Hindu Gods in West Africa : Ghanaian Devotees of Shiva and Krishna [1 ed.] 9789004255715, 9789004244887

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Hindu Gods in West Africa

Studies of Religion in Africa Edited by

Benjamin Soares, African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands Frans Wijsen, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

VOLUME 42

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sra

Hindu Gods in West Africa Ghanaian Devotees of Shiva and Krishna By

Albert Kafui Wuaku

Leiden • boston 2013

Cover illustration: Shri Shri Radha Temple (Ghana) by ISKCON Desire Tree. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wuaku, Albert Kafui, 1964– author.  Hindu gods in West Africa : Ghanaian devotees of Shiva and Krishna / by Albert Kafui Wuaku.   page cm. — (Studies of religion in Africa, ISSN 0169-9814 ; v. 42)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-24488-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25571-5 (e-book) 1. Hindus—Ghana. 2. Hinduism—Ghana—History. 3. Hinduism—Ghana—Customs and practices. 4. Ghana—Religious life and customs. I. Title. II. Series: Studies on religion in Africa ; v. 42 0169-9814.  BL1168.G43W83 2013  294.509667—dc23

2013019455

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0169-9814 ISBN 978-90-04-24488-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25571-5 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

In loving memory of my father, Dr Samuel Yao Wuaku (April 1939–June 2012)

CONTENTS Acknowledgements .........................................................................................

ix

Introduction ......................................................................................................

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1 Ghana’s Hindu Religious Landscape ...................................................

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2 The Hindu Monastery of Africa .........................................................

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3 Domesticating Shiva Worship in Ghana: Rituals of the Hindu Monastery of Africa .................................................................................. 119 4 The Sri Radha-Govinda Temple Tradition ........................................ 146 5 “Hinduizing” From the “Top,” Indigenizing from “Below”: Krishna Devotion in Ghana ................................................................... 174 6 Spreading Krishna and Shiva Worship in Ghana ............................ 208 7 Why We became Hindus: Conversion Narratives ........................... 241 8 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 308 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 315 Index .................................................................................................................... 321 Illustration Section

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot mention all of the people who have helped towards the writing of this book in one way or the other individually. But there are some whose inspiration, guidance and support throughout the course of the study deserves special mention and my gratitude. First, I thank the leaders and followers of the Radha Govinda Temple and the Hindu Monastery of Africa for their hospitality and help in documenting their religious cultures and personal stories. I am indebted to Professor Elom Dovlo, my mentor at Legon for encouraging me to explore Ghana’s Hindu religious landscape and for his advice on how to go about the research when I returned to Ghana in the summer of 1999 to begin data collection. I am grateful to Professors Paul Younger and the late David Kinsley of McMaster University in Canada for teaching me what I know about Hindu traditions in general, and to the late Professor Joseph O’Connell (University of Toronto) for introducing me to the world of Vaisnavas and the Hare Krishnas. Professor Ellen Badone of McMaster University added a whole new dimension to my appreciation of religion by helping to sharpen my anthropological insights as well as introducing me to the most current trends in scholarly representation. This book builds upon my doctoral dissertation. I am particularly grateful to my dissertation committee at Toronto; Professors Michael Lambek, Joseph O’Connell and Martin Klein for their guidance. Martin Klein prompted me to rework my dissertation for publication. Questions raised by Professor Rosalind Shaw during my Ph. D defense prompted me to look more carefully at the gendered dimension of Ghana’s Hindu religious experience in the re-writing of the original research. My warmest appreciation also goes to Professor Rosalind Hackett for the interest she expressed in this project and for encouraging me to extend my focus beyond the two Hindu temples I was originally interested in. Professors Whitney Bauman and Christine Guddorf of FIU deserve my heartfelt thanks for taking time away from their own projects to meticulously read through and copy-edit the entire work. I must signal my gratitude to my graduate students at FIU; Genevieve Nrenzah, Comfort Maxwirth, Albert and Ruby Forson, Dorcas Dennis, Seth Tweneboah and Evelyn Sam. They all participated in this process in one way or the other. I am particularly indebted to Dorcas Dennis, currently working on her Ph.D. in New Zealand, for all her help in the final

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stages of the project. I am also indebted to the University of Toronto and Florida International University for grants that made my field research in Ghana possible. Earlier versions of portions of the chapters in this book were presented at conferences in the USA and I learned an enormous amount from the comments I received at them. I have also published portions of the manuscript as essays elsewhere, and am grateful to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers who contributed to the review process. I owe profound gratitude to Maarten Frieswijk and Benjamin Soares of Brill and the anonymous reviewer who reviewed the manuscript, for their guidance in the revision of the original manuscript. I was a beneficiary of the insights, support, and generous assistance of a number of colleagues— particularly Afe Adogame, Jacob Olupona, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Shobana Shanker, Akin Ogundiran, Peter Paris, Elias Bomgba, Emmanuel Lartey, Jean Rahier, Nathan Katz, Oren Stier, Ana Maria Bidegain and Erik Larson. My heartfelt thanks goes to my parents, Dr Samuel Wuaku, (who passed on in June 2012) Rhoda Wuaku, Mr. and Mrs. Victoria Jerry Kanfra, and my aunties and uncles, especially Daa Esther, with whom I lived while collecting data in the 1999 phase of the study. Finally I thank Professor Joyce Avotri-Wuaku, my wife and my best friend, our children, Elorm, Sena, and Dela, and my in-law, grandma Juli, for being my main sources of support throughout this journey. Joyce’s incisive critique of the drafts of the book’s chapters was particularly crucial in the very early stages of its writing. I am grateful to them for their patience, endurance, and optimism. For the many who have helped me in different ways but whom I have not mentioned, as we say in Ewe “if you hear the crowing of the rooster at the dawn of tomorrow, know that I am thanking you all.” While those who helped me are many, I alone am responsible for the interpretations, conclusions and the flaws that may be found in this book.

INTRODUCTION In the context of the drying up of sources of wealth and certainty, high unemployment, growing social inequalities, and impoverishment, survival in Ghana is increasingly linked with the capacity to access the spiritual universe for magico-religious cover. Some Ghanaian worshippers, viewing Hindu practices as potent sources of spiritual power and protection, join Hindu religious communities and enlist the spiritual help of Hindu ritual specialists in the pursuit of both spiritual and mundane goals. These ritual specialists are associated with a very powerful magic in the Ghanaian religious imagination. Other worshippers are attracted to Hindu temples because they believe that Hindu worship can revive dying indigenous religious beliefs, practices and moral values. For others the discourses of Hindu temples offer new moral visions that can guide individuals and the nation as a whole to a brighter future. In this field-based study, I explore Ghana’s Hindu religious experience in the context of two Hindu worshipping communities located in Accra, Ghana’s capital city. These are the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Sri Radha Govinda Temple. I report the results of my investigation into how these Hindu communities originated in Ghana, spread their influence, and now teach and practice. I offer an account of the historical events and socio-cultural processes that occasioned the transfer of Hindu beliefs and practices from India to Ghana at the tail-end of the British colonial rule of the two societies, to show how these events and processes prepared the groundwork necessary for a local Hinduism to develop in Ghana. I also offer a discussion of how the changes that accompanied the transition of the Gold Coast to the modern state of Ghana in 1957, the socio-economic and political chaos Ghana experienced in the 70s and 80s, and the changes that globalization has introduced into modern Ghana, precipitate the relevance of Hinduism for its Ghanaian worshippers. Although British colonialism occasioned an intercontinental exchange of religious ideas between the empire and the colonies as well as among the colonies, a narrow perspective viewing the global traffic of religion during this period in terms of religious and cultural imperialism has left little space for exploring flows that could not be tied to wider religious hegemonies. With particular reference to the literature on Africa’s encounters with “outside” religions during the era of British colonial control, the focus

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of the research has mostly been on the flow of Christianity from Europe and North America to the African colonies (Gray 1990; Kalu 1980; Peel 1968, 1977, 1990; Horton 1971, 1975; Ikenga-Metuh 1987; Williamson 1965; Wyllie 1980; Assimeng 2010; Asare Opoku 1978; Sarpong 1974; Obeng 1996). Very few studies take into account circulations of religious ideas and images among African communities and other colonies during this period. This study takes as a point of departure the view that, while circuits linking the colonizing powers and the colonies were the “prime movers” of the intercontinental cultural traffic during the 19th century colonial project, there were also, even if only a few, “circuits” that connected the colonies with each other, facilitating religious and other cultural exchanges (see Inda & Rosaldo 2002:25). These linkages have proven to be just as powerful in shaping local situations in the post-colonial nations as any linkage from the colonizing powers (Inda & Rosaldo 2002:25; Wuaku 2013:133–158). The transfer of Hinduism from India to Ghana which started at the tail-end of their colonization by the British exemplifies one such colony-to-colony religious traffic. In exploring this development, one of my objectives in this study is to make a plea for researchers to re-visit the understanding that during the period of European colonization, the colonizing powers, often located in the global north, were always the originating points of religious flows. I suggest that we need to be mindful of the fact that the colonizing powers and the colonized alike engaged in the exchange of religious ideas, images and persons. The story of Hinduism’s origins in Ghana begins with a Ghanaian narrative about India’s powerful magicality and the potency of spirits and medicines originating from there. This narrative started to circulate in Ghanaian towns and villages sometime around the mid-1940s. When the hearers of versions of this narrative came to learn that India’s indigenous religion was Hinduism, they began to view Hindu religious traditions as important repositories of wonder-working, magico-religious power. Beginning in the mid-1940s these local notions about India and Hinduism would engender a local Hindu religious culture, whose varying strands featured ritual specialists, a repertory of ritual paraphernalia and techniques for exploring the spiritual universe, and popular beliefs celebrating the capabilities and exploits of Hindu spirits such as Shiva, Krishna, Durga, Skanda and Ganesh. From the 1970s till the present a number of Hindu temple communities have sprung up in Ghana, invariably building their worship traditions on this thriving local Hindu religious culture. However, I argue that the Ghanaian discourse on Hinduism’s wonderworking, magico-religious power is a product of local imagination and indigenous religious creativity. It originated in local interpretations of



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narratives about powerful Hindu gods and spirits, and other imaginaries about India that flowed from India into Ghana after the Second World War—interpretations largely informed by Ghanaian cultural notions. I explore three narrative genres that channeled the flow of these beliefs and the spread of their influence all over southern Ghana. The first genre includes stories circulating in Ghanaian communities about the mysterious experiences in India of Ghanaian soldiers while serving in the colonial armies during World War II. These accounts described activities of powerful Hindu spirits who aided the soldiers during the course of the war. The soldiers who returned from the war told these stories to local audiences eager to learn something about a war whose horrifying details were conveyed to them through state controlled cinema by British colonial agents. The second genre is Indian films, which were very popular on the local entertainment scene, especially in the 1950s–70s. The third includes narrative accounts rendered by itinerant performers of magic on the local entertainment scene, celebrating India as the source of the supernatural powers they deploy in their magical performances. A key theme of this study is that the genesis of Ghanaian Hindu beliefs and praxis has little to do with Hindu missionary activity, or direct Hindu instruction. Ghana’s Hinduism is rooted in Ghanaians’ own creative religiosity, building on war-time stories, Hindu films, and imaginaries of India and of powerful Hindu spirits conveyed through these media. While the linkages between India and Ghana facilitated by the British empire were important in originating Ghana’s local Hinduism, it is the changing situations of life that both accompanied and followed Ghana’s transition from a colony to a post-colonial nation and the contemporary process of globalization that have precipitated Hinduism’s relevance for local worshippers. The tumult that accompanied Ghana’s struggle for independence in 1957 created insecurities that increased the demand for spiritual power. Among the new religious movements that emerged in response to this demand were indigenous Hindu-worshipping communities, which built their traditions on the ideas circulating about Hinduism’s awe-inspiring, magico-religious power. The 1970s saw the emergence of a moral crisis in Ghana. Corruption was rife, especially in government circles, resulting in two coup d’états or “revolutions.” These were aimed at “cleaning up” a morally fallen nation. People welcomed neo-Hindu religious groups, which had begun to extend their missionary activities into Ghana from outside at this time, because they found the discourses of these groups emphasizing moral accountability (karma), moderation in life, the need to cultivate intense spirituality or “develop God consciousness” relevant to the issues of that time.

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These neo-Hindu groups had been encouraged to extend their operations in Ghana both by the flowering of indigenous Hinduism in Ghana, and by the existence of a small, expatriate East Indian community in Ghana. With the exposure to these new forms of Hinduism and Hindu teachings, the worldviews of Ghanaian worshippers began to undergo a reshaping. From the 1990s, neo-Hindu traditions and indigenous Hindu temples began to feed off transformations that have accompanied globalization in Ghana:— open-mindedness and religious tolerance because of people’s exposure to new religions and discourses, urbanization, opportunities for material advancement, discontent in the face of the “malcontents of modernity” (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993) and globalization, and the resulting sociopolitical and religious debates and narratives. While indigenous understandings of Hinduism emphasizing its magical power continue to provide strong motivations for participation in Hindu rituals in Ghana, it is also true that the discourses of these temples are valued for the new intellectual insights and the moral visions they provide worshippers as they engage both traditional and modern questions. The main thesis of the study is that while Ghanaians appropriated and deployed the alien Hindu religious world through their own cultural ideas, in the context of this new encounter the worldviews of worshippers would themselves be transformed as they engage Hindu ideas in dealing with their day to day modern lives. To demonstrate this thesis I have selected two temples that exemplify two main manifestations of Ghana’s Hinduism—the Hindu Monastery of Africa, a typical example of Ghana’s indigenous Hindu temple traditions, and the Sri Radha-Govinda temple, one of the missionary-established neoHindu worshipping communities currently operating in Ghana. Conceptualizing Ghana’s Hindu Religious Experience A Parallel Modern Religious Flow Theoretically the investigation into the traffic of Hindu religious ideas, images, and commodities into Ghana and their local appropriations, adaptations and usages in the context of local worshipping communities leads directly to ongoing debates on the patterns underlying the global cultural traffic. Specifically, the view that global cultural flows do not always follow a center to periphery axis but are much more complicated “criss-crossed” global affairs, bringing one part of the periphery to another and resulting in creative processes described invariably as “creolization,” “crossfertilization,” “pidginization,” or “hybridization” (Inda & Rosaldo 2002:25;



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Meyer 1999:xxii) provides an important lead. Equally important for the analysis I present in the study are the concepts of “multiple,” “alternative,” and “parallel” modernities that have emerged from the debate as useful conceptual tools allowing us to problematize modern cultural flows as processes that demonstrate many varying trajectories and produce different results. I find the notion of parallel modernity a useful concept for analyzing Hinduism’s flow into Ghana and its role in furnishing contexts for local worshippers to participate in imagined Hindu religious worlds. Brian Larkin describes a parallel modernity as “the coexistence in space and time of multiple economic, religious, and cultural flows that are often subsumed within the term modernity” (Larkin 1997:407). He argues that parallel modernities, unlike Appadurai’s idea of alternative modernities, do not necessarily involve the erasing of national or cultural boundaries and the free movement of people into other cultural spheres (Larkin 1997:407). Neither are parallel modernities associated with the cultural inventions of dislocated populations in diaspora contexts, intended to forge symbolic linkages with their homelands. Rather, parallel modernities are about people imagining and participating in the cultural realities of others as part of their daily lives (Larkin 1997:407). Larkin explores the Hausa appropriation and usages of Hindu films in Northern Nigeria as an example of a parallel modernity. He argues that Indian films that migrate into Northern Nigeria allow local viewers to imaginatively engage with Hindu culture and thus to experience and envision models of fashion, beauty, music, art forms, love and romance originating in India. Armed with these new models, the younger generations of Hausa society are empowered to contest accepted meanings within their own Hausa culture. What is also important to note, Larkin argues, is that, because they do not originate from the West, Indian films provide Hausa viewers in Northern Nigeria with an alternative to aesthetic creations of the West. In other words, though modern, the forms of being in the world that Hindu films allow Hausa audiences to explore are not connected with the history of western cultural imperialism. This allows Hausa audiences to recreate new selves without having to take on the West and its underlying “ideological baggage” (Larkin 1997:407). In her study of the appropriation of Hindu dance and other cultural forms by Senegalese Indophiles, Gwenda Vander Steene (2008) builds on a key theme underpinning Larkin’s argument—the idea that the attraction of Indian films to Hausa consumers rests on a “dialectic of presence and absence” “difference and sameness” (2008:137). Her point, in other words, is that Hausa viewers in Senegal are drawn to Bollywood because

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the realities it conveys are just like those in Hausa culture, but at the same time different (Vander Steene 2008:137). This dialectic enables viewers to experience a similar form of modern life while criticizing western patterns of consumption and materialism. Vander Steene’s analysis explores how perceived resonances between Hindu and Senegalese culture encourage appropriations and performances of Hindu dance forms in Senegal. The explanation Indophiles in her study offer for adopting Hindu cultural forms is that Indian culture reminds them of their own—“It makes them think of their own” (Vander-Steene 2008:120). The repertoire of resonances between Hindu and Senegalese culture the Senegalese Indophiles build on to make their case includes religious beliefs and practices, language, aspects of everyday life in the village, cultural values such as the importance attached to the family and respect for elders and even ways of walking (Vander Steene 2008:120–121). To bolster her argument, Vander Steene relates the idea of parallel modernities to Pinxten’s (1994) concept of the cultural sphere which refers to “groups attracted to each other because of a strong internal coherence, such as Western Europe, Japan and South East Asia, sub-Sahara Africa/Senegal and India” (Vander Steene 2008:137). Vander Steene argues that it is not only groups within the same culture sphere who can share cultural traits, but those located in a parallel modernity can also have similar cultural experiences while maintaining differences stemming from their location in a different cultural sphere (Vander Steene 2008:137). These similarities, she explains further, “may be due to shared cultural intuitions or similarities between cultural spheres which might be drawn to each other because they are both more different from a third culture sphere” (Vander Steene 2008:137). One idea that emerges from the discussion on parallel modernity which I build on in this study is the view that cultural traffic from the peripheries, like those from the centers, also fosters linkages that allow recipients to construct new ways of being in the world (Inda & Rosaldo 2002:25). Another idea is that we cannot always construe such cultural traffic in terms of impositions on peripheries by agents of dominating cultures (Inda &Rosaldo 2002:25). Sometimes peripheral communities themselves are eager to appropriate symbols from others—appropriations that allow individuals within these cultures to creatively partake in the imagined realities of different cultures. While these scholarly perspectives on the diverse forms of the global traffic in culture have emerged in the context of the analyses of contemporary globalizing forces, my position in this study is that they also shed some light on cultural circulations among the colonies during the era of



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the British empire, which can be described as an earlier period of globalization occasioning the transfer of cultural objects, people and ideas. I propose that both the transfer of Hindu religious ideas and images from India to Ghana which started during British colonization, and also the local Hindu religious culture that has since emerged from it in Ghana, represent a parallel modernity. Members of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temple have constructed Hindu worlds from the local Hindu worship culture that originated from this cultural traffic from India. These Hindu religious worlds are alternatives to those offered worshippers by other traditions, especially, the Pentecostal groups, which dominate the religious landscape of Ghana. While the majority of Ghanaians embrace modernity and the opportunities for trade, travel, cultural exchange, and the adoption of new lifestyles that have come with the increasing interaction with the rest of the globe, a small minority is unhappy about the strong influence of the West on life in Ghana. For most of these people globalization is the most current form of western imperialism. This influence of the West, they argue, is colonizing. It marginalizes Ghanaian cultural influences and undermines the basis of Ghana’s identity as an African nation. The fact that India and Ghana share a history of colonial oppression and consequently a sense of being viewed by the West as inferior others endears Hinduism to some of these people. Such people also direct their animosity towards the Pentecostal prosperity gospel discourse and its excessive focus on the accumulation of material wealth. In their view this discourse feeds a growing western-originated capitalist consumer ethos, introduces disruptions into life in Ghana’s quasi-traditional society, and can be morally corrupting. The attraction of their Hindu temples to them is linked to their understanding that the temples’ emphasis on ideals such as accountability and moderation can check the corrupting influences of western capitalist ideologies. Horton (1971), Peel (1968), Wilson (1973), and Stillson Judah (1974) among others have argued that religious innovations emerge in response to new problems and perplexities that arise in new and unfamiliar situations— problems and complexities that are not solved readily by other, more traditional conceptualizations available to the individuals. Berger (2011), Fernandez (1969), and Geertz (1973) have pointed to the world-building role of religious communities. Berger (2011) and Fernandez (1969:5) have argued that religious communities are constantly engaged in “microcosmogony.” By this they mean the construction of enclosed social realities, which give coherence to the lives of the members (Rounds, 1982:78).

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I would suggest that the construction of microcosmogonies becomes more crucial in times when people seek to escape from, or engage, their apparently confused worlds. This study offers narratives of devotees from both the Hare Krishna and the Hindu Monastery temples, describing how the novel perspectives furnished to them by Hindu theological notions formulate more satisfactory answers to perennial and emerging questions (some indigenous, others modern, some religious, others secular). But I also identify other factors that explain the growing interest in Hinduism: factors linked with a post-colonial society undergoing rapid socio-cultural change, especially in the context of its increasing interaction with the rest of the globe. Emerging National Discourses and Ghana’s Hinduism Michel Foucault identifies a discourse as an individual or collective act related to an author and located in a specific context. It is neither true nor false but simply everything said about something (1984:118). Discourse, then, is not necessarily based on facts, but can simply be opinion. Larkin explains the popularity of Hindu films among the Hausa of northern Nigeria in terms of a discourse of sameness the Hausa have constructed. He argues that though originating from a different culture, the popularity of Hindu films rests on what viewers see as resonances between Hindu culture and their own culture (Larkin 1997). Making a similar observation among Senegalese who appropriate Hindu dance forms, Vander Steene notes that Senegalese Indophiles have developed “what I would call a discourse of similarities . . . They love Indian culture because it reminds them of their own . . . It makes them think of their own” (Vander-Steene 2008). The study offers accounts of two discourses emerging in the context of some local religio-political and cultural projects, and discusses how they have augured well for the receptivity of Hinduism in Ghana. One of these involves the efforts of some agents of indigenous African religions to revitalize them in Ghana. Viewing these initiatives as an opportunity to advertise their tradition as a modern form of indigenous traditions, agents of Hinduism in Ghana have created a discourse establishing linkages between the two traditions. This discourse identifies India as the cradle of the African religious heritage. It argues that Ghanaians (in fact, Africans) originated in India, but were separated from their Hindu families because of a continental drift that separated Africa from India. In the centuries following the separation, the Indian portion of the religious heritage



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evolved into a sophisticated Hindu religious system with scriptures, complex beliefs, ritual forms and temple traditions. Armed with this sophistication, the discourse argues, the Hindu religion survived the impact of English colonialism and the attack missionary Christianity launched on it. I offer an account of the socio-political context that has given rise to this discourse. In addition, I discuss the evidence that Ghana’s Hindus use to support it, and describe how Ghana’s Hindu movements, including the two temples involved in this study, build on this to promote their traditions. I also show how some people with deep sympathies for indigenous religious traditions in Ghana are motivated by this discourse to seek spiritual homes in Ghana’s Hindu Temples. Similarly, a growing discourse emphasizing women’s empowerment and gender equality in Ghanaian feminist circles has led some women to focus attention on Durga, the powerful Hindu warrior Goddess. This discourse is linked with western feminist notions about women’s equality with men and women’s empowerment, images of the modern woman that have filtered into Ghana through modern media since the 1970s, and traveler narratives. But Ghanaian women’s own experiences of the uncertainties of marital life, a Ghanaian economy that has over the decades not only invited but demanded women’s participation, and a growing perception shared by many young women that “the men of today” are not as responsible as the men of earlier generations in providing for their families, have also contributed to changing local perceptions of womanhood in Ghana.1 The discourse on the empowerment of women in Ghana calls on them to be assertive, confident, and to strive for independence. Women must not only know, claim, and jealously protect their rights, they must also strive to overcome traditional barriers and carve new niches in social, political, religious and economic arenas. The goal is to empower women in the performance of their roles as wives, mothers, aunts, and nurturers of

1 It is said that wives who are not independent socio-economically risk becoming poor should their husbands leave them. Also as many men have come to lack the means to provide even the basics of needs for their families due to Ghana’s poor economy in the 1970s and 1980s,women, some of whom have risen to high statuses, such as homeowners, business tycoons, executives of companies, literally have had to fend for themselves, their husbands, and their children. The fact that this development contradicts a traditional Ghanaian understanding of femininity in terms of passivity and subservience to men has led women to re-think their roles and statuses in society. See also A. Cornwall, “Spending Power: Love, Money, and the Reconfiguration of Gender Relations in Ado-Odo Southwestern Nigeria,” American Ethnologist 29.4(2002):963–980.

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children. Sometimes this calls for the usurping of traditional male positions, prerogatives, or privileges by women, the discourse argues.2 In response to this call women’s groups such as the Progressive Women’s Credit Union, West African Media Network (WAMNET), Women in Management Resource Center (WIM), Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) are very active in Ghana, addressing a variety of women’s concerns and needs (Nrenzah 2008).3 These developments represent milestones which can only be measured against the backdrop of a history of women as a marginalized group, especially in the Gold Coast colony and the Ghanaian post-colonial nation. A patriarchal understanding of femininity in terms of domesticity, passivity, and subservience to men, and other instruments of coercion inherent in male-dominated indigenous cultures contributed to the subordination of women before the colonization of the Gold Coast. These structures were, however, flexible, and women could share power with men in social, political and religious arenas.4 The new ideas and

2 The declaration of 1975 as the International Women’s Year started this trend toward women’s activism in Ghana, one of the first African nations to implement the recommendations made during the premier World Conference on Women in Mexico that 1976–1985 should be declared the decade for women. In 1975 the National Council on Women and Development (NCWD), was established to serve as the official national machinery for advising the government on women’s issues.  Created in 1991 under the sponsorship of Nana Agyeman Rawlings, wife of the president of Ghana at that time, the 31st December women’s group, followed. Ghana sponsored a delegation of women to the fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995, for the first time in her history. There was a new awakening among women in Ghana after the conference. The phrase “What men can do, women can do better,” was the call for women to become more assertive and confident in their endeavors. The expression “after Beijing things must change” or simply “After Beijing” also emerged as a signal for the need for change in society’s attitudes regarding women. 3 Genevieve, Nrenzah, “Inventing Indigenous Religious Belief and Practice within the Spaces of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: The Mame Wata Healing Churches of Half Assini,” Unpublished M.A. Thesis; Florida International University, 2008. 4 The Akan matrilineal system gives women ownership rights over their children. In terms of religion not only is Akan religious discourse replete with powerful images of women and their spiritual power, Akan women also featured and still feature prominently in key ritual roles in social, religious-political circles. Among the Ashanti, an Akan group, there is even a strong indigenous sense that the security of the state depends in part on female spiritual power. For a discussion of this, see Akyeampong, E. and P. Obeng. “Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28 (1995):481–507. For a discussion on women as diviners, healers, and custodians of post mortuary rituals, see Aborampah, “Women’s Roles in the Mourning Rituals of the Akan of Ghana,” Ethnology 38.3 (1999):257–271. For a discussion on Akan women’s political roles, which include acting as queen mothers who appointed a chief and having the powers to de-stool him, see Nrenzah, “Inventing Indigenous Religious Belief and Practice



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practices that accompanied colonization affected understandings of women’s roles and power in ways that sometimes benefitted some women, but for the most part, undermined the indigenous power bases of women as a group, tilting the gendered power balance in favor of men.5 After independence, the ruling male elite promoted a patriarchal power structure and state policies that further disempowered women in post-colonial Ghana. Scape-goating of women undermined their power further. Ghanaian women experienced the most ominous form of scapegoating during the Rawlings revolution, when female traders were blamed for the country’s galloping inflation of the 1970s, publicly flogged by soldiers, and had their main market, the Makola markets, destroyed. The older generation of Ghanaian women still remembers this state attempt to eliminate one of the remaining realms of influence available to women, and describes the details of the incidents in horrific tones to the younger generations in order to drive home the urgent need for things to change as far as gender relations are concerned. Aware of the history of their marginalization, and sensitized to the need to reverse the gendered power imbalance, by their own realities of life and modern gender ideologies, the present generation of Ghanaian women do not hesitate to respond when within the Spaces of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: The Mame Wata Healing Churches of Half Assini,” 52. 5 Seeing women as inferior, British colonialists did not accept their political positions. The banning of indigenous religious traditions and the attacks local Christians launched on their agents weakened the power bases of women who had wielded so much power and influence in indigenous religious cultures. In the Christian churches only males could be pastors, teachers and evangelists. Female leaders were often wives of petty bourgeoisie, the clergy, lay readers and wealthy traders or prominent men and so subject to easy manipulation by men to whom they owed their access to power. Other factors occasioning the decline in the power of women include missionary-sponsored education which stressed the training of young women to perform household duties and care for children, while professional training was provided for men expected to become the breadwinners. For a detailed discussion of these changes, see Ifi Amadiume, Re-inventing Africa: Matriarchy, Religion and Culture. (London & New York: Zed Books Ltd, 1997), 150–152. For a discussion on how male-controlled Western-originated medicine supplanted the need for rituals women had previously undertaken for the welfare of their communities see Nrenzah, “Inventing Indigenous Religious Belief and Practice within the Spaces of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: The Mame Wata Healing Churches of Half Assini, 52. For other accounts of how colonial rule occasioned the decline in the power of women, see Birgid Sackey, New Directions in Gender and Religion: The Changing Status of Women in African Independent Churches (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006), 59–64; Sofola Zulu “Feminism and African Womanhood,” in Obioma Nnaemeka (ed.), Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora (Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: African World Press, 1997); and Arhin Kwame “The Political and Military Roles of Akan Women” in Christine Oppong (ed.), Female and Male in West Africa. (London: George Allen and Unwinn, 1983).

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men engage in actions calculated to restrict them or deny them access to privileges. The contemporary feminist discourse and related activities constitute the backdrop for understanding why Durga attracts some female devotees of the Hindu Monastery of Africa. I offer an account of how the women enlist the meanings of female power they glean from Durga’s strong persona and her heroic exploits as presented in a Hindu mythology describing her victory over a demon called Mahisasura, in asserting their own agency in various spheres of their lives and in a gendered struggle for control over the temple’s rituals, which they otherwise do not have. I also describe how the female devotees of a branch of the monastery in the port city of Tema use the festival in Durga’s honor as an opportunity to create some space for their religious leadership amid conditions that are otherwise patriarchal. My argument is that Durga’s model of femininity provides additional ammunition for the female devotees of the monastery in their re-thinking of the dominant perceptions of women, their place in society, and their roles vis-à-vis those of males in modern Ghana. Popular Notions about Spiritual Power and the Appeal of Hinduism Stressing the need for scholars exploring African religious phenomena to locate their analyses in the context of local conceptual schemes, Assimeng, the Ghanaian sociologist of religion, reflects that: Every logical course of human action should be seen as dependent upon a unique configuration of a particular cultural, symbolic and experiential background . . . No appropriate conceptualization of behavior deriving from belief can ignore the culturally patterned cognitive map of the people concerned (1977:73).

Following Assimeng’s lead, I engage local Ghanaian notions about supernatural power that originate from far-flung sources, in an attempt to demonstrate how folk ideas about outside sources of spiritual power mediate local encounters with in-coming religious traditions, especially Hinduism. There is a considerable literature devoted to the analysis and application of the concept of power, specifically spiritual power. Yet, as Dahrendorf has remarked, there is not yet consensus on the definition of spiritual power (Dahrendorf 1959:166). Each discussion on power must therefore begin with a preliminary clarification of the intended usage. Borrowing Hackett’s definition, I use the concept of spiritual power in the study to mean “The ability to transcend the normal course of events, to possess



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knowledge beyond the human ken, to be able to effect the miraculous, to possess spiritual gifts, which may be beneficial to the individual or the community, to ward off harmful forces or adversaries, and the ability to realize the objectives of life, that is to raise a family, enjoy economic selfsufficiency and good health” (Hackett 1993:385). In indigenous African religious cultures where religion is viewed as a technique for the production of welfare, discourse is not ceded as much importance as praxis or ritual. Ritual praxis furnishes the context in which magico-religious power, the most important spiritual raw material in producing welfare, is harnessed. As an effect of God, who is considered to be the epitome of spiritual power, the universe is suffused with spiritual power, which human agents equipped with the secrets of its workings can tap into to effect good or harm. Magico-religious power, then, is a crucial concept and element in the African religious universe. There is useful work done on African appropriations of alien religions, especially Islam and Christianity, and the nature of the conversation between them and indigenous religious notions. This literature has demonstrated how a pragmatic consideration of these outside religions as reservoirs of superior spiritual power motivated local communities to enlist the help of their agents and symbols in efforts to cure disease and misfortune, and provide insurance for prosperity. For instance when Islam first migrated to sub-Saharan Africa, its reputation for having superior spiritual power motivated African kings to enlist the help of “marabouts” or “mallams” as ritual specialists, especially in their palaces. These men provided supernatural cover against illnesses, sorcerers, competitors, and enemy states (Handloff 1982:186; Fisher 1973; Lewis 1957:452–453; Sanneh 1976:49–72 etc.). The kings of the Ashanti Empire in Ghana, for instance, would never launch a military campaign without consulting a “mallam” (Akyeampong & Obeng 1995:500). Masquelier has noted how, even, in the regions of Africa where “mallams” or “ulemas” are absent, Islam still “participates” in local efforts to probe the occult through its magic, techniques of divination, and the use of ritual apparatus such as amulets (2001:42–43). Students of the history of Christianity in Africa such as Gray (1990), Kalu (1980), and Peel (1968, 1977, 1990), Horton (1971, 1975), Ikenga-Metuh (1987) also describe how local communities were drawn to Christianity because of the belief that it was associated with a superior form of spiritual power. Peel suggests that in their reception of Islam and Christianity one source of motivation for the Yoruba was their belief in the power of the religions. He summarizes a Yoruba perception of spiritual power in the following words: “Sources of spiritual power (i.e. ability to perform

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feats as a result of supernatural intervention or celestial knowledge) were mysterious and manifold and widely spread; illumination might come from remote quarters and a dogmatic reliance on one source was foolish” (1968:125). Horton links the turning of local African communities to the world religions with the attribution of less power to local gods as local worlds became integrated into wider contexts. As the local gods could no longer provide sufficient knowledge, people turned to the world religions which postulated the idea of a high God considered to be more powerful and in charge of the macrocosm as a whole (1971, 1975). The prosperity gospel discourse, arguably an alien import into popular African Christian theology and one force behind the phenomenal growth of African Pentecostalism, draws appeal from its emphasis on the instrumental and magical use of the power inherent in the blood of Christ to change unfavorable destinies and pave the way for material success in the here and now (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005:96). In explaining the pre-occupation of the youth of Peki with foreign, especially Indian spirits in modern Ghana, Meyer draws the attention of readers to the appeal that the global character of these spirits holds for individuals whose modern aspirations motivate them to acquire spirits that would link them with the modern global world. She writes: The acquisition of Indian Spirits and new dzo differs from Mami Water possession, in that people actually ask for these new spirits rather than being overwhelmed by them. Nevertheless, these spirits are also perceived as external forces enabling their owner to do certain things which he is unable to do by himself. Moreover these new spirits share with Mami Water the fact that they are foreign and that they link their owners with global culture. Indeed, through their acquisition of these spirits young men are able to express their desire for power and pleasure beyond the limits of local life. . . . it is not surprising that new spirits are of special concern to young people. Many of them live in a situation that is long away from their aspirations and therefore they try to bridge the gap between reality and the ideal through personal efforts. To them the new spirits provide access to the modern and the global world, showing once again that modernity and spirits go hand in hand (Meyer 1999:210–211):

While I share Meyer’s interpretation, I suggest in this study that it would also be equally profitable for us to locate explanations of the appeal of new and foreign spirits in the context of Ghanaian indigenous understandings of spiritual power that link people’s ability to deal effectively with local sources of harm or hardship with their acquisition of external or foreign spirits (See also Wuaku 2012:246–248). Because the cause of mishap is often located in close relatives and friends, in indigenous



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Ghanaian religious thinking there is a sense that spiritual remedies such as curative powers and protective symbols must come from external or foreign sources and hence be unfamiliar to the perpetrators of supernatural harm, lest they render it ineffective. Put differently my point here is that in the indigenous Ghanaian spiritual world, familiarity with, or the acquisition of external, even unfamiliar and untested, spiritual power or ritual knowledge has a strategic advantage for the owner. Local purveyors of power lacking knowledge of the secrets that underlie the workings of the external power sources, may not have the capability of neutralizing them. Thus while agreeing with explanations of the appeal of Indian spirits and other external spirits in Ghana that privilege the need of locals to participate in a global culture, I seek to make indigenous Ghanaian religious understandings of outside spiritual power an important focus of the analysis in this study. I engage southern Ghanaian folk theories about “outside spirits” in order to show how these cultural notions inform the ways in which local people interpreted the narrative genres on Hindu spirits that filtered into Ghana at the tail-end of British colonialism. In conceptualizing how folk theories mediate the local encounter with Hinduism, I build on Gananath Obeyesekere’s analyses of the role of “myth models” in mediating human experience in cultures. These analyses are found in two of his works: Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (1981) and The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (1992). Myth models, according to Obeyesekere, are a category of popular cultural beliefs or notions through which the meanings of human experience, however idiosyncratic it might seem, are filtered (Obeyesekere 1981:100). Obeyesekere illustrates his idea with the belief in demons in his homeland of Sri Lanka. He says that a Sri Lankan patient afflicted by “pretas” or demons can behave in seemingly bizarre ways. But such behavior is hardly considered bizarre in Sri Lanka, as it is recognizable and readily understood as the work of demons not only by others living within the culture but also by the patient (Obeyesekere 1981:99) through Sri Lankan cultural notions regarding the activity of demons and how afflicted people behave when they are possessed by these demons. Also, the beliefs contain models for the culturally appropriate response to such a predicament (Obeyesekere 1981:99). These beliefs then are models in two senses; they are both “of” and “for” reality (Obeyesekere 1981:101; Geertz 1973:73). In the Apotheosis of Captain Cook (1992) Obeyesekere argues that because “myth models” shape the way people interpret, construct and represent their experiences, fictional forms such as the novel, theatre,

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art, historical and anthropological writings sometimes reflect the popular beliefs circulating in the societies in which these genres originated (Obeyesekere 1992:10–11). Western narratives in particular, but also, other western forms of fiction about non-western people may simply reflect western “myth models” (beliefs) about non-western people and not reality, he argues (Obeyesekere 1992:11). The Apotheosis of Captain Cook offers a good example of the influence of “myth models” in the reconstruction and representation of history and anthropology. Obeyesekere argues that a perennial and pervasive European myth model underlies the narratives of Captain Cook: the myth of “the redoubtable person coming from Europe to a savage land, a harbinger of civilization to non-European savages” (Obeyesekere 1992:11). This myth simply reflected what Europeans thought of themselves vis-à-vis non-European people. But its influence in shaping actual encounters between European and non-European people was profound. For instance the myth was later transformed in European thought to the evangelical idea of “the non-European heathens” and was used to justify missionary activity among “savages” (Obeyesekere 1992:177). The situations described in his two books and the focus of my study, are quite dissimilar. But Obeyesekere’s idea of “myth models” demonstrating the role of popular cultural beliefs in mediating meanings of human behavior, strikes me as a relevant conceptual tool for the discussion on how Ghanaian cultural ideas function as “lenses” through which people come to understand, evaluate, express and also respond to their experiences with Hinduism. I will retain Obeyesekere’s understanding of “myth models,” but to distinguish my usage from his, I will employ the term myth to describe popularly held beliefs about outside spirits that circulate in a variety of narrative forms in southern Ghanaian communities. One argument I make in this connection is that the image of Hinduism as a reservoir of awe-inspiring magico-religious power (which is an important source of its present appeal) is largely a product of the cross-fertilization of a Ghanaian myth about the superior magical powers of spirits from foreign lands, and narratives of people’s actual encounters with powerful Hindu spirits in India. The association of India with a powerful magicality in local Ghanaian imagination is a product of this interaction. I will describe how Indian films, popular theatre, and western texts on Hindu mysticism that found their way to Ghana reinforced this belief, and how Ghanaian religious agents constructed Hindu religious worlds by building on these local cultural notions.



