the brunt of urban degradation and disrepair, they are seen as effective brokers between these neighborhoods and the state. “Dashing” in this context is important for consolidating authority and presence. These multiple instantiations of authority have come together in important ways in the context of electoral reservations. Since reservations target women and lower castes, the presence of reservations produces various opportunities for political jockeying and provides women at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy with the promise that their local “dashing” may be translated into formal power. Further, despite rhetorical lip service to the female domain of the home versus the male domain of politics, Shiv Sena does not practically differentiate between male and female domains of political life. Shiv Sena women have no gender-​segregated training camps or indoctrination in the correct feminine place in the Hindu community noted in other Hindutva-​allied organizations (Bacchetta 2004; Menon 2010; Sahgal 2007). Therefore, the presence or absence of strict bodily discipline seems to mark the sense of agency that different Hindu nationalist women have over their political actions. There are undoubtedly efforts to subordinate women structurally in the party. However, absence of institutionalized or consistent discourses on “women’s place” and the fact that many women often have their eyes on the ballot box means that women are in positions to create their own “place.” Given Shiv Sena’s enormously diverse class and caste composition, women’s dashing approach is more focused on imperatives of political efficiency and street smarts than on clearly defined, normative, or respectable feminine behavior or bodily comportment. As Shiv Sena deploys a populist style of political engagement, dashing also operates as a subversion of respectable, upper-​caste politics. Populism as such valorizes the transgressive, or the “proper” way of doing politics, of proper public behavior, or of what can or “should” be publicly said (Chatterjee 2019; Ostiguy 2017).

Shiv Sena and Shifting Political Alliances in Western India Shiv Sena is named after 17th-​century Maratha warrior Shivaji and most literally translated as Shivaji’s Army. It was founded in 1966 in Bombay by former journalist and cartoonist Bal Thackeray as a populist, anti-​migrant, “sons of the soil” movement (Katzenstein 1973; Purandare 1999). The initial demand was for preferential employment opportunities for the local

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  77 Marathi-​speaking population. Through the late 1960s and 1970s, mobilization continued around demand for preferential policies for the local, Maharashtrian population, but it continued to evolve to respond to other shifts in Bombay’s economic and social landscape (Gupta 1982; Heuze-​ Brigant 1999; Lele 1995; Patel 2003). Soon after its founding, Shiv Sena got involved in city politics in municipal bodies of Bombay and the neighboring district of Thane (Hansen 1999). As it became more ambitious electorally, it expanded beyond the city to state-​level politics. This led to brokering of alliances with national political parties. Through the 1970s, Shiv Sena attempted alliances with the Congress (O), an offshoot of Indira Gandhi’s Indian National Congress, the Janata Party (People’s Party), and Congress (I) led by Indira Gandhi (Palshikar 2004a). These alliances were fraught and unstable. By 1984, Shiv Sena aligned itself electorally with the BJP. However, when both Shiv Sena candidates lost the elections, the BJP saw little electoral benefit in the alliance and the alliance disintegrated. By 1989, as BJP’s national ambitions expanded, they recognized Shiv Sena’s regional popularity in the key state of Maharashtra could be beneficial. This brought the alliance together again (Palshikar 2004a, 2004b). At this point Shiv Sena’s agenda expanded from one form of exclusionary politics to another—​from a regional, ethnic, and linguistic movement protecting rights and employment of locals against immigrants—​to exclusionary politics of BJP’s Hindu majoritarianism. This was when Shiv Sena’s support spread from Bombay to other regions of Maharashtra (Hansen 1996, 2001). The broader political landscape in Maharashtra helped strengthen this alliance; Shiv Sena and BJP fought national, state, and city elections together ever since (Palshikar 2004a). In 1995, the alliance between Shiv Sena and the BJP came to power in the state of Maharashtra. One of the first things they did was change the name of the city of Bombay to Mumbai (Hansen 2001). Since 1995 and even in the present and most recent elections in May 2019, the Shiv Sena–​BJP alliance has continued, albeit with significant disagreements between the alliance partners often leading to estrangement and breakdown of the alliance for different elections. In fact, while they have allied and fought national and state-​level elections together as allies, for civic and municipal elections they have been electoral competitors. The political scientist Suhas Palshikar (2017) has argued, quite correctly, that the Shiv Sena has had many lives, each of which has been significant in shaping not just the politics of Western India but also politics at the national level through its alliance with the BJP (Palshikar 2017). He argues that in the present, the party is in what he calls “its third

78  Tarini Bedi life.” In this third life, it has almost become a “normal” political party, trying to exploit cleavages and at the same time trying to overcome them in order to build broader coalitions locally to win elections and to become a viable political force (Palshikar 2017). However, there is broad agreement that the capacity to display public anger remains a consistent mode of political action for the members of the party. Despite alliances brokered at the highest levels of the two parties, at the party-​cadre level, the alliance was fraught with suspicion and disputes over sharing of electoral seats. Throughout my fieldwork with Shiv Sena, while most were generally resigned to the alliance, they were bitter about particular BJP members seen as political competitors rather than as allies. In 2014, serious discussions of a split over disagreements over seat sharing at all levels of the party surfaced in the media (Mishra and Chatterjee 2014; Purandare 2014). Soon after, in October 2014, the BJP/​Shiv Sena alliance split, leading both parties to contest the Maharashtra state elections independently.8 In the most recent national elections in 2019, despite contesting the elections as an alliance, the leaders of the two parties publicly attacked each other all the way until the elections. As of this writing, political jockeying continues over seat sharing in the Maharashtra state elections that will take place in late 2019. From its founding, the party has behaved as both populist movement and political party (Hansen 2001). The movement-​style ethos has meant that it also relied on a political strategy of aggression and everyday militancy. In Western India, militant politics have a long cultural history (Tahmankar 1956; Ghodke 1990; Lebra 1986; Valiani 2011). Shiv Sena draws on these cultural narratives and practices of public militancy. It has successfully combined Hindu nationalist imaginaries with aggressive politics of linguistic and regional chauvinism and a plebian, populist politics of urban frustration (Hansen 1996). This produces a range of imaginaries that Shiv Sena members inhabit bodily to craft political personas that expand personal, public authority and political constituencies. Dashing is closely tied to this plebian, maverick politics. Further, Shiv Sena does not pathologize everyday aggression, even for women, because it is able to fold violent female action into discourses of urban justice and truth. Since the party presents contradictory and flexible messages about the place of women, Shiv Sena women find many ways to engage in political strategies censured for most Indian women. 8 When BJP failed to win a majority in the 2014 state elections, the alliance reunited to form a state government, but the relationship between the parties and their leaders remains strained. In 2019, the alliance fell apart in a dramatic turn of events.

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  79

Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi (Women’s Front) While the general founding narrative of Shiv Sena is well-​known both inside and outside the party, the founding of Shiv Sena’s Mahila Aghadi is more amorphous (Sen 2007). Absence of a master narrative for Mahila Aghadi’s founding is telling, especially given the mythic nature of founding narratives of the larger Shiv Sena party. Therefore, women jostle over a place in the dominant history of the party and in its founding narratives. Most women agree that the Mahila Aghadi got an “official” name and structure around 1985 through the efforts Meena, wife of Bal Thackeray. This was also the period during which electoral reservations for women were being consolidated at various levels of India’s democratic system. It was in response to this that many political parties began to actively recruit and mobilize women. However, women clearly feel that they were politically involved with Shiv Sena’s politics long before formal organization into a women’s front. Sudha Churi was the first appointed pramukh (chief) of the Mahila Aghadi. When asked about the founding of the women’s wing, she said, “We have always been in the party, yes, we only got posts9 since Mahila Aghadi was formed. But in Shiv Sena’s life, ladies were always there, doing morchas (public political protests) and doing dashing.” Women like Churi, who have been party members since the 1960s, spoke about the Mahila Aghadi as though it were born at the same time as the larger party. A later founding story discounts what women see as their vital presence in the party’s founding and early life. Out of this ambivalence emerged various reconstructions of the Aghadi’s birth through the narratives of women who see themselves as its “original” founders (Sen 2006). Meera Rangnekar, Shiv Sena leader in Pune, said: “Whatever men are doing, women are doing; if men are breaking glasses, women are also breaking glasses; if men come forward and shout, women are also shouting and doing dashing.” But Rangnekar is also clear that Shiv Sena women are distinct from other female political figures: Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi emerged as a reaction to something. It has not evolved on its own. It evolved as part and parcel of Shiv Sena so there 9 Refers to various appointed positions in the party. Each appointed post generally has a male and female appointee.

80  Tarini Bedi was anyway no special identity, or special personality other than Shiv Sena. So when I look to feudal politics of Maharashtra in our villages and districts where women’s expectations are very different, having Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi has really changed the definition of women’s politics in Maharashtra.

I asked Rangnekar why and what it is that makes Shiv Sena women so different from women other political parties. She responded without missing a beat that it has to do with personality: I see women in other parties who talk very softly; they cannot move about and somebody will make all arrangements for them. Here we are women who are shouting, who are going here and there, putting black mud to some police officer’s face and sending them running away into the districts. Look at us. We were a cultural shock to people in Western Maharashtra. That is our dashing personality.

In this way, Shiv Sena women make themselves historically visible in the party’s early life. This flexibility of founding narratives also helps women to insist that there is no institutionalized demarcation of women’s roles or between what women can or cannot do. Most importantly, one has to pay attention to the logics of what Rangnekar calls “personality,” as personality is cultivated first and foremost in and through the body.

Performance and Credibility on the “Street” Despite evolution of Shiv Sena’s politics, Shiv Sena members’ self-​identity continues to be located in a populist, street-​style politics. This relationship of dashing bodies to the street rather than purely to the nation presents greater nuance to the extant, rich work on Hindu nationalist women and on politicized femininity that focuses mostly on upper-​caste, middle-​class women. The relationship of the latter to public space differs from that of Shiv Sena women whose body politics emerges out of their position as urban caretakers in environments of urban degradation and competition for resources. It is also connected to the complex structural realities of their lives in the city. Therefore, there is a political geography to dashing where the body and the pressures of the city intersect.

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  81 In October 2005, during the Hindu festival of Dasshera, I attended a prayer ceremony for Goddess Durga at the home of Kane, Shiv Sena leader in Mumbai. This was an all-​female affair with women, all from Shiv Sena. Introducing me to them, Kane announced, “All these ladies are ours, they are all mine, all dashing ladies in this ward are Shiv Sena’s, and they are mine.” This discursively merged boundaries between personal and political community and between individual and collective “dashing” agent. When I asked for directions to her house, Kane said, “Just get into the rickshaw, come to the temple, and then tell him to go to the house of Kane the Corporator.10 Anyone will be able to tell you. They all know me here. I am the most dashing person here.” This idea of being locally “known” without need to specify an address was common. In this case, it was particularly interesting since Kane was not still a “corporator” at the time. She had previously held a seat for one term in Mumbai’s civic body until 2001. Since then, she had resumed her job as assistant headmistress of a local primary school. What is important to Kane’s story is that she recognized the transient nature of power in the formal halls of city politics. For civic elections, electoral wards are routinely reorganized, reservations are shifted from one ward to another, and new candidates are fielded by Shiv Sena to fill electoral slots. This makes it necessary for women like Kane to continually reproduce presence, visibility, and capacity to be effective on the streets of the city. That evening’s festivities wrapped up after midnight. Other than an initial bow to the idol, everyone forgot about the goddess, and the gathering became a planning meeting for an upcoming election campaign. I left the festivities with five other women. We piled into a single auto-​rickshaw, but the driver refused to take us. Transport authorities had made it illegal to carry that many passengers. Satam, who held an elected post in the municipal corporation, shouted, “I am the Corporator. Your transport authority works for me.” Before he could retaliate, she pushed us in and jumped onto someone’s lap. “Arre tapori (hey, you good-​for-​nothing loafer) take us to the bottom of the hill,” she yelled. The driver, a much younger man, turned silent but obliged. We got to the bottom of the hill, and he stopped. “Please get off,” he said. All the women shouted at him, “Don’t you know who we are? We are Shiv Sena; we will make your life hell.” He held his ground. Satam got out and hit him in the face. The others swung their purses at his back before they jumped out and walked off without paying him. Satam then turned around,

10 Corporators are elected officials in urban civic bodies.

82  Tarini Bedi draped her hair garland (given to women to put in their hair at Hindu religious ceremonies) around the man’s neck, and walked away without looking back. Generally, garlanding is a gesture of respect. In this case, the female garland on the man’s neck was intended as gesture of emasculation; it was one of many such gestures I saw Satam perform. The women crossed the street and called out, “Let that madarchod (motherfucker) go. We can walk home without the madarchod’s help. We are dashing ladies.” Satam’s actions and declarations are illuminative. For one, here we were out in the city late at night without male escorts; Satam sought to expand her control over the city through bodily practices of dissent and emasculation. This was a common way for Satam to negotiate a difficult city by challenging what it meant to be a conforming body or a “body proper” (Farquhar and Lock 2007a). In turn, this enabled her to walk off into the night cheered by her companions who held lower party positions than she did. It was a way for Satam to consolidate efficacy in the presence of her junior party workers. For low-​level politicos like Satam, dashing operates as performative technology of power and authority over other women placed lower in the party hierarchy but on whom she relies a great deal for political support. This resonates with Dyson’s (2010) argument that the body is significant in nurturing alliances whether explicitly political or whether they are friendships. As that evening and its aftermath illustrates, for Shiv Sena women, friendships, political community, and political alliances overlap. Arguably, establishment and maintenance of friendships and other alliances make it imperative to orient the body and to accept specific “technologies” and norms that act through and are inscribed on the body (Dyson 2010; Foucault 1988).

Intimate Politics and Alliance Building While public displays of bodily dissent are vital, women of Shiv Sena regularly use several intimate forms of embodied practices that are associated with Hindu religious practice. One of these is the haldi-​kumkum ceremony. Shiv Sena women regularly host and participate in these religious rituals and everyday practices that are less visible or even “invisible.” However, these feminized, domestic rituals and less visible sites of alliance building are no less important in fulfilling political goals and in marking particular Shiv Sena woman as benefactors of political and material favors. I will focus on various instantiations of the haldi-​kumkum “events” and their spatialization in

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  83 the domestic and private spheres. Through this I will show how domestic ritual and party-​sponsored social events structured around embodied Hindu religious rituals strengthen and expand political community, political obligation, and not least, friendships among Shiv Sena women who occupy different spaces in the hierarchy of the party, and between Shiv Sena women and their constituents. The haldi11-​kumkum12 ritual is a key example of a domestic ritual that gets performed by Shiv Sena women both in public and in their homes. In public they occupy an important place in constructions of Hindu, political community. It could be argued that public, religious ritual, which often remains centered on women, is a site for innovation as much as it is a site for control over female religiosity. In the case of Shiv Sena, I found that Hindu-​Maharashtrian identities were reconstituted and reproduced in the public sphere through visual performances that drew their symbols from the larger cultural narratives that Maharashtrian domestic life and modern urban life made available. Shiv Sena women are deeply cognizant of those cultural narratives that might produce the most affect in performance. In fact, many female Shiv Sena leaders have built their political careers through “domestic” rituals that are rooted in a Maharashtrian Hindu religiosity but in their public practice provide a site for local (often personalized) political campaigns. While these public displays of religiosity are used by women to great political effect, there is no doubt that they also serve to consolidate women’s domestic and religious prowess.

Spaces of Gendered Performance: The Haldi-​kumkum The space of the haldi-​kumkum, unlike other public, political rallies where the genders compete with each other for visibility, is one that is an exclusively female domain. Haldi-​kumkum ceremonies take place starting with the Hindu festival of Sankranti on January 14 and can go on for one month following Sankranti. The haldi-​kumkum ritual was a way for women to get out of the house, visit other women, and solidify friendships while at the same time praying for the long life of their husbands. The traditional ritual 11 Turmeric powder. 12 Red vermillion used by Hindu women as a form of make-​up. Among married Hindu women this vermillion is put into the part of the hair as one of the visible symbols of marriage. Traditionally the presence or absence of this vermillion on the face and head of a Hindu woman visually marks the difference between married and unmarried women and widows.

84  Tarini Bedi involves women putting turmeric (haldi) and vermillion (kumkum) on each other’s foreheads and receiving tilgud (a sweet sesame ball) and a small gift of a household item from the hostess. Examples of some of the household items that I observed being gifted at these events were stainless-​steel glasses and tumblers, soap dishes, stirring and mixing spoons, and incense holders. While traditionally these are intimate household affairs for close friends, relatives, and neighbors, and remain so in Maharashtrian households all over the state, Shiv Sena women have co-​opted this domestic ritual and made it into a large neighborhood spectacle. Sena women were always at the visual center of the haldi-​kumkum celebrations. On the one hand, haldi-​kumkums provide “public,” feminine spaces of ritual performance. On the other hand, most female Shiv Sena leaders, in addition to hosting the large-​scale public affairs, also host smaller personal celebrations within their homes. These public and private events might take place either in homes or on streets, but they are nevertheless intertwined. Therefore, the “public” spectacle created around the domestic ritual was targeted at constituents and voters and was symbolic of a control over particular public spaces and public visibility. The household-​level celebrations were targeted at solidifying party loyalty. These less “public” instances of the ritual were significant to the production and reproduction of gendered political community and to the solidifying of political alliances and political protection. I begin here with these household-​level celebrations. I attended several celebrations at women’s homes in Mumbai, and I could not help but notice that even at these private events, the guests were almost exclusively other Shiv Sena women from surrounding neighborhoods. Sometimes, a few close neighbors with married daughters, daughters-​in-​ law, or other relatives were present. However, as the talk inevitably veered toward party politics and intrigue, the latter, non–​party members rarely stayed long. The very first haldi-​kumkum I attended was at the home of Motitai, a long-​ time Shiv Sainik and nominated leader in Mumbai’s Malad area. The gathering at Moti’s was informal but festive. Several women walked in and out of the open door to Motitai’s house and were greeted warmly by all present. As each guest walked in, Moti carried a silver plate with the haldi and kumkum containers on it, placed the haldi and kumkum on each woman’s forehead, and threw some uncooked rice over their heads. Each responded by dipping her finger into the containers and reciprocating on Moti’s forehead. By the end of the afternoon, every part of Moti’s forehead was smeared with haldi

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  85 and kumkum. For Moti, this was a symbol of how many well-​wishers she had. As she said to the gathered crowd at her home as well as later at a public event, “the messier my face gets at the haldi-​kumkum, the more auspicious and the more political support it shows I have.” Moti then presented each of us with a little brass incense holder and the customary sesame ball. I noticed that throughout the ritual, women kept their own conversations going, laughing and sharing news about the day’s activities. While some women talked about their families and the rising prices of food, the majority of the discussions were focused on party business. Mostly it was sharing how a Shiv Sena party branch chief was dealing with a particular neighborhood’s problems—​the death of someone in someone’s electoral ward, an attempted murder or assault in someone else’s, or an auto-​rickshaw accident in another’s. After witnessing similar events at other homes, I began to see that the ceremony itself was only incidental to the overall social gathering and the building and strengthening of local, political community. The ritual itself was the mediating event; the presence of other women in this ritual space seemed to provide women with many opportunities to realize their social and pious standing in the community of other women; however, an important part of the gathering was that is allowed for the swapping of stories about what is going on in the party or about who was going to be appointed to a particular position in the party. Most Shiv Sena women who attended these private rituals went to several other haldi-​kumkums hosted by other Shiv Sena women. Often a female constituent would invite a Shiv Sena leader to her home to show her allegiance to the party. I noticed that many female shakha leaders and ward and deputy ward leaders invited their junior party workers to their homes for this ceremony. After attending about twelve private ceremonies, I began to see that these were the sites around which political alliances among women were reinforced. Who was there and who was invited were deeply political statements about which leaders were aligned with each other and who they could count on for help, both electoral and otherwise, if they ever needed it. For example, there were some party leaders in the area who I never saw at any of the private events. These were also the women who were talked about as undeserving of the positions they had been given. Also, being invited to a haldi-​kumkum ceremony at the home of a key or senior Sena figure was also a statement of status in the Sena. Women would make sure to tell everyone when they had been invited by a Municipal corporator, the wife of a member of the Legislative Assembly, or by Thackeray’s late wife when she was alive.

86  Tarini Bedi Therefore, the haldi-​kumkum, which is ostensibly rooted in celebrating women as wives, was a site through which to express political will, as well as their social and religious agency. In many ways the haldi-​kumkum in this context illustrates the porous boundaries between religious and political agency. It also breaks down the spatial boundaries between what are strictly political or strictly religious spaces. Further, in many cases, while women hosted and participated in the ritual with a great deal of enjoyment, for many it was also a rebellion against the ritual’s conventionality. For example, Sarita Mohite, a former shakha pramukh in Mumbai and one who was routinely gossiped about as being too “fashionable” and too much of a maverick, organized haldi-​kumkums as a way to express her rebellion against the conventionality of the event. Sarita refused to accept that it was only married women who should be allowed to attend. That year, she invited a neighbor who was widowed. Several women chuckled about Sarita’s audacity. Sarita herself preempted any criticism and shouted out very loudly to all gathered: “I am dashing, so I can invite whoever I want. Why should it be only suhagans [married women] who share in each other’s joys and sadness or speak sweet words?13 What is her fault if she has lost her husband? I don’t know why women do this to one another. Why can’t they just share and understand each other’s troubles?” Her neighbors seemed to agree even if many of her party colleagues did not.

Domestic Rituals in “Public” While these “private events,” or feminized religiosity, were profoundly intertwined with political jockeying, haldi-​kumkums were often also sponsored by the party as public events to showcase the party’s female leaders and electoral candidates. Unlike the smaller personal celebrations that I attended at people’s homes, the public events depended on a high degree of public visibility. They were a showcase of sorts for the Sena female leaders to be seen by women in the neighborhood. These events were organized in the open spaces within slum communities, marketplaces, school playgrounds, or in and around Hindu temples.

13 The central significance of the major sweet offering in this ritual, the tilgud (sesame ball), is to ensure the speaking of sweet words and the thinking of sweet thoughts.

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  87 These public spectacles were most often replete with a stage on which key Shiv Sena women were invited to sit. The organizers in each neighborhood were generally junior local party workers who lived in the housing society or neighborhood that the event was organized in. For many of these women, being given the responsibility of hosting large public events on behalf of the party was an immense source of self-​affirmation. More than one of them admitted to this as being the first step of dashing. They also saw it as an indication of more formal political opportunities to come. Undoubtedly, the event worked both ways: an already powerful female Shiv Sena leader was hosted and given public audience by a junior party worker. The latter in turn was provided with her own public visibility and political promises from the more experienced leader that her name would be passed up the chain of command when it came to choosing electoral candidates at election time. This duality of political opportunism is what kept escalating the scale and grandeur of the haldi-​kumkum events each year. Generally, at these events the hosts provided microphones, loudspeakers, and a disc jockey. The disc jockey initially devoted some time to playing bhajans but generally soon switched over to hit Bollywood numbers. This was illustrative of a particularly Indian phenomenon where the lines between the religious and the purely entertaining are crossed quite effortlessly. Many of these public haldi-​kumkum events also had dance programs choreographed by children of the neighborhood. There was a general cultural script for these, too. For the events that I attended, the first dance was generally a koli folk dance program. This folk form that is indigenous to Maharashtra marked out a clear celebration of regional identity at the same time that its vigor and exuberance provided much joy and entertainment to audiences. The subsequent dances were generally set to popular Bollywood tunes where children and their mothers alike sang along. Once the entertainment was done with, the haldi-​kumkum event always involved speeches by Sena women to their constituents, the presentation of bouquets of flowers to all the key Sena women involved, and the felicitation of all key Sena women who attended. At several of these events, key Sena women were presented with busts of the warrior Shivaji which they held up to the photographers with a great deal of pride. These gifting ceremonies were photographed by local camera owners and become part of a particular Shiv Sainik’s album or were pinned up on the bulletin boards at various party branch offices or shakhas. When visiting a shakha for the first time, it was common practice for Sena women to bring out their haldi-​kumkum

88  Tarini Bedi albums, which become the foundation for several stories of dashing. In the context of the haldi-​kumkum, dashing was expressed largely as a form of agency reflected in the ability to take on leadership roles outside what is perceived as male gaze and male control. Further, amid the extremely well-​ executed programming and organization, the actual practice of placing the haldi and kumkum on women’s foreheads seemed to be only of tertiary concern. At most of these public events, it was given the least stage time in a two-​or three-​hour program. Therefore, while the gathering was overtly one that celebrated women as wives (and therefore consonant with patriarchal religious-​nationalist politics), the ritual surrounding the solidifying of this Hindu feminine identity was vastly overpowered by the celebration of political will, and the recognition of female constituents as critical to the electoral process. Political parties in India are all aggressively trying to expand their share in the female electorate. I heard very regularly from Shiv Sena women that it was very important to reach women in political campaigns. There was a great deal of discussion over how, if political parties can get to the gendered and domestic sphere of the “kitchen” of a household, to convince the women to vote, which could also ensure the vote of the rest of the household. Public haldi-​kumkum spectacles seemed to follow this logic of reaching out to the female electorate. By providing women with the opportunities to participate without reprimand in what are considered, routine, domestic practices otherwise conducted in domestic spaces, these public rituals consolidated political relations between constituents and their electorate and created a sense of intimacy between them. Given the spectacle that the haldi-​kumkums created, the public audiences in densely populated parts of Mumbai or Pune, stretched beyond simply the immediate surroundings in which the program took place—​women from the surrounding buildings, markets, and streets also got pulled into all the sensory aspects of the ritual. The symbolic association of the ritual with a particular Hindu moral order made it an acceptable space for female audiences to participate without reprimand. For Sena women, it allowed them to navigate a political terrain where they were ostensibly asking for votes and political support from women for the larger party. However, I observed that this mobilization, away from the gaze of the Sena male cadre, often tended to be a personal political project that engaged gender interests often at odds with what conservative rhetoric might otherwise support. Hindutva in India has engaged strategically with the liberal discourse of modern India where it is constitutionally prohibited to use religion as a

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  89 political vehicle or to incite communal passions. Hence, “if religio-​national icons are to be effectively used for political mobilization, they need to be promulgated indirectly—​at occasions other than political rallies” (Kaur 2003,155). Right-​wing religious parties invest a lot in everyday vernacular culture which is positioned as detached from the sphere of realpolitik. The haldi-​kumkum, and the fact that it most visibly focuses on a feminized, ritual sphere, is a particularly important casting of this detachment from politics. Here, even as the performers of the ritual were deeply political subjects, they were able to rhetorically deny their association with rajniti (politics) through what is cast as a uniquely Hindu-​Maharashtrian cultural performance. For the male cadre in the party, this feminized ritual and what took place there between constituents and the women leaders appeared to be politically unthreatening in ways that a more overtly “political” event might not have been. Moreover, the fact that young children regularly accompanied their mothers to these events and older children often provided dance and music entertainment gave the haldi-​kumkum a particularly familial feel. For the spectators, made up of large gatherings of women from across the dense urban neighborhoods of Mumbai, the ritual established feelings of commonality between the Sena women and the populace. It was an erasure of the abstraction of politics by forging community around common residence, devotion to a common Hindu ritual, and shared gender—​as a site at which women gain a particular capacity to assert both political power and political will.

Conclusion While dashing is a local, linguistic signifier that highlights the body and embodied experience, what is the value of exploring the relationship between right-​wing party politics and body politics more broadly? The body politics of dashing operates less as disciplinary mechanism and more as creative practice of political visibility and political transformation tied to electoral and public ambition. It reveals less about ideological or patriarchal structures that guide aggressive, right-​wing politics and more about the strategies, motivations, and local forms of agency that women produce through aggressive, embodied practices. Attention to connections between body politics and party politics illustrates how female bodies are drawn into political projects and how the dashing body shapes and grounds political subjectivity. Further, understanding agency through vernacular, linguistic innovations such as

90  Tarini Bedi dashing could also avoid the problem of trying to make sense of women’s political agency in terms of the conventional binary of feminine as distinct from masculine. It also extends beyond the individual body to the collective body of the party. Therefore, dashing as embodied practice is connected not only to unequal positions women hold vis-​à-​vis dominant men in the party but also to unequal social and political positions women in the party hold to each other, to women in other political parties, and to less powerful men. Shiv Sena women see dashing as collective political personality and collective body: it constitutes both the political party, as well as individual personas and bodies. It is also profoundly democratic since it can act through a wide range of bodies. Lastly, it is significant that junior women in the party and female constituents routinely invoke the public bodily presence of senior Shiv Sena women as inspirational examples of what public women can be. Here, the dashing body is also the “present” body. “Presence” contests assertions about “natural” femininities of non-​Western women which reestablishes stereotypes about the apolitical and nonmaterialist engagement of Eastern women with their bodies and communities. Shiv Sena women are deeply engaged with material realities of their environments, with emotional and material demands of constituents, and with how bodily practices of dashing can affect and be affected through political engagements. Therefore, dashing becomes the site at which the body becomes political instrument, force of political affect, and political subject simultaneously.

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Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  91 Banerjee, Sikata. 2012. Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Violence and Empire in India and Ireland, 1914–​2004. New York: New York University Press. Bedi, Tarini. 2016. The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India. Albany: SUNY Press. Bhatt, Rakesh M. 2001. “World Englishes.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 527–​550. Blee, Kathleen M., and Kimberly A. Creasap. 2010. “Conservative and Right-​Wing Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology 36: 269–​286. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butler, Judith. 1990a. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” In Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, edited by S. Case, 270–​282. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Butler, Judith. 1990b. Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter. London: Routledge. Chatterjee, Partha. 2019. “Populism Plus.” In The India Forum: A Journal-​Magazine on Contemporary Issues, 1–​7. Delhi, India: Vichar Trust. Csordas, Thomas J. 1990. “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology.” Ethnos 18, no. 1: 5–​47. Dyson, Jane. 2010. “Friendship in Practice: Girls Work in the Indian Himalayas.” American Ethnologist 37, no. 3: 482–​498. Enloe, Cynthia. 1998. “All the Men Are in the Militias, All the Women Are the Victims: The Politics of Masculinity and Femininity in Nationalist Wars.” In The Women and War Reader, edited by L. A. Turpin, 50–​62. New York: New York University Press. Farquhar, Judith, and Margaret Lock, eds. 2007a. Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Farquhar, Judith, and Margaret Lock, eds. 2007b. “Introduction.” In Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, edited by J. Farquhar and M. Lock, 1–​18. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1988. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technologies of the Self, edited by L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton, 16–​49. London: Tavistock. Ghodke, H. M. 1990. Revolutionary Nationalism in Western India. New Delhi: Classical Publishing. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gupta, Dipankar. 1982. Nativism in a Metropolis: The Shiv Sena in Bombay. New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1996. “The Vernacularisation of Hindutva: The BJP and Shiv Sena in Rural Maharashtra.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 30, no. 2: 177–​214. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001. Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harcourt, Wendy. 2009. Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development. London: Zed Books. Harcourt, Wendy, and Arturo Escobar. 2002. “Women and the Politics of Place.” Development 45, no. 1: 7–​13. Harcourt, Wendy, and Arturo Escobar, eds. 2005. Women and the Politics of Place. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.

92  Tarini Bedi Heuze-​Brigant, Gerard. 1999. “Populism and the Workers Movement: Shiv Sena and Labour in Mumbai.” South Asia 22, no. 2: 119–​148. Jaffrelot, Christophe, ed. 2005. The Sangh Parivar: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jeffrey, Craig. 2010. Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Katju, Manjari. 2005. The Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini. In The Sangh Parivar: A Reader, edited by C. Jaffrelot, 335–​341. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Katzenstein, Mary Fainsod. 1973. “Origins of Nativism: The Emergence of the Shiv Sena in Bombay.” Asian Survey 13, no. 4: 386–​399. Kaur, Raminder. 2003. Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism: Public Uses of Religion in Western India. Delhi: Permanent Black. Kovacs, Anja. 2004. “You Don’t Understand, We Are at War! Refashioning Durga in the Service of Hindu Nationalism.” Contemporary South Asia 13, no. 4: 373–​388. Lebra, Joyce C. 1986. The Rani of Jhansi: A Study in Female Heroism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Lele, Jayant K. 1995. “Saffronization of the Shiv Sena: The Political Economy of City, State and Nation.” In Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, edited by S. Patel and A. Thorner, 185–​212. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Lovell, L., ed. 1998. Locality and Belonging. London: Routledge. Menon, Kalyani Devaki. 2010. Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mishra, Ambarish, and Mohua Chatterjee. 2014. “BJP Prepares for Life after Sena, but Leaves Door Open.” Times of India. Mumbai, India. Mol, Annemarie. 2002. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. London: Duke University Press. Mol, Annemarie, and John Law. 2004. “Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycemia.” Body and Society 10, no. 2–​3: 43–​62. Moore, Henrietta L. 1996. Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. New York: Guilford. Myers, Natasha. 2015. Models, Modelers and Excitable Matter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ostiguy, Pierre. 2017. “Populism: A Socio-​Cultural Approach.” In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by C. R. Kaltwasser, P. Taggart, P. O. Espejo, and P. Ostiguy, 1–​26. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Palshikar, Suhas. 2004a. “Shiv Sena: A Tiger with Many Faces?” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 14–​15: 1497–​1507. Palshikar, Suhas. 2004b. “Revisting State Level Parties.” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 14–​15: 1477–​1479. Palshikar, Suhas. 2017. “Third Life of the Shiv Sena: Notorious Becomes ‘Normal’.” Economic and Political Weekly 52, no. 48: 33–​36. Patel, Sujata. 2003. “Bombay and Mumbai: Identities, Politics, and Populism.” In Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition, edited by S. Patel and J. Masselos, 3–​30. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Purandare, Vaibhav. 1999. The Sena Story. Mumbai: Business Publications. Purandare, Vaibhav. 2014. “The First Time the Sena-​BJP Split and Sharad Pawar Stepped in.” The Times of India. Mumbai, India.

Body Politics and Hindu Militancy  93 Sahgal, Meera. 2007. “Manufacturing a Feminized Siege Mentality: Hindu Nationalist Paramilitary Camps for Women in India.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36, no. 2: 165–​183. Sarkar, Tanika. 1998. “Woman, Community, and Nation: A Historical Trajectory for Hindu Identity Politics.” In Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, edited by P. Jeffrey and A. Basu, 89–​104. London: Routledge. Sen, Atreyee. 2006. “Hindu Women ‘Soldiers’ Remember the Birth of Female Militancy.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 13, no. 1: 1–​35. Sen, Atreyee. 2007. Shiv Sena Women: Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Setalvad, Teesta. 1995. “The Woman Shiv Sainik and Her Sister Swayamsevika.” In Women and Right-​Wing Movements: Indian Experiences, edited by T. Sarkar and U. Butalia, 233–​244. London: Zed Books. Tahmankar, D. V. 1956. Lokamanya Tilak, Father of Indian Unrest and Maker of Modern India. London: J. Murray. Turner, Terence. 1995. “Social Body and Embodied Subject: Bodiliness, Subjecitivity, and Sociality among the Kayapo.” Cultural Anthropology 10, no. 2: 143–​170. Valiani, Arafaat. 2011. Militant Publics in India: Physical Culture and Violence in the Making of a Modern Polity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. VanderVeer, Peter. 1994. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wolputte, Steven Van. 2004. “Hang on To Yourself: Of Bodies, Embodiment and Selves.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 251–​269.

4 Buddhist “Radicalism” A Vehicle for Female Empowerment?* Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund

The Rise of Ma Ba Tha Myanmar’s economic capital, Yangon, is a rapidly developing metropolis filled with looming skyscrapers and shopping malls. Still, the country’s long tradition of Theravada Buddhism is immanent in the everyday activities, exchanges, and dispositions of its more than 7 million residents. As such, when a cosmopolitan Burmese woman in her late 20s declares in English, “I am a feminist, that is why I joined Ma Ba Tha,” it speaks to the inherent difficulty of accurately labeling Myanmar’s largest Buddhist “radical” movement in the context of Myanmar’s now-​embattled political and economic liberalizing project. Ma Ba Tha, a Burmese acronym for a sprawling, nation-​wide organization A-​Myo Batha Saun Shauk-​ye Apwe, translates to English (somewhat problematically) as “the Committee for the Protection for Race/​Nation and Religion.”1 As this chapter will discuss, women’s participation in Ma Ba Tha in some senses reflects Myanmar’s dichotomous modernity, mirroring the ways in which religious cosmology comes to shape the ethical register of self-​making in the context of rapid change and uncertainty. While the intersection of Buddhism, state politics, nationalism, and violence is by now a well-​established field, few, if any, studies are concerned with *This

chapter was written prior to the military coup on February 1, 2021. The coup brought about massive resistance against military rule, and Buddhist women—​including those active in “radical movements” such as Ma Ba Tha—​have actively opposed the coup by participating in street protests, or by participating in Buddhist rituals such as the banging of pots to ward off evil (read: the military). Ma Ba Tha itself is divided over the issue, and while leading monks such as Ven. Sithagu Sayadaw explicitly engage with the military, other leading Ma Ba Tha monks strongly oppose the military junta and its State Administration Council (SAC). For more on religious responses to the military coup in Myanmar, see Frydenlund et al. (2021). 1 Due to a state ruling on May 23, 2017, regarding its name, Ma Ba Tha changed its name into the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation, stressing its philanthropic profile.

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Buddhist “Radicalism”  95 gender, or the role of women in contemporary “radical” movements. This analytical blind spot is a function of well-​known biases in the academy, but it is to be noted that gender issues have not been high on Buddhist monastic political agendas, and that female participants have been less visible than their male counterparts in the public domain. However, since 2012, in Myanmar,2 as well as in Sri Lanka, Buddhist “radical” movements can be differentiated from their historical precursors, at least in part, by their overwhelming concern with gender, sexuality, and reproduction. While major scholarly attention has been paid to groups like Ma Ba Tha in Myanmar and Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka, particularly at their points of articulation with electoral politics, intercommunal violence and anti-​ Muslim sentiments, the gendered aspects of their rhetoric, and the participation of women, has yet to be systematically explored. As we will argue, the Ma Ba Tha movement is primarily concerned with asserting a particular vision of the moral-​social “nation,” one which transcends party politics and even the cultural traditions that otherwise limit women’s participation in conversations about the future and their place within it. As such, Ma Ba Tha serves as a vehicle through which Myanmar women are able to transform ideas about their value and the value of attachment labor (the care women are expected to provide and which is often seen as limiting their capacity for spiritual attainment) in a field otherwise hierarchically encompassed by ideals of individual autonomy that generally preclude women on account of the numerous sociomoral obligations they have to others.3 Building on this material, and with reference to similar, but notably different developments in Sri Lanka, this chapter will examine the organization’s discursive construction of gender and the role of women within it. The chapter draws on two periods of fieldwork, conducted by the authors, in an attempt to lay the foundations of a theoretical groundwork for future scholarship on the role of women in Buddhist “radicalism.” The first, undertaken by Frydenlund between 2014 and 2016, explored Ma Ba Tha’s legal activism and the passage of laws in Myanmar to “protect race and religion.”4 The second, conducted by McKay between 2016 and 2019, closely followed lay 2 The country is referred to as Burma in colonial times and until 1989 when the military changed its name to Myanmar. 3 Keeler 2018. 4 The laws referred to are Control of Population and Health Care Law No 28/​2015; the Religious Conversion Law (Conversion Law) No 48/​2015; the Myanmar Buddhist Women Special Marriage Law No 50/​2015 (Marriage Law); the Monogamy Law No 54/​2015. For analysis of the laws, see Frydenlund (2017, 2018).

96  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund and ordained female members of the Ma Ba Tha movement in an attempt to better understand their motives and aims.5 Therefore, while the empirical underpinnings of this analysis were gathered by two individual scholars over the course of six years—​and based on different research questions—​we see the material as complementary. While Frydenlund focuses on gendered ideologies in the four “race and religion laws,” McKay explores why so many women seem to support Ma Ba Tha, and the ideology underpinning the laws, despite Ma Ba Tha’s reputation, among national, as well as international, human rights and women’s groups, for espousing beliefs that are seemingly detrimental to women’s interests.

Current Formations of Buddhist Radicalism The overall aim of Ma Ba Tha is to protect Buddhism, or more accurately, the sāsana.6 According to the minutes from the Ma Ba Tha inaugural meeting in 2013, Ma Ba Tha’s vision is threefold: (a) to raise public awareness about the need for racial protection and the dangers of religious conflicts, (b) to establish peaceful coexistence among different religions in Myanmar through “unity and maintenance of discipline,” and (c) to safeguard “race and religion within a legal framework.”7 The organization defines its activities in support of these goals along four pillars: secular education, religious education, health care (by which they mean financial support to people in hospital), and disaster relief. They are also very active in legal aid, particularly in regard to sexual and labor abuses cases, in legal activism to get the four “race and religion laws” passed, and in pressuring political actors to ensure the special place of Buddhism in Myanmar public life. The Ma Ba Tha organization is headquartered in Yangon, but it has prominent chapters across the country. The most notable of these regional chapters is in Mandalay, where a monk named U Wirathu has made innumerable headlines for his violent anti-​Muslim rhetoric. The movement

5 Walton, McKay, and Khin Mar Mar Kyi 2015; McKay and Win 2018. 6 The Pali word sāsana (in Burmese: thāthana) refers to the teachings, practices, and institutions established by a particular buddha. It is understood to exist for a particular period of time before it disappears altogether. 7 Ma Ba Tha Minutes. 2013. Included in the Draft Bill Called “Myanmar Women’s Special Marriage Law (Bill).” Translated from the Burmese. On file with author.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  97 includes both lay and ordained members, which has made it difficult for the Buddhist high council (the Ma Ha Na) to exercise authority over its member monks. Under Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) government, Ma Ba Tha faced increasing pressure, which eventually forced them to change their name to “the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation.” NLD party members in positions of authority across the country regularly denied Ma Ba Tha requests for permits to organize their religious and social events, which limited their public visibility dramatically over time. Ma Ba Tha gained a reputation for racist, inflammatory speech particularly against the Rohingya Muslims during the Rohingya crisis in 2017. In an attempt to prevent the spread of hate speech through their platform, Facebook decided in 2018 to blacklist Ma Ba Tha and to exclude several of the most prominent members, which further handicapped Ma Ba Tha’s mobilization capacities.8 Still, support for Ma Ba Tha has persisted in part because it is largely a grassroots movement. Tiny, local chapters form out of interest and run on volunteer labor. Members pay monthly dues to facilitate a variety of activities, including regular publications. Ma Ba Tha appeals to a broad range of people through its engagement in a wide range of “good causes” central to the group’s volunteer social work agenda.9 Ma Ba Tha women are particularly involved in this volunteer social work (referred to in Myanmar as parahita) and play an important role as organizers of food offerings to monks (dāna), or Buddhist Sunday school (known locally as dhamma school) teaching for children, and fundraising for or disaster relief work. As one Ma Ba Tha woman in her late 50s said of her role in the movement: I saw what was happening in Rakhine and I was so sad. I thought, this cannot be! How can our Myanmar people suffer like this? so I decided I would do something, especially for the children. Children need to go to school, for the development of our country. But in Rakhine, many villages are far away from any school, and so the children cannot study. . . . As you see [gestures around her living room] I am comfortable, but I am not wealthy enough to do it alone. I wondered how I could raise the money . . . I went [to New Masoeyin] with my mother for dhamma talks and so I knew the monastery

8 https://​fron​tier​myan​mar.net/​en/​faceb​ook-​bla​ckli​sts-​myan​mar-​hardl​ine-​buddh​ist-​group. 9 McKay and Horsey 2017.

98  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund well and also the monks. So, I went there and said what I wanted to do and they agreed to help me . . . then [I]‌was not Ma Ba Tha, but already Ma Ba Tha mindset. I organized three days of dhamma talks in order to raise funds. In the end, I raised 80 lakh [nearly US $6,000] . . .that is Ma Ba Tha! All of the people love and support them, people always want to donate. But we don’t just give money, we give heart.10

After raising the funds, this same Ma Ba Tha member, a laywoman with limited formal education, traveled herself to build a school in a remote village in northern Rakhine. It was the furthest she had ever been from home, and her willingness to undertake the journey speaks to how the desire to perform parahita work motivates women who may otherwise demur on account of the risks such travel entails. An unmarried woman, traveling alone to conflict-​affected Rakhine state, could reasonably expect to face some degree of social backlash, to say nothing of actual physical threat. Ma Ba Tha can thus be seen as mobilizing women by giving them access to broader lay and monastic networks and by providing them with a religious justification that helps to protect them from social censure. Exactly how women are in engaged in Ma Ba Tha parahita work varies. While some Ma Ba Tha chapters have official women’s groups, for instance, in Mandalay, others merely collaborate with existing women’s organizations that share their ideology, or with whom key member monks share personal connections. In Mandalay, women were asked to complete an official application form, which served to gather participants’ contact details and professionalize the proceedings. The group is remarkably nonhierarchical but benefits from the fact its leadership also serves in Mandalay Ma Ba Tha’s central organizing committee. At the border between Kayin and Mon states, Ma Ba Tha women’s activities were facilitated by a preexisting organization of approximately 500 women, which supported the teaching of Buddhist scripture in monasteries. The group enjoyed a close relationship with Ma Ba Tha’s Kayin state chairman Zwekabin Sayadaw U Kawidaza. As the senior monk increasingly framed his work in the community as being for Ma Ba Tha, the women’s group followed suit while also retaining their independence and original mission.



10 McKay, personal interview, January 2017, translated from Burmese to English.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  99

Articulating “Religion” and “Politics” In contrast to India or Sri Lanka, the 2008 Myanmar Constitution bars all members of religious orders from formal politics. This means that monks and nuns are deprived of basic political rights, including the right to vote. Also, electoral laws clearly forbid the use of religion for political purposes, however defined.11 In spite of such legal attempts at separating “religion” from “politics,” Ma Ba Tha monks engaged in numerous rallies and public engagements during the 2015 election season, in which members spoke strenuously about the need for political leadership capable and willing to protect and promote the special place of Buddhism in Myanmar. Ma Ba Tha was cautious not to make a formal statement in support of one party or another, but a number of individual members were willing to do so. Ma Ba Tha carefully responded to reports of their political leanings by asserting their official neutrality. The decentralized nature of the organization helped to shield Ma Ba Tha from most official sanction. The friendly relations some of Ma Ba Tha’s highest ranking members enjoyed with key figures in the Myanmar military-​backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) also mitigated the risk of Ma Ba Tha’s being labeled an unlawful association. The challenge of classifying Ma Ba Tha as “Buddhist nationalism” stems, at least in part, from the insufficiency of direct translation. In Burmese, the word a-​myo can be used in conversations concerning “race” but also “nation,” in the sense of a collective identity project as opposed to a unit of governance. Furthermore, the shifting and contextual meanings of the term implies space for interpretation and negotiation about who belongs to the nation, or the “national races.”12 Sustained focus on Ma Ba Tha leaders’ high politics and ideological statements has produced numerous analyses that fail to sufficiently account for the full spectrum of motivations driving members’ participation, tending instead to overemphasize the close relationship some Ma Ba Tha leaders cultivate with members of the USDP. These ties, many of which are maintained through ritual interactions and religious donations, are significant; they represent the military party’s attempt to replicate kingly patterns of state-​ Sangha13 reciprocal relations in which political leaders provide materially for 11 For more on shifting formations between the “secular” and “religion” in Burma/​Myanmar, see Frydenlund (2019b). 12 The Myanmar state codifies and recognizes 135 “national races,” excluding the Rohingya and many others from this list and thus access to citizenship. 13 Sangha in Myanmar is used exclusively in reference to fully ordained male monks.

100  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund the Sangha, who in turn bestow spiritual legitimacy to their bids for power. As such, the pattern of engagement between Ma Ba Tha’s monastic leadership and the USDP led many to speculate that Ma Ba Tha was created by the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) in an attempt to prevent Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), from coming to power. However, Ma Ba Tha’s rank-​and-​file members, on the whole, are less interested in bolstering the legitimacy of the Myanmar state, as it has been envisioned by the Myanmar military, and more concerned with building and promoting a multiethnic, pan-​Theravada identity movement that centers and looks after Myanmar Buddhists and their way of life. To date, prominent Ma Ba Tha activists have seen the USDP as the party most likely to foster the legal and political conditions in which such a movement could thrive, but their support for the military and its party is not absolute. Moreover, Ma Ba Tha members often differentiate between the sort of politics in which parties engage (nain ngan ye) and the labors Ma Ba Tha members undertake in protecting and promoting Buddhist sociomoral values across the country. When Ma Ba Tha’s work is materialized into disaster relief or education, for instance, it is most often known as “volunteer social work” (parahita); where it is concerned with legal issues and political advocacy, members generally discuss their activities as though they are a function of propagating ideas (a-​tway a-​hkaw), beliefs (a-​yu a-​hsa), and culture (lu mu yay).14 For instance, as one Ma Ba Tha laywoman in her 70s put it: The idea that Ma Ba Tha is a party-​like organization disturbs our work. Ma Ba Tha aren’t a party. Political parties are for their own interests, not for their communities. . . . I don’t like being called a politician. The problem is that many people misunderstand. Politics touches every person in the country.15

As such, while it is of course possible to explore Ma Ba Tha through the lens provided by its engagement with party politics, to do so risks ascribing a political consciousness to the group that is at odds with the ways in which many members understand their objectives. Rather, emic perspectives are strikingly similar to those produced by two notable waves of Buddhist revivalism,

14 Walton 2017, 65.

15 McKay, personal interview, February 2017, translated from Burmese to English.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  101 which swept across Myanmar during the colonial period, and following independence.

Historical Background: Gendered Ideologies in Colonial Buddhist Nationalism At key points in Myanmar history, women have been seen as embodiments of the national community. According to Tharaphi Than, in the 1920s and 1930s, Burmese print media depicted the lifestyles of women as “determining the fate of the country.”16 Women, Than argues, were “held accountable for disseminating a ‘proper’ image of the nation.”17 The anti-​colonial movement, which portrayed women’s behavior as critical to its success, regularly questioned women’s loyalty and moral conduct through public criticism of women wearing Western clothing styles and their marriages to foreigners.18 Women were also frequently held responsible for the nation’s problems during Burma’s democratic era after independence. As Than explains, “the public often found it easier to blame women for their ‘unpatriotic’ behav­ ior than to pressurize the government to take action . . . Burmese women married to foreigners were most severely criticized. The issue of marriage was greatly politicized, and women marrying foreigners began to be seen as a focus of feminine vice and as betraying their race, their religion and the state.”19 Women, in this sense, were depicted as a potential point of failure in need of vigilant policing. While this directed attention to the critical role women played in tending to the health and prosperity of the nation, it did so in a way that was in many ways retrogressively prescriptive. Still, the emphasis on women’s behavior had the effect of highlighting the importance of dhamma education to moral fortitude. Under the Burmese monarchy, Buddhist women’s access to formal religious education was limited and the community of nuns was very small. Myanmar women thus parlayed the gendered rhetoric of the anti-​colonial movement in such a way as to expand their access to the dhamma.20 This increased participation would set the scene for a second religious revival 16 Than 2014, 112. 17 Than 2014, 112. 18 Chie 2011. 19 Chie 2011, 116–​117. 20 Turner (2014) finds a similar pattern of dhamma democratization through Burmese religious revivalism in the beginning of the 20th century.

102  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund movement in Myanmar, the mass lay meditation movement, the popular success of which was in many ways due to the organizational labors provided by Buddhist laywomen.21 The fixation with women’s moral comportment and reproduction vis-​à-​vis state-​making projects is recurrent; for instance, within the nationalist awakening in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), women were portrayed in literature and theater as mothers, or as noble.22 In the context of the Hindutva movement in India, this fixation on the role of women as symbolic mothers of and to the nation has produced analyses that cast the movement as masculinist martial fantasy within which an idealized womanhood circulates as helpful foil.23 In Buddhist Myanmar and Sri Lanka, by contrast, idealized masculinity is monastic as well as martial. Still, the role of the military in postcolonial Burma/​Myanmar and its martial masculine ideology cannot be underestimated. During the years of the military dictatorship, the regime utilized official women’s organizations to mobilize women using traditional gender norms and ideas of the nation. Similarly, ethnic and student-​based resistance organizations structured the inclusion of women in opposition activities in line with conservative interpretations of gender roles.24 Military rule then—​as well as armed ethnic resistance—​fostered traditional gender roles in postcolonial Myanmar in more profound ways than neighboring countries such as India, Thailand, or Sri Lanka.25 In many regards, Ma Ba Tha (as well as numerous other Buddhist activist groups) fit the classic pattern of neo-​traditionalism, here defined as the wish to work against institutional differentiation brought about by colonial rule, modernity, and secularization. Being primarily concerned with ensuring cultural cohesion in the midst of Myanmar’s economic and political liberalizing project, Ma Ba Tha is at least in some ways following in the path of prior Buddhist revivals. Attending to the revivalism at the heart of Ma Ba Tha makes visible similarities between the contemporary movement and its colonial-​era precursors, but also suggests that there is a meaningful difference between Ma Ba Tha’s “politics” and the party politics of the Myanmar government. This difference is very often elided by the continued assertion 21 Jordt 2007. 22 De Mel 2001. 23 Banerjee 2010. 24 Hedstrom 2015. 25 Although it should be noted that among ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) women’s participation as rank-​and-​file members and leaders is especially pronounced.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  103 that Ma Ba Tha is ultimately a creation of the Myanmar military party, a purely instrumental use of religion as a means of justifying the kind of nationalism upon which the military has operated since it came to power. Rather, it resembles other Buddhist protectionist movements, which thrive in times of rapid social, political change and subsequent ontological insecurity.