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Witchcraft Modernity, Occult Economies and the Appeal of Hindu Spiritual Power Two major developments in Ghana in the last three or four decades of the 20th century, which have also occasioned an upsurge in beliefs and practices centered on new spirits and occult forces, help to explain the attention Hinduism’s powerful magicality is currently receiving from worshippers in Ghana. The first had to do with chaos on the political landscape. After a brief spell of political stability following Ghana’s independence from British colonizers in 1957, the nation was plunged into chaos, as successive coups led by “predatory”, “corrupt”, “undisciplined” and sometimes “violent” military juntas, rocked the socio-political landscape (See Kalu Ogbu 2007:61). The chaos generated great insecurity and anxiety among many Ghanaians. The second crisis was socio-economic in nature. This same era was characterized by socio-economic decline marked by the scarcity of basic necessities, rising prices, run-away inflation, unemployment and a growing chasm between a wealthy middle class and the poor working class. The crisis prompted a socio-economic reconstruction (structural adjustment) initiated under the auspices of the IMF. By the end of the 1980s, the measures resulted in a steady in-flow of global commodities, ending the scarcity. However, the conditional strings that the IMF tied to aid packages introduced massive redeployments of workers in the public sector, leaving little money in the hands of many Ghanaian people. In the markets of Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi and other big cities of Ghana, it was possible for many to buy luxury goods coming in from outside. However, only a minority could afford these. Presently Ghana is relatively stable politically. However, her economy has still not recovered from the failed policies of the past. Sources of wealth and certainty continue to dry up, unemployment is high, there is growing impoverishment, and the chasm between the rich and poor is still widening because the flow of information, goods, and people associated with globalization incorporate only a few. Meanwhile, the rampant in-flow of the selective imaginaries of the glitter and glamour of the West through modern media forms and travelers’ stories about the affluent lifestyles in the West, especially starting from the early 80s has generated desires that many Ghanaians cannot fully satisfy locally. In Ghana, it is said that life is largely a game of tsatsa or chance. People who “came” with good destinies have greater chances of “making it.” Securing the backing of a supernatural source of power is one way a person can

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ensure his or her chances of success in the here and now, because Ghanaians often attribute dislocations in life to malevolent powers and the failure to take the necessary ritual precautions against them. The sense of insecurity and risk involved in living in Ghana today is generating a rise in beliefs about the harmful activities of demons, witches, and other agents of spiritual harm, and practices of “working with and on these spirits” (De Witte 2010). Ghana does not stand alone in this experience. Since the 1990s the body of writings describing similar experiences in other African communities has burgeoned (Geschiere 1997; Apter 1993:111–128; Auslander 1993:167–190; Bastian 1993:129–165; Comaroff & Comaroff 1993:xxv; Masquelier 1993:3–33; Moore and Sanders 2001:3). Navigating Ghana’s changing socioeconomic landscape and the associated hardships, many Ghanaians find it necessary to resort to supernatural measures. For this reason the demand for services of purveyors of magicoreligious power is rising. Desperate for answers, more Ghanaians than ever before are willing to experiment with new, especially alien, supernatural resources. These include Hindu traditions, which many Ghanaians had labeled as “heathen” and “devilish” or branded as cults engaged in “juju,” in the 70s. In the study I attribute this change in attitude to the growing demand for supernatural cover to counteract the negative forces believed to be behind the challenges people face, to achieve breakthroughs and preserve gains made in contemporary Ghana. Some of the conversion accounts I report in the study establish a link between converts’ decisions to join and remain members of Hindu temples and the quest for supernatural empowerment, assurance or deliverance from harmful spiritual powers, the desire for higher forms of spiritual experience including experiencing transcendental reality, and the use of Hindu spiritual exercises to soothe away the angst of modern living. Charisma and Ghana’s Hinduism The socio-economic situation in Ghana that I have just described is a requisite backdrop to the emergence of charismatic religious persons (Bendix 1962:301). There is always some sort of crisis in any society and as scholars such as Goody (1957:356–363) have noted, we cannot easily point to or measure the degree of crisis at any given time in a society (See also O’Brien 1988:7–8). This fact notwithstanding, the socio-economic and political situation in Ghana from the 1970s till the present, discussed above, has created conditions congenial for the emergence of charismatic figures.



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This situation has helped in the provision of “a charismatic clientele”— an audience ready to believe in salvific miracles (O’Brien 1988:10). Charismatic people are emerging in Ghana every day, and because of their intrinsic charisma are developing their leadership potentials to the degree that they are able to win the recognition and acceptance of large followers. The much-documented spectacular florescence of new religions Ghana has witnessed from the 70s till now owes much to the activities of these charismatic personalities (Assimeng 2010, Meyer 1994; 1995; Gifford, 1994a; 1994b; Nukunya 1992). These men and women derive their authority mainly from the demonstration of extraordinary power and charisma, from their followers’ faith in that power and charisma, and the loyalty of their followers, maintained through their constant demonstration of those powers. Providing remedies for their allegedly incurable illnesses, intervening in their favor in difficult and intricate court cases, and protecting them from fatal accidents or against human adversaries, witches, and sorcerers, are ways in which charismatic personalities demonstrate their power. People in southern Ghana describe a charismatic religious leader as a “working person” or “one who knows his/her work” (Odunsinii no nim ne’dwuma! in Akan). “Work” or edwuma refers to the manifestation of spectacular spiritual power in Akan religious parlance. The indigenous basis of the Akan belief in peoples’ charismatic powers is the notion that the universe (ewiase) is suffused with forms of mystical power (originating from Onyame or God) and persons could tap into this power source for good or bad purposes. The “worker” is a person who, through training or intuition, has acquired the secrets required to tap into Onyame’s (God’s) powers.6 The story of the Hindu Monastery of Africa offers a classic example of the role of charisma in the shaping of some of Ghana’s Hindu groups. The beginning of the Hindu Monastery of Africa in the 1970s is linked with the charismatic career of the founder, Kwesi Esel. A traditional priest and healer with a nationwide fame for the “sharpness” of his medicines, Kwesi Esel rallied his clientele and created a worshipping community as a way of routinizing his charisma, when he relocated to Accra from his village of Senya Breku in the 1960s. Drawn to the Hindu religion because of its local 6 Max Weber also writes about the routinization of charisma whereby, at the height of their charisma, religious agents feel an urgent need to institutionalize their practice by creating a worshipping community with a stable matrix of norms, roles and a status (See Reinhold Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Berkeley: University of California, 1970) [1960]).

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reputation for magico-religious power that can be used for healing, Esel introduced his followers to Hindu scriptures focusing particular attention on Hindu gods. Shiva, whose reputation as a powerful Hindu god had been established locally through the narratives about Indian spirits circulating in Ghana at this time, was one of these gods. In the late 1960s, Esel travelled to India seeking more healing powers to meet the needs of his growing following. While in India, Esel studied under the supervision of some swamis in Shaivite temples in Rishikesh, located on the foothills of the Himalayas. When he returned to Ghana in the early 1970s he named the worshipping community he had formed, “The Divine Mystic Path Society.” He also renounced the world, divorced his wife, declared himself a Hindu sadhu, and transformed his worshipping community into a Hindu monastery. Drawing largely on narratives of witnesses, I reconstruct these events, demonstrating the place of Esel’s personal magnetism in the origins and the life of his monastery. I also report narratives of Esel’s miracles as a Hindu sadhu, and their many re-tellings circulating in southern Ghana. I then explore the role these miracles play, first, as the hub around which his charisma continues to spin, and secondly, as the main channels for spreading his influence and that of the monastery’s tradition. Intense Religious Competition and the Proselytizing Strategies of Hare Krishna Far from the situation in Ghana during the years of military governments in the 70s and 80s, when religious activities were severely restricted by state legislation (note PNDC Law 211, 1989) Ghana’s return to democracy in 1992 occasioned a state de-regulation of the religious field. Presently Ghana’s democracy guarantees all people in Ghana freedom of religious expression. Reinforced by an indigenous attitude of religious tolerance and the growing demand for purveyors of protective supernatural power, the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom has led to the mushrooming of new religious groups. These groups take advantage of the unprecedented access to modern media forms in Ghana to make themselves visible to the public. In a sense then, the de-regulating of religious life and socioeconomic changes in Ghana have led to a high level of religious pluralism, diverse religious offices and loyalties, and intense competition. The Hindu religious landscape I describe in this study is emerging against the backdrop of this religious ethos. Pentecostals are leading in the competition for religious capital in Ghana. Not only do they have the largest number of followers, but their healing, deliverance, and material



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prosperity discourse is also the most influential in Ghana’s religious field. Furthermore, their dominance over Ghana’s public space thrives largely on their delegitimizing of non-Pentecostal religious others, which include Hinduism. This development raises the important question of how the two temples covered in the study survive in Ghana. How do they negotiate the contours of this volatile religious landscape in marketing themselves? How do they sell themselves to potential worshippers? In answering these questions I engage the scholarly perspective that draws on the idea of the religious market as a metaphor in analyzing the behavior of religious communities and their agents in a pluralistic religious space. According to this view in societies where the nation state has limited power to enforce religious compliance a proliferation of new religions results in a free market situation in which religious groups and their agents compete for religious capital. The perspective likens religion to a commodity, and worshippers, to consumers shopping on a market for religious goods and services. As consumers, worshippers have the freedom to make choices, and are willing to bargain and pay a price for what religious groups offer (Iannaconne 1995a:77). Likewise, operations of religious leaders as purveyors of various forms of religious capital are analogous to producers and entrepreneurs in a commercial economy, in that their actions represent calculated responses to the strictures and opportunities found in the religious market place (Iannaconne 1995a:77). The relative freedom of choice exercised by worshippers motivates religious groups “to produce or supply attractive commodities to their clients,” advertise and sell their wares, and compete with other suppliers to maintain a niche “with steady demand for their supplies” (Iannaconne 1994:230–234 see also Ukah 2003:206). Some scholars such as Steven Bruce (1993) and Robertson (1992) do not agree entirely with the market theory of religious behavior. For example, Steven Bruce objects to this approach on the grounds that it produces a distorted view of the realities of religious actors because it ignores the cultural factors that inform their behavior. He argues that while religious people are generally rational in the sense of “being reasoned and reasonable” their behavior cannot be explained in terms of the expectations of economic rationality or of rational choice models (1993:193–205). The only context in which such an approach could be viable is a thoroughly secular society in which religious people view religious beliefs and practices as commodities to be bought and consumed (Bruce 1993:193–205). Robertson, another critic, draws attention to how the theory of religious market “fails to address directly the structure, history and difference between religious markets” (1992:147–157).

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In spite of its shortcoming the religious economy perspective sheds light on how worshippers of the Hare Krishna advertise their tradition to potential worshippers and increase their visibility in Ghana’s fiercely competitive religious market. Its analytical value lies especially in its insight into the creativity of these preachers in the generation of public visibility. I show how their behavior is analogous to that of firms advertising their goods and services in a free and competitive economic market. Krishna Preachers in Ghana make a very conscious effort to present or “package” their religion in ways that will appeal to the local religious imaginations. My account describes their aggression and persistence in approaching potential converts, and their skillful adoption, adaptation, and use of the crusade, which is a strategy for winning recruits in Pentecostalism, to reach out to potential converts. I also show how they manipulate traditional Ghanaian “hometown” networks and a rift between Pentecostal/ Charismatic Churches and agents of indigenous religions to “sell” their religion. Hinduization and Domestication Hinduization and domestication are two models I engage in this study to analyze the processes by which the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Hare Krishnas entrench Hindu religious beliefs and practices in local Ghanaian communities. “Hinduization,” involves the socialization of devotees into Hindu (or Vedic) religio-cultural patterns through their conversion in Ghana. Domestication involves the appropriation of Hindu religious symbols by local communities and the making of these symbols “their own,” to borrow a phrase from Meyer (1992) and Fisher (1985). It also refers to the “mixing” (Fisher 1985:156) or syncretism of Hindu and local ritual forms and meanings. I explore the extent to which the host Ghanaian culture and the guest Hindu traditions or elements reciprocally inform, change, and bolster each other in the context of rituals. While elements of both processes exist in all the communities, I identify Hinduization as the dominant pattern of localization in the Hare Krishna community. I suggest that the localizing of Krishna worship in Ghana is a typical example of religio-cultural globalization. Chaitanyite Vaishnavism has become a transnational religious system co-opting local worshippers into a global religious regime. The goal of the exogenously-controlled hegemony (based in America) is to homogenize this worship tradition, that is, to transform local worshippers into “Hindus” by transplanting and strictly enforcing its



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ritual forms in local communities. Local devotees in Ghana receive this tradition, apparently succumbing to the homogenizing initiative. However, because many are motivated to join the community by their own indigenous convictions that Hindu “churches” are more capable of protecting followers spiritually than their competitors in Ghana’s religious field, (because of access to Hindu magico-religious power), they are eager to put the rituals of the community to use as magico-spiritual resources. This occurs in spite of the hegemony’s strict measures to protect the tradition from such indigenous religious notions and practices and the fact that the local leaders do not share the popular meanings lay practitioners associate with the tradition. In other words lay practitioners receive the tradition on their own terms, and in the process, transform their newly adopted religious beliefs and practices. Building on relevant conceptual ideas from McKim Marriot, Michael Foucault, Sherry Ortner, Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo, and Arjun Appadurai, I offer a discussion of how this grassroots indigenization in the local Hare Krishna community in Ghana occurs against the backdrop of the strict enforcement of Chaitanyite Vaishnava tenets from the “top,” that is, the official level (see Kalu 1995:49–67). First, the Hinduizing of local devotees from the top and the indigenizing of Vaishnava symbols from below can be understood in terms of what the South Asianist anthropologist, McKim Marriot, describes as Universalization and Parochialization processes. Marriot built on the notion of great and little tradition as developed by Robert Redfield in developing these concepts. Universalization is a process by which cultural traits of a little tradition are absorbed into a great tradition—or a local religious practice becomes universalized. Parochialization is the opposite process by which cultural traits of a great tradition are learnt and reformed or modified by folk people or villages to become part of their culture (McKim Marriot 1960:205). The twin concepts operate in continuity in the socio-religious systems of Indian villages—the context in which he developed the ideas. And the study of one in isolation of the other is not possible. These concepts are equally applicable to contexts in which globalizing traditions are adopted and adapted by local communities, or are imposed on them. The spread of Chaitanyite Vaishnavism into Ghana—a part of its globalization—then can be understood in terms of universalization, while the investing of indigenous meanings into these practices as Ghanaians adopt and adapt aspects is best captured by the concept of parochialization. Foucault’s (1979) reformulation of the nature of power relations between elites, who control the apparati of domination, and those they

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act upon sheds further light on the agency and power of the Hare Krishna laity in Ghana to appropriate hegemonic Hindu meanings and make these their own. Foucault sees operations of power and resistance as widely distributed practices in hegemonic contexts. Power, he argues, is seldom imposed solely from above because those who are acted upon have agency and draw on their own creativity and ingenuity in appropriating the signs and process of domination from below. As the context of the analysis is one of globalization, interpretations of the impact of globalizing processes (capitalism, colonialism and missionizing) which emphasize the agency of local communities in resisting or contesting homogenizing processes are also instructive here. For example Ortner (1983:84) prompts us to view the realities of local communities as responses or reactions to the external agents and processes of socio-cultural change. These communities, she argues, are subjects of their own histories. The invaders’ signs and processes, Sahlins (1988) also suggests, are appropriated and made to fit into the cultural logic of local worlds. Inda and Rosaldo in The Anthropology of Globalization argue that local consumers of global cultural inflows do not necessarily absorb the “ideologies,” “values” and “lifestyle positions” of the “texts” they consume, “but bring their own cultural dispositions to bear on such texts” (2002:17). Focusing specifically on cross-cultural religious encounters in Africa, Robin Horton and J.D.Y. Peel have demonstrated how local people assimilate new and alien religious ideas and practices because these make sense to them in terms of their own notions and practices. They also note how these old notions conjoin with the new beliefs and practices (or even operate independently sometimes) to shape the local religious experience (Horton & Peel 1976:482). Meyer has demonstrated the role of cultural (or inter-cultural) translation in the development of a local Ghanaian Christian concept of demonology from a synthesis of the notion of Satan as the devil with the belief in witchcraft as a source of harm among the Peki Ewe of southern Ghana (Meyer 1992:99–131). While all the frames and examples above shed considerable theoretical light on the indigenization of Krishna worship from below, I do not find it helpful in this study to simply superimpose a binary opposition that pits the domination of the Radha Govinda hegemony against the resistance of lay followers on this Ghanaian Hindu experience. Since some Hindu experiences in this community cannot be clearly subsumed under resistance or domination and can slip out of view, such analyses can be problematic (Cooper 1994:157). Taking a cue from Appadurai’s (and also Mckim Marriot’s) view that globalizing and localizing processes, or “global



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homogenization” and “heterogenization” feed and reinforce each other rather than being mutually exclusive processes, I demonstrate in this study how the Hinduization of local devotees and the indigenization of Chaitanyite Vaishnavism go hand in hand in the context of the Ghanaian portion of Krishna worship. My discussion of the Hare Krishna community’s vegetarian lifestyle, its belief in the cow’s sanctity, and the kirtan experience as Hinduizing mechanisms will show how indigenous meanings of the laity dovetail into the community’s official beliefs in informing devotees’ religious experiences. I will also describe village Krishna rituals in which the synthesis seems to be developing into a complete “swallowing up” of Caitanyite Vaishnava practices by the local religious culture, especially the indigenous traditional religions. While I stress the resilience or persistence of indigenous meanings in the laity’s interpretation of rituals in spite of the top-down policy of Hinduization, I do not deny the fact that Chaitanyite Vaishnava meanings have influences on the laity’s religious experiences. The prevalence of Hindu samskaras (rituals) of birth, marriage, and death in the community over traditional Ghanaian life cycle rituals demonstrates how local cultural practices have been completely supplanted in certain areas of ritual. My account of marriage in the community will illustrate this. I also describe the regular meeting and reading of scriptures where Hindu “models of” and “models for” life are produced as guiding principles in devotees’ mundane and spiritual lives. My account of the monastery’s indigenization and use of the Hindu festival of Navaratri offers a poignant example of its culture of domesticating elements from Shaivite traditions. Here I rely on a Turnerian model to demonstrate how the Navaratri has been indigenized and transformed into a kind of rite of status reversal and deployed to mitigate the disruptions in devotee’s lives, which they attribute to supernatural agents of harm. Turner demonstrates how rites of status reversal temporarily reverse the relationship between superiors and the structurally weak in a world by masking the weak in strength while symbolically robbing the “superiors” of their powers.7 In the devotees’ Akan worldview, not only do both humans and evil spirits (homhomfi) participate in the same spiritual universe, but humans are also vulnerable to spiritual attack because they are in a structurally weaker position.8 Yet during the nine days of the

7 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995), 174, Reprinted version. 8 The Akan is an ethnic group in Ghana.

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festival, devotees see themselves as part of Durga’s army, and her victory is their temporal overthrow of the tyranny of agents of supernatural harm. This victory, albeit temporary, is a symbolic way of reasserting some sense of control over the forces spiritually responsible for their disrupted lives in Ghana. What the women in Tema struggle for (as mentioned above) is the right to lead this “army” in spiritual warfare. Furthermore, Turner’s notion of communitas, which refers to the intense community spirit or the feeling of great social equality that characterizes liminal groups, also captures the egalitarian ethos of the community. My analysis will show how the monastery’s stress on its communitas makes the exclusion of women from ritual life markedly stand out and functions as important grounds on which they stand in their demand of equal treatment. The Study’s Contribution This study is intended as a contribution to an emerging scholarly conversation on how India and Africa have influenced each other’s history and cultures. This conversation has yielded accounts of a cultural traffic flowing from India to African communities since the fifteenth century. Some of these accounts describe how Indian cultural elements involved in this flow have been, and still are appropriated and used local, especially in West Africa. For example, Larkin’s analysis of the local appropriation of Bollywood movies in Northern Nigeria aside, a recent volume titled India in Africa, Africa in India (Hawley 2008) is devoted to analyses of African and Indian encounters in both India and Africa. But the emerging scholarship has hardly paid attention to the flowerings of Hinduism among indigenous worshippers in West Africa, which can also be historically traced to these Africa-Indian encounters, in spite of the growing scholarly interest in contemporary African and African diaspora religious experiences and the Hindu religious diaspora. For instance, although Henry Drewal describes how Gujarati traders from India, who set up firms along the coast of West Africa by the First World War, exposed practices associated with Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and patron of merchants, to communities living on the Atlantic shores of Nigeria, it is not clear from his account whether any local Hindu religious groups or practices emerged from this Nigerian encounter with Lakshmi (Drewal 1988). Dana Rush (2008) traces the origins of an India to West Africa cultural traffic to the fifteenth century, when Portuguese sailors and merchants of the British and Dutch East India Company traded in Indian cloth between



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India and West African peoples of Nigeria, Ghana, Benin and Togo. She describes how iconographies of Indian gods printed in the textile spread to these communities when this trade expanded with the establishment of colonial empires in the 19th century. Communities in Togo and Benin, especially, began to incorporate these iconographies into vodun artistic and religious expressions beginning from the late 19th century. Rush notes how the “flexible structures” and “richly suggestive” chromolithographic imageries of Hindu deities such as Shiva, Hanuman, and Ganesh allow them to integrate and give expression to a diversity of ideas, themes, beliefs, histories, and legends in vodun artistic forms and thought (Rush 2008). Nevertheless, it is not clear from her account whether this traffic of Hindu religious ideas has led to local Hindu or Hindu/Vodun worshipping communities or religious practices arising in Togo and Benin. Furthermore, while the burgeoning literature on new religious movements in Africa includes accounts of indigenous African Hindu worshippers, these accounts are not only few, but for the most part, cursory. For instance while Rosalind Hackett (1989) identifies Hindu religious groups such as the Guru Maharaja movement, whose local appeal she traces to the visual affinities between Hinduism and indigenous southern Nigerian religious traditions, she devotes only a few paragraphs of an entire volume on new religious movements in Calabar to this experience. Likewise, in his book entitled Religion and Social Change in West Africa, Max Assimeng (2010), the Ghanaian sociologist of religion, merely lists Hindu religious movements that emerged in Ghana in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Hare Krishna Movement, The Hindu Monastery of Africa, the Arcanum Nama Shivaya Mission, the Divine Light Mission, and the Ananda Marga, without providing descriptions of their histories or beliefs and practices. In a general description of popular religious practices in Peki, a southern Ghanaian community, in her manuscript on indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana, Meyer (1999) devotes one page to descriptions of the use of Hindu spirits imported from India by individuals, who believe that the spirits can enable them to “perform miracles.” In a more detailed account, Dovlo (1992) describes the history and practices of the Arcanum Nama Shivaya movement, an indigenous Hindu group in Accra, Ghana’s capital. Also Asamoah-Gyadu’s (1994) account of the mutual distrust and suspicion among Pentecostal Christians and devotees of the Hindu sage, Sai Baba, in Accra offer a detailed description of this group’s origins, membership and main tenets. However, while these accounts provide valuable information on specific Hindu groups and religious experiences among

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African worshippers the authors treat these experiences as isolated developments rather than grounding them in local Hindu religious cultures. With particular reference to Meyer, Dovlo, and Asamoah-Gyadu’s research on the Ghanaian portion of the experience, what seems to be missing is the mention of a Ghanaian Hinduism whose beginning dates as far back as the mid-1940s. Not only did founders of indigenous Hindu communities build their traditions on elements from this Hinduism, but neo-Hindu groups coming from outside Ghana also benefited from the appeal it had garnered among Ghanaian worshippers before their arrival. Representing one of the first attempts at a comprehensive analysis of indigenous African Hindu worshippers who built their Hindu traditions on a local Hindu religious culture, this study sheds light on the extent of the Indian cultural influence on Ghanaian culture. It also demonstrates the role of local creative agency and imagination in colonial and post-colonial Ghanaian religious thought and practice. The Uniqueness of Ghana’s Hinduism Ghana’s Hinduism demonstrates patterns that make it stand out in a number of respects when we consider the history of overseas Hinduism and the migration of outside religions to Ghana. First, the spontaneous growth of Hinduism among a non-Indian community in Ghana represents a unique pattern in the history of overseas Hinduism. For instance, while Ghanaian soldiers serving in colonial armies and Hindu films were largely responsible for originating Hinduism in Ghana, in South Africa and East Africa, two parts of the continent with a strong Hindu religious presence, the origin of Hinduism is linked with the large-scale settlement of Indian populations. In East Africa, sailboats (called dhows) have linked the Indian sub-continent and the coastal regions for centuries, bringing both Indian and Arab traders into contact with the local people (Younger 2010:190–192). From the middle of the nineteenth century, Indian traders began to settle in Zanzibar at the invitation of the sultan of Oman, who, taking advantage of the presence of the British settlers, expanded his inter-continental trade in slaves and ivory by tying the links he already had with the Indian subcontinent with the widespread European trade networks (Younger 2010:1–17, 199–201). Even when the sultan transferred his headquarters to the Island of Zanzibar, it was a Hindu family, the Bhatias, who he employed as his tax collectors (Younger 2010:199–201). Indian traders followed and established inland trading posts, recognizing the opportunities that were available for trade.



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After the formal declaration of these regions as protectorates and their annexation by Germans and British colonial agents in the 1880s, the British hired 37,747 workers, mostly Punjabi, from northwest India, to construct a railway network connecting the coastal locations to the hinterland of Uganda, through Kenya (Younger 2010:201). From this time the Indian presence became permanent in East Africa, establishing Indian religious traditions, including Hinduism, in East Africa (Gregory 1993). The story of Hinduism in South Africa is similar. British businesspersons, inspired by the huge profits from sugar cane cultivation and sugar production in the Caribbean and Mauritius, developed sugar plantocracies on the warm eastern coast of Natal. From 1860 plantation owners started to import indentured Indian laborers mostly from South India (Younger 2010:125–129; Kumar 2000:2) through the port of Madras. After arriving at Durban Indians were allocated to different employers, some to the railway, some to colonial government of Natal, and others to the sugar plantations in the coastal north and south regions. While some of these laborers were Christians, the majority were Hindus or Muslims. The Hindus established their temples and shrines wherever they settled. Some of them were rehired into the system when their contracts ended. Others moved in many different directions as they found opportunities after freeing themselves. Some moved into rural areas to take up gardening and trading in fruits and vegetables, others survived in all possible livelihoods (Kumar 2000:3). Traders, most of whom held British passports, arrived later from Gujarat and began trading and supplying groceries and other items to Indians and blacks. After the indenture contract the former indentured and the merchant class began small trading enterprises where their interests clashed with those of European merchants (Younger 2010:127–143; Kumar 2000:3–5). A number of shops in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, are owned and run by persons of Sindhi-Indian origin, members of a well-established and respected business community fully integrated into Ghanaian society yet retaining a strong sense of its Sindhi-Indian roots. Although some members of this community visit the local Hindu temples, especially during important Hindu festivals, or at the invitation of the gurus in charge, the majority of worshippers in the Ghanaian temples are locals. Again, this pattern represents a departure from the situation in East and South Africa, where the bulk of the worshipping populations is descendants of the original Indian indentured laborers. Younger describes how the Kutchi-speaking Ismaili Muslims from Gujarat, the initial group of traders to settle in East Africa, established a pattern of caste religion which

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subsequent followers copied (Younger 2010:220–223). In terms of religious practice the members of this group kept to themselves because they had “a secret ritual life” (Younger 2010:220–223). As a result, the Gujarati caste communities that subsequently joined them in trade also tended to develop self-contained caste worshipping groups. While caste consciousness was not as strong among those arriving from Punjab, they too followed a caste-based social pattern in East Africa (Younger 2010:201). In the context of the caste-based worship tradition that developed, the host African community was an “outsider” community. This perception excluded Africans from Hindu temple life (Younger 2010:203). Only after independence of these nations (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) were attempts made by Hindu-worshiping communities to establish relationships with the local populations. The cultural interchanges between the African majority and Hindus resulting from these post-independence encounters encouraged some neo-Hindu missionary movements to extend missionary activities to East and South Africa. The notable groups in East Africa are the Ananda Marga, the Brahma Kumaris and the Hare Krishnas (Younger 2010:203–225). In South Africa, the success of reforms inspired by the Arya Samaj demonstrated an appeal for non-traditional Hindu worship forms, leading to the influx of more modern forms of Hindu worship in which some Africans currently participate. Groups such as the Hare Krishna, the Divine life society, The Ramakrishna center and the Satya Sai Baba are among the most active neo-Hindu groups in South Africa currently (Younger 2010:203–225). The Ghanaian Hindu experience also departs from the general pattern underlying the migration of Hinduism into other corners of the British Empire outside of Africa, such as Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. In these places the influx of Indian labor triggered the flow of Indian traders, and as they adopted these lands as their homelands, they transplanted their Hindu religious practices. The post-colonial spread of Hinduism overseas especially from the 1960s demonstrates this same linkage between the emergence of East Indian diasporas and the presence of Hindu worshipping communities. In places such as the United States, UK, Canada, Germany and countries of Northern Europe such as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and Australasia, Hindu temples furnish meaningful contexts for revitalizing, creating, or maintaining a sense of specific Hindu ethnic identities. Some of these communities are Hindus involved in secondary migrations from their adopted homelands in East Africa, Guyana, Fiji, South Africa, Jamaica, and Trinidad, who need to define their own specific sense of Hindu ethnic identity when they meet Hindus coming directly from India.



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Finally the religious flow that originated Hindu beliefs and practices in Ghana demonstrates a reversal of the pattern involved in the migration of Islam and Christianity, earlier outside religions currently established in Ghana and the rest of Africa. The native bearers of these traditions through trade, colonization, war, or direct missionary work transplanted them into African communities and only after they had established firm roots in their African host communities did local people begin to sponsor local versions. In the case of Ghana’s Hinduism, local people were sometimes the first to found Hindu temples through their own spiritual initiatives, building on the thriving local Hindu religious culture. Only in later years did some of these founders establish linkages with gurus in India. Drawn by the local appeal for Hinduism some Hindu missionaries also arrived on the local scene to establish temples. The Field and the Fieldwork In ethnography the field is where the people in a study are located. Describing a field is easy when the respondents live in the same area. But when they live in far-flung places it becomes difficult to describe the field in very specific terms. The respondents in this study come from towns and villages all over southern Ghana. Though sometimes I traveled to their towns and villages to conduct interviews, I met and interviewed most of them in their temples in Accra. For this reason I describe my field mainly in terms of the locations of the temples. These are Medie, the locus of the Hare Krishna temple, and Odorkor, the home of the Hindu Monastery of Africa. Medie A community of about 3000 people from different ethnic units in Ghana, Medie is about twenty kilometers northwest of Accra. A small village in the 1960s, Medie grew rapidly in the ’70s and ’80s as many inhabitants of Accra settled there, trading Accra’s crowded living conditions and high rents for the quietude of a countryside location. As more people migrated to Medie, pressure on the land forced the later arrivals to settle at the outskirts, necessitating the divisions of Medie Newtown (the newly settled portion) and Medie Village (the earlier community). The hub of Medie’s social and business life, Medie Newtown has many chop bars (local eateries),

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palm wine bars, modern restaurants, video houses, and a market that bustles continuously with life till the midnight hours. While Medie Village and Medie Newtown have electricity, only those who can afford it have wired their houses. Piped water is also available but again only those who can afford it have it available in their homes and often these people sell water to neighbors. There are a few public taps in central locations. But many of these are often dry resulting in people having to depend on streams and wells, which are not always safe, for their drinking water. Most of the women who live in Medie earn their living from smallscale production and distribution. Some are farmers who grow corn, cassava, other staples, and vegetables to feed their families. They often sell the rest of the produce to buy meat or pay their children’s school fees and to buy other household needs. Many of the young men in the village work on a pineapple plantation in the northern part. A small number of people work in the formal economic sector: in government employment and private firms in the city of Accra. Others are self-employed as fitters, hawkers, farmers and hunters. Some women sell palm wine tapped by their husbands. Medie is a very fascinating kaleidoscope of religious activity. Christianity has the strongest presence and there are mission-established churches as well as indigenous Pentecostal churches. There are other religions, however. There is also a mosque, where Muslims worship and as is the situation in most Ghanaian communities, people in Medie still believe in traditional gods, ancestors, witchcraft, and sorcery. The village is also the headquarters of the “Center for the Awareness of African Spirituality,” created by a renowned national traditional drummer in the 1990s. Administratively Medie is in the Ga-west Municipal district of the Greater Accra region and it is headed by the district assemblyman. Medie’s political structures, however, reflect the influence of both the modern system of government and the traditional system. The traditional chief, queen mother, their agents, and religious leaders play important political roles in the community. For instance the Medie chief and the queen mother sit on various committees that attend to the welfare of Medie and work hand in hand with state law enforcement agents like the police to maintain order in the community.



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Odorkor Odorkor lies at the western end of Accra, and is within walking distance from the busy commercial district of Kaneshie. It has a population of about 12,000 people. Odorkor is more urbanized than Medie and is perpetually bustling with activity. Shops, restaurants, hotels, cinema, and video houses line the sides of Odorkor’s main streets. Houses in Odorkor are more modern and demonstrate the influence of European and American architecture. But Odorkor is also a place of striking contrasts. It is common to find clusters of huts bordered by Hollywood-style mansions in parts of Odorkor. Compound houses are common. Often landlords lease them out to individuals and families or relatives. It is common to find about five different families crowded in a compound house with rooms meant to be used as kitchens converted into temporary bedrooms at night. Water runs through taps in most homes and almost everybody has electricity in the home. The people of Odorkor are predominantly from the Ga-speaking ethnic group. But like elsewhere in Accra other ethnic groups especially Akan, Ewe people, and migrants from northern Ghana live in Odorkor too. Odorkor is crowded and very poorly drained. When it rains the roads and streets become flooded and earth roads become muddy and sticky, sometimes rendering them impassable. Like most crowded urban places in Ghana, the air in Odorkor is sometimes filled with stench. This is a result of poor sanitation. In many places there are dirty gutters choked up with overgrown bushes and rubbish due to years of neglect from poorly paid city maintenance workers. People from all social categories live in Odorkor. There are affluent people such as doctors, lawyers, professors, prominent businessmen, and key government officials. There are also factory workers, teachers, clerks, messengers, students, sanitary workers, and laborers. Most residents of Odorkor work in downtown Accra and commute to work and back every day. But others work in and around Odorkor itself. Most of the women are petty traders, palm wine sellers, drink and chop bar owners, and seamstresses. Odorkor is an important educational center with junior and senior secondary schools and vocational and technical institutions. It is also religiously pluralistic. Christianity is the dominant religion and all the mainline Christian churches in Ghana are represented in Odorkor. There are spiritual churches and prayer homes too. In the past decade or two

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Odorkor has witnessed a proliferation of Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. Odorkor has Mosques that serve the Muslim community. The belief in gods and other traditional religious beliefs are still strong among the people of Odorkor and they still visit priests and priestesses at shrines and healing centers for spiritual protection. Although most people in Odorkor depend on the nearby city of Kaneshi, a hub of Accra’s trading activities, for their needs, Odorkor has its own market located in the central part and women are the mainstay of the trade in Odorkor. In the daytime they sell foodstuffs and everyday goods. But in the evenings they sell cooked food. Also, there are stalls set outside individuals’ houses selling a variety of consumer items; things that people need. Corn mills, hairdressing saloons, seamstresses, and cloth sellers are also found everywhere in Odorkor. Administratively Odorkor is under the Kaneshie district. An elected official represents Odorkor in the house of parliament. But the chief and queen mother also work hand in hand with the local government authorities in the dispensation of justice and the maintenance of law and order in Odorkor. While my interest in Hindu worship in Ghana and my observation of the manifestations of Hindu belief and practice date as far back as my years as an elementary school student in the eastern region of Ghana in the mid-1970s and intensified when I attended college in Accra in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the vast majority of field and archival research contained in this work was carried out during the summer of 1999. Four additional weeks of field research carried out in the summer of 2009 was made possible by a summer grant from Florida International University. Thus even though I make reference to incidents I witnessed before and after, the ethnographic present refers mainly to 1999.9 The ethnographic research involved interviews with worshippers of the Hare Krishna community and the Hindu Monastery of Africa and participation in their religious and social activities. Some factors determined my choice of these communities as the focus of this study. First, they have the largest followings of Ghanaian Hindus. Secondly, they represent two different schools of Hinduism, the Hare Krishna representing Vaishnavism and the Hindu Monastery of Africa representing Shaivism. Thirdly, the temples represent two strands of Hindu religious practice, the Hare Krishna representing 9 I visited both Temples in the summer of 2004 and 2012. Even though I gathered some data these visits were occurred during brief vacations in Ghana and not research visits per say.



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the devotional strand and the monastery, the ascetic strand, even though they all practice aspects of both strands. Fourthly, the monastery was indigenously inspired while the Hare Krishna was introduced through foreign missionary activity. Put together, these communities demonstrate elements that complement each other and this helps us to understand a broader range of issues pertaining to the Hindu situation in Ghana. During the fieldwork I spoke to a large number of members of the two temples as well as observers, including local scholars. I attended a great number of the temples’ ritual activities. I tape-recorded sermons and scriptural discussions at Gita classes and satsangs, and interviews. Most of these were in the local dialects of Twi, Ga, Ewe, and Fante, all of which I understand clearly and speak fluently. I am fully responsible for the interpretations I offer in the study. Yet, because I think it is crucial to represent the voices of those with whom I interacted, I reproduce recorded conversations and my respondents’ views extensively throughout the book. This is also a way of inviting my readers to be part of the field experience so that they will be empowered to evaluate the validity of my interpretations (Meyer 1999:xxiv). Aside from the names of the leaders of the two temples all names used in the book are pseudonyms. How this Book is Organized An understanding of Hinduism’s history in Ghana is a sine qua non for explaining its attraction to Ghanaian worshippers. In Chapter 1, I present an ethno-historical account of Ghana’s Hinduism showing how it originated and how its relevance in Ghana has shifted over the years in response to people’s religio-cultural-moral and political needs in the context of changing socio-political and economic circumstances in Ghana. I suggest that Hinduism originated in a synthesis between Ghanaian cultural notions about exotic spirits and narratives demonstrating the power of Hindu spirits, and has over the years accumulated many new meanings, which Ghanaians currently deploy in engaging their contemporary modern and thoroughly globalized world. The next two chapters of the book offer detailed descriptions of the Hindu Monastery of Africa. Chapter 2 traces the temple to its Indian Hindu backgrounds and its origins in Ghana and offers an account of the characteristics of the temple’s membership, discourse and daily operations. Chapter 3 is devoted to a discussion of the monastery’s ritual practices. Chapter 4 looks at the tradition

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of the Radha Govinda Temple, discussing its history, membership characteristics and discourse. Chapter 5 continues the discussion on the Radha Govinda temple by looking at the community’s rituals. In chapter 6, I offer analytical accounts of the mechanisms the two temples deploy in spreading their influence in Ghana. In chapter 7, I report conversion narratives of selected members of the two temples. I show how Hindu worshippers of these two temples in Ghana link their decisions to either join or remain as members of their Hindu communities to their daily life situations, and their understandings of the religion’s relevance. Chapter 8 concludes the book with a brief discussion, bringing together various strands of the key themes that run through my main findings in the study.

CHAPTER ONE

GHANA’S HINDU RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE Jacob K (21) lived in Peki Avetile, in the home of his maternal grandmother . . . His paternal grandfather had been a juju man (that is, dzoto). After the death of his grandfather Jacob’s family members wanted him to take charge of these powers. However he refused . . . The reason he did not wish to take over these powers from his grandfather was not that he was a Christian . . . but the fact that he already owned a couple of spirits from India . . . more powerful than his grandfather’s dzo. . . . He had received the Indian spirits about four years earlier, when involved in a conflict with the principal of his school . . . His strong wish to fight this teacher was one of the reasons for becoming involved with Indian spirits. He had once helped a rasta-man . . . and the man gave him an address in Bombay . . . to which he should write in order to obtain Indian spirits. Jacob was told that through these spirits he would be able to perform miracles (Meyer 1999:197).

The discussion in this chapter provides a backdrop to the developments I explore in the rest of the book. Two main themes run through the discussion. The first theme is that Ghanaians appropriated and deployed the alien Hindu worldview and practices through their own cultural ideas. To demonstrate this theme I offer an account of the origins of the Ghanaian imagination of India’s powerful magicality and the fascination with, and use of Indian spirits, which Meyer describes in her account above, locating it in the interaction between Ghanaian popular cultural notions about exotic spirits and narratives about Ghanaian people’s actual experiences of the power of Hindu gods. The second theme is that a local Hindu religious culture that emerged from this process in the 1950s and 1960s prepared the initial groundwork for the local receptivity of neo-Hindu traditions which arrived later from outside, seeking to internationalize their activities. As Ghanaian worshippers interacted with the Hindu ideas these neo-Hindu groups introduced their own world views would be transformed. I treat these phenomena in their historical contexts and over time, illuminating the multiple ways in which Hinduism has interacted with individual Ghanaian experiences as well as changing social, political and religio-cultural circumstances.

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chapter one Myths in Ghanaian Popular Imagination

At the time western academics began to study African societies in significant numbers around the middle of the last century it was assumed that oral traditions or oral cultures were becoming extinct, and that they were known to only a dying generation of old people who had access to the precolonial heritage (Ellis 1989). The idea was that with the strong influence of western modernity on African cultures the significance attached to orality was becoming a thing of the past (Ellis 1989:321–330). The research of David Bettison (1968), Steven Ellis (1989), Niels Kastfelt (1989), and Mwelwa Musambachime (1988), has not only shown that African cultures are still essentially oral, but also that oral discourses continue to wield considerable influence on people’s lives in African communities. In fact, in southern Ghana, people still give much weight to the spoken word in spite of the development and overwhelming influence of literacy. Unlike in many Western societies, where people are skeptical about information that is not written or broadcast on radio and television (Ellis 1989:321– 330), popular beliefs and other forms of information transmitted by word of mouth continue to have widespread influence on people’s actions in southern Ghana. One of the forms in which the influence of the “spoken word” is manifested in Ghana, is myths. In the discussion that follows I demonstrate how a Ghanaian myth about outside spiritual power contributes to the aura surrounding Hinduism. There are two senses in which we may understand myths. In the narrower and more standard, perhaps anthropological sense, they are sacred stories about God, the gods and ancestors, the origin and organization of the cosmos, the origins of human beings and human society as a whole. Myths reflect how communities make sense of their world, their origins, the nature and origins of their social institutions, their values, and their norms. In modern African communities indigenous myths may be recited or performed in the context of rituals. But they do not feature prominently in the daily discourse as they did in earlier “pre-modern” African societies. There is, however, a somewhat different but related form in which myths are not only prevalent but also prolific in modern Africa, or at least in southern Ghanaian communities. I use the terms myth, folk theory, and folk belief interchangeably to describe this other understanding. Myths are popularly held beliefs circulating in a variety of narrative forms in southern Ghanaian communities. Themes in Ghanaian fictional narratives such as novels, drama, local movies, folk tales, rumors, gossip,



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proverbs, everyday common sayings and forms of art may reflect these beliefs. As Obeyesekere has noted, these beliefs are also “structures of the long run” (Obeyesekere 1992:10) in that they could be attached to nonfictional narrative forms too: biographies, autobiographies, historical, and anthropological narratives. In Geertzian terms myths are “models of” and “models for reality.” Myths reflect southern Ghanaian people’ s deeply held beliefs about the world around them, humanity, the outside world, phenomena such as evil, spiritual power, its sources and access. They also reflect people’s real feelings and their deepest fears, and they have a profound influence on how people shape themselves to happenings around them. Myths closely resemble rumor and gossip. But they are more deeply rooted in the belief systems of southern Ghanaian communities than rumor and gossip. Rumor and gossip are only outlets for the expression of myths. An example of a southern Ghanaian myth might make things clearer. The belief that spiritual harm inflicted on a person is always caused by another person, who knows the victim well, is an enduring myth in Ghana. When misfortune befalls a person the tendency is for people to suspect “the people around,” that is, the victim’s closest friends and relatives, of causing the mishap. Even when a natural cause of the mishap is clear, for example death caused by a vehicle accident, the immediate and usual reaction is to seek the underlying spiritual cause, often someone who caused it supernaturally, among the victim’s circle of friends, relatives and acquaintances. The Akan proverb, “the insect that would sting you on your thighs must have hidden in your own loin cloth,” is an expression of this belief. So is the Akan concept of effie nipa, the notion that in all families there are members with malicious intentions who use supernatural powers to inflict harm or even kill successful relatives. Medicine men and priests or priestesses draw on this myth to effect cures of afflicted people. They demand to know the state of their patients’ relationship with “the people around.” If it is determined that this relationship went sour somewhere, the medicine man/woman recommends making peace with the person or people as the first remedy, or he/she might divine to find out if the spiritual cause of the harm came from that source. But as influential and as widespread as this belief is, it is only a popular belief, a myth. Though anecdotes and rumors often circulate about the use of divination to confirm such suspicions, these narratives for the most part cannot be (or have not been) empirically proven to be true or false.

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chapter one Myths about Spiritual Power: Sources from the Outside World

Generally speaking, “outside power,” that is, spiritual power sources from far-flung places, has a privileged place in the indigenous Ghanaian religious imagination. Just as spiritual causes of harm, such as witchcraft, sorcery, and the curse, are commonly located in close relatives and friends, the belief is that curative powers and protective symbols must be sought from “outside” or sources that the local perpetrator or agent of the supernatural harm is unfamiliar with, lest it prove ineffective. A strand of this local popular religious notion adds that, not only are far flung spirits strong, but those that cross the seas on their way to Ghana can pick up extra strength making them more efficacious compared with local powers. An endless and impenetrable medium, the sea, is said to be the home of a host of spirits, some strong, others weak. Spirits and their purveyors crossing the seas either pick up extra strength from these spiritual powers or are drained of their potencies by them. A strong spirit will “suck up” power from weaker spirits in the oceans augmenting its potency as a result. The potency of a weak spirit crossing the seas will be drained by stronger spirits in the seas. It is said of members of Ghanaian communities living overseas that they cannot be attacked by witches from the homeland, for a witch cannot fly over the seas and still have its powers intact since there are more powerful spirits residing in the seas to render the witch impotent. A popular Fon (and Ewe also) folk song about a powerful ritual specialist captured in Abomey and sold into slavery in the New World echoes this motif. It goes, “if Abomey Atigbli indeed still has his powers intact after crossing the seas, let him escape and come back home for us to see.” These indigenous myths about power from far-flung places underlie the appeal of religious traditions, religious personalities, and magicoreligious objects flowing in from overseas communities in southern Ghana. So deeply ingrained in the psyches of many Ghanaians is this sense of confidence in “outside powers” that even when there is an efficient ritual specialist in the immediate vicinity, it is still normal for some individuals or groups to travel far and wide (beyond the boundaries of their localities) in search of outside medicine or charms from powerful healers to cure themselves or their sick relatives. This folk theory about spiritual power is often attached to folk tales that circulate in southern Ghana. A very common theme in these stories is the falling ill of the protagonist of the story—a chief, a warlord, Kweku Ananse, the tortoise, or the hare—and the sending of emissaries to far-flung places to seek powerful medicine or medicine men with effective cures.



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Observing the Yoruba of Nigeria, Sandra Barnes notes a similar tendency in relation to what she describes as “outside knowledge:” Outside knowledge enjoyed a privileged place in this kind of religiouspolitical environment. The use and control of ritual forms . . . is a special strategy for asserting leadership. Enjoying a monopoly over the communication of these forms, particularly when knowledge of how to treat and activate them comes from outside and is therefore inaccessible to the ordinary public heightens a leader’s position. Outside knowledge helps to distance authorities so that they may conduct their duties at a greater remove from their followers. Distance can validate, enhance, legitimate, and buttress high positions . . . The goal is greater understanding, greater power, greater control over the fateful mysteries of the universe attained with a display of wisdom and sanctity that is associated with those who are familiar with the unfamiliar (Barnes 1990:265).

Similarly, it could be suggested that in the spiritual worlds of some Ghanaian communities, familiarity with the unfamiliar and untested knowledge or power is considered to be a strategic advantage. India in Popular Southern Ghanaian Imagination In popular Ghanaian opinion India has a “real” image and a “mythic” image. In terms of its real image India is considered to be a geographical and cultural space where ordinary people live, have norms and values, and go about their normal daily activities as people do anywhere else in the world. The more dominant popular view about India in Ghana, however, is a mythic view in which India is a spiritual space or a sacred land— a land filled with spirits and magical, occult, and esoteric forces, where techniques of making people spiritually potent have been developed, where knowledge beyond the human ken—the kind that would enable the bearer to unravel earthly and spiritual mysteries of our world—can be acquired. The words “India” and “Hindu” conjure up images of magical and awesome happenings such as yogis suspending in space in meditative trance, snake charmers and multiple-headed cobras emerging from pots, people floating in space, and people vanishing and reappearing. In the contemporary Ghanaian Pentecostal religious culture, India is the epitome of evil and the occult. It is the abode of dark satanic forces; some kind of “Mecca” where witches and juju men (sorcerers) go to rejuvenate their evil and magical powers. Meyer’s article featuring a popular story circulating in the Pentecostal community in Ghana, in which Alice, a witch, spiritually initiates her spouse, Eni, into “the Occult Society in India” echoes this

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motif (Meyer 1995:242). A woman believed to possess effective witchcraft powers is said to “glow like a witch from India.” Indeed among the Peki– Ewe of southern Ghana the category “India witchcraft” is the epitome of witchcraft power. The notion of cultivating spiritual potency and ability is well known in indigenous Ghanaian tradition and there are traditional aspirations towards spiritual potency. India is reputed to be a place (sometimes the place) where spiritual potency could be cultivated. Stories about local medicine men and women traveling to India to “re-charge” their healing powers float around in almost every village in Ghana. These stories predate the presence of Hindu religious institutions in Ghana. And although Hindu religious groups in Ghana often try to portray a different image of the religion, the influence of these earlier notions remains a strong factor in shaping people’s understandings and responses to Hinduism. In other words, the mythic images of India are superimposed on Hinduism in Ghana. The imputing of superior magico-spiritual power to Indian spirits and other Indian religious symbols in Ghana can in part be explained by the fact that India, their birthplace, is an “outside” and they survived the journey across the seas into Ghana. However, local notions about the powerful magicality of the Hindu religion can also be traced to the meanings some local people, informed by the myth of the superior potency of “outside powers” come to attach to three local genres of narratives on India. These are the stories featuring alleged real experiences with the superior powers of Hindu spirits: esoteric truths of India told by Ghanaian Second World War veterans, Indian films, and depictions of India in stories told by “Professor Hindus.” “Professor Hindus” are purveyors of “Magik,” a category of Ghanaian popular entertainment. Because of the association of India with magic in Ghana and because the magicians themselves claimed they acquired their techniques from India, they became known as “Professors of Hindu power” or simply as “Professor Hindus.” Mami Wata’s Indian Origins and the Belief in Hindu Magical Power The earliest evidence to date of the influence of Hindu beliefs on West African communities comes from Henry Drewal, who describes how Gujarati traders settling at various points on West Africa’s Atlantic coastline by the First World War introduced rituals related to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and patroness of merchants, into local communities (Drewal 1988:176). According to Drewal, these experiences had an impact



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on beliefs in relation to Mami Wata, the African water goddess worshipped throughout west and central Africa, and noted for her superior magical powers. Just as followers of Mami Wata in West African communities do, these Gujarati merchants would place their accounts books or ledgers in the shrines of Lakshmi as objects of veneration (Drewal 1988:171–177). Also, in a practice strikingly similar to those that occur during some Mami Wata festivals, the Indian traders would place terra cotta effigies of Lakshmi in pails of water at the end of their yearly festivals (Drewal 1988:171–177). Apparently the local observers understood Lakshmi in terms of their experience with Mami Wata and identified the latter with the Hindu religion. Mami Wata’s association with wealth and luxury, attributes of Lakshmi, bolstered this perception. A genre of popular religious stories featuring the mystical journeys of magicians, powerful local medicine men and women, charm makers, and witches who travel from Ghanaian villages to India for the purpose of revamping their powers or to consult with Indian spiritual agents, still circulates in Ghana, telling of how Mami Wata ferries these local purveyors of spiritual power across the oceans to their destination in India. In Meyer’s article (in which Alice, a witch, spiritually initiates her spouse, Eni, into “the Occult Society in India”) Mami Wata carries the occult agents on her back and follows the “under-sea” routes that connect Ghana to India. Drewal notes how the proliferation of Hindu images showing bindu (bindi if the person is female) on people’s foreheads inspired the belief that Mami Wata puts distinctive marks on her chosen devotees (1988:175–181). He also describes how the Togolese effigy of Nimayo, a guardian Mami Wata spirit, captures a Hindu ritual gesture (mudra) and depicts the figure seated in lotus posture. The lotus posture, Nimayo’s forehead mark, her piled hairdo, together with a hooded cobra shown above her shoulder, Drewal argues, reinforce devotees’ sense of the link between Mami Wata and India (1988:179). The local belief that Mami Wata and her magical prowess originated in India may have contributed something to the wonder-working magico-religious power many people in Ghana associate with Hindu religious traditions. In the course of my fieldwork in Accra I came across observers who referred to devotees of the Hare Krishna community as “the Mami Wata people.” Yet, aside from Drewal’s account, there is no evidence to date of a Hindu presence in Ghana by World War 1 and we are not sure that Drewal’s account speaks to a Gold Coast Hindu experience. For clues to how images of India’s magicality filtered into Ghana, the literature on the involvement of Ghanaian soldiers in the Second World War, and interviews with some of these soldiers would seem to be more reliable sources.

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chapter one Wartime Narratives and Local Belief in Hindu Spirits

Small colonial armies expanded rapidly during the Second World War as the Allied war effort called for the use of men and women from the colonies in Africa. These armies played crucial roles as combatants as well as non-combatant labor, such as laborers, drivers, guards and orderlies (Rathbone and Killingray 1986:14). In British-controlled territories, British policy initially restricted African soldiers to campaigns within the continent. Italy’s entry into the war, especially the emergence of the Vichy regime, accelerated British military recruiting in the colonies (Rathbone and Killingray 1986:14). African troops from the Sudan, East Africa, West Africa, and South Africa were employed against the black Italian colonial army in Somalia and Ethiopia. But from 1942 to 1947, British policy changed in response to the demands of the times and African soldiers began to engage in campaigns outside the continent. Of two British African colonial armies, the King’s African Rifles and the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), involved in the Second World War, the latter is more relevant to the discussion presented here. Created by the British colonial administration in 1897 to subjugate internal rebellions in the colonies and defend the empire inside and outside Africa, the Royal West African Frontier Force was made up of soldiers recruited mainly from the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia (Hettne 1980:174). During the Second World War, the Gold Coast, the primary training site of this army, supplied the largest number of colonial soldiers for the allied armies (Cole 1987:387). The Gold Coast was also the assembly “stage” for fighter planes and bombers, which were then transported to the war fronts in Egypt and the Middle East (Cole 1987:387). The Royal West African Frontier Force provided back-up for allied forces during military campaigns in Burma (Rathbone and Killingray 1986:14). It has been recorded that some 65,000 Ghanaians served in the Royal West African Frontier Force under British officers during the Second World War. Since India was the transit and refueling point for those en route to Burma, about 30,000 served in India where they encountered aspects of Hindu culture and religion (Israel 1987:159; Holbrook 1985:358). Some Second World War veterans I interviewed during my fieldwork revealed that though they were mainly engaged in campaigns in Burma they often lived for considerable periods in small Indian and Sri Lankan villages during the war. During an evening conversation with Gyebi, one of my informants, in his home at Tema, he told me the story of Nana Awuah Amoh, a man



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from his village of Larteh, who had returned from the Second World War to form a Hindu healing home in the village. I had just completed three weeks of library and archival research pouring through documents on Ghanaian soldiers who fought in the war, coming away with nothing about the possible involvement of these soldiers in the spread of Hindu religious practices in Ghana, so Gyebi’s story intrigued me greatly. Gyebi also directed me to the “Hindu” healer and allowed his wife to accompany me on my first visit to Larteh. During these visits to Larteh I met with and interviewed other Second World War soldiers. Though aging, the soldiers still have vivid memories of their wartime experiences. Their stories provided keen insights into the crucial role returnee soldiers from the Second World War played in introducing beliefs about Hindu spirits into their communities. The village of Larteh itself emerged from the interviews as an important center in which southern Ghanaian beliefs about India crystallized. Larteh Larteh lies some thirty miles northeast of Accra in the Akwapim hills, a chain of hills and ridges some 1500 feet above sea level, and has a resident population of about 9000 people. One of the villages that make up the state of Akwapim in the Eastern region of Ghana, Larteh has a long history as an important spiritual center. It is the location of the shrine of Akonedi, a famous local deity. Coming from far-flung places in the entire region of West Africa, clients and visitors of Akonedi and her associate deities flock to Larteh every day. They consult with Akonedi on a vast array of spiritual and mundane problems (Nukunya 1992:90). Driving to Larteh, I saw people trudging along the mountain footpaths to the shrine, carrying live animals such as fowls, goats, and sheep on their heads to be sacrificed to the deity. But Larteh is also an important center of Christianity1 in Ghana. It is one of the earliest missionary fields in southern Ghana. The Basel missionary, Andreas Riis, moved the headquarters of the Basel mission in the 1840s from Osu in Accra to Akropong, two miles from Larteh, where the cool mountain climate and absence of mosquitoes made living conditions more amenable (Clark 1986:41). Despite and perhaps also because of the strong presence of Christianity at Larteh, it became a key player in the 1 For a detailed account of Christianity and social change in Larteh, see Brokensha’s work, Social Change at Larteh, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

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crystallization and diffusion of Hindu religious beliefs into outlying areas in southern Ghana. The Basel missionaries built schools and encouraged local people to learn to read and write, resulting in a growth in literacy at Larteh (Clark 1986:41). Because the colonial government preferred to enlist literate and semi-literate people into the Royal West African Frontier Force, they looked to places such as Larteh. These soldiers would learn about and experiment with aspects of Hinduism during the war and when the war ended, they would return and introduce their villages to these beliefs and practices. In the course of the war, the British colonial government embarked upon a large-scale wartime propaganda effort in the colonies. One aim of the propaganda was to rally public support and encourage locals to join the army. The impression created by the colonial administration was that, by joining the colonial army, local people were defending their homeland against possible occupation by the brutal Nazi German regime (HoldBrook 1985:358). As part of the propaganda, information about the war was broadcast in Ghanaian languages over loudspeakers in Ghanaian villages and city streets (Cole 1997:369). Roaming the country mobile film cars and vans showed footage from the war to crowds gathered in markets, community centers and village playgrounds (Cole 1997:369). The war was also the focus of public rallies and press reports. To reinforce the mass media publicity, the colonial army commissioned Concert Parties (Drama groups) to stage “propaganda plays” about the war (Cole 1997:369). Through these media forms, the Ghanaian public became aware not only of the war but the horrid details—the brutal torture and killings, and the suffering, hunger and starvation—which the propaganda made a point of stressing, making Ghanaian town-folks and villagers wonder how someone could survive such a war. Certainly indigenous notions of war informed such curiosities. War in the indigenous imagination and practice of Ghanaian communities is largely a spiritual affair. Achieving victory in a battle or a war did not depend exclusively on a group’s superior war strategies or the strength and endurance of its army. Individual soldiers and the army as a group must secure the protection of supernatural forces before engaging in combat. The acquisition of protective war medicine (Ewe: edzo or Akan: eduro) to ensure the invisibility of the soldier, neutralize the effects of enemies’ weapons, or enable the soldier to catch bullets or arrows, was a crucial component of preparing for war. Also, often a medicine man accompanied warriors to battlegrounds to replenish their spiritual power sources should these become drained of their potency during combat. In the minds of the Ghanaian public then, it would require more than luck or



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sheer bravado for their fellow countrymen in the colonial army to survive the Second World War. The sense was that the soldiers must have had some supernatural backing and must have returned repeatedly to a source to replenish their store of power during periods of the war. The public was curious to learn something about the nature of this supernatural backing. Opanin Gyedu, one of the veterans I interviewed, vividly captures the mood at that time in his narrative about his return home after the war: In the evening when all work was done, the elders would come. “Kweku” they would call me. “Tell us what you have brought back with you . . . You couldn’t have survived this war without anything [magico-religious protection]. Tell us your story.” We would drink palm wine and talk about the war and my stories amazed them. And when I would finish they would say to me, “there must be something [some powers] at the place where you fought . . . You brought some of these with you.” All over the village there were stories. Every family wanted to hear something . . . They did not expect that we would live and come back to the village (Interview in English).

Curiosity and speculation characterized the immediate post World War Two environment in southern Ghana, furnishing a breeding ground for stories, which easily circulated among a Ghanaian public eager to find answers to questions about the War—questions pertaining to how the soldiers who lived to recount their war times experiences, had survived the war.2 While some of the Second World War survivors I interviewed were reluctant to divulge information about their personal use of protective charms during the war, most of them recounted miraculous survival stories of others in which themes on the protective powers of magicoreligious symbols acquired from Burmese, Sri Lankan, and Indian villages featured prominently. A theme that emerged from my interviews is that firsthand accounts of how the soldiers deployed the supernatural forces imbued in the magico-religious Hindu symbols in their survival of the war appealed powerfully to the local imagination. Furthermore, the enthusiasm the public showed for such stories made the narrators even more eager to stress the magico-religious capabilities of Hindu symbols (charms and medicines). Surviving war-times narratives are still told in Larteh. In one story featuring the powers of Shiva, the Hindu deity, a soldier from the village of Larteh had a Shiva devotee for a lover during the war. The lover

2 Personal communication with Opanin Yaw Larbi, an ex-soldier of World War II at Larteh.

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introduced the soldier to Shiva worship and taught him to chant Om, a symbolic mystical Hindu utterance, whenever he was in danger. According to the story, any time the fighting would become fierce and the soldier would sense that the situation was getting out of hand he would chant “Om” three times and miraculously the tide would begin to turn in his favor. Attributing his surviving the war to the saving power of Om, on his return, the soldier taught his family and friends the Om chant and encouraged them to chant each time they confronted a crisis. Accounts of the soldier’s war escapades in India and Burma spread all over the villages of Larteh and soon the belief that Om is an Indian magical symbol capable of mysteriously rescuing people during times of crisis became prevalent in Larteh. Each time people would confront with a crisis situation, they would chant Om three times and they believed they were saved because of its magical effect. “Old man” Gyebi, one of my respondents in Larteh, recounted his personal experience of the protective powers of “Om” himself when it saved him from a witch, in Twi: I have experienced the powers of Om before, filifili [face to face]. I was younger then and lived in Ayikuma, near this village [Larteh]. It was early one morning in the Harmattan season [dry spell]. And there was no water anywhere. All the streams had dried up. So you had to wake up earlier than others and walk all the way to the bank of a stream and wait for water to well up through the bedrock. That day I was up by 2 a.m. and on my way. But that was too early. On my way I met an old man who warned me: “Hei, where are you going this early? Go home! There are evil spirits hovering around at this hour. Go back home!’ But I did not heed his advice. I got to the riverside and just as I bent down and took up my calabash to fetch the water, what did I see standing before me? The apparition of an old lady! She looked like someone I knew though I could not remember where I had seen her before. She just stood there, gazing at me. It was still dark but I was close enough to note that her eyes were bloodshot. Then I froze and I began to sweat . . . I was shaking like a leaf. That was when I remembered the Om. “Om, Om, Om,” I chanted three times. She took two steps back. “Om, Om, Om,” I chanted again, this time louder. She walked away slowly at first, and then I did not see her again. She vanished behind the bushes. And that was how I knew that this Om word is indeed powerful. I had met with a witch. Maybe that night she had no victims. So she was angry. Had I not chanted the Om word, she would have harmed me. I could not even draw the water again . . . I ran away. The next day I was sick the entire day, I had sores all over on my lips [traditional sign that one has encountered an evil spirit]. This made me more certain that I had encountered an evil spirit. It was the Om chant that saved me.

Another soldier, a man called “I swear by my nose,” also featured prominently in many stories. He was described as a man with a broken nose. According to the stories, “I swear by my nose” had also served in the



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colonial army and had returned from the war deformed as a result of injuries he sustained during the battles. It was said that his deformities, particularly his broken nose, were a source of magical powers. The fact that he spoke in a nasal tone, a trait associated with spirits in southern Ghana, reinforced this belief. But it was said that “I swear by my nose,” who was often publicly humiliated because of his deformity, cursed people who made fun of him, uttering the words “I swear by my nose, you will die” and the individuals had died not long after the curse. The narrators tacitly suggested that “I swear by my nose,” must have obtained such effective medicine from Indian gods. Similar stories about the powerful magicality of India circulate in many southern Ghanaian villages and I would hear many from my own village of Peki while growing up. One theme that recurs in these stories is the association of mysterious and mystical powers with India and the belief that the returnee soldiers brought some of the powers back with them into their Ghanaian communities. In the years that followed the end of the war, as these ideas crystallized and spread throughout southern Ghana, specific attention began to focus on India as a sacred land filled with powerful deities and occult forces. The words “India” and “Hindu” became synonymous with magic thereafter. The formation of Hindu religious groups was another way through which the returnee soldiers introduced ideas about India and Hindu practices into Ghana. Nana Awuah Amoh’s healing home, which I mentioned earlier, is one of such groups. Awuah Amoh, a chief of one of the subdivisions of Larteh, was in the Royal West African Frontier Force from 1939 to 1945. He fought in Burma and lived in India where he became acquainted with Hindu and Buddhist religious practices, especially yoga. Nana Amoh is reputed for introducing powerful charms (eduro in Akan) from India into Larteh. It is said that on his return from the war he would gather groups of people and teach them about yoga. In the years following his return he founded a meditation and healing community called the Larteh Mystical Prayer and Healing Home. As the name of his healing home suggests, Amoh’s main occupation is healing through yogic practices. Nana Amoh explained that he does not teach all the people yoga so that they may use it to sustain their health. Rather, through his own attainment in the practice of yoga he is able to transfer disease from clients to himself and then dispose of the ailments.3

3 Personal communication with Nana Amoh, also called “Oblamus”, at his home in Larteh and with Professor Elom Dovlo of the University of Ghana.

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Some of the war stories or their re-tellings may have been fabrications or exaggerations of actual events. But to the Ghanaian public these accounts were factual. The strong influence of Indian films reinforced this belief, though in the present situation in southern Ghana, where, unlike northern Nigeria and Senegal where there is a fascination with Bollywood films (Vander Steene 2008; Larkin 1997), indigenous videos informed largely by pentecostalite popular culture are now screened at the big cinema houses, providing a popular alternative to imported cinema (Meyer 2003). In Accra only television stations such as TV3, Metro TV and GTV currently show Indian movies regularly. The Indian films these stations show, however, borrow heavily from styles of Western film genres unlike the older genres of Indian films my respondents described watching in the 1960s and 70s, a period during which Indian movies were more popular and shown at big cinema halls all over the country. Indian Cinema The introduction of cinema in India started in 1896 with the Lumiere Brothers screening of six silent short films (Joshi 2001:14–15). These films inspired Harischandra Sakharam Bhatvadekar, a Bombay photographer, to make India’s first indigenous documentary film in 1901 (Joshi 2001:14–15). Thrilled by this new medium, Jamsetji Framji Madan, a Parsi businessman ordered cinema projectors from Pathe (France) and sponsored the construction of bioscope tents at locations in Bombay, where films were screened to local audiences. By 1910 the watching of films in cinema halls of major Indian cities and touring bioscopes had become a feature of India’s popular entertainment. All the same it was not until 1913 that the mass local film production in India really got underway. That year Dadasaheb Phalke released his first silent film entitled “Raja Harishchandra” (Joshi 2001:16–17). The mass appeal the release of Raja Harishchandra garnered, inspired many local Indian actors, mostly men, to enter the production of silent movies. Although drama drawing on themes from India’s, history and daily social life became quite popular at this time, mythological subjects dominated the silent movie genre era. The narrative of Raja Harischandra, which featured a legendary King of Ancient India, whose life exemplified the pursuit of ideal truth, modeled the trajectory of this genre of Indian movies (Joshi 2001:16). By the 1930s, a rapidly expanding Indian movie industry occasioned by the proliferation of local studios started making talking or sound movies. The 1950’s witnessed the



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introduction of color films, though some people continued to follow black and white films till the mid-1960s. As these films were primarily for entertainment and escape from the drudgery of daily life for the audience, story plots would contain a little of everything (masala)—“romance,” “comedy,” “melodrama,” and “tragedy” with folk music and songs from India’s cultural past providing important backdrop (Joshi 2001:18–21). Indian Cinema in Ghana Cinema was introduced to the Gold Coast in the 1920s by private European businesspersons, who established cinema houses or Mikados in big towns and cities such as Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi and sometimes employed vans to tour the countryside showing films to audiences (Meyer 2003:204). According to archival sources, these films were of the silent mythological genre that came from India and they were shown to audiences in chapters over several nights (Meyer 2003:327). By the middle of the 1930s a number of independent mobile cinema operators started to show films in the cocoa-growing forest belt of Ghana where an emerging cash economy and profits from the sale of cocoa provided people with enough funds to pay for this new entertainment form (Meyer 2003:204). A Hindu Sindhi businessman called Nankani would soon arrive on the scene to capitalize on the local demand for Indian cinema in Ghana and monopolize its importation, distribution, and consumption. Hindu Sindhis come from the province of Sind, which was the northwesternmost province of British India from 1843 to 1947; with India’s independence and partition in 1947 Sind became part of the modern nation of Pakistan. After the partition some Sindhis fled the “fledgling” Pakistan to India (Falzon 2001). Others migrated out of the subcontinent in search of greener pastures (Falzon 2001). Many of them settled in places such as Malta, where they found congenial conditions for the pursuit of business ventures. Nankani blazed the trail for a small population of Sindhi mercantile families, who would come to settle in Ghanaian communities. Nankani,4 had arrived in Ghana from Sindh long before the partition (in the early 1930s), sponsored by an Indian trading firm, but had decided

4 The story of Nankani’s migration to Ghana was told to my research assistant by his son, Manu.

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to settle there because of the political and social strife that occasioned the years leading to the Partition of India and immediately afterwards. During the first twelve years of his stay he returned to India only twice: the first time to marry, and the second to relocate his mother to Ghana after the partition. Initially Nankani settled in the city of Cape Coast along the Atlantic coast of Ghana, but later moved inland to Kumasi to set up a number of trading companies. In the wake of the chaos preceding the partitioning of India, Nankani encouraged his family members, cousins, friends and acquaintances looking for greener pastures outside of Sind and India to join him in his business ventures in Ghana. Nankani formed a partnership with his brothers and cousins in Ghana; together they traded in an assortment of goods ranging from items for domestic use, to electrical gadgets and building materials. These were imported from Europe and sold in stores established all over Ghana. Later they turned to the importation and local distribution of Hindu cinema. The 1940s represented a landmark era in Ghana’s cinema history. From this time cinema began to enjoy governmental sponsorship, leading to its rapid expansion. Having come to identify film as a crucial technique for promoting colonial policies, the colonial government created the Information Services Department, an outfit responsible for producing and screening films considered suitable for the local setting (Meyer 2003:204). As part of this initiative the colonial administration also opened new cinema houses in Accra and other cities and made use of vans that would be driven into small towns and villages in the countryside to organize film shows. Communities in the countryside would gather in outdoor spaces to watch free documentary films and newsreels explaining colonial policies to them (Meyer 2003:204). The cinema industry in Ghana experienced a phenomenal growth in the post Second World War years. By now urbanites and countryside dwellers alike had developed a greater taste for cinema as an entertainment commodity. Also the relatively peaceful post-war atmosphere, increased interaction with the outside world, and in-flows of new ideas, economic prosperity, and rapid urbanization led to an increase in the taste for cinema. Even though the screening of films at this time was under the strict control of colonial administrators, independent cinema operators still had room to operate (Meyer 2003:204). By the 1950s and 60s, through the sponsorship of the independent cinema operators, Hindi films were becoming a staple in Ghana’s cinema culture. They were liked by both



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urban and village audiences.5 Seeking to expand the scope of his business and encouraged by the growth in the local taste for them among Ghanaian audiences, Nankani ventured into, and soon monopolized, the importing and distributing of Indian films in Ghana on a massive scale. He also opened a chain of cinema houses all over Ghana, where Indian films were screened to full houses of audiences every night. Ghanaian audiences found Hindi films fulfilling because they could identify with the mix of mythical, supernatural and musical imagery the films presented to them. Earlier Hindi films that were set in Mughal India had special appeal to the large Muslim population who dominate northern Ghana and Zongos, self-contained quarters in southern Ghana in which Muslim migrants from the north often settle. While there is a disconnect between the references Indian movies often make to Indian cultural, religious and political themes and the norms and values of the southern Ghanaian viewing public, this did not seem to affect their popularity in Ghana. Similar to the northern Nigerian audiences of Hindu movies that Larkin writes about, Ghanaian audiences came to develop their own ways of interpreting and comprehending the narrative styles and genres in Indian films.6 In the course of our conversations about Hindu films during my fieldwork, the genres many of my respondents described watching seemed to be flavored heavily with themes from classical Hindu mythology, folk literature and drama, Hindu religious belief and practices, and musical styles based on Indian classical forms. They said they watched these films in the 1950s, 60s and 1970s when they were younger and they liked them because the plots and the scenes reminded them of their own lives in Ghana. They pointed to iconographies of Hindu tradition—marriage celebrations, culinary practices, costumes, daily lives and struggles of the poor, etc.—as aspects of Hindu culture and life that resonated with them. Many would describe at length scenes of beautiful sari-clad Indian girls with long hair, the songs and the way they were sung, and the way actors danced across rolling green plains and hills of the rural Indian landscape. Some respondents would hum some of the familiar tunes and mimic dancers’ moves, as they narrated the account. They seemed very familiar with Bollywood 5 Personal communication with Dr Africanus Aveh of the school of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana. 6 See Brian Larkin’s article entitled “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and The Creation of Parallel Modernities” in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 67.3 (1977):404–44.

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idols, and would recite names by rote such as Mehboob, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, and Jaya Bhaduri. Also, and more importantly, it emerged from our conversations that one of the strongest sources of appeal or fascination with Indian films was (and is) their awesome magical scenes making use of special effects. These include dramatizations of the actors’ miraculous encounters with devas often depicted as hydra-headed or hydra-handed or legged creatures, and scenes of meditating yogis floating in space. Cinematic scenes of characters vanishing from the screen and re-appearing, and of cobras issuing forth from “black” pots in response to flute music, were interpreted as expressions of Indian juju or magical power. These scenes in particular drove home the rapidly growing impression that India was indeed a land of magico-religious and awesome happenings. In this way, Hindi films reinforced earlier notions about India’s superior spiritual powers introduced into Ghanaian communities by the returnee soldiers from the Second World War. Some individuals in Ghana have a proclivity for resorting to magico-religious means to achieve ends and aspire towards the acquisition of magical powers. Depictions of magic in Indian movies greatly stimulated the imagination of such people. In villages where movies in general were rarely screened, each time villagers would have the opportunity to see a Hindi movie, people would pay particular attention to scenes that depicted “Indian juju.” Characters, scenes and narrative themes would become topics of conversation, discussion, and debates for days, even weeks, and views would spread into neighboring villages with the descriptions of the magical scenes, and the local interpretations featuring notions about the powerful Hindu spirits such as Shiva and Durga, who were sources of Hindu magical power. It became impressed on popular Ghanaian imagination that “Hindu magical power” was real. One only had to watch a Hindi film to learn this. In a conversation with Yao Manuh, a 31-year-old carpenter and a Hare Krishna devotee, in Twi, he narrated an Indian movie he saw as a child and described how it influenced his perspectives about India and Hinduism. “I went to see this movie,” he began. “It was an Indian movie called ‘Maya ma chandra.’ I was living at Cyanide (a village) in Tarkwa at this time.” “Tell me about it,” I urged him. “I cannot remember much but there was a man in it and he had p-o-w-e-r-s! I mean Hindu powers. He had t-h-r-e-e heads (he spread the digits of his fingers).” His face lit with excitement. “Was he the blowman (‘blowman’ in Ghanaian cinema culture is the star of a movie)?” I asked. “Yes, something like that. And anytime people were in danger they will chant some words and then the wind will begin to blow hard p-h-e-e-e-e-w. Then, there will be dust all over in the



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air and this blowman will just appear from nowhere to save the people.” “Waoo! (Expression of surprise),” I exclaimed excitedly. “In fact it made me view India in some way,” Manuh commented. “Like what?” I probed further. “Like there was a lot of juju and magical things and people there. Long before, we used to hear all these things. They said that, when you go to India, you will find lots of magical powers, witchcraft and others. You remember when we were young and we misbehaved, and our mothers would say to us, “You must stop behaving that way otherwise you will glow like a witch from India?’ But this movie was the first time I had seen India powers filifili, and from that time I knew that what they said about India was true. And you know what happened? From that day, any time something was going to happen to me I sensed it or I will see some sign.” “And you believe it was because of the movie you saw?” I inquired. “I don’t know, but I know that there was some power in me that had been evoked by this movie. I became interested in Indian films and India things from that time,” Manuh concluded. Another respondent, Kweku Oppong, a 46 years old Ashanti trader and staunch follower of the Hindu Monastery of Africa, narrated his experience to me in English when I visited the temple at Ashanti Mampong: When I was younger, I watched many Indian movies. Moreover, I loved those magical scenes. People would just vanish and appear again somewhere else, just like that! There was this one that I watched. It was a long time ago, so I have forgotten the title. It was about some monkey men and how they went to retrieve some lost treasures. Before they could get home, they had to cross this very wide river. We sat there wondering how they were going to cross this stream. But you know what they did? [He looked at me]. They picked some tiny pebbles, about five of them and dropped these in the stream across and before our very eyes these pebbles grew bigger and bigger in size and became a bridge! We all screamed in amazement, “shie! shie! shie!” these Indian people, they must have something! From that day, as for me, I became convinced that Indian people . . . they have a lot of magical powers. There is something in that land! And that was when I decided that I had to know more about their religion.

Padambadam, a female devotee of the Hare Krishna, also described how scenes from Indian films influenced her: I used to watch many Indian films and those wonderful acts we saw made us all view India as the place of powerful spirits. Some people believed these powers were inherently evil, so they said juju [sorcery] came from India . . . But something in me said Indian power might also be of the good kind . . . And it could be used rightly . . . So from my child hood I was always attracted to religions from India (Interview in Fante).

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And while describing his childhood, Kwesi Esel, who founded the Hindu Monastery of Africa, made allusions to the influence of Indian movies on his spiritual aspirations: And in the village we used to watch a lot of Hindu films those days . . . And when I would see the people vanish vim! And appear again like that, and then I would say to my friends . . . “Eei! This land must be full of eduro [power] . . . One day me too I will travel to this land to acquire some powers so that I could heal with it.”

Indian films are works of fiction and most of the Ghanaian viewing public is aware that the characters in the movies they watched were simply acting. All the same, Ghanaian people believe that films can be based on actual events, or that, even when they are pure fiction, the actions of the actors depict everyday life happenings in the cultural milieu in which the film was produced or based on. Thus, according to the respondents above, if Indian movies show many magical acts that must be because magic or the manifestation of forms of supernatural power is a reality of everyday life in India. The influence of Indian films on Ghanaian beliefs about India can also be seen in the anecdotes they spawned about India. One story is often told to explain the conspicuous absence of Indian athletes from international sporting activities, especially soccer, a popular sport in Ghana. The story goes that during a soccer match between India and an opponent, Indian people used their magical powers to cast a spell on their opponents and to incapacitate them. Each time the ball was shot towards the opponent’s goal post, either some mysterious clouds developed and clouded the goalkeeper’s vision or he would see a multitude of balls rushing towards him and become confused, not knowing which to prevent from entering his goal post. Eventually the opposing team conceded so many goals that the match had to be stopped. The story adds that Indian people were subsequently banned from participating in most world games because their magical powers gave them an advantage over their opponents. This story seems like a fabrication, but for people in southern Ghana where village mallams (Muslim ritual specialists or sorcerers) and other ritual specialists are consulted to spiritually incapacitate an opponent before or during a sporting competition such as a soccer match, such stories could be true. The cumulative effect of Indian movies and the anecdotes they spawned in the imagination of many southern Ghanaian people was to bolster the image of India as a land of mysterious happenings.