Tropes of Risk: Deracination and Decline While Buddhist revivalism has a historical legacy going back to the British colonial era, such groups have moved from the margins to the center of public life in postwar Sri Lanka and in transitional Myanmar. The aim of groups like Ma Ba Tha and (for Sri Lanka) Bodu Bala Sena is to promote Buddhist interests and Buddhist people from the perceived threat of Islam, in particular, as changing global demographics, and the expected worldwide increase in the Muslim population is perceived as an existential threat to Buddhism.26 Anti-​Chinese sentiment, expressed in terms of amoral secularism, labor abuses, and resource extraction, are also central to Ma Ba Tha’s discourses. Protection of Buddhism against imminent external or internal threats is a recurrent theme in Buddhist history, but the nature of such perceived threats has obviously changed over time. The current collective fears are tied to larger concerns about open borders, “Islamization” of Myanmar, and the possible eradication of Buddhism. To Ma Ba Tha, threats to Buddhism are posed by Islam in general and “non-​nationals” in particular, referring to the Rohingya, whom they consider to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Concerns about “non-​nationals” are clearly articulated in various Ma Ba Tha documents, for example in their “10-​point-​declaration” made public in Mandalay at a mass gathering of monks in 2014. Several of the specific concerns noted in the declaration related directly to the 1982 Citizenship Law and the legal status of the Rohingya minority.27 Such local apprehensions are also interwoven with wider regional, or even global, anxieties about the fate of Buddhism. Ma Ba Tha supporters often point to Malaysia, Southern Thailand, Indonesia, and even Afghanistan as examples of formerly Buddhist

26 Anti-​Muslim sentiments are widespread in Myanmar; see Schissler, Walton, and Phyu Phyu Thi 2017. 27 “10-​Point Declaration” (in Burmese) dated January 15, 2014. On file with author.

104  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund states that were “overrun” by Islam, with the result being the virtual disappearance of Buddhism. Through fears of “Islamization,” many Myanmar Buddhists come to understand Islam as a threat to the relationships which constitute and sustain their cultural cosmology. For instance, Ma Ba Tha members often speak about the existing difficulty of funding monasteries; with fewer Buddhists, these institutions and the services they provide Buddhist communities might collapse.28 Ma Ba Tha members are also deeply concerned with Muslim legal practices (Sharia law) and what the imposition of these practices would mean for existing social and juridical norms, which are often predicated upon Buddhist moral teachings. As such, far from being solely concerned with party politics, soteriological, or eschatological issues, Ma Ba Tha functions as a discursive project, one which uses the risk posed by an imagined, often Muslim “other” to define and police the boundaries and content of social belonging. Speaking about threats (in the case of Ma Ba Tha, about the threat of Muslim birth rates, or about interreligious marriage) implies the identification of vulnerabilities. In so doing, that which is vulnerable is made valuable and worthy of protection and promotion. For women, this creates a powerful opportunity to marshal the vulnerability often considered inherent to their gender so as to transform ideas about their place and value in society.

Buddhist Female Agency in Myanmar Laywomen in Myanmar enjoy considerable economic and legal rights: women are able to own land, are legally guaranteed equal inheritance, participate actively in business and trade, often as business owners and entrepreneurs, and have been granted the right to vote alongside men. Despite this, their position within society is still very much secondary to that of men. Women are underrepresented in the national parliament, across state governments, and in the upper echelons of business. Domestic abuse is a scourge, as is street and online harassment and sexual violence. Thus, recent literature demonstrates convincingly that despite persistent reference to the “traditional high status of women” in Myanmar,29 women in fact hold



28 Walton and Hayward 2014; Gravers 2005. See also Frydenlund and Jerryson 2020. 29 Ikeya 2011.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  105 secondary status in all spheres of life, including ritual status, as well as legal rights or economic influence.30

The Bhikkhunī Controversy in Myanmar As other Theravada-​majority states, Myanmar does not allow full ordination for women (bhikkhunī-​ordination). Women who live monastic lives are referred to as thilashin, meaning something akin to “masters of virtue.” The role of these women within the Sangha is ambiguous. As Hiroko Kawanami notes: Tradition tells us that the lineage of bhikkhunī ordination has become extinct and there exists no bhikkhunī who can confer ordination on contemporary Buddhist nuns. Therefore, present-​day thilashin are not bhikkhunī. The pseudo-​ordination ceremony that initiates laywomen into the Order is considered a ritual that provides them with a religious status no more than that of pious laywomen who abide by additional sabbatical vows.31

Despite their lack of ordination, however, they do not fit into the category of upāsikā—​Buddhist laywomen—​who also take certain vows, because they are dependent on the laity for food and donations.32 Like in other Theravada countries such as Thailand and Sri Lanka, there have been several attempts to revive the bhikkhunī order, but the very particular political context of Myanmar—​marked by military rule, nationalist paranoia, and suspicion of the outside world—​has influenced the bhikkhunī ordination debate. In fact, the Burmese authorities claim bhikkhunī revivalism is “strongly influenced by alien ideas and different cultural values, which are suspected to be instigated either by Mahayana Buddhists or Western feminists who do not, in their view, understand the importance of their historical monastic legacy.”33 In 2004, the highest monastic authority in Myanmar, the so-​called Ma Ha Na (Sangha Maha Nayaka Council), issued an order stating that any movement to revive the bhikkhunī lineage 30 Khin Mar Mar Kyi 2004; Harriden 2012; Jordt 2007; McKay and Win 2018. 31 Kawanami 2000, 86. 32 Other religious roles for Buddhists women in Myanmar is the ayaw-​gi (yogin). Most Burmese women will spend a certain time in meditations centers. They are clad in brown and follow eight precepts, but they do not shave their heads. They are not entitled to lay donations and are materially self-​sufficient. 33 Kawanami 2007, 232.

106  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund went against the historical tradition of Burmese Buddhism, which brought a close to the discussion. This was again confirmed during a 2005 trial in the Buddhist monastic court (vinacchaya) run by the Ma Ha Na. A thilashin called Saccavadi, who had ordained as a bhikkhunī in Sri Lanka,34 accepted (after much pressure) the court’s refusal of full ordination for women as bhikkhunī but refused to apologize to the court for her actions. For the latter offense she was sentenced to five years in prison (but released after 76 days). The Ma Ha Na’s conservative stance reflects their traditional position in relation to the male Sangha, in which nuns look to the authority of senior monks for guidance. Thilashin regard the authority of male monks as imperative in their religious life, and acknowledging it forms the foundation of their religious orientation. The present system allows them to study sacred scriptures, including the vinaya, and many nuns have pursued a scholastic career in order to become more worthy of respect in the eyes of their lay supporters. Kawanami argues that the nuns’ positioning in the midst of the male hierarchy indicates a pragmatic strategy by which they gain a certain level of recognition, while simultaneously remain a nonthreatening force to male hegemony.35

The Role of Laywomen Ideas about the inherent pollution of women’s bodies remain common place. Men’s need to protect their Hpoun (charismatic power) from the polluting force of women’s bodies contributes to a general habitus in which women must navigate men’s movements and physical comfort, often to their own detriment. It is also to be noted that the Burmese term for “monk,” pongyi, is derived from the very term hpon, the charismatic power that only men can possess through past karmic retribution. While many women do derive a sense of accomplishment and happiness from domestic roles and labors, navigating the cultural expectations that circumscribe their desires is a source of frustration for many others. A common joke within Myanmar pivots on the similarity of the Burmese words for “house” (ain) and “prison” (htaung) with the verb for “to marry” 34 Formally, the state of Sri Lanka does not recognize bhikkhunī ordination, but there are many people in Sri Lanka who, de facto, accept the legitimacy of bhikkhunī ordination even if it is not recognized de jure. 35 Kawanami 2007, 232.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  107 (ain htaung). Indeed, the domestic duties that so often preoccupy women’s attentions can detract from the time they might otherwise spend in meditation or studying the dhamma. As such, both laywomen and thilashin confront a complex and historically embedded system of social expectations that dictate a variety of time and energy consuming social obligations. For many if not most Myanmar women, opportunities to participate in meaningful conversations about these expectations are limited. That Ma Ba Tha brings the issue of women’s “rights” to the fore in their rhetoric thus presents a unique opportunity.

Ma Ba Tha’s Legal Activism and the Protection of Women Groups like Ma Ba Tha and Bodu Bala Sena are particularly concerned with sexuality and reproduction. Following familiar “Islamophobic” tropes in Europe and India, Muslim male sexuality is portrayed as aggressive and uncontrollable. Muslim men, devout or otherwise, are often accused of raping Buddhist women.36 For example, according to U Wirathu, Buddhist women are lured into marrying Muslim men, and once married they are forced to convert to Islam: The women are very vulnerable (in marriage). The man pretends to be Buddhist, and then she is lured into Islam and she is forced to wear burqa. Some women are tortured if she continues the practices of her religion. If she is pregnant, she will be mistreated until miscarriage. In one case, a woman was even killed. If a woman of another religion marries a Muslim man she loses all her religious freedom and all her human rights. . . .Then they are forced to commit sacrilege, for example to step on Buddha images. They force Buddhist women to sin. . . . When we as monks give sermons we inform laypeople about these stories so that they can shy away from Muslim males.37

The threat of Muslim male aggression against Buddhist women is central to the Ma Ba Tha movement. The 969 movement, a precursor to Ma Ba

36 For a typology of Buddhist anti-​Muslim tropes, see Frydenlund 2019a. 37 The background for this is rooted in the legal requirement of conversion to Islam for non-​ dhimmi women for a religious wedding to be valid.

108  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund Tha, went so far as to organize a series of public events to document such cases, through presentation of “real-​life stories.” In such events, the identified Buddhist victim was interviewed by a Buddhist monk in front of a Buddhist audience. In this narrative of violence and suffering, Buddhist monks are portrayed as rescuers of women who escape domestic violence and religious persecution, indicating a new aspect of the male monastic role vis-​à-​vis laywomen. Ma Ba Tha’s messaging around the 2015 election tended to focus on concerns about Muslim male intrusion and called on all of Myanmar society to “protect local Buddhist women.” This activism resulted in Myanmar’s parliament passing four controversial “religious protection laws” in 2015. The four “race and religion laws,” which regulate marriages between Buddhist women and non-​Buddhist men, allow the government to limit birth rates in economically depressed areas,38 outlaw polygamy, and make religious conversion of Buddhists administratively tedious, raised human rights concerns vis-​à-​vis Ma Ba Tha’s Buddhist protectionist ideology. Specifically, many in the human rights community believed the laws discriminated against women and non-​Buddhists, and not surprisingly, the laws were met with fierce opposition from local and international human rights organizations for not being in accordance with international human rights standards. Strong criticism was also voiced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists, who all emphasized the laws’ severe implications for intercommunal relations and their noncompliance with international norms of human rights. Women’s groups in Yangon raised a feminist critique of Ma Ba Tha ideology, arguing that the laws imposed “the responsibility of preserving race, religion, culture and the traditions of a country entirely on women.”39 They also pointed out how these laws were unfavorable not only to religious minority women but also for Buddhist women compared to Buddhist men, as the marriage age for Buddhist women in mixed marriages is set to 20 years, while males can marry at the age of 18; furthermore, Buddhist women need to ask for state permission for marrying a non-​Buddhist (which does not apply to Buddhist males). Still, the laws enjoyed widespread popular support, including among women. Indeed, some of the most vocal and dedicated proponents of the laws were then and remain today thilashin and laywomen. 38 According to Ma Ba Tha activists, Muslim Rohingya women were explicitly in mind when developing the law. 39 AWID 2014.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  109 Ma Ba Tha monks and many female members view human rights as a Western neo-​colonial instrument threatening to undermine Buddhism and the “national races.”40 Accordingly, Ma Ba Tha deliberately refers to group rights (lu hkwin yay osu) and “human dignity” rather than individual “human rights” (lu hkwin yay). Ma Ba Tha has publicly stated that patriotism should go before human rights, by which they mean expressions of individual freedoms. To illustrate, one Ma Ba Tha woman said the following: You can’t control someone to be like you. But culturally it’s not good if you are too different. With democracy, culturally we have already changed a lot. Now, no one knows how to behave, everything is uncertain . . . I don’t blame “human rights”—​that is just a concept that exists. I blame people who accept human rights as an invitation or excuse to act immorally or in ways that are not good for society. Everyone has rights. No one can change that. But you can’t just do what you like—​or you shouldn’t, anyway. Specific disciplines are good, even if you have human rights. The Buddha gives cultural rules about how you should behave. It’s not enough to meditate only. You must have good conduct. Culture and behavior is different across ethnic groups—​it’s good to combine culture and human rights. That’s best for the country. Human rights are not the same as freedom. A woman can walk naked—​that is a human right—​but it’s not good for her, for the society, or for the country.41

Nonetheless, elements of human rights thinking are blended into Ma Ba Tha’s protectionist discourses; the very conceptualization of “Islamization” of Buddhist women in mixed marriages is expressed by members in terms of “religious freedom” and “women rights.”42 Indeed, the rights to free speech and association are regularly touted by Ma Ba Tha figures, such as Wirathu, as a means of contesting the civilian government’s attempts at sanctioning the group. Though academics, journalists, and even Myanmar women’s rights activists have tended to elide women’s support for the laws by suggesting either explicitly or implicitly that such women are poorly educated or guileless, their fears manipulated or exploited by the men who dominate their families,



40 Brac de la Perrière 2015.

41 McKay, personal interview, November 2017, translated from Burmese to English. 42 Frydenlund 2017.

110  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund religious institutions, and political authorities, it is clear this phenomenon warrants further scrutiny.

Female Support to the “Race and Religion Laws” Myanmar is one of the few countries in Asia that still does not have a law against violence against women. Ma Ba Tha monks show of concern for violence against women, and rhetoric focused on the need to protect “women’s rights,” appealed strongly to many Buddhist women, both lay and monastic. For such women, Ma Ba Tha, and the four “race and religion laws,” appeared as necessary for their protection.43 Thilashin have demonstrated their commitment to Ma Ba Tha and its ideology by marching in support to the “race and religion laws.” These demonstrations, which occurred during 2015, were widely covered in local media, thus taking their monastic engagement for the protection of the sāsana out in public space, at a time when these laws became perhaps one of the most controversial issues in national politics. Ma Ba Tha supporting nuns were acutely aware of the sensitivity of the situation but chose nonetheless—​ at least some of the them—​to show their commitment to the laws in public. One of Myanmar’s leading Buddhist nuns, who also happens to be a proud supporter of Ma Ba Tha, explained her feelings about the laws thusly: The laws are necessary in order to give protection to our religion. Some people say that the laws are not necessary, but they are narrow-​minded. They do not love our religion or our Myanmar women. Some say that monks and nuns should not take part in law-​making or in politics, and that they should only be involved in mediation. . . . This is not discrimination. The Ma Ba Tha aims to protect race (ah-​myo), not only the Burmese, but all races and all religions in our country, including Christians and Muslims. . . . The marriage law does not mean that that we do not allow mixed marriages. Mixed marriage is OK, but we need a law to discipline and to protect both parties in marriage.44



43 Walton, McKay, and Daw Khin Mar Mar Kyi 2015.

44 Frydenlund, personal interview, June 2015, translated from Burmese to English.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  111 This passage reveals common tropes and concerns in Ma Ba Tha’s Buddhist protectionist ideology: the intrusion by the non-​Buddhist “Other,” the need to protect Buddhism, and the emphasis on freedom of choice and self-​ determination for women.45 Importantly, however, this concern for women’s rights extends beyond the anti-​Muslim prejudice through which it is so often expressed. As one Ma Ba Tha supporting nun in her early 30s put it: The government doesn’t support the nun community, they didn’t under Nay Win and they don’t now under the NLD. The government gives only about 2,000 Kyat [approximately US $1.25] each month to the nuns. That’s why most, maybe 85% of the nuns here [Sagaing] like Ma Ba Tha—​they protect women’s rights. . . . Access to the [dhamma] teachings, and the freedom to study in the way that she wants, that is a woman’s right for nuns. But nuns also have a duty to promote other women’s rights, because they speak to laywomen. [Nuns] should go to the village to share with women the Buddha teachings and also about their rights.46

The Role of Women as Protectors of the Sāsana Ma Ba Tha women aren’t particularly interested in political parties or the operations of the civilian government beyond ensuring that Myanmar public life finds its basis in Buddhist moral values. They express this in terms of social cohesion and conflict prevention—​everyone must share the same ideas about what is appropriate if society is to remain stable. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Buddhist women from ethnic minority communities, including the Karen and the Rakhine, who see Ma Ba Tha as providing a pan-​ Theravada identity. It is this same identity, they believe, that can bring the country’s diverse ethnic groups together at a level which transcends the official peace process, which they see as a struggle between those seeking power and not as a genuine opportunity for conflict transformation and peace building.

45 It is also interesting to note how the nun explicitly responds to the accusations against Ma Ba Tha from human rights circles that the laws implied discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. She insists that protecting Buddhism does not imply minority discrimination and that “race” refers to all national groups identified in the Citizenship Law. Also, she is very specific about monks and thilashin’s legitimate engagement in legal and political processes. 46 McKay, personal interview, February 2017, English.

112  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund Approaching Ma Ba Tha as a revivalist movement means looking at the religious aspects of the organization’s ideology, not as a reaction to an imaged clash with modernity, but as its own vision of modernity, as anthropologists Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky put it, a conversation about the future and consent about its most desired prospects.47 Where Myanmar’s earlier Buddhist revival movements were overly concerned with policing the moral behavior of Buddhist laypersons and clergy, Ma Ba Tha tends to focus instead on defining Buddhist culture and society. This has important implications for the treatment of women in the movement. Rather than being held up as a kind of anti-​exemplar, as they often were in the colonial period, Ma Ba Tha entreats women to become more engaged in sāsana promotion, whether through parahita work or promulgation of the four “race and religion laws,” without expending huge amounts of time policing their personal behavior or the modes of action this sāsana promotion takes. The growing body of anthropological work on morality and ethics suggests that a deeper examination of the ways in which women navigate various objectives—​spiritual, social, or otherwise—​may well show that women intentionally leverage technologies that seem at odds with liberal Western, or even local sensibilities, in an effort to be a good person and to live a good life.48 In order to understand the ways in which these negotiations emerge out of local cosmologies of belief, “mental culture,”49 or social constraint and expectation, women’s reflections on morality and daily ethical practice must be given greater attention. Why do Buddhist women sympathize with radical nationalist groups who want to restrict Buddhist women’s marriage rights or Muslim women´s reproductive rights? Along the lines of the critique offered by Saba Mahmood with regard to secular and Western feminism, the position of women in nationalist or pious movements is far more nuanced than seen from a liberal feminist position.50 For instance, thorough knowledge of the dhamma is deeply respected in Myanmar, regardless of one’s gender or social station. Ma Ba Tha women often retell stories about King Mindon’s queen sitting on the floor to listen to the dhamma speech of her servant, whom she told to take her place on the throne. If knowing and speaking the dhamma brings



47 Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, 9.

48 Khandelwal et al. 2006; Mahmood 2005; Abu-​Lughod 2002. 49 Houtmann 1999. 50 Mahmood 2005.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  113 respect, defending the dhamma from loss or degradation must be even more likely to do so. This “defensive,” or “protectionist” labor has not historically been within the remit of non-​noble women in Myanmar, but it is very much encouraged by Ma Ba Tha. Both laywomen and thilashin operating within the movement enjoy a high degree of freedom in deciding how they will go about their work protecting and promoting the sāsana. By doing so in such close association with leading monks, they are afforded a degree of protection from social sanction.

New Avenues for Female Agency Though Ma Ba Tha pay strong attention to women as mothers and wives, they do not necessarily insist that women must serve these domestic roles in order to participate in the movement and/​or in the critical work of protecting and promoting the sāsana. Indeed, many of Ma Ba Tha’s most active female members are unmarried laywomen, or women who have lost their husbands to death or emotional distance. Many Ma Ba Tha laywomen express their participation in terms of duty and obligation. This is not an unusual register for women given the number of duties that entangle them as women. Ma Ba Tha women see the Pali texts (canonical and extra-​canonical) as clearly defining the reciprocal duties to which they are bound.51 Indeed, these roles are so clearly demarcated, and the burdens they create so all consuming, many women eschew the idea that nirvāṇa is achievable for women—​the sociomoral obligations that bind women and their labor to others are too complex to navigate. Simply put: it is impossible to fulfil one’s moral obligations (as a woman) and dedicate the time and energy necessary to advance toward a nirvanic horizon. As one Ma Ba Tha women in Mandalay put it: For women, there are two nirvanas. The first nirvana comes from meditation and attending the pagoda and the dhamma talks. This is the Buddhist enlightenment. The second, comes when a woman has peace—​no problems

51 Ma Ba Tha women emphasize the Maṅgala Sutta (of the Pali canon) and other key texts such as the Lokanīti (important Burmese Buddhist text in Pali) as especially important to understanding how to be a good woman.

114  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund with children, no worries with a husband, and no trouble with money. This is also a kind of nirvana.52

Ma Ba Tha participation, however, provides laywomen with a means of pursuing their ethical objectives as Buddhists within a framework that values their attachment labors. It treats this labor as a spiritual public good working toward the advancement of a collective karma and therefore suggests that women’s participating in sāsana promotion is objectively good for society. Furthermore, the protection provided by the close association with the Sangha means that women can participate in ways that are quite remarkable without being attacked on the basis of their gender. For instance, one Ma Ba Tha laywoman in her late 50s has been involved in leading rape crisis response for women and children. Working closely with U Wirathu, she helps to coordinate the legal response, which in turn means women and children who would otherwise be unlikely to press charges against their attackers, are not only able to do so, but are able to do so successfully. Another laywoman in her early 70s travels around the country recording monk’s sermons. If she hears what she understands to be wrong teachings, she builds a case against them in court. These extraordinary opportunities build merit through defending the religion, but their public visibility also transforms ideas about the value of women’s religious labor in a changing Myanmar. As such, Ma Ba Tha offers laywomen an opportunity to participate in conversations about the future and the absolute value of women to society. Although Ma Ba Tha is dominated by male monasticism, highly respected scholar nuns speak at national conventions, to largely male monastic audiences. Some Ma Ba Tha supporting nuns express interest in full ordination, others do not. Where there appears to be a high level of agreement is on idea that the current limitations on women’s religious advancement, as pertains most immediately to thilashin, is a matter of cultural bias rather than an unchangeable aspect of religious orthodoxy, as the following exchange between two nuns demonstrates: (Elder Nun) It’s not possible under these circumstances [to bring back the bhikkhunī]. . . . It’s very hard in general to be ordained, but even harder for



52 McKay, personal interview, May 2017, translated from Burmese to English.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  115 women because we have to get our own food. People don’t see us as equal, so it is harder. We also have more duties outside the nunnery, with family. (Younger Nun) Me, I want to see them brought back. It is culture that makes things hard, and culture can change.53

Ma Ba Tha supporting nuns, such as those above, highlight that the lack of donations made to nuns makes it exceedingly difficult for them to dedicate sufficient time to study. However, the only way to improve this condition is to demonstrate advanced knowledge of the dhamma. Previously, thilashin were not allowed to take the upper-​level exams that would allow them to prove their abilities. U Thiloka, the chairman of Ma Ba Tha, has been a vocal supporter of rule changes that allow the thilashin to take the exams. This support led a number of thilashin to joke in whispers that U Thiloka is himself a feminist.54 The “race and religion laws” provide women with a legal channel that has been imbued with an almost spiritual significance. This has been helpful given the ways in which Buddhist women have primary used the Monogamy law—​ which also bans extramarital affairs—​ to take cheating Buddhist 55 husbands to court. When asked about this facet of the law, Ma Ba Tha women in Mandalay and thilashin in Sagaing remarked that they have been active in educating rural women about their rights. As the “Monogamy law” demonstrates, the concerns raised through this framing of threats and vulnerabilities extend to Myanmar society and, indeed, to dynamics that trouble women even from within Buddhist families. Anthropologist Atreyee Sen has written similarly about the work of Shiv Sena women in India, arguing that women, “joined the Sena because they were insecure in public and felt that the party would overtime systematically resolve their predicament”(Sen 2007, 43). Addressing such fears directly would expose women to dangerous social censure, particularly from Buddhist men. Highlighting them vis-​à-​vis Muslim men, however, obliges Buddhist men to both acknowledge and accept the validity of their concerns—​particularly, where doing so also services a useful narrative of Buddhist exceptionalism.

53 McKay, personal interview, June 2017, translated from Burmese to English. 54 In many instances, Ma Ba Tha women use the English term when discussing the issue of women’s equality and advancement. 55 Although Ma Ba Tha’s intention behind the Monogamy law (one of the four “race and religion laws”) was to prevent Muslim men from marrying several Buddhist women, the section that prohibits extramarital affairs has led to hundreds of court cases between Buddhist couples in Yangon alone.

116  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund

Conclusion: Buddhist “Radicalism” as a Vehicle for Female Empowerment? The fact that nationalist movements across time and space have showed a particular concern for controlling the female body and female reproduction is well-​known.56 Within nationalism studies, the focus has been on the connection between masculinity and nationalism through which gender manifests itself in patriotic manhood and exalted motherhood as icons of nationalist ideology.57 Scholarship on militant Hindu nationalism, including Tarini Bedi’s work, shows how women’s participation in movements such as the Shiv Sena poses a challenge to feminist scholarship about female agency within such groups. Along similar lines, Atreyee Sen shows how women within the Shiv Sena were able to adopt and adapt the discourse on women’s vulnerability in order to mobilize in ways that would themselves be seen as martial, thereby striving toward a quality embedded in the idealized masculinity which characterized the movement and Hindu society more broadly. In much the same way, Ma Ba Tha creates opportunities for Myanmar women, lay and thilashin, to marshal the discourse on vulnerability to more effectively assert their desires in a cosmology fixated with the notion of masculinized autonomy. Women’s participation in Ma Ba Tha brings to the fore a key issue with the way we conceptualize such movements: specifically, that the majority of analysis simultaneously downplays the religious or ethical motives of members while simultaneously ascribing a conservatism or even fundamentalism to their modes of action that we believe is unwarranted. Many Ma Ba Tha participate because the movement enables them to achieve ethical objectives that are important to them—​they can make merit and pursue self-​ formations in ways that had previously been unavailable to them on account of their gender. These modes of action are inherently transformative and not at all concerned with pressuring women to behave in “traditional” or subservient ways. Indeed, many such women refer to themselves as “feminists,” and they do so because of the opportunities Ma Ba Tha provides them, not despite some male members’ sexist rhetoric. Ma Ba Tha thus provides these women with opportunities to participate in conversations about what people owe to each other as members of a society, and the ultimate value of women

56 See, for example, Yuval-​Davis 1993. 57 See, for example, Nagel 1998.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  117 within these idealized arrangements. It provides them with additional means to determine their attachments, which contributes to shifting ideas that tend to feminize attachment labor and masculinize the transcendental/​path toward enlightenment. If movements like Ma Ba Tha provide new avenues for Buddhist women to show their commitment to Buddhism (with support from high-​ranking monks in Myanmar, which means that Buddhist women’s activism within these movements is seen as noncontroversial by the Buddhist establishment), then to what extent can these movements be understood as safe spaces, within the strict hierarchical, male-​dominated, military, social, and political order, for women to test out possible avenues for social and political engagements? We suggest that Ma Ba Tha, as an organization and an ideology, produces spaces for both nuns and Buddhist laywomen who participate to more freely actualize their desires. Being a woman in Ma Ba Tha is not a feminist emancipatory project as defined by liberal feminism or international human rights discourses; it is not a question about gender equality, per se, though as we have argued, discourses on “women’s rights” do exist and are in fact quite prominent aspects of many female and even male members’ statements of support for the movement. As self-​proclaimed and Sangha-​approved protectors of the sāsana, Ma Ba Tha’s female supporters are not only able to expand the conditions of possibility, going beyond the monastery or to the domestic sphere of the family, but are also able to demonstrate their commitment to Buddhism in the public sphere in new and socially transformative ways. Rather than promoting an austere vision of womanhood, one fixated on dress, docility, and deference, the Ma Ba Tha movement appears to open, at least for its members, new spaces for female agency. In so doing, it enables these women to more readily participate in conversations about the nature of the Myanmar nation and the values upon and through which it should ideally be constructed.

References Abu-​Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3: 783–​790. AWID. 2014. “Women’s Rights Activists Resist Myanmar’s Proposed ‘Law on Protection of Race and Religion.’” https://​www.awid.org/​news-​and-​analy​sis/​wom​ens-​rig​hts-​ activi​sts-​res​ist-​myanm​ars-​propo​sed-​law-​pro​tect​ion-​race-​and-​relig​ion.

118  Melyn McKay and Iselin Frydenlund Banerjee, Sikata. 2010. “Women, Muscular Nationalism and Hinduism in India: Roop Kanwar and the Fire Protests.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 11: 271–​287. Brac de la Perrière, Bénédicte. 2015. “Ma Ba Tha: Les trois syllabes du nationalisme religieux birman.” In L’Asie du Sud-​Est 2015: Bilan, Enjeux et Perspectives, edited by A. Pesses and F. Robinne, 31–​44. Paris-​Bangkok: Institut de Recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-​ Est Contemporaine (IRASEC). Chie, Ikeya. 2011. Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frydenlund, Iselin. 2017. “Religious Liberty for Whom? The Buddhist Politics of Religious Freedom during Myanmar’s Transition to Democracy.” Nordic Journal of Human Rights 35, no. 1: 55–​73. Frydenlund, Iselin. 2018. “The Birth of Buddhist Politics of Religious Freedom in Myanmar.” Journal of Religious and Political Practice, 4: 107–​121. Frydenlund, Iselin. 2019a. “Buddhist Islamophobia: Actors, Tropes, Contexts.” In The Brill Handbook on Religion and Conspiracies, edited by Asbjørn Dyrendal, Egil Asprem, and David G. Robertson, 279–​302. Leiden: Brill. Frydenlund, Iselin. 2019b. “Protecting the Sasana through Law: Radical Buddhism and Religious Freedom in Transitional Myanmar.” In Religion, Secularism and Democracy in South-​east Asia, edited by Vidhu Verma, 194–​212. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Frydenlund, Iselin, and Michael Jerryson, eds. 2020. Buddhist-​Muslim relations in a Theravada World. Singapore: Palgrave MacMillan. Frydenlund, Iselin, Pum Za Mang, Phyo Wai, and Susan Hayward. 2021. “Religious Responses to the Military Coup in Myanmar.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 19, no. 3: 77–​88. doi:10.1080/​15570274.2021.1954409. Gravers, Mikael. 2005. “Anti-​ Muslim Buddhist Nationalism in Burma and Sri Lanka—​Religious Violence and Globalized Imaginaries of Endangered Identities.” Contemporary Buddhism 16, no. 1: 1–​27. Harriden, Jessica. 2012. The Authority of Influence: Women and Power in Burmese History. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press. Hedström, Jenny. 2016. “We Did Not Realize about the Gender Issues. So, We Thought It Was a Good Idea.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18, no. 1: 61–​79. Houtmaan, Gustaaf. 1999. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series No. 33. Jordt, Ingrid. 2007. Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power. Ohio University Press. Kawanami, Hiroko. 2007. “The Bhikkhunī Ordination Debate: Global Aspirations, Local Concerns, with Special Emphasis on the Views of the Monastic Community in Burma.” Buddhist Studies Review 24, no. 2: 226–​244. Kawanami, H. 2000. “Teravadin Religious Women.” In The Life Of Buddhism, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Jason A. Carbine, 86–​96. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keeler, W. 2018. The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Khandelwal, Meena, Sondra L. Hausner, and Anne Grodzins Gold. 2006. Women’s Renunciation in. South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers. London: Palgrave. Khin Mar Mar Kyi. 2004. The World of Burmese Women. London: Zed Books.

Buddhist “Radicalism”  119 Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McKay, M., and R. Horsey. 2017. “Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar.” International Crisis Group. Asia 290. McKay, M., and K. C. Win. 2018. “Myanmar’s Gender Paradox.” Anthropology Today 34, no. 1: 1–​3. Mel, de Neloufer. 2001. Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield . Nagel, Joane. 1998. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 2: 242–​269. Schissler, Matt, Matthew J. Walton, and Phyu Phyu Thi. 2017. “Reconciling Contradictions: Buddhist-​Muslim Violence, Narrative Making and Memory in Myanmar.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 47, no. 3: 376–​395. Sen, A. 2007. Shiv Sena Women: Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Than, T. 2014. Women in Modern Burma. London: Routledge. Turner, A. M. 2014. Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Walton, Matthew J. 2017. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton, Matthew J., Melyn McKay, and Khin Mar Mar Kyi. 2015. “Women and Myanmar’s ‘Religious Protection Laws.’” The Review of Faith and International Affairs 13, no. 4: 36–​49. Walton, Matthew J., and Susan Hayward. 2014. Contesting Buddhist Narratives: Democratization, Nationalism, and Communal Violence in Myanmar. 71 Policy Studies. Honolulu, HI: East-​West Center.

5 Laughing on a Rooftop Female Buddhist Agency as Local in Lumbini, Nepal Amy Paris Langenberg

Introduction When, in the summer of 2018, I brought my teenage children on a research trip to Nepal, my daughter took a picture of six Buddhist precept nuns laughing with one another on a rooftop against a backdrop of bare winter fields (see Figure 5.1). Perhaps it takes the aesthetic and social attunement of a teenager to capture so perfectly the unique presence of other teenagers. In the picture, one girl, the tallest, is gracefully adjusting her red monastic clothing, while another holds her head either in disbelief at something someone has said or in an attempt to smooth back her hair. She looks straight at the camera while she does so. Another leans back, grasping the hand of a fourth younger smaller girl, obscuring her from the camera’s eye, laughing hard at something a fifth girl has said. The fifth girl is bent over slightly as if her stomach hurts a little from laughing, her long black hair piled on top of her head. The sixth girl looks on, amused at the laughers, her red robes wrapped elegantly around her frame. These six are students at the Peace Grove Institute, a small residential community of young female Buddhist renouncers in the pilgrimage town of Lumbini, Nepal. Peace Grove was created with the goal of empowering girls by delaying marriage and providing opportunities for education. The innovative form of Buddhist monasticism I would like to express my appreciation of the participants in the 2018 summer workshop on female agency in religious South Asia at Heidelberg University’s South Asia Institute, from whom I learned so much. I am particularly thankful to Ute Hüsken, who organized this transformative workshop, and Antoinette DeNapoli, Tarini Bedi, and Caroline Starkey, who have been important conversation partners ever since. Thanks also goes to colleagues at the University of Virginia—​Manuel Lerdau, Natasha Heller, Sonam Kachru, Eric Braun, Naomi Worth, Kali Nyima Cape, and Jue Liang—​for their comments and questions after my invited talk about aesthetic agency and the Peace Grove nuns in February 2020. I would also like to express gratitude and love for the Peace Grove community.

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Laughing on a Rooftop  121

Figure 5.1  Peace Grove nuns laughing on the roof in June 2018 (photo by Isabel Rose Bagger, 2018).

practiced at Peace Grove can be attributed, in part, to the vision of Peace Grove’s leader, Venerable Metteyya Sakyaputta, and its beloved patron and dharma mother, Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita. It is also, as I have come to see it, the invention and ongoing creation of the Peace Grove nuns themselves. This chapter, which is based on insights, impressions, and narratives gathered during seven visits over a period of about four years,1 is an attempt

1 The data and perspectives offered in this essay are the fruit of visits to Nepal in January 2016, January 2017, January 2018, June 2018, January 2019, July 2019, and January 2020. The first three and the last visits were for the purpose of a student study abroad course through Eckerd College rather than ethnographic research per se. During the other three visits, I conducted unstructured interviews with several important gurumas in Kathmandu (including Dhammawati Guruma), members of the larger Lumbini Social Service Foundation network, and with the Peace Grove nuns themselves. With the approval of Venerable Metteyya Sakyaputta, I also spent time in the Peace Grove and KGS communities, participating in activities, attending classes, attending meals, sitting in the Buddha Hall, sitting on the roof, and generally hanging around. In January 2019, I lived in the nunnery for approximately 10 days, again with Venerable Metteyya’s approval. During this time, I engaged the nuns in a photo auto-​solicitation project. I asked them to take photographs in five categories, including (1) woman you respect; (2) good teacher; (3) friend; (4) something beautiful; (5) photo of your choice. I then interviewed the girls about their photographs. Most interviews and conversations took place in English or some combination of English and Hindi. At other times, a

122  Amy Paris Langenberg to understand and describe the monasticism of the Peace Grove nuns as a localized example of young female agency, and to understand the role of Buddhism in fostering that agency. For the Peace Grove nuns, Theravāda Buddhist monasticism aids in the promotion of female capacities in that it constitutes a bulwark against early marriage, provides educational opportunities, and shields them from the constant surveillance of patriarchal authority. Egalitarian Buddhist ideas, practices, and institutions as interpreted and taught by their Buddhist teacher, Venerable Metteyya, certainly play a major role in supporting modalities of female agency at Peace Grove. In this essay, I focus, however, on a less obvious dimension of Buddhist female agency at Peace Grove that I describe as aesthetic.2 The word “aesthetics” is employed variously to connote the philosophy of art, the theory of beauty, and the study of the human sensorium. Here I am using the adjectival form “aesthetic” expansively to refer to the nuns’ embodied affective experience of self, inclusive of their spontaneous expressions of feeling, emotion, and opinion, and their curated self-​ presentation as they move through the world. In other words, I will explore how the Peace Grove nuns manifest agentive selves, not through practicing vipassanā meditation or rigorous monastic discipline, and not through direct political interventions or bold acts of social defiance, but through the way they dress, move through space, express humor, affection, and other affects, and self-​curate/​self-​narrate in Lumbini. A distinctive aesthetic and affective tone arises in the Peace Grove setting because it is an unusually young and female-​centric space, well-​seeded with the ideals of female empowerment and freedom, and well away from the everyday patriarchal gaze. While the Peace Grove nuns’ practical ability to exercise agency and autonomy in the political, professional, and economic realms is hampered by their poverty, their gender, and their limited access to higher education, their aesthetic agency—​which is detectable as a certain expressiveness, confidence, physical community member with good English translated for me into and out of Nepali. The photo-​auto solicitation project was approved by the institutional review board of Eckerd College. I have referred to the nuns by pseudonyms, and not by their real ordination or family names. I have shared drafts of this essay with Venerable Metteyya, Venerable Bodhi, and the Peace Grove nuns. I thank them for their corrections and comments. 2 The participants of the 2018 summer workshop at Heidelberg that was the inspiration for this volume developed a concept of aesthetic agency dialogically during the course of our time together. I also note that the term “aesthetic agency” appears in works of analytic philosophy where it seems to refer to the work that beauty does in ethical subject formation, and ideas of the good life, among other things. I haven’t seen this term used in the context of feminist ethnography.

Laughing on a Rooftop  123 charisma, and mobility—​is well supported by the communal Buddhist life of Peace Grove. Here I argue that, while not itself political in nature, what I am calling aesthetic agency is a significant manifestation of and precondition for the exercise of female power in gender-​conservative Lumbini.

Peace Grove Institute: Origin Tales Lumbini is home to the Mayadevi Temple, which marks the Buddha’s birthplace and is registered with UNESCO as a World Heritage site.3 It is also the location of the Lumbini “Master Plan,” an area 25 square miles in size adjacent to the temple that was carved out of former agricultural land by the Nepali government to promote pilgrimage, tourism, and education about Nepal’s Buddhist past.4 The Master Plan was designed by the celebrated Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. That Tange only visited Lumbini briefly and did not know the area well is reflected in the abstraction of his design (McDaniel 2016, 30–​81). In fact, local people were moved off their village lands to create the Master Plan (Molesworth and Müller-​Böker 2005) and, while it attracts international Buddhist tourists with its ostentatious temples, retreat facilities, and pilgrim lodging, it is culturally, socially, and economically alienated from surrounding communities. Construction began in 1978, but Tange’s Master Plan has yet to be completed. In contrast to the Master Plan, Peace Grove Institute is a grassroots effort by progressive elements of the local community to engage the richness of Nepal’s Buddhist history in a manner appropriate to the cultural norms and particular needs of greater Lumbini. It is a community of 21 young local women and girls between the ages of 8 and 31 years.5 The majority of the “nuns” (and they often use this English term of Catholic derivation to refer to themselves) are of school age. Part of a linked series of educational projects in Lumbini, all under the umbrella organization of the Lumbini Social Service Foundation (LSSF),6 Peace Grove is a response to social and economic

3 For the history of the Mayadevi Temple, see Bidari 2003; Coningham et al. 2013; Weise 2013; Verardi 2010. 4 For an official presentation of the Master Plan design and history, see http://​www.une​sco.org/​ new/​en/​kathma​ndu/​cult​ure/​lumb​ini-​past-​pres​ent-​fut​ure/​kenzo-​tange-​mas​ter-​plan-​for-​lumb​ini/​. 5 The LSSF website says that there are 26 girls, but I counted only 21, including those not currently in residence at Peace Grove. 6 For information about LSSF projects, see http://​serve​lumb​ini.org/​.

124  Amy Paris Langenberg conditions that constrain and cause suffering among girls and women and, by extension, the entire community. With the exception of several of the more senior nuns who are currently pursuing postsecondary training in Kathmandu, the Peace Grove nuns live together in a small compound tucked away behind Lumbini’s main market street. In good weather, they often study or chat on the roof of the nunnery building overlooking the green fields and colorful brick, concrete, and adobe houses of Mahilwar, the adjacent village. In fact, quite a few (though not all) of the girls living at Peace Grove grew up in Mahilwar itself. None are originally from Theravāda Buddhist families. In addition to its L-​shaped two-​ story residential building, the Peace Grove compound also includes a small Buddha hall, a recently built office space, a courtyard garden, and a newly built large community kitchen. Peace Grove nunnery is located just adjacent to the Karuna Girls School (KGS), also an LSSF project and the only all-​girls high school in the area. The attractive buildings and grounds that make up Peace Grove nunnery and KGS form an all-​female progressive educational zone that is unique in the Lumbini area.7 Peace Grove was founded in January 2010 when the first nine nuns ordained. At that time, only Metta School, the first of the LSSF projects, was in existence. The coeducational Metta School is located in the Mahilwar village and was founded (with the help of a network of friends) by Venerable Metteyya Sakyadhita (now usually referred to respectfully as “Guruji”) when he was still a very young local organizer and educator. As the eighth-​ grade class prepared to graduate, a group of girls, mostly friends who had grown up in Mahilwar together, contemplated their futures. They were teenagers, though of somewhat different ages, as it is common in Nepal for children to begin school at different stages. All or most would already have been engaged from a young age, as is normal in Lumbini. Upon graduating eighth grade, considered children no longer, some would be married and sent to their husbands’ homes. No free girls’ school existed in the area at that time. Since the girls were mostly from families of modest means, private school was out of the question. Continuing at Metta School with the boys was not an option, for most of their future in-​laws would have considered coed schooling to be a risk to the girls’ virtue and not appropriate. In order 7 The Peacegrove nuns moved out of this space during the COVID-​19 pandemic, several returning to their natal homes for safety. As far as I know, they have not yet returned to this space, but have instead taken up residence at the Bodhi Institute, a residential educational center located in the Master Plan and also founded by Metteyya Sakyaputta and his organization.

Laughing on a Rooftop  125 to continue their education with their parents’ blessings, they required a chaperoned environment, else their future husbands’ families could well refuse the marriage. In response to this crisis, the girls themselves pushed for delay of marriage and further education. They were already participating in a Buddhist-​ inflected educational environment at Metta school, studying pariyatti (the graduated Buddhist curriculum distributed and administered by the All Nepal Bhikkhu Sangha Council), meeting ordained women at Gotami Bhikkhuni Bihar (the Theravāda nunnery and women’s educational center founded by the famous Kathmandu nun, Dhammawati in the Master Plan area), and gaining confidence in their studies. One of the girls, whom I will call Subha, recalls admiring Sujata Guruma, a fully ordained nun highly educated in Pāli and abhidhamma who is one of Venerable Metteyya’s root teachers, thinking “I would like to be like her for ten years or so, just to study. Not for my whole life, just for a few years.” She and her close friend, both “so interested” in school, discussed this thought together and then spoke about it with Venerable Metteyya (interview, January 18, 2019). Reflecting on the early days of the nunnery, Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita, a Canadian-​born nun who has been a key financial and moral-​spiritual supporter of the proj­ ect from the beginning, also recalls that “The girls were voicing very strongly that they didn’t want to go to their married families. They wanted to continue to learn” (interview, August 7, 2019). Metteyya and Bodhi looked at their resources and put together a plan with other trusted community members to arrange for a chaperoned environment in which the girls could live together as a community, pursue their secular and Buddhist educations, and, importantly, postpone marriage without committing social death, so to speak. Bodhi had recently built a modest retreat center on a piece of land that had belonged to Metteyya’s family. Metteyya had by this time ordained as a novice monk and was living there. As it happened, Bodhi was in Nepal at that time for her own ordination, which took place on December 31, 2009. In fact, she and Metteyya had just completed a very small temple building on the property (replaced by the current Buddha Hall). As Bodhi recalls, the paint was literally still wet, and she got some paint on the brand-​new robes she wore. The accommodations on the property were extremely modest, but the girls were happy to pile in together and share space. One of the Metta School teachers (I will call her Uttara), older by half a decade than the other girls but also eager to ordain, agreed to take on the role of head nun and be present to care for the girls and

126  Amy Paris Langenberg maintain discipline. The next step, then, was to discuss the plan with the girls’ families. Metteyya convened “a meeting of the mothers.” Metteyya and Bodhi have both commented on the importance of securing the cooperation of the mothers for the Peace Grove project. Veterans of Nepali womanhood, mothers were arguably a bit more likely than fathers, uncles, and brothers to perceive the value in delaying marriage and creating a space for girls’ education. They were also the ones with the social expertise to identify the plan’s possible pitfalls, and the communication skills to persuade male relatives to permit the girls to ordain and move into the new nunnery space. The importance of the mothers in the Peace Grove community is ongoing. When, during a period of fieldwork in January of 2019, I asked each of the girls to photograph and describe a “woman she respects,” they almost universally supplied a photo of their mothers. I haven’t talked to one Peace Grove nun whose mother is not supportive of their participation in the Peace Grove project. Furthermore, the nunnery, and now the neighboring KGS, both function as community centers and gathering spaces for women connected through their children. Many of the mothers attend KGS to take sewing classes or study pariyatti, and it is not unusual to find a pair of them deep in discussion on the nunnery stairwell, balcony, or roof. Additionally, Peace Grove has a tradition of hosting full-​moon community meals in which the mothers cook a large meal over outdoor fires for the extended Peace Grove community. Following the grain of local norms and protocols, Metteyya’s younger brother and another longtime school friend (both trusted and well-​ connected community members) were also dispatched to engage in discussion with, provide information to, and assuage the concerns of the families. Most of the girls were successful in securing permission from their families to join the fledgling nunnery. A few were not. Subha’s family did not agree and, in fact, she was immediately married and sent to her in-​laws’ house. She did, however, eventually enter the nunnery, but only after her repeated attempts to secure permission failed and she ran away. This resulted in a rupture in her family, especially with her brother, that has yet to heal. Significantly, her mother is now supportive of her, as is her father, though she says she is still alienated from other relatives. Uttara also moved into the nunnery and simply stayed, ignoring her parents’ requests that she return home. The in-​ laws of another nun, whom I will call Kasi, were also difficult to persuade. In the end, nine young women were ordained as the first Peace Grove nuns in January of 2010. Since Metteyya had been called away to attend the opening

Laughing on a Rooftop  127 of David Grubin’s PBS documentary The Buddha (in which he appears), Bodhi stayed in Nepal to provide the newly ordained nuns with 10 days’ training. Upon returning home to Edmonton, Canada, she immediately held a fundraiser for the nunnery. Four more nuns were ordained in the spring of 2010, to be followed by several more “batches” in the years to come. Peace Grove had been willed, discussed, cajoled, and imagined into existence.

The Leadership of Guruji and Bodhimom I wish to emphasize that the primary actors involved in the founding and ongoing vitality of Peace Grove are the girls themselves, and that the secondary actors are distributed across the community. Still, an important reason that the young women and girls of Peace Grove have been empowered to push against gender expectations, educate themselves, and speak out to be heard within the special cultural-​social space of Peace Grove is Metteyya’s progressive yet culturally attuned Buddhist leadership. Metteyya claims that he was never attempting to “make people Buddhist.” Rather, in his words: We believe in the promise of the Buddha that women have equal capacity for enlightenment, for knowledge, for wisdom, for culture—​they are the same! And this promise is as strong as any of the religious teachings that came before Buddhism. Whatever statements they made about gender that dictates the very foundation of religious life, Buddha’s statements are as strong as those. So we try and take shelter from that teaching, and inspiration. . . . I see in ordination a connection with the Buddha. I see that our nuns are still the very beating heart of Buddhist women through the generations from the time of the Buddha until today. They are a reflection of that. But I don’t see them as nuns forever. This is not their burden to carry. They are not here to carry Buddhism for anybody’s sake. They don’t even have to maintain my property or my vihāra or my nunnery. I don’t even want them to carry my name. (interview, June 22, 2018)

Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita, the Canadian national and ordained Theravāda nun, whom everyone refers to with affection and respect as Bodhimom and who has been crucial as Peace Grove’s primary financial backer and a steady source of moral-​emotional sustenance for its nuns, echoes Metteyya’s understanding of their work together. Far more important than flashy displays of

128  Amy Paris Langenberg piety, she argues, is helping the community through the Buddhist teachings (Sanskrit: dharma; Pāli: dhamma) “not in a conversion way but in a real way” (interview, August 7, 2019). Empowerment through education and Buddha’s teachings are, she insists, “the same thing. That’s the dhamma. The Buddhist principles in action: breaking down the caste system; understanding what’s valuable in life; understanding Buddhist principles enough to apply them to your own life. This is engaged Buddhism” (interview, August 7, 2019). Metteyya continually emphasizes the intellectual and existential freedom that Buddhist teachings and discipline make possible when he discusses its promise as a tool of social change and empowerment: “If you meet a real monastic, and if they have gotten the target right, there is this crazy sense of freedom. You can’t put a finger on where this will go. They are free. They can walk in this direction or they walk in that direction. The fluidity of mind is there” (interview, June 22, 2018). He understands, however, that, for the Peace Grove nuns, “freedom” is predicated on maintaining “sanity in the dharma” and “a very alert way of life.” “They must keep that distinction [of their status as monastics] clear, but they enjoy a lot of relative freedom. They can ride their bikes, they can go a lot of places. Now as they are growing they can go and spend the night with their families. But they still must maintain the clarity of lineage, clarity of their behavior while they are nuns” (interview, June 22, 2018). While credit for the founding of Peace Grove is usually given to Venerable Metteyya Sakyaputta, who is the spiritual leader of the LSSF community and its most articulate spokesperson, and secondarily to Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita, the dharma mother of all of the girls, some of the most important actors involved in its creation were, in fact, young, local, and female: the Peace Grove nuns themselves. In their modest way, the first Peace Grove nuns acted intelligently, creatively, and with stunning amounts of autonomy in advocating for themselves, especially given the cultural pressures mitigating against female self-​advocacy in Lumbini. Yet other actors were older but also local and female: the mothers were (and continue to be) central nodes of the social web that supports the Peace Grove project. Yet others were young, local, and male, but not monastic: school friends and brothers contributed their street smarts and social capital (not to mention their physical labor) to socially and materially advance the project. In other words, as I tell it, the origin story of the Peace Grove nunnery does not follow standard patriarchal narratives in which spiritually authoritative senior male visionaries work alone or with the support of other politically powerful or wealthy actors to

Laughing on a Rooftop  129 found Buddhist institutions.8 Even Metteyya was himself barely 20 years of age when Peace Grove began. The story of this community effort is multilayered and connects not only to the charisma and vision of Metteyya but also to the cultural skills and goodwill of a local network of friends, relatives, and volunteers; the indigenous “parafeminism”9 of experienced women in the community; and the intentionality and idealism of a particular group of young girls growing up once upon a time in a socially conservative, impoverished, agricultural, religiously important town in Nepal.10

The Gurumas and the Ṛṣiṇīs Although it is a grassroots institution, the history of Peace Grove interleaves with the larger history of women in Theravāda Buddhism in Nepal. Other scholars have tracked the coming of Theravāda Buddhism to Nepal, and the role of the gurumas (pink-​robed women ordained in the Theravāda tradition) in that movement, so I will not repeat that history here (Bechert and Hartmann 1988; Langenberg 2018; Leve 2016; LeVine 2016; LeVine and Gellner 2005). The education of young women and the mobilization of the monastic system as a tool of social service is a feature of women’s monasticism, at least to some extent, across Nepali Theravāda Buddhism, not just at Peace Grove nunnery. Some vihāras focus more strongly on moral education, meditation, and character shaping while others also emphasize secular education, entrepreneurship, and job readiness.11 Peace Grove is at this latter 8 The prototype for this narrative is the Buddha’s founding of the Buddhist order. For Buddhaghosa’s influential version of this narrative, see Heim 2014, 132–​180. It is not unusual for this standard narrative to be uncritically amplified in Buddhist Studies scholarship, despite the presence of strong counternarratives, such as the Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī’s well-​known role in the canonical narrative about the founding of the nuns’ order. 9 I use the term “parafeminism” to refer to an ideology or way of thinking that has something in common with but is not in the same cultural and intellectual stream as feminism. See Langenberg 2018. See the work of DeNapoli, Chapter 9, in this volume for a further development of this concept in relationship to her research on the female Hindu guru Trikal Bhavanta Sarasvatiji. 10 The concept of distributed agency is sometimes associated with Bruno Latour’s actor-​network theory. Latour is best known for including non-​human actors in his way of thinking about the complex, decentered ways in which things change in society and culture, something I haven’t explored much here. It would be possible, for instance, to work the Mayadevi Temple, the physical space the nunnery occupies, Buddhist ideas about gender equality, the availability of red robes, and perhaps the mother goddess Mayadevi herself, into my description of the distributed agency at the origins of Peace Grove. Ahearn’s language-​oriented discussion of “dialogical approaches” to agency is, perhaps, even more also useful for understanding the way in which Peace Grove emerged from relationships between or, in Ahearn’s words, “the interstices between” people (Ahearn 2001, 128–​129). 11 For instance, Dhammavijaya Guruma in Kindole near the important Swayambhūnāth Stūpa, who received bhikkhunī ordination in Los Angeles in 1988, holds a PhD in Buddhist Studies from

130  Amy Paris Langenberg end of this spectrum. In general, while Theravāda Buddhists in Kathmandu (most of whom are from the wealthy Newar community) tend to be more focused on Buddhist philosophy, ethical purity and vipassanā meditation, Theravāda Buddhism has come to be especially associated with social justice for marginalized groups in the poor, gender-​conservative, and caste-​ conscious Terai border regions where Lumbini is located (Letizia 2014). Metteyya and the Peace Grove nuns are connected through Metteyya’s teacher, Sujata Guruma, to the largely Newar Theravāda community of Kathmandu. A revered figure at Peace Grove, Sujata Guruma was Metteyya’s pariyatti teacher as a boy and is responsible for inviting him into the orbit of Buddhist thought and practice. Sujata was sent by Dhammawati Guruma (the first fully ordained bhikkhunī in Nepal and abbess of Dharmakirti Vihar in Kathmandu)12 to Lumbini to help found Gotami Bhikkhuni Vihar, a nuns’ temple and retreat space within the Master Plan. In addition, Sujata is closely connected with the well-​known meditation teacher Goenka, who came often to teach in Kathmandu. This is how Metteyya became involved in vipassanā meditation. Through Sujata Guruma, Metteyya met Dhammawati Guruma and one Venerable Buddhaghosa, a highly respected monk and past head of the All Nepal Bhikkhu Sangha Council in Kathmandu. When I asked Metteyya how Peace Grove fits into the larger Kathmandu-​ centered Theravāda community in Nepal, he acknowledged that it is through

Magadha University, and has spent time in the United States teaching meditation, cofounded the Dhammamoli project with Molini Guruma in the early 2000s (see http://​dha​mmam​oli.org/​ and Campano 2013). Dhammamoli is an attempt to address trafficking in Nepal by offering vulnerable girls Buddhist and secular education in a residential monastic setting. While young, the girls keep five precepts. Dhammavijaya and Molini Gurumas started the project with four girls from different castes and backgrounds and have cared for as many as thirteen at one time. In my conversation with her, Dhammavijaya seemed especially focused on opening a path for her young precept holders to study and train in Burmese nunneries (interview, June 29, 2018). The gurumas of Amarapur Buddha Vihar in Bungamati, Lalitpur, a lovely breezy building with a large Buddha Hall and outside courtyard, follow a different model of community engagement. Sapana Guruma, the head nun at Amarapur told me that she leaves the gates open and encourages the neighborhood kids to use the courtyard space for their games. Sometimes they stay to hear the gurumas chant in the Buddha Hall in the evening. If any parents are looking for their children, they will always send someone to the Vihar, she said. Sapana Guruma also teaches local kids about health and hygiene and organizes health clinics once or twice yearly for the elderly in the community. In addition, she provides Buddhist training to about 50–​70 ṛṣiņīs per year, though on a temporary rather than a semi-​permanent basis. Sapana Guruma told me that, since her teacher, Sayadaw Pandita, was a great meditator, meditation is also a primary focus of her teaching. She seems particularly proud of her male students, five of whom have gone on to become monks and are now teaching or in other positions of responsibility. In fact, she appears to regard boys as somewhat more capable and confident than girls as a rule, whom she described as very strong but not as bold (interview, June 18, 2018).