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“Professor Hindus”: Culturally Reproducing the India Myth By cultural reproduction, I am referring to the cultural performances by which local Ghanaian people themselves manifested the attributes assigned to Hindu power, contributing in the process to the spread of the belief in this power. The activities of a group of men dubbed “Professor Hindus” by the public sped up the cultural reproduction of beliefs about Indian power. The designation reflected people’s beliefs in their mastery over Hindu powers and other magical techniques. “Professor Hindus” were magicians-actors on the local popular entertainment scene-and they often accompanied traveling theatre companies and performed with them. For this reason the “Professor Hindu” phenomenon must be discussed in connection with the popular travel theatre also known as Concert Parties, which dominated the Ghanaian entertainment scene especially from the 1930s till the late 1970s. Sociologically rooted in the “intermediate,” “working class” and “rural agrarian” sectors of Ghana, Concert Parties are a popular form of entertainment extremely well-liked and attended (Cole 1997:366). Catherine Cole further explains their popularity in terms of their ability to make use of, and reinforce a repertory of expressive material available in everyday popular culture: “political ideas and symbols,” “slang expressions” and “traditional folklore” (Cole 1997:366–367). Unlike authochonous forms of entertainment such as drumming and dancing, singing of funeral dirges, chanting praises in honor of gods, and fireside storytelling, which were voluntary and conveyed religious and moral sentiments or meanings, Concert Party performances were “entirely secular” and for profit. Because the actors moved from place to place and enjoyed widespread popularity, Concert Parties, not only influenced, but also catalyzed the change in public consciousness in Ghana in the post-war and independence years (Cole 1997:366). Their geographical mobility enabled these actors to transmit fashion trends, “manners”, dance forms, “characters”, and “ideas” across Ghana, making the Concert Party a form of media through which information spread in colonial Ghana, in the absence of widespread literacy (Cole 1997:366). This is the context in which we must evaluate the part played by the “Professor Hindus” in demonstrating Hindu power and thereby helping to spread its influence in southern Ghana. Young Fante males, especially, those living along the Atlantic coast, started Popular theatre in the late nineteenth century by staging amateur

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plays or “concerts” modeled after European and American “variety shows” (Cole 1997:365). Mainly comedies, these performances had a huge appeal among urban coastal African audiences whose frequent interaction with Western people had nurtured in them an “appetite” for typically Western entertainment forms such as variety shows (Cole 1997:366). At first these performances were voluntary and often linked with the British Empire’s “propaganda” administered through colonial and mission-established schools. But during long school breaks the actors traveled to the emerging mining settlements and industrial centers to entertain the growing urban audiences there (Cole 1997:366). By the 1930s Concert Parties began to proliferate all over southern Ghana. Becoming popular, the comedians won “enthusiastic following” in a thriving monetized Gold Coast economy with an expanding urban population that had enough cash in their hands to afford this form of entertainment (Cole 1997:367). As these itinerant actors became “geographically mobile” and “popularly accessible”, acting and other forms of theatrical performances became easier and a lot more people took to it as source of livelihood. Furthermore, the comedies were no longer free but full time profitable money making ventures and Concert Parties were “owned and operated for profit” by independent businessmen and women, making acting a lucrative career (Cole 1997:367). By the end of the Second World War the travel theatre phenomenon was ushered into a new era and magical shows entered the popular entertainment scene and became an integral component of Concert Party performances. In the wake of the Gold Coast’s struggle to define and create a modern state in the immediate post World War II years, people became more creative. Concert Parties too came up with imaginative innovations. A new generation of performers introduced more elaborate plots, involved more characters, incorporated highlife music and a diversity of themes, and developed extensive and more complicated story lines (Cole 1997:366–367). Concert performances spanned longer periods, and to avoid monotony and boring their audiences, performers began and interspersed their scenes with other forms of entertainment such as magical performances. A “Magiki show” (as the magical performances came to be known) would precede the main “Concert,” giving the audiences something to watch while the community center or cinema halls filled up, getting them in the mood for the main event. Magicians would also fill the interludes between the scenes of a lengthy Concert performance with their dazzling acts so that the audience would not lose interest. Soon, a division of labor developed on the popular entertainment scene of southern Ghana, with



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magicians creating a niche for themselves as the specialists in techniques of magical practice. For their roles, magicians were paid part of the gate proceeds. Because of the association of India with magic in Ghana and because the magicians themselves claimed they acquired their techniques from India they became known as “Professors of Hindu power” or simply as “Professor Hindus.” I witnessed the “Professor Hindu” phenomenon as a child growing up in Ghana in the 1ate 1960s and can offer a first-hand account of this experience. We would sit in a crowded and stuffy community center often filled with rising smoke and the scent of cigarettes from smokers, anticipating the beginning of the main Concert play. The curtains on the stage would part all of a sudden, revealing a man, often bald, bearded, and bared at the chest. Sometimes he would have talismans around his waist and hold a white horsetail in one hand. He would dance for a while to traditional rhythms. Sometimes we would clap and sing alongside the drumming. He would introduce himself. Often, “Hindu,” “Bombay,” “India,” or some other Indian connotation would be prefixed or suffixed to his local name reflecting his status as a magician. Names of magicians such as Bombay Kofi, Kofi Larteh Hindu, Hindu Deago, and Kwasi India were household names in Ghanaian towns and villages. Then, he would announce what he was going to perform. The drums would beat again and his performance would begin. Performances mostly involved ingesting objects such as sharp blades, stones, chunks of wood and regurgitating an assortment of items: candies, handkerchiefs, eggs and textiles which they would distribute to the audiences. On one occasion a “Professor Hindu” apparently strangled a member of the audience and “charmed” (the local term used to describe the act of a magician resuscitating a dead person) him back to life. Some antics accompanied their performances. As they performed they would encourage us to cheer, “Hindu! Hindu! Hindu!” Sometimes, without warning, they would burst into a wild run and then stop suddenly, spring forward and gyrate their waist or jerk violently like a person possessed by a spirit. At the climax of the performance they would recite chants and verses which they invariably claimed were from Hindu scriptures. Then, they would scream “Obubuyaya! (A traditional Ghanaian chant used to evoke the presence of spirits), I conjure you up by the powers of India. Appear!” and begin to regurgitate the things they conjured up. We would scream, clap our hands and cheer excitedly. We relished the excitement of scrambling for the items they conjured up. Apart from magicians who accompanied and performed with the Concert Parties there were freelance magicians who often performed independently or in twos. They, too, captured attention with their dazzling

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magical performances. These men moved from place to place performing for audiences especially on market days when they were assured of ready audiences from crowds of sellers, buyers, travelers and other people in the busy markets. Their performances sometimes, but not always, followed an entirely different modality from their counterparts who accompanied Concert Parties. They would wait until the market was teeming with people. Then they would ring bells, sing a song or light some incense to attract attention of the market crowd and begin. Their tricks and antics were not different from those of the magicians who accompanied the concert parties but these freelance magicians also sold protective charms and amulets. They said these ritual paraphernalia were charged with “Hindu powers,” so they protected buyers from attacks by evil forces. Hardly did a market day end without any such performance. But sometimes they visited and performed in villages, too. They would stay in one village for a day or two performing and then move to the other, using community centers, markets spaces and village playgrounds for their shows. Sometimes they were peddlers of traditional medicine and used the opportunity to sell their medicines. So impressed did villagers become by these shows that they would talk about the magician for months and years after they had gone. Whether as magicians accompanying concert parties or as freelance performers, “Professor Hindus” always ended their performances with stories about their spiritual escapades in India—stories that explained the sources of their powers. A constant theme that recurred in these stories was how they traveled to India or were kidnapped by a dwarf or some other mystical being who took them to India and how they acquired their magical powers from there. It is not very clear why “Professor Hindus” always said they acquired their magical powers from India and we cannot be sure that their claims were true. It would, however, seem that in making such claims they were simply drawing on prevailing discourses on India initiated by the returnee soldiers and reinforced by Indian films. Furthermore, by making claims that they had been to India and actually acquired magical powers from there, and going on to demonstrate these claims further through their magical performances, “Professor Hindus” became living proofs that Hindu magical power really existed. Southern Ghana experienced a sudden influx of magicians in the 1960s and 1970s. As the number of people claiming to be “Professor Hindus” multiplied and as they moved from city to city, village to village or town to town performing for audiences, so did the influence of beliefs about India’s magicality spread. From about the 1960s onwards, the phrase “powers of



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India” gained currency in Ghana as a euphemism for describing phenomena people perceived as spectacular manifestation of supernatural power and ability. Children would mimic magicians in their play, claiming they had “powers from India.” Parties involved in conflict would threaten to use “Indian power” or “Hindu juju” to inflict harm on each other spiritually. Other people would boast that they were protected by “Indian powers,” and therefore were immune from any kind of spiritual attack. India became synonymous with magic, wonders, and supernatural ability and in popular opinion anything from India must be suffused with such powers. General Acheampong, a former head of state of Ghana, is even alleged to have sent a delegation to Sathya Sai Baba, a Hindu sage in India, for “Hindu powers” so that he could rule the nation forever (AsamoahGyadu 1994:106). Eastern Mysticism in Literature Also in the 1960s and 1970s there was an influx of literature about eastern mysticism in general, but in particular about Indian religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Much of this literature came from Europe and North America. The discovery of and fascination with eastern mysticism in the West spawned a good deal of writing and as Ghanaian people increasingly encountered the West through trade, travel, colonialism and cultural exchange programs much of this literature infiltrated Ghanaian communities. Many of these books were modern renditions of ancient Indian scriptural texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita. Some, too, were biographies and autobiographies of people’s actual encounters with Indian mysticism by Western, but sometimes Indian, writers. A particular popular text that captivated youth in the 1960s’ and 1970s was titled The Third Eye, by Cyril Henry Hoskin (1910–1981), who wrote under the name Lobsang Rampa. It featured accounts of his mystical experiences growing up in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. On the one hand, the appetite for such books on Eastern mysticism was reinforced by the myths about India flying around, the awe inspiring scenes people saw in Indian movies and the performances and claims of “Professor Hindus.” On the other hand, as Ghanaian people read these texts they became convinced of the beliefs about the magicality of Eastern or Indian religions and curious to experiment with Hindu spiritual symbols so that they might experience the mysteries for themselves.

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Trade was also a significant factor in bolstering the belief in Hindu magic in southern Ghana. The Kubchandanis, a mercantile family who were at the center of a thriving trade in exotic vegetables and fruits in the 1960s and later established a chain of stores (called “Glamour” in the 1970s and 1980s but currently operating as Melcom Stores) all over southern Ghana, were Sindhi Hindus, like the Nankanis. There were other successful Hindu Indian trading families also, from South Africa and Uganda, who hoped to escape from the racial discrimination of the apartheid regime and the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s, respectively, by settling in Ghana. A popular religious belief in Ghanaian and other West African communities is that exchanging goods and services, transforming value, and moving of people in and out and within markets or trading spaces, such as shops, depend primarily on the support of the specific patron deities of the market or trading space. In the absence of the backing provided by these spiritual beings, markets or trade activities can literally “wither and die” (Masquelier 2001:199). The success of East Indians in general, but specifically, the Kubchandanis, as traders in Ghana is attributed to the “Hindu magical powers” that Hindu spirits are believed to provide. Sometimes the traders encouraged this connection themselves for, as Curtin notes of Islamic traders in pre-colonial Senegambia, “it is worth a trader’s while to encourage a reputation of magical powers” (Curtin 1971:67). Similarly the Kubchandanis associate themselves with Sathya Sai Baba, the Hindu sage, famous for his miracles, whose devotion they introduced into Ghana in the 1970s (Asamoah-Gyadu 2004). They also sponsor pilgrimages to Sathya Sai Baba’s Shrine in India where Ghanaian worshippers travelled to consult with the modern Hindu saint and seek spiritual remedies to the challenges they face in life. The point of the discussion so far is that by the time neo-Hindu religious groups from outside began to appear in Ghanaian communities, there was already a pervasive belief in the potency of spiritual powers associated with Indian religious symbols. The Indian immigrant community in Ghana has community centers such as the Sri Sathya Sai Baba Center in Accra and in Kumasi where members are concentrated. These centers are designed for social interaction among members, but can also be used for worship and for gatherings during important Hindu religious festivals. Although members of the community invite their Ghanaian friends and acquaintances and spouses to participate in these religious meetings and sometimes sponsor trips to India for Ghanaians seeking to consult with Hindu holy men, they are not involved in direct proselytizing. Besides, the community is largely viewed by the local population as aloof, as its members tend to interact



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with each other more than with the local population (e.g., Sindhi only married other Sindhi). The linkages the community fosters with locals are motivated more by its business interests than by the quest to spread the Hindu faith. The role of these centers in spreading Hindu belief and practice among local worshippers in Ghana has therefore been minimal. In other words the Indian immigrant community in Ghana has contributed more to the local appeal and receptivity of Hinduism in Ghanaian communities though the Hindu films the Nankanis imported, distributed and showed to audiences at their cinema halls than through their own worship and related Hindu religious activities. Post-World War II Ghana and the Growth of Hinduism Social and political upheavals in Ghana after World War II created conditions that enhanced the local fascination with Hinduism, leading to the rise of some indigenous Hindu communities, the adoption of elements from Hindu traditions by some African Independent Churches and indigenous shrines, and the coopting of Hindu ritual practices and ritual paraphernalia into Ghanaian popular religious practices. Emboldened by their bravado during World War II, and inspired by anti-colonial protests in far-flung colonies, especially India, Ghanaian colonial soldiers who returned home after the war teamed up with post-war political organizers to challenge British control of the colony. The colony seethed with revolutionary activity as local anti-colonial protesters and colonial agents clashed, until independence came in 1957. After a brief interlude of peace and stability, the new nation plunged once more into a state of socio-political chaos as it struggled to define a sense of nationhood. Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, was overthrown in a coup de etat in 1966, after surviving a number of assassination attempts. Between 1966 and the first Rawlings revolution in 1979, there were several military coups and political assassinations. The chaos accompanying these events generated great insecurity and anxiety among Ghanaians. Because of the Ghanaian cultural tendency to explain complex situations in terms of evil supernatural agency and to remedy various existential problems through the use of religious rituals, a rise in religious activity accompanied this chaotic period. In addition to the sunsum soris or African Independent Churches, which dominated Ghana’s religious field at that time, new Christian movements sprang up like mushrooms. More important for this discussion, spiritual

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science groups of western and eastern provenance, such as Eckankar, Aetherius Society, Freemasonry, Ananda Marga, Nichiren Shoshu Sokka Gakkai International, Transcendental Meditation, and Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), which had begun to appear in Ghana by the mid-1960s, garnered more appeal during this chaotic period because of their reputation for exposing practitioners to deep spiritual knowledge, and enabling them to experience higher states of consciousness. These practices promise a practitioner’s spiritual advancement, self-fortification against evil spirits, and ability to see into the future. It is also said that through their ritual practices practitioners can draw upon esoteric forces to manipulate the course of events, especially during difficult times. Among the many top-ranking Ghanaians at this time who used the services of these movements was General Kutu Acheampong, the sixth head of state of Ghana (from 1972–1978), noted for obsessively indulging in superstitious consultations of religious agents and the acquiring of forms of spiritual power in a desperate search for solutions to Ghana’s problems and for his personal safety as the ruler (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005:122). In a sense, the spiritual science movements were the precursors of Ghana’s indigenous Hindu Temples. Because of the commonalities in the beliefs and practices of spiritual science movements and Hindu points of view, people associate spiritual science groups with Hinduism in Ghana.7 Although Nana Awuah Amoh, an ex-soldier of the Royal West African Frontier Force, had already created the yoga healing center in his home town of Larteh as early as 1946 when he returned from the war, it was the growing reputation of spiritual science movements, especially in the mid1970s, that encouraged local imitators, many of whom had already been dabbling in forms of Hindu practice, to create their own groups, which they identified invariably as Hindu groups. These imitators, indigenous ritual specialists, claimed the powers to heal, explain puzzling events, and predict the future, and said these powers came from Hindu gods or Hindu

7 Both Hindu and spiritual science groups stress the precedency of the spirit, the human ability to use the mind or words to manipulate the material world, the importance of empowering oneself by acquiring secret formulae underlying the unseen world, and the need to engage in spiritual exercises such as meditation, to gain personal spiritual advancement etc. In Ghana spiritual science groups are generically called “those Hindu worshippers.” Most members of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Hare Krishna, admitted having been members of a spiritual science group or two before joining their communities. They described these groups’ practices, however, as a less pure form of Hinduism which nevertheless prepared them for the more advanced forms they currently practice.



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spiritual techniques. They adopted Hindu gods and incorporated Hindu practices into their traditions. One of these local initiators of Hinduism in Ghana is Reverend Guru Jakarananda Amankwa, the founder of the Arcanum Nama Shivaya Hindu Mission, an indigenous Hindu group. Amankwa is said to have had an encounter with Shiva, who appeared in the guise of Mami-Wata at midnight on a beach in a coastal village in 1963. Shiva granted him a bottle of sea-water representing Hindu healing powers, equipping him with the ability to heal. It is said that under Shiva’s direction Amankwa travelled to India at a later date to study yoga under the tutorship of a sage called Swami Jyotri Mayananda. He returned in 1978 to create the Arcanum Nama Shivaya healing center and church at New Fadama, a suburb of Accra. The Hindu Monastery of Africa is another example of the indigenous Hindu groups that originated around this period, to meet a growing need for supernatural cover. Some spiritual churches as well as indigenous shrines also began to adopt Hindu gods and ritual techniques to bolster their claims to superior healing powers. For example one of these churches, the Christ Yoga Church, established by a Ghanaian called Philemon Kwasi Obiri, at a suburb of Accra called Labadi, or La, in 1968 blends Christian forms of worship with Hindu practices such as yogic meditation (Assimeng 2010:142). The Mozama Disco Christo Church, a spiritual church originated by Jehu Appiah, a Fanti who broke away from the Methodist church in 1922, adopted the Hindu god Krishna, among other icons of non-Christian religions. And in a cluster of Mami Wata healing churches which originated during this period in Half Assinni, a town located at the western end of Ghana, Krishna pairs with Mami Wata as the spiritual duo upon whom devotion is focused. A Mami wata healing community at Adome in the Volta region of Ghana was also inspired by these developments to dedicate a shrine to Shiva. Hinduism and Popular Religion In popular religious circles, a wide array of Hindu ritual paraphernalia became part of repertory of the local ritual instruments that religious functionaries and individuals use to probe the occult world for spiritual answers to their day-to-day challenges. These remain part of Ghana’s popular religion. The Bhagavad-Gita, viewed in Ghana as the “Hindu Bible,” has a growing reputation as a reservoir of wonder-working magico-

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religious power. Ritual specialists use it to determine cases during trial by ordeal rituals. In many homes that I visited during my fieldwork, devotees of Hindu gods and non-devotees alike spoke about placing the Gita and japa beads (a form of Hindu rosary) under their pillows at night to repel witches. Photos of Krishna and Shiva hang on entrance doors to “hold the witches and demons down” at the doorstep. Many homes have a Tulasi, a sacred Hindu plant (described as Krishna dua or Krishna plant) growing somewhere on the compound or hedging around them as a good luck charm and witchcraft repellant. Some individuals described at length how they would perform rituals honoring through obeisance, chant, watering, and circumambulating the sacred Tulasi, before they would begin important ventures such as business journeys, work, or a trip to the farm, to ensure constant spiritual fortification and the assurance of success in their endeavors. People would chant the Gayatri mantra, a prayer of praise believed to awaken vital energies within a person and create a protective aura, before setting out to work every day. It is said that of all Hindu mantras, the supreme and the most potent is the “great, glorious” Gayatri Mantra. Meyer’s (1999) account of popular religion in Peki in her work on rural Pentecostalism among the Ewe describes people’s encounters with spirits they imported from India for a variety of spiritual purposes. The use of handkerchiefs charged with magic-religious powers from Hindu sources as a spiritual aid during examinations is a common practice in many village schools in Ghana. These handkerchiefs are believed to conjure up the correct answers to examination questions enabling the users to score high marks. The Neo-Hindu Traditions and New Understandings of Hinduism From the mid to late seventies Ghanaian worshippers began to witness the arrival of the missionary sponsored neo-Hindu groups currently operating in the country. While these later arrivals benefitted from the local Hindu religious culture already taking shape in Ghana and the appeal the indigenous Hindu-worshipping communities had garnered, they introduced new discourses and emphasized practices which worshippers saw as speaking directly to their life situations, enhancing their sense of Hinduism’s relevance. These teachings would also begin to shape worshippers’ general outlook to life. The ISKCON made its debut in 1977. From the early years of the 1980s, missionaries of the Brahma Kumari movement started to teach Raja Yoga



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meditation and to share spiritual knowledge with local worshippers in Accra. In the absence of an official center in the country they used the homes of local sympathizers for their meetings. They would establish the Brahma Kumaris Meditation Centre at North Labone in Accra in December 1999 at the prompting of a cadre of local followers that emerged from their proselytizing activities. The center organizes regular lectures, workshops and seminars on topics such as self-development, personal empowerment, and the development of good values in schools and work places. The Arya Samaj was also established in August 1986 as the Arya Vedic Mission in Accra by Pandit Wreston Charles Ankoh, a local missionary of the movement. Ankoh was trained as a Hindu priest in a temple at Durban in South Africa by Pandit Nardev Vedaalankarji. Originating as a weekly gathering of his friends and acquaintances for satsangs, yagnas, and the study of Hindu scriptures in his home, Ankoh’s Arya Vedic Mission has expanded over the years. It disseminates its Hindu teachings across Ghana through public speaking, satsangs and the distribution of devotional literature. The Divine Light Mission Society, Transcendental Meditation, and the Sri Satya Sai Baba Center (created by the Kubchandani family, who use the Sindhi Hindu community at Osu, a suburb of Accra, for their meetings) are among the well-known neo-Hindu religious communities currently active in Ghana. Once again socio-political and economic climate in Ghana in the late 70s and early 80s created an ethos to which the discourses of these groups spoke, directing the attention of worshippers to them. In the 1970s Ghana experienced a sharp socio-economic decline characterized by the scarcity of basic necessities, rising prices of items, run-away inflation, unemployment, and a growing gap between a wealthy middle class and the poor working class. Blamed largely on bad policies of irresponsible leaders, corruption, and immoral behavior, especially of high ranking governmental officials, this situation led to Ghana’s two political revolutions. The first was a bloody coup d’état in 1979 led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry-John Rawlings. The brutality of this revolution plunged the nation into a state of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. The second revolution, which occurred in 1982, was relatively peaceful. The revolutions were greeted with enthusiasm and the rhetoric of the revolutionary leaders quickly caught public attention. In 1983 there was a mass deportation of Ghanaian immigrants who had been seeking “greener pastures” in the oil-rich neighboring country of Nigeria. The sudden increase in the local population put pressure on limited resources and created a food shortage. A prolonged drought between 1983 and 1985 exacerbated the crisis as it resulted in bush fires that

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devastated farms in the countryside, leading to hunger and starvation. Ghana, a nation with the highest per capita in Africa just after independence in 1957, all of a sudden faced crises of unimaginable proportions. Playing on the religious sensibilities of their countrymen, Rawlings and the other revolutionary leaders drew largely on religious vocabulary to drive home the sense of the urgent need for change. The nation was said to be rife with corruption because she was living in a “morally fallen state.” The coup d’états were described as “holy wars” and were aimed at “cleansing” the nation. The moral imperative was “accountability” and there were consequences (karma) of not being accountable—imprisonment, flogging, or death by firing squad. Meanwhile in religious circles the quest “to know God,” or to be God-fearing, a perennial traditional religious quest, took on an entirely new turn as people sought divine intervention to make sense of, and cope with, the crises. In the context of this chaotic climate themes such as karma, (which local people interpreted as accountability) Kali Yuga (the era of moral decadence in Hinduism), God-consciousness, the non-material self, and moderation in life, which recur in the discourses of neo-Hindu communities easily resonated with worshippers. In sum, the conditions that produced the revolutions, the revolutionary climate itself, and the aftermath produced an audience with a ready taste for the themes underlying the theological teachings of neo-Hindu religious groups. Borrowing Horton’s famous phrase, we could say that there were “changes in the air” that made Ghanaian worshippers pay attention to the discourses of the neo-Hindu groups (Horton 1971). Adding to the already existing association of superior magico-religious power with Hinduism, this emphasis on the relevance of Hindu discourses bolstered the religion’s local appeal. The neo-Hindu groups themselves seized the moment to self-advertise as traditions with the answers to Ghana’s problems. For the worshippers who joined these Hindu groups, their discourses have become important contexts in which they locate their understandings of happenings in the nation and their personal lives. Contemporary Developments in the Hindu Landscape Agents of Hinduism have taken advantage of a national debate on what should be the appropriate “imagination” of the indigenous culture and religious traditions in modern Ghana (Meyer 2005, 276) to attract national attention. This debate started in the early 1980s and escalated in the 1990s. One side of the debate is represented by the Christian, especially



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Pentecostal, understandings of tradition as something of the past that modern Christians should break away from. Pentecostals argue that clinging to traditional customs not only retards progress, but is also risky because it risks a person being attacked by demonic forces resident in the traditional religious landscape. They typically view becoming a member of their churches as a sine qua non for social and economic progress because it facilitates participation in the modern globalized world and international commercial networks. On the other side of the debate is a small minority of Ghanaians, who stress the need to revitalize the indigenous traditional religious heritage in order to develop national identity and pride. This group looks upon Christianity as an alien religion, which colonized Africans’ consciousness (Meyer 2005:277). It casts “tradition” as an embodiment of religio-cultural authenticity and insists that the recent dominance of Pentecostalism and its attack on indigenous religions undermine the Ghanaian sense of national identity and pride and belie many problems—material and moral—facing individuals and the nation as a whole (Ibid.). Priding themselves on protecting what has remained of the ancestral heritage in contradistinction to Pentecostal worshippers, who advocate its abandonment, these supporters and agents of African religions are fighting hard to re-affirm the viability of African religious beliefs and praxis and the centrality of their authority (Gifford 2004:40–43). Neo-traditional religious groups such as The Afrikania movement (also called the Reformed Traditional Religion or “Sankofa”) created by Damuah in 1982 epitomize the efforts of this minority. The supporters and agents of indigenous Ghanaian religions promote a discourse that runs counter to the Pentecostal hegemonic narrative that indigenous religions are “secretive fetish cults” (De Witte 2010:89). For example, Afrikania describes the indigenous religions as “modern and morally good” religions comparable to any world religion (De Witte 2010:89). Damuah’s death in 1992 was interpreted by Pentecostal pastors and followers as sign of Christ’s victory over Satan and his agents, who, from a Pentecostal perspective, operate in the context of indigenous religious institutions such as Afrikania. But his leadership in revitalizing African religions encouraged an ethos of indigenous religious and cultural inventions and revivalisms in Ghana. Many Ghanaians initiated cultural projects afterwards. A good example was the “Center for the Awareness of African Spirituality” created at Medie by Gamaliel Warren Kpakpo Akwei, alias Kofi Ghanaba, a nationally renowned traditional drummer, in the mid-1990s. This center houses a library holding writings on indigenous

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Ghanaian religious beliefs and practices by local scholars and practioners. It also has a museum of indigenous religious ritual paraphernalia. Kofi Ghanaba hosted periodic talks and conferences on aspects of the indigenous religious heritage of Ghana until his death in 2008. The Pan-African Festival—PANAFEST—is another of the newly initiated cultural projects. Invented in Accra in 1992 as a biennial festival aimed at promoting the ideals of Pan-Africanism, the festival’s main goal is to use the arts and cultural performances of African people as media for the promotion of knowledge about Africa’s history and the experiences of African people. The highlights of the festival are rites of passage programs, re-enactments of slave marches, a midnight Candlelight Vigil at Cape Coast Castle, the Emancipation Day Commemoration, musical and theatrical Performances. There are also lectures, tours of historic sites, speeches and a grand durbar of traditional African chiefs and community leaders from all over the African world. The Gbidukor Zaa (festival of the Gbi-Ewe people) is another of Ghana’s new religio-cultural projects. “Gbi Zaa,” as the festival is popularly called, originated in the 1990s by the Peki (Gbi-Anyigbe) and the Hohoe (Gbi-Dzigbe), two separate Ewe communities in southern Ghana. Celebrated in November, the festival rotates from Hohoe to Peki.8 In addition to these newly created festivals, there is a rekindling of interest in the already-existing festivals such as the Akwasidae, Fetu Afahye, Dipo, Kundum,Odwira, Hogbetsotso and Aboakyere festivals. Encouraged by this upsurge of interest in the indigenous cultural and religious heritage, and in their attempt to secure their niche in Ghana’s pluralistic and highly competitive religious field, Ghana’s Hindu worshippers are advertising their traditions as modernized versions of the Ghanaian indigenous religious heritage. They have constructed a discourse that identifies India as the cradle of the African religious heritage. This discourse also invites sympathizers of the indigenous religious heritage to pay respectful attention to and participate in their Hindu rituals so that they will re-discover the foundations of the indigenous religious heritage. The Hindu temples in Ghana argue further that, because they survived the onslaught on Hinduism by Christian missionaries during India’s colonization, Hindu traditions provide models that can guide the evolution 8 This festival’s goal is to commemorate the exploits of the Gbi-Ewes of old. It commemorates the earlier history of these towns as one group living under a legendary despotic, king Agokoli, and their exploits after escaping his tyrannical rule in the sixteenth century. Agokoli was the ruler of Notsi, which the tradition locates in the present-day West African nation of Togo. Oral history holds that the Ewe originated here.



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of Ghana’s indigenous religions into a more complex religious system suitable to the modern times and capable of standing up to the ongoing onslaught of Pentecostalism. As evidence of the indigenous religions/Hinduism linkage, Ghana’s Hindus point to similarities between Sanskrit and Hindi terms and words arbitrarily plucked from African languages and dialects and a vista of resonances between Hindu and African religious beliefs and practices. In terms of linguistic similarities, they identify words such as “Somela” (which means “song” in Sanskrit) and “Somalia” (the African country), “ganah” (which means “host” or “entourage,” in Sanskrit) and “Ghana” (the West African country), “tatha” (meaning “hence” or “the” in Sanskrit) and “tata” (father in the Ewe language of Ghana). The fact that these similarsounding words do not have the same meanings in Hindu and African cultures does not seem to matter to worshippers. When pressed to explain the difference in meaning, they argue that African communities partially lost the memory of Hindu culture and used Hindu words to mean different things in their new homes in Africa. Similarities between Hindu and indigenous Ghanaian religious beliefs and practices such as the belief in and worship of gods, and the veneration of totemic emblems, are identified as evidence of the Ghanaian/Hindu cultural linkage. Other similarities between East Indians and Ghanaians rallied to bolster the notion that indigenous African religions were originally Hindu include the dark skin of low caste Hindus and African people, and the cultural values and practices that Indians and Ghanaians share. This discourse has fed a positive image of Hinduism, especially among sympathizers and agents of Ghana’s indigenous religions, many of whom are directly involved in the indigenous heritage reclaiming campaign. A Sociological Explanation Aside from these specific developments, some general sociological and political changes in Ghana have contributed to the Hindu religious florescence. One of these is the increasing power of individual choice in religious matters in post-colonial southern Ghana. Religion in pre-Islamic and pre-Christian indigenous Ghanaian societies was largely a community affair and seldom private. Whole communities participated in acts of devotion. Membership in the tradition was prescribed and the individual had little or no freedom of choice in matters of religious practice. Deciding to go one’s own way carried its own sanctions. It could result in one being

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ostracized, or at worst, invite the anger or curse of parents, as Achebe depicts in his work Things Fall Apart, when Okonkwo reacts angrily to his son’s defection to the Christian missionaries “To abandon the gods of one’s father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination” (Achebe 1985:108). Missionary activity that led to the establishment of the church in southern Ghana occurred mostly along ethnic lines, so that some areas were specifically associated with a particular denomination. For example the Akwapim region of South Eastern Ghana was associated with the Basel Mission from Switzerland and its successor, the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (Clarke 1986; Nukunya 1992). Most people living in this area of Ghana therefore belong to the Presbyterian Church. In the Volta region, especially the eastern and northern sectors, the main Protestant denomination is the evangelical Presbyterian Church founded by the Bremen mission (Meyer 1995). In all of these communities, becoming a member of a mission-established church was a community, clan or family affair. Membership in a church was viewed as a part of the group’s tradition and deviating from the tradition was frowned upon. Thus, most post-firstgeneration Christians or Muslims in Ghana were born into the denomination of their families and were expected to remain in it (Dovlo 1992:55–73). With the rapid urbanization that occurred during and following European colonial rule in Ghana came a shift in the local demographic pattern that seems to augur well for any new religion seeking to recruit followers. Many more of the youth are migrating from their villages and hometowns in the countryside into the cities and big towns to find “white man” jobs. Living away from “home,” that is, from the constant “gaze” of family, relatives and friends, these youth feel free to live their lives the way they would wish to. Furthermore European socio-economic concepts and lifestyles, which stress individualism as opposed to the corporate responsibility of the community and its members, have made it possible for people to develop a stronger sense of independence and personal freedom (Hillman 1999). One result is that individuals in contemporary Ghana feel less pressured or inclined to follow the traditions and norms of their families or groups. In religious matters this means that worshippers nowadays feel free to choose the religion they would like to practice with little or no fear of sanctions from family. The youth especially are finding personal commitment in various independent and charismatic churches and other religious forms, which they view as offering them concrete and ecstatic forms of spirituality through intense devotionalism. Bryan Wilson describes this



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phenomenon when he writes of the functions of religion in Western society undergoing rapid socio-cultural change: Religious action steadily became more a matter of conscious choice and hence of real personal commitment and no longer an automatic part of received national, local or ethnic tradition, the easy assumption of everyday life (Wilson, 1982:201).

In Southern Ghana such freedom facilitates the easy movement of urban people into new religious communities and many find the Hindu communities accommodating because they do not require that new members cut off their former religious affiliations. A related feature of Hinduism that makes it attractive to worshippers is the ability to cultivate spirituality by practicing Hindu rituals such as meditation, chanting and Darshana independently. This is most appealing to worshippers seeking to avoid the highly regimented structure of public religious practice. Many of these individuals initiate personal contact with gurus from oversea countries, especially India, adopting them as their spiritual masters. These far-flung spiritual masters correspond with their Ghanaian devotees through letters and the electronic media, guiding them through courses and spiritual exercises that culminate in their initiation (diksa) as Hindus. These “Hindus through correspondence” advertise their allegiance to their gurus through a wide array of insignia—a shrine for Hindu gods in their homes, a ring, a string of beads bearing a picture of the guru, or a rosary or talisman obtained from the guru. They also adopt Hindu signifiers such as Vaishnava or Shaiva guardian deities, Hindu spiritual names, a vegetarian lifestyle, Indian clothing styles, and going through daily regiments of Hindu spiritual exercises prescribed for them by their spiritual masters (reading portions of a scripture, reciting a sacred group of words or mantras—listening until they hear an underlying hum, etc.). While many of these individuals are affiliated with Christian churches, especially the historic mission-established churches, the inclusive orientation of Hinduism enables them to use its practices to “build up spiritual power” (which is often cast as developing the third eye). Tales of miraculous encounters of individuals with their spiritual masters in dreams and visions are in constant circulation in southern Ghanaian communities. These narratives recount how spiritual masters appear, often after prolonged periods of praying, meditating and fasting, and chanting of mantras, to warn of forthcoming catastrophes, reveal cures to mysterious illnesses, issue blessings, or give assurance in trying moments. For example, narratives

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featuring the miraculous appearances of Sathya Sai Baba to his devotees linked with him through correspondence course and ritual paraphernalia he sends to them, have become the stuff of popular religious discourse in Ghana. The presence of ash residue or kunkun at the base of the guru’s picture, strange noises from a particular section of a house in the night, or the scent of strong incense pervading a room, are all signs of a distant guru’s invisible presence. Another factor is the growing ethos of religious tolerance in southern Ghana. This region has for a long time experienced a high level of religious pluralism, with traditional religions, missionary-sponsored and Pentecostal forms of Christianity, Islam, and Spiritual Churches, co-existing with each other in contradistinction to the northern region being mostly Islamic. But the frequent interaction with other cultures, people and ideas through travel, cultural exchanges, the electronic media and Western education, especially the study of non-Christian religious traditions, has also made southern Ghanaian people more open-minded, more tolerant, and more willing to explore and experiment with new religions now than ever before. Ghana’s present democracy, which constitutionally guarantees citizens the freedom of religion, reinforces this attitude of religious tolerance. This national attitude has produced a congenial environment for the propagation of new religions, including those of alien provenance and this explains the boldness with which Hindu traditions present themselves. I concur with Hackett’s assertion that it constitutes an “anathema to de-contextualize” religion in Africa because of its integral place in traditional pre-colonial societies, and the close linkages it still has with politics, the economy, social behavior, and artistic expression, in the African post-colonies (Hackett 1994). Following this line of thinking, the theme that has run through the discussion in this chapter thus far is that an evaluation of Hinduism’s relevance to its Ghanaian followers must seriously consider the socio-economic, political, and religious context of their lives, the emerging questions, and how manifestations of Hinduism help worshippers to engage them. At the time of the research for this study (1999, 2009, 2012) Ghanaians were grappling with a new set of questions, some stemming from locally induced conditions, but most were linked to the changes introduced into their midst by globalizing forces. Hindu worshippers, whose conversion narratives I report in the study, explained the attraction Hinduism holds for them in terms of its relevance to these questions. For this reason I find it useful to conclude this discussion with a brief account of my experience of these changes and the ways in which people in Ghana are responding to them.



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“Life” and the Religious Response to It in Southern Ghana at the Time of This Study In southern Ghanaian parlance, “life” refers to the general state of people’s daily affairs. During my fieldwork I did not have to consult literature on the state of the Ghanaian economy or politics to know something about people’s lives and how they felt about it. My own experiences, together with the lives of my relatives, friends, and informants, provided deep insights into the conditions in which many people live. For this reason I base this discussion of the “life” in Ghana on my personal experiences of it and my encounters with people during my fieldwork. One of my earliest observations when I arrived in Ghana in May 1999 was that a lot had changed while I was away (I had left Ghana for studies overseas in 1992). My impression was that while some Ghanaians had taken advantage of the opportunities globalization was offering to acquire wealth and live affluent lives, many more people had a harder time making ends meet than they did before I left home seven years ago. In the early stages of the fieldwork I tried to live on a modest budget of a hundred and fifty American dollars a month. Though this amount would not support me for a week in Canada or the United States, in Ghana it was a lot of money when I changed it to the local currency, the Cedi (about two million cedis). Nevertheless, this was barely enough to cover my food expenses and to buy gas for the car I sometimes borrowed from my stepmother to enable me to move around easily. It could not even enable me to take my friends out for a drink, which they expected of me, coming back from Canada. The average monthly salary of people in Ghana at the time of the research was about fifty dollars (about 600,000 cedis). This amount was far below my monthly budget, even though unlike me (who only needed to buy food and gas) most workers had families and relatives to look after. I constantly wondered how people met their financial and other obligations living on such meager incomes. Soon, my experience living with my aunt would give me the first sense of how far Ghana’s economy had deteriorated and the precariousness of the life many people lived. My aunt Lisa lived in Community Ten in the port city of Tema, which lies east of Accra. The people who live in “Ten,” as the residential area is commonly called, are a mixture of middle-level income earners and working class people, though some very wealthy businessmen, doctors, and lawyers also live there. “Ten” was a very affluent community in the seventies and middle to late eighties. Rich young entrepreneurs, businessmen,

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corporate executives and top-level government officials preferred to reside there. In popular imagination “Ten” was associated with opulence and money. It conjured up images of videos and video houses, satellite dishes, high powered cars, shops filled with designer clothes and accessories, beautiful and expensive hotels and restaurants, and houses with swimming pools, to name but a few of the most common external signs of “living good.” During the Rawlings revolutions of 1979 and 1981 many of the affluent members of “Ten” fled Ghana because they embezzled money in their work places and were afraid of being prosecuted and jailed or executed by the military rulers. Homes were confiscated by the state and some became dilapidated from years of neglect. In the years that followed, economic hardship drove the government to sell these houses at low prices, resulting in all classes of people, including lower-income earners and working class people coming to live in Community Ten, transforming its status in the process. At the time of the fieldwork Aunty Lisa was in her late fifties. She had lived in “Ten” all her working life. Our extended family considered her and her husband to be well to do. In the community itself, people looked on them as being affluent. They have five children, three of whom have graduated from college and are gainfully employed, but two of them were still in school. They live in a seven-bedroom house, which, though old and falling apart in some sections, still has vestiges of its old glamour and is always well kept. In the house are all the external signs associated with a well to do home—a fridge, a television and video deck, a deep freezer and a set of decent living room furniture—all of which are considered symbols of wealth and comfort in Ghana. Aunty Lisa’s husband also has a French car, a Peugeot, which he bought in the 1970s. Even though the car is now so old and in such a bad condition that it required the services of mechanics every morning before it would start, it was still an important status symbol, an indicator of the “good life.” Life, even for Aunty Lisa and her family, is a constant struggle to make ends meet. Two years before I began the fieldwork her husband was laid off his job as an accountant with a fishery company when it was sold by the government to a private company; he was still unemployed. Aunty Lisa herself had recently resigned from her job as a director of music for high schools in the Tema district because of low salary and started her own school at Ashiamang, a village near Tema. She also reared poultry in the backyard of their house and sold eggs and chickens during Christmas. Occasionally, she sold iced water to supplement the family income. Even



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though Aunty Lisa worked so hard to provide the needs of the family and to make life comfortable, things were still tight for them. On top of his unemployment, Aunty Lisa’s husband was diagnosed with diabetes. The cost of her husband’s illness and running the new school placed severe strains on Aunty Lisa and her family’s income. She said there was never enough money because prices of items on the market were too high. Even though she tried to be discreet about the magnitude of the problem, I found out that they were constantly behind in paying utility bills and often threatened with interruption of their services. On days that the car would not start, Aunty Lisa walked to her school, which was about five miles away because she would like to save the bus or “trotro” fare for something else (“trotro” is the generic name for different types of privately owned public transport that serve most metropolitan areas and the surrounding localities in Ghana). Sometimes, whilst talking about the precariousness of their situation— living without much money—Aunty Lisa sounded quite defeated that there was so little to spare for even modest treats: We are constantly paying. Paying is all we do here . . . Nowadays we pay for water, for telephone, for electricity and many things. The remaining money we use to buy food and that’s it . . . Finito! You are always paying; so you have no money left, not even to buy obroniwawu [second hand clothing]. Once in a while, you too would like to put on something decent . . . But that would mean you have to squeeze, really, really tight [Aunty Lisa lamented with a sign].