12 See LeVine 2010, LeVine 2016, and Manandhar 2016 for more on Dhammawati Guruma.

Laughing on a Rooftop  131 this very important lineage connection that they can claim an “ordained connection with the Buddha.” In some ways, however, his vision in founding Peace Grove is a critique of “the whole nun environment” in Nepali Theravāda Buddhism (interview, June 22, 2018). During one conversation, Metteyya outlined for me some of the difficulties he perceives with the nuns’ movement in Nepal. Many of the Kathmandu nunneries are supported by family money, which, on the one hand, is necessary and helpful, but, on the other hand, keeps the women tied to the family system.13 As Metteyya puts it, “They sort of live under the illusion of the great freedom of nuns from this whole gender thing and yet they are trapped within their kith and clan” (interview, June 22, 2018). Also, the Theravāda nuns’ movement in Nepal suffers from what he terms a “program mentality” which, while well-​ meaning, puts too much emphasis on ordinations, the installation of images, Buddhist-​themed events, and conversion, and too little emphasis on meeting educational, medical, and other vital community needs. At one time, for instance, Metteyya thought to send the Peace Grove nuns to live with the head guruma14 in residence at Gotami Bhikkhuni Vihar. Ultimately, however, he felt that “she failed to grasp or distinguish between the need for women’s education or empowerment and religion. Her idea was that we are making people Buddhist . . . [but] this is not what we are trying to do here” (interview, June 22, 2018). One innovative aspect of female Theravāda monasticism in Nepal has been crucial for the Peace Grove nuns. That is the Nepali institution of the ṛṣiṇī.15 The practice of temporarily ordaining young girls as ṛṣiṇī began in Dharmakirti Vihar as a Theravāda alternative to the Newar female coming-​ of-​age ritual, called bārhā tayegu. Dhammawati and her gurumas invited Newar families to forgo this ritual (which involves the ritual quarantining

13 See Gellner and LeVine 2007. 14 She, like Sujata, is a disciple of Dhammawati. 15 Metteyya explains the provenance of the term ṛṣiṇī as follows: “The term ṛṣiṇī is coined in Nepal, by one of the eldest monks in Nepal. When he became ordained, it was before Theravāda even came in Nepal. . . . He was the first Newar merchant to seek ordination. At that time there were no Theravāda monks so he took ordination from the Tibetans. This is a weird juxtaposition because he’s not really Tibetan. He was the first to wander in the streets of Kathmandu and such. The Newaris had maintained this idea of what monks are so they had seen him but he was not really like the Theravāda monks from the vinaya. So they called him ṛṣi, Bauddha ṛṣi, ‘Buddhist ascetic.’ They gave him acknowledgment but also that he wasn’t a proper Theravāda monk until he took ordination from the Burmese Monk, Chandramani, in Kushinagar. So a lot of monks that came after used the phrase, even some who didn’t want to ordain as a monk but still wanted to practice meditation, they took up the term. And Dhammawati and the team started using this [for temporarily ordained girls] . . . it was a very brilliant move” (interview, June 22, 2018).

132  Amy Paris Langenberg of soon-​to-​be pubescent girls) and instead to send them to the nunnery where they wore red robes, kept the eight Buddhist precepts, and studied Buddhism for the period of time required by the ritual.16 Metteyya describes the thinking that led to this new female Buddhist practice as follows: The Newaris are a very conservative community. They have a taboo about periods. When you have your first period, the send you in guphā, a cave dwelling. You are banished for a month. It is unhygienic. [The girls] suffer a lot. They get fever. So Dhammawati thought, “Well, they can be at the nunnery.” And the Newaris said, “Oh, this is nice. We don’t have to be with them, and we don’t have to worry about them being in a cave. Someone else is taking care of the moral responsibility of their contamination. And they will learn our tradition [of Buddhism.]” They started giving them the reddish clothes and calling them ṛṣiṇī. I really liked that. It creates a shelter. (interview, June 22, 2018)

Like the ṛṣiṇīs in Kathmandu, the Peace Grove girls enter the nunnery as young girls. Like them, they wear red. Like them, they keep the eight precepts, live apart from their families, and receive Buddhist training. While the Kathmandu centers and Gotami Bhikkhuni Vihar in the Master Plan area all offer ṛṣiṇī pabbajjā (going forth as a ṛṣinī) as a temporary status to girls, none offer it on a semi-​permanent basis in the way Peace Grove does. In other words, the temporal extension of the ṛṣiṇī model in order to facilitate girls’ access to schooling over the long term and shield them from early marriage throughout their teens is a Peace Grove innovation. At the level of ritual symbolism, the practice of ṛṣiṇī pabbajjā seems entirely fitting for the needs of the Peace Grove nuns. Ṛṣiṇī pabbajjā is a ritual substitution for bārhā, which marks the advent of menses and sexual maturity, the life-​cycle crisis that also precipitated the creation of the Peace Grove community. In Metteyya’s words, “[Young girls] shouldn’t have to deal with saṃsāra issues. They should have space to grow and to learn before they get too serious” (interview, June 22, 2018).

16 See Allen 1996, 100–​132; Emmrich 2014; and Gutschow and Michaels 2008, 173–​187 for insight into the bārhā (cave) ritual. Levine and Gellner (2005, 91) and Bechert and Hartmann (1988, 26) mention ṛṣiṇī pabbajjā. See also Langenberg 2018, 15.

Laughing on a Rooftop  133

Discipline and Decorum at Peace Grove Like the maechi of Thailand (Cook 2010; Falk 2007; Seeger 2018), the Peace Grove ṛṣiṇīs officially keep eight precepts;17 however, discipline at Peace Grove is, in Metteyya’s description, “relaxed.” Bodhimom refers to the Peace Grove environment as “semi-​ monastic.” For instance, the Peace Grove nuns, who are young and still growing, are not expected to fast after noon, a standard disciplinary practice of Theravāda monastic life at all levels of ordination. Since the best food is typically given to boy children and men, girls sometimes grow up calorie-​deprived in poorer families in Lumbini. Given Peace Grove’s primary mission to give girls the best chance at life, it makes little sense to restrict the Peace Grove nuns’ diet. Though it is not the subject of a precept, the importance of sleep for growing bodies is also prioritized over keeping the extremely early morning hours that are typical of a traditional monastic schedule. According to Bodhi, “the women are all sleep deprived” in Lumbini because they work so hard and are responsible for so much, so this prioritization of sleep over monastic asceticism also reflects Peace Grove’s progressive advocacy for Lumbini girls (interview, August 7, 2019). The precept guarding against causing harm is interpreted by the girls I asked primarily as vegetarianism, a dietary restriction they find easy to follow and proudly embrace as an essential mark of their Buddhist identity. While the younger nuns are permitted sometimes to watch movies for the sake of both entertainment and education, Uttara, the head nun, insists that movie choices should be appropriate. To give a sense of what their exposure to popular media is, “appropriate” has, at times, included the Harry Potter and Twilight movies and the 1980s American shark thriller Jaws. Several of the older nuns possess smartphones, so their consumption of media is relatively less regulated. While they by no means wear finery, the girls routinely use good-​smelling shampoo and hair clips or bands, and some of the older ones may own sunglasses or sometimes wear T-​shirts (usually reddish in color) with lettering or images around the nunnery. They all seem to possess pretty, feminine footwear and some accessorize with handbags at times. For 17 The eight include abstaining from taking life; taking what is not given; sexual misconduct; false speech; intoxicants; eating at the wrong time; attending entertainments and wearing perfumes, lotions, or adornments; and sleeping or sitting in high or large seats or beds (Cook 2010, 195–​197; Falk 2007, 4). Although Metteyya mentioned the eight precepts as the disciplinary standard at Peace Grove, the head nun, Uttara, told me that the ṛṣiṇīs follow ten (as opposed to eight) precepts, particularly on full-​moon days. Foregoing the handling of money is included in the list of ten but not the list of eight precepts.

134  Amy Paris Langenberg Metteyya, the crucial precept is the one guarding against sexual misconduct, which, in the case of the Peace Grove nuns (and any respectable unmarried teenage girl in Lumbini) means complete abstention from sexual contact of any kind. On this subject, he commented, “This they must maintain because otherwise we lose the trust of the system.” The only day that the nuns are expected to keep all eight of the precepts strictly, however, including fasting after noon, is the full-​moon day. A key aspect of monastic discipline, and one that is highly emphasized in the training of monks and nuns in most Buddhist contexts, is beautiful self-​presentation and decorum (Cook 2010, 116–​134; 151–​172; Langenberg 2018, 9; Samuels 2010, 63–​83). The vinaya contains multiple rules governing decorum that can be memorized, recited, and obeyed. These include guidelines for how monks and nuns should manage their head and body hair, dress, speak, laugh, sit, walk, eat, and even urinate. For instance, one of the sekhiya or “training” rules for nuns is, “I will not go laughing loudly in inhabited areas” (Wijayaratna 2010, 190).18 To a large extent, however, monastic decorum is a lived embodied tradition that is learned through informal oral (rather than formal text-​based) instruction and simply absorbed through daily participation in a monastic environment (Samuels 2010, 81). The monastic decorum performed by the Peace Grove nuns is proper when necessary but pleasingly informal when not. For instance, they kneel or stand in an upright posture, hands joined in prayer position, during ceremonial occasions such as morning and evening chanting, visits from important guests, or formal photographs in front of the Buddha Hall. During the rest of the time, however, the girls lounge, jump, lean, flounce, or sprawl as teenagers do. While they are quiet, polite, and deferential when faced with strangers, out in the public eye, or engaged in interactions in which social hierarchy is important, at home in the nunnery they are boisterous, loud, and full of laughter. Day-​to-​day meals at Peace Grove are casual, sometimes chatty or joking, and the girls follow local Nepali table customs, not vinaya regulations regarding eating behavior. Metteyya and Bodhi have been intentionally lenient in choosing the monastic apparel the girls are permitted to wear. They always wear the reddish color associated with the ṛṣiṇī status—​even their jackets, sweatshirts, and socks are usually red—​but the nuns are given a choice between the traditional 18 For details on proper monastic decorum according to the vinaya, see Wijayaratna 1990, Wijayaratna 2010, and Heirman and Torck 2012.

Laughing on a Rooftop  135 three robes prescribed in the vinaya and a more user-​friendly salwar kamiz (loose pants and long shirt) option. On this topic, Metteyya explains, “I wanted them to have a bit more freedom. I wanted them to be able to ride a bike, go to school, play sports. They don’t have to wear a funny skirt. They can wear pajamas; it gives them more freedom. And yet, they are special beings, special people, [with] special privilege. So they get all the respect from the community. But they do have—​if they get a bit grown up and mature—​they have a set of robes” (interview, June 22, 2018). The girls themselves appreciate this choice and wear both options depending on a range of factors. Some prefer the freedom of movement of the salwar, especially the little ones and a few of the older ones who get around on motorcycles or scooters. In one detailed and frank conversation, several mentioned with a giggle, however, the advantage of the monastic skirt, which doesn’t get wet when they use water for cleansing after using the toilet, as is normal in Lumbini. A very distinctive feature of Peace Grove monasticism is the fact that the nuns do not shave their heads. Tonsure is the emblem of renunciation of both men and women in virtually all Buddhist orders. Other women who have joined alternative renunciant orders, such as the dasasilmātās of Sri Lanka, the Thai maechis, or, closer to home, the Nepali gurumas, shave their heads as the very mark of their special non-​lay celibate status. Bodhimom’s head is also shaved. The Peace Grove girls keep their hair, however, and keep it carefully. It was necessary for Metteyya to secure special permission from the bhikkhu saṅgha officials in Kathmandu for this exception, which he describes as a compromise with a local Lumbini gender environment in which a young girl’s hair is closely keyed to perceptions of her desirability and marriageability. In Metteyya’s words, “The taboo [on cutting hair] is that, sadly, girls are objects. So this object mentality is there. Like a cup. If the cup is chipped, nobody is going to buy it.” He adds, “I had to find a solution within the existing cultural boundaries—​a sort of easy way for them to defend their idea, especially to their mothers, and within the community. And yet [their ṛṣiṇī status] could still change them from where they were to a bigger, better, more spacious place,” even with well-​groomed, long, glossy hair. The authority structures that support and structure moral behavior at Peace Grove are not entirely separate from the lay hierarchies and norms that govern social life in Nepal. The nuns are still, to some intangible extent, connected to the hierarchical authority structures within their families, although parents sign contracts upon their daughters’ entry into Peace Grove which require them to refrain from marrying the girls off before their

136  Amy Paris Langenberg graduation from the program. The nuns also interact daily with gender-​ coded structural hierarchies at the schools they attend. The Peace Grove nuns all feel they must “respect” (they often use the English word) their parents, older brothers, teachers, and other elders, although their Peace Grove life also provides them with a platform for dissent and critique, a topic to which we will turn soon. Ultimately, the Peace Grove nuns all look to “Guruji” (Metteyya) for guidance and access to resources in all educational and vocational projects. An unfailing advocate for the empowerment of women and girls, Metteyya nonetheless symbolically occupies the role of male leader of the community (mostly in absentia of late as he has accepted a highly demanding government job)19 even while being keenly aware of the ironies. He takes ownership of the dignity associated with his monastic status, speaking quietly and carefully, wearing his robes fastidiously, sometimes sitting on a higher seat, submitting to being served first and with the best things, and often finding himself in the position of hierarchical authority rather than democratic dialogue with others. There is clearly a strong relationship of genuine mutual affection between Metteyya and the nuns, but, nonetheless, his entrance into the community ripples through the affective atmosphere and creates changes of behavior among the girls. While they generally socialize in gregarious and lighthearted ways when on their own, they tend to behave more formally, be quieter, more still, and less expressive in his presence, even inside the nunnery. As both he and one of the senior-​most nuns told me, he is well aware of this dynamic and, though he didn’t admit to this, may feel some pressure to enforce monastic decorum. While on a walk to the Mayadevi Temple one night, two of the high-​school-​aged nuns recounted with a smile how much they love to laugh and be loud (contrary to local gender convention), how carried away they sometimes get, and how “Guruji” gently hushes them, saying “slowly, slowly” (conversation January 16, 2019). During a nunnery celebration of some of the girls’ “birthday” (Peace Grove lingo for their ordination day), he opened the event and said a few words but then withdrew so the nuns could be silly, stuff cake in each other’s mouth, and tease each other without inhibition. Shaking his head at the irony, he told me that he cannot avoid the gendered history and ingrained patterns of hierarchy and power that his

19 Metteyya is now the Vice Chairman of the Lumbini Development Trust, which was formed by the government of Nepal in order to implement the Lumbini Master Plan and develop and conserve nearby archeological sites associated with the Buddha’s life.

Laughing on a Rooftop  137 forefathers put in place. He occupies the position of authoritative male leader of Peace Grove, whether he likes it or not. The day-​to-​day business of managing, caring for, and maintaining discipline among 21 young monastic girls and women falls to Uttara, the head nun. Uttara’s field of responsibility encompasses any and all aspects of Peace Grove daily life from making sure the smaller girls get off to school on time to supplying everyone with enough soap, shampoo, and menstrual products, buying rice for the week, and, sometimes, putting the brakes on the older girls’ phone use. It is an under-​resourced, and overwhelming task, and Uttara often suffers from stress, tiredness, and worry. In addition, because Uttara is so close in age to the girls in the first “batch” of nuns ordained at Peace Grove, they sometimes challenge her right to structure their days or restrict their behavior. As the older girls spend more time outside of the nunnery for education or work, and as they contemplate their next steps in life, the disciplinary parameters of their monastic life may become hazier. While they all understand the importance of proper sexual conduct, non-​lying, non-​harm, and non-​stealing, and none seem at all inclined to experiment with intoxicants as would be more likely for teenage girls in, for instance, the United States, issues like social media or phone use become areas of questioning, tension, and challenge. At the moment, it falls largely to Uttara to negotiate these gray areas with the older girls while they still wear the reddish clothing and inhabit the religious status of Peace Grove ṛṣiṇī. This situation has resulted in some tension within the nunnery.

Religion, Education, and Their Limits at Peace Grove As noted by Metteyya, contemporary Theravāda Buddhism in Nepal still includes expensive displays of Buddhist piety, but a critique of formal ritualism is at the root of the movement. For its early proponents, the Theravāda revival represented a turning away from the elaborate ceremonialism of Newar Buddhism and a return to the ethical purity and core meanings of the Buddha’s original teachings. Although it does not seem to reach the level of an official Peace Grove dogma, a subtle modernist deemphasis on ritual formalism and ostentatious displays of devotion is discernable in the Peace Grove environment. The religious simplicity of Peace Grove can be traced in part to the skepticism of Metteyya and Bodhi with respect to religious excess, spending, and pretention. Bodhi, for instance, for whom

138  Amy Paris Langenberg Buddhism and education are “the same thing,” tells the story of how the current modest Buddha Hall at Peace Grove came to be built, almost incidentally, not out of any desire on the part of the Peace Grove community for a larger fancier place of worship. After the first girls were ordained, an elderly and ailing Vietnamese American monk donated, unasked, some money to the nunnery for the purpose of building a new hall to replace the tiny temple originally installed by Metteyya and Bodhi. Before leaving for America, he entrusted the money to another foreign monk, who applied to Bodhi and Metteyya to receive permission to tear down their tiny temple and build a bigger hall with the funds. They agreed, and the new (still quite modest) hall was built. Now cleaned daily and tended to by the younger nuns, it is a pleasant and functional space, the site of melodious morning and evening prayers, a one-​hour group meditation on Saturday mornings, various meetings and talks by guests and local dignitaries, and study sessions during school finals. To the extent that traditional, ritual-​focused South Asian religious life is valorized at Peace Grove, local Lumbini practices seem to be favored over modernist Buddhist practices. For instance, I have heard both Metteyya and his younger brother (a stalwart friend and supporter of the Peace Grove nuns) speak with genuine regret at the transformation of the Mayadevi Temple, swallowed up by the Master Plan, from a place of local ritual potency where many non-​Buddhist lifecycle and agricultural rituals have taken place to a controlled and sanitized site of transnational Buddhist tourism. The Mayadevi Temple is the preferred location of children’s haircutting ceremonies, its sacred tank and goddess shrine the site of rain rituals, and its Aśoka pillar a place of marital auspiciousness where grooms come to offer their wedding crowns. It is also a beloved place for the Peace Grove nuns. Many significant community moments occur there, including ordinations, full-​ moon rituals, and special evening candlelight prayers when Bodhimom visits from Canada. While being Buddhist themed, such moments are conducted, like the other “family” rituals that have taken place at Mayadevi, with much affection and a relaxed sense of time. In some sense, in part because they are local girls, the Peace Grove nuns’ relationship with the Mayadevi site is more indigenous than “Buddhist” in flavor. Bodhi and Uttara, the head nun, speak of Buddhism itself as acting to accomplish great things within and through the community. While most of the other nuns do not speak of the Buddhist teachings in this way or, frankly, speak of it much at all, they appear to gather not only moral direction but

Laughing on a Rooftop  139 delight from Buddhist practices, ideas, and places. They suffer very little from doubt, boredom, or resistance to their Buddhist commitments, even though most prioritize secular over religious self-​ development. Once they reach a certain age, the nuns are given the opportunity to participate in vipassanā retreats, an experience which a high-​school-​aged nun I will call Vimala, assuming a sort of Indiana Jones swagger, described as an exciting, strange, and perilous adventure. Another nun, after giving a thumbs-​ up review of her vipassanā retreat experience, remarked with a twinkle in English, “vipassanā is funny.” The Peace Grove nuns sing their melodic ratnavandanā chant (honoring the three jewels: buddha, dharma, saṅgha) at morning and evening pūjā in full voice and with musical flair (even if their attendance is not always consistent). They speak of fulfilling the precept of nonviolence by following vegetarianism with a sense of ease and rightness (not of deprivation). They appreciate the Mayadevi shrine for its beauty and express a special heart connection to the site. It seems to me that, for Peace Grove nuns living in the Terai (where Theravāda Buddhism is associated with anti-​caste views, environmentalism, critical thinking, educational ambition, compassion for those who suffer or are marginalized, modernity, and, most of all, gender equality), Buddhism represents a solid and benign source of good and beautiful things. While the Peace Grove nuns are connected with local monastic communities, especially the large Thai temple within the Master Plan at whose charitable “eye camps” they regularly contribute volunteer labor, the institutional mission of Peace Grove is educational in essence. Indeed, Peace Grove is more connected with local schools than local monasteries and nunneries. Educational opportunities put in the nuns’ way fall into a range of categories. All of the nuns are given access to the graduated Nepal-​wide Buddhist pariyatti curriculum, which the head nun, Uttara, teaches and administers for the LSSF schools. Mostly, however, the nuns pour their energies into the secular education they receive at the Metta and Karuna schools. In addition to math, English, Nepali, health, science, social studies, information technology, and other standard classes, the KGS students also periodically participate in enrichment programs. These have been made possible by the presence of European and American volunteers who live at the nunnery, or at the Bodhi Institute, a parallel LSSF monastic institution for local boys. An American music student, Olivia Snow Gilmore, offered a music class to KGS students for four months in 2016–​2017 in which several Peace Grove nuns learned to play the guitar and perform songs, including “Cheerleader” by

140  Amy Paris Langenberg Omi20 and “Sanam Re” by Arijit Singh.21 A unique and by now enduring enrichment program at KGS is the journalism club begun by Vanessa Martinez, an American cultural anthropologist who lived and volunteered for several years at the nunnery and served as Metteyya’s assistant. Martinez’s vision is to help KGS students build confidence in engaging the world around them and expressing their own views. Promoting computer literacy is also a goal of the program. Since its founding in 2016, the KGS journalism club has produced multiple issues of Girl Reports, which are reported, written, and illustrated by KGS students. Under Martinez’s leadership, Girl Reports is now registered officially as a non-​profit organization, has its own board of directors, and is available online.22 After receiving their “school-​leaving certificates” at the end of 10th grade, the older Peace Grove nuns have continued on to a number of professional training programs and academic pursuits. Four were trained as auxiliary nurse midwives, though only one of those four, the now married ex–​Peace Grove nun I have referred to as Kasi, currently works in that capacity. The other three have studied German at the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, originally with the intention of receiving further training abroad in the nursing field through a German government program. Several of these auxiliary nurse midwife nuns have also taught health and participated in a public health project at KGS, the purpose of which is to educate the KGS students about menstrual hygiene and promote the use of proper menstrual technology. Two of the other more senior nuns are studying to be lab technicians in Kathmandu. The long-​term hope is that eventually, when a new hospital is built in Lumbini (another of Metteyya’s many projects), they will be able to staff the lab. Yet another Peace Grove nun has undergone short trainings in Kathmandu to be a baker and barista. If the funding can be procured, she will eventually manage a café and bookstore for tourists within the Master Plan. Two others are studying marketing and business in nearby Bhairahawa. Another, whom I will call Sumana, has earned an MA in Buddhist Studies at Lumbini Buddhist University and wishes to continue on to a doctoral program in Buddhist Studies, possibly in Korea. A few seem poised to give back their robes and enter lay life. Only one, Uttara, the head nun, has mentioned 20 See https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​jGfl​UbPQ​fW8. 21 See https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​DS-​raAyM​xl4. 22 For more information, see https://​www.girl​repo​rts.org/​. One highly motivated and academically talented Peace Grove nun is an active member of the KGS journalism club and wrote a profile of Bodhimom called “Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita: Bodhi Mom and Us” for the winter 2019 issue (Gupta 2019).

Laughing on a Rooftop  141 to me an aspiration to pursue higher ordination, thereby entering Buddhist monastic life in a more serious way. Indeed, it is possible that the social functionality of the Peace Grove environment as currently structured breaks down to some degree for the girls in the older age category, most of whom are from one of the first two founding “batches” of nuns. One of them mentioned that “conditions in the nunnery are not good” for her at present, despite the fact that in the early years the nunnery represented “everything good in life.” During my time at Peace Grove, I did observe a general mood of frustration, waiting around, and uncertainty among some of more senior nuns as they attempt to negotiate a transition from the Peace Grove environment into an adult reality that, for women in rural Nepal, is almost exclusively defined in terms of hard labor, wifely duty, and motherhood. Several, are, as mentioned, ready to return home and enter married life. Others have aspirations that may often feel out of reach. For instance, the nuns studying German in Kathmandu met with multiple obstacles. Living without day-​to-​day support in Kathmandu on a restricted budget posed many challenges and hardships, including water shortages, health problems, and a long commute to school. In the end, they did not pass their first-​year exams. A pathway for Sumana to a PhD is also, at the moment, unclear. In the meantime, she dreams of building a small house on land owned by her family and moving away from the busy nunnery environment to live independently, but, for financial reasons, this also is a difficult goal to achieve. When I asked Bodhi what she wishes for the nunnery in the future, she immediately indexed the problematic nature of this transition from Peace Grove to whatever comes next. “I would like us to be able to support the nuns after the nunnery in whatever it is they want to do,” she commented. “That part is difficult” (interview, June 7, 2019).

Dynamics of Female Agency at Peace Grove The members of the larger Peace Grove community often employ English-​ language terms such as “empowerment,” “liberation” and, especially, “freedom” when describing their own aspirations for girls and women in Nepal. An old painted metal sign outside the nunnery gate reads “Shantikunja, Peace Grove Institute, Centre for Women’s Liberation.” Similarly, the KGS sign reads “(Centre for Women’s Liberation), Educating & Empowering Women to be Change-​maker of the Society.” Metteyya also

142  Amy Paris Langenberg speaks of “freedom” (which he connects to flexibility, independence, and subtlety of thought) and considers it to be an integral feature of Buddhist monasticism. The nuns themselves utilize a vocabulary reminiscent of liberal feminism, incorporating notions of freedom, autonomy, and sisterhood into their self-​narrations. One night in January of 2019 while on a walk to the Mayadevi Temple, Vimala, who is still in high school, and Abhaya, who is in “plus 2” (11th and 12th grade), openly and passionately expressed to me their frustrations about how much “freedom” and “independence” (we were speaking English together) is afforded to boys in their society, and how little to girls. Abhaya complained, “If you walk with a man, even if it is your brother, if you wear jeans, if you don’t cover [your breasts] with a chunni, people say you are bad. If you laugh too loud, people say ‘you are a girl, you must act shy.’ ” Vimala complained that, when she goes home, her relatives pester her about getting married. They say, “Look, you are so tall. Why are you not married?” The “thinking” in the home environment is so “different” than theirs, they both explained, and they are always happy to return to the nunnery. At the nunnery, “they all have the same mother,” by which they mean Bodhimom. They are sisters, and all share the same frustrations in their villages. Only at the nunnery are they “free,” they both agreed. They both added, though, that their parents now understand and support the nunnery program, although members of their extended family may not. KGS is also an environment in which local girls are able to develop “different thinking,” and KGS serves as a platform from which they have begun to critique conservative gender norms. The menstrual hygiene education program, in which KGS girls were given frank biomedical and practical information about a topic that carries much stigma and shame, is one example of an opportunity for girls to develop “different thinking.” The KGS journalism club is another LSSF program that encourages local Lumbini girls to explore “different thinking.” For instance, the winter 2019 issue of Girl Reports includes an article in English by KGS student Pratima Khatri entitled “We Too: An Inside Look into the Struggles of Girls in Nepal.” This well-​argued essay stakes a claim for female freedom and equality in Nepal. Khatri writes: We girls just want to live our lives as freely and as happily as boys. Girls and boys are creatures of the same nature and we all have the same desires, but only boys are allowed to fulfill those desires. It is time for us to create a world where girls can enjoy their lives too. To do that we all need to work together as a society. The first steps can be taken by the family by providing

Laughing on a Rooftop  143 more support for girls and removing conservative thinking from the home. We must create more opportunities for girls and keep the ideas of girls as equals in life and work at the front of every mind. (9)

Still, while Khatri, Vimala, and Abhaya are finding the words to express their “different thinking,” their sometimes-​fiery rhetoric of freedom and equality is substantially at odds with their actual capacities to act independently. The South Asian practices of guru devotion in which the Peace Grove nuns participate and the hierarchical respect for and deference to elders (especially senior men) that structures the lives of Lumbini girls cut across liberal principles associated with agency such as autonomy, equality, and freedom. While, as I have argued, the older nuns catalyzed the creation of the nunnery, these same young women often assume a posture of receptivity, obediently stepping into structures created for them by those in hierarchically senior positions. If the nuns tend not to initiate projects or make schooling or job plans independently and for themselves even as they enter their twenties, this is not just for lack of financial resources; they may struggle to act autonomously for a number of deeper cultural, social, and psychological reasons. Some of them are now discovering that, in young adulthood, this socioculturally rewarded posture of receptivity and obedience comes at a price; namely, an acute sense of uncertainty over where they will go next in their lives and feelings of entrapment (read: lack of “freedom”). In her 2001 review essay, entitled “Language and Agency,” the linguistic anthropologist Laura Ahearn highlights common modes of thinking about “agency.” One such “tendency,” especially prevalent in philosophical works, is the unmarked conflation of agency and “free will” (114–​115). Another “misguided approach to agency is to consider it a synonym of resistance,” according to Ahearn (115). One of Ahearn’s major points in her essay is that we should not make use of the concept of agency without defining it. To do so risks the importation of concepts like free will and resistance that are inappropriate to the context or situation under discussion and occludes how our research subjects understand themselves and act in the world. Ahearn provides a “bare bones definition” of agency that constitutes a helpful starting point: “agency refers to the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (112) (though she admits that this definition leaves many parameters unspecified). Ahearn’s bare bones definition of agency, which emphasizes sociocultural mediation, provides a starting point for understanding the Peace Grove nuns better. Scholars such as Saba Mahmood (2005) and Joanna Cook (2010) have

144  Amy Paris Langenberg also pointed to forms of agency in non-​Western religious environments that do not fit the Western liberal feminist understanding of the term as an operation of the individual will in resistance to power structures. As the work of Mahmood and Cook would predict, while the majority of the Peace Grove nuns often assume a receptive posture and are obedient to hierarchical forms of authority, they are still filling themselves out and building themselves up within the context of their monastic lives in ways not available to Lumbini girls living at home. Still, I have not found Mahmood and Cook’s articulations of religious mastery as a form of non-​liberal agency satisfactory for fully understanding agency at Peace Grove. The most essential way in which the Peace Grove nuns “accomplish themselves,” to borrow the language of the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir, is their ready access to secular education and immunity to marriage. Virtuosity in Buddhist forms of virtue or Buddhist practices of self-​transformation such as vipassanā are not necessarily the highest priority for the Peace Grove nuns. Sometimes, in fact, “vipassanā is funny.” As mentioned previously, the Peace Grove nuns seem to be drawing on a concept like “free will” and participating in a spirit of “resistance” when they include the words “equal” and “free” in their self-​talk. This type of language is pervasive in the Peace Grove subculture and appears in its online presentations, its signage, and in the articulations of its leader and spokesperson, Venerable Metteyya. It is a distortion to simply dismiss the seeming paradoxes of agency at work at Peace Grove nunnery as a regrettable coupling of feminist rhetoric with a failure of feminist will. “Equal” and “free” are lived as well as spoken concepts at Peace Grove, as I hope to demonstrate by developing the category of aesthetic agency. But because the categories of “equal” and “free” are somehow made to coexist, even fuse with, the performance of (admittedly lenient) forms of Buddhist monastic discipline, obedience to gender and age hierarchy, and a keen sense of being enmeshed in and responsible to the web of family, I think we have to regard “equal” and “free” as indigenous categories used to denote particular types of agency at Peace Grove that don’t map directly onto young female styles of agency in, for instance, white, middle-​class North American suburbs. How do we characterize the agency the Peace Grove nuns do perform when they are “equal” and “free”? Here, Ahearn’s, Cook’s, and Mahmood’s interventions are a starting place. Individual heroic will to action and blunt resistance to structural oppression are inadequate to describe the Peace Grove nuns’ “socioculturally mediated capacity to act.” Beyond Peace Grove’s

Laughing on a Rooftop  145 important capacity to support them in self-​educating and resisting marriage, it is evident to me that the girls’ ṛṣiṇī life also affords them many ephemeral, low-​visibility moments of delighting themselves and each other by not doing things quite conventionally, quite in accordance with their older brothers’ wishes, or in strict obedience to gender hierarchies. Such micro-​resistances might include getting rough during a KGS game of Kabbadi, waving a menstrual pad in the air during health class, participating in making a TikTok video with an American pop song for a soundtrack, or laughing loud, long, and often on the nunnery roof. Abu-​Lughod (1990) describes similar sorts of micro-​resistances by Bedouin women in Egypt, including her iconic example of “secret cigarettes” smoked on rooftops with children posted as lookouts, but she also warns against “misattributing to them forms of consciousness or politics that are not part of their experience—​something like a feminist consciousness or feminist politics” (47). Indeed, despite their embrace of the language of freedom, it is unclear to me whether the nuns are critically self-​aware as “feminists” or if it is more that they are affectively energized when engaging in a micro-​resistance, as in the time Vimala battled my then 16-​year-​old son on the chessboard using only her queen, or the time I witnessed Abhaya’s satisfaction in taking aggressive control of a classroom full of adolescent boys at Metta school. Often, small but “free” moments of mildly transgressive delight and subtly irreverent sisterhood happen spontaneously in the private space of the nunnery. One night, for instance, I was sitting in the old nunnery kitchen as the girls cooked themselves a snack. The lighting was exceedingly dim, the small room cramped, grease stained, and dingy. In and out wandered these luminous shiny-​haired girls, wafting the scent of Juicy Fruit gum and feasting on rainbow colored sour gummies, both carried over in my luggage from America. One fashioned a rainbow gummy into a bow tie and tried it on first at her neck and then in her hair. At one point, somebody used the wrong English pronoun and misgendered Subha. Somebody else then joked about Subha’s recent sex change. Subha responded, “I like to be a man.” She then turned to me and (unnecessarily) explained that, “in Nepal, men are very high and women are very low” while everyone laughed (interview, January 9, 2019). I aver that such affect-​ driven micro-​ resistances constitute “socioculturally mediated capacities to act” even if they are politically invisible. The nuns’ ongoing effectiveness and pleasure in acting as female agents also has at least something to do with their mastery of a unique Peace Grove monastic aesthetic of female presence, another illiberal form of female agency. As a

146  Amy Paris Langenberg number of ethnographic and textual scholars have demonstrated, beautiful self-​presentation is, in fact, an orthoprax dimension of Theravāda Buddhist monasticism in Asia, authorized by foundational texts such as the vinaya and the Visuddhimagga that prescribe standards of monastic comportment (Collins 1997; Cook 2010,118–​119; Samuels 2020, 37–​38, 72–​81). Following this orthopraxy, the nuns create and inhabit a differently gendered space for themselves not just inside in the private spaces of the nunnery but also outside in the public spaces of local Lumbini society by virtue of their recognizable monastic clothing,23 their distinctive topknot hair style, their mobility and visibility, and their self-​carriage as embodied, dignified, female beings. It is important here to note that, since sexual restraint is absolutely central to the norms that govern their lives as rṣiṇīs, their beautiful self-​presentation is behaviorally and rhetorically detached from sexuality and romance.24 Peace Grove nuns’ aesthetic agency is related in complex ways to their monastic costume. Fashion studies provides useful tools for conceptualizing this relationship. In Fashion and Cultural Studies, Susan B. Kaiser asserts that the study of fashion involves the mapping of an “ever-​changing interplay between freedom and constraints,” an analysis that “refers to an on-​going structure-​agency debate in social sciences and humanities” (2012, 10–​11). Kaiser employs the concept of “articulation” in order to capture the Janus face of fashion. Dress (for instance, monastic robes) and style (for instance, piling well-​groomed hair on top of the head) “articulate,” both in the sense that a joint articulates through joining, but also in the sense of expressing something distinct. In other words, individuals “articulate” through fashion in that they use it to attach to a social body as an arm attaches to a torso, while simultaneously expressing difference or individuality through self-​expression (13). Kaiser gets at this idea from a different direction when she borrows the concepts of subjectivity, subjection, and subject formation from cultural studies. Fashion engages all modes of subjectivity. Individuals experience subjugation when they conform to the dress or style expectations of their subject positions (wearing monastic robes, conforming to modest dress). At the same time, they participate in an agentive process of subject formation by 23 See Kieschnick 2000 for a discussion of the monastic robe as an emblem of monkhood and the dharma in China. 24 Kali Nyima Cape (PhD student, University of Virginia), who is a specialist in Tibetan consort traditions, made the important observation that women in monastic robes are often the targets of sexual harassment and violence. In the case of Peace Grove, the nuns’ visibility does not appear to increase their vulnerability, probably because they are so thoroughly embedded in a protective, very local social web, and the beneficiaries of effective community oversight in the public spaces of Lumbini.

Laughing on a Rooftop  147 making choices or combining different style options (not wearing what non-​ monastic girls wear, hairstyling). In Kaiser’s words, “These representations through style allow individuals to combine, or move across, their subject positions with a sense of self-​awareness and self-​expression.” They are “processes of subjectivity—​the ongoing, changing sense of exploring ‘who I am’ and ‘who I am becoming’ ” (29). In their dress and style choices, Peace Grove nuns illustrate the dynamic of agency versus subjection or conformity that Kaiser theorizes. The donning of monastic garb allows them to articulate their special status in relationship to other non-​monastic girls, while, at the same time, joining a powerful social body (the saṅgha). In addition, they hybridize their monastic performance in ways that are subtle or not so subtle, creating differentiation within the group. They do this by choosing between the salwar-​kamiz versus skirt style available to them, and through layering, accessorizing, footwear choices, and hairstyle. All of this suggests a level of critical self-​awareness or “subject formation” of the type Kaiser describes. Moreover, sometimes the girls take selfies using their phones while posing or temporarily self-​styling in ways that push against the boundaries of normative monastic performance. Sometimes other close members of the community, especially Metteyya’s younger brother who is a great friend to the nuns, takes photos or makes homemade music videos. Some of these selfies, photos, or videos make it onto social media. For example, a photo appeared on Facebook of one of the senior nuns looking fierce in her storm-​trooper-​style helmet, posed behind her red motorcycle. Such use of social media is an obvious acts of self-​representation, individually, or as a community, and manifests both critical self-​awareness and an ongoing process of subject formation. Visually and spatially, the Peace Grove nuns’ monastic presence is especially potent when, red robed, they speed from one place to another driving scooters or motorcycles (also still somewhat unusual behavior for young women in rural Nepal) or appear in public as a group. In her study of women in the Shiv Sena, Tarini Bedi comments on the stylish mobility of a particularly effective female Shiv Sena boss called Bala whose motorcycle, sunglasses, and impeccable sari are part of what allow her to self-​identify as “dashing.” Like “free” seems to be for the Peace Grove nuns, “dashing” is an indigenous category of Shiv Sena women that captures their political potency, visibility, and fearlessness.25 Similarly, the Peace Grove nuns’ 25 Bedi’s Shiv Sena party leader, Bala, comments, “On my bike, I am like Shivaji, like the Rani [queen] of Jahansi on my horse. Sometimes I take the bus, but mostly I like to take the bike. That way everyone can hear me coming. That is what makes me dashing” (2016, 3).

148  Amy Paris Langenberg ability to move freely and stylishly through the physical space of Lumbini, or to gather in visually arresting groupings in public places, is essential to their effectiveness as social agents. It is a visual assertion of the fact that, in Metteyya’s words, “they are special beings, special people, [with] special privilege. So they get all the respect of the community” (interview, June 22, 2018).26 As part of their performance of monastic female presence, a “capacity to act” that is attuned to the particular local material culture and performative traditions of Lumbini, the nuns sometimes assert themselves in unexpectedly physical ways, as when they participate in the Peace Grove custom of hugging friends and guests. Social hugging is unusual behavior for young Nepali women, but the Peace Grove nuns are empowered, it seems, within the ethically and politically separate space of the nunnery, to follow distinctive nunnery norms. According to Metteyya, this particular Peace Grove exception is an import from Canada, learned through the influential and physically affectionate presence of Bodhimom. Tarini Bedi (2016) notes that among the “dashing and daring” Shiv Sena women that she worked with as an ethnographer, embracing other women was common, even though “it is unusual for Indian women to initiate this kind of public, physical contact with anyone other than their children” (15). She analyzes this transgression of the usual as follows: “Shiv Sena women are ‘present’ as bodies in very physical ways even when they are structurally subordinated within the formal spheres of their political party. . . . It is ‘presence’ in everyday lives, in everyday transactions, and in everyday space that this book argues is critical to the political possibilities for women” (15). I would argue that a very similar, politically suggestive, assertion of physical presence operates in Peace Grove hugging. Upon reading a draft of this chapter, Antoinette DeNapoli, the author of Chapter 9 in this volume and an important interlocutor for me in this work, made a connection between Peace Grove moments of “freedom” and the concept of autonomy developed by Trikal Bhavanta Sarasvatiji (a.k.a. Mataji), the female Hindu guru she works with and writes about. For Mataji,

26 Metteyya tells a story of the first time he encountered Sujata Guruma (who would go on to be a pivotal influence in his decision to become a Buddhist monk) that resonates with the point I am making about the power of the ṛṣiṇīs’ visibility and mobility. One day Sujata rode into the courtyard of his school, tall and elegant, wearing the pink robes of the gurumas and a large sun hat. Her sartorial specialness, dignified carriage, and autonomy of movement all made a vivid impression on him, even before he heard what she had to say (interview, June 22, 2019).

Laughing on a Rooftop  149 female autonomy is “a natural indwelling force and has to be expressed.” It is “the force of life itself.” DeNapoli commented, “These [Peace Grove] girls have an intuitive sense of their autonomy as natural” and, through their various acts of self-​expression and resistance, are “letting out or leaking . . . a [female] autonomy that is [otherwise] so constrained and surveilled in South Asian culture.” Peace Grove, in DeNapoli’s words, “promotes a divine horizon of the freedom and flourishing of the female,” which, in the ideal, will spread to transform the communities to which Peace Grove is connected.27 The Peace Grove life, which DeNapoli described aptly as a “fortress of female flourishing,” is mostly lived outside of range of the everyday male patriarchal gaze. Exercising intellectual freedom and humor, performing aesthetic self-​ mastery, grounding themselves in a networked community of like-​minded girls, women, and men, the Peace Grove nuns have manifested a uniquely local form of aestheticized young female agency. At the same time, my research shows that the girls’ poverty and necessary obedience to pervasive hierarchical social structures, especially at the juncture where they must leave school and negotiate entry into adult life, kneecaps their “capacity to act” and threatens to block the seeping out of their in-​dwelling autonomy. Still, I would argue that articulating a strong subjectivity through monastic self-​ presentation, becoming energized during ephemeral moments of gender-​ transgressive “freedom,” and producing English-​language feminist rhetoric about freedom for girls and gender equality can all count as emergent forms of political consciousness as they are all characterized by “a changing sense of exploring ‘who I am’ and ‘who I am becoming’ ” (Kaiser 2012, 29) and a powerful performance of “presence” (Bedi 2016, 15) in relationship to, especially male, others. A social experiment designed and conducted in no small part by the girls themselves, Peace Grove is a female communitarian environment structured by engaged Buddhist ethical principles and a basic skeleton of monastic discipline that promotes education, delay of marriage, and a robust, filled-​out-​ from-​the-​inside sense of self among local girls. As the girls themselves know well, especially those in the older age group who have begun to face the question of “what comes next?,” the autonomous, “empowered” female people they accomplish themselves to be within the special space of the nunnery may not be fully acceptable or functional in the larger society, especially if they give back the protection and possibilities of their red robes and celibate

27 Email communication on August 15, 2019.

150  Amy Paris Langenberg ṛṣiṇī status. It is likely the girls themselves who will have to mobilize what they have become and again ooze autonomy/​exercise agency to solve this problem in a manner keyed to the particular challenges of their particular Lumbini lives. In the meantime, they explore and strengthen themselves, as individuals and as community, through both spontaneous and curated expressions of their embodied aesthetic female agency.

References Abu-​Lughod, Lila. 1990. “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women.” American Ethnologist 17, no. 1: 41–​55. Ahearn, Laura. 2001. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109–​137. Allen, Michael. 1996. The Cult of Kumari. Virgin Worship in Nepal. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point. Beauvoir, Simone de. (1949) 2011. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-​Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books. Bechert, Heinz, and Jens-​ Uwe Hartmann. 1988. “Observations on the Reform of Buddhism in Nepal.” Journal of the Nepal Research Center 8: 1–​30. Bedi, Tarini. 2016. The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India. Albany: SUNY Press. Bidari, Basanta. 2003. Lumbini: A Haven of Sacred Refuge. Kathmandu: Hill Side Press. Campano, Erik. 2013. “How Buddhists Fight Human Trafficking in Nepal: An Interview with the Venerable Dhamma Vijaya.” Patheos, February 13. https://​www.path​eos.com/​ blogs/​erik​camp​ano/​2013/​02/​buddh​ist-​nuns-​human-​traf​fi ck​ing-​nepal-​dha​mmam​oli-​ dhamm​avij​aya-​mol​ini-​erik-​camp​ano/​. Collins, Stephen. 1997. “The Body in Theravāda Buddhist Monasticism.” In Religion and the Body, edited by Sarah Coakley, 185–​204. New York: Cambridge University Press. Coningham, Robin, R.A.E. Coningham, K.P. Acharya, K.M. Strickland, C.E. Davis, M.J. Manuel, I.A. Simpson, K. Gilliland, J. Tremblay, T.C. Kinnaird and D.C.W. Sanderson. 2013. “The Earliest Buddhist Shrine: Excavating the Birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal).” Antiquity 87 (338): 1104–​1123. Cook, Joanna. 2010. Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Emmrich, Christoph. 2014. “Ritual Period: A Comparative Study of Three Newar Buddhist Menarch Manuals.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37: 80–​103. Falk, Monica Lindberg. 2007. Making Fields of Merit: Buddhist Female Ascetics and Gendered Orders in Thailand. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Gupta, Gauri. 2019. “Venerable Bodhi Sakyadhita: Bodhi Mom and Us.” Girl Reports 5 (Winter): 12–​13. https://​stat​ic1.squa​resp​ace.com/​sta​tic/​5b43f​d0f7​c932​7022​d090​033/​ t/​5c492​a042​1c67​c915​6363​bcd/​154829​8765​323/​Issue+​5+​Final+​Draft+​9.pdf. Gutschow, Niels, and Axel Michaels. 2008. Growing Up: Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Rituals among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Heim, Maria. 2014. The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.

Laughing on a Rooftop  151 Heirman, Ann, and Mathieu Torck. 2012. A Pure Mind in a Clean Body: Bodily Care in the Buddhist Monasteries of Ancient India and China. Gent: Academia Press. Jefferey, Patricia. (1998) 2001. “Agency, Activism, and Agendas.” In Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader, edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli, 465–​491. New York: Palgrave. Kaiser, Susan B. 2012. Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Khatri, Pratima. 2019. “We Too: An Inside Look into the Struggles of Girls in Nepal.” Girl Reports 5 (Winter): 8–​ 9. https://​stat​ic1.squa​resp​ace.com/​sta​tic/​5b43f​d0f7​c932​7022​ d090​033/​t/​5c492​a042​1c67​c915​6363​bcd/​154829​8765​323/​Issue+​5+​Final+​Draft+​9.pdf. Kieschnick, John. 2000. “The Symbolism of the Monk’s Robe in China.” Asia Major, Third Series 12, no. 1: 9–​32. Langenberg, Amy. 2018. “An Imperfect Alliance: Feminism and Female Buddhist Monasticisms.” Religions 9, no. 190: 1–​24. Letizia, Chiara. 2014. “Buddhist Activism, New Sanghas, and the Politics of Belonging in Some Tharu and Magar Communties in Southern Nepal.” In Facing Globalization in the Himalayas: Belonging and the Politics of the Self, edited by Gerard Toffin and Joanna Pfaff-​Czamecka, 286–​322. Singapore: Sage. Leve, Lauren. 2016. The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal: Ethical Practice and Religious Reform. Abingdon: Routledge Press. LeVine, Sarah. 2010. “Learning, Living, Spreading the Dharma—​ A Postmodern Journey from Uku Baha, Lalitpur, to Hsi Lai Monastery, Hacienda Heights, California: How Ganesh Kumari Shakya Became Bhikkhuni Dhammawati.” In Lives Lived, Lives Imagined, edited by Linda Covill, Ulrike Roesler, and Sarah Shaw, 161–​180. Boston: Wisdom Publications. LeVine, Sarah. 2016. “Dhammawati: President of the Theravada Nuns’ Order of Nepal.” In Figures of Buddhist Modernity, edited by Jeffrey Samuels, Justin Thomas McDaniel, and Mark Michael Rowe, 62–​65. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. LeVine, Sarah, and David N. Gellner. 2005. Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-​Century Nepal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. LeVine, Sarah, and David N. Gellner. 2007. “All in the Family: Money, Kinship, and Theravada Buddhism in Nepal.” In Observations on the Changing Social Mosaic of Nepal, Volume 10, edited by R. B. Chhetri and L. P. Uprety, 141–​173. Kathmandu: Central Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tribhuvan University. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Manandhar, Geeta, trans. 2016. Beloved Daughter: The Story of Dhammawati Guruma. Kathmandu: Mera Publications. McDaniel, Justin Michael. 2016. Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. McNay, Lois. 2016. “Agency.” In The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, edited by Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth, 39–​60. New York: Oxford University Press. Molesworth, Kate, and Ulrike Müller-​Böker. 2005. “The Local Impact of Under-​ realisation of the Lumbini Master Plan: A Field Report.” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 32, no. 2: 183–​211. Samuels, Jeffrey. 2010. Attracting the Heart: Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion in Sri Lankan Monastic Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Seeger, Martin. 2018. Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

152  Amy Paris Langenberg Verardi, Giovanni. 2010. “Buddha’s Birth and Reassessment of the Archeological Evidence.” In The Birth of the Buddha, edited by Christoph Cueppers, Max Deeg, and Hubert Durt, 19–​40. Lumbini: LIRI. Weise, Kai. 2013. “Perception Four: Tranquility, Universality, Clarity. The Kenzo Tange Master Plan.” In The Sacred Garden of Lumbini: Perceptions of Buddha’s Birthplace, edited by Kai Weise. Paris: UNESCO. Wijayaratna, Mohan. 1990. Buddhist Monastic Life According to the Texts of the Theravāda Tradition. Translated by Claude Grangier and Steven Collins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wijayaratna, Mohan. 2010. Buddhist Nuns: The Birth and Developmen of a Women’s Monastic Order. Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society.

6 Right to Pray Comparing Shani Shingnapur and Sabarimala Shefali More

Introduction Places of worship are a major medium through which religious specialists, devotees, and many others exercise their religious agency. While many scholars have discussed “agency” on different levels (Avishai 2008; Desai 2010; Mahmood 2001; Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002; Zion-​Waldoks 2015; Stein 2018; Sax 2006), in the study of religion, it remains an ambiguous term, especially when related to female agency. While early understandings of the concept were associated with resistance, free will, and the ability to transform the world (cf. Mahmood 2012, 374–​375; Ahearn 2001, 114; Sax 2006, 474–​475), in the last two decades, scholars in religious and gender studies have indeed moved beyond these understandings, discarding/​abandoning the assumption that religious women are, in principle, “oppressed.” Instead, the concept of agency has then been explored by looking at women’s faith and religious beliefs (Avishai 2008; Zion-​Waldoks 2015; Lila Abu-​Lughod 2002). In this chapter, I aim to problematize the notion of female religious agency further. I will deal with the agency of female devotees in male-​dominated Hindu places of worship in India through a comparative analysis of two case studies, namely the Śani temple in Shani Shingnapur, Maharashtra, and the Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple in Kerala. I will focus on the negotiations of women’s access to these two places of worship, especially by analyzing the “Right to Pray” movement, through which women in India voice their resistance against the restrictions on women’s entry into these places of worship. I shall consider two equally significant aspects of women’s agency in this context: on the one hand, agency lies with those female devotees who choose not to resist the religious traditions and who embrace the restrictions on their entry into places of worship. On the other hand, one also cannot deny the

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154  Shefali More agency of those female devotees who choose to resist. In this chapter, I will be focusing on the second aspect of women’s agency by analyzing the journey of this resistance and how and whether it reached its goal. Although the “Right to Pray” movement deals with the agency of women, it entailed the participation of multiple actors at different levels. Actors were, for example, the judiciary, social media, social activists, and state governments, who together in this process led to securing the goal of women’s temple entry. As Kockelman (2017, 16) rightly says, “There is no interesting account of agency that is not simultaneously an account of those agents who are trying to account for agency,” it is important to think about the agency of all these actors and ponder upon the concept of distributed agency in this context, as this movement is an excellent example of how the distribution of efforts on different levels leads to the achievement of a single goal. Most Hindu traditions, especially those following Brahmanical norms, normatively define gender-​specific roles and rules in religious spaces. For example, up until the second half of the 20th century, priesthood was thought to be an exclusively male territory. Though notably women were ritual partners who were essential in most domestic religious ceremonies,1 here, too, they were, and in most contexts still are, unable to perform the rituals without their ritual partner, namely their husband. In contrast, men could, and can, do so in the absence of their wife.2 In this ritualistic context, menstruation is the limiting factor as it curtails a woman’s movement in the sacrificial arena, confines her roles in religious settings, or constrains her access to sites of worship.3 However, in the first two decades of the 21st century in India, such assignment of gender-​specific roles and the practices following gender-​ specific rules began to be actively challenged both by women and men. I shall now analyze two case studies where rules regarding women’s entry to sites of

1 Most religious ceremonies in Brahmanical traditions are to be performed by married couples. In such ceremonies, the presence of wife (yajamānapatnī, the hostess) alongside the husband (yajamāna, the host) is essential. 2 For example, as per the local tradition, a father or brother or uncle could perform kanyādāna—​a rite in the marriage ceremony where the bride is officially given to the groom—​without their ritual partners, but the same cannot be done by a mother or sister or aunt in the absence of their husband. 3 Most Dharmasūtra texts talk about impurity associated with menstruation. Vasiṣṭha Dharmasūtra (4.3) lists menstruating women and women who have just given birth as causing impurity by their touch. Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra (1.11.32–​34) says that if someone deliberately touches a menstruating woman, that person remains impure for three days. Some texts such as Vasiṣṭha Dharmasūtra (5.8) and Taittirīya Saṁhitā (2.5.1.5–​6) also explain the reason why menstruation is associated with impurity with the story of Indra’s killing of a Brahmin and sharing one-​third of that brahmahatyā with women. This brahmahatyā manifests itself every month as menstruation and, thus, the impurity of killing a Brahmin is associated with menstruation.

Right to Pray  155 worship were modified on account of persistent and active protests against such regulations.

Case 1: Śani Temple, Shani Shingnapur, Maharashtra One specific temple in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra is dedicated to the male deity Śani, the son of Sūrya (the sun) and his wife Chāyā (the shadow). He is one of the nine planetary deities known as navagrahas in Hindu astrology, and he is associated with the planet Saturn (Gansten 2018). According to a purāṇic myth (Viṣṇu Purāṇa 3.2.2-​4), Samjñā, the wife of Sūrya, left him because she was unable to bear his intense heat. In her absence, she created a substitute, Chāyā, who resembled her. While Sūrya was unaware of this, he had three children with Chāyā. Śani is one of those three children. Once, Śani was so engrossed in the worship of Kṛṣṇa (Gansten 2018) that he failed to even glance at his wife who had just finished her menses and had taken her purificatory bath.4 His wife became angry and cursed him that whatever he glances at will be destroyed. Thus, this deity is feared for having evil effect on people’s life (Gansten 2018). In Hindu astrology as well, when the planet Śani passes through the zodiac sign occupied by the moon in a person’s natal horoscope, as well as its two adjacent signs, the mostly evil influence of Śani may be experienced for seven and a half years. This period is known as sārdhasapta or sāḍesātī (Gansten 2018). The temples of Śani are visited by people to appease the deity and ward off any evil effects of sāḍesātī.5 The site of worship at Shani Shingnapur is not a temple in the conventional sense, as the central focus of worship, a black stone boulder, is not confined within walls. According to local legend,6 many years ago, when it was raining incessantly, a boulder, caught in the flow of flood waters, got stuck in the branches of a tree. After the rain stopped, when the cowherds took the cows and buffaloes for grazing, they saw this black boulder stone. They 4 Dharmasūtra texts prescribe a strict regime to be followed by women during their menses. This regime, along with other restrictions, also includes sexual abstinence. The texts also prescribe a purificatory bath on the fourth day of menstruation, after which women are free from these restrictions (Vasiṣṭha Dharmasūtra 5.5, Taitirīya Saṁhitā 2.5.1.5–​7). 5 The effects of sāḍesātī are considered evil. As per the belief, during this period, people experience unfortunate incidents in every aspect of life, such as unemployment, having difficulties in their job, delay in marriage, problems in marriage, being injured in an accident, and difficulties in conceiving a child. 6 See Shri Shaneshwar Devasthan Trust website, https://​www.shani​dev.com/​the-​uni​que-​idol/​.

156  Shefali More were initially hesitant, but then they touched the stone with their sticks. Wherever they touched it, blood started trickling out. Later that night, the god Śani appeared in the dream of a cowherd and revealed his identity. He also asked the cowherd to move the stone and install it in the village instead. This black boulder, which is worshipped as the main deity in its site of worship, is considered a svayambhū (self-​manifested) form of Śani. There is no formal temple for the deity. After entering the main space, there is an open area and the black boulder stone (i.e., the Śani icon) is elevated on a platform that is separated from the remaining area by metal railings (as of September 2019).7 This worshipping site is considered a Jāgṛta devasthāna, meaning that the deity resides within the stone and is always in an awakened state. Therefore, people believe that the deity looks after the village at all times, so houses in the village do not have doors.8 At that (pre-​“#RightToPray”-​movement) stage in Shani Shingnapur, women were allowed onto the site, but they were not permitted to step onto the elevated platform built around the Śani icon and to touch the stone, which is also enclosed by metal railing. This Śani temple first became a topic of discussion in the media, when in November 2015 a woman entered the elevated platform in the site and touched the Śani icon (from here onward, this event will be referred to as the “November 2015 incident”). When the head priest and the temple authorities became aware about this incident, the place was rigorously purified, as the temple authorities considered the female touch a bad omen (Kulkarni 2015). Moreover, the temple trust suspended seven security men after the incident.9 When the news of this event and the subsequent purification process spread across the country, it sparked a debate among social activists and many others about the practice of excluding women from this site of worship, resulting in the demand to abolish this practice. Those justifying the exclusionary practice claimed that the boulder stone emits radiation that negatively affects the procreational capacity of women (Pandey 2016). While this specific argument does not indicate a connection between banning of women and impurity due to menstruation, the

7 The current elevated platform was built around the boulder. (see Shri Shaneshwar Devasthan Trust website, https://​www.shani​dev.com/​the-​uni​que-​idol/​). 8 In 2011, an incident of theft was recorded, and some villagers now want a change in this tradition. See Kulkarni Sushant, “Villagers in Shani Shingnapur, a Village with No Doors, Now Want Change,” The Indian Express, January 11, 2015. 9 PTI 2015. Although the news report does not explicitly mention the reason for suspending security men, it is understood that the temple administration must have blamed them for their lack of attention, allowing a woman to go on the elevated platform and touch the Śani icon.

Right to Pray  157 purificatory ritual performed by the temple authorities after the November 2015 incident implies an underlying connection with the assumed impurity of the female body. The November 2015 incident and the subsequent purification of the Śani icon triggered huge protest on different levels. Social activists, political leaders, celebrities, and common people (especially youngsters) voiced their opposition to the practice through on-​the-​ground protests, different social media platforms, and most importantly through legally challenging the practice in court. At the forefront of the on-​the-​ground protests was Trupti Desai, a social activist and the founder of Bhumata Brigade.10 She announced that she and other women would enter the platform of the Śani temple on January 26, 2016. When asked why she chose this particular day she said, “26th January is the Republic Day of India. As the constitution was implemented on this day, we decided to implement women’s right to equality on this very day.”11 However, she and 1,200 women who accompanied her12 were stopped by policemen in Supa, a town roughly 70 kilometers from the site of worship (PTI 2016). Moreover, within a few days of Trupti Desai’s announcement of her march toward the site of worship on January 26, for the first time, the temple trust appointed a woman as its president. Soon after the appointment, this new president announced her stand on the matter, stating that she planned to ensure that the traditions in the temple remained intact during her tenure (Banerjee 2019). Trupti Desai considers this appointment of a female president as “a tactic used by the temple authorities to manipulate the coverage of the issue and make women stand against women”. The legal battle aiming to eradicate this practice started when Vidya Bal, an experienced social activist and feminist from Maharashtra, decided to back this movement by filing a public interest litigation (PIL) with senior advocate Neelima Vartak in the Bombay High Court. The PIL demanded the implementation of “The Maharashtra Hindu Places of Public Worship (Entry Authorization) Act, 1956” (The Maharashtra Act) (The Hindu 2016). Trupti Desai informed me that at first Vidya Bal had asked her if she wanted to take the issue to the court. When Trupti Desai refused, Vidya Bal moved 10 The Bhumata Brigade is an organization based in Pune and founded on September 27, 2010. The organization works on various issues, such as corruption, women’s rights, farmer’s suicides, and environmental issues. The organization is for both men and women, but it has a special wing only for women named “Bhumata Ranaragini Brigade” (Goyal 2016). 11 All the quotations by Trupti Desai are from my phone conversation with her, dated June 21, 2018. 12 This is the number stated by Trupti Desai in my phone conversation with her. However, according to BBC News, approximately 1,000 women participated in the protest (PTI 2016).

158  Shefali More forward with the court case on her own. When asked why she did not take legal action, Trupti Desai stated: “The protests which I was leading were aggressive in nature. If I would have filed the PIL, then I wouldn’t had been able to continue with the protests. Also, one cannot predict how much time it will take for the court judgment. And I did not want to take the risk. Now because someone else filed the PIL, I was able to protest while the case was in the court.” Here, one should note that she considers aggressiveness as central and efficacious aspect of her protests (see also Bedi, Chapter 3, in this volume). Following these protests and the PIL, on April 1 2016, the Bombay High Court decreed that the state had a duty to prevent gender discrimination with regard to temple entries, and it ordered the Maharashtra Government to implement the provisions of “The Maharashtra Act” (The Hindu 2016). After this ruling, on April 2, 2016, Trupti Desai tried to enter the platform of the Śani temple with other women for a second time. However, the women were stopped by the villagers (devotees of the deity Śani), who strongly opposed the entry of women on the platform. However, the situation changed when, after the High Court’s order, the temple authorities took the decision that no one, not even men, should be allowed on the platform. When asked about this, Trupti Desai said, “this was a deliberate effort by the temple authorities to ensure that no woman goes near the Śani icon. If no one is going on the platform, then women also cannot demand to go on the platform”. However, this decision of the trustees caused unrest among the villagers, as this would stop them from observing the day of Guḍipādawā, a festival that marks the beginning of the new year for Maharashtrian Hindus. Every year on this day some men from the village worship at the temple of Śani. As a number of villagers did not want to discontinue their tradition, they went against this new rule and entered the platform on April 8, 2016, and worshipped the Śani icon. The villagers opened up a path for women as well: since men were going on the platform, as per the verdict of Bombay High Court, the temple trust could not legally stop women from going on the platform and touch the Śani icon as well. Therefore, the temple trust formally allowed women to go on the platform. On April 8, 2016, Trupti Desai and other women finally crossed the metal railing and worshipped and touched the Śani icon. Here, the impulse of the temple administration to continue the practice that excluded women was so strong that they chose to prohibit everyone from going on the platform rather than also allowing women. This highlights the profound fear of pollution by the presence of women near the Śani icon. This fear is substantially rooted in the anxiety of enraging the deity (as Śani

Right to Pray  159 is known to be enraged easily) by discontinuing the exclusionary practice. It is also worth noticing how the temple trust conveniently highlighted an existing fault line among female devotees and attempted to widen the divide by appointing a woman as their president. These dealings regarding women’s entry into the Śani temple thus pinpoints that there are major differences of opinion among all the actors involved, and that the assumption that women in general side with other women is simplistic and does not reflect the situation on the ground: it seems that those women who closely relate to Śani as their deity opposed the change in tradition demanded by those who champion for equal access to this and other holy sites.

Case 2: Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple, Kerala The second case study is about the dispute over women’s entry into the Sabarimala13 Sree Dharma Sastha Devasthanam (Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple) in Kerala. This temple is located on the Sabarimala hills in the Ranni-​Perunad village of Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district. It is one of the biggest pilgrim centers in South Asia. Every year, millions of devotees come to Sabarimala from different parts of India and abroad. The deity worshipped at Sabarimala is known as Dharmaśāstā or Ayyappan. The main source of myths and legends regarding Ayyappan are folk songs and a 19th-​century Sanskrit text called the Bhūtanāthopākhyānam.14 According to this text, after the buffalo demon Mahiṣāsura was killed by the goddess Durgā, the demon’s sister Mahiṣī, who was determined to avenge her slain brother, pleased Lord Brahmā with her penance. Brahmā granted her the boon that she would be defeated only by a human incarnation born through the union of two males. Blessed by this boon, Mahiṣī became invincible and went on a rampage of destruction. The helpless gods asked Śiva and Viṣṇu for help. Śiva and Viṣṇu decided to create a son who would eventually destroy her. This son was Bhūtanātha, another name of Ayyappan. The child was left on the banks of the river Pampā and was found by the childless king Rajasekhara of the Pandalam dynasty. The king adopted the child and named him “Maṇikaṇṭhana,” as he 13 The place name is spelled in many ways, such as Śabarimalā, Śabarimalai, and so on. I use “Sabarimala” throughout the chapter. 14 Sekar 1992, 15. According to Sekar, the myths and legends of Ayyappan are not found in any of the majot Purāṇic texts, whereas N. Gangadharan emphasizes that there are the references to Dharmaśāstā in some Purāṇas (he mentions Bhāgavata and Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇas) which stop either before or at his birth (Gangadharan 1995, 135–​144).

160  Shefali More wore a little bell around his neck. However, after some years, the Pandalam queen gave birth to her own child and became jealous of the adopted son. With the help of a court physician, she then hatched a plot. She told the king that she was ill, and that the only cure was tiger’s milk. After knowing this, the 12-​year-​old Maṇikaṇṭhana was sent to the forest to get some. He took with him only a coconut and some food which he wrapped in a small cloth bundle. On the way, he encountered the fierce Mahiṣī, whom he defeated and killed. Seeing him defeat Mahiṣī, the gods were overjoyed and revealed his divine identity to him and the mission for which he was born. Indra then took the form of a tigress, which the victorious Maṇikaṇṭhana rode back to his father’s kingdom. Having seen him like this, the king and the subjects realized the divine identity of Maṇikaṇṭhana. He then instructed the king to build a temple and took on a divine form. Before leaving, Maṇikaṇṭhana shot an arrow into the forest to mark the site of the temple.15 However, this is not the only legend related to Lord Ayyappan. According to another version of the story, Mahiṣī was formerly Līlā, the wife of Dattātreya, whom he had cursed to be reborn as Mahiṣī in the family of demons (Gangadharan 1995, 139). In this version of the legend, the beautiful Līlā re-​emerged from the ashes of the defeated Mahiṣī and wished to marry the young god. However, Ayyappan had taken a vow of celibacy. Yet he promised to marry her when new devotees would stop coming to his shrine at Sabarimala (Sekar 1992, 17).16 Although Ayyappan started out as the god of Keralites, today, devotees from all regions, religions, and castes visit this temple in huge numbers. Until September 2018, only men, prepubescent girls, and postmenopausal women were allowed to take the pilgrimage. Women in the age range from 10 to 50 years (i.e., of fertile/​menstruating age) were not permitted to join (Sekar 1992, 1). While women of this age group are free to worship the deity and are permitted to enter other temples of Lord Ayyappan,17 they are banned from the Sabarimala temple. The common reason given for this prohibition is that the deity Ayyappan is in his naiṣṭika brahmacārin form, that is, the penultimate brahmacārin, therefore following a strict code of celibacy. Thus, to maintain the celibacy of the deity, women are not allowed in the temple. 15 See Sekar 1992, 15–​16; Gangadharan 1995, 138–​139; Osella and Osella 2003, 730–​731. 16 For more versions of the origin of Lord Ayyappan, see Sekar 1992. 17 There are other shrines to Ayyappan in Kerala. There he is commonly known as Śāstā. A small shrine to Ayyappan is found in Kerala temples dedicated to other deities as well. For more details, see Sekar 1992.

Right to Pray  161 Also, devotees who take the pilgrimage must follow a mandatory vrata (observance), requiring abstinence from meat, stimulants, and sex, as well as follow some minor rules, such as visiting a temple every day and not shaving (Osella and Osella 2003, 733). Traditionally, this vrata is followed for 41 days before the actual pilgrimage.18 However, as Osella and Osella record, in practice, this period may be much shorter and some pilgrims start the abstinence just a few days before the pilgrimage (2003, 733). As women of menstruating age cannot complete this vrata due to their monthly cycle,19 they are not allowed to take the pilgrimage. Even women who do not menstruate or with early menopause are restricted as long as they fall in the aforementioned age group; because there is no medical check-​up that can be done at the time of the pilgrimage, the rule is followed strictly (Nair 2019). However, as we will see below, this has not always been the case. After observing the 41-​day-​long vrata, devotees have to undertake the arduous trek to the temple, starting from river Pampā. On this trek, they also have to carry with them an irumudi (a sack in the form of two pouches with ritual offerings), emulating the journey of Ayyappan. The front pouch is filled with offerings for Ayyappan, consisting of a ghee-​filled coconut and three handfuls of rice, and the rear pouch contains the offerings for other deities.20 Pilgrims are supposed to carry this irumudi on their head throughout the pilgrimage. This is another reason often mentioned for the banning of women at this pilgrimage: the arduous trek is believed to be too difficult for them. As many people started questioning the reasons provided by the traditionalists to justify the exclusionary practice, the traditionalists then responded that every religious space has its own energy. The energy of Sabarimala is masculine. Women of menstrual age are the embodiment of the feminine energy due to their procreational ability. Therefore, they are not allowed to take the pilgrimage to avoid the collision of two different energies.21 While the issue of women’s right to enter places of worship was gaining momentum in Maharashtra, the ban on women’s entry at the Sabarimala temple received heightened attention. However, the history of women’s entry issue at Sabarimala can be traced back to 1990. At that time, a PIL—​ “S. Mahendran VS The Secretary, Travancore Devaswom Board”—​was filed 18 The battle between Ayyappan and the Mahiṣī is said to have lasted for 41 days. Thus, the period of vrata is 41 days. 19 Since women are not supposed to indulge in the religious activities during their menstruation, they cannot complete the vrata. 20 For details on irumudi, see Osella and Osella 2003, 733. 21 Many of my interlocutors who were in favor of this practice gave this reason as justification.

162  Shefali More by one S. Mahendran, complaining about young women trekking the Sabari hills and offering prayers at the Sabarimala shrine. This PIL resulted in the High Court’s order to the Travancore Devaswom Board not to permit women between 10 and 50 years of age to offer worship at the Sabarimala shrine, and to demand all the necessary assistance from the Government of Kerala to implement this order.22 This order provided the legal basis to ban women’s entry at Sabarimala. Evidently, the practice that women were not allowed to enter the Sabarimala shrine was much more flexible before 1991 and was made a rigid rule only with the 1991 court order.23 This matter resurfaced when, in the year 2006, a WRIT petition was filed by the Indian Young Lawyer’s Association in the Supreme Court of India, asking to abolish this practice (Mishra Dipak 2018). However, in the case of Sabarimala, the legal battle was not as smooth as with Shani Shingnapur. In Maharashtra, the law had already granted gender equality for access to places of worship, and it was only the matter of its implementation on the ground. In contrast, in Kerala, a loophole (see below) in the act enabled the Devaswom board to ban the entry of women legally. On September 28, 2018—​12 years after the petition—​the Supreme Court of India gave its judgment on the case and allowed women of all ages to enter the temple. This verdict was followed by massive protest throughout the state. Amid the protests, it took almost three months to implement the court order. Finally, two women successfully entered the temple on January 2, 2019 (Kuttoor and Anand 2019). However, as soon as the temple authorities received this information, the temple was closed for purification rituals (Outlook Web Bureau 2019). This implied an underlying connection of the ban on women’s entry with the impurity associated with menstruation, though at first the traditionalists denied this connection. The entry of these two women caused a massive eruption of violence across the state. According to a report submitted by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, to the Governor of Kerala, P. Sathasivam, incidents of violence included attacks on women who tried to enter the temple, as well as on media persons and

22 B. Marar, S. Mahendran VS The Secretary, Travancore Devaswom Board, No. AIR 1993 ker 42 (Kerala High Court April 5, 1991). 23 Before 1955, women of all age groups used to visit Sabarimala temple for the first rice feeding ceremony of their children. See Mishra Dipak 2018, 79–​80. Sekar writes in her book that although she was not initiated due to the rules of cultus, she was able to accompany a group of pilgrims on their pilgrimage to the shrine as an observer. She also mentions that she was on hand at all the important structural rituals of the cultus except some ceremonies, such as ascending the sacred 18 steps or the karpūra ārati at Sabarimala and so on, from which she was excluded (Sekar 1992, 8, 109).

Right to Pray  163 police officials, damage of shops, houses, and state road transport buses (The Hindu 2019).

Comparative Analysis The two cases are concerned with the right of women to access places of worship, yet there are some notable differences. One striking difference is the amount of time involved in the process of securing temple access for women. It becomes evident by merely glancing at the chronology of events that access was granted to women at Śani temple within a few months after the November 2015 incident, whereas it took almost 12 years to achieve the same at Sabarimala, after the WRIT petition was filed. There are several aspects which could help to understand this prolonged time span in the Sabarimala case. First, the issue at Sabarimala is concerned with a pilgrimage undertaken by millions of devotees every year who not only come from South Indian states but also from abroad. This is not the case at Śani temple.24 Thus, the impact of the decision of Sabarimala case had a much further reach and, accordingly, received much more attention. Additionally, in Sabarimala, women were banned from even undertaking the pilgrimage, whereas at the Śani temple, women were allowed to enter, but not to go near and touch the Śani icon. Thus, the issue at the Śani temple was not about securing access to the site, but only to a certain (though central) part of it. At Sabarimala, it was about both the pilgrimage and the temple entry. These facts account for fundamental differences in the approach toward both cases, in the set of arguments provided both for and against the practice as well as regarding legal circumstances. Two acts require specific attention, namely (1) The Maharashtra Hindu Places of Public Worship (Entry Authorization) Act 1956 (The Maharashtra Act); and (2) The Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorization of Entry) Act, 1965 (The Kerala Act).25 Both these acts serve to enable the entry of all classes and sections of Hindus into public places of worship. However, one point of the Kerala Act distinguishes it from the Maharashtra Act: in section four of the Kerala act, 24 Although one can argue that the Śani temple also has millions of devotees, including those coming from abroad, it is not comparable to the number of devotees who come at Sabarimala, considering that Sabarimala is open for only around 120 days a year. 25 This act is referred from “India Code: Digital Repository of all Central and State Acts” (https://​ www.indiac​ode.nic.in).

164  Shefali More “power to make regulations for the maintenance of order and decorum and the due performance of rules and ceremonies in places of public worship” is given to “the trustee or any other person in charge of any place of public worship, subject to the control of the competent authority and any rules which may be made by that authority.”26 Exercising power under the aforementioned section four of the Kerala Act, the state of Kerala framed some rules. Rule number three disallows certain classes of persons to enter or to offer worship, and it explicitly mentions under its section (b)—​“women at such time during which they are not by custom and usage allowed to enter a place of worship.”27 The Travancore Devaswom Board, which is the governing body in case of Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple had issued notifications (in 1955 and 1956) preventing women from the age 10 to 50 from entering the temple.28 The said prohibition was also published on the website of the temple.29 This legal complexity was not present in the case of the Śani temple, as the Maharashtra act does not give any authority to anybody under any circumstances to formulate such regulations. The legal issue, together with the fact that the Sabarimala case was pending in the Supreme Court of India, accounts for the longer amount of time involved in finding a resolution. Yet also the implementation of the court order in the Sabarimala case took more time than the Śani case. At the Śani temple, women were able to go near the Śani icon within 10 days of the Bombay High Court’s order, whereas in Sabarimala it took almost three months until the first two women could enter the temple. There are a few points which should be taken into consideration here: How deeply is the practice rooted in the local tradition on site? What is the cultural importance of the temple and the deity for the respective state? What is the nature and meaning attributed to the deity’s worship?, What kind of power-​related and economic considerations are involved in it? Moreover, the public attention, amplified by social media, has to be taken into account, too. In the case of the Śani temple, women were never banned from entering the temple. The elevated platform and the metal railing which they were not allowed to cross had not existed from the beginning, and women were 26 “The Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorization of Entry) Act, 1965,” § 4 (1966). 27 “The Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorization of Entry) Rule, 1965,” as quoted in Mishra 2017. 28 See Mishra Dipak 2018, 201. 29 In January 2020, the notification was removed from the website.

Right to Pray  165 restricted only after it was built.30 In contrast, in Sabarimala, according to custom, women of menstrual age were always prohibited from taking the pilgrimage, though earlier it was not as rigidly implemented as after the 1990 court order. Additionally, Ayyappan’s celibacy, which is a well-​highlighted fact in all the legends related to the deity, provided a specific ground for putting a ban on women’s entry. In case of Śani, no mythological narrative provides a specific local ground for such a restriction. It thus seems that the ban on women at Sabarimala had more and deeper roots in tradition compared to the Śani temple and, thus, was more difficult to break. Furthermore, Śani is not a deity whose worship is exclusive to Maharashtra (Das 2019), and Shani Shingnapur is not the center of Śani worship in India. There are many equally famous Śani temples in other parts of India (Das 2019), and the Shani Shingnapur Śani temple is not an inextricable part of Maharashtrian identity. In contrast, Sabarimala pilgrimage does play a vital part in the construction of Keralite identity. People in south India are deeply attached to the customs and traditions associated with this pilgrimage. As Sekar analyzes, the modern popularity of this pilgrimage represents a revitalization of a Dravidian identity (Sekar 1992, 6). Therefore, it is not a surprise that the Supreme court’s order to abolish the custom was met with intense opposition. Importantly, this specific identity is at the same time a strongly gendered identity. As Osella and Osella argue, “Sabarimala pilgrimage plays a role in constructing male identities, at both external (social structural) and internal (psychological) levels” (Osella and Osella 2003, 729). On the social-​ structural level, it unites a man with a larger community of men, and on the psychological level it unites the devotees with a hypermasculine deity, who is born from two male deities. They suggest that the self-​immersion by men in a larger masculine social body at Sabarimala, is “undertaken in the context of a perfectly normal and universal sense of masculine ambivalence and self-​ doubt” (Osella and Osella 2006, 164). This pilgrimage underscores the power of renunciation as a greater source of masculinity, which, in addition to its structure (separation from the world—​immersion in all-​male community—​ return to the household) helps men to enhance their effectiveness as a householder. The task of securing general welfare of the family, inflicted on the

30 According to the temple trust, both men and women were not allowed to go on the platform and only the priest used to go there. However, in practice, men could enter the platform if they donated a fixed amount of money. In contrast, women did not have this option (More 2016).

166  Shefali More male pilgrims during this pilgrimage, sees women in a subordinate role. The absence of women allows men to focus on what is common in them, and the inferior status of women allows the men to posit their superiority. Thus, the exclusion of women is essential for the masculine character of this pilgrimage. At the Śani temple, the major opposition was local, as it consisted of the members of the temple trust, villagers of Shani Shingnapur, and people residing in the neighboring villages, who withdrew their opposition after the court’s order. Moreover, during the Shani Shingnapur row, almost all the political parties were in support of women’s entry on the platform. In contrast, in the Sabarimala case, though initially most parties welcomed the Supreme court’s verdict, later on parties such as the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) changed their stance. The BJP even actively participated and organized protests against the verdict (Karindalam 2019). This should be seen with the background of the then upcoming 2019 general elections. Moreover, the huge number of pilgrims involved, and the massive amount of cashflow generated during the short pilgrimage season (the main pilgrimage season lasts for around 60 days), as well as the popularity of this pilgrimage, drew heightened media attention to the case. Fear about the misfortune that might befall people due to this change,31 as well as the risk that the pilgrimage might lose its popularity (and thereby decreasing the money flow) and the media attention that magnified these fears, accounted for the overall strong resistance. Another very important aspect is the different nature of worship at both the temples. As mentioned earlier, the Śani temple is open for devotees for the whole year, with occasional festivals. Sabarimala, in contrast, is a pilgrimage site which is open only on very few specific occasions during the year.32 When the Supreme court’s judgement came on September 28, 2018, the temple was closed for worship. It reopened only in mid-​November for the Maṇḍalam (the maṇḍala-​pūjā) and closed again around mid-​December. During this period no woman was able to go inside the temple due to the strong protest by the devotees of Ayyappan who opposed the court’s judgment. After this, the temple opened again at the end of December for the 31 Osella and Osella (2006, 150) recount stories they heard in their fieldwork about misfortune befalling men who did not abstain from sex before or during the pilgrimage or broke the custom of excluding mature fertile women from the pilgrimage. 32 For the exact days when the Sabarimala Ayyappan temple is open, see Gangadharan 1995, 145; and Osella and Osella 2006, 147–​148.

Right to Pray  167 Makaravilakku festival. It was during this festival that two women were successful in entering the temple. Thus, technically, it took around 43 days (41 days of Maṇḍalam plus the additional 2 days of Makaravilakku festival) to implement the order. However, it should be noted that the women went inside the temple secretly, and it was announced only after they had been there. These points at least partially explain the relative delay in the court order’s implementation in the case of Sabarimala. However, apart from the differences, one important point connects both case studies, namely that campaigns were initiated on social media platforms to both support the women’s entry issue and oppose it. Thus, a “#RightToPray” started trending on Twitter after the November 2015 incident took place. Although the “#RightToPray” hashtag was a big umbrella which was also used to deal with other issues such as offering namāza in public places, it trended significantly during the women’s temple entry issues. When Sabarimala became the focal point of the movement, a counter campaign was started on social media with the new hashtag “#ReadyToWait.” This “#ReadyToWait” campaign was started by female devotees of Ayyappan, who wanted to send the message that they were ready to wait until they reached menopausal age to see Ayyappan (BBC News 2018). This campaign gave rise to the new argument that women who are true devotees of Ayyappan would respect the tradition and would wait to go in the temple at the appropriate time. This subsequently raised questions regarding the devotion of those who either wished to go in the temple or those who supported the abolishment of the practice. In a short time, this debate produced a flawed binary that religious people would stand with tradition and that those seeking change are feminists, and thus are invariably believed to be atheist or even “anti-​religious.” Similarly, during the Śani temple row, those activists who wished to go near the Śani icon were labeled the same way. However, the use of these binaries did not serve a deeper understanding of the matters at stake, but rather simplified and thereby polarized those engaged in the matter into two parties with seemingly mutually exclusive stances. Yet this simplification does not correspond to the much more complex reality. For example, although Sabarimala is a Hindu pilgrimage site, it is visited by people of other religions as well. Consequently, being “religious” as an Ayyappan devotee has a very different context for different people and is expressed differently, defying any attempt to define a “uniform Ayyappan religiosity.” In this context, the label “anti-​religious” is equally misplaced.

168  Shefali More In terms of agency through the November 2015 incident at the Śani temple, one needs to acknowledge that the woman who transgressed the rules and touched the Śani icon articulated her agency as a devotee by both actively and positively performing her devotion to Śani and at the same time by exhibiting resistance to the practice of banning women from touching the Śani icon. In this sense, this woman who crossed the metal railing and took the nine steps toward the Śani icon, and the two women who entered the Sabarimala temple on the dawn of January 2, 2019, are examples for religious women who adapt their religious action to the realities of their lives, subverting and resisting “official dogma through partial compliance and individual interpretations” (Avishai 2008).33 The Sabarimala issue heated up when the president of Travancore Devaswom Board, Prayar Gopalakrishnan, stated that he would allow women to enter only after a machine was invented to detect if they were pure—​meaning that they were not menstruating (BBC News 2018). This led to another social media campaign, the hashtag “#HappyToBleed.” This “#HappyToBleed” campaign, started by a college girl, aimed to change the perspective of considering menstruation as a taboo and as a marker of impurity. However, although this campaign addressed a core issue, it diverted attention away from temple entry of women to other issues connected to the perceived impurity of menstruation.

Conclusion Many actors played central roles in securing access for women to the two sites of worship discussed above. Enfield (2017) defines core elements of agency: “with regard to some goal-​directed controlled behaviour, agency consists of 1. Flexibility of controlling, composing, and subprehending and 2. Accountability of being evaluated, being entitled, and being obligated.” We can find some degree of these core elements (control and accountability) in the on-​the-​ground protests of Trupti Desai in the context of the “Right to Pray” movement. To some extent, she took control over the timing and method of the protest. Thus, she announced the date—​January 26, 2016—​on 33 At the same time, one needs to acknowledge the multiplicity of agendas of different actors in these movements. Although such debates are often dominated by modernizers, who profit from changing the rule and traditionalists, who profit from maintaining the rule, there are also many others who do not see themselves as part of either side.

Right to Pray  169 which she was going to head toward the Śani temple and she also determined the method of protesting, deciding to march toward the temple and attempting to enter the restricted area. Doing so, she was well aware that the temple authorities would not allow women to cross the metal railing. Yet rather than sitting in protest of the practice in Mumbai’s “Azad” Ground, which is a hub of protests, and rather than filing an appeal in the court, she chose to actively challenge the practice by using her physical presence and actions. While doing so, she anticipated the response, namely that she and women accompanying her would be stopped from crossing the metal railing or even from entering the temple, but still preferred this to legal action. Similarly, being the public face of this protest (at least in the initial phase), she was also held accountable for it. Her protest gained her popularity and media access through which she could voice the reasons for her opposition to this practice. Some people praised her for speaking against this practice and some criticized her. For many, being a woman certainly gave her some degree of “entitlement” to protest. Moreover, her protest motivated others (especially women) to join the protest. Similarly, the social media campaigns related to this movement through their very nature made the protest more inclusive, as social media is a platform for everyone with access to the Internet to voice their experiences, beliefs, and stance on the issue. Particularly, social media effectively amplified some voices, quickly making them the voices of a mass movement. Thus, the creators of these social media hashtags and those who transformed them into huge trends were also important agents, with at least some degree of control and accountability. Another important agent in these processes is the state, with both legislative as well as administrative agencies. The importance of the legal battle cannot be underestimated, as securing access on a constitutional level was a significant step toward the on-​the-​ground abolishment of the practice to ban women. Judiciary has the power to change people’s behavior, whether they like it or not. Over time, this changed behavior tends to become normalized—​ one simply gets used to it. However, the role of administrative agencies is very important here, as these agencies bear the burden of implementation of statues or court orders. “Agencies translate legislative pronouncements into rules that set standards and regulate conduct; investigate and ensure compliance; adjudicate disputes and prosecute violators” (Bernstein 2017, 41). This is quite evident from the case of Sabarimala, as earlier the Devaswom Board used a loophole in the law to ban women from the temple, issuing

170  Shefali More notices every year. When in 1991 the High Court gave the order to strictly implement the ban on the entry of women, the board even sought help of the police to implement this ban. After the Supreme court’s order to allow all women in the temple, it was the state agencies who were held accountable for not implementing the order. In the end, it would not have been possible for Kanakadurga and Bindu Ammini—​the first two women to enter the temple after the Supreme Court’s verdict—​to enter the temple without the help and protection of the police force. Both instances prove the importance of the administrative agencies for the implementation of any court order on the ground. Further important agents in the process are the women who actually entered the temples. Without their actions, the constitutional change would have been in vain, and the action of the first people who implement the change is very iconic. In the cases at hand, the fact that they were the first to break the custom impacted their personal life to a great extent, as is evident from the case of Kanakadurga, one of the two women who went inside the Sabarimala temple. As per news reports, she was beaten by her mother-​in-​ law after her return from Sabarimala (BBC News 2019). At the same time, the risks these women took made them role models for others and provided the courage and enthusiasm to others who wish to do the same but are afraid of the social consequences. In combination, the actions and efforts of all these agents facilitated change. In this sense, the movement itself is an expression of agency distributed among a network of actors and institutions—​an agency that becomes visible only when we inspect what is happening on different levels, allowing us to see the different agents who contribute in the process and to understand the dynamics behind the unfolding and interaction of different agencies.

References Sanskrit Texts Taittirīya Saṁhitā with the Padapātha and the commentary of Bhatta Bhāskara Miśra and Sāyanācārya. 1981. Edited by T. Dharmadhikari. Vol. 2, Part 1. Pune: Vaidika Samśodhana Mandala. Viṣṇumahāpurāṇam of Maharṣi Vedavyāsa. 2003. Edited by Thaneshachandra Upreti. 2nd ed., Vol. 1. Parimal Sanskrit Series 21. Delhi: Primal Publication.

Right to Pray  171

Secondary Literature Abu-​Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104: 8 S. Ahearn, Laura M. 2001. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109–​137. Avishai, Orit. 2008. “‘Doing Religion’ in a Secular World: Women in Conservative Religions and the Question of Agency.” Gender and Society 22, no. 4: 409–​433. B Marar. 1991. S. Mahendran VS The Secretary, Travancore Devaswom Board. Kerala High Court. Banerjee, Shoumojit. 2019. “Woman to Head Shani Shingnapur Temple Trust.” The Hindu, January 11, 2019. https://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​news/​natio​nal/​other-​sta​tes/​Woman-​to-​ head-​Shani-​Shi​ngna​pur-​tem​ple-​trust/​arti​cle1​3994​380.ece. BBC News. 2018. “Sabarimala: The Indian God Who Bars Women from His Temple.” October 19, 2018. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​asia-​india-​45901​014. BBC News. 2019. “Sabarimala: Woman Who Defied India Temple Ban ‘Attacked by Mother-​ in-​ Law.’” January 15, 2019. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​asia-​india-​ 46877​388. Bernstein, Anya. 2017. “Agency in State Agencies.” In Distributed Agency, edited by N. J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman, 41–​47. New York: Oxford University Press. Das, Subhamoy. 2019. “Hindu God Shani Bhagwan (Shani Dev): History and Significance.” Learn Religions (blog). August 22, 2019. https://​www.lea​rnre​ligi​ons. com/​shani-​dev-​1770​303. Desai, Amit. 2010. “Dilemmas of Devotion: Religious Transformation and Agency in Hindu India.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, no. 2: 313–​329. Enfield, N. J. 2017. “Elements of Agency.” In Distributed Agency, edited by N. J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman, 3–​7. New York: Oxford University Press. Gangadharan, N. 1995. “Pilgrimage to Śabarimala.” In Pilgrimage Studies: Sacred Places, Sacred Traditions, edited by D. P. Dubey, 135–​144. Pub. No. 3. Allahabad: The Society of Pilgrimage Studies. Gansten, Martin. 2018. “Navagrahas (Sūrya, Candra/​Soma Etc.).” In Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Hinduism Online, edited by Knut Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, and Vasudha Narayanan. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1163.2212-​5019_​beh_​COM_​1030​310. Goyal, Prateek. 2016. “Meet Bhumata Brigade’s Trupti Desai: Devout Hindu, Aggressive Activist.” The News Minute, January 30, 2016. https://​www.thenew​smin​ute.com/​arti​ cle/​meet-​bhum​ata-​briga​des-​tru​pti-​desai-​dev​out-​hindu-​agg​ress​ive-​activ​ist-​38331. The Hindu. 2016. “End Gender Discrimination at Temples, HC Tells Maharashtra,” April 2, 2016. https://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​news/​cit​ies/​mum​bai/​end-​gen​der-​dis​crim​inat​ion-​ at-​temp​les-​hc-​tells-​maha​rash​tra/​art​icle​8423​892.ece. The Hindu. 2019. “CM’s Report Highlights Violence,” January 11, 2019. https://​www.thehi​ ndu.com/​news/​natio​nal/​ker​ala/​cms-​rep​ort-​hig​hlig​hts-​viole​nce/​arti​cle2​5963​252.ece. Karindalam, Anirudha. 2019. “A Year after Sabarimala Verdict, Has Kerala BJP Given Up Its Fight?” The Week, September 28, 2019 (https://​www.thew​eek.in/​news/​india/​2019/​ 09/​28/​A-​year-​after-​Sab​arim​ala-​verd​ict-​has-​Ker​ala-​BJP-​given-​up-​its-​fight.html). Kockelman, Paul. 2017. “Gnomic Agency.” In Distributed Agency, edited by N. J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman, 15–​23. New York: Oxford University Press. Kulkarni, Sushant. 2015. “Ahmednagar Temple Trust ‘Purifies’ Shrine after Woman Offers Prayers.” The Indian Express, November 30, 2015. https://​indian​expr​ess.com/​arti​cle/​

172  Shefali More india/​india-​news-​india/​ahm​edna​gar-​tem​ple-​trust-​purif​i es-​shr​ine-​after-​woman-​off​ ers-​pray​ers/​. Kuttoor, Radhakrishnan, and G. Anand. 2019. “Two Women under 50 Years of Age Enter Sabarimala Temple.” The Hindu, January 2, 2019. https://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​news/​ natio​nal/​ker​ala/​two-​women-​under-​50-​enter-​sab​arim​ala-​tem​ple/​arti​cle2​5887​406.ece. Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16: 35 S. Mahmood, Saba. 2012. “Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt.” In Handbook of Gender, edited by Raka Ray, 368–​400. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mazumdar, Shampa, and Sanjoy Mazumdar. 2002. “In Mosques and Shrines: Women’s Agency in Public Sacred Spaces.” Journal of Ritual Studies 16, no. 2: 165–​179. Mishra, Dipak. 2017. Indian Young Lawyer’s Association vs The State of Kerala. The Supreme Court of India. Mishra, Dipak. 2018. Indian Young Lawyers Association vs The State of Kerala. The Supreme Court of India. More, Manoj. 2016. “SHANI Shingnapur Row: How a 400-​Year-​Old Tradition Fell Apart in Barely Four Months.” The Indian Express, April 8, 2016. https://​indian​expr​ess.com/​ arti​cle/​explai​ned/​shani-​shi​ngna​pur-​tem​ple-​row-​tru​pti-​desai-​ahm​edna​gar-​maha​ rash​tra/​. Nair, Aradhana. 2019. “A Significance of Temple Customs through Legal Lens: Shabarimala Judgement.” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 24, no. 1: 36–​39. Osella, Caroline, and Filippo Osella. 2006. Men and Masculinities in South India. London: Anthem Press. Osella, Filippo, and Caroline Osella. 2003. “Ayyappan Saranam: Masculinity and the Sabarimala Pilgrimage in Kerala.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9, no. 4: 729–​754. Outlook Web Bureau. 2019. “Sabarimala Reopens After ‘Purification’ As Two Women Enter Temple.” Outlook, January 2, 2019. https://​www.outlo​okin​dia.com/​webs​ite/​ story/​india-​news-​two-​women-​below-​50-​years-​rep​orte​dly-​enter-​sab​arim​ala-​tem​ple/​ 322​778. Pandey, Geeta. 2016. “Enough Is Enough: India Women Fight to Enter Emples.” BBC News, February 18, 2016. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​asia-​india-​35595​501. PTI. 2015. “Woman Breaks Tradition to Enter Shrine at Shanishingnapur Temple.” The Hindu, November 29, 2015. https://​www.thehi​ndu.com/​news/​natio​nal/​other-​sta​tes/​ Woman-​bre​aks-​tradit​ion-​to-​enter-​shr​ine-​at-​Shan​ishi​ngna​pur-​tem​ple/​arti​cle1​0235​ 282.ece. PTI. 2016. “Indian Women March to Temple Demanding ‘Right to Pray.’” BBC News, January 26, 2016. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​asia-​india-​35410​047. Sax, William. 2006. “Agency.” In Theorizing Rituals, edited by Jan Snoek, Jens Kreinath, and Michael Stausberg, 473–​481. Leiden: Brill. Sekar, Radhika. 1992. The Śabarimalai Pilgrimage and Ayyappan Cultus. First. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Stein, Deborah L. 2018. “Temple as Praxis:” In The Hegemony of Heritage: Ritual and the Record in Stone, 1st ed., 186–​219. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://​www. jstor.org/​sta​ble/​j.ctv941​vz0.11. Zion-​Waldoks, Tanya. 2015. “Politics of Devoted Resistance: Agency, Feminism, and Religion among Orthodox Agunah Activists in Israel.” Gender and Society 29, no. 1: 73–​97.

SECTION 3

PE R F OR MING RE LIG ION P U BL IC LY

7 Hindu Women and the Gendering of Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad Priyanka Ramlakhan

Introduction The present chapter explores the ways in which two Hindu women in Trinidad articulate gendered religious authority and ritual agency. Their narratives/​ actions/​ journeys have contributed to an unprecedented revisioning of priestly roles that offer an alternative to androcentric models of Hindu leadership.1 A diverse set of Hindu traditions that were predominantly informed by both Brahmanical and devotional traditions were initially transplanted in Trinidad through the memories of Indian indentured laborers during a steady stream of emigration from 1845 to 1917. Over time, these traditions were reimagined into a system that was reflective of local culture, landscape, and the pressures of colonialism. The caste system, religious hierarchies, and gender roles underwent the most visible reformulations (Vertovec 1992, 29). Although women held formative roles in the early practice and performance of Hinduism, they remained relegated to domestic spaces and were omitted from priestly positions of authority. Presently, the paṇḍitā, or female priest, and the nāū, the priest’s assistant, are two categories of religious leadership that are actively being reinterpreted and transformed by women.2 In Trinidad, the paṇḍit most closely functions as a priest, as opposed to a ritual specialist (purohita) commonly found in India. The Trinidadian paṇḍit is the central figure responsible for officiating rituals, delivering public

1 This chapter is primarily based on ethnographic field research that was conducted over the course of several research trips to Trinidad between 2016 and 2018. 2 Nāū is a common term for a priest’s assistant used in Hindi dialects.

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176  Priyanka Ramlakhan discourses on scriptural texts, and conducting religious training, among other community-​based services.3 Paṇḍithood was the exclusive right of the male brahmin; however, in 1990, Geeta Ramsingh, a non-​brahmin married woman, made national headlines when she was ordained as Trinidad’s first paṇḍitā.4 The emergence of the paṇḍitā contested both caste and gender norms, and remains a controversial issue of debate predicated upon issues of purity and pollution connected to the female body (Narayanan 2005, 28). Nevertheless, Geetaji silenced her critics by completing five years of training in India and authenticated her legitimacy by regularly performing Rāmāyaṇ kathā, which also showed her expertise in bhakti (devotion) traditions.5 The nāū, which was once a male-​dominated position, has in its contemporary form transitioned into an almost exclusively female role. As a ritual specialist subordinate to the paṇḍit, the nāū oversees all aspects of preparing ritual spaces and offers procedural guidance for the ritual patron (Winer 2009, 627). Nāūs are ubiquitously found in every village in Trinidad, yet one has emerged as an exemplar in her community: Nirmala Maharaj, a young nāū from a lesser known rural part of Trinidad, has earned a reputation as a ritual expert and healer whose śakti (power) is authenticated through her devotion to a local mud volcano goddess named Bālka Devī. In this chapter, I share the stories of Geetaji and Nirmala. They exemplify a growing body of female religious leaders who are sought after for their religious and spiritual knowledge, and have negotiated priestly positions distinct from their male counterparts. As I explore the extraordinary experience narratives of these women, I argue that while Geetaji works within a Sanskritic model of authority, Nirmala’s power is indigenously drawn from the natural landscape and goddess, and when analyzed together, both performance-​based models of authority underscore the diversity of gendered authority and capacity for agency. Moreover, I suggest that Geetaji and Nirmala have created an empowering space for the inclusion of women’s devotional and healing concerns and increased their participation within the tradition.

3 The attributes, qualification, and process of ordination for Trinidadian paṇḍits also extend to Caribbean Hinduism and in the subsequent areas where Indo-​Caribbean diaspora have migrated. 4 The Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Trinidad participates in the routine ordination of paṇḍitās. This chapter is concerned with the Sanatani strand of Hinduism which is largely informed by brahmanical orthodoxy. 5 Here I am using the Hindi pronunciation. Rāmāyaṇ kathās are a form of the traditional harikathā, a North Indian musical style of performing stories. In this context, kathās are primarily concentrate on Vālmīki and Tulsīdās versions of the Rāmāyaṇa, and routinely include excerpts from other Hindu scriptural texts (Lutgendorf 1991, 116).

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  177

Geetaji’s Authority and the Creation of the Paṇḍitā It is necessary to interpret and be loyal to our recipient heritage and tradition but also allow it to provide instruction for us and guidance for us as people here in Trinidad. It is about giving deeper meaning as to how we express ourselves as individuals, Hindus and Trinidadians; you are not separate from the community nor the country; it is about making the ancient relevant to today.