Food is a critical component of people’s lives in southern Ghana. The number of meals people ate a day and the quality of the food is seen as a measure of their status and the general quality of their life in Ghana. A well to do family must always have food in abundance. Yet food is really expensive in the cities and takes over fifty percent of people’s incomes. There was always food in Aunty Lisa’s house, but because the house was always full of visiting relatives, there were so many mouths to feed all the time. So in a sense, food was still scarce. We ate two major meals a day-breakfast and supper, Aunty Lisa literally struggled to put this on the table. The people I interviewed during the study also talked at length about the hard times they lived in and their struggles just to survive. Sometimes the manner in which they spoke suggested that they expected me to “do something” to help. One of the people I visited regularly was Bulley, a high school graduate at 28. After finishing high school in his village of Dodowa near Accra he worked briefly as an apprentice carpenter. Bulley stopped

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work after a year because he believed he did not have a bright future as a carpenter. He moved to Tema to seek a “white man’s job (office work). With his education he had hoped it would not be long before he would find a job. It had been five years since Bulley arrived in Tema and he was still not employed. When I first met him, Bulley had been evicted from his rented house in the squalid neighborhood of “Tema Quarters” and was sleeping in a Hindu Temple. He still owed his landlord seven hundred thousand Cedis in rent. Each time I would visit Bulley he would begin his welcome greetings with a litany of complaints about the hard life. He said he went days without food because he had no money. He would enumerate a long list of items and compare their current prices with their prices a few years ago, always pointing out how sharply prices have gone up just over the course of five years. Often using jokes, he would expatiate on his quandary of having to live with a chronic lack of money. He talked constantly about wanting to go abroad. He also said he wanted to go into the timber business because there was a “lot of money there” and he would complain about how wicked his cousin who lived in the United Kingdom had been to him because he would not lend him money to start his business. “If only someone could loan me only a hundred American dollars, my woes are over! . . . And I know you can,” he would say, staring me straight in the face. All over the twin cities of Accra and Tema I came across scenes, episodes, events and signs that reminded me that the story of people’s lives was no different from Bulley’s. The sight of boys and girls and young men and women selling all sorts of items, trying frantically to survive in the very harsh city conditions was all over—in the public markets, on the sides of the streets, at the busy intersections, in residential neighborhoods, and in downtown Accra and Tema. Many were recent high school graduates. A few were university graduates. Others were schoolgoing children or dropouts and people who had been laid off their jobs. Some had traveled from far-flung villages to the city to find work so that they could support parents, siblings, and other relatives in their hometowns where the only source of livelihood was farming, fishing or petty trading, but could not find work because of a hiring freeze, especially in governmental circles, imposed by the state. Some, including males, were forced to take to petty trading, selling any item their money enabled them to buy. These included live animals such as snails, goats, and chickens, household items such as tables, television sets, pressing irons, and books, to name a few. Perpetually drenched in sweat because of the heat in Accra at this time of the year, they trot up and down the streets and busy



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intersections haggling with commuters over prices. “Masa . . . Please make you buy something from us so we too can eat at least one meal today,” they would literally plead in Pidgin English with commuters to buy their wares, thrusting an assortment of items into their faces. Occasionally they would scamper into different directions on hearing the sirens of approaching city guards, notorious in Accra and Tema for their ruthlessness in dealing with culprits. But they would soon return to their bases as soon as the city guards leave. Some did not have any homes or relatives in Accra or Tema and slept under sheds in market places to pass the night. Others stayed with relatives, friends and acquaintances. The favorite topic of conversations was money, its scarcity, the few who were “making it,” and the avenues available for others to “make it too.” In their homes, at the church service, at restaurants, beer and palm wine bars, in cinema halls, on “trotro” buses, on their way to work, and at the lorry stations, people talked about money. They busily discussed the high prices especially of foodstuff like yams, plantains, vegetables, fish, sugar, and of other basic items such as shoes and clothes. They said that even though there were “good things” on the market nowadays compared with the past times, the items were too expensive and incomes were so low that they cannot afford these items. People spoke in horrific tones of their frustration at seeing things and yet not being able to acquire them. Other common complaints were about the high cost of health and education and the difficulty involved in getting jobs, even for people with very good education and other qualifications. I heard story after story of people trying their hands at one income-generating activity after another to see what would work out. Even people doing “business” complained about too much competition and too low profit margins. Conversations also focused on the wealthy and how they acquired their wealth. It was said that people with relatives or connections abroad or who themselves lived there had a lot of money and publicly displayed their wealth through building houses and buying cars and other valuable items. The themes of these conversations suggested that, traveling to abrokyiri (overseas) was the only way out of people’s predicament. The United States and Canada especially held a good deal of appeal to people. The desire to travel abroad and the frustrations people encountered obtaining visas from embassy officials easily translated into envy and jealousy for people like me who many considered lucky to be living and going to school in Canada. The lyrics of “highlife” tunes (a blend of traditional music and melodies with modern elements) reflected how people felt about the times. Songs described the plight of the many people without work or “chop money”

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(pocket money), and facing humiliation and desertion from loved ones, friends, and family. Others contained exhortations on how to live during such hard times. In churches, pastors preached about the lack of money, the difficulties women faced in finding wealthy men to marry etc., and the ways in which God can intervene to provide solutions. Portions of worship were dedicated to prayers and fasting on behalf of worshippers’ relatives living abroad so that God would help them to secure jobs, and to “send dollars and pounds home.” Violent crime, especially armed robbery, was rampant and was blamed on unemployment. Gas stations, banks, forex bureaus, foreign nationals, successful businessmen, government officials, and people recently arrived from overseas were the common targets of armed robbers. In Accra, murder was also common. A week before I arrived home a woman was found dead in a pool of blood. She had been murdered and it was believed to be a ritual murder. Three more bodies of dead women were found in Accra before I returned to Canada. All of the corpses of the women were missing certain parts of the body. These incidents threw the capital into a state of panic, fear, and anxiety throughout my stay. Even in the very busy areas of Accra streets were deserted just after dark. Suspicious that murderers using the guise of taxi cab drivers would kidnap them, many people stopped taking taxis, especially in the evenings. There were disquieting rumors that the people who perpetuated these murders used the blood and body parts of their victims for spiritual rituals that would make them rich quickly. These insecurities of a modern urban existence aggravated beliefs and fears about the activities of witches, and sorcerers conveyed through rumors. The main theme of the rumors was that not only were witches and sorcerers becoming more vicious, unfeeling, and relentless in attacking their victims, but many more people were also resorting to occult measures to become rich quickly. A general sense of insecurity pervaded the social atmosphere in southern Ghana, generating the feeling that no one was safe. Countryside dwellers were not free from the socio-economic turmoil. In some cases their plights were worse than those of urban dwellers. With youth immigrating to cities, the aged, who are often too weak to engage in fishing and farming (the mainstay of rural economies) are left behind. The result was low productivity. Besides, the little food that was produced in the farming and fishing villages was sold in cities for higher profit margins, with the result that little or nothing was left for local rural consumption. Meanwhile, because of unemployment, sons and daughters living in the



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cities were unable to remit their aged parents in the villages regularly as Ghanaian tradition expects of adult and working children. People blamed the government for their problems and throughout my research I witnessed five anti-government demonstrations. All of these were about poor salaries. I also joined a student demonstration protesting new incidental fees on the campus of the University of Ghana. Yet, there were also those who believed that God was punishing the nation for the sins and evil ways of corrupt government officials. The Growing Sense of the Marginalization of Ghanaian Cultural Values and Declining Morality A distinct feature of Ghana’s experience of globalization is the strong influence of Western, especially American, pop-culture and other lifestyles over people’s lives. Arguably we could refer to globalization in Ghana as “Americanization” or the implantation of American symbols and cultural practices around the nation. The combination of American economic and political power, especially in the 1990s, helped to ensure this. In Accra and Tema, where I lived during the fieldwork, evidence of this influence was quite overwhelming. All over these cities I saw American flags displayed on the dashboards of vehicles or hoisted on their antennas. People rushed home from work to watch American television programs that were featured by the three television stations in the country, especially in the evenings. Fake dollar notes, maps of America and the individual states and names of American states and cities such as Michigan, Colorado, and Dallas were displayed on the windscreens, bumpers, and bonnets of vehicles. On some vehicles there were inscriptions that made references to America’s wealth or revealed people’s desire to visit there. Local imitations of American-originated eateries such as Macdonald were highly patronized and visiting these restaurants exuded prestige. Local bands played Akan versions of American pop music such as “rap music” and their own local compositions (called “Akan Rap music” or “Hip Life music”). Images and signs of American life in Ghana are largely transmitted through electronic media: the internet, the news, talk shows, and hit television series. Also, Ghanaian people living in America or who travel there frequently came back with stories of their experiences of life in America. The images of the glamour and glitter of American life conveyed through these media contributed to the myth of America as a place of virtually unlimited freedom and opportunity. Many people in Ghana believe that

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the United States is “the” country in which they should place their hopes for a better economic future. Folk theories hold that America is the place where people willing to work hard and use their imagination “make it” in “no time”. In response waves of immigrants from Ghana have since the last three decades flooded major American cities more than ever before in Ghana’s history. While some of these “greener pasture” seekers have “left Ghana for good,” others hope to return to Ghana someday after “making enough” to live well there. The overwhelming influence of American life style and pop-culture together with the myths about life in America have drawn the younger generations into a mindset of Western aspirations and styles of living, with diverse social, cultural, and economic implications. There is a craze for commodities such as electronic gadgets; brand name jeans, sneakers, and shoes; cell phones; and other symbols of American pop culture among the youth in southern Ghana. These cultural markers make their Ghanaian owners feel “American” or part of the dominant global trend. They also allow people to exude an aura of prestige. People who have them or use them are distinguished from “ordinary people,” and considered to be successful, powerful and having “connections” to America. The pragmatic value attached to these commodities is not as important as their symbolic and political significances. As a result of this new craze for America and commodities from there, a capitalist-consumer ethos—a capitalistic culture—is rapidly developing in Ghana with powerful influences on lifestyles as well as people’s values, morality, and meanings. Many people examine life from a strictly economic standpoint and aspire to the lifestyles of the American “rich and the powerful” in dress, diet, clothing, and housing. Their efforts and energies are fixated on acquiring commodities—building luxurious, American-styled houses, driving in flashy cars, and having a lot of money, mainly dollars. This emerging postmodern ethos has, however, introduced new goals that can be achieved by only a small number of people: well-placed people, powerful government officials, expatriate workers, wealthy businessmen and businesswomen, and people whose relatives live abroad or who themselves live there. This group of people are able to take advantages of the opportunities in trade, travel, and cultural contact that globalization has facilitated. They reside in places such as Airport residential area or East Legon, which in popular imagination are associated with opulence and money. For most people, however, reaching these goals remain inaccessible dreams, and a chronic sense of a lack of achievement haunts them constantly, making their lives all the more difficult and unbearable.



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Many people I talked to during the research embrace these changes, stressing how the use of cell phones, computers and other modern gadgets, ease of travel, and connections with the outside world have made “life faster, and easier.” But some people also lamented the loss of respect for Ghanaian “things “and traditional values in the face of a growing preference for “Western things and lifestyles.” Many people talked about the moral degeneration of Ghanaian society that has come with these changes. The corrupt government officials who embezzled state money to meet their insatiable tastes, the girls who dressed in skimpy clothing called Apuskelekey and paraded the streets of Accra late night “selling sex” to men for money to acquire the “good things of today,” the adoption of gay (Akwesi besia) or “men sleeping with men,” and lesbian lifestyles, the influx of Western pornography, its consumption, and the production and export of Ghanaian pornography, were noted as signs of Ghana’s moral decay. In the course of national debates and in editorial commentaries on morality in the dailies, discussants condemned practices such as homosexuality, anal intercourse, bisexuality, and notions such as sexual liberation, as repulsive and grave moral breaches or taboos (Akan-musuu). They argued that these markers of modernity pose serious challenges to traditional notions of sexuality, femininity and masculinity, and marriage, and are directly linked to HIV/AIDS. They rooted HIV/AIDS in Aburokyiri (Western) originated notions and practices of sexuality. In religious circles, the view was that AIDS was God’s way of punishing the West for breaching sexual taboos, especially through gay and lesbian practices and “unnatural” sexual behavior. The discourse was that Ghanaian “been-tos” (Ghanaians who live and work in the West) and foreigners transferred the disease into Ghana, and that by adopting these modern sex lifestyles Ghanaians risk exposure to HIV/AIDS. A Religious Response The socio-economic, cultural and moral situation has triggered a search for spiritual answers, a sign of which is the heightening of people’s involvement in religious activities and their increasing tendency or willingness to experiment with new spiritual symbols deriving from local and foreign sources. There are three levels of this spiritual quest. First, there would seem to be a search for religious symbols that help people to impose some meaning on their precarious lives. Other people feel they need forms of supernatural guarantee for their success and deliverance from purveyors

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of supernatural harm, who impose hardships on them. Yet there are also those who are searching for some religious truth or some message that would console and inspire them, reinforce the sense of confidence they might need to face the difficult times, and guide their moral conduct in the face of “modern temptations.” The most spectacular effect of the religious responses to the situation in Ghana has been the much documented proliferation of Pentecostalisms. The rising tide of these churches’ evangelistic activities struck me when I arrived in Ghana in May 1999. Every day of the week a crusade (a public or open-air fellowship meant to publicize the church and attract new converts) was held somewhere in Accra or Tema. The posters and banners of the churches were all over the cities of Accra and Tema declaring “battles against Satan” and calling for prayer meetings where Satan’s agents would be defeated, and where the worshippers would receive the Holy Spirit, healing, and prosperity (see Meyer 1995:237–241). I made a point of attending some of the crusades and the church services of some of the churches in Accra to familiarize myself with their culture. But I was also curious to know something about the sources of their appeal to their followers. I experienced for myself the warmth, freedom, and spontaneity in worship service that seems to draw to them a large following. But a key to the success of these churches is the prosperity gospel they propagate. According to this discourse, applying the bible’s teachings “inexorably” and strictly following spiritual laws guarantees material prosperity (Gifford 1994:241–261). God did not create anyone to be poor, the discourse holds. Poverty was the work of the devil—and war against the devil during crusades is also war against poverty. To the followers, many of whom are facing difficult economic times, are ambitious, and are striving hard to “make it,” the churches offer the hope and the assurance of a future of prosperity and wealth. Psychologically, they reinforce a sense of confidence among their followers. Presently many of them are establishing universities that teach worshippers the skills they need to be successful in the modern globalizing world. Another reason for the success of Pentecostal churches is the sense of protection against spiritual agents of evil such as witchcraft and sorcery that they provide their followers (Meyer 1995:237; Opoku-Onyinah 2002:108–134). The churches demonstrate their ability to deal with these evil forces through their healing miracles and exorcisms called “deliverance sessions” (Atiemo 1994:39–40; Adjebeng 1989:7–8). Far from the assumption that a shrinking of the indigenous religious landscape has accompanied the expansion of Pentecostalism in Ghana, the insecurities of modern Ghanaian life have led to an upsurge in the



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demand for the services of traditional religious agents, too. They match Pentecostal churches in offering people “ways of connecting to the spiritual powers” they need to succeed in their endeavors (De Witte 2010:92). The countryside of Ghana has witnessed a mushrooming of indigenous shrines operated by a cadre of new priests and priestesses such as Nana Kwaku Bonsam, Nana Saabento, and Nana Ogyaframa, many of whom publicize their services through the use of radio, TV, road-side signposts and newspapers. Equally active are the prayer and healing houses of African Independent Churches and mallams. A by-product of the growing demand for supernatural intervention in peoples’ lives is the emergence of an ethos of fierce competition among Ghana’s various religious traditions— traditional religions, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, missionary-established churches and Spiritual churches—with the agents of each religion claiming that their tradition has the answers to people’s problems. A winning strategy of the Pentecostals who view themselves as the “worshippers of the true God,” is to de-legitimize other competitors by labeling them as “demonic” and “dangerous.” The non-Pentecostal religious others respond to these characterizations of them by also pointing out what they identify as flaws within Pentecostal traditions, escalating the level of a practice of “name calling” among members of different religious groups, which has been an enduring feature of Ghana’s religiously pluralistic field. To conclude this discussion I summarize the key themes. Throughout its history in Ghana Hinduism has served different needs at different periods. Attributing superior magical powers to Hindu spirits through their own cultural notions, some Ghanaians found Hinduism relevant to their needs for spiritual protection and fortification in the wake of their chaotic transition from a colony to a modern state and the political turmoil that characterized the first two decades after independence. In the face of a socio-economic decline in the 1980s attributed largely to widespread greed and corruption, the emphasis of worshippers shifted to the relevance of the moral teachings of neo-Hindu groups to the local situation. These teachings would become the lenses through which some people would begin to evaluate local happenings. A debate in the early 1990s, which thrust the importance of the Ghanaian indigenous heritage into focus, would once again direct attention to Hinduism, as its agents argued that it was the source of indigenous Ghanaian religious beliefs and practices. Presently, in the context of changes linked to Ghana’s increasing interaction with the rest of the globe, many people are turning to religion to address indigenous and modern insecurities and moral dislocations. Most Ghanaians find refuge in the teachings and practices of Pentecostal

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churches. Many are also turning to indigenous ritual experts, prayer houses of African Independent Churches, and mallams. Other people find answers to their questions in the Hindu traditions emerging in Ghana, their decisions to join and remain members of these temples informed by local understandings of Hinduism—as a magical religion and a resource for cultivating spiritual power, a repository of moral teachings, the source of indigenous religious ideas and practices.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HINDU MONASTERY OF AFRICA The story of the Hindu Monastery of Africa revolves around the story of Kwesi Esel, a traditional healer, who, driven by an insatiable thirst for spiritual knowledge, healing, and psychic powers, and drawing inspiration from a repertoire of Indian religious symbols circulating in Ghana, initiated this local Ghanaian Hindu tradition. The high point of the story is Kwesi Esel’s journey to the Himalaya Mountains in India to explore the depths of Hindu mysticism and acquire more healing powers. When he returns to Ghana, he divorces his wife, renounces the world, becomes a Hindu sadhu and establishes a Hindu monastery. The charisma of Esel plays a crucial role in the establishment of this temple and its present life, as well as in the spread of the monastery’s influence throughout Ghana and beyond. As the story unfolds, we see that it is Esel’s fame and reputation as a “sharp” healer and his spectacular display of other divine attributes that shape the course of events and processes. I begin the discussion by introducing the Hindu background of Esel’s temple tradition, and follow with the story of the monastery’s origin, and an account of its membership, discourse and culture. Hindu Asceticism The Hindu Monastery of Africa is associated with the ascetic tradition in Hinduism. It also emphasizes the worship of Shiva, one of the two preeminent gods worshipped in Hinduism. As a background to the discussion in this chapter, we would need to know something about Hindu asceticism, the monastic tradition in Hinduism, and Shiva worship. The ultimate goal of religious life in Hinduism is moksha, described as the release of the soul from all earthly limitations and restrictions—in Hindu terms, the eternal cycle of rebirth, samsara. The central belief of Hindus regarding moksha is that underlying all manifestations of being is Brahman, a transcendental reality (God). Brahman is changeless, without beginning or end, “conscious, blissful, and unqualified by time and space” (Kinsley 1993:92). Shankara, the famous Hindu theologian, argued that the souls of human beings, atman, are, in reality, identical with Brahman

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(Kinsley 1993:92). Moksha involves the individual coming to realize this truth. A transcendental experience, it involves the loss of all consciousness of being an individual, and literally dying to actions that restrict the soul and bind one eternally to rebirth (Kinsley 1993:92). In the state of moksha a person’s soul is released to merge with its source, Brahman. Kinsley notes that a person in this state is said to rest content in “actionless, desireless bliss” and “redemptive knowledge” (1993:92). There are three paths to attaining moksha: karma or action, including ritual performances, jnana, which involves striving on one’s own to acquire the transcendental knowledge that leads to moksha through meditative contemplation, and bhakti, which is selfless devotion to a loving God. Of these three paths, asceticism falls within the path of jnana or meditative contemplation. From the ascetic point of view, renouncing the world is the surest route to transcendental knowledge. Whether meritorious or not, action only leads to rebirth in this world. Because moksha entails release from rebirth, and even from “re-death,” mundane action has less value, compared with acquiring transcendental knowledge through renunciation (Fuller 1992:17). The ascetic renouncer abandones mundane society. Typically, he lives only on what he can beg and devotes his life to “lonely meditation and awesome austerities” to realize his or her spiritual essence (Fuller 1992:17–18). However, ironically, renouncing the world may in fact push the ascetic renouncer into more extensive societal “involvement” than if he or she “remained” a lay individual (Fuller 1992:17–18). Although it is understood that an ascetic has renounced the mundane world he or she is still “visibly present to those who remain in it”, is greatly respected as a model of a “supreme Hindu religious ideal,” and is “treated” as a spiritually eminent member of society (Fuller 1992:17–18). People consult him on a range of spiritual and even worldly matters. Ascetics therefore can teach, heal, offer advise, foretell the future, arbitrate in disputes between parties, and offer valuable social commentary. When Kwesi Esel renounced and became a sannyasi, his behavior was consistent with the Hindu ascetic tradition. He would also be spoken of as a sadhu (holy man) or swami (master), generic Hindu titles of respect for a religious leader. A Brief History of Asceticism in Hinduism Ascetic practices in Hinduism date as far back as the Indus Valley civilization in the third millennium B.C. (Narayan 1989:67). The Vedas, that is, the earliest Hindu scriptural texts, mention ascetics and associate them with magical practices such as drinking poison and flying on the wind



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(Narayan 1989:67). Post-Vedic texts like the Upanishads and Aranyakas also allude to ascetic practices in that they recommend meditation and the practice of rejecting the mundane world “in order to realize the indwelling divine self ” (Narayan 1989:67). However, asceticism only became a powerful socio-religious force in the Hindu society, in the middle of the first millennium C.E. Because it threatened to overthrow the hegemony of the Brahmans, the highest religious authorities, they assimilated and contained asceticism within the framework of their authority (Narayan 1989:67) by integrating it into the asrama scheme—progressing from the stage of a celibate student (brahmacarya), a twice born is expected to become a married householder (grihasta), maintaining social order through production and reproduction. In his middle age (vanaprastha stage), he must start withdrawing from the social arena. Eventually he must renounce worldly and materialistic pursuits and dedicate his life to spiritual pursuits (sannyasi stage) (Kinsley 1993:7). In spite of the attempt by Brahmans to co-opt asceticism, groups of freelance ascetic sects continued to flourish through the early centuries of the common era. However, because Buddhism had a more unified monastic structure at this time, Hindu ascetics began to join the Buddhist orders (Narayan 1989:67). In the ninth century A.D. Shankara,1 a Hindu philosopher and theologian, responded to the Buddhist threat by transforming asceticism into a monastic order. He set up monasteries throughout India where world renouncers might undertake appropriate spiritual exercises (Kinsely 1993:97). Shankara’s “formalization” could not accommodate all the existent or emerging orders of ascetics on the Indian subcontinent (Narayan 1989:68). All the same, in that it strongly influenced the beginning of monastic orders in Hinduism (Kinsely 1993:97), the pan-Indian organization Shankara established is considered to be a landmark in the development of Hindu asceticism. Hindu Monastic Orders Hindu monastic orders develop around teaching or philosophical traditions called sampradaya, traced to a famous religious teacher or philosopher who first enunciated this body of teachings. Five great “teachers” 1 For a more detailed account of Shankara’s life and his Advaita Vedanta school, which teaches that the essence of knowledge (which is found in the Upanishads) is that ultimate reality is non-dual in nature, see Kinsley’s work, Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), 96–102.

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are identified in Hinduism. These are Shankara (788–820), Ramanuja (Ca 1017), Nimbarka (Ca 1162), Madva (1199–1278), and Vallabha (Ca 1500) (Miller 1995:87). Initiates into a specific order trace their spiritual lineage to one of the great acharyas. All the same, when a new monk emerges and becomes renowned for his teachings, his followers view his sampradaya as a new one (that is, his own teaching tradition). He is at the center of this sampradaya. Those nearest him are his closest disciples. Most often, close disciples are ascetics. But equally close to the guru or monastic are lay disciples, who live at the monastery and share in its life or live outside and visit regularly. Lay disciples play key roles as patrons by providing financial and material support for the monastery (Miller 1995:87). Where lay organizations or worshipping communities crystallize around the monastic center, disciples become the leaders of these communities, promoting and furthering the goals of the monastery (Miller 1995:87). We might describe the tradition of the Hindu Monastery of Africa in Accra as the beginnings of Kwesi Esel’s sampradaya. This is because, even though the foundation of this tradition is the tradition of the Divine Life Society, a Hindu monastic organization in India, Kwesi Esel, inspired by his own Ghanaian indigenous religious background, has instituted new teachings and practices. But to trace the lineage of the Hindu aspect of Esel’s temple tradition, we still need to focus attention on the Divine Life Society. The Divine Life Society The Divine Life Society was founded by Swami Sivananda, an Indian Sadhu, in 1936, and is based in Rishikesh in the Himalaya Mountains of India. The Hindu Monastery of Africa in Accra is the headquarters of the Divine Life Society worshipping community in Ghana, and is sometimes called “The Divine Life Society of Ghana.” During his brief sojourn in India, Kwesi Esel stayed at the Rishikesh Ashram of the Divine life Society and was tutored by a guru there. Furthermore, Swami Krishnananda, the guru who initiated Kwesi Esel into the sannyasa order, was the leader of the Divine Life Society. For this reason Kwesi Esel traces part of his spiritual lineage to the sampradaya of Sivananda, who founded the Divine Life Society. Swami Sivananda was a medical doctor. He was born in 1889 to high caste Hindu parents from south India who worshipped Shiva. The story goes that in 1923 Sivananda abandoned all his property and his career as a medical doctor on a plantation in Malaya, and returned to India to begin a spiritual career. Upon his return, Sivananda renounced worldly life and became a wondering ascetic. In preparation for his new mission



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he journeyed to the holy city of Benares in India and took refuge in a temple dedicated to Shiva, the Visvanatha Temple. From Benares Sivananda wandered along the Ganges river northward to Rishikesh where a sadhu called Paramahansa Viswananda Saraswati initiated him into the sannyasa ascetic order in 1924 (Miller 1995:95). Even though he went on pilgrimages and embarked on wanderings at intervals, Rishikesh remained Sivananda’s base. From here Sivananda published extensively and traveled widely delivering lectures. Because he wrote in English, Sivananda was able to reach a wider pan-Indian and international audience and he appealed to very well-educated and elite people (Miller 1995:98). By 1933, Sivananda’s public lectures and widely distributed publications began to draw disciples and followers to him. In 1934 he was granted a request for land from the maharaja of Tehri Garhwal region where he lived. This is the present site of his monastery, where Esel visited in the 1970s. His organization was formally named the Divine Life Society in 1936, marking the beginning of the Sivananda movement. Presently it has a large cross-continental following with ashrams in different parts of the world. The Hindu Monastery of Africa seems to be the only branch of the Divine Life Society with an African monk and an exclusively African following, and Esel’s followers make much of this fact. Shiva Tracing its lineage to Sivananda, Esel’s monastic tradition is Saiva, that is, it emphasizes worship of the Hindu deity Shiva who is the presiding deity of the temple. It would therefore also be helpful for us to know something about this Hindu god. Shiva is one of the pre-eminent deities or devas in Hinduism; the other two are Vishnu and Brahma. In Hindu mythology Shiva is described as a lone ascetic who has abandoned the world so that he is “outside and beyond its institutional constrains” (Fuller 1992:33–34). Associated with the margins of mundane society, Shiva is depicted as always wandering around cremation grounds, forests, and the mountains, his body smeared with the ash of cremated bodies. His favorite place for resting and practicing meditation is the summit of Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas. Shiva generates and stores up power, often described with the imagery of a fiery heat called tapas, within him, by performing austerities during his mountain retreats. O’Flaherty describes tapas as “the heat of asceticism and passion” (1973:1). Shiva could become so intoxicated with power in his ascetic state that sometimes he becomes uncontrollable, immoral,

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violent, or fiercely destructive (for instance, in his ferocious manifestation as Bhairava). In mythology, Shiva burns the god of love, Kama, to ashes with the fury from his middle eye when Indra, the king of the gods, sent Kama to distract him from his ascetic austerities in order to reduce the threat of his powers (O’Flaherty 1973:17). Shiva is also distinguishable for his unsurpassed erotic powers. His most important cultic symbol, the “aniconic” lingam—a round-topped pillar representing his phallus and standing on a base representing the female genitalia, yoni2 (Fuller 1992:33), reflects this motif. Embodying the world-renouncing tendencies in Hinduism, Shiva’s life is the “model of,” and the “model for,” the ascetic tradition. His mutually contradicting attributes of asceticism and eroticism are explicable in the light of Hindu ideas about renunciation. Though opposites, these two attributes complement each other. Abstention from sexuality generates heat with tremendous procreative power. The one who renounces the world, Hindus argue, does not only have greater spiritual power, he possesses more sexual potency than ordinary men. Thus, the ascetic is full of erotic power by virtue of his celibacy (O’Flaherty 1973:6–18). This association of Shiva with power, especially erotic power, identifies him with reproductive fertility, an issue of paramount concern to Ghanaian worshippers. Shiva is also a celestial god who oversees the universe. His function is to destroy the universe with the fiery heat generated through his ascetic austerities so that it can be created and preserved anew by Vishnu. His consort is the goddess Parvarti and he has two children, Ganesha, his eldest son, and Skanda, who derive their powers from him and participate with him in his “cosmic dramas” (Fuller 1992:32–35). Unlike Vishnu, Shiva has no incarnations. But he has a huge range of concurrently existent forms that represent him in his temples; for instance Bhairava (the terrible), Dakshinamurti (the guru), Nataraja (the dancing Shiva), and Bhikshatana (the beggar), (Fuller 1992:33). Shiva is ordinarily addressed as Bhagavan or Swami, translated as “God” or “Lord,” and this is also how followers of the Hindu Monastery of Africa refer to the deity.

2 For more on Shiva’s erotic powers and also his Vedic antecedents, see O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).



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The Origins of the Hindu Monastery of Africa The absence of written records of the monastery’s origin and history made reconstructing its history difficult. But, in that the community is a little more than a generation old, I was able to rely on oral accounts of events from the people directly concerned. The narrators were not always consistent in their accounts and sometimes this frustrated me. In any case I was able to piece together a reasonably complete picture of events, and I checked and rechecked the details as I understood them with the leaders and some lay followers. I did this so that my informants could critique my account of their history and control my reconstruction of the events. This way I ensured that their own voices shaped my version of events, even though the interpretations had to be my own. A Synopsis The Hindu Monastery of Africa began as a small group of people in Accra, whose activities date back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. This group searched through scriptures of different religious traditions for spiritual knowledge, and above all, practiced what they learned from the scriptures. Kwesi Esel founded and led this group. The story goes that Kwesi Esel was on a personal spiritual quest. Although he was familiar with various forms of spirituality through his extensive reading, he was attracted to, and engaged in forms of Hindu religious practice, especially meditation. Esel also wrote to various sources including Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist mystics in far-flung locations, seeking a more powerful spiritual teacher to guide him. In the late 1960’s Esel visited some temples and hermitages in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains of India. He returned in 1971 and began to teach the doctrines and practices he was exposed to during his travels to the group. In 1975 Swami Krishnananda Saraswati, the leader of the Divine Life Society of India, visited a Sindhi Indian worshipping community at Osu in Accra. This community introduced Kwesi Esel to the Swami, who after some hesitation took him along when he visited Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region. The journey brought the two closer together and the Swami initiated Esel as a guru. Esel adopted the full title of a swami and assumed the name Swami Ganananda Saraswati after the initiation. Henceforth, his followers referred to him as Eselji. The “ji” suffix symbolizes respect to a Hindu holy man. Swami Krishnananda also named

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the community led by Esel as “The Hindu Monastery of Africa.” This was the first Hindu Monastery in Africa. As new members joined the group, branches emerged from the Odorkor monastery, leading to the formation of centers in Kumasi, Ashanti-Mampong, Tema, and Cape Coast, towns in southern Ghana.3 This brief will guide us through the summaries of followers’ narratives and conversations presented below. There is no major disagreement among followers on these details, but their versions of how the events unfolded reveal different emphases. Kwesi Esel’s initiation into the ascetic order symbolized the death of his previous identity and all of his previous names are now considered to be defunct. All the same, some of his followers still refer to him by these earlier names when talking about him. They call him Swami, Swamiji, Esel, Guru Eselji, Paa Kwesi, and “the old man.” Although I try to stick with “Swamiji” in the rest of the book, sometimes I refer to Kwesi Esel in the same way that his followers do. Memoirs of the Origins of the Hindu Monastery of Africa: Charisma and the Rise of a Local Hindu Guru It was a bright Wednesday morning in July 1999. Life on the campus of the University of Ghana had just begun and I was sitting in the office of Prof. Tottoh, my tape recorder on and my pen and notebook in hand. I was listening to the professor telling me the story of his conversion to Hinduism. Prof. Tottoh, whom I shall refer to simply as Prof, is in his late fifties. He teaches physics at the University of Ghana. Soft-spoken and striking in appearance because of his towering posture, Prof is well respected by all followers of the Hindu Monastery because he is elderly and “learned,” and because he was the president of the monastery. Prof had come to the highest point of the story. In 1979 his daughter developed a mysterious skin ailment. When all remedies failed to work, he became convinced that an evil spirit caused the ailment. That was when he sought the help of a traditional spiritualist and medicine man and this led him to contact Kwesi Esel, who had just returned from India. From this point, Prof’s story veered in an entirely different direction; he started talking about Kwesi Esel’s childhood. Eventually, he ended with the story of how Esel started the Hindu Monastery of Africa. 3 Personal communication with Elom Dovlo of the Religious Studies Department, the University of Ghana, at Legon.



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I noticed that Prof, had digressed from the main topic, but I was eager to learn what his new direction would reveal, so I said nothing. “Yes, that was when I met Kwesi, and he brought me onto this path. He was the one who begun this whole thing,” Prof began the story of Swamiji. The tone in which Prof spoke and the casual manner in which he mentioned Swamiji’s birth name, “Kwesi,” gave me a clue that Prof might be very familiar with Swamiji’s childhood. That was when I suspected that perhaps I could learn from Prof some personal information about Swamiji that I might not be able to learn from any other follower, so I seized the moment. “Tell me a bit more about Kwesi,” I urged him. “Ooh . . . I have known Kwesi since his childhood,” he confirmed my suspicions. “You grew up together?” I asked, my excitement beginning to heighten. “Yes,” he smiled. “We all come from the same village . . . Senya Breku, near Winneba in Central region, and when we were children, we were friends. Kwesi was in my home all the time. Sometimes, he would be there the entire day. As for Kwesi . . . [Pause] he has always been like this.” “Like what?” I probed further. “His behavior was always weird. He was strangely curious, always delving deeper into mystical things,” Prof replied. “But his family background had something to do with it. You see, he comes from a family of indigenous priests and healers. His grandfather was a great healer in the Senya Breku area. His (grandfather’s) medicine was “sharp” (potent). Then his (Kwesi’s) father took over when his grandfather died. So, Kwesi was the next in that line. But he was special in many other ways, too. He has the third eye!” “Why do you say that?” I cut in. “He is able to see things beyond this world. He was born with it. It’s his gift from God,” Prof explained. Mame Agnes, a female trader who frequented the ashram at one time expressed a similar view when she commented that Swamiji’s eyes literally “pierced” through his devotees: “He knows your thoughts before you say anything.” “Ahaa let me tell you some other strange thing he did.” That was Prof, recollecting another of Swamiji’s boyhood episodes. “He would go to the cemetery alone at midnight, and he would stay there throughout the night.” “Doing what?” I was curious. “No one could tell. He would venture into the part of the cemetery where they buried powerful medicine men, fetish priests, priestesses, witches, and the juju people of Senya Breku. Even the very heavy men (spiritually powerful people) in Senya Breku never ventured there in the day let alone at night. But Kwesi! he would go in there alone at night, and he was only a boy,” Prof elaborated, his eyes lighting up. “We heard that he made contact with saints, dwarfs, ghosts, and witches in the cemetery, and learned secrets of their powers.

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So, Kwesi has always been a heavy person. But he used his powers well. People would consult with him about their problems and he would help them.” Other narrators provided details of the kinds of help Swamiji provided people. Mame Abena, a middle-aged trader and a worshipper at the monastery, comes from Swamiji’s hometown, too. She recalled an incident: I remember a year when the middle school finalists from Senya Brekum were preparing for their final exams. They were scared of the exams, so they came to Paa Kwesi. Then late one night he took them into the bush. Kwesi prayed and prayed and did his things. Then he conjured up white handkerchiefs. “Put these in your books when you study,” he told them. So they all studied with the handkerchiefs. That year, they passed their exams just like that. All of them passed!