These words of Geetaji best encompass her philosophy as a religious leader and show how she views her social responsibility as an extension of her religious, national, and cultural identity. Geetaji was raised in Longdenville, Enterprise, a village located near the bustling, urbanized burrow of Chaguanas that has long been known as a hub for Indian arts and culture. As a youth, she was deeply influenced by her Hindu upbringing and held several leadership positions within the Longdenville Mandir. In her academic career, Geetaji was recognized for civic engagements and as an innate artist, and became the recipient of several artistic awards. Her talents were creatively expressed at the Longdenville Mandir as she routinely painted lamps (dīyas) and decorated other vessels used in temple worship. Geetaji’s demonstration of leadership within the temple caught the attention of Ravindranath Maharaj, better known as Raviji, who would later become her guru and inspire her interest in priesthood. Raviji, a well-​known member of Trinidad’s brahmin elite, self-​identifies as a cultural activist, and he established the Hindu Prachar Kendra (henceforth, the Kendra) in the mid-​1980s as an independent Hindu organization to fulfill his vision of revitalizing uniquely Trinidadian traditions. Aspects of his mission that deeply resonated with Geetaji included the reestablishment of customs practiced by Indian indentured laborers, an emphasis on sacredness of the Trinidad’s natural landscape by establishing local pilgrimage sites, and a renewed social interest in Indian arts and culture. Importantly, Raviji used his status as an elite male brahmin to advocate for female inclusivity in priesthood and challenge hegemonic Hindu organizations such as the Mahasabha, that maintain what he calls “archaic” views on caste and gender. Raviji has been instrumental in training and creating a pathway for a handful of women interested in priesthood, but none to the extent of his prized disciple, Geetaji. From 1987 to 1989, under the direction of Raviji, the Kendra launched its first two-​year residential “Missionary Course” designed for students to receive formal training in Hindu philosophical and

178  Priyanka Ramlakhan ritualistic applications. Geetaji was among the first cohort of students to graduate from the Missionary Course, which at the time served as her initial initiation into priestly work. At the age of 21, Geetaji became the first Indo-​Caribbean woman to sit upon the siṃhāsan (throne/​lion-​seat) and deliver a seven-​night Rāmāyaṇ kathā. This was a historical and socially impactful moment that marked the onset of controversial public debates connected to a woman’s right to priesthood. The first debate circulated around the siṃhāsan, an esteemed seat exclusively reserved for male brahmin paṇḍits, which in Caribbean Hinduism has been enculturated as a symbolic display of power.6 Local tradition dictates that the one who sits upon the siṃhāsan is understood as the deity Viṣṇu. Women are barred from sitting on a siṃhāsan because (1) the female body becomes polluted during the time of menstruation and (2) a woman’s gender prevents her from assuming the symbolic role of a male deity. Among my several interviews with paṇḍits and lay Hindus across Trinidad, a women’s restriction from sitting on the siṃhāsan was the most common response as to why women must never become paṇḍits. In response to Geetji’s many critics, Raviji publicly endorsed her right to the siṃhāsan by stating: If the siṃhāsan is the lion-​seat, then who is the one that sits upon the lion? It is but of course Mā Durgā. If Bhagavān [god] in the form of the goddess sits on the lion, then why can’t our women who are devīs [goddesses] sit on the siṃhāsan (Maharāj)?

Next, Geetaji’s performance Rāmāyaṇ kathās circulated doubt on her intellectual qualifications to interpret Trinidad’s most beloved text. Moreover, a public seven-​night lecture series is generally reserved for the most experienced of paṇḍits. In subsequent years, Geetaji continued to receive her share of praise and criticism, the latter of which mostly stemmed from orthodox paṇḍits of the Mahasabha. In our conversations, Geetaji explained to me that Raviji was not yet satisfied with her qualifications and continuously advised her to conduct advanced studies in India. At the behest of her guru, Geetaji completed four years of studies on Hindu philosophy at the Suddhananda Ashram in Chennai, followed by a year of research in Varanasi. Although a

6 In Trinidad, and by extension the Caribbean, the siṃhāsan is a symbol of power upon which a vyāsa or one who acts in the place of vyāsa, a narrative figure credited as a compiler of Hindu texts.

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  179 non-​brahmin female, Geetaji’s return from India solidified her status among elite paṇḍits.

Vāhinī as a Vehicle for Change In 2006, Raviji made the controversial move to step down as leader of the Kendra and appoint Geetaji as its new leader and spiritual head. Raviji initiated Geetaji into a new title—​vāhinī (Skt. for channel), which he interpreted as “vehicle of change.” He conceptualized it like this for two main reasons: (1) as a strategic move to elevate Geetaji’s social status through a title that reflected her training and qualifications, which far surpassed most paṇḍits, and (2) to depart public associations of Geetaji as a paṇḍitā and appease critics who contested the ordination of paṇḍitās. However, the title of vāhinī failed to serve the entirety of its intended purpose as most people continued to see Geetaji as a paṇḍitā and refer to her as such. Geetaji expressed that she often conceded to the title of paṇḍitā because she understood that it fit within the local vocabulary of religious hierarchy. Nevertheless, she acknowledges her true role is vāhinī and draws inspiration from its meaning as a change agent. Raviji’s agentic and symbolic power which catapulted Geetaji into a public religious profession is reflective of Nancy Falk’s study, which argues that in the creation of space for female leaders who embody male-​dominated roles, it is often a male elite that must work to establish their newfound position (2005). In a conversation with Raviji, I questioned him on his stance toward the inclusion of women in religious authority and his own role as a facilitator. He stated: I trained my students equally. I could not give preference to the males just because they were males. It so happened that the female students were more willing and had greater potential for the many-​sided nature of our community work and were less distracted; the females were more dependable.

Though he understands how a major part of his work focused on training women, he points out that his stance on women was never “contrived” but “natural” and consistent with Hindu teachings. Raviji cited the example of Ardhanārīśvara, the androgynous form of the deities Śiva and Pārvatī, to illustrate that that masculine and feminine energies are given equality in Hindu teachings. Raviji did not initially work with the intention of facilitating new

180  Priyanka Ramlakhan spaces for women, but he was gradually led down this path because his female disciples simply expressed more interest. He noted that Geetaji was an innate leader who not only showed immense promise but also shared in his vision for religious and cultural progression of their community. Although Geetaji’s mission is undoubtedly entwined with her guru’s vision, she has carefully created a distinct model of gendered authority that can be observed in five key ways: (1) an articulation of gender, (2) a style of interpreting Hindu texts that affirms and highlights women, (3) training female disciples, (4) negating purity restrictions ascribed to women’s bodies, and (5) reinserting women’s narratives into national Indo-​Trinidadian history. Geetaji’s articulation of gender combines aspects of “third gender,” a model adopted by Karen Pechilis, to interpret the ways in which female gurus reject categorizations of sex. In this model, the subject is neither male nor female, but exists within a tension of simultaneously being and not being a woman. Additional conceptions include the archetypal “mother” figure who performs maternal femininity while effacing features that may expose her sexuality (Pechilis 2004, 222). Geetaji’s overall appearance invokes simplicity. Her typical attire consists of a conservative shalwar kameez with unfitted, modest lines that are practical but also hide her femininity. For special functions such as a public reading or an initiation ceremony, she chooses a sari which is still modest, but slightly more elegant for the occasion. Geetaji’s hair is always carefully pinned back, and her only form of makeup is a red tilaka (forehead mark) that adorns her forehead. Her look is completed by a beaded mālā that swings around her neck—​adding a śakti-​like dynamic to her otherwise disciplined demeanor. Her appearance is a deliberate play between feminine and masculine attributes that portray an aesthetic of competence and authority. Motherhood is an essential part of Geetaji’s identity. Geetaji once desired to be a mother but ultimately could not have a child of her own child after struggling with a series of health conditions. The paṇḍitā described that she was ultimately able to fulfill her journey to motherhood by adopting a devotional attitude in which she envisioned all as her children, and as a guru, her disciples have become like her own children. Selecting her disciples carefully, Geetaji does not agree to assume the formal role of guru for just anyone, as she has a commitment to ensure that she can provide the proper guidance and devote the necessary time to each one of her “children.” Geetaji’s disciples are required to attend classes at the Kendra, where they learn about aspects of Hindu dharma, learn how to perform pūjā (ritual worship), and

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  181 are initiated into the exegetical study of Hindu texts. Most of her disciples consist of young women who explained that they are drawn to Geetaji’s jovial personality, relatability as a woman, and her flexible interpretation of purity restrictions. In particular, Geetaji works to contest the boundaries of ritual purity by allowing menstruating women to freely enter temple spaces and engage in rituals. In her view, it is most important that young women are not alienated from participating in temple activities for any reason but are actively encouraged. Alicia, a mother of two teenage daughters and member of the Kendra, explained to me that it was never a question as to who her children’s guru would be. She chose to have her daughters formally initiated (dīkṣā) with Geetaji because of the paṇḍitā’s obvious qualifications, and her gender. Alicia felt more at ease having her daughters spend time learning from a female. Geetaji herself acknowledged that most of her initiates are young women because their parents feel that their daughters can connect better with a woman. Her disciples often confide in her their personal struggles that they will not share with their own parents, so at times she takes on various roles of guru, mother, friend—​whatever her disciple needs at the time. Geetaji’s discourses often features the glory of motherhood as its central themes. In 2016, the Kendra organized a seven-​night Rāmāyaṇ reading officiated by Geetaji in honor of her 25 years of service as a paṇḍitā. Geetaji’s kathās glorified heroines of the Rāmāyaṇ, and illustrated the ways Kausalyā, Rām’s mother, was the epitome of piety and courage. When retelling the story of Rām’s exile, Geetaji directed the audience to turn their attention to the strength of Kausalyā as she described the depth of pain Kausalyā experienced when separated from her child. Attention to the humanization of heroines from Hindu epics is a part of Geetaji’s interpretive narrative style which sets her discourses apart from male paṇḍits who generally prioritize stories of male deities like Rām or Hanumān that depict hypermasculinity and male-​centric devotional attitudes. Ideas of nation-​building often inspire Geetaji’s teachings and community events, which she sees as honoring Indo-​Trinidadian history by making efforts to preserve Hindu identity and local customs. Indentureship narratives play a significant role in her view of nation-​building, highlighting that indentured ancestors were not only central in driving the economic and social development of Trinidad, but most importantly, they brought with them the Rāmāyaṇ tradition. Due to the widespread performance of Rāmāyaṇ, and as Trinidadian Hindu’s most beloved text, the island-​nation

182  Priyanka Ramlakhan is often referred to as “Rāmāyaṇ Country” (Riggio 2010, 106). Indentured laborers drew upon the Rāmāyaṇ as a source of strength and inspiration, as they reimagined it as a metaphor for their own experience of colonialism. Indian laborers compared the harsh pressures of plantation life to the challenges experienced by Rām during his exile, and they hoped to return to their homeland just as Rām voyaged to return his own kingdom (Singh 2012, 11). Reinforcing this theme, Geetaji’s teachings echo the national religious narrative of how indentureship is a parallel for the Rāmāyaṇ, yet she goes one step further by proclaiming that Indo-​Trinidadians are not only the successors of Rām’s divine lineage but that Trinidad is the kingdom of Rām. The Kendra also celebrates Indo-​Trinidadian history annually on the occasion of Indian Arrival Day, a national holiday that commemorates the day Indians initially arrived in Trinidad on the ship Fatel Razack. In honor of Indian Arrival Day, Geetaji highlights stories of indentured women and female elders in the community by showing their piety and sacrifice in preserving Hinduism. Under her creative direction, the Kendra’s halls are transformed into a museum-​like space that recreates the Fatel Razack, along with a display of artifacts such as cooking vessels and utensils from the indentureship period. The transformation of the temple illustrates the inseparability of religious, cultural, and national identities with local history. As Geetaji’s vision is one that centralizes women’s development and visibility, I questioned if she saw herself as a feminist or as part of a feminist movement. In response, she gave a spirited laugh and quickly responded, “No.” From our conversation, I understood that she didn’t want to be constricted by the labels of feminism, nor did she desire to be too closely affiliated with political undercurrents of the term. Instead of identifying as a feminist, she understands her work to be a fulfillment of her title, vāhinī. Geetaji pointed out that her mission is “making the ancient relevant to today,” which she constantly focused on by reflecting on the Sanskrit word navya. She interpreted this as “born anew” and explained that “everything, including rites, rituals and festivals should be born anew” (Ramsingh). The act of female agents separating themselves from feminist associations is not uncommon by women who feel their interests are not represented by feminist organizations (Lucia 2014). According to Geetaji, there is no need for the term as her dedication to women’s interests and gender-​equitable spaces is what she views as an authentic interpretation of Hinduism.

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  183

Nirmala’s Authority as a Nāū In a historic village of Ceedros located on Trinidad’s southernmost tip is St. Mary’s, a former coconut estate where Nirmala resides with her family who operate several businesses from their home, but primarily the manufacturing and selling of coconut oil. On an ordinary day, one can find Nirmala busily running about cutting, shelling, and extracting oil from barrels of coconuts. When she is not tending to her family’s business, she is occupied by her full-​time work as a nāū and as the temple keeper of the Bālka Devī shrine. Nirmala hails from a brahmin family and has worked as a nāū for more than 15 years. She explained that she was originally trained by an experienced male nāū from her village, and her interest in ritual and devotional work was influenced by spending her youth doing service work for her local temple. In Nirmala’s words, her “plenty of love for God” is what continuously inspired her to do religious work, and she pointed out that many people are not interested in becoming a nāū because it requires a strict vegetarian lifestyle and frequent fasting. The authority of the nāū is complicated, because although Nirmala is required to have knowledge of all facets of public rituals that occur within the Hindu calendar, domestic lifecycle rituals, and local traditions, she is a specialist who is relegated to a supportive role. During our conversations, Nirmala demonstrated enthusiasm for her craft by sketching the arrangement of the ritual platform (bedī) upon which the pūjā is performed, the placement of materials, and the sequence of steps for the different rituals we discussed. Despite the notion that paṇḍits mostly receive credit for officiating a ceremony, it is the nāū who maintains its ritual integrity. In our conversations, Nirmala relayed that most paṇḍits cannot often remember all the preparations required for each pūjā and continuously rely on her expertise. She stated that this is particularly true with younger paṇḍits who have granted her an informal role in their training. Pandit Sharma, who has routinely worked with Nirmala and has officiated worship for several women at the Bālka Devī temple, credited Nirmala as an advisor for paṇḍits. He endorsed her as the “most popular” nāū on the island, stating, “Anyone who is anyone knows her,” and her caliber of knowledge cannot be “taught in schools” but is a result of her years of training and dedication in her community. Nirmala, who is also a well-​versed musician, sings devotional songs (kīrtans and bhajans) that correspond to each step of worship. She stated that

184  Priyanka Ramlakhan it is her “efficiency” which has earned her the reputation to take her outside of her small village to all parts of the island-​nation.

Connections to the Goddess All that Nirmala does is an expression of her love for the goddess. But the goddess that has captured her devotion is not widely known. Bālka Devī is a regional goddess of Trinidad who is known to inhabit at least two mud volcanoes that are situated near an old civil war base in Ceedros. The goddess was originally worshipped at a previous location, but it later spontaneously manifested in another site, where a temple now stands. Nirmala is the youngest in her lineage to inherit the responsibility of caring for Bālka Devī, a tradition that has been preserved by the women in her family since indentureship. Nirmala and her mother, Roopa, retell various stories of how indentured laborers stumbled upon the volcano and experienced the power of the goddess emanating from its large expanses of mud. They insist that worshipping Bālka Devī will not only bestow healing but is compulsory for the island’s protection from natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, and especially from devastating volcanic eruptions. Together, Nirmala and Roopa spread miraculous stories of healing attributed to the goddess to such an extent that currently, Bālka Devī’s powers are something of a local legend. These authorizing narratives attract pilgrims of many religious and ethnic backgrounds across Trinidad, who then journey to perform goddess pūjā. Women comprise the majority of devotees who seek help in resolving domestic issues, begetting a good husband, relieving pain and illness, and having children. According to Nirmala, “the goddess is a woman and a woman always has the best interest of women.” When pilgrims arrive, they likely meet with Nirmala, who oversees all aspects of the temple care. Nirmala prepares all the materials for worship and leads devotees in a simple pūjā. If patrons request more elaborate rituals, Nirmala also assists a local male paṇḍit who officiates the ceremony. But often, it is Nirmala herself that is sought after for her popularity as a nāū and growing reputation as a healer. Nirmala has cultivated a unique relationship with the goddess to the extent that she can interpret the mud bubbles that occur on the surface of the volcano as distinct forms of the goddess, each replete with their own personalities and nicknames she assigns to them. Roopa has even acknowledged that her daughter’s abilities to commune with Bālka Devī far surpass her

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  185 own. Roopa insisted that Bālka Devī does not allow anyone but Nirmala to walk into the mud craters, not even male paṇḍits. Nirmala often enters the base of volcano to collect mud from the craters, which is used both in rituals and by pilgrims as a healing balm. Nirmala expressed that through her experience in maintaining the temple and worshipping Bālka Devī, she has accumulated “special benefits.” She stated, “when you touch people you can know what their problem is and heal them” and she has described how the repetition of rituals and prayers that is part of her daily life has “built up energy” within her that she can use to help others. She recounted several stories of removing evil eye, locally referred to as mālju, and cleansing women of negativity through a purifying ritual known as jāre. Nirmala attributes the power that has developed in her hands through repetitive work in preparing ritual altars with cow dung (gobar), and through working with volcano mud—​she states both these aspects of earth have innate healing properties. Even the coconut oil she manufactures serves a special function as it is used in the worship of the goddess and the light of temple lamps. Nirmala is always in touch with elements from the natural landscape that she personifies as prakṛti, the material form of the goddess. Indira is a Trinidadian woman in her 30s and a distant cousin of Nirmala who resides in the United States. She had heard stories about her indentured ancestors who once lived and worked on St. Mary’s plantation in Ceedros and became increasingly curious about Bālka Devī worship. A year before taking the trip to visit Ceedros, she recalled having a dream that she was worshipping an earth goddess (dhartī mātā pūjā) in a “remote” and “rustic” countryside that she had never seen before. As she performed her worship, she sang what she said sounded like traditional folk songs dedicated to the earth goddess with words that she didn’t know nor could recollect. Having forgotten about the dream the following year, she learned more about how her ancestors conducted volcano worship and was immediately attracted to the idea of visiting Bālka Devī. Having recently been divorced from an abusive spouse, Indira’s prayers were for protection and the prospect of a good husband in the future, and she believed Bālka Devī would answer her prayers. Nirmala served as Indira’s nāū and guided her through the pūjā that was performed by a local priest. Following the pūjā, Nirmala led Indira down a path toward the opening of the mud volcano to direct a private ritual in which Indira could request her own blessings from the goddess. As Indira made each offering that was carefully curated by Nirmala, Nirmala interpreted the goddess’s acceptance of the offering by examining the movement within

186  Priyanka Ramlakhan the craters. She exclaimed, “See how she is happy, look at how it’s bubbling!” Indira expressed that Nirmala’s abilities allowed for a meaningful fulfillment of the dream she had a year prior. She highlighted that even though she was eager to perform goddess pūjā with a paṇḍit in the Bālka Devī temple, it was “just an ordinary experience,” and it wasn’t until she was directed by Nirmala to make her own offerings into the volcano that she started to feel a curative connection with Bālka Devī. On another occasion, while Nirmala was in a neighboring town working as a nāū, she came across a woman whom she perceived to be experiencing pain in her lower leg. When the woman confirmed that she was experiencing pain, Nirmala spontaneously sprang into action. To alleviate the woman’s pain, Nirmala removed a bracelet from her own wrist and pressed it against the ailing part of the woman’s leg, which then created an immediate sense of relief. For Nirmala, such occurrences are common, and she states that it is part of her life’s work to “serve God and help humanity.” Just as the Bālka Devī looks after the interests of women, so, too, Nirmala follows the goddess’s example to become her own agent of healing, and by extension, an agent of access for the goddess. Spontaneity of ritual is the most compelling part of Nirmala’s agency, as she never knows when she will be called to perform healing. Nirmala expressed that the more she opened herself to a relationship with the goddess, the more the potency of her special abilities grew. Although Nirmala has earned an authoritative and respectable position as a brahmin nāū, it is her additional authority derived from the natural landscape that sets her apart as a ritual exemplar and opens a new set of possibilities for her work and talents.

Some Reflections on Authority and Agency This chapter has been an initial look into interpretive and innovative revisioning of roles of female priesthood by Trinidadian women that are shifting the very model of what counts as priestly authority within a Brahmanical tradition. It is important to note that the impetus for this chapter also stemmed from an interest in religious change in contemporary Indo-​Caribbean Hindu communities, particularly in how they negotiate the articulations of gendered authority. Though the island-​nation of Trinidad consists of closely knit communities, Geetaji and Nirmala have never met nor heard of each other and are from opposite social and economic backgrounds.

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  187 In one of my conversations with Nirmala, I asked her to share her thoughts on a woman’s right to priesthood. Though Nirmala did not personally know any paṇḍitās, she simply expressed: Women should not be paṇḍits. That is the place for a man because women get unclean. They must have a period of rest and they cannot touch holy books. Women are also not supposed to sit on a siṃhāsan, it is more for men, they are the high authority in the rules of sanātana dharma.

It is not surprising that Nirmala’s attitude toward female priesthood reinforces the very process Geetaji and her supporters work to dismantle because Nirmala’s opinions on ritual purity are directly informed by her brahmin upbringing, and this is a widely shared view among rural Hindu villages. Nirmala herself has no aspirations to become a paṇḍitā, nor does she see her own work as a form of priestly leadership. In my work on women in Trinidad, I often find that female religious leaders often reproduce the rhetoric of gendered norms, yet their actions exemplify a creative challenge to male-​centric authority. I suggest this for several reasons. First, because female leaders are loosely networked and are mostly confined to their own villages and surrounding areas. Secondly, only in the last 25 years have there been a handful of women who work as paṇḍitās. Next, women who work in a priestly capacity report that they do so as a form of devotion to God and the inner fulfillment it provides, as opposed to being part of a religious movement. Lastly, because the female experience of religious leadership is discursive and open to interpretation, women do not yet have a shared lexicon to discuss their newfound roles. As I reflect on these broader issues, it is apparent that the shifting roles of authority exemplified by Geetaji and Nirmala are reflective of religious movements that are geared toward a spectrum of innovative ritualistic adaptations, which respond to the social needs of women. Geetaji and Nirmala have shown that they need not get entangled with the messiness of directly contesting patriarchal constructions of local Hinduism, nor do they need to ascribe to feminist agendas for effecting change. Instead, Geetaji and Nirmala work within patriarchal structures to bring about change sanctioned by what they view as an authentically interrogated tradition. They do not necessarily compete with their male counterparts for ritual space because they are forging an entirely distinct space that is especially for women but also one in which men benefit. I borrow Saba Mahmood’s conceptualization of agency

188  Priyanka Ramlakhan “as a capacity for change” to generate my theoretical understandings of how Geetaji and Nirmala perform authority respective to the larger male-​defined spaces they work within. Both Geetaji and Nirmala have each expressed that their respective leadership roles is a fulfillment of their life’s purpose to serve God. Geetaji’s agency appears to be bound by the Brahmanical structure she abides within, but she has used her publicly sanctioned authenticity and legitimization to soften patriarchal lines that constrict her, by choosing to focus on women’s issues. I see this connected to Mahmood’s reflection of agency, which enables a female subject’s power to be located within structures of power, as opposed to outside of it (Mahmood 2011, 20). Although Nirmala is authenticated by her high caste, vegetarian lifestyle, and efficiency, and her vast array of ritual knowledge, I argue that it is her connection to the goddess that makes her authority unique and highly sought after. Among the categories of women’s roles within Trinidadian Hinduism, Nirmala is an interesting case because she falls between the socially demarcated positions of the nāū and the healer, making the expanse of her agency curious. Her lineage, alongside her relationship to the natural landscape, imbues her with an authority that operates outside of mainstream Hinduism, and this affords her a freedom to express both her individuality and curative power—​it is here that her agency as an unconventional ritual specialist lies. Nirmala’s embodied knowledge and shamanistic abilities attract a specific market of Hindus who seek healing which they could not otherwise gain from male paṇḍits. In this way, she contributes to a dual consciousness that operates within, but also on the periphery of, Brahmanical Hinduism. Geetaji and Nirmala have certainly achieved a far-​reaching degree of popularity within the Hindu public that has widened access to the communities that they serve, and in turn, this furthers the expanse of their agency. Geetaji’s popularity is, of course, on a much wider scale because she has often been the subject of news articles and earned recognition as the public face of the Kendra, which differs from Nirmala, whose popularity was primarily achieved through word of mouth. But this raises the question, does gender affect their popularity? In my attempt to answer this question, I am reminded of a comment made by a Hindu male interlocutor who stated, “Trinidadians are a tough crowd, you can’t fool them; if you are good, you are good and its doesn’t make a difference if you are a man or woman, most men are not paṇḍits, they are bandits.” The statement was made in response to a question I raised about women’s right to priesthood and touches on meaningful themes for the paṇḍitā.

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  189 In the Trinidadian landscape, for a religious figure to be considered “good,” they must be skilled in local ways of performing Hinduism: primarily the knowl­edge and recitation of texts, musical ability, and ritual competence. At the very least a paṇḍit must possess these basic qualifications, but often to sustain a congregational following, they must also demonstrate the capacity to guide and connect with the larger community. Geetaji’s early career was engulfed in controversy by critics who sought to discredit her; however, because she almost always exceeded the religious education of her male counterparts, the public is now less focused on her qualifications but on her personality and the light-​hearted ways she delivers spiritual teachings; this personality has earned her the reputation as a people person. Long-​time members of the Kendra reported that in her early career, many attended the paṇḍitā’s kathās precisely because she was a woman; some temple-​goers wanted to witness the novelty of a paṇḍitā while others showed up to test her proficiency of religious texts. It is true that Geetaji first earned her popularity because of her gender and the anomaly that it was to be a credentialed paṇḍitā, but it is her continued accomplishments which have sustained her following. I refer back to the earlier statement made by a Hindu male informer: “most men are not paṇḍits, they are bandits.” This statement highlights a growing dissatisfaction among the Hindu public who have become disillusioned by the growing perception of incompetent paṇḍits, and though it reflects a much larger social issue that requires much more scrutiny beyond this chapter, it is relevant to mention. During my conversations with lay Hindus in different parts of Trinidad, the term “bandit” arose many times, as a way of mocking how some paṇḍits use the profession as a money-​making business and engage in questionable moral conduct. Public acceptance of the paṇḍitā is still a divided issue, yet there is an emerging sense among lay Hindus that women just might be more suited to lead because they are thought of as more trustworthy and committed to the integrity of religious work. Unlike Geetaji, Nirmala’s popularity as a nāū has more to do with her skill and less to do with her gender. The main difference in their respective public receptions is that while Geetaji is more accepted by lay Hindus (though opposed by orthodox paṇḍits), Nirmala’s position is largely authorized by orthodox paṇḍits. Although Nirmala occupies a priestly position, because she is subordinate to the paṇḍit and poses no real threat to their authority, she is not publicly subjected to the traditional objections that restrict a woman from priesthood in the manner that Geetaji has experienced. Likewise, as a healer, Nirmala’s gender does help in creating connections with the women,

190  Priyanka Ramlakhan who report feeling more comfortable receiving healing from another woman. Studies also suggest that within healing spaces in Hindu traditions, gender often plays a legitimizing role as many traditions associate healing with goddess devotion and as a uniquely feminine practice (Erndl 1993, Sax 2009). It is Nirmala’s ancestral connection with the volcano goddess that adds an additional layer of authenticity, and by extension popularity, to her service and the stories that circulate around her healing capabilities. Finally, it is important to note that conceptions of diaspora and locality have long been established as a lens to theorize the making of religious and cultural identities, and this provides a useful framework to reflect on religious authority (Alfonso, Kokot and Tölölyan 2004, 3). The context of indentureship not only left an indelible imprint on the reimagining of Hinduism in Trinidad, but as this chapter has shown, it also shaped the ways Geetaji and Nirmala are constructing a gendered form of agency. Geetaji and Nirmala draw empowerment from diasporic space and its authorizing narratives, as each reconstruction and retelling celebrates the stories of female indentured ancestors. Moreover, they invoke ancestral authority into the present, as they preserve the legacy of inherited traditions—​and in their service to women. The recent reconceptualization of traditional roles offers alternate ways and new directions in thinking about female inclusivity and religious leadership, and while I have chosen to examine two models of gendered authority, there are several others forged by Trinidadian women who are just beginning to negotiate their own space in this emerging movement.

References Alfonso, Carolin, Waltraud Kokot, and Khachig Tölölyan. 2004. “Introduction.” In Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research edited by Carolin Alfonso, Waltraud Kokot, and Khachig Tölölyan, 1–​8. London: Routledge. Erndl, Kathleen M. 1993. Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falk, Nancy. 2005. “Shakti Ascending: Hindu Women, Politics, and Religious Leadership During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” In Religion in Modern India, edited by Robert Baird, 298–​334. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Lucia, Amanda J. 2014. Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lutgendorf, Philip. 1991. The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2011. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Religious and Ritual Authority in Trinidad  191 Narayanan, Vasudha. 2005. “Gender and Priesthood in the Hindu Traditions.” Journal of Hindu-​Christian Studies 18, no. 1. Pechilis, Karen. 2004. “Gurumayi, the Play of Shakti and Guru.” In The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States edited by Karen Pechilis, 219–​ 244. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riggio, Milla Cozart. 2010. “Performing in the Lap and at the Feet of God: Ramleela in Trinidad, 2006–​2008.” TDR/​The Drama Review 54, no. 1: 106–​149. Sax, William S. 2009. God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singh, Sherry-​ Ann. 2012. The Ramayana Tradition and Socio-​ religious Change in Trinidad, 1917–​1990. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers. Vertovec, Steven. 1992. Hindu Trinidad: Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-​economic Change. London: Macmillan Education. Winer, Lise. 2009. Dictionary of the English/​creole of Trinidad & Tobago: On Historical Principles. Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s Press.

8 Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance? Training Girls in Sanskrit and Vedic Rituals* Ute Hüsken

Introduction Every morning between five and half past six,1 sleepy tourists gather at Varanasi’s Assi Ghat, to witness the worship of the rising sun and the holy river Gaṅgā, called Subah-​e-​Banāras.2 In order for the onlookers and (often foreign) visitors to enjoy this experience, rows of plastic chairs are set up, just like for a theatrical performance. Before the performance starts, the visitors are informed first in Hindi and then in English about the spiritual significance of the event they are about to participate in, and they are requested to behave appropriately.3 The performance begins with a group of teenage *I wish to thank the female participants of the 2018 “Lived Sanskrit Cultures in Varanasi” course, with

whom I visited the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya repeatedly, who conducted some of the interviews together with me, and from whose insights I profited. I also thank Dr. Vinita Chandra (IIT-​BHU, Varanasi), who kindly shared some of her insights on the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya with me. Furthermore, I wish to thank Dr. Anand Mishra (South Asia Institute, Heidelberg) for his help with accessing the school and also for his help with several translations from Hindi, and I thank Kush Depala and Dr. Quoc-​Bao Do for copy-​editing this chapter. I also wish to express my gratitude to Heidelberg University for funding the workshop “Dynamics of Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism” in July 2018 and thus facilitating important academic discussions which are reflected in this chapter’s analysis. 1 The event starts at ca. 5:40 a.m. in the winter and at 5:00 a.m. in the summer. 2 The designation of this morning program reflects, complements and in some way is in competition with the Śām-​e-​Avadh in Lucknow, referring to the “glorious evenings” in the Awadh capitals of Faizabad and later Lucknow. 3 According to the introductory remarks that precede the daily performance, the program is not considered a ritual, but rather designed to make people aware of Indian traditions (“this is not karmakāṇḍa, it is spreading our culture”) which have been forgotten, about self-​realization, and about being close to nature. Nevertheless, in 2020, the Subah-​e-​Banāras committee had set up a signboard in Sanskrit and Hindi, which mentions 14 actions not to be done near the river Gaṅgā, “our life-​line” (gaṅgā hamārī jīvan rekhā). There it is mentioned for example that one should not defecate near the river, not throw garbage into the river, not laugh near the river, not to use soap in the river, and not praise other places of pilgrimage (tīrtha) near the river. On the signboard these rules are attributed to the Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa. However, the standard editions of the text do not contain the Sanskrit verses given on the signboard.

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Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  193

Figure 8.1  Scene from the Subah-​e-​Banāras program. Students of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya light the lamps for the performance (photo by Ute Hüsken, 2017).

girls reciting for a few minutes in Sanskrit, their voices being amplified by a loudspeaker.4 While the audience listens, a group of splendidly clad young men, appearing to be priests, enter the space, each taking a position on a separate platform facing the river.5 The girls then light big oil lamps set up in front these platforms and walk toward a pavilion with a prepared firepit (see Figure 8.1). There they sit down, lighting and tending to the sacrificial fire with members of the planning committee of this daily event and their guests in attendance. While the girls attend to the fire sacrifice, they continue to recite in Sanskrit. However, the visual focus of the event is on the aesthetically refined performance of the young men, whose worship of the river Gaṅgā 4 The girls recite selected passages from the Vedic saṃhitās, such as the sūryasūkta, and other hymns, praising moon, earth, and water. 5 While these seven young men are clad like priests, they are in fact students studying at the Sanskrit Vidya Dharma Vijnan of Banaras Hindu University. Sri Lakshmi Narayanan Mishra recruits and trains the male performers. In a 2020 interview with Shefali More and Aaron Vorwinkel, Mr. Mishra explained that he trains whoever is interested, and that those who perform well are then selected to perform on the stage. He adds that all young men are Brahmin by caste and receive a moderate remuneration for their performances. Asked why they joined the morning performance, the young men all said that they are proud to make people aware of the society’s culture and belief, and that they are proud to save the culture, and to serve Mother Gaṅgā. I thank Shefali More and Aaron Vorwinkel (both participants in the 2020 “Lived Sanskrit Cultures in Varanasi” course, conducted by Heidelberg University and funded by the DAAD) for sharing their insights with me.

194  Ute Hüsken looks spectacular in front of a sky that turns from black to dark blue, with an increasing pinkish hue, as the sun rises. The two performances—​that of the young men, and that of the girls—​are perfectly coordinated, contributing to the overall aesthetic experience.6 Both the sacrificial fire and the worship of sun and Gaṅgā are concluded shortly before the sun rises. Then, the spectators are invited to get up and join in calling “Hara, Hara, Hara, Mahadev!” By and large unnoticed by the audience, first the young men, and then the girls take the steps down to the river, line up close to the water, recite hymns to Varuṇa (the Vedic god of the waters), and perform an abbreviated sandhyāvandana, the twilight offering to the sun. Thereafter, the girls rush to a waiting car, which takes them home to their school, the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. On the stage follows a live performance first of serene classical Indian music, playing a morning rāga, and then 45 minutes of guided Yoga exercises for the general public. The program is clearly and explicitly designed to convey an “essence” of Indianness: Sanskrit is recited, a fire sacrifice (homa) is enacted, and an āratī to the holy river mother Gaṅgā is performed. Then follows a communal Yoga exercise—​Yoga being the most successful Indian contribution to the global health industry.7 Together, this program constitutes a perfect masala, a nice “traditional Indian curry,” which is exotic yet not too spicy and culturally refined, certainly leaving many visitors with the sense of having tasted the “essence” of spiritual India in a happy, clean, and enjoyable experience.

The Morning Program, Subah-​e-​Banāras Since November 2014, this program, called Subah-​e-​Banāras, is run every morning at Assi Ghat, the southernmost Ghat in Varanasi, which was once situated at the confluence of the Gaṅgā and Asī rivers.8 This Ghat is very 6 This coordination has continuously been refined and sophisticatedly coordinated from 2016 to 2020, when I (U.H.) had the chance to witness it. 7 The organizers summarize the program as follows: “Daily Schedule: Morning Vedic enchanting and Nature’s welcome (ethnic way); Vedic Yagya, to purify our inner self for realization and world peace; Tribute to five basic elements, i.e., Land, Water, Sky, Fire, and Air; Music–​Morning Raga, Classical/​Semi classical by expert artists; Yoga, to shape perfectly physically as well metaphysically” (http://​www.subahe​bana​ras.net/​index.php?id=​DailyS​ched​ule). 8 Things have radically changed since the pandemic COVID-​19 hit the world in February/​March 2020. While the fact that this program had been uninterruptedly performed since its inception had been a matter of great pride to all performers I had talked to, with the nationwide lockdown in March 2020 there clearly was no way to continue the performances. In early 2021, however, the program was resumed.

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  195 popular with Western tourists and foreign students and scholars, and it continues to be developed as a public space for locals and visitors alike. It also often is used as a political space, as Prime Minister Modi, whose constituency is Varanasi, often chooses Assi Ghat as a venue to receive and entertain state visits from abroad.9 During these visits, “samples” of the girls’ Sanskrit chanting and the young men’s āratī are given and, depending on the character of the state visit, sometimes embellished with other elements that are designed to represent Indian culture to the Prime Minister’s guests. The website of the morning Subah-​e-​Banāras program emphasizes as its salient feature “[a]‌mystic blend of nature’s grandeur and human existence. Rising Sun-​Golden Ganges and illuminated Ghats inspire man to enchant, sing and conjure (Yoga).”10 However, in the text of the website, one truly extraordinary aspect of this performance is not mentioned at all, namely that young women and girls, right from the beginning, have been prominent performers, publicly reciting Vedic verses and conducting the sacrificial fire (homa).11 According to the majority of normative Brahmanic texts in Sanskrit and according to representatives of the traditions, these rituals should be out of their reach—​a notion perpetuated by Indologists. The fact that women and girls are performing rituals here makes these events extraordinary on a number of accounts.

Exclusion of Women versus Women’s Public Performance According to Brahmin texts in Sanskrit, Vedic learning, and the performance of rituals “for others” (parārtha), is the exclusive right of male members of Brahmin castes. Members of the lowest class (collectively labeled śūdras in the normative Sanskrit texts) and also women are excluded from the right to learn and exercise these specialized religious and ritual practices. In many Dharma texts,12 women are categorically denied ritual agency, and they are denied the authority to act as priests,13 be it in the temple or for domestic 9 To name just a few state visits: In 2018 the German President W. Steinmeier was received at Assi Ghat by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2019 French President E. Macron was received there by Narendra Modi, and in 2020 the Sri Lankan President Rajapakshe visited Assi Ghat. 10 See http://​varan​asi.nic.in/​dcc/​sbp.html and http://​www.subahe​bana​ras.net/​index.php. 11 This fact becomes evident only through the images on the website which show that girls are reciting and performing the sacrificial fire. 12 For references see Kane 1941 (154f. and 558f.). See also Mānavadharmaśāstra 5.155 and 10.127. 13 I use the terms “priest,” “priestess,” and “priesthood” to refer to Hindu ritual specialists who perform domestic and temple ritual for others (arcaka and purohita).

196  Ute Hüsken rituals such as life-​cycle rituals (saṃskāra). This perception need not correspond to actual practice in the remote past, as the different voices listed by Kane (1941, 293ff.) show. However, those who insist that women cannot perform such rituals often refer to texts that do not allow women to undergo relevant initiations to make them eligible for such performances. Often Manu’s Dharmaśāstra is cited here. Here we find a verse which equates a young man’s initiation (upanayana) into Vedic learning with a woman’s wedding, and his service to his guru with her service to her husband.14 In contrast, marriage (pāṇigrahaṇa/​vivāha) transforms the Veda student into an independent householder with the right and duty (adhikāra) to perform sacrifices on his own. Osella and Osella therefore even argue that “Brahmanhood is synonymous with maleness,” as in the “second birth” (the initiation upanayana) a male Brahman (the guru) is the birther, and as this second birth replaces the original female-​effected birth (Osella and Osella 1999, 197). Undoubtedly, the gender of the performers of this part of Subah-​e-​Banāras is remarkable. It is equally outstanding that the organizing committee of Subah-​e-​Banāras chose the women to publicly represent “traditional, spiritual India” not only to the average tourist but also to the world at large, by showing them off to the heads of state of other countries. In Hindu traditions that refer to Sanskrit texts as their source of authority,15 women’s ritual and religious roles are mostly restricted to the private sphere, and women are thus relatively powerless in the public realm.16 It is therefore quite remarkable that these women, who transgress traditional ritual rules through their performances, are chosen to represent Hindu spirituality. Importantly, with their daily public performance at Assi Ghat, the school and the girls contribute to a facelift of the Vedic tradition—​traditional, yet modern, and sanitized. We will therefore now look into the identity of these girls and their role,

14 vaivāhiko vidhiḥ strīṇāṃ /​saṃskāro vaidikaḥ smṛtaḥ //​patisevā gurau vāso /​gṛhārtho ’gniparikriyā //​ Mānavadharmaśāstra 2.67, in Olivelle’s translation: “For females, tradition tells us, the marriage ceremony equals the rite of vedic consecration; serving the husband equals living with the teacher; and care of the house equals the tending of the sacred fires” (Olivelle 2004, 92 and 415). However, Olivelle points out that according to the preceding verse 2.66, women are entitled to undergo saṃskāras, albeit without Vedic mantras. 15 “Traditional” throughout this chapter refers to the definition of both colonial forces and the Indian reformers of “tradition” as a timeless principle of Indian society, supposedly formulated in Brahmanic texts in Sanskrit, and expressed as “religion” in everyday life. 16 On the redefinition of womanhood in colonial and neo-​Hindu discourse toward the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, characterized by a sharpening of the contrast between men’s and women’s freedoms, see Sangari and Vaid 1989, and O’Hanlon 1994. See also Osella and Osella 1999, esp. p. 205 and note 32.

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  197 explore how they are received in the religiously rather conservative city of Varanasi, investigate whether their school and their success indicate a shift in religious and ritual agency that is available for women and girls, and briefly address the school’s connection to the rise of Hindu nationalism since the first election of Modi in 2014 and his landslide victory in 2019.

The School—​Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya The girls’ performance during the morning program Subah-​e-​Banāras at Assi Ghat publicly shows that in spite of some normative texts in Sanskrit today, at least some girls do in fact receive training in the recitation of Vedic texts and corresponding ritual practices, such as performing a sacrificial fire (homa). The girls one encounters during Subah-​e-​Banāras are junior and senior students of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya in Varanasi,17 a residential school for girls that hosts up to 100 girls aged between 8 and 22 years, from all over India.18 In this school, in-​depth practical and theoretical knowl­edge in Sanskrit—​based on Pāṇini’s grammatical system—​and Vedic rituals are imparted to the girls, complemented for example by training in martial arts, musical education, and computer sciences. The school was established in 1971 by two women, Dr. Prajñā Devī and her younger sister Medhā Devī. These two founding mothers of the school had themselves been trained in the relevant subjects from early childhood on. They grew up in Sattana (Madhya Pradesh), where their father had promoted Sanskrit learning among his male and female children. However, when he died in 1954, their mother Hardevi Arya Ji moved with them to Varanasi to their father’s guru, Śrī Paṇḍit Brahmadatta Jijñāsu (1892–​1964), a widely acknowledged authority on Sanskrit grammar. At that time, Prajñā Devī was 18 years old and Medhā Devī was 7 years old. For 10 years, Śrī 17 The full name of the school is Śrījijñāsu Smāraka Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. In this chapter the shorthand Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya will be used throughout. 18 Source for this section: a brochure in Hindi authored by Nanditā Śāstrī Caturvedī (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d.) on the school’s history. While this brochure mentions that there are 100 resident girls, which was confirmed by the head of the school, during visits from 2016 onward I had the impression that there were only 50–​60 students. However, the capacity of the school at that time was certainly 100, and since then, the school has expanded even more. The school also has a multistory hostel for “international students” on its premises, which was finished around 2016. Until 2020, however, hardly any international students studied at the school, and so far it is mostly used to accommodate occasional guests. In 2003, it seems that the school had 70 girls as resident students (Broyon 2008).

198  Ute Hüsken Paṇḍit Brahmadatta Jijñāsu instructed the girls in the Aṣṭādhyāyī (Pāṇini’s grammar), Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya, Nirukta, Śrauta, and other subjects related to Sanskrit grammar and Vedic learning. Five years after the death of their teacher in 1964, the two young women established a school for girls in Varanasi (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., 3). As the Hindi brochure on the history of this school elaborates (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., 3), the location of the site itself was fraught with difficulty: at that time, the location of the school, Motijhil, was a rural area. In the brochure it is stated that the locals believed that there were ghosts (bhūta), so they avoided the area even during daytime.19 Overall, the description emphasizes the difficulties the young women had faced, and it highlights at the same time that the formerly scary wilderness is now a well-​maintained park belonging to the school, thanks to the relentless effort of both women. When Prajñā Devī died in 1995, her sister Medhā Devī was joined by the current headteacher Nanditā Śāstrī Caturvedī, one of the first graduates (snātikā) of the school and a niece of the school’s two founders (her mother was the oldest sister of five sisters).20 Nanditā Śāstrī had joined the school in the year 1969, when she was eight years old. The brochure emphasizes her mastery of the entire Aṣṭādhyāyī, Mahābhāṣya, Nirukta, philosophy, and so on. However, in that brochure, she is especially praised for her musical and poetic skills. With Medhā Devī’s death in 2010, Nanditā Śāstrī Caturvedī became head principal and administrator of this school. Today, she runs the school together with Ācāryā Dr. Prītī Vimarṣiṇī, who is in charge of administration and teaching.21 She came to the school at the age of seven. After her studies at the school, she earned a PhD from Sampūrṇānanda Sanskrit University in Varanasi on the topic vedeṣu nyāyavaiśeśikapadārthanvīkṣaṇam (“Tracing the meaning of Nyāya and Vaiśeśika words in the Vedas”). Since 1989, she has taught at the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., 8).

19 It is further stated there that behind their house was a garden of the Dom, a caste group in charge of cremations, where pigs were offered, and that “one poor horse always bound in the darkness of the night used to cry all the time” (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., 4). 20 The brochure emphasizes that her mother Kuntī Devī Āryajī had offered her two daughters named Śrīmatī Vidula and Nanditā Śāstrī to the feet of the founder, who was her own sister (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., 5). 21 Dr. Prītī Vimarṣiṇī is the eldest daughter of one Mr Chandramauli Prasad Arya from Gayā, a professed follower of Ārya Samāj.

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  199

Education Offered at Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya The school follows the gurukula model, meaning that the principal acts as the gurumā (teacher-​mother) to the students, who form a kula (family) under her guidance. Only girls are admitted as students, and most of the teachers are women. However, some guest teachers are male. In 2018, for example, I encountered two male Ṛgveda experts from Ujjain at the school. For the smallest girls, an elementary school teacher comes in. A full study cycle in this school takes up to 14 years of intense study of Sanskrit grammar (vyākaraṇa), Vedic recitation, exegesis (nirukta), and Vedic rituals (such as homa and the saṃskāras). In the school’s curriculum the major emphasis is on Pāṇini’s grammar, and not Veda study.22 On the school premises, there is a spacious temple in honor of the grammarian Pāṇini. While the temple does not house an icon (mūrti), the sūtras of the text Aṣṭādhyāyī are engraved on marble slabs attached to the outer temple walls. The inner temple space is mainly used for classes and occasional congregations.23 The basement of the temple houses a library, a chemistry and biology lab, and a computer room. Importantly, most of the teaching is done by advanced students, who teach those who are junior to them. This way of teaching clearly confers confidence and also deepens the older students’ knowledge about the subject they are teaching. Thus, during the daily morning fire sacrifice, the younger and more unexperienced students are seated in the outer circle, whereas the more experienced students are closer to the firepit (homakuṇḍa) (Figure 8.2). When I visited the school in 2018, I also witnessed how one of the older students taught the younger students in spoken Sanskrit. It seems that alongside Hindi, Sanskrit is the major language of communication among the students, who come from different parts of India and therefore do not have a common language when they join the school.24 22 Not only was the guru of the founding mothers of the school a Pāṇini specialist, but this focus is in accordance with many other Ārya Samāj schools, who tend to emphasize Pāṇinian grammar over Vedapāṭha. 23 The Pāṇini temple was inaugurated in 2012. However, a short Al Jazeera documentary from September 10, 2009 (see https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​4uR0​v4av​3ns) already shows the temple structure in its current location. It seems that a temporary lack of funds delayed the temple’s finalization. 24 However, this seems to be the result of a development which took place during the last 10 years; in a NDTV documentary from 2004, the girls only speak about Hindi as a common language (https://​ www.ndtv.com/​video/​shows/​24-​hours/​24-​hours-​break​ing-​the-​rules-​of-​relig​ion-​aired-​novem​ber-​ 2004-​279​924). Broyon, who visited the school in 2003, claims that the girls only communicate in Sanskrit among each other (Broyon 2008, 275).

200  Ute Hüsken

Figure 8.2  Morning fire sacrifice in the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. The younger and less experienced students are seated in the outer circle, whereas the more experienced students are closer to the firepit (photo by Ute Hüsken, 2016).

In this school, self-​reliance is strongly emphasized for every aspect of daily life. One older student said: “You cannot depend on others. You have to stand on our own feet” (interview on September 22, 2018). In line with this general attitude, the girls cook, clean, wash their clothes, and even make their own firewood for the sacrifices. However, the cowshed and the garden within the school’s premises are taken care of by employees. As mentioned, the girls are educated in several subjects and Sanskrit texts, but they are also trained in the performance of rituals. This knowl­ edge is essential, because the students are frequently called upon to perform rituals for clients (yajamāna). On such occasions, they are asked to recite Vedic texts and to perform fire sacrifices for specific occasions such as house inaugurations. Moreover, they are asked to perform life-​cycle rituals (saṃskāras) for clients.

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  201

The School’s Clients and the Girls’ Vision of Their Future Asked about the identity of those who employ them for ritual services, the school’s headmaster, Nanditā Śāstrī, explains that people ask specifically for their services, since they are not only performing the rituals but are also lecturing, explaining the meaning of the rituals and mantras to their clients, and can relate them to everyday life. Nanditā Śāstrī says: “It is not only ritual, it is also knowledge!” She stresses that they are also called to perform rituals for Brahmins, implying that those castes who are traditionally in charge of preserving the knowledge are now relying on the students and teachers of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, valuing their performances and knowledge. She also mentions that many professors of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) chose to employ the girls of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya for domestic rituals.25 One professor from the Banaras Hindu University, who is one of the school’s clients, occasionally invites the Ācāryās and the girls for officiating rituals in her house. She explains that her parents were among the patrons of the school. The professor herself strongly advocates the right of women to recite the Veda and also officiate as priestesses. She says the texts have been misinterpreted to stop women from doing so.26 The professor and her parents are from Marwari community, and Nanditā Śāstrī confirms that most of the clients are followers of the Ārya Samāj, and many are members of the Marwari community. The girls are also called to performances outside of Varanasi, which is often a major occasion to recruit new students for the school, as they impress the clients with their discipline and knowledge. From an NDTV documentary from 2004, it is evident that at that time there was already a high demand for the girls’ ritual services, with invitations coming in every week. In this documentary, Medhā Devī strongly emphasizes that they also perform the last rites. This is quite extraordinary, as for many female priests in Maharashtra (see Hüsken 2016) the performance of last rites is a line they do not cross: not so for the girls of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. When Medhā Devī died in 2010, the entire girls’ school came to the Maṇikarṇika burning Ghat, with Nanditā Śāstrī performing the last rites there (Pāṇini-​Prabhā 2010). However, it is still doubtful if the 25 The emphasis on the women’s ability and willingness to explain the rituals they perform is also mentioned as a major factor for the success of “women priests” (strī purohitā) in Pune (see Hüsken 2016). 26 I thank Professor Vinita Chandra (IIT/​BHU) for this information.