Other narrators said Kwesi Esel extended his “spiritual hand” to traders, travelers, fishermen and women, and people embarking on journeys such as traveling abroad in Senya Breku and beyond. The young Esel’s fame, like his grandfather’s and father’s, spread through Senya Breku and the villages beyond. In concluding his account of Swamiji’s childhood, Prof explained how he lost contact with Swamiji when he (Prof ) went to secondary school in Cape Coast. He explained that he only got hints of his later activities: his moving to Accra, his forming a worshipping community and later, his journey to India. After I listened to Prof’s account, the patchy details of the story of Swamiji’s childhood that I heard from followers were beginning to come together. As I reflected on the story, a picture began to emerge: Swamiji’s charisma had much to do with the origin of the monastery and the roots of his charisma stretched far back to his boyhood days. Prof also stimulated my curiosity when he mentioned that he heard Swamiji had formed a community—a “church,” at some earlier time. I sensed that this earlier community would provide valuable clues to how the Hindu monastery originated, so I wanted to know more about it. But, because he was not part of this earlier group, Prof was not in a position to say anything about the worshipping community. But, Kofi Takyi, another devotee and a disciple of Swamiji, covered this area of the monastery’s history vividly in his narrative. In the summary of his narrative I will simply refer to Kofi Takyi as Takyi. Kofi Takyi is a sixty-five-year-old, tall and lanky man. He lives at “Quarters,” a squalid neighborhood of Tema with his wife, and worships at the ashram in Tema. Like Prof, Takyi comes from Swamiji’s village, though he spent his entire working life in Accra as a senior clerical officer of the



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Ministry of Agriculture. Unlike Prof, Takyi was a member of Swamiji’s earlier worshipping community. For this reason Takyi seemed more confident describing this worshipping community. His recollections too seemed more vivid, and quite detailed. “We had a group here before Kwesi went away to India to learn more,” Takyi said when he got to that part of the story. “We called the group the Divine Mystic Path Society . . . This was about 1963. Kwesi had just come to Accra. He was still a young man and was very energetic. Everywhere you passed people talked about him. They said some powerful man had come from the village and was working miracles. They said he had traveled far and wide to learn the secrets to hidden powers and that he was helping people with these powers. We even heard that he brought a dead man back to life. Kwesi! Kwesi! Kwesi!, was all you would hear around. E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y who had some problem would rush to Kwesi. That was the time he formed the church,” Takyi explained, adjusting the cushions in his couch. “So this church, what did they practice?” I tried to get Takyi to say more about this earlier worshipping community. “We were simply interested in knowing about mystical things, powers, and the secrets to hidden powers. We met in Paa Kwesi’s home in “Russia” Thursdays after work and on Sunday evenings. We would ask him questions about his powers and he would answer us and teach us more. He taught us many things. He showed us to use the Psalms, the books of Moses, and the Holy Quran to protect ourselves from evil powers. But he taught us Hindu things most of the time.” “Oh, was it a Hindu church?” I cut in, excited by that revelation. Takyi scratched his head and continued. “Yes, but not in the beginning. First, we simply met, sang hymns, and read verses from the Bible and sometimes the Quran too. But later, we stopped and practiced Hinduism mainly. We learnt about yoga, we read the Gita, and he told us about the Puranas, the Vedas, Vedanta and all that. He would tell us those stories about Krishna, Shiva, Durga and their powers. But he was a healer too, so when we had problems he would prepare medicines and help us spiritually.” “So it was like a Hindu spiritual church?” I probed further, still not sure how to label this community. “Yes, like a Hindu spiritual church, but we did not pray to any figure like Krishna or Jesus or somebody like that. We simply learnt Hindu mystical things. All kinds of people, even very learned people, like professors, lawyers, and doctors, were in the group,” Takyi explained, yawning. “So this happened before Kwesi’s visit to India?” my quiz continued. “Yes,” he answered. “You mean, he taught you the Hindu things before going to India?” “Yes he did.” “Was he a Hindu at that time?” “No, he was a healer but he knew about Hindu

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powers too. He knew everything. He read a lot from Hindu books. He talked to Indian people. He traveled all over, learning. Then he practiced the things he read and acquired those powers too. I am sure Kwesi was a Hindu in his past life. That’s why he picked it up so easily. He only went on from where he left it in his past.” There were many occasions like this one during the research when a follower would back his or her facts with the authority of a Hindu belief. Here, Takyi was referring to the doctrine of karma or past lives. The narratives offered different reasons to explain Swamiji’s journey to India. Some people said a Hindu deity directed him to a guru in India through a vision. Other people said Swamiji himself elected to travel to India to fulfill a childhood dream. Some narrators explained that officials from the Indian High Commission in Ghana encouraged Swamiji and paid for the trip because they were happy about his interest in Hinduism and Indian culture. Takyi did not refute the other explanations, but he insisted that the final push for Swamiji’s journey came from the worshipping community, “so that he could learn more, acquire more powers and help us better when he comes back.” The community contributed money to pay for the trip. Takyi also talked about how the community survived in the absence of their leader: We went on. There were some elderly members . . . and very knowledgeable too, who led us. . . . But we still consulted Kwesi on what to do. . . . And . . . you see, Kwesi was out there in body only. His spirit was still here. He always knew what we were doing here.

In concluding his account, Takyi described how the community’s fortunes increased with the return of their leader from India, the building of their temple and Swamiji’s initiation by Krishnananda. From Takyi’s description of Swamiji’s earlier worshipping community it was clear to me that it practiced an eclectic form of religion. But it was also clear that some watered down version of Hinduism provided an overarching framework for the religious practice of this earlier community. Some narrators insisted that the community was purely Hindu though they added that Swamiji encouraged an open attitude to other religious practices too. By now, a clearer picture was beginning to emerge: Swamiji had begun the process of establishing a Hindu tradition in Accra before he journeyed to India and he went to India to acquire deeper insights into the religion so that he could complete this process on his return. But, to confirm these details of the story, I needed to talk to Swamiji himself.



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Swamiji Tells His Own Story “Come in my son,” Swamiji called me from his balcony when he saw me entering the gates of the temple’s courtyard. It was a rainy morning in July 1999. The weather was cold and the ground was soaked with muddy water. This was my first major interview with Swamiji, so I had butterflies in my stomach. Swamiji is in his seventies (he was in his 60s when I started the research in 1999). About five feet and nine inches tall, he is above the average height of most Fante-Akan people. Although he stoops slightly and often limps on his left foot, clear indications of aging, Swamiji’s dark shiny skin, muscular build and bald head give him the look of a younger man. A tribal mark on his left cheek reflects his Fante-Akan ethnic background. Swamiji dresses regularly in ochre robes and wears sacred beads (mala) around his neck just like any Hindu sadhu or holy man. Before he “renounced the world” and took the sannyasa vow to become a guru, Swamiji was married and had children. Some followers of the monastery said his wife now lives alone in Odorkor. Swamiji’s children live with him in the monastery and go to school at Odorkor. His eldest son, Jamra, is in his late twenties. He has completed secondary school and he is a disciple of his father. Jamra seems to be very well versed in Swamiji’s temple tradition and when Swamiji was not available, Jamra would take me around the temple telling me about the deities and going over the temple rituals with me. Followers say that Jamra will take over as the next Swami when his father “leaves this body” one day. Swamiji is one of the most impressionable people I ever met. Anyone who met him remarked about his intelligence, broad knowledge base, humility, humor, and generosity. He seemed to be particularly fond of me and accommodated me anytime I showed up at the temple, even though strangers or visitors to the temple are not allowed to “importune” him outside visiting hours (see also Fernandez, 1970). There were people sitting on concrete platforms at the entrance of the courtyard waiting their turns to consult with Swamiji when I arrived that morning, but he walked past them and led me to his office. We exchanged greetings and began. “It’s Shiva. You are not writing this book for yourself. Bhagavan is using you as an instrument to tell the world about him,” Swamiji commented after I had explained the details of my research to him. “How did you become Hindu?” That was my first question. Swamiji sat on a platform, back against the wall, legs stretched straight and resting on a cushion before him. I sat in lotus position on the red woolen carpet covering the

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floor of the office and faced Swamiji. He paused briefly, staring at a spot on the floor of the office as if he was going over the reminiscences of his past and was wondering where to begin the story. Then, he directed his eyes to a writing desk in the corner of the opposite wall stacked with books. On the walls were pictures of Hindu deities, a picture of Swami Krishnananda, Swamiji’s guru, a portrait of Jesus and a photo of Swamiji posing with Otumfuo Opoku Ware the second, the Asantehene (King of the Ashanti kingdom). He sipped water from a glass nearby, cleared his throat and began his story. Swamiji’s Background Swamiji was born as Kwesi Esel in the mid-1930s at Senya Breku, a small fishing village located on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, fifty miles west of Accra. Swamiji’s father was a traditional healer, a priest, and a psychic all rolled into one. His father’s fame and reputation, which spread throughout Senya Breku and the neighboring villages beyond, rested on the “sharpness” of his remedies. Swamiji’s mother was a petty trader, and an herbalist. Swamiji does not remember the month or date of his birth because, “my mother and my father, they did not go to ‘white man school’ so they were not concerned about months and dates.” But, because he was named “Kwesi,” Swamiji believes he was born on a Sunday. He had a patchy education, the result of frequent interruptions: “I would go to suku (school), then stop, start again and then stop again.” Swamiji’s father did not encourage his going to school because, as the only male in the family, Swamiji had to follow in the steps of his father as a healer, according to tradition. For this reason Swamiji was frequently pulled out of school to observe his father at work. On the contrary, his mother was quite enthusiastic about Western education—”because she knew that white man knowledge too was good”—and wanted Swamiji to remain in school. But she died when Swamiji was still a boy and with her death, young Swamiji’s hopes of gaining “white man knowledge” faded: “So I came to stay at home completely so that I could observe my father at work. The ‘englis’ (English) that I speak and write and read today I had to learn all on my own.” How Swamiji Understands His Mission I sensed Swamiji’s reluctance to talk about his past. Traditionally Hindu ascetics are not supposed to talk about their pre-ascetic lives because having



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renounced the world, they are dead to that life. So I could not push him to confirm or deny the stories I had heard about his childhood. But he revealed clues to how he perceived his mission and the things that inspired him in his spiritual quest. Swamiji believes he was on a divine mission—to serve the Hindu God Shiva: From the time I was a boy I knew my life was heading in this direction. The reason I faced difficulties going to school was that schooling was not on my path. Shiva was directing me towards this spiritual path. Then, all the time I had this strong urge to delve deeper into mystical things and to develop spiritually. Nothing could satisfy this thirst and I kept going and going. I knew all the secrets to the healing powers of herbs and other plants. I could tap into other traditional power sources when I was only a boy. But something still urged me on to search the bible, the Koran, and other scriptures for deeper secrets. I prayed, fasted, traveled to places, consulted with other spiritual people, magicians and people with powerful medicine. And anytime people would come to me for help I always knew what to do. It came ‘just like that’.’ When they would come to me and say ‘Kwesi, I am not feeling well, life is not going on well for me. Something or somebody is doing [causing harm spiritually] me,’ I would simply take a glass of water, pray into it and prepare some concoctions. They would drink this and the problems would go away. I did not always understand how I accomplished all these things, but I knew that somehow they were leading me somewhere.

Swamiji’s boyhood encounters also inspired him to take spiritual matters seriously. One of these was an encounter he had with a priest from the Roman Catholic Church in his village: You see, at first I was Apostolic. Then later, I became a Catholic. And as a Catholic, the powers of the fathers impressed me. They inspired me. There was one father [he adjusted his seat and began a story]. A church member died and we were going to bury him. Then all of a sudden the skies turned dark and then without warning, shooo! The rain started to pour down. We were all drenched in the rain. But this Roman Catholic father, he too was with us in the rain, but the rain did not touch him. He was still dry! Only him, he was dry . . . And he had no umbrella too. It was his powers! And he really impressed me. That day I said to myself ‘I’d like to develop powers like that father [he hit his chest three times].’ When I heard that Catholic fathers communicated with saints, I thought, ‘Maybe that’s where they got their powers from,’ so pam! [Immediately] I was into saints too. I wanted to be able to talk with saints too. And I read all I found on them. . . . Saint Anthony, Saint Peter, and Saint Augustine. . . . All of them. I simply wanted to be spiritually powerful.

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Swamiji left Senya Breku for Accra in the early 60s. He described the events that led him to make this move: That was in the 1960s . . . 1962 thereabout. In November, but am not too sure of the date. The chief of Abobloshi village [a village near Accra] was seriously ill. Actually, he was dying. He had tried all kinds of remedies, but the illness would not go away. So his people went all over the country to find a good medicine man to cure him. They heard of my father and sent after him. My father came to the palace and healed the chief. The chief was so much impressed by my father’s medicine that he begged my father to stay and become the palace healer. So my father remained in Accra. The chief gave my father some land at the place in Accra called Russia, to build a house. People heard of his good medicine and came to him for help. And when they became more than he could handle alone he said I should come to help him. First I did not want to go. I couldn’t leave my clients in the village behind. But I thought about it for some time and said ‘If my father says I should come and help him why should I refuse?’ So, that was how I came to Accra.

Typically, founders of religious movements in African communities experience a crowning episode in which the spiritual “mandate” to begin their mission is made “unambiguously manifest” to them and to the public (Fernandez 1970:233–234). Swamiji believes his call to begin his mission came not long after he arrived in Accra when he resurrected a dying person: Then one day something happened and that was how people came to know me. Two girls were critically ill. In fact they were almost dead when their family brought them to my father. Soon, one of them died. The other one was barely clinging to life. But we knew she too would die. When I saw the girl at first I was scared. But I said, “I will give it a try.” I called her father and said to him “bring me this thing, and that thing and that thing.” I needed water, herbs, and a white fowl to prepare my charms. He brought them. I said “One is already dead so I am not going to do anything for her. The other one, I will prepare a concoction but you will administer this yourself. Pray and pour it on the girl, if she will live we will know. If she won’t live too she will die at once.”’ I prepared the concoction, recited some verses from the psalms and handed it over to him. He poured it over his daughter’s body. Nothing happened at first. “Why do you stare me in the face? Pour more on her,”’ I screamed at him. So he poured more. We all stood over her, watching, watching, watching, and then we heard a loud noise, Shololololol! And what did we see? A b-i-g black snake! A cobra! Eei! It came through the wall.



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Swamiji was silent for a moment as if he was reliving the scene. He continued: Everybody stepped back. Some people ran away. Even old man [his father] himself, watched from afar. The snake circled the girl three times and then vanished into a hole in the wall! Eei! [Swamiji let out an expression of surprise]. The girl struggled for a while and then let out a cry, ‘Mama! Ma ye ni [mother, give me some food to eat’ [he mimicked the cry of the girl] and that was it. She lived! And that was it. That was how I began in Accra. The news spread all over Accra, and beyond and people came to me from far away places.

Almost every follower I talked with had something to say about this incident. It became clear, however, that because of the many retellings of this narrative over the years, it had come to develop many varying versions. But in all the strands I heard from followers, the incident involved a man—not a girl—and he was already dead when Swamiji brought him back to life. Some narrators added that the traditional priests and medicine men and witches of the village where the incident occurred became suspicious of Swamiji’s healing powers and banished him. Whether the narrators intentionally embellished their stories to prove the powers of their leader is still not clear. It seemed, however, that a tradition of narratives featuring Swamiji’s miraculous deeds was developing in the community. These narratives borrowed themes from stories about Hindu holy men such as Chaitanya and mythological characters such as Krishna. But they also included themes from a local genre of narratives featuring famous Ghanaian religious figures and their miracles. As I will show later in the book these stories and the interpretations they spawned are crucial in spreading the influence of Swamiji throughout southern Ghana. Swamiji’s miracle also marked the beginning of the community that would blossom over the years into the Hindu monastery. On the question of the status of this community Swamiji’s account was consistent with Takyi’s. But Swamiji went on to further explain why he adopted Hinduism: You see, when I was growing up, I had so many unanswered spiritual questions. So I read a lot, but found no answers. It was my search for answers that sent me to Hindu scriptures. I realized that I got all my answers from there. The scriptures taught me to meditate, to maintain my health, to focus attention, and so many things. I found that Hinduism could help me to grow deeper spiritually. I found out too that all the things I read about in other religious books, they were all nicely put together in Hinduism. So I took to the religion. Through Hinduism I taught my followers to delve deeper into spiritual matters.

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Swamiji’s innate curiosity and yearning for deeper spiritual truths had led to his discovery of Hinduism. Selecting practices and beliefs from the repertoire of Hindu religious symbols floating around in Ghana at that time, he created a local version of Hinduism as the framework for the religious practice of his worshipping community. Swamiji also explained in greater details why and how he went to India. Surprisingly his explanations contained nothing about the influence of his worshipping community on this decision: One day I said I had to travel somewhere to learn more and develop my powers. So I wrote letters to some places; Mecca, Jerusalem, America and finally far away India. My plan was to go to a place first and then crown everything with a visit to India, the home of all spiritual powers. So I started correspondence courses on the Hindu way of life (santana dharma) with the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh, in India. Then I wrote to the Guru that I want to come . . . Then, I was there, aah [waited for a long time] and a letter came from India from the guru saying, ‘We have accepted you, so come.’ Could you believe that India, the farthest of all the places and the last place I wrote to, was the first to reply? But I sensed it was going to happen that way.

Paa Kwesi Returns from India Swamiji returned from India to a rousing welcome from his followers. The festivities celebrating his return went on for weeks. Following his return, Swamiji divorced his wife and became a celibate. He also completed the transition of his “church” into a Hindu worshipping community: From this time we performed only Hindu rituals. Soon many people heard about us and started to come and that was how the monastery started.

The community continued to meet in Swamiji’s home at “Russia.” He renovated his living room and transformed it into a hall to accommodate the large number of followers that his new status as a Hindu sadhu was attracting. When his living room could no longer accommodate all his followers, Swamiji bought a piece of land at Odorkor from a Nigerian returning to his country. In that same period the building of the temple, which is presently the headquarters of the community, began and after five years it was completed.



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Initiation into Sannyasa Swamiji would still have to wait for five years to be initiated in 1976. He described his initiation in a tone that exuded a sense of pride and achievement: “I thought of going back to India, but then I met my guru. He came here. He was visiting the Sindhis at Osu. They told him that I was here so he came. I said to him ‘Please, Swami, I’d like to renounce.’ ‘Renounce?’ he asked me. I said, ‘Yes.’ At first he did not want to initiate me. Four times! He refused. I cried. I said to him, ‘You are God and only you can initiate me so if you say ‘No’, then I do not know of anywhere to go. I cried like a child.” In the end Swamiji prevailed in his request and was initiated at Odorkor into the sannyasi order of monastics on Sunday, 4th January 1976. It was then that he received his name Swami Saraswati Ghanananda. The name Ghanananda is a joining of two words, “Ghana,” the country, and “nanda,” which means bliss. Literally the name means “the bliss of Ghana.” The underlying sense is that as the locus of the initiation of Africa’s first indigenous Hindu monk, Ghana will experience bliss, peace and prosperity. On that same day the temple was named “The Hindu Monastery of Africa” and twenty-five disciples selected from Swamiji’s worshipping community went to the “feet of the guru” to be initiated. The visiting Swami extended his stay to teach and train these disciples in the teachings and practices of the Divine Life Society. Two related themes emerge from the story of the monastery’s origins. The first theme is the role of Swamiji’s personal initiative in the founding of the monastery. The monastery represents the culminating point of Swamiji’s boyhood dreams to become a renowned spiritual figure. Swamiji’s charisma drew on the aura that surrounded him as a child and his manifestation of spectacular healing and psychic abilities. At the height of his charisma Swamiji felt an urgent need to institutionalize his practice by creating a worshipping community. But he knew that his community needed a stable matrix of norms, roles and a status if it was to survive. Swamiji adopted Hindu religion because “it contained all the answers to my spiritual questions.” But this was also possible because Hindu religious symbols circulated freely in Ghanaian communities at this time. To legitimize his status as a Hindu holy man and the status of his community as a Hindu worshipping community, Swamiji had to journey to India, the traditional home of Hinduism, to be trained. His return marked the beginning of his community’s life as a Hindu worshipping community. The monastery provides an institutional, communal and a spiritual context

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for Swamiji to continue to exercise his charismatic leadership. Next, I will describe the physical structure of the temple, the community and the tradition that testifies to Swamiji’s efforts. The Monastery’s Worshipping Community The Physical Temple The Hindu Monastery of Africa is a white dome-shaped building taller than the buildings in its immediate surroundings. It is located near Busia junction, a busy intersection on the Mallam-Odorkor highway, which links Odorkor to its neighboring towns and villages, so that it is easily accessible to worshippers and visitors. The temple stands out for its striking beauty and unique Indian architectural style. Seen from afar, it resembles a mosque. But as one draws near to it, the arch-shaped “Om” Hindu symbol placed on top of its dome betrays its Hindu identity. The words “The Hindu Monastery of Africa” are boldly written in black on the white gates of the courtyard of the temple. Sometimes, the crowns of the trees growing in front of the temple conceal this writing. In the rainy season the trees look greener and their branches grow longer and thicker, concealing the temple partially and giving it the appearance of a fetish grove in southern Ghana. This appearance represents a sharp contrast to the background of the temple, which is located at the center of Odorkor, a heavily urbanized area and for this reason the temple is the subject of rumors and tall tales. One rumor goes that because Hindu religion involves occult practices and is associated with sorcery, Swamiji deliberately planted the trees to hide the temple so that they could perform their rituals in secrecy. Rumors like this one reinforce the mythic image of the Hindu religion in Ghana. A six-foot high wall surrounds the temple, protecting it from the dusty winds that blow in the dry Harmattan season of dry dusty wind, and from erosion by runoff due to torrential rains, which are common in Odorkor. There are paintings of Akan religious symbols such as Gye Nyame, Sankofa, and Adinkra on the external portion of this wall. This is the first important sign one sees of the monastery’s Akan religious flavor. The walls and the trees separate the clean, serene, and orderly atmosphere of the sacred world of Swamiji and his followers, from the relative disorderliness of the world outside. They also prevent worshippers from being distracted by activities outside the temple. In the daytime, activities reach their peak at Odorkor. The sound of moving cars, the blaring of horns by taxi drivers, the shouts of vendors and the sound of pestle hitting against mortar as



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a chop bar nearby pounds fufu (pounded yams or pounded plantain) for its customers, become unusually loud. At these times the trees and the walls protecting the temple literally succumb to the pressures of its urban surroundings and activities in the temple are drowned by the noise from outside. The temple has a big courtyard where worshippers socialize. There are three concrete platforms and some wooden benches at the entrance of the courtyard. Followers and visitors sit here as they wait their turns to consult with Swamiji. I often sat here too to observe activities in the temple and take notes. An assortment of shoes and other footwear is always strewn on the sides of the benches and platforms as members and visitors are prohibited from walking around the temple grounds with shoes on. On one side of the courtyard, there is a chain of rooms: the library, Swamiji’s living quarters, his offices and the living quarters of his children and the boys and girls who attend the deities and perform other chores in the maintenance of the monastery. On the opposite side, is the office of the secretary, Swamiji’s computer room, a classroom where Swamiji teaches Vedanta classes, and effigies of Krishnananda, the guru who initiated Swamiji, and Mahatma Gandhi. There is a garden in the middle of the courtyard. The garden contains rare species of trees, and the followers said Swamiji brought many of these plants from India when he visited there in the 1970s. Followers also spoke at length about the medicinal qualities and the spiritual potency of the trees and other plants in the garden. The worship hall of the temple is located at the southern end of the courtyard. There is an altar on the verandah of this hall. Here, Swamiji and his disciples perform fire sacrifices (Hawan) during worship, while devotees sit in the courtyard looking on. The shrine of Shiva, the presiding deity of the temple, is located at the eastern end of the verandah. Two ghee lamps placed at the entrance of the shrine burn constantly. There are two striking differences between the Hindu Monastery of Africa and most Indian Hindu temples. In the Hindu Monastery of Africa, the images of the temple’s deities: Shiva, Hanuman, Durga, Krishna, Radha, Ganesh and Skanda, dressed in shiny and brightly colored clothes, are all lined up on an elevated platform at one end of the worship hall. Offerings, normally fruits from devotees are placed at the base of this platform. These are cut up and eaten as prasad (food blessed by gods) during worship. In Indian Hindu temples, however, the images of the deities worshipped are normally placed in a dark room known as the garbha grha, which is considered to be the “womb” and only the presiding priest

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has access to this room where he performs rites on behalf of the worshipping community. The second difference is that in the monastery, apart from Shiva, all the deities are together whilst in many Indian Hindu temples each deity often has its shrine and it is very clear which one is the single central deity of the temple. The Hindu Monastery of Africa is, however, not necessarily unique in this regard. Some North American and Indian Hindu temples follow this pattern of having multiple deity images arranged on a platform. “Kwesi’s Followers” The worshipping community that eventually became the Hindu Monastery of Africa was called “Kwesi and his followers” or simply “Kwesi’s group.” Followers as well as outsiders still use these names. In this section I shall use the names “Kwesi and his followers,” “the Hindu Monastery of Africa,” and “Swamiji’s followers” interchangeably to refer to the community. The monastery has five lay worshipping communities in Ghana. These are located in Accra, Cape Coast, Ashanti Mampong, Tema and Sunyani, cities in southern Ghana. There is also a community in Lome, the capital of Togo, a French speaking country that borders Ghana on the east. The temple at Accra, also known as “The Ashram,” is the headquarters and has the largest worshipping community. The other communities have their own temples but these are not as elaborate as the one in Accra. The total population of Kwesi’s followers is a little over twelve thousand people. But this number represents only people whose names are on record as followers. There are those who are mere sympathizers, followers of mainline Christian and spiritual churches who may not be described as bona fide followers of Swamiji, and whose names are not recorded, but who regularly take part in the temple’s activities, sometimes travelling from far-flung places. Because the community defines membership in loose and open terms as “any-one who follows Kwesi’s teachings and chants regularly,” it would seem reasonable for me to consider this group too as part of Swamiji’s followers. For this reason a population of about seventeen thousand people would be a more reasonable estimate of the total number of Swamiji’s followers. In describing the community I will focus on the temple community in Accra. Where there are striking differences in the characteristics of followers in the other worshipping communities, I will mention and explain these differences.



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Swamiji’s followers are made up of extended family units. Sometimes I came across as many as three generations of family members: husband and wife, their sons and daughters, in-laws, grandchildren, and relatives such as uncles and aunts. This pattern is explained by the fact that in southern Ghana the religious group that a family head belongs to normally determines where other members of the family worship. If a family head switches allegiance to a new religious group, the other members follow, sometimes by their own volition, but normally they are pressured to do so. Followers range in age from babies to the very elderly and there are both male and female followers. Compared with the Hare Krishna community, Swamiji’s followers have remained in the community for longer periods. I met people who had been followers from the time of Kwesi’s earlier community. On the average the number of years a devotee had been a follower of the monastery is between ten and fifteen years. In the Accra temple, there are more male than female followers. The women are mostly wives and fiancées of male members. Most followers are middleaged. There is an active participation of youth, many of whom are teen­ agers (children and relatives of adult members) who often sit together and use the opportunity for important social contact with their peers during worship. They constitute about a fifth of the total population. There are a small number of children below not yet teens. In the Tema branch of the monastery the women outnumber men by two to one. The majority of the women have completed secondary school, teacher training college, or nursing training school. A few of them attended university. Most of them are traders, with some owning chop bars and drinking spots or running private businesses. Others are administrative clerks in offices in Tema and Accra, secondary school teachers, and dressmakers. Only a few of the married women have their husbands in the community. Most married women said their husbands “are not Hindus,” so they worship elsewhere. Some women are single, others divorced or widowed, and a few of the married women have absentee husbands who have travelled to seek greener pastures in richer African countries such as Libya, and Europe and North-America. The opportunities for trading in Tema explain the preoccupation of the women with trade. Originating in the early 1960s as a harbor which attracted individuals from far-flung and nearby hometowns and villages, Tema has developed into Ghana’s most industrialized city and a center of brisk mercantile import and export trade in which women are the main middle people. As traders, most women in Tema, including some members

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of the Tema branch of the monastery, are economically independent, powerful, and very influential.4 As the discussion will show the role of these women as traders and the fact that the majority of them are gainfully employed in respectable professions are important socio-economic bases on which they assert their equal rights and independence in the face of Akan expressions of patriarchy. Equally important in shaping their attitudes are the aggressive, competitive, and no-nonsense stances the women have to adopt in order to survive the ethos of Tema’s fast paced life, and their penchant for quickly picking up current global trends in dress, lifestyles, business, and ideas, living in the harbor city of Tema, considered to be the door through which foreign culture filters into southern Ghana. The ethnic groups in Ghana except “Northerners” are all represented in Swamiji’s Hindu community. But there are more Akan people than any other group. Two factors explain this—Swamiji’s ethnic background as an Akan and the history of the monastery. In Ghana people prefer to follow religious leaders who come from their own ethnic groups. Because Swamiji is a Fante-Akan, Akan people are mostly attracted to his community. They feel bound by a sense of obligation to follow their kinsman. Secondly, when he began his career in Accra the people who consulted with him were individuals who already knew him from his village, so that Akan people became his first group of followers. This earlier community recruited other followers from circles of close friends family members and acquaintances with a similar ethnic background, which is Akan. Contrary to Asamoah-Gyadu’s (1994:108) general observation that affluent and elite members of southern Ghanaian society pre-dominate the membership of Asian religions, I observed that Swamiji’s followers came from all the social categories in southern Ghana. There are working class people and individuals with no work. But there are very well-educated people too, such as doctors, lawyers, and professors. Some followers hold key positions in the government and other key institutions. Some are private businesswomen and men who control resources, power, and wealth and they are highly respected socially. They sponsor most of the temple’s activities. Followers described in glowing terms how Mr. Bansa, a wealthy businessman, and a member, single-handedly sponsored many 4 Even though these female traders are not necessarily wealthy, the regular in-flow of money affords them high levels of socio-economic independence. Some are the main breadwinners of their families.



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of the programs marking the beginning of the community’s 25th anniversary celebrations. People like Mr. Bansa are not in the majority, but they stand out because they use their wealth, power and fame to promote and further the goals of the monastery. Some female followers work as clerks and secretaries in government offices. Others are traders, seamstresses, and homemakers. Most followers are urban-based, living in and around the towns where the temples are located. Rural followers are scattered over far-flung places in the countryside. These individuals, mostly traders, teachers and farmers have no temples, but sometimes they come together to form groups meeting in homes or classrooms. Swamiji’s followers previously belonged to the mainline Christian churches; Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Roman Catholic churches. Many of them say they are now “Hindus” with no ties with their previous churches, but some followers say they still attend their former churches occasionally, especially at Christmas, or Easter, or when they visited their hometowns. The monastery’s membership consists of two main groups; disciples and lay followers. Disciples are the closest to Swamiji in terms of authority. They hold key positions in the temple and they are qualified to officiate during ceremonies and perform temple rituals with Swamiji. Most disciples are elderly men and women. Unlike other Hindu monastic communities, where disciples are ascetics and live in the monastery, Swamiji’s disciples, although initiated, live outside the ashram and visit regularly for the purpose of worship and other devotional activities. In the branches outside Accra disciples lead the lay worshippers in the organization of the temple and rituals, with the most senior serving as the president. As leaders, the disciples nominate individual lay worshippers from their branches for discipleship. Swamiji would interview the nominees to determine their readiness for this role and if satisfied would train them for six weeks in the scriptures, the rituals, and the norms of the monastery’s tradition. He then initiates them as his disciples. Leaders of the Community Apart from Swamiji, the community’s spiritual leader, other individuals contribute to its smooth running. Prof, the national president, oversees the monastery’s day-to-day administration at the Accra headquarters. He is also the leading spokesman and represents the monastery at important meetings with other organizations. Prof presides over meetings of the

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governing council comprising disciples elected from all the branches in Ghana and the one in Togo. The council meets periodically to plan events, settle disputes and attend to other matters relating to the monastery. The secretary, Abu, is a retired agricultural officer. He is also the treasurer, and the temple’s general overseer. As overseer, Abu supervises all activities relating to the physical maintenance of the physical temple. Some boys live in the temple and perform daily chores: cleaning the temple, filling a water tank with pipe-borne water, and sweeping the compound every morning. The boys slept in the ashram, ate their meals there and attended a junior secondary school nearby. Swamiji also has a personal secretary, a middle-aged plump Fante woman. She warmed Swamiji’s bath water for him, cooked his meals, did his laundry, kept his office tidy, and hosted Swamiji’s important visitors. At the other branches this organizational pattern is replicated. The only difference is that these extensions have no Swamis. They are headed by senior disciples. Life in Swamiji’s Courtyard The daily life of the monastery revolves around Swamiji’s daily routine. Swamiji is habitually an early riser. By 4:00 a.m. he is up, takes a bath, and wakes the boys in the ashram up to begin their chores. He would go to his office and work on a book he was writing. Then he would walk around the courtyard humming a traditional Ghanaian or Hindu tune. He would go from deity to deity performing the appropriate daily rituals on behalf of followers. Then he would retire to his office and for a long time would not be seen. People speculated about what he did during this time. Some people said he meditated on followers’ problems and consulted with Hindu deities to find spiritual solutions to them. Swamiji himself told no one what he did during this period and when I asked him he only shrugged his shoulders and said, “that’s when I do my things.” By 7:00 a.m., Swamiji is ready to attend to his visitors. Every day he welcomes a string of visitors at the temple. Most of them are his followers visiting him because they need advice on an issue. Visitors however include “outsiders,” who approach Swamiji with all kinds of problems—illness, financial instability, death in the family, a family or work-place conflict, or a personal identity crisis. Listening attentively to their stories, Swamiji would sympathise with them before providing remedies for their suffering. His devotees and visitors alike attest to Swamiji’s deep concern for people going through life challenges, and emphasize how this quality endeared him to them.



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A follower described how he supported her emotionally when her terminally ill husband eventually died. Every day after church he would come and ask me how he was doing. He would ask, “What are the doctors saying? Have they found anything new that can help? Have you tried this? Have you tried that?” He placed everything in Bhagavan’s hands. “If Bhagavan wills it the doctors will not even touch him, he will live.” Swami would tell me. He would give me kunkun . . . And say “Take this, put it on his forehead it will help.” But my husband died . . . And when I told him he just took me aside and said “Don’t cry too much . . . Don’t worry. It’s all in Bhagavan’s hands. It was your husband’s karma. There was little you could do.” He consoled me.

Not only did Swamiji address the situation by contributing ritual paraphernalia, giving the woman hope when she felt very helpless, he cushioned the devastating impact of her husband’s illness and death by relocating the entire crisis within the context of Shiva’s will. Followers and visitors always left Swamiji’s office beaming with smiles or wearing a look of relief. I would overhear contented followers whisper to others still waiting to consult with Swamiji, “He said he knew our problem before we even came in.” “I told you,” the person would respond. Such interchanges reflect the confidence followers had in their leader’s ability to deal with their problems. Aside from the psychological and spiritual assurance, Swamiji also helped his followers and visitors materially. I heard testimonies of how he helped followers to find work or obtain loans for business by introducing them to other well-placed followers or even non-members that he knew. Unlike some Hindu monasteries that emphasize devotion to the guru, Swamiji discourages a focus on him. Sometimes, when devotees lie prostrate upon seeing him approach them, he says to them in Akan “Wongyae . . . Ame menyɛ Nyame,” meaning, “Please refrain from that, I am not God,” before explaining further (still in Akan), “I am only a teacher. I only help you identify the path to salvation. Everything else depends on you. You will have to practice, so you can build your own Shakti.” Swamiji makes a point of emphasizing his role as a spiritual leader, a model, and a guide. The fact that some followers still perceived his role in purely instrumental terms as the spiritual guarantor of their material welfare sometimes frustrated Swamiji. There were times, when, unable to hide how overwhelmed he was by the range of problems people approached him with, Swamiji openly expressed his frustration. Apparently exhausted after an unusually busy day addressing the concerns of his followers and visitors, he mused over their overly concern with worldly matters:

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chapter two Some people come here because they think I have powers to solve all problems. “Oh Swamiji, the poverty is killing us. Oh Swami, my business is not doing well. Swamiji, someone is doing me. Give me something to protect me,” That’s all I hear. People are interested only in worldly matters. But me, that is not my department. I am Swamiji, a guru. I am not a mallam! If you come to me and say “Oh swami can you help me know God better, or how can I be a good worshipper in my church,” I might be able to say something to you that might help. But I don’t have magic to solve all worldly problems.

Swamiji may simply have been tired on this day, but underlying this statement is his concern that his followers’ over-emphasis on worldly matters, detracted from the ascetic life that he exemplified and sought to promote. For Swamiji’s followers and the visitors who consulted him, however, Swamiji was not only a sadhu. He was like an okomfo, a priest of Shiva, a “Hindu” god, in the same way local deities had priests in southern Ghana. Swamiji’s earlier vocation as a healer supported this perception. Viewing him in this way followers and visitors believed that Swamiji could tap into the “powers of Shiva” to uncover the spiritual causes of their problems and furnish them with appropriate antidotes. Although Hindu sadhus are healers, Swamiji may have felt that his followers over-emphasized this aspect. Here, we see a clash between the other worldly-orientation of Swamiji’s ascetic Hindu tradition and the sense among his followers that spiritual symbols are instruments for promoting material well-being. This is an obvious carryover from traditional religion. But Swamiji skillfully mediates this conflict. When people would come to talk to him about their problems, he would locate the conversation in an all-embracing divine will and power, advicing them to “Meditate on the problem. Do what you can and leave everything else to Shiva to handle.” He would encourage them to “Use the mala (rosary). That’s your spiritual bullet for fighting problems. Chant every day. Bhagavan would see you through in his own time.” He would also assure them that his “spiritual eyes” would constantly watch over them and see them through. His followers took his prescriptions seriously and religiously followed through with them. Even though he did not provide any direct solutions, they believed that Swamiji always intervened spiritually to influence the outcome of whatever step they took to solve their problems. They would say, “We knew it was Swamiji’s doing, he is always with us in spirit.” In this way Swamiji is able to hold onto to his status as a Hindu sadhu whilst at the same time addressing the indigenous practical and magico-spiritual needs of his followers. Followers and non-followers alike freely walk into the temple anytime they wish. People would spend an entire afternoon there meditating. Some



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followers came just to have darshana of the deities before going to work, during break, or after work. Darshana, “to view,” is the act of obtaining audience from a more powerful being. This could be a highly respected elder, a sadhu or holy person, or a murti (the image of a deity). Darshana opens the doors for good fortune, well-being, grace, and spiritual merit to flow into the lives of seeing devotees. But because the deity is also gazing on the devotee, darshana involves trading visions. Members of the monastery share the Hindu belief that the mark above the bridge of the nose on all divine images symbolizes the third eye—the point from which spiritual power radiates—so that when worshippers look at a murti, they are also standing in the field of the deity’s power (murta) and imbibing it. Sometimes, followers simply sit in the courtyard and chant mantras. The temple also represents an escape from the drudgery of the life outside, even if only temporarily. Here the rules that guide the relationship between followers are different, that is, not as stringent as outside. The strong sense of hierarchy in southern Ghanaian society and the rules and conventions that guide behavior of the categories in this hierarchy are toned down, even suspended in the temple. Everybody is considered to be “equal before God.” Relationships among followers are very informal. All followers refer to one another as Om—a name for God— and in their greetings a follower would simply have to say to the other “Hari Om,” to which the person would reply “Om tat sat” or “Hari Om tat sat” (an affirmation that God is real). Titles such as Mister, Doctor, Sir or Opanin— elder in Akan—which reflect social status and achievement, were suspended. From the temple’s ascetic point of view, such earthly titles and status symbols were related to attachments of the mundane world, which followers must abandon, in order to advance spiritually. In sociological and anthropological terms, however, the conditions in the temple generated an egalitarian ethos, or what Victor Turner has described as “communitas,” making it possible for worshippers to freely interact with categories of people everyday life and Ghanaian conventions might not otherwise allow for (1995:131–165). If we consider the fact that many of Swamiji’s followers are urbanites uprooted from networks of countryside village relationships by coming to the city, we appreciate all the more the crucial need to generate such “we feeling” among them. Other factors such as the common bond each of them felt with Swamiji, and the hostilities and criticisms they encounter especially from followers of Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches, made Swamiji’s followers feel all the more strongly about respecting each other and “being there for each other.” This is also the basis of the mutual help that followers extended to each other. Its

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spiritual significance aside, Swamiji’s temple is a “home for the homeless” in Accra. Teachings The monastery’s teachings and practices reflect a blending of ancient Vedic beliefs and practices, the post-Vedic ascetic tradition based on the Upanishads, and traditional Ghanaian religious beliefs and practices. Its pantheon of divinities consists of the Vedic and Hindu deities: Vishnu, Shiva and his children Skanda and Ganesh, Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, Sri Lakshmi, the goddess of riches, prosperity, and abundance, Parvati, Shiva’s wife, and Maa Durga (also called Mata Durga), the warrior Goddess. All the other deities are manifestations of Shiva the Supreme Being. Shiva is described as God. He is referred to in local terms as Onyame, the Akan God and is assigned Onyame’s attributes. His epithets are Otumfuo (the great warrior), Obodea (the creator), Totrobunso (the rain giver), and Kokroko (the great chief). The name Obataanpa, an epithet of Onyame or God among the Akans, is always suffixed to Shiva, as in Shiva-Obataanpa. The Akan expression “baatan” or “Obaatanpa” is a gender-neutral expression for any person, male or female, who displays the moral qualities of love, nurture, care, empathy and dedication. Viewing him as the ultimate in terms of the qualities listed above, Akan people attribute this moral quality to the Supreme Being. Salvation The community’s notion of salvation is based on the meditative and ascetic tradition of the Upanishads. Its ascetic precepts and practices— detachment from mundane life, control of sexuality, repetitive chanting— are designed to condition the body and mind of the devotee for a lifetime of religious piety mainly involving speculative and meditative activity which will lead ultimately to moksha. This salvation is described in terms of “self-realization” or “attaining God consciousness.” It means uncovering the mystery of the fundamental identity of one’s soul, atman, with Brahman, the ultimate reality. The self-realized devotee is “liberated,” that is, released from the illusive world of maya and the endless cycle of rebirth, which is determined by karma. The devotee must strive to be “God conscious in this world,” not after death.