202  Ute Hüsken clients actually invite the girls for performance of last rites. Vinita Chandra’s interviews with few Marwari families in Varanasi revealed they do not consider inviting the girls for the last rights of the deceased kin, as they prefer to have this ritual performed in the traditional way.27

The Girls’ Attitudes and Their Response to Criticism Importantly, the students I talked with are very enthusiastic about the school, and they are happy to learn Sanskrit with such intensity. While they agree that at the beginning it is quite hard to live apart from their family, many are clearly enthusiastic about their education and want to become teachers themselves. Some are even aspiring to do their PhD at the BHU. The school’s brochure also mentions that many graduates of the school (snātikā) return to their hometowns to establish similar schools there.28 In spite of the fact that performing rituals is an important source of income for the school, interactions with the students reveal that most of them do not wish to become officiating priestesses. Compared to employment as teachers in colleges or universities, officiating at ceremonies is a much less favored career. In that regard, the aspirations of the girls do not differ much from that of boys attending traditional Veda schools. In spite of the fact that the school since 2014 has been involved daily in the Subah-​e-​Banāras program, that the girls are consistently there when “traditional India” is presented to Indian and foreign dignitaries, and that the girls are called for many ritual performances, even today the school faces strong criticism, especially from Brahminic orthodoxy, which is a very important force in Varanasi. In the interviews of male Veda teachers conducted in October 2019, Vinita Chandra found teachers to be contemptuous for the Pāṇini Kanyās, charging the girls and the teachers of the school with pursuing “a faulty vedapāṭha.”29 Yet the girls are very well trained to counter such 27 I thank Professor Vinita Chandra (IIT/​BHU) for this information. 28 Importantly, however, these schools are not considered “branches” but are independent institutions. See also Broyon 2008, 282. Ed de Wild in his documentary “Perfect Women” from 2013 interviewed a few former students of the school. Their perspective on their education in the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya is very interesting but would reqire further follow-​up. Ed de Wild’s documentary was put on YouTube by Chandradeo Arya on November 1, 2020, with the remark: “Video credit goes to Ed de Wild director of the project. This video was restored from a very old scratched cd and has some broken clips. It has been shared online for the benefits of the society” (see https://​www.yout​ ube.com/​watch?v=​9ub3​5qQO​CFE). 29 Vinita Chandra, who 2020 did a brief survey of the Veda Pāṭhaśālās/​Vidyālayas in Varanasi, interviewed managers, Ācāryas, and teachers teaching modern subjects and students in eight

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  203 criticism, and they are not hesitant to respond to the critics with Sanskrit quotes to make their point. Then they refer to passages in Vedic texts which insinuate that they are not at odds with tradition, but rather perpetuate or revive a forgotten tradition. The textual passages they quote indicate that in Vedic times, there were female Ṛṣis and that once upon a time, women did in fact undergo the relevant initiation. The girls make the point that the contemporary practice of women’s exclusion is a distortion of the original intent or meaning of the texts, and of an original practice which has been lost. Nanditā Śāstrī is clear about the strong resistance to the school from the beginning. She reports, for example, that the first male teacher of the school had learned Sanskrit grammar from one of the school’s founders. However, when she asked him to teach recitation to her in return, he did so, but asked her to keep this to herself and not to disclose his name. Clearly, things have changed quite a bit since then. Nanditā Śāstrī attributes this to the fact that “the girls have proven to be better than the men; rather, the best” and are more accepted now. Moreover, many of their clients had formerly given up Hindu rituals but are resuming this practice now, since they appreciate the way the rituals are performed by the girls. It seems that in 2004 there was a much stronger opposition against the school than today. At that time one of the school’s teachers, Sūryā Devī, was nicknamed visphoṭī, “the explosive one,” by local male Brahmins. For example, quoting Vedic passages to make her point, she had publicly critically responded to misogynistic statements by the Śaṅkarācārya of Puri. Nanditā Śāstrī also remarks that today criticism is still voiced, but rarely to their face. Even today, many male teachers are not ready to take girls as their students. One of the students reported in an interview with Vinita Chandra that they had organized an open challenge to all the male ritualists to be held on Assi Ghat in 2019 (see Figure 8.3). The girls presented themselves at the scheduled time, but none of the male priests made an appearance. The girl had heard that some of the male ritualists acknowledged to associates that they were afraid of the Pāṇini Kanyās, as their own training could not have matched the rigorous training of the girls. The girls certainly are more serious about their

pāṭhaśālās. She finds that all these men associated with the Pāṭhaśālās expressed contempt toward the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. Chandra writes: “For them, women do not have the adhikāra [eligibility] to Veda. Some even feel the women are committing a sin by studying the Veda.” This means that even after more than 40 years after its establishment, Veda paṇḍits do not consider the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya as equal, or even similar to pāṭhaśālās for Brahmin boys.

204  Ute Hüsken

Figure 8.3  Scene from a Śāstrārtha event at Assi Ghat (photo by Ute Hüsken, 2019).

training because they always find themselves challenged and are faced with constant pressure to outperform the male counterparts.

Initiation for Girls? As mentioned, the issue of initiation for girls is of central importance in the context of Vedic rituals. The girls in this school receive an initiation not long after they join—​after a period of probation, during which their suitability is tested thoroughly.30 The performance of this initiation slightly deviates from the local “standard” practice of initiation that is conferred upon boys. In the girls’ initiation, the female teacher (gurumā) reads out the relevant mantras and takes the promise from the girls that they, after that day, will not lie, will sit upright, will follow the gurumā’s command, and that they will not hide anything from the gurumā. The 2004 NDTV documentary contains a scene from an initiation. Here, Medhā Devī explains the meaning of the three strands of the sacred thread (yajñopavīta) to the girls as representing their debt to the Ṛṣis, to the Devas, and to their parents. The initiation is described 30 Only after having undergone this initiation, the girls can seriously start their study of the Vedas. Only then they have the relevant adhikāra (eligibility), Nanditā Śāstrī confirms.

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  205 as the second birth. After the initiation, the gurumā is considered the girls’ mother. The entire procedure is based on a strong bond between student and the teacher. The students are made to say: “We will see through your eyes, through your tongue we will eat, through your nose we will smell, we will listen to your laws.”

The Female Body and Physical Activities In the 2004 NDTV documentary, Medhā Devī also talks about the school’s attitude toward the presumed female bodily impurity caused by menstruation. For, in Brahmin worldview, menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth are connected to periods of strong ritual impurity. In an orthodox Brahmin household, women have to spend the first three (sometimes even five) days of their monthly menstruation secluded from all persons and activities of the household. They cannot enter the kitchen, prepare food, or touch any member of the household. During this time, they are also not allowed to enter a temple.31 This temporary impurity which women incur at regular intervals is often mentioned as a major reason why women cannot wear the sacred thread. Medhā Devī, however, explicitly argues that men and women are born equal, and that there should be no difference for them wearing the sacred thread: “When men tie the thread around their ear while going to toilet, why should women not be able to maintain purity? It is the purity of the soul, not of the body, which is important.” In practice, the girls are not participating in the morning sacrifice during menstruation, yet they continue to study with the others, and to do all other chores such as cooking. Menstruation is considered an inner cleansing process during which “the impure blood gets out.”32 Nanditā Śāstrī states: “The people forgot that Mahrishi Dayananda was the one who provided the base to giving education to women. He proves through the Veda that every woman can learn the Veda. Every woman can perform yajña, and every woman can pronounce the Gāyatrī mantra. In the ‘middle period’ people thought that women do not have the adhikāra. That, if they pronounce a mantra, they would become widows. That they would

31 The impurity incurred during pregnancy and childbirth is so strong that the husband is also “contaminated” by this impurity and observes a number of restrictions, too. 32 However, one of the female students expressed the idea that menstruation is impure: “At that time we are not holy.”

206  Ute Hüsken have an abortion.” This corresponds to what I heard in Pune, namely that the mantra oṃ is harmful for the uterus. Vinita Chandra’s interviews with some male Veda teachers in Veda Pāṭhaśālas in Varanasi in October 2019 revealed that they, too, are of the opinion that women cannot wear the sacred thread because they undergo a monthly menstrual cycle, and reciting the mantras may affect the reproductive health of women adversely. Nanditā Śāstrī, however, laughs at this idea. On the contrary, she emphasizes that the mantra oṃ strengthens the girls. As mentioned, the girls are also trained in martial arts such as Judo and Karate, they dance, and they are trained in lathi fighting and in sword-​ yielding. These physical activities take place during the afternoons of the school days. Nanditā Śāstrī says that the girls gain both self-​confidence and physical fitness through these activities—​an assessment that is confirmed by the girls.33 This physical training, including Yoga exercises in the morning, at the same time suggests a closeness to Hindu nationalist organizations, such as the women’s branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh known as the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, in which the “heroic girl” and Vedic student are emphasized.34 Manisha Sethi shows that both the Rashtrika Sevika Samiti and the Durgā Vāhinī were instrumental in creating a militant cadre of women. In line with many of the neo-​Hindu reform movements like the Ārya Samāj, this cadre allows women to express a “virulent and avenging” agency, which seems to be independent and spontaneous, yet does not subvert traditional hierarchies. Sethi therefore argues that the reformist and nationalist movements did not just evoke women as “sites of contestation,” but drew them into the political process as active agents. This ideology seems to match closely with the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya’s girls’ training and education. However, at least in 2004, the school’s teachers claimed to resist instrumentalization by political entities. Thus, in the 2004 NDTV documentary, Suryā Devī, then a teacher at the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, says that the RSS often came over to ask her to join their movement. She refused, however, since she wanted to stand only for the school, and not for

33 In the 2004 NDTV documentary, the martial arts training is shown. The girls clearly know what they are doing, though they admit that in the beginning they usually hurt themselves quite a bit. They are, however, very explicit about the confidence this training inspires in them (see 24 Hours: Breaking the Rules of Religion). 34 For example, Panchal Pandita, a monthly magazine of an Ārya Samāj’s Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, created the new fictional heroine “Suvīrā” (the brave woman), a warrior girl who bravely defended her religious rights and who could wield modern weapons (Sethi 2002).

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  207 other people’s political agendas.35 Does the involvement of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya in the morning program Subah-​e-​Banāras since 2014 (the year when BJP came into power) suggest a change of the school’s direction? It is certainly not irrelevant that in 2009, the school received a 1.5 million rupee donation from the BJP,36 and that the gallery of images inside the Pāṇini temple features images of the head of the school with Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who is known as a rather radical proponent of the Hindutva ideology, and with Baba Ramdev, who maintains close ties to Modi, the BJP, and to the RSS (see Khalikova 2017, 111–​115).37

Ārya Samāj as Ideological and Financial Background While not elaborated on in the school’s brochure and hardly mentioned in conversations, the major ideological and financial background of the school is the Hindu reform movement Ārya Samāj, the most influential Hindu reform movement of the 20th century. The organization was founded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824–​1883) as one of many attempts to reform Hindu traditions and practices. Swami Dayananda Saraswati himself had been socialized entirely in a Hindu intellectual environment and never received an English education. It is argued that this fact has lent his reformist movement an aura of authenticity. He systematically purged Hindu tradition from “later accretions,” selected and proclaimed certain texts as canonical, and “reinterpreted these scriptures based on his own very peculiar understanding of Sanskrit and Vedic grammar” (Llewellyn 1993, 160–​ 203; quoted in Fischer-​Tiné 2018). Even after the death of its founder, the Ārya Samāj movement remained very successful and even expanded rapidly over northern India. Young and well-​educated followers of Swami Dayananda introduced new and efficient modes of fundraising, organizing, and propaganda, thus contributing decisively to the success of the organization. As Fischer-​Tiné (2018) elaborates, with the Dayananda Anglo-​Vedic (DAV) College in 1886 the first major educational institution of Ārya Samāj was established in 35 See 24 Hours: Breaking the Rules of Religion. However, Broyon (2008, 276) reports to have watched an Arte documentary film from 2003, in which the girls were shown singing nationalistic and fundamentalist songs, parading in the schoolyard with rifles under their arms. 36 See https://​times​ofin​dia.ind​iati​mes.com/​city/​varan​asi/​20-​girls-​compl​ete-​Upana​yan-​Samsk​ara/​ arti​cles​how/​4795​704.cms; I thank Henriette Hanky for making me aware of this article. 37 For the gallery in the temple, I rely here on Henriette Hanky’s report submitted as an assignment during the “Lived Sanskrit Cultures in Varanasi” course in 2018.

208  Ute Hüsken Lahore. This college “became the nucleus of a rapidly growing and tremendously influential network of similar educational institutions” (Fischer-​ Tiné 2018). Ārya Samāj advocated “modern” education while claiming that modern sciences were anticipated in the Vedas. Also, the so-​called women’s question had been addressed by Ārya Samāj (similar to other Hindu reform movements): right from the beginning Ārya Samāj denounced the inferior position assigned to women, while also attacking the caste system (including the denial of access to Sanskrit texts to lower castes). Consequently, Ārya Samāj concentrated on women’s education in newly established girls’ schools such as Kanyā Gurukuls. However, Ārya Samāj leaders in northern India were careful not to create a new class of “overcultured” and “unruly” women (Fischer-​Tiné 2018). Therefore, the course of study for women designed by Ārya Samāj leaders was far less ambitious than the one designed for male students, emphasizing practical knowledge that would prepare the young women to be “faithful wives, thrifty household managers, and, above all, good mothers able to raise the next generation of strong and healthy sons” (Fischer-​Tiné 2018). This clearly is not the aim of the education in the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya. Rather, the girls aim for—​and are encouraged to aim for—​an academic career, based on their in-​depth knowledge of Sanskrit. Yet with its concentration on women’s education, and the fact that everyone can enroll regardless of their caste background, the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya in many ways seems to be a perfect exemplar of an institutionalization of the Ārya Samāj’s principles. Moreover, the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya is full of references to Dayananda Sarasvati. In almost every room or hallway of the school, one finds his portrait. For the fire sacrifices, Ārya Samāj ritual handbooks are used, and Ārya Samāj and its founder are praised daily after the morning sacrifice. According to the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya’s brochure, the purpose for the foundation of this school is to train the girls to be the most learned persons in Veda and Vedāṅga, Aṣṭādhyāyī, Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, Nirukta, and texts belonging to the different philosophical traditions—​ alongside forming their good character as dedicated, responsible, complete, and brave women (vīrāṅganā—​ a term directly taken from rhetorics of the female branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS), who have faith in the ancient Indian Vedic culture. The girls are said to be “the bell of the Vedic mantra recitation” that perform all 16 saṃskāras, to be “the Brahma of the yajña,” and to spread the word of the Indian Vedic culture’ (Śāstrī Caturvedī n.d., X). This closely resonates with the key to social reform in Hindu India, as seen by Ārya Samājis, who

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  209 aim for a “return to the precepts enshrined in the Vedas,” considered to have been India’s “golden age.” This ideology is explicitly promoted by the past and current heads of the school. In the 2004 documentary, Medhā Devī emphasized that women have been pushed into a subordinate position. However, according to her, in the Vedic texts no area of learning is closed to women. Similar statements are also made by the headteacher Nanditā Śāstrī. While the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya operates on the assumption that in Vedic times, women actually had the adhikāra to learn Vedic texts and to perform Vedic rituals, an explanation of how women lost these rights is conspicuously absent from the rhetoric of the school.38 In contrast, when I interacted with female priests in Pune, many of who are affiliated with the right-​wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), I was often confronted with the claim that upanayana for girls originally existed but had been replaced by very early marriage for young girls. There I often was given one or the other version of the following narrative: The Muslim ruler Allaudin Khilji demanded that all unmarried girls had to come to his palace to marry him. In order to protect their young girls, their parents gave them into marriage with Hindu bridegrooms already at the tender age of eight years. This practice of child marriage for girls was then retained even under British rule. Only Indian independence reinstituted independence for Indian women. This narrative thus attributes the idea that women should not learn and perform Sanskrit rituals, and the practice of child marriage to foreign rule imposed on Hindu subjects, first by the Muslims and then by the Christian colonial rulers.39 Importantly, at least in interaction with me, and in the material available on them, the representatives of the school do not resort to this or similar myths. Rather, Nanditā Śāstrī repeatedly emphasizes that everyone, irrespective of religious or caste background, can join the school. In the same conversation, however, she claimed that “Muslims are opponents of the Vedas” and that after a previous state of equality among people, Muslims actually created differentiations, wrongly distinguishing among people. “That’s not our Veda’s point of view. The Vedas say that you should love everyone, that you should make friends with everyone. Everyone is your friend.”40 Such statements reflect the stance of the more radical wing of the Ārya Samāj, which is known 38 Only once, during a conversation about the role of the Vedas, Nanditā Śāstrī briefly voiced the idea that the (temporary) loss of tradition was because of “people from outside” which she identified as Muslims (bahār ke logon ke kā, musalmānon kā aur . . .). 39 This resonates with Dayananda Sarasvati’s main work “Satyārthaprakāśa” (1877), in which he outlined his vision of a return to a pure Vedic religion of an imagined golden past. 40 Interview with Nanditā Śāstrī on March 10, 2018.

210  Ute Hüsken for its anti-​Islamic stance and for promoting the “religious polarization that went in tandem with the growth of Indian nationalism” from the late 19th century onward (Fischer-​Tiné 2018). At the same time, Nanditā Śāstrī also states that those Muslims who study the Vedas are good people and that Muslim students would be allowed to enter the school if they adopted their culture. Her main concerns are here that they should wear the sacred thread (yajñopavīta) and adopt a vegetarian diet. Moreover, Nanditā Śāstrī points out that the school, and the new roles that it provides for women, are an example for Muslim women within Varanasi. A senior student in a conversation rather emphasizes the commonalities of all human beings: “Our society teaches that every person, [be they] foreigners, Muslims, Jains, [or] Buddhists, they are all our brothers and sisters. For God, we are all the same. I have nails, you have nails. I have eyes, you have eyes. There is no difference, no?” It thus remains to be explored in more detail the ways in which the nationalist agenda that Ārya Samāj shares with the RSS filters down to the teaching, the ideology, and the day-​to-​day practice of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya.

Religious Politics and Political Religion Comparing the relevant statements by Nanditā Śāstrī in our conversations between 2016 and 2019, and the statements of Medhā Devī in 2004 in the NDTV documentary, it seems that female empowerment was much more explicitly a concern in 2004 than it is today. It also seems that there were much more combative teachers at the school 10 years ago. While everyone over a number of years had time to get used to the fact that the students of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya are educated in Vedic recitation and publicly perform rituals, this shift of emphasis, from combative to moderate (in terms of women’s rights etc.), this softening in the tone, might also have to do with a changing political situation. Let us turn back to where we started: Subah-​e-​Banāras was initiated in November 2014. When the school was contacted and asked whether they would contribute to this daily morning program, they immediately embraced this opportunity. Since then the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya has been involved in this program, which successfully aims to become part of the face of a clean, rational, and renewed Vedic India. It is no coincidence that many high-​profile personalities from the religio-​political scene visit this morning

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  211 program, something the organizers do not fail to proudly proclaim on the Subah-​e-​Banāras website. The same sets of people also visit the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, as is evident from the photographs displayed on the walls inside the school’s Pāṇini temple. Moreover, Assi Ghat and the morning program are linked—​ albeit indirectly—​to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to “clean up” the Ghats of Varanasi, turning them into the poster child of traditional-​yet-​modern India. While the course “Lived Sanskrit Cultures in Varanasi” (organized by Heidelberg and Würzburg Universities) was conducted in March 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron visited Varanasi together. Certainly not unlike the visit of the head of another state in any other country, the place was prepared down to the last detail. Days before the visit, the Ghats were cleaned up, the streets the convoy would pass on their way to the Assi Ghat were repaired, and they were provided with pedestrian crossings. Broken steps of the Ghats were covered with gray carpets, so the flaws would not be visible from the boat carrying the two heads of state. Ugly corners were hidden behind huge billboards, celebrating the friendship between India and France. Many of these billboards at Assi Ghat featured images of the girl students of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya performing the daily recitation and fire sacrifice at Assi Ghat. On the preceding day, the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya performed a fire sacrifice on their premises in the presence of members of the Indo-​France Friendship Club, in order “to invoke positive spirits and bless the proposed talk between the political leaders which would be beneficial for both Varanasi and India and a step towards strengthening people ties.”41 When Modi and Macron arrived at Assi Ghat, some of the girls were present to receive them, and others participated in the cultural program that was staged along the Ghats that the boat with the dignitaries would pass: at Kedarnath Ghat, the girls studying at the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya presented a Holi-​like performance when the two politicians passed by in the boat.

41 See https://​times​ofin​dia.ind​iati​mes.com/​city/​luck​now/​yajna-​to-​inv​oke-​pos​itiv​ity-​dur​ing-​ modi-​mac​ron-​visit/​arti​cles​how/​63262​550.cms; I thank Henriette Hanky for making me aware of this article.

212  Ute Hüsken

Conclusion As we have seen with the martial arts practice and the physical training of the girls in the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, the girls undoubtedly acquire the confidence that they can fight and defend themselves. In that way, these young women learn to claim public spaces that are traditionally monopolized by men. Similarly, through the intense education of the girls, along with their public performance of Sanskrit and Vedic rituals, they claim and appropriate fields of knowledge and practice that are traditionally only taken up by men, and especially by high-​caste men. Yet, while the school has created a space where women challenge the patriarchal hold on the religion, and also resist the patriarchal structures, there is a shift in the objective from gaining ritual agency and becoming ritualists to being trained to get employment in higher education, be it in colleges or universities. This may stand in contrast with the initial objective of the school, which emerged out of the Ārya Samāj reform movement, aimed at reform of the religious landscape rather than generating employment opportunities for girls.42 While it remains to be explored in detail in which ways Hindutva ideology is propagated and activated among the girl students of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, the school undoubtedly closely associates with the ruling BJP party, and thereby at least implicitly teams up with a Hindu nationalist agenda, even though Hindu nationalist ideologies reinforce aggressive patriarchal structures. Paradoxically, it is this connection that allows the girls and women to occupy spaces within these structures, with the blessing of important and powerful parts of the local community.43 The case of the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya demonstrates that the investigation of female religious and ritual agency must take into account that gendered religious subjectivities cannot be separated from other positions such as caste, class, regional identification, education, and political agenda. Women’s experiences are as multifaceted as they are individual, negotiating within and shuttling back and forth between various contexts. Therefore, when engaging with these processes, an important challenge is to recognize not only differences and similarities but also the contradictions and conflicts 42 An important question, which cannot be addressed in this chapter, is whether those families that send their daughters to the Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya would and also do send their sons to similar institutions. 43 Importantly, Bacchetta (2002) shows how one of the models for Hindu women’s potential autonomy from men provided by the female branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the “learned, religious celibate.”

Tradition, Innovation, and Resistance?  213 among the women of one religious tradition, and to recognize “agency” as present in both resistance and assertion, which often go hand in hand.

References Sanskrit Text Mānavadharmaśāstra: The Manu Smṛti with Commentary of Kullūka. 1909. Bombay: Nirnaya-​Sagara Press.

Secondary Sources 24 Hours: Breaking the Rules of Religion. 2004. NDTV documentary. https://​www.ndtv. com/​video/​shows/​24-​hours/​24-​hours-​break​ing-​the-​rules-​of-​relig​ion-​aired-​novem​ ber-​2004-​279​924. Bacchetta, Paola. 2002. “Hindu Nationalist Women: On the Use of the Feminine Symbolic to (Temporarily) Displace Male Authority.” In Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, edited by L. L. Patton, 157–​176. New York: Oxford University Press. Broyon, Marie Anne. 2008. “Sanskrit Schools in Varanasi between Traditions and Transition.” In Educational Theories and Practices from the Majority World, edited by Pierre R. Dasen and Abdeljalil Akkari, 268–​285. Los Angeles: Sage. de Wild, Ed. 2013. “Perfect Women: Documentary on Panini Kanya Mahavidyalaya Varanasi Gurukul by EdDe Wild.” YouTube video. Directed by Ed de Wild. https://​ www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​9ub3​5qQO​CFE. Fischer-​Tiné, Harald. 2018. “Arya Samaj.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, and Vasudha Narayanan. http://​dx.doi.org.ubpr​oxy.ub.uni-​hei​delb​erg.de/​10.1163/​2212-​5019​_​beh​_​COM​_​900​ 0000​226. Hüsken, Ute. 2016. “Hindu Priestesses in Pune: Shifting Denial of Ritual Agency.” In The Ambivalence of Denial. Danger and Appeal of Rituals, edited by Ute Hüsken and Udo Simon, 21–​42. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Kane, P. V. 1941. History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law) 2.1. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Khalikowa, Vera. 2017. “The Ayurveda of Baba Ramdev: Biomoral Consumerism, National Duty and the Biopolitics of the ‘Homegrown’ Medicine in India.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40, no. 1: 105–​122. Lewellyn, J. E. 1993. The Arya Samaj as a Fundamentalist Movement: A Study in Comparative Fundamentalism. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors. O’Hanlon, Rosalind. 1994. A Comparison Between Women and Men. Tarabai Shinde and the critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India. Madras: Oxford University Press. Olivelle, Patrick (trans.). 2004. The law code of Manu. Mānavadharmaśāstra. A new translation based on the critical edition by Patrick Olivelle (Oxford world’s classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

214  Ute Hüsken Osella, Caroline, and Filippo Osella. 1999. “Seepage of Divinised Power Through Social, Spiritual and Bodily Boundaries: Some Aspects of Possession in Kerala.” In La Possession en Asie du Sud. Parole, Corps, Territoire, 183–​210. Études Réunies par J. Assayag et. G. Tarabout. Collection Puruśārtha 21, Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Pāṇini-​Prabhā, July/​September 2010. Edited by Nanditā Śāstrī Caturvedī and Prīti Vimarśinī. Phāīn Prinṭiṃg Pres: Vārāṇasī. Sangari, Kumkum, and Sudesh Vaid. 1989. “Recasting Women: An Introduction.” In Recasting Women Essays in Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 1–​26. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Śāstrī Caturvedī, Nanditā. n.d. Śrī Jijñāsu Smāraka Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, Vāraṇasī (U. Pra.) kā paricaya, niyamāvaliva 13 varṣīya pāṭhyakrama. Seeking Equality: Hindu Girls Learn to Become Priests. 2009. Al Jazeera documentary. https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​4uR0​v4av​3ns. Sethi, Manisha. 2002. “Avenging Angels and Nurturing Mothers: Women in Hindu Nationalism.” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 16: 1545–​1552.

9 “I Will Be the Śaṅkarācāryā for Women!” Gender, Agency, and a Guru’s Quest for Equality in Hinduism Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli

Introduction This chapter examines the dynamics involved in the religious agency of the female guru Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati, who is also called “Mataji,” or “Holy Mother.” Born in 1965, Mataji is a women’s rights advocate and a religious reformer, who is turning the institutionalized gender hierarchies of contemporary Hinduism upside-​down. Her radical quest for religious gender equality remains unknown to non-​Hindi speakers in India.1 As a female guru (teacher), Mataji aims to increase the rights of female ascetics (sādhus) in India by promoting gender-​equal interpretations of Brahmanical Hinduism which, as I argue, accentuate the idea of the equality and normativity of the female sādhu to that of the male sādhu. Female sādhus are as unique as they are unusual. They have left behind the ordinary expectations of marriage and householding in order to worship the divine and serve humanity. Moreover, female sādhus are often revered in India by virtue of the intensity of their commitments. As gurus, this reverence places them in uncommon positions of moral authority within, and even outside of, their communities. Although Mataji leads a relatively small, though demographically diverse, community, she is addressed by her followers as a Śaṅkarācāryā—​a title associated with the highest echelons of the traditional Hindu power structure. As a lineage descendent from one of the ten orders developed by the 9th-​century preceptor, Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, a Śaṅkarācārya transmits 1 See DeNapoli (2016, 2019).

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216  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli a teaching tradition and runs a monastery centered on the propagation of Brahmanic Hinduism. There are four or five lineage gurus within the mainstream tradition, all of whom lead from centers located at the four cardinal directions in India.2 Until Mataji, this status has been subject to the sole control of high-​caste Brahmin men. Not only has Mataji made herself the first female Śaṅkarācāryā without institutional sanction, but she has done so in a northern state, Uttar Pradesh, which is known for its Hindu religious orthodoxy and conservative gender ideologies.3 Albeit rare, while there have been female preceptors invested by their gurus with the authority to lead a community,4 and while women within renunciant akhāṛās (monastic societies) associated with Ādi Shankarācārya’s lineages are in the process of obtaining the requisite training that theoretically could qualify them for the role, the mainstream traditions have never produced a female Śaṅkarācāryā. This institution’s loudest voices, which are by no means homogenous, nor representative of the diverse views of the Śaṅkarācāryās, but for whom leadership and maleness are synonymous, deny female agency and presence. Hence, to heighten her “self-​made” status outside of the mainstream, Mataji calls herself a “Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā” (the term “svayambhū” may be translated to mean the “self-​made” female Śaṅkarācāryā, or female preceptor in the lineage connected with Ādi Śaṅkara, the first male lineage preceptor). Mataji is not the first Śaṅkarācārya to claim svayambhū status. According to news reports, there are between fifty and two-​hundred gurus using the title of “Svayambhū Śaṅkarācārya” to sanction their authority.5 All of these 2 See Cenkner 1995; A Śaṅkarācārya must be initiated into the lineage tradition by a guru, ideally a Śaṅkarācārya, within the system. It is a position based on initiation, not on equal rights. Adi Śaṅkarācārya established four or five learning centers (vidyā pīṭhas), from which to consolidate Hindu power against the rapid rise of Buddhist and Jain communities, as well as propagate the Hindu religion. Besides establishing four main centers, Ādi Śaṅkarācārya is credited with organizing 10 ascetic orders, which would theoretically support the Śaṅkarācāryas by promoting and protecting their teachings. 3 In October of 2018, three months prior to the start of the Kumbh Mela festival, the Hindu Nationalist government of Uttar Pradesh changed the name “Allahabad” to Prayagraj, arguing that the latter Sanskritic term represented what government officials called the “original” Hindu name of the city. 4 For example, the late Mate Mahadevi of the Lingayat community in South India. See Charpentier 2010, 2013; Narayanan 2005; Pechilis 2015. Sadly, Mate Mahadevi passed away on March 14, 2019. 5 See https://​www.daily​pion​eer.com › state-​editions › self-​styled-​shankaracharya. See https://​times​ ofin​dia.ind​iati​mes.com/​city/​dehra​dun/​con​vent​ion-​in-​varan​asi-​on-​april-​10-​over-​self-​sty​led-​shan​ kara​char​yas/​arti​cles​how/​57498​329.cms; https://​times​ofin​dia.ind​iati​mes.com/​city/​dehra​dun/​self-​ sty​led-​sha​nkar​acha​r ya-​achy​utan​and-​expel​led-​from-​commun​ity-​of-​seers/​arti​cles​how/​57450​922. cms; https://​www.red​iff.com/​news/​2000/​jul/​24p​uri.htm; https://​www.dnain​dia.com/​india/​rep​ort-​ exc​ept-​peeth-​chi​efs-​no-​other-​sadhu-​can-​use-​sha​nkar​acha​r ya-​in-​their-​names-​all-​india-​akh​ara-​ paris​had-​2592​620.

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  217 svayambhūs are men; they are fighting for leadership of centers run by lineage holders within the established system; and their “self-​made” authority, like Mataji’s, is disputed. Mataji’s female svayambhū tradition thus challenges the system doubly. Her alternative authority to both the established system and the male svayambhū traditions amplifies the nexus of transformative understandings of gender, religion, and authority emerging at the intersection of religion and rights-​based discourses in the 21st century. Other modern and contemporary Indian female gurus have propelled discourses of gender equality into local and global forms of social action (Rudert 2017; Spina 2017; Pechilis 2015; Lucia 2014). And yet Mataji is unusual among female gurus in India and elsewhere, as she has mobilized her quest for gender equality around her leadership as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā in order to elevate the hardships of disadvantaged populations to national awareness. Building on the work of the historian of religion Karen Pechilis (2004), who has argued that the phenomenon of the female guru contributes the understanding of “female as universal” to Hindu studies scholarship, this chapter represents an advance beyond Pechilis’s analysis in its argument that Mataji’s leadership directs attention to the idea of the “female as normative” (Tomm 1991). Based on ethnographic research that I conducted with Mataji and her followers over a five-​year period from 2014 to 2019, this chapter examines the religious agency of the female Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā as a site for transforming aspects of Brahmanical Hinduism which promote the structurally imposed inferiority of socially marginalized identities. My aim is to show how Mataji’s agency as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā renders possible the synthesis of religion and rights norms to legitimate the authority of people traditionally excluded from the Śaṅkarācārya lineage on the basis of religiously sanctioned views of sex and caste difference. The analyses that follow are drawn from fieldwork methods comprising participant observation at Mataji’s temple and elsewhere; the documenting and analyzing of her discourses, narratives, and rituals; and semi-​structured interviews with Mataji and her followers. Spotlighted shortly are narratives from Mataji’s life history repertoire. Since Mataji constructs her religion in light of the personal challenges that she has faced, sharing such experiences with others—​ including the author, an American ethnographer of religion—​solidifies her Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā status.

218  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli

The Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā and Female Religious Agency in Hinduism As Caroline Starkey’s methodological chapter in this volume attests, agency is a well-​traveled concept in the humanities and social sciences. My interpretation of the term has been influenced by various explanatory models, according to which agency comprises many forms, actors, and activities. It generally involves the capacity to act and exert power within cultural systems of complex social relations (Jeffrey 2001, 466). In analyzing the interface among gender, selfhood, and ritual action in the early Vedic Indian literature, Laurie L. Patton (2012) has spoken about agency in the frame of “the capacity to act with discernment—​that is, the capacity to choose a path of action and understand, according to the cultural norms of the day, the consequences of one’s actions” (Patton 2012, 369).6 The possibilities for agency, however, reach beyond the intentionality of actors. As the analysis of agency shifted from the evaluation of individual intentionality and toward the analysis of networks of power, important work like Janaki Nair’s “On the Question of Agency in Indian Feminist Historiography” (1994) influenced the comparative study of religion as well as gender studies. Attentive to the complexity of non-​voluntaristic accounts of agency, Mary Keller (2002) argued in a postcolonial and feminist comparative study of spirit possession that comparing the agency of women who were possessed by spirits in different cultures elucidated a common paradox in their agency for which she proposed the idea of “instrumental agency.” Keller reorients agency discourse in her focus on the woman whom, in the possessed state, transforms into a “receptive” vehicle of the sacred in ritual contexts. Demonstrated in three modalities of spirit possession—​the work, war, and play of spirit possession across cultural and historical contexts—​ Keller shows that the possessed woman is “played like a flute” or “wielded like a hammer” by divine forces, and it is by being wielded that she exercises her paradoxical authority, which is to say that she is instrumental in effecting action by being played. According to Keller, the possessed woman’s “radical state of receptivity” fashions her into an instrument of divine will through whom the sacred speaks; as such, the possessed woman is capable of exercising authority that is otherwise available only to men, or she is 6 Patton also states, however, that agency “is not tantamount to autonomy” (2012, 370). On Hindu women’s ritual agency in contemporary ethnographic contexts, see Hüsken (2013, 2016).

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  219 vulnerable to marginalization by her community. These very different results (authority or exile) develop from the same formal issue. It is the audience’s reception of the power that is speaking through her upon which the woman’s status is dependent. Therein lies her instrumental agency.7 Saba Mahmood has approached the notion of non-​voluntaristic agency from the angle of Muslim women’s embodied performances of moral excellence (2005). Through an examination of the lives and practices of orthodox Muslim women participating in the women’s piety movement (da’wa) in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt, which is linked to the broader Islamic Revival in Muslim-​dominated countries, Mahmood advanced the claim that embodied agentive practices relating to the cultivation of modesty and virtue, practices inclusive of Quranic study, prayer, and veiling, generate the “requisite agency” of “docility” through which a moral subject is actively fashioned and purposefully inhabits the world she lives in (Mahmood 2005, 29). As with Keller’s work on the possessed woman, Mahmood’s analysis of movements of moral reform goes against the grain of feminist epistemologies, according to which agency is premised on volitional acts of resistance. For Mahmood, Muslim women’s piety practices fashion sensibilities and commitments which cannot “be contained within the stringent molds of ” liberal principles (2005, 198). Mahmood’s model of women’s agency rethinks the dominant assumptions underpinning Western feminist discourse to focus on the way that women live and inhabit patriarchal norms, rather than enact and subvert them (2005, 23). Building on the analysis of agency as mediated and constituted through networks of power, Amy P. Langenberg and Tarini Bedi talk about agency as “community-​ oriented” (Langenberg 2018) and “distributed” (Bedi 2016) human energies by which means “social transformation and personal transformation meet and influence each other” (Rozmarin 2011, 2). Whether it concerns the “aesthetic agency” of Buddhist women in Lumbini, Nepal, as described by Langenberg (Chapter 5, this volume), or the “dashing agency” of Hindu nationalist women in the Shiv Sena movement of Maharashtra, India, as described by Bedi (Chapter 3, also this volume), collective and distributed agencies, much like individual agency, comprise multiple and sometimes “paradoxical” configurations (Langenberg 2018). Women acting

7 I am grateful to Mary Keller for our evolving discussions of “instrumental agency,” and her explanation of her use of that concept to interpret female religious agency. Personal conversation, October 16, 2019.

220  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli collectively or in a distributive capacity (i.e., their roles are distributed among actors within a network or community to achieve a goal), resist and oppose, accept and enact, embody and accomplish the dominant gender order. Recognizing, as the historian Nita Kumar (1994) has argued, that women’s subjectivities are shaped by parallel discourses, the question that this stream of agency scholarship prioritizes, to my mind, concerns the ways that collective agencies create or obstruct possibilities for expanding localized visions of gender roles and prerogatives and female power. The analysis below is positioned within and builds on this broader conversation about agency as illustrated in the foregoing discussion and offers fresh insights about female agency in Hinduism. In the field, I saw “agency” everywhere, in the ritual activities of Parvati, an elderly resident of Mataji’s ashram, who every morning at 4 a.m., and every evening at 6 p.m., would prepare the temple’s space for worship. I saw “agency” in Parvati’s sneaking away in the afternoon to the fields behind the temple to smoke a cigarette and maybe eat a sweet. I saw “agency” in the ways that Uma, a middle-​aged woman and another resident of the temple, took pride in the food and herbal teas she prepared for people every day. I saw “agency” emerge in the playful banter between Parvati and Uma, in Uma’s cracking of a smile when my field assistants Raj Kumar and Shahil, research scholars from Delhi University, told Uma that she served them the “sweetest mango” they had ever tasted. I saw “agency” in Mataji’s telling stories, her reciting of the Gāyatrī mantra as we walked on the banks of the Ganges River in Prayagraj, her building alliances with local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), her telling an unknown male sādhu who lingered too long to take some food from the temple and leave, and her watching the sunset. To me, “agency” encompassed diverse aspects of everyday life at and beyond the temple. But I never used the term in my interactions with Mataji or her followers. First of all, I did not know what the Hindi language equivalent of the English term “agency” was. Even after perusing my Oxford Student’s English-​ Hindi Language Dictionary (McGregor 1993), the Sanskritized Hindi language words I found were not terms which I had heard used in the contexts in which I conducted fieldwork (e.g., abhikartṛtva). Second, it would have been presumptuous (and ethnocentric) on my part to assume that respondents thought or cared about “agency” in the way that I did, or that they shared my perspective of the concept. Because I understand my role as an ethnographer of religion to be one of “attentive listening” (Lawless

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  221 1988; Orsi 2003), I paid attention to the localized idioms, symbols, practices, concepts, and memories—​what historian Robert Orsi represents as the “religious media” of meaning-​making—​that Mataji and her followers used and shared with me, and through which they constructed their worlds. Thus, the terms that Mataji utilized to describe and interpret her leadership as the Śaṅkarācāryā concern the Hindi language concepts “svayambhū,” “matṛ-​śakti” (or “mother-​power”), and “sadācār” (or “good conduct”). As Mataji experiences her leadership, and by implication, her quest for gender equality by means of these cultural categories, they have become my frames of reference for understanding how Mataji’s svayambhū agency “works” on the ground, that is, how it is constituted, mediated, and accomplished in a local context of North India. I am, therefore, concerned with this type of female agency in Hindu society and its implications for Mataji’s reconfiguring the normative boundaries of gender roles and relations in connection with Hindu religious structures of power and privilege. As the reader will notice, I have put Indic and Western concepts of agency in conversation to enrich the scholarly discourse. I argue that, as Mataji applies them in her teachings, svayambhū, matṛ-​śakti, and sadācār elucidate a triumvirate of semantic contexts for interpreting the dynamics of her “agency,” for combining rights-​ oriented discourses with a Hindu religious worldview in ways transformative to women’s religious lives; and for contesting the authority of the established lineage holders. Furthermore, I contend that Mataji’s leadership accentuates three intersecting dimensions of her agency in regard to the interplay of autonomous, instrumental, and what I term “redemptive” modalities. Let us now turn our focus to Mataji’s personal narratives to learn more about how she experiences, embodies, and lives her “agency.”

The Role of Volition in the Agency of the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā In many of our interactions, Mataji’s applies the svayambhū label to her leadership in order to sharpen attention to the transformative power of personal, and volitional, female agency in altering systemic gender-​motivated inequality, oppression, exploitation, and discrimination pervasive within male-​dominated Hindu institutions. Mataji talks about these institutions in a generic sense by using the Hindi language term “dharmakṣetra,” which translates to mean the “religious field.” But she also deploys the word to refer

222  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli to Hindu renunciant institutions inclusive of akhāṛās, maṭhs (monasteries), and ashrams. In the Sanskrit language, svayambhū designates a term that is derived from the verbal root bhū, which means “to be,” “to arise,” and “to exist.” The concept is used in Hindi-​language religious discourse to refer to a deity who “emerges” in creation by its own will (svayam is a pronoun and can be translated as “oneself ”—​svayambhū, then, refers to that which arises by itself). For instance, stones that resemble the phallic-​like symbol of the lingam, an aniconic image connected with the god Śiva, are called svayambhū by many Hindus in North India, as such naturally occurring objects are said to represent the “self-​manifesting” power of the deity—​in this case, Śiva—​in the world (Rao 2019, 113–​114). Hence, svayambhū, that is, the impulse to emerge in creation is thought to be an attribute constitutive of divine power within a Hindu worldview. Theoretically, a god or goddess “self-​manifests” by virtue of the authority of the god’s will. It is the god’s “right” or privilege as the absolute who creates, sustains, and destroys the world. The application of svayambhū to objects not only implies the notion of divine intentionality at work in world but also spotlights a linguistic context for imagining the autonomous (i.e., self-​determining) agency of divinity and its creation in Indic culture. Against this backdrop, I suggest that Mataji’s agency is anchored to her understanding of the notion of “autonomous agency” embedded in svayambhū. In narrating her personal experiences, Mataji emphasizes that she is a “self-​ made” Śaṅkarācāryā, a title which she claimed in 2008. It is a self-​appointed status. Her discursive self-​representation foregrounds the intentionality of her leadership. By the authority of her own will—​or, to use Mataji’s words “wish” (icchā)—​Mataji calls herself a Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. In a narrative she shared with me in 2018, while in the company of female devotees, Mataji explains her understanding and use of svayambhū: See, this post, a thought came to me that a woman should be there . . . At the time of the Buddha, there was no Śaṅkarācārya. Svayambhū happened with Ādi Guru Śaṅkarācārya first. He started the Svayambhū tradition. Nobody created Ādi Guru Śaṅkarācāryā. He was a svayambhū [guru] himself. [Author]: Svayambhū means self-​made? Mataji, is this the meaning? [Mataji]: Yes, self-​made. A svayambhū guru is self-​created . . . So, I took the initiative for this position to move our Hindu sanātana dharma in the right direction. With courage, I started distributing business cards,

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  223 pamphlets, flyers, everything. People used to ask me during conversations that they are hearing about a female Śaṅkarācāryā for the first time. People were curious to know how a woman could become a Śaṅkarācāryā. It got it printed on my business card “Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā.” They said, “How can you be svayambhū when our tradition is sanātan [eternal]?” I told them, “I did not start a new tradition. Ādi Śaṅkarācārya was svayambhū, and on behalf of women I became svayambhū. I named myself Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā to reduce the disparity between men and women, to reduce the criticism. There is no one for the women. For men, Ādi Guru Śaṅkarācārya is there. But I will be the Śaṅkarācāryā for women. (personal communication, June 8, 2018)

In clarifying her interpretation of svayambhū, Mataji plugs into the idea of autonomous action implicit in the concept’s meaning. She makes transparent that she takes initiative in naming herself the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā to create equality of opportunity and status for female sādhus. Her narrative signals that female sādhus have a comparably lower status than that of male sādhus, on account of the structurally imposed lacuna of female leadership in the Śaṅkarācārya lineages. As Mataji narrates her story, she becomes adamant that her self-​made status is not an anomaly at all; nor is it “new” to Hinduism. She says that her leadership follows the example of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, whom she calls the “first” Svayambhū Śaṅkarācārya. By doing so, Mataji elucidates that his status is “self-​made” like her own, rather than an appointed position. Mataji’s knowledge about the emergence of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya’s “self-​made” leadership presents an alternative view to the dominant Brahmanical understanding that he earned his distinguished title by engaging in philosophical debates (śāstrārthas) with his critics, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists (Cenkner 1995; Varma 2018). And yet, to my mind, the issue around which she orients her story’s content involves the idea of autonomous action as a normative human capacity. For Mataji, the agency she exerts by making herself the first female Śaṅkarācāryā brings into focus an expression of the kind of agentive action that she imagines Ādi Śaṅkarācārya to have exercised a millennium ago by becoming the first male Śaṅkarācārya. The difference between the gurus to which she heightens attention has to do with their gender, not their agency. This point is significant because, in the process of constructing her personal experience narrative, Mataji implicitly advances the notion that the capacity of women for autonomous action is as normative as men’s. As far

224  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli as she is concerned, the problem is not women’s perceived incapacity for volitional agency, but instead Brahmanical orthodoxy’s suspicion and suppression of it. Thus, Mataji indicates that volitional agency is neither anathema nor anomalous to virtuous Indian womanhood. Although Mataji clarifies that her svayambhū agency is not “new” to Hinduism, I suggest that her application of this concept to the Śaṅkarācārya system as a means to found an alternative Śaṅkarācāryā lineage of female preceptors is new. Her example indicates that women’s exercising svayambhū agency may be the only available means for female sādhus to access the Śaṅkarācārya traditions. The conventional methods of entering the lineages, such as appointment by a predecessor, or a committee, with preceding education in the system, remain inaccessible to women. Moreover, even when female gurus find ways to rise to the top of the mainstream power structure, they would still need the cooperation and acknowledgment of the male holders of authority within the system. This has yet to happen. As of this writing (2019), the dominant tradition refuses to recognize the legitimacy of female leadership.8 The established lineage holders have rejected Mataji’s authority. Not surprisingly, then, female sādhus and gurus enact agency within the Śaṅkarācārya traditions by operating outside of the religious mainstream altogether, which allows them to found lineages of their own. By emphasizing the “a” vowel at the end of “Śaṅkarācāryā,” Mataji linguistically distinguishes her female lineage from the mainstream male lineages. For example, during an interview with a local media station in Prayagraj in 2018, I witnessed the interviewer ask Mataji what her title was as he was writing down the details of their meeting in his notepad. A devotee replied, “Mataji’s title is Jagadguru Śaṅkarācārya Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati Maharaj” (interview with male devotee, July 21, 2018, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh). He did not stress the “a” in Śaṅkarācārya. Mataji, however, was not going to let this linguistic faux pas become a matter of public record. She interjected, “No! It is Śaṅkarācāryā. I am the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. I have made this path for the women. You make sure to write this in your report.” 8 According to an article published in Hindustan Times on August 31, 2018, Sadhvi Hemanand Giri has been appointed the Śaṅkarācārya title at Nepal’s Pashupati Nath Temple in Kathmandu. She is the first female Śaṅkarācāryā of Nepal and the first woman to be appointed to the position. The Sadhvi, originally from Nepal, claims that her appointment has been sanctioned by the Akhil Bharatiya Biddhat Sabha, which she says has a “global presence,” as well as by the Bishow Hindu Mahasangh. Her appointment has been contested by the lineage holders and akhāṛā leaders. See https://​www. tel​egra​phin​dia.com/​india/​sad​hvi-​in-​first-​claim/​cid/​1329​858. See also https://​www.hin​dust​anti​mes. com/​india-​news/​sad​hvi-​cla​ims-​she-​is-​pas​hupa​thin​ath-​tem​ple-​s-​sha​nkar​acha​r ya-​seers-​see-​red/​ story-​Snd​v2Z3​dRlF​I7vv​Oysm​FqM.html.

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  225 Through her self-​made leadership, Mataji affirms that women attain complete humanity to the extent that they themselves can conceive and experience autonomous agency as a normative capacity, and through it, claim their ontological right to exist and flourish. My sense is that the statement she makes in the context of “women have to understand themselves first” voices her gender-​equal vision of the female sādhu as normative. Mataji’s svayambhū agency models her vision of “every woman’s” right to equality and freedom of self-​expression, and which she insists are their birthright. Against this backdrop, Mataji understands that her authority as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā is neither derivative of, nor dependent on, Ādi Śaṅkarācārya’s. Being a svayambhū guru, Mataji’s leadership runs of its own accord and “wish.” Both she and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya stand “shoulder to shoulder” with parity of status and authority. Thus, Mataji’s usage of svayambhū identifies a semantic context for combining modernist discourses on gender equality with a Hindu worldview. Volitional agency as exerted by Mataji in her svayambhū role resists the chauvinism and hegemony which renders female sādhus subordinate to male authority. As we have seen thus far, Mataji opposes misogynistic values and customs that perpetuate the second-​class status of female sādhus in Hindu institutions. Her agency as the female Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā is, therefore, an oppositional modality that agitates against structural gender inequality within Hinduism. My analysis of her leadership indicates that religious gender reform demands a firm and unapologetic stance of contesting the widespread, and frequently unchallenged, systemic attitudes and practices that undervalue the female. Mataji makes clear that religious reform, especially as it concerns gender roles and relations, cannot happen until people confront the skeletons in their traditions’ closets. For Mataji, this means confronting received Brahmanical understandings of the female as inferior to the perceived male as normative, precisely because such conceptions normalize gender inequality, discrimination, and exploitation in Hindu society. However, even as Mataji emphasizes the intentionality of her svayambhū agency, she also calls herself the “vehicle” (mādhyam) of the Goddess. Mataji says that the Goddess, whom she refers to as “Mother,” emerges in existence by means of Mataji’s leadership as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. In a similar respect, Mataji says that she embodies the female form of Brahman, while Ādi Śaṅkarācārya manifests Brahman’s male form. Either way, Mataji’s statements relate the understanding that her leadership also actualizes the outcome of divine intentionality, and therefore, cast light on the idea of

226  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli female svayambhū agency as a receptive modality through which divinity affects the world. It is to this model of female religious agency that I now turn.

The Role of Receptivity in the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā’s Agency According to Mataji, divine knowledge constantly “comes” to her, which she calls the Brahma-​jnān (i.e., knowledge revealed by the nameless and formless deity Brahman), through meditation, chanting of mantras (jap), visions (darśan), dreams (svapnā), auditory sensations (sravan se), and ritual practice (pūjā). But Mataji also says that the gods and goddesses can come to her “at any time” and “bless” her with divine insight. She reiterated this point to me in a conversation we had at her temple in the year 2019. Mataji had made the comment that the knowledge she teaches to others “is not written anywhere.” So I asked her where the knowledge comes from, and she said, “It comes from the ātmā. It is not found anywhere, neither in the Vedas nor the Purāṇas. This ātmā-​knowledge which comes to me is revealed by the Mother of the Vedas, Gayatri Mata. Like every time you ask me a question, I don’t think about my answers. The knowledge comes by itself. This is all the power and wish of the Mother Śakti.” It seems that Mother Śakti has been “coming” to Mataji for almost two decades. In 2018, she spoke about a personal visionary experience from 2008, in which the deities Śakti and Śiva revealed to Mataji that she would become a Śaṅkarācāryā, and that she would found a woman-​centered monastic society (akhāṛā). Mataji was participating in the annual winter festival known as the Magh Mela,9 which is held in Prayagraj during the month of Magh (January through February), when she says the vision happened. It came to Mataji while she was adjusting the signboard to her camp one evening. As she told me, “The light was coming. Like when lightning occurs, that’s how it happened. I saw the form of Śakti. In that spark, Mother appeared. This has happened to me many times. I also saw Lord Śiva with a trident in his hand. I saw all this.” The vision occurred a month before Mataji announced her Śaṅkarācāryā status.

9 The Magh Mela has been characterized as a “mini” Kumbh Mela by pilgrims and popular religious discourse.. The latter term literally translates to mean the “festival of the waterpot.” On the Magh and Kumbh melās of Allahabad, see Maclean (2008).

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  227 Besides having visionary experiences, Mataji frequently tells me that the goddess Gayatri comes to her during meditation and, while in a meditative state, teaches Mataji the Vedas. Mataji does not see the goddess, but rather “hears” her voice, through which Gayatri reveals her knowledge. Mataji elucidates that “Gayatri is the mother of the Vedas. Gayatri mantra is known as the mother of all mantras, and through that mantra, we meet God. So, after meditation, I get this power and knowledge. I get a lot of confidence, too. Whenever I leave this temple to give my lectures, I am not afraid” (personal interview with Mataji, January 27, 2019, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh). Along parallel lines, in 2013, as related by Mataji, she had an experience in which she heard Gayatri reveal that the temple where Mataji lived was a śakti pīṭh, a sacred place where Śakti dwells in the form of the Ganga, Yamuna, and Sarasvati Rivers. Mataji said that the experience happened while she was performing a ritual on the banks of the Ganges River. Her temple is located near a sacred river confluence known as the Triveni Sangam, where the Ganga, Yamuna, and Sarasvati rivers are thought to converge, and where pilgrims bathe to ritually purify themselves. According to Mataji, Gayatri instructed her to turn the temple into a center (vidyā pīṭh) of religious learning for women, and that Gayatri would teach Mataji “the four Vedas” so that she could teach other women, householders and sādhus, the knowledge through which they develop themselves and transform their lives. Gayatri further revealed to Mataji that her pīṭh would serve in the role of what Mataji calls the “pancham pīṭh,” meaning, the “fifth center” of Vedic learning and training associated with the Śaṅkarācārya traditions.10 Influenced by this experience, Mataji remains convinced that her pīṭh, which she has named the Gayatri Triveni Prayag Pith, represents the “original” (ādyā) center of all the Śaṅkarācārya pīṭhs, the site where Gayatri dwells. As she described, “This Triveni Pith is the first pīṭh, because the mother of the Vedas is Gayatri Mata, and as the four Vedas evolved from Gayatri Mata, so all other pīṭhs have evolved from this one.” Since receiving Gayatri’s revelations, Mataji has founded her own akhāṛā in 2014, which she has named Sarveśwar Mahādev Vaikuṇṭh Dhām Mukti Dvār Akhāṛā Pari (Mataji and the officers of her akhāṛā have established Gayatri as their tutelary deity), and which operates independently of the 13 established male sādhu akhāṛās. Every 10 Like many gurus with whom I worked, Mataji says that there are only four vidyāpīṭhs, instead of five, in India. The idea that there are five vidyāpīṭhs remains a contested within the Śaṅkarācārya traditions. Mataji’s svayambhū tradition complicates the picture further by adding a fifth or sixth vidyāpīṭh.