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Sometimes the notion of salvation is explained in terms of the culminating point of a transcendental journey involving one’s soul. This journey is in stages and it begins on a plain called Bhu described as the “earth” or “this world.” There are seven “heavens” above Bhu and seven “hells” below it. On the one hand, a devotee who faithfully follows the tenets of the community and lives a virtuous life would progress upwards through subsequent rebirths and life cycles through the higher heavens, enjoying better life conditions with each rebirth until he or she reaches the highest heaven called satyam. When such a person dies he or she would not be reborn. The soul would merge with the divine. It is said that the person has attained moksha. On the other hand, people who accumulate bad karma as a result of their misdeeds in Bhu are reborn into the hells. They would have to work their ways out through the merits of good deeds or sink lower and lower into the different hells experiencing worse life conditions as they do so. The temple’s discourse emphasizes power and protection. Not only is Shiva’s ascetic lifestyle a model for devotees, his spiritual power— shakti—generated through his ascetic practices could be transferred to the devotee for protection and to ensure a speedier journey towards “God consciousness.” Shiva’s powers of fertility can also be transmitted to female devotees to ensure their fecundity. Meditation and controlling of sexuality builds up shakti within the devotee, which transmutes bad karma into spiritual merit and ensures rebirth in a higher heaven. Shakti also builds a protective aura around a devotee that cannot be penetrated by witches and other evil forces. “Chant and meditate all the time, use your mala so that your third eye will develop,” Swamiji would constantly encourage his followers. In the parlance of the community, “the third eye” is a euphemism for the ability to transcend phenomenal reality and to see into the future, to acquire techniques to transform one’s consciousness and have mystical experiences. At worship Swamiji would exhort devotees: Use your viveka shakti [capacity to distinguish between what is absolutely essential for living a normal life and what is irrelevant] well. The third eye would never come until you divert attention from the things that sap your power, like having too much sex.

Worshippers can acquire “the third eye” only after years of performing spiritual exercises and through lengthy individual effort. Its mark is the acquisition of techniques and disciplines that enable the worshipper to “develop” (that is, breaking out of habitual patterns of thinking) or “see and do spiritual things.” For instance, the ability to fixate one’s eyes on

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an object till it moves, chant mantras until one sees a vision or falls into a trance, meditate silently until one hears a humming sound, are signs that a devotee is “developing” a third eye. The third eye is a mark of spiritual achievement. The ultimate goal, even past acquiring the third eye, however, is the realization that one’s soul, atman, is a part of brahman, the universal soul. Though they are not direct objects of devotion in the monastery, ancestors are acknowledged in a discourse that would seem to blend Hindu beliefs in forefathers and Ghanaian beliefs in connection with ancestral spirits. The ancestors are said to exist in the ninth heaven, which the community identifies as Bhu, and they perform their traditional Ghanaian roles as human guardians and custodians of traditional morality. When they so choose, they provide their offspring with the necessary assistance in their endeavors. Neglected, they withdraw their protection and support. According to the discourse, ancestors have an added role; they are spiritual guardians to devotees on the path of God-consciousness and their proper veneration generates spiritual merit for the devotee. Even though the temple tradition may seem overtly ascetic, in practice this tenor seems to be toned down in the devotees’ lives. What is stressed is maintaining a “middle ground” between an extreme ascetic life and over-indulgence in the world. Morality and right action and control of sexuality are rather stressed, not total renunciation from the world. The temple stresses fulfillment of obligations to the family and service to larger society—seva—which runs quite counter to the stress on asceticism. While this might reflect the Hindu reconciliation between dharma— social obligations—and moksha—spiritual obligations—it seems more like an attempt to reconcile the pragmatic, more robust “material success in the here and now” orientation of Ghanaian life and culture to Hindu asceticism. In the next chapter I offer a detailed account of other ways in which indigenous Ghanaian religious practices engage Hindu traditions in the context of the monastery’s ritual praxis.

CHAPTER THREE

DOMESTICATING SHIVA WORSHIP IN GHANA: RITUALS OF THE HINDU MONASTERY OF AFRICA In the Hindu Monastery of Africa, what is deemed to be Hindu practice is a blend of indigenous Ghanaian and Indian Hindu ritual practices and meanings, not strict East Indian or Vedic practice. All the same, the Indian Divine Life Society’s version of Shiva worship provides the overarching framework for beliefs and rituals in the community. This dynamism reflects the relative autonomy of the community, compared with Hare Krishna community, which is still exogenously controlled. Swamiji is the most authoritative voice in determining the meaning of Hinduism in the monastery. A tradition of the community explains the source of this authority. It is said that although the temple has affiliations with the Divine Life Society of India, the guru, Swami Krishnananda, who initiated Swamiji into the order of sannyasa, also vested him with the authority to establish his own Hindu tradition as the cornerstone of an authentic African Hinduism. The Hindu Monastery of Africa is therefore only loosely affiliated with the Divine Life Society of India. I did not even find the Ghanaian community listed among the Divine Life Society’s worldwide temple communities. Though his interpretation of Hindu meanings may be shaped somewhat by the Divine Life Society’s tradition, still Swamiji exercises considerable autonomy in selecting which aspects of this tradition would be appropriate and practicable for his community. He blends into this Hindu tradition aspects of traditional Akan religion in which he is extremely well versed, being himself a traditional priest and healer. Rituals1 Becoming a member of the community entails an initiation ceremony, the Namasamskara Diksa. During this initiation, devotees take vows committing them to the tenets of the community, accept Swamiji as their guru, and receive a secret mantra. They also receive their mala and a sacred thread that signifies their Hindu identities. Devotees of the monastery 1 I describe only rituals I observed and those that devotees talked about at length.

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are not enjoined to take on Hindu names during initiation. All the same, some devotees said they added Hindu names to their local names when they were initiated. Devotees are, however, made to choose a personal guardian Hindu deity to whom they must chant daily. Believing that these deities aid them in their endeavors and that they imbibe the deities’ attributes through devotion to them, devotees carefully consider deities with special powers or attributes that would enhance the realization of their specific life aspirations. Some female devotees said they favored Durga as their guardian because Durga bestows powers of fecundity, feminine power and vitality, and symbolized feminine divinity. Two young females said devotion to Durga guaranteed them “a good man to marry.” A woman whose deity was Sita said she looked up to the goddess as a model of matrimonial dutifulness and faithfulness. Saraswati and Lakshmi, goddesses of knowledge and wealth respectively, are more popular among younger devotees, many of whom are students. They said they needed wisdom and blessings from Saraswati. Some people too said they aspired to be as rich—often stressing “rich”—as Lakshmi. Ganesh, the elephant god, and Shiva, his father, were the more common choices of adult males. They said Ganesh would remove obstacles in their way or bestow on them qualities that would “enable us to bulldoze our way through life like an elephant moving through the forest,” and Shiva would grant them the power to achieve their secular and spiritual desires. Adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is not a condition for membership in the monastery. All the same two-thirds of devotees interviewed said they “stopped eating meat” when they became Hindus. They evoke the Hindu notions of ahimsa (nonviolence) and purity as the underlying reasons, but they do not relate “not eating meat” to dietary rules of the Brahman caste. For them nonviolence (as implied by “not eating meat”) is essentially an ascetic ideal and they do not eat meat because of the community’s strong emphasis on asceticism. An explanation of the Hindu basis of this connection between nonviolence and asceticism is in order at this point. The mainstay of the Vedic religion, the cradle of Hinduism, was animal sacrifices, the horse being the most valued animal victim (Fuller 1992:88). Post Vedic texts such as the Upanishads, however, reflect a switch from animal sacrifice and ritual action as a whole to transcendental knowledge gained through ascetic world renunciation (Fuller 1992:88–89). Kirin Narayan (1989) and Fuller (1992) suggest that the development of Buddhism and Jainism, which strongly emphasize nonviolence, possibly influenced this switch. The result explains the nexus of nonviolence and asceticism. Furthermore, the ascetic practice underlying the monastery’s tradition



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conceptually stands apart from the established Hindu social order and religion that Brahmanism and caste represents. For this reason there is a clear absence of the notion of caste in Swamiji’s community. Swamiji would however offer his own pragmatic explanations as to why his community does not subscribe to the caste ideology and practice, and the vegetarian lifestyle: .

The Hindu caste idea has a long and rich Indian tradition behind it, so it has functioned effectively in India. But we are from this land [Ghanaian people], not India, so it would be of no use here . . . Imagine us introducing caste into this temple. Won’t it introduce division in our midst? Who would we say are the low caste people and who would be Brahmans? What criteria would we use? As for the meat problem, again eating meat is part of our customs . . . Onyamkupon [God] himself created animals so that we his children would have food to eat . . . and . . . Not everybody can stop the meat. No! Not when some people are grown up like this before becoming Hindu. So it is not by force. As for me, Swami, I will not convert people from their religions . . . I am only a guide to people. So I would let them know the good and the bad of eating meat, for spiritual growth. The final choice is the devotees’.

Swamiji’s explanation underscores Horton’s and Peel’s observations that: . . . acceptance of ideas [and practices] from the world religions will be highly selective. Just what is accepted and what rejected will be determined very largely by the structure of the cosmology, and by the limits which this structure sets to the cosmology’s potential for adaptive change (1976:482).

Swamiji would not require the caste ideology or “not eating meat” because he knew that the cultural changes these would entail would be too drastic for his followers to adjust to. The explanations of some devotees for not eating meat re-echo folk theories about meat. A devotee said his not eating meat was in tune with his aspirations to become more otherworldly. Another devotee said he stopped eating meat because “it could drain all the power you gain through spiritual exercises and make you spiritually weak. It could make you immoral too.” We will treat these notions into greater detail in chapter five when discussing indigenous Ghanaian understandings of vegetarianism in the Hare Krishna community. Paradoxically, some devotees who ate meat also drew on the authority of the local custom for support. A devotee argued: We are Ghanaian Hindus. In our custom we eat meat. It was onyamkopun (God) who made the animals and said we could kill and eat them to his glory (Interview in English).

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Another devotee pointed out the impracticality of stopping to eat meat at his age in Ghanaian society: How could you live in society and say you would stop eating meat when you are becoming an elder? You will create problems for yourself, your wife and your family. How do you function during social events? It is good to stop for spiritual reasons but sometimes you should think of the social cost, too. We are not like beasts that exist in isolation. We are human beings. Because you may not eat meat there would be places you could not go to (Interview in Ga).

A female devotee based her eating meat on the authority of Christian scriptures. She drew on the Acts of the Apostles for support: “God himself ordered us to kill and eat. . . . So long as we are not being converted into Hindus there is no reason we should begin behaving like Indian people.” The point here is that “not eating meat” is a matter of personal choice for Swamiji’s followers and not an imposition. Even the cow is not considered a sacred animal in this temple because devotees said they did not consider its sacredness to be necessary in Ghana. “That is an Indian totem . . . We too have our own totems in our customs . . . We even have too many totems to adopt more,” an officer of the community explained, referring to the Hare Krishna practice of venerating the cow. The community’s attitude towards the Hindu notion of ritual purity is also quite ambivalent. For instance although Swamiji explained the prohibition of leather sandals or shoes in the temple in terms of Hindu rules of ritual purity—that is, because leather is from dead animals and is polluting—the main theme of followers’ explanations stress the sacredness of the temple’s premises. They mentioned two reasons why they considered it to be sacred, and both reasons reflect local notions. First, they said, the temple was the earthly abode of Shiva and Swamiji was Shiva’s priest. Second, they said Shiva was a great chief and the temple was like a chief’s palace. In the local tradition there is a respectful attitude towards deities’ shrines and chiefs’ palaces. Both are sacred grounds and to tread on them wearing shoes is disrespectful and ritually polluting. Footwear symbolizes dirt both physically and spiritually. Life-cycle rituals of the monastery reflect a strong Akan traditional religious flavor. Although mantras and slokas (hymns to deities) in honor of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god and “remover of obstacles,” always preceded them, life-cycle rituals are mainly traditional. Swamiji and the older disciples function as elders in these rituals, aiding the elders of the devotees’ extended families. For example, marriage is according to the tradition of couple’s ethnic unit, unless they request a Hindu



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wedding ceremony at which Swamiji would officiate. Even then, the couple would still have to complete the traditional rituals before the Hindu ceremony. Similarly, death rituals are traditional, unless followers specifically indicated before they died, their wish to have their bodies cremated and Hindu funerals performed for them. Devotion The community’s prescribed path to salvation emphasizes the importance of weekly congregational devotion, yogic meditational exercises, the chanting of mantras, and selfless service to larger society. Although it encourages domestic devotion, the monastery stresses the importance of its Sunday congregational devotional meetings consisting mostly of congregational singing of slokas, bajans, and kirtans (hymns)2 in Hindi or Akan language, chanting of mantras in honor of the Hindu deities, and the offering of sacrifices (swaha) to them, in the context of the Aarti, and the Havan, so that they will continue to bless devotees with the necessities of life.3 Devotion ends with a katha, or a sermon based on a Vedic text chosen by Swamiji. The text is read in English first and then translated into Akan. Swamiji delivers the sermon in Akan, while a devotee translates it into English. In the Accra ashram Swamiji presides over these rituals, aided by disciples. Disciples preside over rituals in the monastery’s branches. The Navaratri Festival Another example of the domestication of Hinduism in the monastery involves the indigenization of the Navaratri, a Hindu festival celebrating Durga’s power and victory over Mahisasura. In Hindu traditions, Mahisasura is a lion demon and a symbolic representation of forces that threaten the stability of the universe. Using their own local interpretation of the Hindu mythology describing this encounter as a basis, the female 2 Devotees sing from a hymn book Essel compiled. 3 The Arti involves swinging a lamp in a circular motion around a deity as devotees sing songs praising it. The leader then moves from worshipper to worshipper with the lamp. Each worshipper cups his or her hands over the flame, raises the palms, and touches the forehead with the forefinger. The Havan or fore sacrifice takes place in the courtyard of the Temple. Worshippers sit before the fire and recite mantras as the presiding official places feeds the fire with rice ghee herbs and coconut.

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worshippers lead devotees of the monastery in creating a ritual space and time in which they tap Durga’s powers to defeat evil spirits, which are responsible for vicissitudes of life in indigenous Akan religious thinking. The discussion here will show how the community feels empowered to symbolically overthrow the tyranny of malevolent forces by participating in Durga’s victory over demons in the context of the Navaratri festival. This way of wresting the control over their lives from evil spirits, I suggest, is the community’s way of coming to terms symbolically with the dislocations of life in Ghana. Secondly, the discussion will highlight how women draw on meanings of power and agency they have come to associate with Durga to contest in direct and symbolic ways local cultural assumptions of male superiority and women’s marginal status in Ghana. The women draw on meanings of power embodied in Durga’s strong persona and her exploits in war, to reinforce the ongoing national feminist discourse on gender equality and the complementary nature of male and female roles. In Hindu mythology, Durga’s primary function is to combat demons who threaten the stability of the cosmos. In this role, Durga is presented as a great warrior with sixteen arms, each wielding a weapon. She rides a ferocious lion and is described as irresistible in battle (Kinsley 1993:131). The context of Durga’s miraculous incarnation in the universe was the tyranny of the monster-demon called Mahisha, or Mahishasura, who, through terrific austerities, had acquired invincible strength. The gods were afraid of Mahisha because neither Vishnu nor Shiva could prevail against him (Kinsley 1993:131). It seemed that only the joint energy of shakti was capable of vanquishing Mahisha, and so it was the sixteen— armed Durga who went out to do battle and defeated the demon. This is why Durga’s most popular epithet is Mahisha Mardini, or “the slayer of Mahisha.” This also explains why Durga is shown defeating Mahisha in her most common iconographic representation. This role casts Durga as a savior goddess who rescues her worshippers from exceptionally dangerous situations. Kinsley notes in his description of this role: Durga herself says that she is quick to hearken to the pleas of her devotees and that she may be petitioned in times of distress to help those who worship her. She mentions specifically forest fires, wild animals, robbers, imprisonment, execution and battles as some threats from which she will save her devotees (Kinsley 1986:102).

But Durga is also a sacred symbol and in that connection an embodiment of Hindu ideas: a repertory of Hindu meanings in relation to the power of the female and her divinity. She is the manifestation of the Mahadevi



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(Great Goddess). The notion underlying the Hindu idea of the Mahadevi is that the Supreme Being of the universe or God is a powerful creative transcendent female (Kinsley 1986:133). The essence of Mahadevi is shakti, which generally means power or in the Hindu theological and philosophical sense, that divine power that “underlies the godhead’s ability to create the world and display itself ” (Kinsley 1986:133). As Mahadevi’s manifestation then, Durga is that powerful active dynamic being or force creating, pervading, governing, destroying and protecting the universe, all at once. Sometimes described as Shiva’s consort, Mahadevi is worshiped in various forms corresponding to her two aspects; benevolence and fierceness. She can take on a mild and benevolent guise as Parvati (the mountaineer and embodiment of wifely dutifulness), Uma (a passive and gentle aspect), Gauri (a form representing purity and austerity), and Jagatmata (the-mother-of-the-universe). Durga is one of the terrible manifestations of Mahadevi. The others include Bhairava (the dreadful), Kali (the dark goddess), and Chandi (the fierce goddess) (Kinsley 1986). This strong sense of the Hindu notion of Mahadevi in the monastery has inclined followers towards a de-emphasis on the male divine and a respectful attitude towards what it views as God’s feminine side, to the delight of female devotees, who would often explain at length how the idea validates their own Akan understandings of God’s femininity.4 Durga as Anti-Structural Viewed from a socio-anthropological perspective in the context of Hindu society Durga is anti-structural. On many levels she violates the traditional model of the Hindu woman. Kinsley notes in his work on Hindu goddesses: Durga is not submissive, she is not subordinated to a male deity, does not fulfill any house duties, and she excels at what is traditionally a male function, fighting in battle. As an independent warrior, who can hold her own against any male on the battle field, she reverses the normal role for females and therefore stands outside normal society (Kinsley 1986:97).

Moreover in the mythology Durga does not lend her power to any male deity; but rather takes power from them in order to perform her own 4 While Ardhanarishvara, meaning “the lord who is half woman” is an expression of Shiva in which one side is male and the other side is female, this form is not emphasized by the worshippers of this Temple.

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acts of heroism (Kinsley 1986:97). In other words, Durga excels the male gods who lend their power to her and she acts for their welfare (she saves them). In the indigenous Hindu religious understanding, Durga upholds the order of dharma by assuming a traditional male role and playing that role more effectively than any male deity. Durga then becomes the symbol of an alternative form of female life to that prevalent in the dominant traditional Hindu perception. Underlying the Durga model of femininity is the notion that women are equally (or more) capable of participating in what society considered to be the “male domain” or “male.” Female devotees of the monastery view Durga as an exemplar that women must emulate in the pursuit of their goals in a modern world. As I will demonstrate later, these understandings of Durga provide crucial ammunition for the women in their contestation of the marginal positions assigned them in the community’s ritual life. Celebrating Navaratri at the Monastery Though originally a north Indian festival honoring Durga’s central role as warrior and regulator of the universe (Kinsley 1986:95–97), Navaratri is now celebrated by Hindus everywhere in the world. Also, its celebration follows no standard format, as its traditions vary from place to place. For this reason I cannot provide a detailed description of the festival’s Indian form to serve as the basis of a comparison with the Ghanaian appropriation. Kinsley’s (1986) account, however, provides us with a window into some of the more salient features of the festival in its north Indian home. He notes the overtones of fertility, describing the festival as an agricultural festival in which Durga is propitiated as the power of plant fertility. He describes blood sacrifices that dominate aspects of the festival. These are intended to replenish Durga’s powers so that she could continue to give life (Kinsley 1986:112). He writes about women singing songs that reflect Durga’s domestic roles as Shiva’s wife (Kinsley 1986:112–113), and the military overtone, especially Durga’s role as “battle queen” that dominate the celebrations (Kinsley 1986:95–115). He also mentions the boisterous behavior of women, which include their making of obscene gestures in public to stimulate Durga’s powers of fecundity (Kinsley 1986:113). Fuller also notes the royal and political overtones of the festival whereby Durga’s victory is taken to mean the restoration of universal dharma predicated on the rule of a rightful king. Durga’s victory returns to Indra, the cosmic ruler and a rightful king, the throne that had been seized by Mahisasura



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(Fuller 1992:109). He describes the Ayudha Puja ritual, which involves the worship of elephants and horses together with weapons of war on the ninth day of the festival in many parts of India (Fuller 1992:120). As to the political significance of this ritual he writes: The military animals and arms, like the state sword, are imbued with divine powers; their worship associates them with the weapons given to the goddess [Durga] for the battle. The King’ armies are thereby identified with her and they participate in her victory. Moreover they will enjoy victories as glorious as the goddess’s after Navaratri, which was traditionally regarded as the start of a new campaigning season, following the end of the southwest monsoon when military activity was practically impossible (Fuller 1992:120).

In our discussion of the Ghanaian appropriation of this festival, we will see how these themes—royalty, femininity, fertility and the practice of blood sacrifices—are conspicuously absent. We will also see that the themes of power, especially feminine power as expressed through Durga’s military victory, and of feminine divinity, are particularly emphasized, pointing to a deliberate selection of themes from this north Indian festival to address the specific local needs of Ghanaian worshippers. The Local Appropriation of Navaratri in Ghana Although for secular purposes the Hindu Monastery of Africa uses the Western Gregorian calendar, it adopts the lunar calendrical system that Indian Hindu religious communities use for religious purposes. This is to ensure that the community celebrates all the major pan-Indian religious festivals at the same time that Hindus in India and perhaps all over the world are celebrating it. The Navaratri is held during the first nine lunar days of the Hindu month of Ashwina (September–October). Although I observed this festival two times before the 1999 research, during the 1999 research, and in 2004, much of the data which forms the basis of my discussion is from the 1999 celebrations in the Tema branch of the monastery This spanned September 25th 1999 to October the 4th. Not only was this my most carefully documented of the festivals, it featured the most dramatic expression that I have observed of the power-plays in the male/ female struggle for control over rituals in the monastery. The Ghanaian appropriation of the festival in the context of the monastery’s tradition begins with the local cultural rendition of the myth of Durga’s slaying of Mahisasura. Speaking Ga, Mrs. Lamptey, a disciple, narrated the community’s version of the myth:

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chapter three The children of God were suffering, so God, Shiva, said to his wife, “Why are you sitting there and looking at your children suffering? Go, take human form and save them.” So she came as Durga. Durga is also Asase Yaa [the Akan earth goddess]. When she came, she realized that human problems were far more immense than she had anticipated. She decided to use nine days and planned her restoration in stages. That is why we have nine days for the festival. We are hungry, we want food, we are ill, we need our health restored, we are ignorant and we seek knowledge. Yet bad spirits pervade our world and stand in the way of our realizing these needs. For these nine days, we take over affairs of the world and mother Durga leads us in battle against the evil forces.

She also outlined the “battle plan”: The first three days we chant and ask her for strength as we face and subdue the forces of evil. The battle is won after these days. The next three days after we conquer the evil spirits, Durga takes the form of Lakshmi—the goddess of wealth, so that we can enjoy the world. The last three days we ask for knowledge to go on in life and so we chant to Durga who takes the form of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge.

The depictions of scenarios of illness, hunger, ignorance, chaos, the search for food or knowledge that shoot through the rendition are culturally symbolic ways of describing the hard times in Ghana. Mahisasura epitomizes the evil forces and the difficult times reflect his reign of terror. Durga’s battle epitomizes devotees’ daily struggles to “make it” through the times. The victory of Maa Durga represents the defeat of evil forces that cause mishaps in people’s lives. Thus in the ritual space and time of the nine-day festival devotees team up with Durga in the cosmic battle against evil forces. They “turn the tables” against the evil powers. Evil and harm, together with their perpetrators, the witches and evil spirits, rather become victims to human beings. Devotees dramatize these motifs during the festival. On the first day of the festival there is mock play of the battle. Devotees gather on the temple’s compound in the morning. Some of them tie red bands on their waists, wrists, and around their heads. Devotees’ interpretations of the color symbolism reflect both Hindu and indigenous Ghanaian religious meanings. While the majority of them said red was Durga’s color some added that it also symbolized the “crisis” or the war she was leading them to fight.5 Red is associated with Hindu goddesses, but in Ghana it is a symbol for war or a crisis. 5 Brief phone interviews with sixteen selected devotees from the Tema ashram between December 2011 and January 2012.



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I saw a small group of younger male devotees yielding machetes and brandishing clubs singing Akan war songs in a section of the Temple’s courtyard. “Our eyes are red today. We are on a war path together with Durga in this battle,” I heard them sing in Akan.6 One of them said a prayer invoking the presence of Durga, the “army commander.” Another young male devotee, nicknamed Dallas, stepped forward, thrust a clenched fist in the air, and yelled, “Choo boi” (a war cry). “Yeeei!” the “army” responded. He repeated this act three times. A resounding “Yeeei!” greeted the last yell, marking the beginning of the battle. This mock play of the battle extends the shared presence of these devotees into a shared corporation with Durga. The act reminds them that the battle against evil involves every devotee and not only Durga. Seeing themselves in the myth makes the battle and the possibility of triumph over evil and hardships more real for devotees. But the battle is essentially spiritual, so throughout the rest of the day devotees fast and chant in the temple. The chant to Durga is as follows: Yaa devi sarva bhutesu, maatriroopena, samsthita namah tasyai namaha tasyai namo namah. Salutations to the divine mother, who, pervading the entire world, exists in all beings in the form of mother. Salutations to her, Salutations. Salutations.

This mantra spiritually rejuvenates the strength of Durga and her army of Swamiji’s devotees. On each of the nine days of the festival, followers meet in the temple at 4 a.m. every morning to perform sacrifices to Durga and Shiva. Devotees who would not go to work would remain in the temple and chant till six o’clock in the evening. The fiercest battle is on the third day. Mahisasura, the epitome of evil, is defeated and humiliated. From the third to the sixth day, devotees meditate on Durga in the form of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. The idea is that, after defeating the forces of evil Durga transforms into Lakshmi in order to bestow prosperity on her children. For the final three days the meditation is directed to Durga in the guise of Saraswati, the goddess of art and knowledge, as devotees seek to subdue ignorance. Devotees believe that the day immediately following the festival, called Vijayadashami meaning “victory on the tenth day” is an auspicious time for starting any new venture. The logic is that having destroyed the evil spirits, nothing stands in the way of success in any endeavor a person undertakes. 6 “Our Eyes are red,” refers to an emergency in Ghana.

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Some devotees in Tema described how this local innovation to Navaratri took shape gradually after it was introduced by Swamiji in the 1970s, the most significant period being the early to mid-eighties. Reflecting on this development as I write up the book (I did not at that time) I discern a significance that further bolsters my argument that in the context of this temple’s life Ghanaian people appropriated Hindu symbols and domesticated aspects to address emerging concerns. The eighties were particularly difficult years for Ghanaians. They were still going through a lingering recession and political strife when a drought hit in 1983 and dragged on for the next three years. As people sought ways of explaining their situation, folk theories blamed it on witchcraft. In Ho, where I was attending high school at that time, folk theories held a female trader (a witch) responsible for the drought. The theories alleged that each time the clouds would gather the woman would strip herself naked and expose her vagina to the sky whereupon the rain clouds would disperse immediately. She did this to protect her business as rains may “spoil her market” by preventing buyers from coming to buy her wares. Such myths flew around everywhere in Ghana. The monastery’s fashioning of a tradition out of Navaratri at this time, which would generate among devotees a sense that they could wield power and influence over the impersonal forces responsible for their hardships, must be understood in the context of these developments. Women’s Control over the Festival As far as female devotees of the Hindu Monastery of Africa are concerned, the Navaratri is a festival for them because it is in honor of a goddess. The sense that Durga is independent of any male deity’s control in her use of shakti—though her shakti derives from the combined shaktis of male gods she excels in battle—particularly appeals to them. From the outset of its inauguration in Ghana the female devotees of the monastery have taken an active interest in the festival. Normally, women have limited ritual roles in the monastery and its branches. In fact, except for some female disciples who sometimes aid Swamiji during worship at the main ashram, the women who introduce hymns and those who carry and wave the burning lamps called diya/dipa during Aarti, and the fact that during Hawan all worshippers present, including women, can take turns to pour a spoonful of oil into the sacred fire, males dominate the rest of the rituals. But during Navaratri one can see women more actively engaged in rituals,



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especially those directly connected with Durga—such as bathing and dressing her and feeding her. In the Tema branch of the monastery the women were in full control of the Temple’s affairs during the festival. Some female devotees there described how they had prevailed in their request to preside over the nine day festival sometime in the early 1990s. They said they had argued that it made no sense for male devotees to preside over rituals of a festival celebrating female power and its heroic exploits. They insisted that as daughters of Durga, they must lead the community in the spiritual battle against evil forces. Moreover, they said the dominance of women over the festival would enable them to share in and demonstrate Durga’s divinity. Ever since their initial success, the Navaratri has been a women’s affair in Tema. This meant that even the performance of rituals such as puja, which the community regards as a prerogative of male devotees, would be in the hands of the females during Navaratri. For the entire period of the nine days that Navaratri is celebrated the women in Tema usurp the male prerogative in the temple as ritual specialists, presiding over the performance of rituals and daily chanting. They clean the temple daily, cleanse the paraphernalia to be used for daily rituals, and plan all the other activities in connection with the festival. It would seem that this reversal of roles sometimes extends to the homes of devotees. According to some devotees, so that they will have time for the activities during Navaratri, some women leave all domestic chores to their husbands who sometimes arranged for relatives to come in to help. The festival also invests female devotees with the authority to freely speak their minds to male devotees on any issue without any consequences. The female devotees in the Tema temple reveled in their nine-day control of power and “temple regime” and some could not contain their excitement. On the second day of the festival, I asked Julie how she was feeling. Beaming with smiles she responded in Twi: It’s good for me. This week we will show that God is not only man. He has female form too. We too are part of God. In fact we are God too, or? We too would be seen in the temple. We will organize everything. Ganesh festival was for the men. This is for us. Durga week allows us to show what we too can do as women.

On the fifth day, Durga, a disciple, explained in English how they were proving to the men that the women could perform the rituals better than the men could:

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chapter three Were you at hawan yesterday? Did you see how it went smoothly? As for us women when we are doing something we do it and do it well. This week it’s our turn to show we are better at performing the rituals than the men perform. After the nine days the men can take over if they want to. We all need this kind of thing. Even at home, during Durga week I feel I must take more control of other things and not only be a housewife. That’s what Durga is saying.

Another woman said in Twi: This practice is not only Hindu, it is our own thing, our ancestors knew this long before . . . that God is female too and that women are important in spiritual matters. Look at it yourself. Men and women, who are more spiritual? How can God be only male . . .? But Akwesi broni [western people] brought the Kristo religion [Christianity] and then women became nothing [women lost this power] Paa Kwesi’s Hindu church has brought back what we lost. That is why when it is Navaratri we are all happy.

These female worshippers of the monastery are asserting that as women they share God’s nature and are innately programmed to fare equally well and sometimes better than the men playing roles in the community’s ritual life. Navaratri, they argue, gives them the opportunity to prove this point. This woman described in glowing terms how her husband honors her by taking over the performance of domestic chores during the nine day festival: As for me when it’s Durga week at the Ashram it is Durga week at home too. I am the boss. I won’t do the cooking, the cleaning and all that stuff. My husband takes over. He cooks, he baths the children, and he sets the table. He washes the dishes. . . . And I enjoy it because eii, I have only nine days of rest in the year (Interview in Twi).

Chagrined at the idea of women being in charge of Hindu rituals, some senior male devotees have developed fault-finding eyes that are quick to spot weaknesses in the women’s performances. During the 1999 Navaratri I witnessed dramatic demonstrations of this male resentment. But the response of the women also provided the opportunity for me to witness how female worshippers of the monastery draw on the meanings they associate with Durga to hold their grounds in situations in which men contested their claims to such traditionally male privileges. The male devotees invoked an argument they put forward every year during the Navaratri to put an end to the temporary female hegemony over ritual performances. Their point was that in Hinduism women do not perform core rituals, because they are incapable of mastering the



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intricacies involved in their performance. “Men must perform Hindu rituals. Men are smarter than women and can easily grasp the complex formulae underlying Hindu ritual performances,” a senior male ritual specialist explained to me at one time. One morning, during the festival, a group of male devotees arrived very early at the temple and began to perform the rituals before the women came, in spite of the existing agreement. Their explanation was that earlier performances of the women confirmed their suspicions that women cannot perform Hindu rituals according to the prescribed formulae. “They are not doing things well. Period! And we must take over before things get worse. This festival is crucial, and things must be done properly,” a male devotee summarized the men’s rationale. On that day, the women said nothing. They sat quietly through the rituals, which were already underway when they arrived. The men, encouraged by their earlier success, repeated their action the next day. This time the response of the women was swift. Auntie Mati, a female devotee, wrested the microphone from the male devotee presiding over the rituals. Another woman seized the conch from a male devotee, and another, the horns. “This is Durga week,” Auntie Mati announced confidently as she yanked the horns out of the hands of a stunned male devotee close-by, and handed it over to a woman. “We go through this fight every year. . . . But we don’t have to. Even if we have not learnt anything in this church, we have learnt that what men can do women can do better. Durga has taught us this lesson. She did not seek help from men in destroying Mahisasura. We can perform these rituals alone . . . You men must learn that times are changing fast. We are living in the After Bejin times and Durga reminds us constantly of our abilities and our rights,” she added. From that day the women reasserted their control over the ritual performances for the rest of the festival. That same day, when the women contributed less money than the men during an offertory, the temple president made a sarcastic comment in English: The people in control, Durga’s ‘men’ could not live up to their ‘masculine’ image when it came to money matters. They must really work harder if they want to be like us. With equal power comes equal responsibility.

Again the women lashed back in a gesture quite uncharacteristic of many Ghanaian women, who are expected to respond in the spirit of obedient servility, often merely looking on should men chastise them. Auntie Comfort responded boldly in Twi:

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chapter three Look here! Be careful what you say. Who looks after your children? Who does the marketing? Who feeds you? Where does money for all these come from? It is we women, your wives, and your sisters, your mothers, who take care of these needs, and that’s where all our monies go. You men keep all the money to yourselves. We use ours to feed you. So don’t go there. Don’t talk to us about responsibility.

As she spoke, Mary, a younger devotee, urged her on: “Yes, yes, give it to him. This week is our turn to talk.” Old man Akolor, an elderly male devotee, was apparently stunned by Auntie Comfort’s boldness. Yet all he could do was to look on and protest lamely, mumbling quietly, “Yes, but no excuses. Don’t complain. Durga did not complain. She fought gallantly like a man.” The attitude of the male devotees reflects the dominant patriarchal stance on the exclusivity of male access to power in domains defined as “public.” From the male perspective of Temple devotees, women have no place in the status quo. But as we see from the reaction of the female devotees, Ghanaian women are now contesting this notion. The female devotees are adamant in insisting that they are equal to men and must be allowed to perform roles reserved for men in the temple. Their drawing on the powerful symbol of Durga and her prowess as a warrior as reference points in making their claim to equality with males and in repelling the efforts of the men to ridicule them, provides yet another case of the local appropriation, adaptation, and use of icons of Indian culture by Ghanaian Hindu worshippers to engage existing and emerging concerns. My point here is not that the models Durga provides for the women and the opportunity Navaratri offers them to perform important ritual roles are the only resources they have in this gendered struggle. Neither do I argue that Durga is the main or only source of their motivations in this project. As a group of women with reasonably high levels of education, and successful in their livelihoods as traders, chop bar owners, seamstresses, office clerks, and teachers, they have considerable earning power to serve as a base for their assertion of religious power and their appropriation of Durga as a model. With this economic factor and the prevailing feminist discourse on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Ghana, the women have a considerable social expectation of equality. Possibly the poise and confidence they show in addressing the men (“hey look here”) reflect the degree of authority and independence they have as wives within their own marriages. While marriage in most Akan groups is patrilocal, Akan wives are not completely silenced in their husband’s homes. Akan matrilineal inheritance ensures they have considerable say



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in decisions affecting their children who customarily belong to their families. Even though they are in a patrilocal marriage Akan wives are free to visit their relatives occasionally. They have to be actively involved in the funerals of their relatives. Akan custom demands that, when a parent dies they must keep the death-vigil of forty days in the house where the funeral rituals are being performed. It is even customary for an expectant wife to go the home of her parents some weeks before childbirth, “to await her confinement” (Sackey 2006:59–64). Even divorce in Akan society was and is not a privilege for men; a woman can also initiate divorce proceedings when she feels cheated in marriage: for example, when she is physically abused, when the husband disrespects her mother, does not provide for her, or abandons her for another woman (Sackey 2006:59–64). The meanings they associate with Durga and the opportunity Navaratri provides them for controlling the ritual life of the temple are then only additional resources Hinduism furnishes these women in this gendered power struggle. I am in agreement with Wessinger’s argument that goddesses in and of themselves do not particularly empower women in highly patriarchal social contexts or in situations where they are disempowered because of a lack of earning power and education. It is when women already have earning power, rising levels of education, and a high social expectation of equality, which often corresponds with these factors, that they may appropriate goddesses and use them as resources for empowerment (Wessinger 1993:10–11). In her own study of Gurumayi Chidvilasanda, she makes this observation: In the past the Hindu Goddesses have often been subordinated to their husbands, the gods, or the strong goddesses have not translated into models of independence for women. But with modern expectation that women are equal to men and are competent to achieve the religious goal, the goddess becomes a factor supportive of the equality of women (Wessinger 1993:133).

As their exemplar, Durga validates the women’s claim to equality with the men. For them the whole point of the Durga narrative is the idea that women, too, can excel in traditional male roles. Furthermore the traditional Hindu expectations that Navaratri should be dominated by women gives them the opportunity to not only assert a control over rituals they otherwise do not have, but also to demonstrate their efficiency in Hindu ritual practice, contrary to the men’s views. Given the chauvinistic tendencies the men demonstrate, it is not likely that many of them share or are sympathetic to the national feminist cause. As Hindus however, we would expect that they would share the community’s understandings

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of Navaratri and the meanings associated with Durga’s personality with the women. In this connection we see the women playing the men at their own game. The male hegemony invokes the authority of Hindu tradition to back its claim to exclusive control of rituals. In a similar move the women rely on the authority of a Hindu mythology featuring Durga’s heroic exploits and the Navaratri festival to anchor their claims to equality. We can argue that this nine day control is no real source of power—it is ceremonial only—and that men resume their control over rituals when the festival is over. But the women themselves do not seem to share this understanding. For them the gendered struggle for control is like a long war and their control over Navaratri is only a stage in a process they expect to unfold until women have equal access in all the spheres of the community’s life. In a recent (June 2011) phone conversation with Auntie Juli, she elaborated on how they expect to stand on the grounds they have claimed to make more demands. She spoke Twi. My brother, no woman wants to overthrow any man in Ghana ooh [emphasis]. All women are asking for is to be treated equally. But you Ghanaian men! You don’t understand us. The moment a woman is climbing up the social ladder, your alarm bells start to ring. You men will say “Look at her, man-woman, now she will control us.” What are you men afraid of? Tell me. This thing does not have to be a war. It is you men who make it seem like a war, so we have no choice but to fight. And small small, we are winning. Now, every Navaratri we take over affairs. We shall stand on this and demand more. We shall go to the men and say “Do you see how we organize Navaratri well well? It shows we are capable, so we can do more . . .” Then we will see what they will say.

Durga’s influence on the lives of the women spills beyond the Temple. In the course of their day-to-day transactions female devotees model their lives on Durga’s persona and her exploits and depend on her for spiritual help as they negotiate difficult life situations. In the excitement that occasioned the festival some female devotees shared their personal experiences of Durga with me by narrating incidents in which the goddess helped them overcome some life challenges. All of these women have adopted Durga as their guardian spirit and have the name “Durga” suffixed to their local names. Auntie Matilda, a clerk at a hospital, was convinced that the circumstances that led to her encounter with the “good man” who would eventually marry her were orchestrated by Durga: After my divorce I knew I would not find a man again . . . I asked myself, who is going to like me now? I have aged and I have two children already. Which man wants a second-hand woman? . . . When I told my uncle about it, he said don’t worry. Chant to Durga. She knows the kind of man that is good



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for you. So every time I will pray silently and chant Durga Mantra . . . Not long after, I became very ill and was admitted at the hospital . . . But that was how I came to meet my husband. . . . He was the doctor who took care of me. Durga will never leave you. She will find you a man by any means possible (Interview in Twi).

Auntie Bene, owner of The Durga Store at Tema Quarters attributed her miraculous breakthrough as a trader to Durga’s intervention: I fasted for days on end and chanted to Durga. Then when I slept one evening some old woman appeared to me and said I should sell the stall I had and buy the one closest to the entrance of the market and see whether people won’t buy my things. It was hard but I tried and managed to sell it and got this one. Then I just noted that people started coming and coming. My profit was becoming bigger . . . I started buying other goods . . . I even travelled to Togo to buy and sell things . . . (Interview in Ewe).