228  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli woman (or man) who receives initiation into renunciation from Mataji also receives the spiritual surname name of “Triveni Pari.” In 2018, Mataji began calling herself “Ādyā Jagadgurū Śaṅkarācāryā Trikāl Bhavantā Sarasvatī” in conjunction with her Svayambhū title, to foreground the notion that she is the first and original female Śaṅkarācāryā of Hinduism (Figure 9.1). Altogether, Mataji’s statements indicate that she perceives herself to be a vessel of and for the divine. For Mataji, being receptive to divine power and presence facilitates her personal agency and generates her wisdom. This is a common Indic religio-​cultural understanding of the human–​divine interface. The idea of being open and surrendering to divine influence surfaces as a dominant leitmotif in Mataji’s life narratives and orients the ways in which she interprets her leadership. Drawing on Keller’s (2002) work on the “possessed woman” as an “instrument” for divine agency to emerge in the world, I suggest that Mataji’s emphasis on her being a divine channel articulates her view that she exercises “instrumental agency” as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. I clarify that Mataji does not undergo ritual states of spirit or deity possession and has never used in our interactions terminology to indicate that she is or has been possessed. But the importance that she attributes to having experiences in which Mataji says sacred forces “speak through” her suggests, to use Keller’s terms, the “radical receptivity” Mataji experiences and thus the instrumentality of her agency. In Mataji’s understanding, she personifies a receptacle chosen by God or Goddess who, through her leadership, acts in the world in order to accomplish a divine task. To underscore her receptive agency, Mataji says that Brahman and Śakti have “blessed” her to lead as the Śaṅkarācāryā in order to restore the “truth” of equality: This is all the blessings [aśirvād] of Brahman. Brahman is doing the work, but the body is mine. Brahman wants change to happen through me. So, it is happening. This is why I am the Śaṅkarācāryā for women. Everything that I am doing, Mother Śakti is doing through me. Mother has blessed me for this work. [Author] So, Śakti is acting through you? Which form of Śakti? Is it Durga? [Mataji]: I don’t know who I am. But I know that Mother’s power is in me . . . Otherwise how could I be where I am today? It is not possible for a normal person. Mother Durga, Yamuna, Ganga, and Gayatri are speaking through me. I am the one to whom they are revealing their wishes. They

Figure 9.1  A glossy poster image of Mataji from 2014. Notice the goddess Gayatri shining from Mataji’s heart center. The image shows Mataji absorbed in meditation and receiving knowledge from Gayatri. (In the materials distributed by Mataji’s organization, her title is written as “Śaṅkarācārya,” rather than “Śaṅkarācāryā.” And yet “jagadguru” is written as “jagadgurū,” to call attention to the feminine title. In a Skype conversation with Mataji on October 15, 2019, I asked her why Śaṅkarācārya was written in its masculine form, and she replied that the person who manages her printing needs made a mistake. This “mistake” has not been rectified in the literature that continues to be distributed by Mataji’s society.) (Sarveshwar Mahadevi Vaikunth Dham Mukti Dwara Akhara Pari promotional photo of Mataji).

230  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli are doing what they want through me. The truth is going to come out, and it will through me. Truth always stands alone. . . . The one who created the world never discriminated against anyone. For me, that creator is Brahma, Viṣṇu, and Maheś [Śiva].

Framing her agency in the language of the divine “blessings,” Mataji’s narrative implicitly crafts a correlation between gender-​motivated religious discrimination against sādhus and discrimination against Mother Śakti. From Mataji’s standpoint, the violation of sādhus’ rights by Brahmanical orthodoxy suppresses the “Mother Power” (matṛ-​śakti), a divine female force which Mataji says “gives birth to the world” and makes life possible. According to Mataji’s teachings, Śakti has become so distressed and enraged by the pervasive maltreatment of the female principle such that Śakti has decided to “self-​manifest” through means of Mataji’s leadership and deliver to female religious practitioners the rights they are entitled to as embodiments of the matṛ-​śakti. Mataji’s use of the term “mātṛ-​śakti,” which may be translated to mean “mother-​power”—​though, I have also heard Mataji and her followers use this word in the semantic sense of “woman-​power”—​to describe her theology of Śakti is noteworthy. Her application of the concept casts light on another semantic context in which she synthesizes rights with Hindu religious teachings. In Mataji’s discourses, the mātṛ-​śakti principle represents not only Śakti’s ascribed maternal power to create the world but also the biological power of the female to create life. Mataji’s conception of the mātṛ-​ śakti buttresses women’s bio-​spiritual continuity with the divine materiality of the Goddess to accentuate the intrinsic divinity, primacy, and normativity of the female. While Mataji’s interpretation of the mātṛ-​śakti idealizes a female procreative capacity, it does not foreclose other possibilities by reducing women to their biology. As Mataji says, “If women can give birth to Śaṅkarācāryas, then they can become Śaṅkarācāryās.” Her discourses focus on the idea of women’s perceived maternal power, because, as Mataji teaches, a person’s privileges and rights in Brahmanical Hinduism should at least be commensurate with her expected responsibilities. Mataji reasons that since women have a greater responsibility than men by bearing life, they deserve to bear the “first” right to the Śaṅkarācāryā title. To Mataji, the Śaṅkarācāryā leadership extends and enhances the socially ascribed maternal, caregiving, and teaching competencies of women. Thus, she deploys “mātṛ-​śakti” to affirm

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  231 an alternative role to women’s normative gender scripts, and advance gender equality in the Śaṅkarācārya traditions. Equally consequential is that, in narrating her personal experience of her alternative authority, Mataji emphasizes that she “has taken the position of the Śaṅkarācāryā.” Taken it from whom? From the gods Brahma, Viṣṇu, and Śiva perhaps? Are the male gods giving Mataji their divine super powers to vanquish religious misogyny? The narrative signals that this may be how Mataji’s understands her instrumental agency as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. But let me take the implications of Mataji’s narrative one step further. If the gods, as Mataji indicates, give her their powers, then it could also be argued that they are relinquishing their agencies, by offering their powers to Mataji. If this is the case, would their relinquishing their agencies to Mataji not make them impotent? How can the gods act through Mataji if, by releasing their powers to her, they become powerless to act? My question is, whose agency does Mataji understand herself to embody here? Again, Mataji’s narrative suggests a possible answer in connection with Śakti. The gods give their powers not to Mataji, but rather to Śakti whom Mataji says she embodies, and whose agency Mataji is thought to actualize through her leadership as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. The imagery laced throughout Mataji’s narrative resonates with that of the Hindu mythic tale of the Great Goddess featured in the sixth-​century Sanskrit language text known as the Devī-​Māhātmya (“glorification of the Goddess”). According to the scholar of religion, the late Kathleen Erndl, the Devī-​Māhātmya represents “the most important text in the Śākta tradition” of Hindu goddess worship in India (Erndl 1993, 21; Erndl 2004; Coburn 1991). It is one of the earliest Hindu texts to conceive of the goddess as a dynamic and independent female power that creates, sustains, and destroys the world. In Śākta theology, the gods depend on Śakti for their existence as well as their powers. Without Śakti, they are helpless. Mataji says that “Śiva without Śakti is a corpse.” The Devī-​Māhātmya reinforces this viewpoint. The entire universe is said to run by means of Śakti’s power; Śakti animates and transforms the world. Nowhere is this idea made more apparent than in the text’s second episode, in which Śakti in the manifestation of the warrior goddess Durga, defeats the buffalo demon Mahīṣāsura. Before the battle ensues, however, the gods find themselves powerless against the increasing forces of demon army, and after asking the Goddess to intervene in the cosmos, they supply the divine female with their weapons and symbols. In this system, the Goddess has

232  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli all the agency and all the power. This is a female world where the Goddess “emerges” by the power that is life, that is Śakti. In glorifying the Goddess in her manifestations as Lakshmi, Parvati, Saraswati, Durga, and Kali among many other goddesses in seven hundred stanzas, the Devī-​Māhātmya establishes the ontological primacy of the power of the feminine to life and creation.11 Its influence on Mataji’s thinking about her leadership as an instrumental means for the Goddess to repair what Mataji calls a “paralyzed” sacred order is evident in her teachings. Mataji correlates the idea of women’s rights to the weapons wielded by Durga. By making this association, she suggests that, like Durga’s weapons, women’s right to equality shields them from the “demons” of misogyny and chauvinism prevalent in the dharmakṣetra. Moreover, she clarifies that the role of today’s religious leaders, like the gods who assisted Durga by giving the Goddess their weapons, involves supporting female sādhus, by advocating their equal rights. In these ways, Mataji articulates that a female sādhu empowered with her rights in Hindu religious contexts is synonymous with Durga empowered with the gods’s weapons. For religious patriarchy to oppose female sādhus’ equality strips Durga not only of her divine power, but her agency, too. Thus, what strikes me in my observations of the dynamics and processes involved in Mataji’s agency is that fashioning herself in the frame of the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā enables Mataji to act of her own will, while acting for and as the Goddess. That is, Mataji’s agency combines voluntaristic as well as instrumental modalities to authorize an alternate option for women in the Śaṅkarācārya lineages and to push for concrete gender reform in Hindu society more broadly. To me, Mataji’s narratives seem less concerned with the question of whether the initiative to act comes from Mataji or from the Goddess than to foreground the significance of the idea of independent female power acting of its own “wish” in a world in which cultural expectations often constrain and repress female agency. Becoming “Mother’s vehicle” transforms Mataji into a receptive agent of religious change, and she models this possibility for what she classifies as “every woman” in Indic contexts. At the same time, Mataji’s understanding that she and Śakti join female forces to crush evil illuminates the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā’s leadership as a transformative site for exerting redemptive agency. It is to this model of female agency that I now turn.

11 The translation of the Devī-Māhātmya with which I am working is Coburn’s (1991), 32–​84.

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  233

The Redemptive Agency of the Śaṅkarācāryā: A Symbol of Change In many of our ethnographic encounters, Mataji emphasizes that she is a “symbol of change [parivartan kā pratīk]” for contemporary Hindu society. In January of 2019, I asked Mataji if she considers herself an “activist” (sāmājik kāryakartā). We were sitting in her temple and waiting for Jeetu, a journalist from Mumbai, who wanted to interview Mataji for a piece he was writing on gurus at the Kumbh Mela. In response to my question, Mataji said: I am the one who will change the direction of the world. You can call me a reformer, a true preacher of the Vedas, a conservationist of sanātana dharma, a preacher of Indian culture. You can also call me a religious reformer, because religious policy affects every sphere of life. When you write Śaṅkarācāryā, everything comes under that [title]. The meaning of ācārya is that a person has absorbed the Vedas in their daily life, not just read the Vedas, but is living the Vedas in their behavior. . . . This is a big work. It will take a lot of time. A small bulb lights the whole room. I am the sun behind the clouds. When the clouds will move away, then I will shine. (January 19, 2019, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh)

Her words resonate with the imagery featured in the Bhagavad Gītā, a Hindu sacred text, in which Krishna reveals his divine identity to the warrior prince Arjuna. In the text, Krishna describes himself as “the origin of all” (Bhagavad Gītā 10.8),12 who “[a]‌mong the great lights [is] the sun, shining” (10.21), and who “destroy[s] . . . darkness with the bright light born of wisdom” (10.11). As his conversation with Arjuna unfolds, Krishna explains the reason for his incarnation in the world. In chapter four, Krishna tells Arjuna that “whenever there is a decline in dharma, and the absence of dharma increases. . . . I come into being from age to age with the purpose of fixing dharma—​as a refuge for those who do good and as a doom for those who do evil” (4.7–​8). That is, Krishna has come to rescue dharma (moral goodness, social order; truth) and thus save the world from moral corruption and social disorder. Mataji’s rhetoric is replete with savior-​oriented imagery, symbols, and mythic descriptions that illustrate what I term a “redemptive” model of female agency in Hinduism. Her teachings raise the point that her svayambhū

12 Bhagavad Gita, Patton translation (2008).

234  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli leadership accomplishes a moral corrective to reform what Mataji labels the “sin” of gender inequality, which, to her, represents an effect of morally “corrupt” (bhraṣṭ) religious attitudes and practices. By framing gender inequality in the language of adharma, Mataji locates women’s rights within a Hindu framework to support the equality of female sādhus. She considers her svayambhū agency a redemptive modality for revolutionizing patriarchal mentalities entrenched in the running of Hindu religious institutions, especially mathas. Thus, my representation of Mataji’s leadership as illustrative of “redemptive” agency is based on and heightens her understanding that she has been “chosen” by God or Goddess to “save” or “rescue” (bacānā) sanātana dharma from “today’s dharmācāryas” who, as Mataji says, are not only “materialistic,” “lustful,” and “greedy,” but who are also “using the religion” to violate women physically, emotionally, and sexually. Mataji’s redemptive agency actualizes a woman-​led quest for religious moral reform within institutionalized Brahmanical Hinduism. My terminology, then, spotlights a salvific model of moral agency congruent with Mataji’s primary aim to rehabilitate the Brahmanical tradition of its deeply ingrained sexism and improve female sādhus’ lives. Although redemptive agency is not uniquely female, as it represents an agentive modality attributed to Durga as well as to Krishna, Mataji’s understanding that her leadership restores the respect, dignity, and equality of female sādhus highlights the agency she exerts as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā in a gendered way. From Mataji’s standpoint, the role of the Śaṅkarācāryā is to ameliorate gender differences of power and authority in Hinduism, and raise female sādhus’ status by promoting their equal right to institutional autonomy. According to her narratives, Mataji learned that female sādhus’ situation in the dharmakṣetra is “very bad” long before she renounced the world in 2007. Almost a decade earlier, Mataji was employed as a social welfare worker with a women and children’s development NGO in Benares. She held the position of the general secretary of the organization for approximately two years from 1998 to 2000. This NGO had multiple roles in connection with providing shelter to abused and exploited women and their children, teaching them life skills, and helping them find jobs in the community. Through her work with the NGO, Mataji says that she met sādhus who were forced into sexual relationships with their gurus or their gurus’ disciples and who were thrown out of the ashrams they shared with their gurus

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  235 after they became pregnant. Moreover, Mataji says that during the Magh and Kumbh Melas held in Prayagraj, which she attended as a householder as part of her devotional practice, she met female sādhus who she says were being sexually trafficked by their gurus or by others at the festival. The news both shocked and horrified Mataji. While she had encountered through the NGO many women who had been abused and exploited by their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, and bosses, she never imagined that she would meet female sādhus having similar experiences. She thought that of all the places in a patriarchal Indic society where women could live as they see fit, where they were respected and treated with dignity, because they had dedicated their lives to simplicity, poverty, and God/​Goddess, it was the dharmakṣetra. Mataji realized, however, how wrong she was. She identified with the women whom she met through the NGO on a deeply personal level. The serial infidelity of an uncaring and irresponsible spouse caused Mataji to feel neglected, exploited, and abused as a woman, despite, in her view, doing everything that she was expected to do as a wife and a mother. Mataji understood what it was like for women to be abandoned by their families and their communities, and to feel alone and vulnerable in a society in which they often have little overt power. Motivated by her social work, as well as the dissolution of a 15-​year arranged marriage, and with her children in college (which she paid for with her savings), Mataji renounced the world. She emphasizes that she took a “mental vow” of renunciation (sannyās) in 2000, and then “full sannyās” in 2007 from a guru within the Saraswati lineage. Mataji felt that, as a sādhu, she could devote herself purposefully to serving disadvantaged women and, through her efforts, apply the leadership and life skills she had learned and taught to thousands of women through the NGO to the dharmakṣetra. But the deeper she plunged into the religious world of the dharmakṣetra, by living in ashrams, temples, and akhāṛās run by male gurus or their disciples, the more she realized that it was as patriarchal and misogynistic an environment as her former life. As Mataji says, “what happens in the society also happens in the dharmakṣetra.” As significantly, since Mataji and many of the sādhus whom she met spent the majority of their time cooking and cleaning for their gurus, she felt that women are treated like the “servants” (dāsīs) of men. Female sādhus’ perceived maltreatment convinced Mataji of their secondary status in Hinduism, and that she needed to do something about it.

236  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli Akhara Pari, therefore, offers women, especially sādhus, an alternative “home” to the conventional, patriarchal model, that is, a supportive, woman-​ centered environment where they have the time, the space, and the assistance of the akhāṛā community to develop themselves, rather than serve the patriarchal family. Mataji suggests that women must step beyond the prescribed parameters of the home and family, which restrict female agency, to advance Indic society. Her narrative cues that women are as entitled as men to live a full and satisfying life outside of the home. In Mataji’s view, the dominant expectation that women, particularly married women, confine their worlds, their aspirations, and their priorities, to the home is neither good for women nor for the society. As Mataji explains, the entrenched societal suspicion of female independence as dangerous to the patriarchal gender order places an enormous, and harmful, psychological pressure on women to stay within circumscribed limits of home and family in order to be perceived as “good” and virtuous. This suspicion of independent female power has frequently been ignited and sustained by the misogynistic rhetoric of religious leaders. For example, in August of 2018, Indian news reports highlighted discriminatory comments made by the Śaṅkarācārya of the region of Dwarka (western India), named Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati, who also heads the Jyotish Pith in Badrinath (northern India), to the effect that women can never become Śaṅkarācāryās and should not make “demand[s]‌for . . . a religious post whose rigors they cannot uphold.” He said that organizations which promote female Śaṅkarācāryas “corrupt” the religion and that, “instead of falling for the feminist trap, women are good at home and should avoid going out of the house.”13 Thus, through the redemptive agency of the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā, Mataji is constructively changing religious patriarchy’s framing of rights discourses to emphasize that gender equality and freedom (personal autonomy) represent principles intrinsic to Hindu teachings. Whereas Śaṅkarācāryas like Swaroopananda Saraswati frame religious gender reform as “corruption” (bhraṣṭācār) of tradition, Mataji flips the frame to stress the Hindu religious idea of sadācār, meaning “righteous conduct” or “virtuous action.”

13 See https://​www.ind​iato​day.in/​india/​story/​dwa​rka-​sha​nkar​acha​rya-​swaro​opan​and-​sarasw​ati-​ vrinda​van-​women-​1322​944-​2018-​08-​25.

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  237 Hindu studies scholars have discussed that sadācār marks a site for innovating Hinduism, as gurus’ exemplary conduct, along with the Vedas and Dharmaśāstras, is considered to be a “source of dharma” (Narayanan 2005, 31; Lucia 2014, 120). As with the concepts of svayambhū and matṛ-​ śakti, sadācār identifies a third semantic context for Mataji’s relating rights to Hinduism, as well as dismantling the legitimacy of traditional authority. She teaches that sadācār entails the “equal treatment of everyone without making any differentiation on the basis of sex, caste, or religion.” To Mataji, sadācār illustrates a person’s attainment of moral perfection. Viewed from this angle, sadācār bespeaks the spirit of equality central to Mataji’s vision of Brahmanical Hinduism. Her accent on treating others fairly and well heightens the redemptive agency underpinning Mataji’s leadership as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā. In a field as competitive as religious leadership, the perceived righteous conduct of gurus provides the moral basis on which Mataji sanctions or contests the authenticity of a Śaṅkarācārya. Mataji is up-​front about not having the “official” training that Brahmanical orthodoxy considers necessary for that role, and she makes no apology about it. She also feels, however, that her sadācār distinguishes the legitimacy of her leadership and alternative authority from that of the established leaders. Mataji reasons that her exemplary moral character validates her religious right to claim the Śaṅkarācārya title as well as paves a way for female sādhus’ equal participation in the Śaṅkarācārya traditions. She says: I have made myself a Śaṅkarācāryā because there is no one for the women. For sure, I will fail in memorizing their (meaning, Hindu religious orthodoxy’s) texts (granths). I say this myself that I have not read all the texts and can never read them all. My life will pass reading them. Look, I do not want to read them all. I have understood the summary of the texts even without reading them. This is a power (matṛ-​śakti) that I have. I openly state that I learned everything without reading the texts. Whatever is written in the texts only shows what a male-​dominated society thinks. Do these leaders follow the texts in their actions? I have not read the texts, still I am following their teachings. I treat everyone, even the smallest insect, as equal (barābar). Everyone is equal for me. I am a Śaṅkarācāryā by my sadācār. They are Śaṅkarācāryas by caste. This my thinking that I am the true Śaṅkarācāryā, because my actions are pure . . . I treat everyone equally. I am working for women’s welfare. I was training and teaching women

238  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli earlier. I was giving them knowledge about their equal rights and responsibilities, how women can speak and live with confidence in who they are. And while working in religion, I am still telling women about their rights.

As this narrative illustrates, the motif of righteous conduct repurposed as the equal treatment of all humanity, especially the most disadvantaged, surfaces repeatedly in Mataji’s teachings. In this excerpt, Mataji underscores the idea that advocating women’s equal rights discloses a modality of sadācār, because women deserve to know what their fundamental rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the Indian state, and that these rights apply not only in secular contexts, but in religious contexts, too. Mataji dismisses the popular perception held by religious leaders that rights represent a so-​called Western invention, by stressing that her own striving to advance equality exemplifies sadācār, a “righteous” mechanism for restoring dharma in the world. In this way, the narrative distinguishes Mataji’s sadācār as “pure,” that is, unselfishly motivated insofar as her agency as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā benefits others, especially marginalized identities, even as it interrogates Swaroopananda’s view that women are “good in the home.” Mataji pushes back against this idea. Instead, she suggests that women accomplish and embody their feminine dharma by working toward their own self-​realization, which includes claiming their equal rights. By locating her alternative authority within the moral frame of sadācār, Mataji voices her perspective as to why Śakti has chosen her to be the Goddess’s vehicle. Her narratives subtly distinguish between Mataji’s self-​ perceived moral purity and perfection and what she rhetorically crafts as the moral impurity/​imperfection of the established Śaṅkarācāryas. She says that “They are materialistic. Brahman has left their bodies and is in mine, because I am pure. I am the true Śaṅkarācārya.” Mataji’s emphasis on purity conveys a cultural frame for representing female sādhus, whom religious patriarchy considers transgressive to the dominant gender order, as paragons of virtue. To Mataji, her purity encompasses moral, sexual, and psycho-​spiritual dimensions. She elucidates that her perfection of sadācār—​by following a strict vegetarian diet (ahār), practicing lifelong celibacy and dedicating herself the divine (vihār), and acting ethically and responsibly in her relations with others (acār), human and non-​human—​has generated her purity of mind and body and, hence, transformed her into the “perfect” vehicle for the Goddess. Purity, as Mataji teaches, has little, if anything, to do with one’s caste or class status, one’s bodily functions and fluids, like menstruation and blood

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  239 or semen, or one’s sex. Rather, Mataji says that purity entails perfecting one’s thoughts, words, and deeds and, through sadācār, shifting one’s perceptions so as to be able to see “everyone as equal,” and thus, as deserving of respect, dignity, and freedom. Affirming the idea of the moral excellence and normativity of the female sādhu who devotes herself to divinity by increasing women’s rights and opportunities in the dharmakṣetra, Mataji’s redemptive agency as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā heals the harm endured by women, especially ascetics. In effect, it gives them both a voice and a role in realizing gender equality in Hinduism.

Conclusion: Feminism and the Female Śaṅkarācāryā: Rethinking Frames From the outside, Mataji’s leadership as the female Śaṅkarācāryā engages values and ideals that align with liberal as well as radical feminist worldviews. Although there are different forms of “liberal feminism” (Baehr 2018), in gen­eral, it holds the position that women should live their lives as they see fit.14 Liberal feminism views equality and personal autonomy to be fundamental “rights” of the “just state.”15 As significantly, to cite the feminist scholar Judith Lorber, liberal feminism “argues that women and men are essentially similar, and therefore women should be equally represented in public arenas dominated by men” (1997, 15). By contrast, radical feminism, which also comprises a spectrum of views, advances the idea that discrimination is symptomatic of systemic oppression and exploitation related to the patriarchal mindset that the female is different from and inferior to the male. Since the social order is inherently patriarchal, radical feminism reasons that to resist patriarchy women must separate themselves from the system entirely and create “a woman’s culture,” through formation of “non-​ hierarchical, supportive, woman-​only spaces where women can think and act and create free of . . . sexual harassment, and the threat of rape and violence” (Lorber 1997, 17). Can we, then, call Mataji’s leadership an Indic example of “religious feminism”? The term has been developed by the social anthropologist Emma Tomalin and is based on her research with transnational networks

14 See Amy Baehr (2018), https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​femin​ism-​libe​ral/​. 15 See https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​femin​ism-​libe​ral/​.

240  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli of self-​identified Buddhist feminists.16 As Tomalin elucidates, “religious feminism” describes women’s use of religious worldviews to promote understandings of gender and gender roles that are consonant with the views of liberal feminism and that raise women’s status in patriarchal societies.17 In my earlier work, I have characterized Mataji’s quest for gender equality as illustrating a localized, Indic expression of “dharmic feminism.” Since then, however, I have been rethinking my representation for two reasons. First, Mataji does not use the term “feminism” of her own accord, possibly because of its pejorative connotations. And second, for many of her followers for whom “feminism” is a word in their vocabularies, the label identifies women who wish to emulate men in order to be equal to them, or who are “against” men and want to live separately from them. From another angle, a few respondents suggested that a person cannot be both a feminist and a Hindu, as these represent opposing value systems. Let us take the example of Atra Mahamandeleshwar, a sādhu who has a PhD in English literature, as well as a law degree from Kanpur University, and who serves in a leadership role in Mataji’s akhārā. Atra is a devout supporter of Mataji’s movement and knows her well. She provides Mataji with legal aid, by serving as her attorney at the High Court of Allahabad. Atra calls herself Mataji’s “bodyguard.” I asked if Atra considers herself a feminist. No sooner had I said the word “feminist” than Atra puckered her face as if she had just swallowed a bug. Her body shivered in disgust, and when she regained her composure, Atra said with a force that I still remember, “No, I am not a feminist! I am a Hindu. I don’t want to compete with men. I’m not against men. What I want is equality. My religion preaches equality. Don’t call me a feminist in your book. I believe in equality.” Just as much confusion exists about the concept of “feminism” in American cultural contexts, my discussions with Atra and other followers of Mataji indicate that the concept is as confusing in Indic cultural contexts. Liberal and radical feminisms are often conflated in mainstream discourse. Aware that dominant local perceptions view her leadership to be “against men,” Mataji clarifies in her interviews with the media and in our interactions that, while the lineage and the akhāṛā that she has organized are woman-​oriented, they are not at all woman-​exclusive. Many times Mataji has said, “I am not against men.” In 2014, Mataji explained her position as follows: “It’s like this,

16 See Tomalin (2009).

17 See Tomalin (2011, 37–​51).

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  241 a bicycle needs two wheels to run properly, and my mission needs both men and women to defeat the evil corrupting our dharma.” Thus, in light of these responses, according to which “feminism” is implicitly correlated with misandry (hatred of men) or the erasure of gender differences, applying that label to Mataji’s leadership would generate more confusion. It is best to leave the term aside. For Mataji and her followers, the struggle for gender equality enacts a grassroots religious response to male hegemony, not “feminism.” Yet Mataji understands that women must have the freedom to author lives of their own, to think and act independently without male or familial interference, and that autonomy is vital to the flourishing of female ascetics in Hindu society. But this is where we reach the edge of what could possibly be called Mataji’s “feminist” viewpoint of gender equality. Her teaching women to live as they see fit is not advocacy for them to do as they please, particularly as it concerns their sexual autonomy. Mataji requires celibacy of her female students, especially those living at the temple, even if they have not renounced, to protect not only the perception of their sexual propriety but also their personal autonomy. I, too, was held to this standard of celibacy as a foreign female researcher working closely with Mataji. In Uttar Pradesh’s conservative climate, advocating women’s sexual autonomy, either from a religious or secularist viewpoint, is dangerous for Mataji and her students. It is not a standpoint they would accept as women living in a northern society that constrains women’s bodies, mobility, and choices. Instead, Mataji teaches that women harness their power and authority by strengthening their moral base, that is, by protecting their sexual and moral purity, and as such, her expectations of female chastity and celibacy represent a departure from feminism(s). Thus, while Mataji’s leadership as the female Śaṅkarācāryā discloses an innovation to Hinduism by heightening the compatibility of religion and rights-​based values, it also pushes the limits of feminist frames such that she approaches the issue of religious gender equality from an ideological position that parallels conservative gender discourse. Mataji endorses a gender ideology that emancipates women from traditional social constraints even as it sanctifies conservative ideas about virtuous womanhood.18 In Mataji’s theology, women and men are born with the same normative value. This view, however, does not translate into the idea that they are the same. To Mataji, gender equality (i.e., women as a class deserve equal 18 For a discussion of the constraining and emancipating aspects of female agency in the American Shaker movement, see Procter-​Smith (1993).

242  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli treatment with men as a class) is not tantamount to gender sameness (i.e., that women and men are the same in their socio-​biological and moral capacities). From the perspective of her teachings, women and men are essentially different, and that perceived sex difference becomes Mataji’s entry point into a gender discourse that magnifies a set of properties as constitutive of womanhood. In her public discourses, Mataji promotes a religiously sanctioned gender ideology that enhances the socially ascribed power of the feminine by linking attributes like self-​sacrifice, self-​discipline, and suffering to the female sex. Women’s presumed capacity to endure hardship as a proclivity intrinsic to female nature, a difference that is mapped onto the attributes equated with the Goddess Śakti as a generative force, is thought to create a bio-​moral power endowing them with strength, wisdom, and authority. Mataji’s putting women on a moral pedestal because of their religiously ascribed gender difference produces a social paradox. Women’s engaging the cultural ideal can be used as a reason to advance their equal rights in Hinduism. Conversely, if women, are viewed as falling short of that ideal, such a perception can be used to deny them equality. So, even as Mataji places women on a pedestal to increase their rights, the religious patriarchy can as easily deploy the same gender ideology to violate those rights. Either way, women are rendered categorically homogenous in conservatively inflected discourses that eclipse the reality of “women as agents” (Sered 2000). Although Mataji reinterprets the discourse on respectable femininity to authorize a new role for female ascetics, namely that of the female Śaṅkarācāryā, by grounding their equal rights in an ideology of sexual difference she reverses the dominant gender hierarchies, rather than totally dismantles hierarchical gender arrangements.19 Drawing from the insights of the feminist legal scholar of constitutional law Catharine A. MacKinnon (2006), Mataji’s quest for equality “promot[es] equality of status for historically subordinated groups, dismantling group hierarchy” with respect to elite Brahmin men (MacKinnon 2006, 186). Seen from this angle, her agency illuminates paradoxical elements in that it is confrontational as well as acquiescent. To signal Saba Mahmood’s insight about the agency of embodied practices like piety, through the cultivation of female sexual and moral purity, Mataji’s religious agency as the Svayambhū Śaṅkarācāryā accomplishes patriarchal

19 See MacKinnon (2006, 184).

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  243 norms related to idealized womanhood, even as it resists the chauvinism justifying that ideology. Her leadership, therefore, casts light on the ways that a female-​identified interpretation of a Brahmanical ideology of sex difference can be used to free women from prescribed gender norms as well as maintain the religious gender status quo. That said, I disagree with Mahmood’s claim that practices of piety engender sentiments contrary to the so-​called liberal principles of democracy, freedom, autonomy, and equality. Mataji’s example indicates that moral reform and religious gender equality are intertwined in Indic contexts. By grounding one’s power in localized practices of female purity, like celibacy, vegetarianism, and activism, sādhus fashion rights-​based commitments and enhance goals congruent with gender equality in Hindu institutions; as such, Mataji’s leadership elucidates the complexity of the relationship between religion and rights projects in that her quest nuances debates, scholarly and popular, which polarize religion as “conservative” and rights as “liberal.” In Mataji’s case, it becomes apparent that her “conservative” woman-​led quest furthers “liberal” principles of women’s and human equal rights in Brahmanical Hinduism. Contrary to laying what has been called the “feminist trap” by the Śaṅkarācārya of Dwarka in response to people’s increasing religious gender activism in India, Mataji’s leadership is igniting a broader conversation about violence against marginalized identities, and the complicity of religious leaders in perpetuating a culture of misogyny. This is a conversation which the religious establishment would rather shut down by leveling the charge of “feminism” against Mataji. And yet Mataji’s practices indicate that she battles inequality from within the flexible parameters of a Hindu worldview, and thus exposes high-​caste male entitlement, while contesting critiques that deny the relevance of “rights” to religion. Combining the frameworks of religion and rights into one platform, Mataji’s leadership actualizes an empowering vision of the “rights-​bearing”20 female sādhu that is fundamental to women’s advancement in the 21st century.

References Baehr, Amy R. 2018. “Liberal Feminism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​018/​entr​ies/​femin​ism-​ libe​ral/​.

20 The term “rights-​bearing” is drawn from Yuksel Sezgin (2012).

244  Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli Bedi, Tarini. 2016. The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India. Albany: SUNY Press. Cenkner, William. 1995. A Tradition of Teachers: Śankara and the Jagadgurus Today. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Charpentier, Marie-​Thérèse. 2010. “Māte Mahādēvi: A Progressive Female Mystic in Today’s India.” Temenos: The Finnish Society for the Study of Religion 46, no. 1: 101–​126. Charpentier, Marie-​Thérèse. 2013. Indian Female Gurus in Contemporary Hinduism: A Study of Central Aspects and Expressions of Their Religious Leadership. Abo: Abo Akademi University Press. Coburn, Thomas B. 1991. Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Devī-​Māhātmya and a Study of Its Interpretation. Albany: SUNY Press. DeNapoli, Antoinette E. 2016. “‘The Time Has Come to Save Our Women’: A Female Religious Leader’s Feminist Politics as Experimental Hinduism in North India.” International Journal of Hindu and Dharma Studies 1, no. 2 (January): 1–​37. DeNapoli, Antoinette E. 2019. “A Female Shankaracharya? The Alternative Authority of a Feminist Hindu Guru in India.” Religion and Gender 9, no. 1: 1–​23. Erndl, Kathleen M. 1993. Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jeffrey, Patricia. 2001. “Agency, Activism, and Agendas.” In Women, Gender, and Religion, edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli, 465–​491. New York: Palgrave. Keller, Mary. 2002. The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power, and Spirit Possession. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Kumar, Nita, ed. 1994. “Introduction.” In Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, edited by Nita Kumar, 1–​25. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Langenberg, Amy Paris. 2018. “An Imperfect Alliance: Feminism and Contemporary Female Buddhist Monasticisms.” Religions 9, no. 190: 1–​24. Lawless, Elaine J. 1988. Handmaidens of the Lord: Pentecostal Women Preachers and Traditional Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lorber, Judith. 1997. The Variety of Feminisms and their Contributions to Gender Equality. Oldenburg: Bibliotheks-​und Informationassystem der Universität Oldenburg. Lucia, Amanda. 2014. Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mackinnon, Catharine A. 2006. “Sex Equality under the Constitution of India: Problems, Prospects, and Personal Laws.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 4, no. 2: 181–​202. Maclean, Kama. 2008. Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765–​1954. New York: Oxford University Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McGregor, R. S. 1993. Oxford Hindi-​English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press. Nair, Janaki. 1994. “On the Question of Agency in Indian Feminist Historiography.” Gender and History 6, no. 1: 82–​100. Narayanan, Vasudha. 2005. “Gender and Priesthood in the Hindu Traditions.” Journal of Hindu-​Christian Studies 18: 22–​31. Orsi, Robert. 2003. “Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live in?: Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42, no. 2: 169–​174.

“I Will Be the Śa ṅ karācāryā for Women!”  245 Patton, Laurie L. 2012. “The Enjoyment of Cows: Self-​Consciousness and Ritual Action in the Early Indian Gṛhya Sūtras.” History of Religions 51, no. 4: 364–​381. Patton, Laurie L., trans. 2008. The Bhagavad Gita. New York: Penguin Press. Pechilis, Karen, ed. 2004. “Introduction: Hindu Female Gurus in Historical and Philosophical Context.” In The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States, edited by Karen Pechilis, 3–​49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pechilis, Karen. 2015. “Women Gurus in Hinduism.” Prabuddha Bharata 120, no. 6: 400–​409. Rao, Mani. 2019. Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity, and Visionary Experience Today. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rozmarin, Miri. 2011. Creating Oneself: Agency, Desire, and Feminist Transformations. Bern: Peter Lang AG. Rudert, Angela. 2017. Shakti’s New Voice: Guru Devotion in a Woman-​led Spiritual Movement. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press. Sered, Susan Starr. 2000. “‘Woman’ as Symbol and Women as Agents: Gendered Religious Discourses and Practices.” In Revisioning Gender, edited by Myra Marx Feree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess, 193–​221. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Spina, Nanette R. 2017. Women’s Authority and Leadership in a Hindu Goddess Tradition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tomalin, Emma. 2009. “Buddhist Feminist Transnational Networks, Female Ordination, and Women’s Empowerment.” Oxford Development Studies 37, no. 2 (June): 81–​100. Tomalin, Emma. 2011. “The Thai Bhikkuni Movement and Women’s Empowerment.” In Gender, Faith, and Development, edited by Emma Tomalin, 37–​49. Oxford: Practical Action Publishing. Tomm, Winnie. 1991. “Goddess Consciousness and Social Realities: The ‘Permeable Self.’” In The Annual Review of Women in World Religions, Vol. 1, edited by Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, 71–​104. Albany: SUNY Press. Varma, Pavan K. 2018. Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism’s Greatest Thinker. Chennai: Westland.

SECTION 4

RE SE A RC H ST R AT E G I E S

10 Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism Methodological Reflections and Collective Commitments Caroline Starkey

Introduction In July 2018, Ute Hüsken invited 12 scholars to the University of Heidelberg to participate in a collaborative three-​day workshop on “The Dynamics of Female Agency in Buddhism and Hinduism.” The participants came from universities across Europe and North America, each with varied research specialisms and disciplinary backgrounds, and all with experience of different multinational field-​sites. Although many of us did not know each other before attending, the workshop quickly developed into a vital and dynamic space for scholarly engagement, where lasting research relationships and critical friendships were born. More often than not, the discussions (in the paper sessions and in less public conversations) turned to method and methodology. Each of us openly shared the joy and the difficulty we had as researchers, both in terms of the practicalities of undertaking ethnographic or historical work on the topic of female agency in Buddhism and Hinduism, and in making scholarly sense of our participants’ lives. In particular, specific questions arose about our relationships to participants, and the problems some of us were having in applying existing analytical and theoretical frameworks to our empirical data. At the time of the workshop, I was in the process of completing a monograph based on several years’ fieldwork with Buddhist women in Britain, particularly those who had taken ordination with various lineages and movements. In the book Women in British Buddhism (Starkey 2020), I gave attention to the methods I used to collect data; however, I felt as if some of

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250  Caroline Starkey the complexities of my research were glossed over, presented as linear and tidy, and as if the problems that arose were neatly resolved over 200 pages. This was far from the reality and, at the Heidelberg workshop, I was given the space to air my methodological and theoretical concerns and to think more deeply and collaboratively about them. Following the workshop, collective conversations continued between a group of us who had attended, either over the phone or by email, sharing questions that we had about our findings and what they meant, and commenting on each other’s works-​in-​progress. This chapter takes these conversations on method and methodology, initiated at the Heidelberg workshop and continued beyond, as its starting point. It is a consciously reflective piece drawing on my research experience, woven together with insights from each of the other scholars featured in this edited collection. As part of our ongoing conversations and in preparation for this chapter, I discussed a series of questions I had about method and methodology with the other contributors.1 They responded either by email, or over the telephone, and they also later commented on drafts of this chapter, furthering and deepening the analysis. The questions I asked centered on the principal methods each scholar employed in their research, their definitions of agency, and any issues they faced in understanding their participants’ perspectives on this topic. We discussed the theoretical and analytical frameworks we employed to make sense of our data, and whether we perceived any tensions between our scholarly assumptions and our participants’ perspectives. Throughout these conversations, I was alert to points of similarity and difference between us, and in particular, I tried to establish whether we shared any specific methodological commitments, despite our range of disciplinary backgrounds, geographical foci, research areas, and national academic habits and traditions. Reflecting this detailed and collaborative discussion of the research process, the purpose of this chapter is to untangle some of the key methodological issues we face in studying female agency in Buddhism and Hinduism. Throughout this chapter, I do not always offer definitive answers to the methodological questions or conundrums posed. Instead, I demonstrate how I and others have responded to issues as they have arisen in our fieldwork encounters, drawing our experiences together in dialogue with other scholarship on feminist method. Examining feminist 1 This distinction between method and methodology is inspired by Sandra Harding (1987, 2–​3), where she distinguishes between epistemology as a theory of knowledge, method as the practical ways in which research data are collected, and methodology as “a theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed.”

Methodological Reflections  251 discussions about method and methodology provides a fruitful starting point from which to think through the process of research and the ways we might engage with participants, our own positionality, and our politics. Each of the scholars I engaged in preparing for this chapter describes themselves as feminist, and this personal political commitment inspired our choice of subject matter and the ways we approached our research. However, the impact of these choices and the ways in which they shift and change over the course of research and writing is a key consideration here. I have structured the chapter in three main sections. The first explores how we as researchers have centered women’s voices in our scholarship and some of the challenges we have encountered in upholding this methodological and ethical commitment. The second examines the politics of feminism in the process of researching the lives of Buddhist and Hindu women, the tensions that arise in working with participants who may not share our political commitments, and the ways in which this has affected us. The final section focuses on the concept of agency. In particular, I am interested in what happens in our research process when the use of this term does not always neatly reflect our participants’ realities and their soteriological aims, as we perceive them. To conclude, I outline a series of shared principles, developed through our collective conversations. These are brought together to form a broad methodological framework, designed to enhance our approach to research with and for women from Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but also beyond. Throughout this chapter, I deliberately engage the language of emotion, employing terms such as “I feel,” “I experience,” or “I wonder.” This is to counter what I, and others, see as the dominant rationalizing tendency within the academy.2 The emotions that arose over the course of my research shaped the encounters that I had, and also the ways I analyzed and wrote about them. In navigating this sometimes tricky terrain, I have been influenced by the foundational work on emotions from within the discipline of anthropology, for as Svašek (2005, 1) argues, “emotions have always been intrinsic to the production of anthropological knowledge.” “Feelings” have been of particular concern to feminist scholars, and as Blakely highlights, “emotions . . . are an untapped resource of information, lending insight into

2 See, for example, arguments within the collection focusing on anthropology and emotions edited by Milton and Svašek (2005).

252  Caroline Starkey the research process (and) the findings of the study” (Blakely 2007, 60–​61).3 Navigating emotions and balancing the practicalities and pressures of research interactions is an ongoing process, operating beyond the publication of the final, written piece. My aim is that this chapter should be seen as part of a developing, multidisciplinary conversation reflecting on the business of research into female agency in Buddhism and Hinduism, and the ways that we, as scholars, engage emotionally and practically with the women whose lives we focus our attention on.

Centering Women’s Voices What was abundantly clear, from the very start of our collective conversations, was that each of us is deeply committed to putting our participants (who are mainly, although not exclusively, women) at the center of the research and writing process. Although, as researchers, we are influenced by our specific disciplinary affiliations (history, religious studies, textual analysis, anthropology, sociology), almost all of us engaged in medium-​to long-​term ethnographic fieldwork, building relationships with individuals and small groups of participants, often over several years. This typically involved spending time within established (or establishing) religious communities (particularly monastic communities), both large and small, in the United States/​Europe or India and Nepal.4 In our research, each of us used the technique of multiple formal and informal interviewing (ranging from structured to unstructured approaches), observations, and participation, but (in particular for Amy Langenberg, Ute Hüsken, Shefali More, and Valeria Gazizova) it also involved bringing together textual, archival, media, and historical analysis with contemporary ethnographic fieldwork. Ethnography, as we understand it, is a process, “in which the researcher is immersed in a social setting for some time to observe and listen” (Bryman 2004, 267), and this idea of “listening” featured in each of our articulations of how we gathered data and how we ensured that our participants were at the heart of the analysis. This is by no means a new or original idea, and each of us has, no doubt, been shaped by 3 See Abby Day (2021) on the value of thinking carefully about researchers’ emotions in the field, including the emotional responses of anxiety, dislike, and distaste. 4 Although the term “monastic” is typically used across Anglophone Buddhist communities, there is some disagreement as to what it means, as in practice it incorporates different levels of religious commitment and a range of vows, lifestyles, and living situations (Starkey 2014).

Methodological Reflections  253 the generations of feminist researchers who have prioritized women’s voices in research, particularly since the 1970s (Kitzinger 2004; Devault and Gross 2012). Still, as Valeria Gazizova exemplified: “my central focus, and the starting point of my research, remains the local theorizing, the voices, and self-​definitions of my interlocutors.” This was echoed by Ina Ilkama, who in undertaking research on the South Indian ritual practice of kolu stated: “I seek to step back, and take for real, the worldviews of my interlocutors.” Given the types of ethnographic data gathering that we engaged with as a group of researchers, it is perhaps not surprising that centralizing our participants’ voices would feature so strongly in our description of the research process. Yet, as Kitzinger (2004) indicates, “understanding what is involved in such listening is, for many of us, no longer so straightforward.” The aim of this section is to explore this process of centralizing women’s narratives, voices, and experiences, and some of the challenges we encountered when doing so. From our collective conversations, the idea of “deep listening” as a method of gathering and analyzing data with women, clearly emerged (DeVault and Gross 2012). This approach involved an ongoing process of trying to understand and appreciate women’s ideas and perspectives, attempting to really listen to what they were telling us about their lives, their hopes and dreams, including in communication beyond words. More often, this meeting would start with a research question or questions, but we were open to these being changed as the ethnographic encounter progressed and what was important to our interlocutors was brought to the fore. At the very beginning, this typically involved meeting our participants where they chose, observing daily life (where we were granted access), as well as being part of more specialized ritual occasions and community events. For some of us, our research involved spending time in monastic or specifically bounded religious communities, taking part in the activities of daily living that occurred. We each varied between “observer-​as-​participant” and “participant-​as-​observer” during the fieldwork encounters, and certainly in my own research, this shifting positionality helped get a sense of the lives of my interlocutors, and the realities of communal monastic settings (Knott 2005, 246). In centering participation as a means to pay greater attention to women’s lives, I was not alone in offering something of myself to the research encounter. From our collective conversations, the idea that we might volunteer to support fledgling communities was a common experience. This might include helping with domestic tasks, practicing meditation or engaging in communal rituals, or even sharing our scholarly expertise about religious texts and histories

254  Caroline Starkey with our interlocutors. Participant observation in the research field is a well-​established anthropological method of encouraging in-​depth learning about communities (DeWalt and DeWalt 2010), and we often prioritized this across our scholarly encounters. However, spending time in monasteries or nunneries (when one has not committed personally to that lifestyle) is a particular type of ethnographic encounter, and one that demands careful attention. I felt that practicing “deep listening” in this environment was impossible without participating, which I did to a greater or lesser extent at each of my field-​sites in Britain. Although I did not take ordination myself, or live in a single monastic institution for long periods (a method which helped shape Joanna Cook’s 2010 study of meditation in northern Thai monasteries, for example), I made sure to spend time with the various communities where I was allowed, doing daily chores and engaging in communal meditation and ritual practices, including eating together. In many ways, some of my most useful conversations occurred when I was not officially interviewing but when I had my hands in the washing-​up bowl—​cleaning pots and pans in the communal kitchens with other women.5 I found this to be a reflective time with each of us focused on the repetitive and, indeed, meditative motion of washing, rinsing, drying, putting away—​a familiar domestic task, even in a more alien, monastic environment. It was when some of my participants felt they could share quiet details of life, and where I was fully committed, with them, to the task at hand and the words they were saying. This was, for me, careful listening in action. Although I sometimes found it difficult to record the thoughts and responses that I had during these periods, it was a time to really engage and be present with what I was being told in that moment instead of worrying about whether I was recording interviews accurately, or what questions I was going to ask next. Being an interviewer, particularly when you are starting out on your research journey, can be a stressful experience and one where you are keen to prove yourself to your participants in order to facilitate a smooth process. However, this pressure does not always create the most effective interview environment or generate the most useful data. In speaking to women in a more informal setting (such as while doing a quiet, repetitive task), I was able to ask questions as they naturally arose, and I was able to respond more 5 In her work on Anglican lay women, Abby Day (2017, 167) deftly discusses the impact of working with women on routine tasks, including washing up, as an integral part of the research process.

Methodological Reflections  255 honestly, even if I had not envisaged these questions at the start of the research. As DeVault and Gross (2012, 220) identify, “active listening means more than just physically hearing or reading; rather, it is a fully engaged practice that involves not only taking in information via speech, written words, or signs but also actively processing it. It means allowing that information to affect you, baffle you, haunt you, make you uncomfortable, and take you on unexpected detours.” Active, deep, or even (to put a Buddhist spin on it) mindful listening, including at the kitchen sink, was one way of uncovering women’s stories and narratives. In Buddhist monasteries, particularly during periods of meditation and formal silence, this was a useful time to begin to process, structure, and observe my “communities of practice” and how women operated within them (Wenger 1998, 73). It wasn’t always easy for me to undertake long periods of silent meditation, and there was a physical toll on my body, rising early, sitting in one place, watching my mind jump about, eating less than usual, or at restricted times, even if I was only engaging in these practices within a short time-​frame. Although I rarely left the field without craving fast food, the familiar drone of the TV, or a mindless scroll through my social media feeds, I distinctly remember that these immersive, communal experiences provided a glimpse into the challenges that my participants had faced, particularly in their early religious lives and when settling into the monastic routine. By engaging with long periods of silent meditation and the embodied ritual practices that one typically observes in Buddhist monastic environments, this was vital to help me appreciate my participants’ lives and choices, and also supported me to look beyond the words of an interview, which DeVault and Gross (2012) identify as an important component of “deep listening.” As Amy Langenberg also discovered in conducting her research with young women in Nepal (Chapter 5, this volume), it was making sense of her participants’ laughter and embodied displays of physical, teenage closeness which helped give a greater understanding of their social positionality and cultural conditioning. This was not explained in words but in action, and it is only in spending time within communities, observing beyond the formal interview, that we are able to really begin to get a sense of social and cultural realities. Critically, Melyn McKay highlighted in work on the Ma Ba Tha movement in Myanmar, that focusing on women’s roles allowed a greater comprehension of the group “as a whole” and facilitated access to events and discussions that might ordinarily have been denied. This was also supported by Iselin Frydenlund. Therefore, women’s experiences were “a lens through

256  Caroline Starkey which we (can) explore other phenomena—​not only as a means of understanding the experiences of women.” Following the initial ethnographic encounters on returning to the office, part of the deep listening for us all involved long and, in many ways, painstaking work with interview audio recordings and transcripts. Being in the field is not easy, but neither is retreating from it, and I ended up memorizing large tracts of interview data and field notes that I can still recall several years later—​not purposefully—​but because I had listened, read, and relistened and reread my interlocutors’ words many times over. For many of my participants, most of whom had high levels of education, I also sent copies of transcripts and draft chapters, and these were annotated, amended, and corrected by them. My intention was to allow the women to take some ownership of the writing process and the finished product but also to help me correct any assumptions that I might have written in. This was a risk, and I was worried that my participants might edit out some of the more critical statements that they might have made in favor of a more circumspect “party line.” Indeed, this did happen on occasion and I had to accept it, despite wanting to include some of the more radical “off-​the-​cuff ” comments that they had made. Yet sending transcripts or involving participants in the writing process may well stand only to validate existing perspectives, for not every participant will want to or will feel able to comment on scholarly work, even if we have been genuine in our attempts to include them (Kitzinger 2004). However, in this case, this interactive approach helped to deepen the trust that had developed between myself and several of my participants, leading to a more productive working relationship in the long term. This is especially important when you are working with women in smaller, sometimes more socially and politically vulnerable religious communities. As valuable as this approach might have been, it does require ongoing critical attention. As Kitzinger (2004) states: As feminists, we know that women’s voices do not always tell “truths”: memories can be fallible, stories can be embroidered, participants may be more interested in creating a good impression than in literal accuracy, speakers contradict themselves and sometimes deliberately lie.

She goes on to question whether there is always a direct link between women’s “voices,” “experience,” and “reality,” and whether we always prioritize some perspectives over others (Kitzinger 2004). In my experience, some

Methodological Reflections  257 ethnographic encounters are easier than others—​they run more smoothly, we are welcomed, we get on well with the community and with individuals (including gatekeepers), and we are given open access. Others are prickly, rushed, we might not feel on top of our game, and we might have other things on our minds. Our participants may seem not to want to engage with us at any deeper level. In the latter case, we might feel like we have failed, and that we just cannot get to the heart of our interlocutors’ experience. As a result of this perceived negative research interaction, the data we collect might feel somehow thinner and weaker. Perhaps, even, these feelings of “failure” are gendered in and of themselves. However, as Thwaites (2017, 5) cautions, “equal and cosy sharing in interviewing” has been somewhat mythologized, particularly by feminist researchers. It may be setting us up for failure to consistently posit this type of interaction as the gold standard, for research realities are often far more complex. The idea of whether our participants always tell the truth is one that I gave careful thought to in my research, particularly when I was asking women to discuss their experiences of religious conversion. Each of them had come to Buddhism in adulthood rather than being born into a Buddhist family, and although I had originally taken a chronological approach to question design, I quickly abandoned this when I realized that the specific details I was looking for were not forthcoming, either in formal interviews or in less formal conversations. Many of the women’s stories sounded the same (despite some differences in biography), and they employed similar words, phrases, and narratives to tell me about their initial engagement with Buddhism and Buddhist groups. Instead of focusing on whether their stories contained “truth” and trying to piece together a literal timeline that was not readily forthcoming, I decided to ask women to describe their “spiritual journey.” In doing so, I was given a much more thematic story, focused around the specific Buddhist concepts of dukkha, saṃvega, and pasāda (Starkey 2020).6 I followed Beckford (1978, 250) in assuming that the narratives that women shared reflected soteriological values that they held dear, both as individuals and as community members. This valorizing of women’s stories and narratives, whether or not they articulate an objective reality, was (to a greater or lesser extent) given priority across each of our ethnographic 6 Dukkha usually translates to suffering or dissatisfaction, a cornerstone of the Buddha’s teaching (Lopez 2012, 108). Saṃvega refers to the upset that is experienced on observing dukkha, and pasāda is the sense of confidence in the pathway outlined by the Buddha to alleviate suffering (see Thanissaro 1997).

258  Caroline Starkey encounters. In this manner, I sidestepped striving to discern absolute “truth” to emphasize instead the weaving together of a story. Furthermore, as Karen McCarthy Brown (1999, 352) explains: While I still care about factuality and freedom from bias, those standards are no longer the most demanding ones for my work. Over the years, I have come to understand anthropological fieldwork as something closer to a social art form than a social science. It involves a particular type of relationship, yet one that is subject to all the complexities and ambiguities of any other kind of human interaction.

However, two interrelated questions follow from our commitment to centering women’s views. The first is: how should we make public the things that our participants tell us, many of which are fundamentally personal and private? The second is: in what ways do we balance the need for critical and theoretical analysis without putting our participants (or the relationships we develop with them) at risk? I can remember a very long interview I had with one female Buddhist monastic, where she said that our dialogue had been like a therapy session. She had discussed very honest and personal thoughts about her relationship with the monastic community she was living within and felt it was particularly cathartic to talk through experiences of religious conversion and monastic ordination which she had not shared openly before. In this moment, we felt connected, in a single conversation that lasted well over two hours. She was aware she was being interviewed for research, but in the process of the interview, our interaction and relationship shifted. Her words and the meaning behind them most certainly directed how I presented the issues facing women in Buddhist monastic life, particularly in relation to their adaptation to communal living and tight disciplinary schedules. Although she had given permission for me to record and write about her experiences in a public way, I had to consider very carefully how to include what I had learned when it might expose her too much within a small and very identifiable community. In the subsequent published works, both to keep her safe and, so doing, to also preserve a longer term research relationship, I left some details out, wrote more generally (about “a monastic” rather than pseudonyms), and shared some of the writing with her before it was finalized, offering the chance to change certain aspects. Yet this inclusive and participant-​focused approach is not always possible or desirable, not least because, arguably, we are not our participants’ mouthpiece at

Methodological Reflections  259 the risk of scholarly criticality (Kitzinger and Wilkinson 1997, 568). When relationships in the field develop and connections happen (which Ionescu [1998] calls “accelerated friendship”), it can feel uncomfortable to expose them in all their gory details. It is not easy to be critical when this might risk offending or alienating people with whom we have connected, grown to like and respect, and with whom we want to have ongoing research relationships. While these affective relationships may develop (either in the short or longer term), it remains our job to theorize and translate individual experiences in the field into critical analysis. From one feminist perspective, while women’s experiences are the fulcrum of our work, they are “insufficient in themselves” (Luff 1999, 690; see also Day, forthcoming). For Tarini Bedi, however, working closely with the women of Shiv Sena, “the story is theory.” Instead of perceiving the development of theory and critical analysis as somehow separate from the lived experiences of our participants, we should instead view our participants’ stories as “fundamentally theory building.” She explained further: “the women I work with do not just tell me stories, but instead they have been building and reflecting theoretically and analytically on their lives long before I get to my site and long after I leave. So I feel as a feminist ethnographer that I have to pay attention not just to their voices but to their ability to push theoretical concepts like agency beyond what I, as the ethnographer, believe to be agency.” That being said, we often participate in a difficult balancing act between our participants’ world and our scholarly world. In articulating her particular approach to this balancing act, Antoinette De Napoli explained: It is not that I advocate an approach of letting the data speak for itself, because it doesn’t. But I do feel that we need to give as much space as we can, to bringing the voices and critical insights of the people with whom we work into our work, to make it a conversation, rather than the scholar analyzing the researched.

Indeed, as part of this “conversation” and the connections that we make with participants, we also have to acknowledge our role in shaping the field that we are researching. In my “therapeutic” research encounter, and particularly as I became more comfortable with my participant, I raised issues in relation to gender inequality in her religious community that she had not thought about before. She told me, as a result, our discussion had shifted her thinking. Cotterill and Letherby (1993, 77) highlight that “the research process may

260  Caroline Starkey make the participants of the research think about things they have never thought about before or indeed think about things in a different way.” Our “facts” may well be produced by our individual engagement in the field, and while this may be inescapable, it is necessary to be more open about this in our writing. Despite the potential and actual difficulties of centering women’s stories and narratives in our research, we remain committed to this approach in our research praxis. Yet there were moments, particularly when we were faced with challenges to our feminist politics and the concept of agency as we perceived it, which produced specific methodological pressure points. As a result, it was not always easy to form a comfortable balance between our participants’ voices and our scholarly analysis.

The Politics of Feminism I began my paper at the Heidelberg workshop with a quotation from one of my participants, a British nun in the Tibetan tradition.7 In a frank interview, after she had raised concerns about gender inequalities in contemporary Buddhist communities, I asked her about whether she was a feminist. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that “feminism” and “Buddhism” were two distinct things. When deciding how to engage in social issues, she said: “I have to ask myself, am I after doing feminist politics, or am I after doing (Buddhist) practice.” This conversation brought into sharp relief a methodological issue that I had been grappling with since the start of my fieldwork a year or so earlier. I had begun my project committed to a feminist analysis and research methodology. I saw my feminist-​inspired research to be, as Fran Porter (2017, 83) aptly describes, “an emancipatory endeavour. It seeks to liberate girls and women from the socio-​political, legal and religious constraints that keep them subordinated to men.” Contemporary Buddhist communities, including in the United Kingdom, do not all offer parity of ordination between women and men. This is particularly an issue for those groups connected to the Thai Theravāda tradition and certain Tibetan lineages, where the female order (bhikkhunī/​bhikṣuṇī/​dGe-​sLong-​ma) is thought never to have been established (Mrozik 2009). Within these groups, 7 This paper was drawn from one of the chapters in my monograph, entitled “Loaded Words: Attitudes to Feminism and Gender Equality” (Starkey 2020).

Methodological Reflections  261 women are offered the opportunity to further their spiritual ambitions by taking ordinations that do not contain as many vows or precepts as the male ordinations (bhikkhu/​bhikṣu/​dGe-​sLong). At present, there are both local and global movements to reinstate “full” ordination for women where this is not available within different Buddhist traditions (Kabilsingh 1988, 228; Mrozik 2009, 364; Tomalin 2006, 387; Lindberg Falk 2007, 8). As I discussed in my paper and, later, my book, when I began my research with British Buddhist women, I anticipated that my participants would want to champion the fight for full ordination, and that in the production and sharing of my research, I would be (nobly) assisting in this endeavor. What happened in actuality was that a proportion of my 25 interlocutors, from across the spectrum of Buddhist traditions in Britain, were not particularly supportive of the “struggle” as I perceived it, and a number were actively against it. This was surprising, as I had assumed that, given my participants had grown up in a cultural context where a commitment to equal rights between men and women has shaped legislation, they would be actively committed to fighting for equality of opportunity in their adopted religious traditions. How could they not? Yet many of my participants saw the world, and their place in it, in a very different way. Some of them told me that fighting for equal rights for women was not Buddhist, given that the categories of “men” or “women” were not fixed, and that gender does not determine spiritual achievement. Many saw feminism as divisive and a threat to community harmony, which, in a context where communities are relatively young and had not been easy to establish, was hard-​won. Others felt that structural gender equality was not particularly important, and the most appropriate response was to contribute to their Buddhist community, respect Buddhist tradition, and to honor the spiritual paths as laid out by their teachers (who were, in the main, men). These kinds of perspectives are, to a greater or lesser extent, shared by Buddhist women in different geographical locations (see, for example, attitudes within the work of Cheng 2007; Cook 2010; Kawanami 2013; Salgado 2013). For many of these women, Buddhist liberation and community relationships take priority over feminist liberation. As a result, and similar to Ionescu (1998, 301), what happened was that “one by one, the expectations I brought with me in the field . . . were questioned, revised and sometimes dropped entirely.” This is an experience shared with many of the contributors to this volume, including Shefali More, who told me: “When I started this, I was categorically against such practices which I feel treat women as subordinate to men. But at the end of this research (which is not

262  Caroline Starkey necessarily the end of my journey), I think now I am more open towards understanding the other side of the coin.” For me, what complicated matters further was the very real, and often stark, diversity of views on the topic of gender equality that my participants articulated. In my published writing, I grouped the different approaches to gender equality in Buddhist communities that women were taking into three modes of engagement—​active campaigning, discreet concern, and purposeful distancing (Starkey 2020, 145–​148). In addition, I adapted a perceptual mapping technique, based on the work by Kim Knott and Sadia Khokher (1993), in order to better appreciate these differences in attitude. Here, I diverged from a more traditional thematic analysis, and I plotted my participants’ perspectives on a map with two axes (one perceptual, one biographical). This was in order to establish whether there were any correlating factors with the feminist orientations of my participants, such as their living situation, or how central they were to the hierarchical structures of power of their specific Buddhist communities. This enabled me to immediately recognize, and visually represent, the subtle diversity among my participants, to identify possible correlating factors in their accounts, and make sure that they received balanced attention (Starkey 2020, 137). Yet, in carefully representing nuance, I began to appreciate in doing so, perhaps more than in any other research encounter I had, that “there is no place ‘outside’ where we can stand” (Neitz 2011, 63). The reality was that my approach to the feminist project was challenged and changed in the process of the research—​what Orit Avishai, Lynne Gerber, and Jennifer Randles (2012, 406) have called “the feminist ethnographer’s dilemma.” I began to question my desire to alter the field I was researching in, not least because I felt, to my utter surprise, that I was emotionally drawn to the choices made by some of my participants who wanted to continue operating in structurally unequal traditions for spiritual and communal reasons. Although I wholeheartedly supported those women who were fighting for parity of ordination, I also increasingly began to appreciate (and wanted to support) those who did not. They did not present as oppressed, at least not as I understood it, or even as making particular “bargains with patriarchy,” to use Kandiyoti’s (1988) phrase. They had made strong spiritual commitments, and this shaped their worldviews in ways I did not envisage at the start of the research. I was moved both by those participants who were resisting religious patriarchy as well as those who stated they wanted to undertake spiritual work through existing hierarchical and communal structures, even if these

Methodological Reflections  263 did not offer full equality. The truth was, I began to see shades of gray, where previously there had only been black and white. Yet this complexity left me deeply torn, personally and academically. Was I ultimately reinforcing the unequal treatment of women by trying to center (or, at least, give adequate airtime to) these “non-​feminist” perspectives? Was I letting down those participants who were championing women’s rights within organizations, often coupled with risk to themselves, in order to share the voices of those who were not? I take seriously Anne Phillips, Fran Porter, and Nicola Slee’s (2017, 17) words, when they write: “The process of research changes those who engage in it, either as researchers or participants; but it also has the capacity to change those who read about it and who take the insights and knowledge of ongoing research into the field in new studies and applications of knowledge.” While I hope that a nuanced analysis inspires nuanced interpretations in the mind of the reader, there remained an impact on me, as a feminist researcher, in trying to balance this diversity of views with my own political position and agenda. I am certainly not the first person to feel divided when faced with women who do not conform to our feminist expectations, particularly when they are operating within patriarchal, conservative religious groups. Indeed, this has become a popular theme for academic work on women and religion in contemporary societies (see, for example, Avishai 2008; Brasher 1998; Cook 2010; Davidman 1991; Mahmood 2005, to cite just a few). Yet the feeling of disloyalty (either to feminism or to particular groups of participants) remained very real throughout my research encounter, continuing even now. Although this issue may still be unresolved in my work, I endorse Orit Avishai, Lynne Gerber, and Jennifer Randles’s (2012, 404) claims that “Feminist researchers can easily get in a position where they feel the need to choose between competing political and analytical impulses rather than using the tension between the two to fuel more innovative feminist analysis.” Readjusting my perspective to tease out what might be an opportunity for deeper research is helpful. Indeed, paying close analytical and methodological attention to the tensions and differences allowed Amy Langenberg to develop an analytical phrase—​“parafeminism”—​to describe her participants who operated in a liminal space between liberal understandings of social action and those of conservative, patriarchal Buddhist and Nepali hierarchies (Langenberg 2018). In our collective conversations, each of the other scholars reasserted that trying to see things from our participants’ perspectives was the solution to

264  Caroline Starkey my quandary, despite the personal and political feelings we harbor. Devalt and Gross (2012, 13) identify that “research relations are never simple encounters, innocent of identities and lines of power” (Devault and Gross 2012, 13) but that being attentive to our own views through reflexive practice, and the ways in which our participants diverge and converge with them, remains a key task of the ethnographer, feminist or otherwise. It remains a methodological work-​in-​progress to find the best ways to reflect on and critically analyze the different approaches that religious women have within highly charged and sensitive contexts. It is a difficult task to effectively center divergent participant voices and maintain a feminist political approach, as well as bringing appropriate scholarly critique to the table. I am left with the concern that perhaps simply trying to air these differences is not enough, but it does feel the most respectful way to honor our participants’ experiences, even when they differ markedly from our own. Looking in more detail at the concept of agency and its place in our work with women in Buddhist and Hindu communities gives a further example of the balance that we undertake as researchers in order to hold closely participants, politics, and critical scholarly analysis together.

Envisaging Agency among Buddhist and Hindu Women: Methodological Considerations One of the key talking points in our collective conversations, both at the Heidelberg workshop and beyond, was the ways in which we employed the concept of agency as an analytical tool. Many of us had struggled with the definitions of agency presented to us in (feminist) scholarship and wanted to push at the boundaries of its analytical potential within our various field-​ sites. In order to honor Avishai et al.’s (2012) recognition that points of tension should be reinterpreted as opportunities, in this section, I explore the problems that we had with certain depictions of agency and how this shaped our ethnographic interactions and theoretical analysis. Although each of the chapters in this volume explores ideas of agency (explicitly or implicitly) as they relate to specific field-​sites and communities, as I build to the conclusion, I argue that there is value in coming together as a collective to think more broadly about the application of core concepts to our situated ethnographic experiences. For me, this value was principally found in the opportunity to talk across disciplinary borders and to reflect on the ways in which

Methodological Reflections  265 individual case studies might be read together, identifying similarities and differences that challenge our assumptions, including disciplinary ones, and seeing potential connections across time and space. As a concept, “agency” is frequently used within scholarly work on gender and religion to think about the ways in which women and men have responded to limitations and opportunities within religious communities. Particularly over the past two decades, there has emerged a wave of scholarly (often feminist) work examining the boundaries of individual agency in different religious traditions, particularly within those that promote more conservative ideologies (Bracke 2003, 335–​336).8 As Burke (2012, 122) highlights, an often-​cited definition of agency is offered by Lois McNay (2000) as “the capacity for autonomous action in the face of often overwhelming cultural sanctions and structural inequalities.” However, alongside other scholars (such as Avishai 2008; Bracke 2003; Brasher 1998; Cook 2010; Davidman 1991; Mahmood 2005, to cite just a few) the valorization of autonomy and resistance against authority and hierarchy, writ large within this definition, felt awkward in relation to our Buddhist and Hindu field-​sites and participants. As it turned out, none of us used the term “agency” in our conversations with participants in informal settings or in more structured interviews. Antoinette De Napoli explains: I never use the word “agency” in my interactions with the women and men I work with, because the very Sanskritized Indian language term does not correspond to the dominant Western usage of that term. And I don’t think many of the women I know in India would understand that term.

Similarly, Ina Ilkama informed me that while investigating the kolu ritual: I have never used the word “agency” in an interview setting (would in most cases be via an interpreter, from English to Tamil). First, I am very unsure what the Tamil equivalent would be (neither is there a straightforward translation into my native language Norwegian), but more importantly, I never felt the need to do so. I conversed with the women using different terminology (for instance, we talked much about changes in the ritual). 8 For example, see the useful overview article from Kelsy C. Burke (2012, 124), who (drawing on Avishai 2008) and on evidence from various empirical studies, distinguishes between different types of agency that are practiced by women in conservative religious groupings which she categorizes as: “resistance,” “empowerment,” “instrumental,” and “compliant.”

266  Caroline Starkey Moving beyond the difficulties of translation, many of us felt that the behav­ ior we observed from participants was not always “agentic,” if we follow the particular definition of agency provided by McNay (2000). Furthermore, our participants were sometimes very willing members of gender-​unequal religious communities (as well as nationalist religious organizations), and they did not always display behavior which could be seen as resisting hierarchies or religious norms. As Ina Ilkama explains: From early on it was apparent that I could not work with a definition of agency as resistance to patriarchal structures or autonomy. Most of my informants would indeed conform to a patriarchic culture. Even the kolu ritual which I investigated is performed to support this worldview.

For most of us, as Ina details, the key problem was with the idea of autonomy. Among many of the women (and men) we spent time with during the course of our ethnographic work, individual “autonomous action” was not prioritized or even conceptualized. Instead, women placed concepts of kamma/​ karma and/​or divine action as the most significant forces shaping their lives. Communal and relational ties were prioritized over the idea of the individual; something that Sharon Wray (2004, 23) argues has been common in our theoretical conceptualization of agentic action. In discussing this as a group of researchers, we were all, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped by the foundational work on agency undertaken by scholars such as Saba Mahmood (2005) and Orit Avishai (2008), who seek to trouble a liberal and wholly resistive account of social and structural freedom. Although Mahmood was writing about Muslim women in Cairo and Avishai about Israeli Jewish Orthodox women, we identified parallels with our understanding of Buddhist and Hindu women’s perspectives, across geographic and cultural locations. Ina Ilkama highlighted this in her conceptualization of agency: Power also comes in many forms; inner spiritual power, divine power, prestige/​influence in the community, increased autonomy, and so on, and Hinduism does indeed acknowledge women’s power (śakti). Isn’t it Mahmood who says that a religious conservative may feel empowered by practices that a secular feminist finds dis-​empowering? I have tried to keep this in mind while writing, in order not to project my own worldviews upon my interlocutors.

Methodological Reflections  267 By way of further specific examples, as I described in the previous section, not all of my participants wanted to challenge Buddhist hierarchies. Instead, they prioritized working to maintain community relationships and to practice Buddhist discipline as it was taught to them. This would be, in Avishai’s (2008, 427) terms, agency that is “grounded in observance,” but it could also be given a more Buddhist slant, as agency “grounded in practice.” In her chapter in this volume, Amy Langenberg clearly describes how difficult it was to assume a resistive and autonomous agency among young women at Peace Grove nunnery in Nepal as their modes of social interaction did not neatly map onto a binary analytical frame. As she explained to me, although she did not use a specific working definition of agency, she preferred to: . . . pay attention to how the girls and women talk about their own freedoms and constrictions and sources of power/​happiness/​pleasure, their ambitions for themselves, their victories but also frustrations at not being able to fulfil them, and their feelings of confidence/​vulnerability.

So, too, with Antoinette DeNapoli’s work with Mataji, who operates between traditional and alternative structures of religious authority, even in her radical claims to be a female shankaracharya. While she did not use the term “agency,” she did: . . . ask (participants) about why they do certain things, or why they don’t do certain things; I ask how they come to making decisions about their lives, why they chose X instead of Y, and, perhaps most significantly, I ask if they feel they are choosing their lives.

Each of us as scholars had become interested in different types of social action and engagement beyond the resistive, including the importance of preserving memories, the aesthetic, the role of karma and the divine, and communal duty, devotion, and the cultivation of discipline, as well as political engagement. Valeria Gazizova talked about the importance of energy in maintaining the histories and stories of repressed Buddhist communities in Soviet Kalmykia, and the power that women had in taking on this role. With perhaps the most defined notion of agency among her participants, Antoinette De Napoli explained:

268  Caroline Starkey I understand agency to be women’s capacity to move and act, and interact, to think and speak, to engage life, its beauty, and its challenges, in ways that are culturally shaped, culturally subversive, and culturally significant. I suppose not all agency is the same, but simply being alive is a form of agency that I feel scholars have yet to look at seriously; that so much of human action involves micro decisions that are not always subject to awareness.

Although the term “agency” was never used with her participants, Antoinette places emphasis on the balance between “cultural subversion” and “cultural shaping,” highlighting the potential for different types of agency that might arise, including in the very small, “micro decisions” that are made subconsciously in everyday activity. Iselin Frydenlund, working with women involved in nationalist movements in Myanmar, furthered this discussion by questioning a simplistic view of “agency,” asking: “How far do we go in sympathizing with nationalist, or even racist voices? How can we defend the human when we study illiberal nationalism?” For Iselin, there was a complicated balancing act that occurred during the process of research to appreciate and reflect women’s voices in nationalist movements (such as the ones she studies in Myanmar), while struggling with the very real challenge of the social impact of these views. It is clear, then, that a singular and reductive definition of agency, posited solely as autonomy or resistance to dominant religious and cultural norms, is not a useful framework in order to understand the complex micro details of Buddhist and Hindu women’s spiritual and social lives. Yet I note here a potential for methodological disconnection. Most of us did not employ the direct term—​agency—​with our participants (in English, or translated), and we questioned any established frameworks which saw resistance and autonomy as the only valid action. However, we still used the concept of agency in scholarly spaces, and, in many ways, the desire to identify resistance continues to shape the kinds of questions we ask our participants. For example, in my work with Buddhist ordained women, many of whom practiced multiple disciplinary rules that regulated dress, hair, deportment, the use of money, sexual behavior, eating and drinking, and sleep, I regularly asked (or thought about) the ways in which they might resist these rules. Did they use perfume, even when they were not supposed to? Did they adapt their monastic robes in ways that made them stand out as individuals? I can remember being asked, by another academic, whether Buddhist monastic women might even wear more unique underwear as a means of subtly

Methodological Reflections  269 challenging the rules—​a question that I found difficult to posit in all good propriety to my participants. While looking at the varied ways in which individuals break social and religious norms can be a useful tool to help heighten our awareness of what is held sacred within specific cultures and social groups, positing resistance as the primary variable remains problematic. Whether or not these acts of individual challenge occurred, the issue I have, methodologically, relates to the dangers of consistently prioritizing questions about resistance in our interactions with Buddhist and Hindu women—​as if resistance is the only sensible response to religious discipline and regulation. As Avishai (2008, 429) maintains, “sociologists are reluctant to think of agency as a pursuit of religious ends or as nonstrategic action—​ hence the focus on inadvertent empowerment, wilful resistance/​subversion, or strategic compliance.” We might not be explicit with this judgement, but it remains. In fact, one of my participants challenged me quite vociferously on this issue. Even though I had intended my questions to be as open and nonjudgmental as possible, she asked me why I was so concerned with the assumed oppressiveness of religious discipline and her levels of compliance with hierarchies and practices. She said to me, “If you were to say to a loving mother, ‘why do you care for your child when you could be out doing what you want?’ the response would likely. . . be wordless astonishment” (Starkey 2020, 128). She argued that through my line of questioning and the assumptions that I brought to the table, motherhood was imagined as a socially acceptable form of renunciation of freedom, while her religious choices were not. Of course, in the contemporary British cultural context, motherhood is a far more common form of renunciation than monastic ordination, but the point remains that beginning our questions with assumptions (explicit or implicit) about inherent difficulties in particular social choices leads to a particular type of knowledge being produced and reproduced. Even if we question the concept of agency (or empowerment, or liberation) and replace it with other, less potentially fraught, terms, the binary of resistance and compliance remains in how we design our interviews and research questions. If we are truly committed to holding our participants’ views at the center of our methodology, we need to resist asking questions that are dominated solely by our existing frameworks. This is not necessarily easy, not least because we were not all comfortable with karmic or divine explanations for social action. Yet, as Avishai et al. (2012, 398) argue, we must enhance our reflexivity as a collective, to begin to piece together how “feminist theoretical and methodological frameworks both constrain and enable particular

270  Caroline Starkey interpretations.” This is a valuable offering from feminist scholarship, for careful and critical dialogue about positionality and motivation provides us with an excellent opportunity to confront our assumptions, in particular about the ways we envisage our role as researcher and our relationships with informants or participants (Sampson, Bloor, and Fincham 2008, 919). While this sort of reflexivity does not, perhaps, solve the tensions, it does bring them to the fore, offering the space to think through our methodological choices and commitments. Thinking about where we are challenged, personally, emotionally, during the course of research, might, in Luff ’s (1999, 697) words: “act as a stimulus to new thoughts about the research process and the emerging issues.” However, this remains a work-​in-​progress among us as a collective of scholars of contemporary Buddhism and Hinduism, not least because we must not automatically assume inherent similarities exist among complex and diverse religious practices and traditions. Buddhism and Hinduism were brought together in the workshop and in this volume due to shared linguistic and cultural histories, but this must not obscure the differences within and among communities of women and groups of practices. While there is value in coming together, as scholars, to try to situate our participants in wider debates about religious discipline, hierarchy, and tradition, and as Neitz (2011, 64) argues, we must remain “attentive to location (to) avoid abstract and decontextualised approaches when (we) collect and analyse . . . data, qualitative or quantitative.”

Conclusion Through bringing together our individual experiences, this chapter has opened up a space for collaborative reflection on fieldwork with Buddhist and Hindu women in order to highlight the possibility of shared methodological commitments. As Jenny Morgans (2017, 191) argues: Reflexivity enabled me to understand the implicit decisions that I had made, to analyse more deeply the experiences I had had, and to shape more intentionally the future of the project.

Each of us had engaged in a process of individual reflexivity throughout our research encounters, but thinking through the issues we had faced collaboratively extended this even further. This allowed for a more sophisticated engagement with the implications of our choices, despite some of the

Methodological Reflections  271 problems and tensions not being satisfactorily resolved. Through the issues presented in this chapter, it is clear that reflexivity is even more necessary when we, as women, seek to undertake research with other women. We might assume (and behave as if) we share experiences with other women, but this is not necessarily always the case. At different stages of the research and writing process, we should ask, as Blakely (2007, 64) does, “who’s experience(s) ‘counts’ in the research, and whose is excluded” and, importantly, why? We cannot fold our participants’ life experiences into our own without sufficient awareness of the ways we are shaping the picture, even though this might give us more empathy or allow us to establish a stronger initial bond with our interlocutors. As a number of authors have highlighted (many of whom are cited throughout this chapter), research by feminists on religious women can be fraught with difficulty, due to the potential for spoken and unspoken tensions to weave their way into the research design and written product. This is not to say at all that feminist research with religious women will always be limited, but only that we do require a greater level of awareness to be brought to our interactions with and analysis of participants who may well not share our political and social commitments. As Thwaites (2017, 5) indicates, “this honesty about the research process remains a crucial part of what makes feminist research ‘feminist’.” What has become clear over the course of our conversations is that despite our varied field-​sites, there are a number of collective commitments that each of us seek to uphold in our research with women, and these can be brought together in a broad methodological framework. At the heart of these collective commitments is the priority that we continue to give to women’s voices, stories, and narratives. Despite some of the challenges we face in drawing together disparate perspectives and engaging in robust scholarly analysis with participants with whom we have grown connected, the importance of putting the views of our interlocutors at the heart of our analysis (even when this might challenge our own values) remains paramount. A question that arises from this is, do we, as women, work in a different way when we are researching with men? On the one hand, I would like to think that, as researchers, we look to understand all of our interlocutors’ perspectives and offer an attentive and careful analysis, regardless of social and demographic category. At the same time, some of us highlighted that we do research differently with men, not least because, as women, we might have greater access to other women and groups of women (that we might not readily have with men), as well as possibly sharing some gendered experiences (although this should not be taken as inevitable, especially cross-​culturally). Yet each of us

272  Caroline Starkey remained passionate about engaging with women’s life stories and trying to rebalance a scholarly picture that has not always adequately included them. This may well be related to our own varied experiences of being marginalized on the grounds of gender and our desires to reshape the social world. This is why reflexivity remains key, as the voices that are more palatable to us are at risk of being prioritized over those that are less so. In order to center women’s voices in our research, we each participate in a process of active and engaged listening, paying attention to what is said (but also what is not said) and working to appreciate the embodied realities of life for women as well as for men. Most importantly, and along with other (feminist) researchers, reflexivity remains a key commitment. In particular, we draw on its value in providing a good opportunity to recognize when our own preconceptions and assumptions are being challenged, allowing tensions to arise and using them for theoretical innovation. Our priority, as ethnographers, is to explore and analyze the micro, the everyday, and the local, but importantly, we uphold the value of collective working, especially across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. Although it can be challenging, particularly in the competitive world of the academy, maintaining a supportive, yet critical space is something toward which we all strive.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Figures are indicated by f following the page number #RightToPray, 155–​56, 167 #ReadyToWait, 167 Abu-​Lughod, Lila, 8–​10, 144–​45 actors, new female, 6–​7 Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, 215–​16, 216n.2, 222–​ 23, 225–​26 agency, 3–​4, 4n.4, 5–​8, 5n.5, 11–​14, 15–​17, 28, 52–​53, 53n.4, 61–​62, 67–​68, 70, 72, 73–​74, 76, 87–​88, 89–​90, 120–​23, 129n.10, 143–​45, 146–​47, 149–​50, 153–​54, 168–​70, 176, 186, 187–​88, 190, 206–​7, 212–​13, 217–​19, 218n.6, 222, 223–​24, 225, 227–​28, 230, 231–​ 32, 234, 238, 242–​43, 249–​51, 259, 260, 263–​65, 265n.8, 266, 267–​70 agency, aesthetic, 10–​11, 122–​23, 122n.2, 144, 146–​47 agency, female/​women’s, 1–​3 (religious a.), 3–​4 (religious a.), 5–​7 (ritual a.), 7–​8 (political a.), 8–​11, 13–​14 (ritual a., religious a.), 14–​16, 23–​24 (religious a.), 24, 28, 34–​35, 38, 43 (ritual a.), 47 (religious a.), 48–​49 (religious and ritual a.), 52–​53 (ritual a.), 61 (religious a.), 68 (political a.), 89–​90 (political a.), 116, 117, 120–​22, 145–​46, 148–​50, 153–​54 (religious a.), 154, 212–​13 (religious and ritual a.), 216, 218–​20, 221, 225–​26 (religious a.), 232, 233–​34, 236, 249–​52 agency, redemptive, 232, 234, 236, 237, 238–​39 agency, religious, 1–​2, 3–​4, 6–​8 (social and r. a.), 23–​24, 47, 52–​53, 60–​61,

86 (social and r. a., r. and political a.), 153–​54, 196–​97 (and ritual a.), 215, 217, 225–​26, 242–​43 agency, svayambhū, 221, 224, 225–​ 26, 233–​34 agency v. subjection, 147 Ahearn, Laura, 129n.10, 143–​45 akhāṛā, 14–​15, 216, 221–​22, 224n.8, 226, 227–​28, 235–​36, 240–​41 Akhāṛā (Akhara) Pari, 227–​28, 229f, 236 a-myo, 94, 99 Ārya Samāj, 13–​14, 198n.21, 199n.22, 201, 206–​10, 206n.34, 212 Assi Ghat, 13–​14, 192–​93, 194–​95, 195n.9, 196–​97, 203–​4, 204f, 211 authenticity, 15–​16, 187–​88, 189–​90, 207–​8, 237 authority, religious, 11–​13, 175–​76, 179, 190, 267 autonomy, 3–​4, 14–​15, 95, 116, 122–​23, 128–​29, 141–​42, 143, 148–​50, 148n.26, 212n.43, 218n.6, 236, 239, 241, 242–​43, 265, 266, 268–​69 avoidance customs, for women (Mongolia, Kalmykia), 26 Ayyappan, 11–​12 (Sabarimala A.), 153–​54 (Sabarimala A.), 159–​61, 159n.14, 160–​61nn.17–​18, 163–​65, 166–​67 Bal Thackeray, 76–​78, 79 Bālka Devī (/​shrine), 12–​13, 175–​ 76, 183–​86 Banaras Hindu University (BHU), 193n.5, 201, 202 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 13–​14, 67, 74, 76–​78, 78n.8, 166, 206–​7, 212

276 Index bhikkhunī ordination, 105–​6, 106n.34, 129–​30n.11 Bodhi Sakyadhita, Venerable, 120–​22, 125, 127–​29, 140n.22 body politics, 7–​8, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73–​74, 80, 89–​90 Bombay/​Mumbai, 75f, 76–​78, 81, 84–​85, 86, 88–​89, 157–​58, 164, 168–​69, 233 Brahma-jñān, 226 Brahmanical Hinduism, 14–​1 5, 188, 215, 217, 230–​3 1, 234, 237, 242–​4 3 Brahmin/​s, 10n.7, 12–​14, 52–​53, 52–​ 53n.3, 54–​55, 57, 58, 154n.3, 175–​76, 177–​79, 183, 186, 187, 193n.5, 195–​96, 201, 202–​3n.29, 203, 205–​6, 215–​16, 242 Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation, The, 94n.1, 96–​97 Buddhist nationalism, 99 Buddhist revivalism, 100–​1, 103 Caribbean Hinduism, 176n.3, 178 caste, 6–​7, 12–​15, 52–​53, 52–​53n.3, 58, 61–​62, 75–​76, 80, 127–​28, 129–​30, 129–​30n.11, 138–​39, 160–​61, 175–​ 76, 177–​78, 188, 193n.5, 195–​96, 198n.19, 201, 207–​10, 212–​13, 215–​ 16, 217, 237–​39, 243 celibacy, 160–​61, 164–​65, 238–​39, 241, 242–​43 childbirth, 26, 205–​6, 205n.31 [social] class, 13–​14, 27, 34–​35, 39, 52–​ 53, 58–​59, 76, 80, 144–​45, 163–​64, 180–​81, 195–​96, 207–​8, 212–​13, 225, 238–​39, 241–​42 cleansing, 33, 44f, 134–​35, 185, 205–​6 collective commitments, 271–​72 contestation of male entitlement, 14–​15 Cook, Joanna, 3–​4, 15–​16, 84–​85, 133n.17, 143–​45, 254 corporator, 81–​82, 81n.10, 85 cosmic Buddhism, 5–​6, 44–​45 creativity, 2, 6–​7, 50, 52–​53, 61–​62 cumaṅkali, 53–​54, 54n.6, 57, 60–​61 darśan/darśana, 57, 226 dashing, 7–​8, 67, 68, 69–​70, 71–​76, 78, 79, 80–​81, 82, 86, 87–​88, 89–​90, 147–​48, 147n.25, 219–​20

dashing ladies, 7–​8, 81–​82 Dasshera, 81 deep listening, 15–​16, 253–​54, 255–​56 Dhammawati Guruma, 125, 130, 131–​32, 131n.15 Dharmakirti Vihar, 130, 131–​32 dolls, 52, 53–​54, 56f, 57, 58–​60, 58n.10, 59n.13, 61–​62 domestic ritual, 6–​7, 52, 57–​58, 82–​84, 195–​96, 201 Durga/Durgā, 52, 59n.12, 81, 159–​60, 178, 206–​7, 228–​30, 231–​32, 234 eight precepts, 105n.32, 132–​34, 133n.17 embodiment, 6–​7, 46–​47, 52, 67–​69, 71–​ 73, 101, 161, 230 emotion, 120–​22, 251–​52 employment opportunities, 13–​14, 76–​78, 212 empowerment, 2–​3, 35–​36, 36n.13, 38, 38n.15, 41–​42, 44–​45, 48–​49, 50, 60–​ 61, 122–​23, 127–​28, 130–​31, 135–​36, 141–​42, 190, 210, 265n.8, 269–​70 equal rights, human, 14–​15, 242–​43 ethical commitment, 251 fasting, 29–​31, 133–​34, 183 female religious leaders, 5–​6, 12–​13, 14–​ 15, 176, 187 feminism, 10, 14–​17, 67–​68, 112–​13, 117, 129n.9, 141–​42, 182, 239–​41, 243, 251, 260–​62, 263 feminist analysis, 260–​61, 263 feminist, researcher, 17, 252–​53, 256–​ 57, 263, 272 festival, 14–​15, 25, 34, 52, 53–​55, 57, 59n.12, 60–​61, 81, 83–​84, 158, 166–​ 67, 182, 216n.3, 226, 226n.9, 234–​35 fieldwork, 25–​26, 41, 48, 53, 67, 76–​78, 95–​96, 126, 217, 220–​21, 249–​51, 252–​54, 258, 260–​61, 270 freedom, 10, 25, 43, 107, 109, 111, 113, 122–​23, 128, 130–​31, 134–​35, 141–​ 42, 143, 144–​45, 146–​47, 148–​49, 188, 196n.16, 225, 236, 238–​39, 241, 242–​43, 258, 266, 267, 269 Gayatri, 226, 227–​30, 229f Gayatri mantra/Gāyatrī mantra, 205–​6, 220, 227

Index  277 Geetaji, 175–​76, 177–​82, 186–​90 Gell, Alfred, 5–​6, 28 Gelugpa (Tib. dGe lugs pa), 23n.1, 41 gender equality, 10, 14–​15, 117, 129n.10, 138–​39, 148–​49, 162, 215, 217, 221, 225, 230–​31, 236, 238–​39, 240–​ 43, 261–​62 gendered authority, 12–​13, 176, 180, 186–​ 87, 190 Girl Reports, 139–​40, 142 goddess, 6–​7, 12–​13, 52, 53–​57, 54n.7, 56f, 58–​59, 59n.12, 60–​62, 81–​82, 129n.10, 138, 159–​60, 175–​76, 178, 184–​86, 188, 189–​90, 222, 225–​26, 227, 228, 229f, 230, 231–​32, 234–​35, 238–​39, 242 goddess, connection to, 60–​61, 188 Gotami Bhikkhuni Bihar, Lumbini, 125, 130–​31, 132 haldi-​kumkum, 7–​8, 68, 70, 82–​89 healing, 27, 34–​37, 38–​39, 41–​43, 46–​49, 176, 184–​85, 186, 188, 189–​90 healing capabilities, 189–​90 Hindu nationalism, 67, 68–​69, 116, 196–​97 Hindu Prachar Kendra, 177 Hindu public, 12–​13, 188–​89 Hinduism, 1, 2–​3, 12–​13, 14–​16, 53–​54, 175–​76, 176nn.3–​4, 178, 181–​82, 187–​89, 190, 215, 219–​20, 221, 223, 224, 225, 227–​28, 230–​31, 233–​34, 235, 237, 238–​39, 241, 242, 249–​52, 266, 269–​70 Hindutva, 69–​70, 74–​76, 88–​89, 102, 206–​7, 212 Hpoun, 106 ideologies, nationalist, 10, 13–​14, 116, 212 impurity, 154n.3, 156–​57, 162–​63, 168, 205–​6, 205n.31, 238–​39 indentureship, 181–​82, 184, 190 Indo-​France Friendship Club, 211 initiation, girls, 204–​5 inner contradictions, 3–​4 innovation, 6–​8, 24, 52–​53, 61–​62, 82–​83, 89–​90, 132, 241, 272 intentionality, 28–​29, 128–​29, 218–​19, 222, 225–​26

interviewing, 252–​53, 254, 256–​57 intimacy/​intimate politics, 68, 87–​88 Islam, 8–​10, 103–​4, 107, 107n.37 Jagadguru/Jagadgurū, 224, 227–​28, 229f Kaiser, Susan, 146–​47, 148–​49 Karuna Girls School (KGS), 124, 126, 139–​ 42, 140n.22, 144–​45 kolu, 6–​7, 52–​55, 53n.5, 56f, 57–​62, 57n.8, 58n.10, 58n.11, 59n.12, 252–​53, 265, 266 last rites, 201–​2 leadership, religious and ritual, 1 legend, 155–​56, 160, 184 liberation, 141–​42, 261–​62, 269–​70 Lived Sanskrit Cultures in Varanasi, 211 Lumbini, 10–​11, 120–​25, 128–​30, 133–​35, 136n.19, 138, 140–​41, 142, 143–​44, 145–​46, 146n.24, 147–​48, 149–​ 50, 219–​20 Lumbini Buddhist University, 140–​41 Ma Ba Tha, 94, 94n.1, 95–​101, 102–​4, 106–​ 8, 108n.38, 109, 110–​11, 111n.45, 112–​13, 113n.51, 114, 115, 115n.54, 115n.55, 116–​17, 255–​56 Ma Ha Na, 96–​97, 105–​6 Magh Mela, 226 Mahila Aghadi, 74–​75, 79–​80 Mahmood, Saba, 3–​4, 8–​10, 112–​13, 143–​ 45, 153–​54, 187–​88, 219, 242–​43, 263, 265, 266 Maitreya, 32, 45, 47 mantra, 45, 48, 205–​6, 208–​9, 220, 227 Marathi, 72–​73, 76–​78 Martinez, Vanessa, 139–​40 masculine ideology, 102 masculinity, 68–​69, 73–​74, 102, 116, 165–​66 Mataji, 5–​6, 14–​15, 148–​49, 215–​17, 220–​31, 227n.10, 229f, 232–​37, 238–​ 43, 267 maṭh, 221–​22 mātṛ-​śakti, 221, 230–​31, 237–​38 Mayadevi Temple, 123, 136–​37, 138, 141–​42 Meena Thackeray, 79

278 Index menstruation, 26, 154–​55, 154n.3, 155n.4, 156–​57, 161n.19, 162–​63, 168, 178, 205–​6, 205n.32, 238–​39 methodological framework, 251, 271–​72 methodology, 15–​16, 249–​51, 250n.1, 260–​61, 269–​70 Metteyya Sakyaputta, Venerable, 120–​ 22, 128–​29 mobility, 2–​3, 10–​11, 69–​70, 71–​72, 122–​ 23, 145–​46, 147–​48, 148n.26, 241 monastic decorum, 134, 136–​37 morality, 112 Myanmar, 2–​3, 8–​10, 94–​96, 95n.2, 95n.4, 97–​98, 99–​107, 99n.12, 99n.13, 105n.32, 108, 109–​10, 111–​13, 114, 115–​17, 255–​56, 268 nationalism and violence, 8–​10, 94–​95 nāū, 12–​13, 175–​76, 175n.2, 183–​84, 185–​ 86, 188, 189–​90 Navarāttiri/​navarātri, 52–​54, 52n.2, 54n.7, 57–​58, 60–​61 navya, 182 Newar Buddhism, 137–​38 Nirmala, 12–​13, 175–​76, 183–​88, 189–​90 nirvāṇa, 113–​14 nuns, Buddhist, 1, 5–​6, 105, 110 Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya, 13–​14, 193–​ 94, 193f, 197, 197n.17, 198, 200f, 201–​2, 202n.28, 202–​3n.29, 206–​13, 212n.42 Pāṇini’s grammar, 13–​14, 197–​98, 199, 199n.22 paradoxes/​paradox, 3–​4, 144, 218–​19, 242 parārtha, 195–​96 pariyatti, 125, 126, 130, 139–​40 participant observation, 217, 253–​54 Peace Grove Nunnery, 10–​11, 124, 128–​30, 144, 267 pilgrimage, 11–​12, 29, 34, 35–​36, 59–​60, 120–​22, 123, 160–​61, 162n.23, 163–​ 67, 166n.31, 177, 192n.3 politics, 7–​10, 67, 68–​70, 72–​75, 76–​80, 81, 84, 87–​90, 94–​95, 99–​101, 102–​3, 104, 110, 144–​45, 249–​51, 260–​61, 263–​64 possession, 52–​53n.3, 54–​55, 58–​59, 218–​ 19, 228

power, 6–8, 10–15, 24, 26, 34n.7, 38–39, 41, 43, 46–49, 52–55, 57–62, 68–70, 73–78, 81–82, 87–89, 99–100, 102–3, 148n.26, 163–66, 169–70, 175–76, 178, 178n.6, 179, 184–185, 187–88, 207–8 (political p.), 106, 111, 122–23, 136–37, 143–44 (structures, of p.), 215–16, 216n.2, 218–21, 224, 226–32, 234–38, 241–43, 262–64, 266–67 pramukh (chief), 79, 81 pregnancy, 205–​6, 205n.31 priestly roles, 175–​76 Prime Minister Modi, 194–​95, 195n.9, 196–​97, 206–​7, 211 protest, 6–​7, 11–​12, 79, 154–​55, 157–​58, 157n.12, 162–​63, 166–​ 67, 168–​69 Pune, 10n.7, 70–​71, 79, 88, 157n.10, 201n.25, 205–​6, 209–​10 purity, 14–​15 (moral p.), 40–​42, 129–​ 30, 137–​38, 175–​76, 180–​81, 187, 205–​6, 238–​39, 241, 242–​43 (moral, female p.) queen of Jhansi, 71–​72, 147n.25 race and religion laws, 95–​96, 108, 110, 112, 115, 115n.55 Rāmāyaṇ Country, 181–​82 Rāmāyaṇ kathā, 175–​76, 176n.5, 178–​79 Rashtriya Sevika Samiti (RSS), 74–76, 206–10, 212n.43 Ravindranath Maharaj, 177 reflexivity, 269–​72 renunciation, 135, 165–​66, 227–​28, 235, 269 research process, 249–​53, 254n.5, 259–​ 60, 269–​71 reservations (electoral), 69–​70, 75–​ 76, 79, 81 resistance, 1, 2, 3–​4, 6–​7, 13–​14, 15–​16, 52–​53, 53n.4, 61, 102, 138–​39, 143–​46, 148–​49, 153–​54, 166, 168, 203, 212–​13, 219, 265, 265n.8, 266, 268–​70

Index  279 ritual, 1 (r. leadership), 2–​3 (r. studies), 5–​6 (r. leaders, r. knowledge), 6–​7 (r. kolu, r. performances and performers, caste r.), 8–​10 (r. agenda), 10–​11 (r. status), 13–​14 (r. knowledge), 25–​26, 25n.3 (r. exclusion, r. fire, r. contexts), 26 (r. specialization), 27 (r. paraphernalia), 28 (r. object, r. activities, r. services), 28–​29 (r. activity), 30 (r. implement), 31 (r. manual), 33 (r. belt, r. setting, r. separation), 36, 37 (r. duty), 38–​39 (r. objects), 41–​42 (r. purity), 42–​43, 46 (r. services, r. texts), 48 (r. work), 48–​49 (r. agents), 49–​50 (r. leaders, r. knowledge), 52–​54 (r. rules, r. focus), 54–​55, 54n.6, 57–​58 (domestic r.), 58 (caste r.), 58–​59 (r. display), 59–​60, 61 (kolu r., r. performers), 61–​62 (r., r. authority), 82–​83 (r., domestic r., religious r.), 83–​84 (domestic r.), 84 (r. performance), 84–​86, 86n.13, 87–​89 (r. sphere), 99–​100 (r. interactions), 104–​5 (r. status), 105, 131–​32, 132n.16 (r. symbolism, r. substitution), 137–​38 (r. formalism), 138 (r. potency), 154–​55 (r. partners), 154n.2, 156–​57, 161 (r. offerings), 175–​76 (r. patron), 180–​81 (r. worship, r. purity), 183–​84 (r. platform, r. integrity), 185 (r., r. altars), 185–​86, 187 (r. purity), 188 (r. knowledge, r. specialist), 188–​89 (r. competence), 192n.3, 195n.13, 196–​97 (women’s r., r. rules,), 197 (r. practices), 201 (r. services), 201–​2 (r. services), 202–​3 (r. performances), 205–​6 (r. impurity), 208–​9 (r. handbooks), 218 (r. action), 218–​19 (r. contexts), 220 (r. activities), 227, 228, 253–​54 (r. occasions, communal r.), 265 (kolu r.), 265, 266 ritual agency, 1–​2, 6–​7, 12–​14, 43, 48–​ 49, 52–​53, 60–​61, 175–​76, 195–​97, 212–​13, 218n.6 ritual exclusion (of women), 25–​ 26, 165–​66

ritual expert/​specialist, 12–​13, 57, 175–​76 ritual integrity, 183–​84 ritual practice/​practices, 5–7, 41–42, 46–47, 52–53n.3, 58–62, 68, 195–96, 226, 252–56 ritual space, 5–​7, 12–​13, 68, 85, 175–​ 76, 187–​88 rituals, Vedic, 13–​14, 197, 199, 204–​5, 209–​10, 212 Rohingya (Muslims), 96–​97, 99n.12, 103–​ 4, 108n.38 ṛṣiṇī pabbajjā, 132, 132n.16 Sabarimala, 11–​12, 153–​54, 159–​62, 159n.13, 162n.23, 163–​68, 163n.24, 166n.32, 169–​70 sacred thread, 204–​6, 209–​10 sadācār, 221, 236–​39 sādhu, 215, 220, 223–25, 227, 230, 232–40, 242–43 śakti, 12–​13, 61, 175–​76, 180, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231–​32, 238–​39, 242, 266 saṃskāra, 195–​96, 196n.14, 199, 200, 208–​9 sandhyāvandana, 193–​94 Sangh Parivar, 74–​75 Śani, 11–​12, 153–​54, 155–​56, 156n.9, 157, 158–​59, 163–​65, 163n.24, 166–​69 Śaṅkarācārya/​ Śaṅkarācāryā, 14–​15, 203, 215–​17, 216n.2, 221, 222–​23, 224–​ 26, 224n.8, 227–​28, 227n.10, 229f, 230–​31, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237–​39, 241, 242–​43 Sankranti, 83–​84 Sanskrit texts, 159–​60, 195–​97, 200, 207–​8 Sanskritization, 61–​62 sāsana, 96, 96n.6, 110, 112–14, 117 shakha, 85–87 Shiv Sena, 7–8, 67, 67n.1, 68–85, 75f, 87–90, 115–16, 147–48, 147n.25, 219–20, 259 Shivaji, 67, 71–​72, 76–​78, 87–​88, 147n.25 siṃhāsan, 178, 178n.6, 187 Śiva, 159–​60, 179–​80, 222, 226, 228–​30, 231 social media, 11–​12, 137, 146n.24, 147, 154, 157, 164, 167, 168, 169, 255–​56

280 Index social work/​parahita, 94n.1, 97, 98, 100, 112, 235 Soviet Kalmykia, 27, 38, 267 space, male dominated, 11–​12 space, religious and ritual, 12–​13 specialists, religious, 1, 3–​4, 5–​7, 17, 23–​ 24, 35n.9, 50, 153–​54 spoken Sanskrit, 199 Śrī Paṇḍit Brahmadatta Jijñāsu, 197–​98 state politics, 8–​10, 94–​95 (State) repression (of Buddhism), 24, 45n.18 Subah-​e-​Banāras, 13–​14, 192–​93, 192n.3, 193f, 194–​95, 196–​97, 202–​3, 206–​ 7, 210–​11 svayambhū/Svayambhū, 14–​15, 155–​56, 216–​17, 221, 224–​26, 227–​28, 227n.10, 231, 232, 233–​34, 236–​37, 238–​39, 242–​43 Tamil Nadu, 2–​3, 57, 58, 59n.13, 60–​61 Theravada [Buddhism], 94, 129–​31, 137–​39 Theravāda Buddhist monasticism, 120–​ 22, 145–​46 third gender, 180 Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati/Trikal Bhavanta Sarasvatiji (“Mataji”), 14–​15, 215, 224 Trikal Bhavanta Sarasvatiji, 129n.9, 148–​ 49, 227–​28

Trinidad, 12–​13, 175–​76, 176nn.3–​4, 177, 178–​79, 178n.6, 180, 181–​82, 183, 184, 185–​87, 188–​89, 190 underground [Buddhism] 5–​6, 27–​29, 30, 32, 35–​38, 41–​42, 43, 45–​46, 48–​49 upanayana, 195–​96, 209–​10 vāhinī as “vehicle of change,” 179, 182 Varanasi, 2–​3, 13–​14, 178–​79, 192–​93, 194–​98, 201–​3, 202–​3n.29, 205–​6, 209–​10, 211 Veda schools, traditional, 202 vegetarianism, 133–​34, 138–​39 vegetarain lifestyle, 183, 188 vegetarian diet, 209–​10, 238–​39 vidyā pīṭh, 216n.2, 227, 227n.10 vipassanā, 122–​23, 129–​30, 138–​ 39, 143–​44 Vishwa Hindu Parishad, (VHP) 74, 75–​76 vrata, 160–​61, 161nn.18–​19 White Old Man (Kalm. Tsagan Aava), 36–​ 37, 36n.12, 44–​47 women’s narratives, 180, 252–​53 women’s voices, 8–​10, 251, 252–​53, 256, 268, 271–​72 Yamāntaka, 41