She also said she emulates Durga’s strong headedness, forcefulness, ability to dare and resilience, in going about her business transactions: “It can be rough sometimes with business . . . And there are times that I want to throw my arms up and say ‘this one . . . I cannot’. But then I remember Durga and I tell myself. ‘No.’ she never gave up. She was tough and she dared. She wants her daughters to be like that . . . To never give up . . . to fight till victory. And that’s how I have survived till now.” Aunty Nurse, a retired midwife, described in Fante how Durga healed her of “kaka” or toothache during a past Navaratri festival: The next day I had to wave the diya during puja . . . All of sudden my tooth . . . It began to hurt badly . . . Then my head started vibrating kpu, kpu, kpu. Eeeii what was this? . . . I could not do anything. . . . But you see, as for Durga, when you need her you just talk to her about your problems. So I said ‘Maa, please help me take care of this head ache . . . so that I can help make your feast a success tomorrow.’ I took a glass of water and chanted the Durga mantra. Then I drank the water and slept in the afternoon. When I woke up in the evening, the kaka was gone . . . and my headache too. Me that I was dying earlier, I had become so strong the next day.

Other women talked about drawing on Durga’s qualities for models of hard work, perseverance, and the pursuit of excellence in their endeavors; as teachers, students, clerks, nurses, and chop bar owners, arguing that as Durga’s daughters they could not afford to fail in anything they did. Durga, they argue, has no room for lazy women and failures. A daughter of Durga must excel in anything she does. While some Ghanaian women turn to the West, and others look into indigenous religions for symbols of female power, these women appropriate an Indian cultural symbol as additional ammunition in the quest for women’s empowerment.

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chapter three The Climax of Navaratri

A series of rituals in honor of Durga marking the climax of the festival further illustrate how Hindu rituals and meanings enmesh with traditional Ghanaian religious symbolism in this community. The day begins with a gathering of devotees at the temple for arti and hawan. We enter the temple, sit on mats and begin singing hymns composed in Akan and compiled by Swamiji. The hymns extol the glory of the Hindu deities by celebrating their assigned traditional Ghanaian divine attributes. We sing in Akan: Wo ye konkrong, Otumfuo Nyame ee Shiva. Wu ye konkrong. Nyame Wu te me mo, woye konkrong Otumfuo Egya ee. Woye konkron. Wutumi ye kese, You are Holy. All powerful Lord Shiva! You are Holy. Lord! You dwell in me. You are Holy. All powerful father. You are holy. Your power is great.

The epithets, Egya (father) Otumfuo (mighty) Konkrong (holy) are epithets for Onyame, the Akan God, who here is identified with Shiva the Godhead in Hindu Shaivite traditions. In another song the epithets Adom Nyame (gracious lord), Katekyi (a royal), Ogyefo (savior), Ewuradze (lord) were identified with Govinda, a name for Krishna, viewed as a manifestation of Shiva in the monastery.7 Because of her wifely roles and close connection with crops and with fertility of vegetation (Kinsley, 1989:95), 7 Ewuradze ee menyi da wo do Adom Nyame ee menyi da wo do. Egya ee menyi da wo do Agenkwa ee menyida wo do Ewuradze govinda ewurade gopal Ewuradze ee menyi da wo do Otumfuo ee menyi da wo do Kokroko ee menyi da wo do Katekyi ee menyi da wo  do Ogyefo ee menyi da wo do (Hindu Hymn in Fante ) Lord, my hope is in you! Gracious Lord, my hope is in you! Father, my hope is in you! Savior, my hope is in you! Lord Govinda, Lord Gopal Lord, my hope is in you! All powerful, my hope is in you! Almighty, my hope is in you! Royal, my hope is in you! Savior, my hope is in you! (English translation).



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Swamiji’s devotees sometimes identify Durga as Asase Yaa, the earth goddess responsible for fertility and morality and sometimes addressed as God’s consort in Akan religion. This process of cultural translation contextualizes these Hindu divine symbols by investing them with relevant emotional and moral sensibilities and indigenous meanings. After singing for a while it was time for hawan, the fire sacrifice. We dance to the sacrificial altar (hawan kund), which is outside the temple, the women waving white handkerchiefs, ululating, and chanting praise hymns to Shiva and Durga, “Bolo! Bolo! Gidio! Gidio.” The hawan, a fire sacrifice, is also called a yajna. A yajna is a sacrifice to the gods and powers so that they will continue to uphold and nourish the world of devotees in return. The proceedings are in English. We begin with a prayer: O lord! With all humility and devotion we have assembled here to offer our prayers to thee. With thee placed in our hearts we desire to purify our minds and souls. In thy care and protection we wish to wash off our sins. O friend of the poor and ocean of mercy! With faith and trust in thee may we be able to complete the end of our lives’ journey happily. O source of all intelligence and bliss. We sit at thy feet with a clear conscience. Grant us wisdom. Show us the path of righteousness and enable us to perform true and noble deeds. May peace be, may peace be, and may peace be.

Then we chanted the Gayatri mantra, an ancient Vedic prayer: O god, the giver of life. The remover of pains and sorrows. The bestower of happiness and creator of the universe. Thou art most luminous, pure and adorable. We mediate on thee. May thou inspire and guide our intellect in the right directions.

A female disciple moved from devotee to devotee, a brass basin of holy water in hand. Each devotee dips the tip of the left forefinger into the water, touches lips, nostrils, eyes, ears, arms, and thighs, representing the five senses and utters a mantra to Shiva. This way we consecrate our bodies making them worthy to appear before Bhagavan-Shiva. We pray, pleading with Shiva to accept the sacrifices and grant us our wishes. Before kindling the fire—jyoti (the firewood is dedicated to Shiva)—we ask for his kindness, generosity, knowledge, strength, food, wealth, protection, and good children. The fire itself is a god, Agni, the intermediary between the gods and human beings, in Hindu traditions, and representing the divine spark in all living things. Through Agni the sacrifice is to be transmitted to the intended gods. Chants accompany the ignition of the fire to invoke the presence of Agni. The offerings consist of ghee, a semi-liquid form of butter, havan samghee, made up of sandalwood, vegetables, medicinal herbs,

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roots, a coconut fruit, and prasad, flower offerings to Shiva. The first oblation is the ghee. A woman scoops a spoonful, chants a mantra ending with a swaha—hail, a sacrificial pronouncement—and pours it into the fire, adding the words idam namama (This is not for me, I am not doing this for myself). She repeats the process five times. Then comes the water offering. She pours water from a brass bowl around the burning flames, turning east, west, and north and south. A series of Sanskrit hymns follow. I count eight different hymns. After the hymns, the big drum, a gong gong, sounds: gong! gong! gong! This drum is a mystical drum and traditionally the sound is believed to drive away evil forces, clearing the passage for the sacrifices to sail smoothly to the heavens. An oblation of samghee is then offered again. We all take part in this. We go to the fire in pairs and as the rest chant verses, each pair would pour the samghee into the fire five times. When this is over we recite the community’s “universal prayer”: O adorable lord of mercy and love. Salutations and prostrations unto thee. Thou art sat-chit-ananda; Thou art omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Thou art the indweller of all beings. Grant us an understanding heart, equal vision and balanced mind, faith devotion and wisdom. Grant us inner strength to resist temptations and control the mind. Free us from lust, greed, anger and hatred. Fill our hearts with divine virtues . . . Om shanti shanti shanti [peace, peace, peace].

Then the big drum goes off, signaling the start of the final oblation. The coconut, prasad, and ghee are placed in the fire and the flowers on the sides. As the smoke rises we offer another prayer. The big drum booms again, Gong! Gong! Gong! And devotees begin to sing and dance joyously circumambulating the hawan kund (sacrificial altar) and shouting praise names to Shiva and ululating “Bolo, Gidio, Bolo, Bolo, Bolo” as the smoke rises to the heavens. The sacrifice is successful and in joy we dance back to the temple, the drummers leading us. The second aspect of the rituals, the lamp service honoring the deity, is called arti or puja. Today’s was special. It is in Durga’s honor. The drums continue to sound as we take our positions on the mats. I hear the sound of cymbals and a girl introduces a hymn in Sanskrit. We join and begin to sing slokas—verses—to Durga. The drums follow. We sing for about twenty minutes and the arti begins. It is in three stages: invoking the deity, entertaining her, and dismissing her. The sound of conches and the ringing of bells mark the beginning. This invokes Durga to enter into her image, or murti. I feel a chilling sensation on my body. A female devotee was throwing consecrated water on us. Two women carrying a basin of water kneel before the effigy of Durga and begin to bathe her. They wash her feet, her head, body and finally,



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her mouth. We chant the Durga mantra. Durga is then mopped dry and adorned in a very expensive piece of traditional kente, a colorfully woven cloth reserved for the rich and affluent in Ghana. A piece of sacred thread is tied on her neck. The women also place bangles on the wrists. A white band symbolizing victory and the joy of the occasion is tied around her head. When the dressing is over, some ladies rush forward and lie prostrate before her effigy and begin to ululate. Three women step forward each holding a burning oil lamp. Sitting in front of Durga, they face us and begin to wave the flames in circular motion. After a while they place the flames on the floor and go away. Three other women go for the flames, wave them in circular motion for a while and walk towards us as we chant and sing. As the flame bearer would approach you, you would cup your hands over the flames and pass your hand over your head and place your offertory in the plate on which the flame was burning. The flame symbolized and transcended the deity’s embodied form at the same time. When the devotee cups the hands over the flames and touched the eyes, the deity’s powers and benevolent protective grace now in the flame are transmitted to the worshipper and absorbed through the eyes (this is darshana). Food is then offered to Durga. It is fruit and milk. We make two files, one for males, and the other for females. First the disciples cut the fruit into pieces and place them in front of Durga. A woman picks a fruit and mimics the gesture of feeding the deity and places it back on the plate. A bucket of milk with a brass ladle in it is placed in front of the deity. Walking to the deity, you would first lie prostrate in obeisance, get up, scoop a ladle full of milk and pour it on Durga’s face, feeding her. Every one of us has a turn at this. When this is over, the fruits are cut and shared among us as prasadam. The drum sounds again and a new set of songs begin. The first song is a local tune but the lyrics are Hindu themes: “Durga ye ohenma, oye ohenma ampa, won yi naye, won yi naye, wonyi Durga aye daa,” meaning “Durga is sovereign queen, she is queen. Durga, the true queen of the Universe. Let us sing her praises all the time.” As we sing a man announces that we would carry Maa Durga through the streets of the city within the Temple’s vicinity in a procession. A wave of excitement surges through the room. Amidst the blowing of horns, drumming, and chanting, two women lift the effigy of Durga and lead the procession. The drummers follow them. Then we follow. The singing is on. The songs are mostly traditional Ghanaian festival songs. The mood is festive. We sing, dance, and clap our hands as we march through a street near the Temple. After about a thirty-minute procession we return to the temple. But before entering the temple, we

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had to circumambulate the temple nine times chanting. After the fourth round we begin to trot, the tempo of the chanting increasing. Durga is returning to the heavens and doing so in her characteristic masculine fury. The women scream louder. Some weep, partly out of excitement, and partly because “Maa Durga is leaving” and it would be a year before she would be brought out of the temple again. The devotees say a series of traditional farewell prayers as they bring Maa Durga back into the temple and bid her farewell. Swamiji’s sermon on the last day of the proceedings concluded the festival. In an apparent marriage of the two main themes underlying the local interpretation of the Durga myth and festival, Swamiji preaches about the leading roles women play in their families’ battles against the hardship of the times. He describes women as “leaders in our homes in these days of hardship” who like Durga lead in the battle against the evils that create socio-economic hardship: They are the spiritual powerhouses and the economic backbones. When there is no money, they are the last resorts. They go out of their way and do all they can . . . They manage the little the family has to keep the family moving.

Swamiji asks devotees to respect women and to appreciate their roles at home. Drawing on themes from the Durga myth, he illustrates the strength of women, even mimicking Durga fighting with Mahisasura, to drive his point home. Conspicuously absent from the monastery’s appropriation of Navaratri are the overtones of fertility, the blood sacrifices intended to replenish Durga’s powers so that she could continue to give life, the songs sung by women reflecting Durga’s domestic roles, and the overtones of royalty. Present are the military overtones. Though the practice of women making obscene gestures in public to stimulate Durga’s powers of fecundity is absent in Ghana, their boisterousness manifests through their uncharacteristic assertive and upfront attitudes. These differences point to a process whereby the monastery deliberately selects themes of power from this north Indian festival to address the specific local cultural and religious needs of its devotees. Performing Texts: The Monastery’s “Satsangs” (Pious Gatherings) Originally satsangs were simply gatherings of devotees in homes to read and discuss scriptures. They have become grander occasions whereby



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devotees invite other devotees, their kinsmen, and neighbors to their homes to listen to scriptural readings and discussions, recite mantras, sometimes watch dramatic performances of texts, and eat a meal. Devotees sponsor satsangs to mark important events such as out-doorings, birthdays, the recovery from an illness, or weddings. Swamiji’s constant presence at satsangs is a strong incentive for followers and non-followers alike to show up. Sometimes an entire temple community invited the other community for a “grand sasan” (satsang). The host temple would bear the cost of the entire ritual and the feast. To accept an invitation and to eat the meal is to partake of the spiritual merit that accrued to the performance. It is expected that the other temple will reciprocate later. The satsang represents an area of ritual whereby the monastery’s Hindu heritage still wields a strong influence in the production and reproduction of models “of” and “for” devotees’ lives. During my fieldwork in 1999 I witnessed an impressive traditional drumming and dance performance of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, by some youth of the Tema branch of the monastery at a satsang in Tema. They acted the adventures of Rama, the hero of the epic. The performance covered Rama’s banishment from Ayodhya (India), his exile, the abduction of his wife Sita by Ravana, the demon king of Sri Lanka, Rama’s rescue of his wife and his return to Ayodhya to rule as king. After the impressive performance, a disciple summarized the themes, relating them to life in Ghana: “These stories are for you and me. Those ancestral Hindu sages were so full of wisdom. They made stories that speak to people all over the world and for all epochs.” Then he launches into a discourse. He focused on the themes of duty and indicated how every character faithfully performed the assigned duty in the epic, harping especially on Sita’s faithfulness and dutifulness. He also focused on the themes of evil and hardship, describing how each character encountered obstacles and had to overcome them. He added, “But good would always triumph over evil and that was why in the end Rama won the battle and began his successful reign.” Then he related the themes to life in Ghana: Nowadays we say everything is hard so people just do what they like. The hardship has become an excuse for people not doing the right things, their duties. “Ooh we are just trying to get by.” That’s all everyone is saying . . . But because of the tukara [difficulties] we must be more dutiful so that we can correct the past mistakes and this land too will go forward. Look, in the Ramayana, life was not bonanza for anyone. Did you notice that each of the people in the story faced an obstacle at some point? The king, Bharata, Rama, Sita, all of them were confronted with difficult situations. But they

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chapter three never forgot to be dutiful . . . And in the end everything worked out well . . . So the only way things will work out well in this land is when everybody does his work, like the characters in the Ramayana. The Ramayana is teaching us the way to go today, so open your eyes and your ears well.

He also related the theme of evil to everyday life: You will always confront with evil in your path; you will always be tempted . . . This world is a battleground for forces of evil and good. But remember your duty in this world is to be fair, to be honest, to do what is your work to the best of your ability. Chant and remember Shiva all the time. That way you will triumph in the world.

I gleaned from their commentaries what devotees made of the performance and the exposition. “Makes you wonder what nurtured the fertile brains that produced such stories,” Margi, a female devotee, commented on the epic, slipping on a slipper. “But evil does not only lurk around everywhere, it rears its ugly head when you least expect it,” she added her insight. “Rama, for instance, did not expect Ravana to come for Sita.” Julie, another devotee, supported Margi’s view and added: But another lesson is, you must always be ready. Readiness for eventualities or being able to adjust to new situations is a lesson I learned today. Even when exile was sprung upon him, Rama was ready. When Ravana came in to steal Sita, he was there to rescue her.

Qunasah, an elderly disciple, commented a few days later in English: Rama’s patience and also his perseverance intrigued me greatly. He accepted things as they came . . . But he was persistent too. And you see what happened? He triumphed in the end. We must all be patient in this world . . . Only we must be careful to not to end up like the lizard whose patience made it remain hairless3 . . . Swami stresses a different lesson every time.

A young male follower called Gyedu referred to the story one afternoon. “The Ramayana gives us hope that eventually things would be better in spite of the hardships. Eventually, all the characters got their wishes.” The stories, their constant recitations or dramatic reenactments, the discourses and the interpretations, are the ways in which Hindu models “of ” and “for” life are produced and reproduced, not only by Swamiji but the devotees too. These models include virtues of duty, conscientiousness, and persistence, hopefulness, and perseverance, values not alien to Ghanaians but recast in novel ways through Hinduism. These venues also generate contexts for the reaffirmation of members’ faiths and the regeneration of the community’s sense of group solidarity. The hawan sacrifices, the chanting



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of mantras and the presence of Swamiji during satsangs is believed to purify the hosts’ household. In this way an underlying objective of the gatherings is the production of welfare for a fellow member’s household and this idea generates a strong sense of good will among devotees. Meanwhile the mutual invitations that must be reciprocated between temple communities, and the periodic grouping of all communities express, produce, and reproduce inter-community relationships.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE SRI RADHA-GOVINDA TEMPLE TRADITION In this chapter, I turn my attention to the history and tradition of the Hare Krishna worshipping community in Ghana. I reconstruct the community’s story in Ghana as eyewitnesses to its beginnings told it to me. These accounts are not conversion narratives and do not point in any way to the factors that motivated the narrators to become followers. They are simply worshippers’ memoirs of the movement’s history in Ghana. A theme that recurs through most of them is the overwhelming influence of local notions about India on the public perception of the Hare Krishna community in its earlier years. A wonder-working religious power image of India was the main paradigm underlying the public’s evaluation of this community at that time, and whatever appeal it had for people stemmed largely from its Indian connection. An important theme in the chapter is the view that the momentum the worship of Krishna required to take off as a religion in Ghana drew strength from its association with India. Not all the narrators of this story were followers of the Hare Krishna community at the time of the events they described, and it is not my intention to argue that this Indian connection is the explanation for all conversions to the Hare Krishna group in Ghana. The conversion narratives in chapter seven would show that as Ghanaian worshippers became more familiar with Krishna worship in the later years, other aspects of the religion apart from its association with India would begin to appeal, sometimes even more, to some of them. The chapter begins with a discussion of the cultural, historical, and religious background of the Hare Krishna religion. I will tell the story of the community’s origins in Ghana in the voices of the followers themselves. A description of the community and its tenets follow. Although the official name of this group is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Ghana, I am for the most part using the more popular expressions, ISKCON, Hare Krishna community, Hare Krishna devotees, the RadhaGovinda Temple, Hare Krishnas, or more often simply Hare Krishna (the most common Ghanaian expression), to designate the Ghana portion of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.



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Hindu Devotion The worship of Krishna falls within the devotional strand of Hinduism, so it would be proper to know something about Hindu devotionalism and its development in India. Devotionalism is the form of Hindu religious practice in which devotion or bhakti to a deity is accorded the greatest value (Fuller 1992:157). Devotionalism is a monotheistic tendency within Hinduism, which is otherwise polytheistic, in the sense that one chosen deity is revered to the exclusion of all others (Kinsley 1993:9). The other deities in the pantheon are identified with the Supreme Being, relegated to the company of his subordinate forms or simply ignored. Devotionalism therefore reconfigures the polytheistic pantheon by elevating a single god as the Supreme Being. Although devotion entered the Hindu tradition as early as the Bhagavad-Gita, around 200 B.C.E., it was not until about the sixth century C.E. that it began to dominate the religious landscape of Hinduism (Kinsley 1993:18). Beginning in the south with the Nayanars (devotional saints who praised Shiva) and the Alvars (devotional saints who worshipped Vishnu), an emotional, ecstatic kind of devotion increasingly became a central aspect of Hindu piety. By the seventeenth century, devotion of this type had come to dominate the entire Hindu tradition (Kinsley 1993:18). The devotional movements proclaimed that a loving and submissive personal devotion to God had the highest value because it brings the devotee closest to the divine presence of God and leads most certainly to release (moksha) from the wheel of birth and rebirth in this world (samsara). Devotionalist movements commonly portray moksha as entering heaven to “rest eternally at the deity’s foot” (Fuller 1992:157). The movements also proclaimed that the Vedic knowledge, which Brahmans monopolized, the meditative wisdom that renouncers attained through ascetic practices, and the rituals of priests and other ritual specialists, were worthless when compared with true devotion (Fuller 1992:157). This represents a radical negation of what was considered normative in Hindu religious practices. But, even more revolutionary was the notion that bhakti can be felt by anyone: high caste, low caste, male, female, educated, illiterate, the rich, and the poor alike. As a popular religious movement then, devotionalism subverted the male Brahman exclusive claim to privileged access to the divine and to liberation—moksha—through ascetic renunciation. Its appeal across all social classes sped up its spread throughout India (Narayanan 1996:71).

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chapter four Vishnu

Because the Hare Krishna community is a Vaishnava movement, to understand its belief and worship tradition we will also need to describe Vishnu, the object of devotion, in greater detail. Vishnu is described as a cosmic ruler living in the “heavenly splendor” of his palace in Vaikuntha, one of the Hindu heavens (Kinsley 1993). He oversees the universe as a whole from here. Vishnu’s wife, Lakshmi, is the “auspicious goddess of fortune” (Fuller 1992:33). Bhudevi, goddess of the earth, is also identified as Vishnu’s wife in some Vishnu temples. However, her status is lower than Lakshmi’s (Fuller 1992:33). Vishnu’s primary role is to supervise order and prosperity in the universe. For this purpose he “descends” into the world from time to time as an avatar (incarnation) when there is chaos, in order to defeat the enemies of cosmic stability and restore order (Fuller 1992:32–34). According to one of the most popular versions of the avatar scheme in Hinduism Vishnu has ten distinct incarnations (avatara). Nine avatars have successively made their descent into this world already. At the end of the Kali Yuga, that is, the “degenerate age” in which we live presently, the tenth avatar, Kalki, will descend into the world to “herald” its destruction (Fuller 1992:33). The most important of Vishnu’s avatars are the seventh, Rama, and the eighth, Krishna. Vishnu himself is widely worshipped in one form or the other but he is more frequently worshipped in the form of Rama or Krishna. In this chapter our focus is on the worship of Vishnu in the form of Krishna. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Hindu tradition in North India witnessed several upsurges of religious fervor. As the wave of devotional activity that began earlier in the south spread to the north, devotionalist movements mushroomed in the north with amazing rapidity (Narayanan 1996:70–71; O’Connell 1993:4–13). Several of these were newly founded movements, but others were older traditions now revitalized (Kinsley 1993:40). The period also witnessed the flourishing of genres of vernacular devotional literature as worshippers with “deep devotional convictions and emotional expressiveness strove to experience and share their understanding of God’s saving love with others” (O’Connell 1993:4). The worship of Krishna and Rama dominated these devotional movements. In earlier times in the Hindu tradition Rama and Krishna were portrayed only as human avatars of lord Vishnu. However, in these medieval devotional movements, they were each affirmed to be the supreme manifestation of deity. Their respective devotees viewed them as God (Kinsley 1993:40; see also, Fuller 1992:156–181). The worship of Rama was



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popular especially throughout the Hindi-speaking areas of Northern India while Krishna worship was popular in the Bengali-speaking areas. Chaitanya Even though the temple is devoted to the worship of Krishna I noticed that in their conversations devotees of the Radha Govinda community at Medie, mentioned the name Chaitanya more than Krishna. Seth, a middle-aged devotee, and peddler of traditional medicine said to cure impotence, would often walk up to me, the opened page of a book bearing Chaitanya’s picture in his hand. He would proclaim, “This is the man, Chaitanya himself, the man who brought this great religion about.” I would also overhear debates in which Chaitanya would be repeatedly mentioned. That devotees focus such attention on this figure underscores their sense of the pivotal role of Chaitanya in the history of their community. Chaitanya, a 16th century Bengali Vaishnava saint, was the founder of a devotionalistic tradition of Krishna worship in Bengal. This tradition was revitalized in 19th century India as the Gaudiya Vaishnava Movement and later introduced to the West as the Hare Krishna movement in the 20th century. Unlike most ancient Hindu saints, a rich biographical literature is available on Chaitanya. But a detailed historical sketch of Chaitanya is not relevant to the discussion here. All that we might need to know is that Chaitanya was born in 1486 in Navadvip in Bengal as Visvambhar, and that he was the most famous devotee of Krishna in the 16th century (O’Connell 1970:14–17). I will restrict my attention to his role as the founder of the Hare Krishna tradition. The Hare Krishna theology locating divine grace in Krishna and its techniques of emotive devotional chanting are traceable to Chaitanya. There were two stages in the development of the theological and institutional foundations of the Bengali Vaishnava movement Chaitanya formed. The first stage involved an earlier generation of followers, which O’Connell describes as the “apostolic” or “avatar” circle (O’Connell 1993:15–16). This generation acknowledged Chaitanya as the divine Hari (Vishnu or Krishna), who had descended as an avatar bearing a new dispensation of faith called prema bhakti or the loving devotion to a loving gracious God, most appropriate for the degenerate age (Yuga) of Kali (O’Connell 1993:16). Prema bhakti is to be expressed in public and to be propagated among all categories of people by loudly chanting the divine names “Hare Krishna,” “Hare Krishna.” Thus began the repeated chanting

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of Krishna’s names associated with Hare Krishna devotees. The idea here expressed in popular terms was that God, Hari, has mercifully incarnated as Chaitanya to deliver humankind from evil and destruction if only they will respond to his grace (O’Connell 1993:16). As the movement progressed, another “modality” of Chaitanya became significant especially among a more “theologically” and “meditationally” advanced circle of followers (O’Connell 1993:16). This is his intense experience of gopi bhava or Radha bhava, which O’Connell describes aptly as “the amorous devotional sentiments appropriate to the cowherdess lovers of Krishna” (O’Connell 1993:16). Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, a 12th century “dramatic lyrical poem in Sanskrit”, inspired Chaitanya’s intense emotional devotional experience (Fuller 1992:155). The Gita Govinda celebrates the amorous affair between Krishna, the beautiful dark-skinned flute player, and Radha, his favorite among the cowherdesses ( gopis) he flirted with. The poem traces the affair from when they first met during Krishna’s dance with all the cowherdesses in the forest, “through the anguish and jealousy” caused by Krishna’s unfaithfulness, to the “bliss of their final union” (Fuller 1992:155–158). Radha and Krishna’s affair is described as an intense experience of ecstatic love (gopi bhava or radha bhava), the epitome of which is Radha’s all-consuming love for Krishna. However, in the Gaudiya Vaishnava devotional context, the affair is a metaphor for the divine-human relationship. Radha is the ideal human devotee who gives up everything in order to be with the lord. Krishna is God; he is “beautiful,” “adorable” and “irresistible” (Kinsley 1986:82). Radha’s sexual love for Krishna is the perfect expression of devotion. For devotees of Hare Krishna, the frenzied state of Radha’s love for Krishna is an attitude and an emotion to be emulated. The goal is for the devotee to share in this experience or as Kinsley puts it, “to uncover the Radha dimension within themselves— that tendency within all human beings to devote themselves entirely and passionately to Krsna” (Kinsley 1986:82). Describing the experience as a “meditational aesthetic devotional journey of progressive refinement and interiorization,” O’Connell identifies it as a quality that underlines the uniqueness of Chaitanya’s mode of bhakti (O’Connell 1993:16). It is said further that Chaitanya’s experience of these feelings was so intense and convincing that his devotees viewed him as a combined Krishna-Radha avatar descended to allow Krishna to taste his own sweetness and Radha’s love for him (O’Connell 1993:16). Devotion to Krishna in the Hare Krishna tradition greatly emphasizes this expressive dimension symbolizing the passion of Radha’s love for the lord. In fact, this is the basis of the ecstatic or emotional flavor of Hare Krishna devotionalism.



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Another theological basis of Hare Krishna devotion is the Bhagavata Purana, the tradition in which Chaitanya’s piety was nurtured. This is the most influential of the Puranas among Vaishnavas in India and it contains descriptions of the “activities,” “qualities” and “beauties” of Hari, the Supreme Being and creator of the universe (O’Connell 1970:18–20). Chaitanya also established the practice of sankirtan or nagar sankirtan, the public chanting of Krishna’s divine names in the streets of the city, a practice associated with the Hare Krishna (Stillson Judah 1974:34). This was a way for devotees to witness to their faith and devotion and to attract attention of new converts. In Ghana it is the main mode of public outreach or proselytizing technique used by Krishna devotees. Chaitanya is said to have died in 1533 but his followers continued to propagate the tradition especially through their writings (Kinsley 1993:47). Towards the end of the nineteenth century Chaitanya’s movement waned somewhat, but through the energies of Kedarnath Datta, a magistrate, who later had the honorific title Bhaktivinode Thakur bestowed on him by some prominent Vaishnava in Bengal, it was revived in 1886 as the Gaudiya Vaishnava Mission of India (Stillson Judah 1974:40). Datta’s son Bimalprasad Datta (1874–1937), also known as Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, continued his father’s work and from 1918 began monastic houses, publishing and missionary activity within India in an organized network called the Gaudiya Math Institute for Teaching Krishna Consciousness. The influence of Chaitanya’s Vaishnava tradition spread to the United States of America when Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada (1896–1977), a disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta, launched the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), also called the Hare Krishna Movement, in New York in 1966. Through this group the lineage of Chaitanya’s movement has been spread abroad and in the 1970s it reached the shores of Ghana in West Africa. I now turn to the history of the Hare Krishna community in Ghana. The Story of the Hare Krishna Community in Ghana It was the morning of August the 17th 1999. I was sitting on a mat facing Prabhu Srivas, and waiting for him to begin the story of how the Hare Krishna community came to be established in Ghana. From where I was sitting, I could hear the gong gong sound of midrangas (drums) and the clanging of bells, summoning devotees to the early morning devotional service to Krishna, which began the day. Before this day my knowledge about Hare Krishna in Ghana was scanty and gleaned mainly from rumor,

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hearsay and myths about them. Because there is not much documented information on the Hare Krishna group in Ghana, I could not corroborate these stories. I concluded that the only way to reconstruct their history in Ghana was to rely on narratives of its leaders and followers. At first I was not sure whose voice to consider the most authoritative in the telling of this story. Eventually I settled on Prabhu Srivas, the national president of the community. In deciding on Prabhu Srivas, I considered the fact that he was one of the earliest converts in Ghana and so was in a position to provide me with a firsthand account of how the events unfolded. I also considered his status as the leader of the community. But I talked to other people, too, devotees and some non-devotees who had witnessed the community’s origins. A dark-skinned bald man, Prabhu Srivas is in his 50s. He is married to mother Ekwe, a Nigerian woman and the leader of the female devotees at Medie. They have no children. Srivas is a Dagomba from Northern Ghana and was a Catholic before he joined the Hare Krishna movement. Before he was initiated into “Krishna Consciousness” as Srivas Das, Prabhu Srivas’s name was Sylvester Bezenger. His followers call him Prabhu Srivas for short and I will refer to him in the same way in this study. Prabhu Srivas is strikingly tall, lanky, and frail looking. His followers make much of his tallness and some even say it has spiritual connotations, but the villagers of Medie openly joked about his thinness. They attribute this to his vegetarian diet and often made unfavorable remarks about the vegetarian lifestyle. “Shoaa! (an Ewe expression of contempt) how can a person be there and say he won’t eat meat. Where then does he expect to get the juice (vital food nutrients) that would make him add some flesh to his bones and look strong and healthy? As for me I won’t give myself to a church that would say I should not eat meat . . . Never! Not me!” commented Auntie Adzoa, a plump lady who owns a store where I often bought my lunch on my way to the Hare Krishna temple. She had just seen Prabhu Srivas pass by. Prabhu Srivas ushered me into a nicely decorated room that Friday morning. This was his living quarters, but Prabhu Srivas also hosted important visitors here. He lighted incense and sat in lotus posture in one corner of the room. “Tell me about how this whole thing started in Ghana,” I began in English. After a brief detour—a lecture on the importance of incense in the Hare Krishna tradition—he began the story, speaking English. “Actually a Swami, a guru called Bhakti Tirtha Swami, and another man brought this religion to Ghana in 1979. They came with some other devotees. In all they were about five men, all of them black American people.” “You remember their names?” I cut in. “No, only Bhakti Tirtha Swami. They



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did not even stay for long. They went to all the university campuses first.” “You know why they went there first?” I inquired. “Well . . . Not really. But I believe they wanted to attract young and well-educated people . . . People receptive to new ideas. And you know that the Krishna movement was in America first?” He stared me in the face questioningly. “Yes, I read about it,” I answered. “In America they attracted young people so I am sure they believed it would work the same way here too,” he explained. “Did it?” I inquired further. “Well, some people may have been convinced. But on the whole, it did not work. But they distributed books to the university libraries. But wait, this was not the first time Hindu missionaries had come from this mission. Yes, I remember now.” “You mean some Krishna people came before these five men?” I was excited. “Yes, in the mid-1970s, that would be about 1977, or 1978, a Swami called Jalaka Das came from India. He was traveling all over the world, recruiting people for what we call ‘international membership.’ He would go back to India and register them as members. First he was in Nigeria. Then he went to Sierra Leone, and then he visited Ghana. He did not preach. All he did was to register individuals. So he did not make much impact. Then, the following year these five swamis came . . . Yes, yes I remember now.” Prabhu Srivas was back on track. “I remember that in 1980 a temple, the first one in West Africa, was established at Lagos, in Nigeria. Then in 1981 they rented a house at a place called Alajo to begin the group here. In 1982 the second temple was established here in Ghana, at Odorkor and we were there for some time.” “So tell me what Odorkor was like,” I urged, wanting him to say a bit more. “It was good. That was the beginning. In fact, that was the point when the religion really took off.” “You mean that was when people began to know you?” I sought further explanation. “Yes, the place was bigger and Odorkor was more accessible, so more people joined us there . . . But in 1990 we moved from Odorkor too. We had some farmland at Akrade so we moved there. But from Akrade we came back to Accra and settled at Newtown and then from there we came here,” Prabhu Srivas concluded his account. The first time I went to interview Prabhu Srivas, I had with me a set of questions I was seeking answers to. But it would seem that Prabhu Srivas had already determined how he would tell the group’s story, so, even though he would respond to my questions he treated them as deviations from his own model. In the end I had to accept my role as a listener, throwing in my questions, seeking clarifications and asking him to elaborate on some issues whenever I had the opportunity. In any case, Prabhu Srivas’s account was clear and consistent. What particularly impressed me was his ability to recollect event after event, names and dates. But because

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his narrative was brief and seemed to represent his version of the events, much as I found it insightful I still wanted to hear the perspectives of others, especially lay followers. Yohannes Wedey’s version of the temple’s origin story stood out among the many accounts that I heard. Yohannes is a little over forty and is from the Anlo-Ewe ethnic group. A temple devotee, Yohannes has been a member of the Hare Krishna group since 1980. He joined after he returned from Spain. Yohannes and I became friends because we both spoke Ewe. When he was not busy we would sit under a tree and Yohannes would tell me stories about his sojourn in Spain, his struggles to settle down when he returned to Ghana, and his eventual conversion to the Hare Krishna community. One late afternoon our conversation veered in a direction that resulted in Yohannes telling me his version of the story of the Hare Krishna in Ghana. Yohannes’s version contained all the highlights of Prabhu Srivas’s. But he added a new twist. He went beyond Prabhu to explain why the new Krishna “church” experienced growth at Odorkor, and in doing so, he revealed how local beliefs—myths about Indian spiritual powers— played out in people’s responses to incidents that marked the presence of the Hare Krishna religion in their midst in its early days. “People will tell you all kinds of stories but as far as I know, Odorkor was the place that this mission really began,” Yohannes began, reiterating Prabhu Srivas’s earlier point. He continued: People really got to know us and joined us there and that was because of the incidents that happened there. We were not well known before then. Our few followers were not so sure about us . . . Some were not even really serious. They knew Hare Krishna was from India but they were still waiting to see something. Other people said we were an occult group . . . They said we had juju.

I found this revelation insightful as it shed some light on the negative publicity the Hare Krishna community encountered, and the uncertainty of its followers in its beginnings in Ghana. Yohannes described two miracles associated with the Hare Krishna group’s emergence that he said, “made people see that it was really from India and they respected us for our powers.” One miracle had to do with the exorcizing of a haunted house, the community’s first rented premise. According to the story, people in the neighborhood believed that the ghosts of its builders who died mysteriously before its completion haunted the house. The new Hare Krishna community and observers considered the fact that they (the Hare Krishna community) lived in the house for five years



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without seeing signs of ghosts to be miraculous and attributed this to their Hindu powers. Yohannes noted accordingly: We stayed there for f-i-v-e years [he spread the digits of his fingers to emphasize this] and we felt nothing! We saw nothing. No evil spirits. No noises. No ghosts. Foko! [emphasis on nothing]. In fact after our first six months of staying there, when nothing had happened to us the people around were amazed. They said ‘Shieee! [Surprise] You people must have something [powerful magic].’ That was when they began to warm towards us. They wanted to join us because they knew we had some powers! Prabhu, I can’t even describe the situation well enough, it was miraculous! And the news spread, just like that.

Another version of this story said the owners of the building themselves invited the Hare Krishna community to come in to exorcise the haunted house having learned that they originated from India. Yohannes told another miracle story of a second haunted premise, this time a clinic that the new Hare Krishna church exorcised. According to this story, for many years the doctors and nurses on night call saw a tall lanky and headless figure roaming the wards of the clinic. Afraid that they might start losing customers and inspired by the community’s first miracle, the owners of the clinic approached the Hare Krishnas for help. Yohannes described how they accomplished that feat: So we went there too at twelve mid-night. We chanted, sang kirtans and played mridanga [drum] all night. That night nothing came. And nobody saw anything ever again . . . And that was it. Just one night of mantra chanting and mridanga playing and that bad spirit too was gone! I will be honest with you and tell it plainly. As for me, the moment I learned that this church was from India, that was it, I knew I had to join it. But some people were waiting to see things [miracles]. And we showed it to them. So, for me, this church really began when we started to show that, yes, we really had powers from India.

Versions of these stories from other narrators added new dimensions. A pujari (priest) said that because the rented house and the hospital stood on an old graveyard, the residents were constantly haunted by ghosts and other evil powers angry for being displaced from their permanent homes. Another devotee told a tale of a river god whose dwelling place was a stream that flowed nearby. He said the appropriate rites were not performed to request permission from the river god to develop the area. So, feeling disrespected and angry, the god relentlessly haunted the residents at night. These two narrators, devotees at that time, both agreed that the haunting stopped when the evil forces confronted the Hare Krishna’s

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Hindu powers and were overthrown. A female devotee from Dodowa, a village near Accra, said she had a relative living in Odorkor who also witnessed to the powers of the Hare Krishna community when they first arrived. She narrated her relative’s episode in Fante: She said she would hear noises coming from her kitchen at night as if someone was opening and closing her cooking pots and pans. She would rush in there but would see no one! She would scream “Hei! Hei! Hei! Thief! Thief!” But still she would see no one. The noise would stop suddenly. She would go back to her bed. The moment her head would touch her pillow, heei, the noise would start again! The priests from churches, the fetish priests . . . They could all not stop these. Yet when the Krishna church started with their mridanga playing, singing and chanting . . . All these stopped at once.

At the Krishna temple in Takoradi, another coastal city, I learned about another miracle involving a man called Shastra Das. This event occurred during the 1983 drought. Devi, a female devotee narrated it in Fante: That time, the rains failed. All the river beds were dry. That was when this God brother, Shastra, had a dream. He saw Krishna and Krishna took him to a place and said “Dig here. You would find water.” When he told the villagers, they only laughed at him because he was a Hare Krishna man. But he insisted until a group of men followed him. He showed them a spot, a rocky spot and said “Dig there.” They resisted “Aah how could water be in this rocky place.” He said “You just dig.” So they dug and dug the entire day, but nothing came up . . . So they left to continue the next day. When they came the next day the hole they dug was full of water. Clean water! They made it a well and it is there right now . . . And it has water all year round, even at Harmattan.

It seemed that versions of such incidents spread beyond the early Krishna community and circulated in the larger Ghanaian community. It became a part of the public discourse that there was a Hindu church “around” and it was “working,” that is, performing miracles. A devotee described how she learned of the community from a “Professor Hindu” performing at a market in Asamankese, a village far away from Odorkor, the main venue of most of the happenings: It was in a market that I learned about Hare Krishna for the first time. That was in 1982. A Professor Hindu had finished performing when he started into stories about India. But people were making faces, so he felt we did not believe him. Then he told us “If you think I am telling lies, go to Odorkor, a new Indian Church has come. Go and see powers for yourselves. Go and see how they are working.” That was the first time I heard of Hare Krishna but soon I would realize the name was all over the place ( Interview in Ga).



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There is a tradition of connecting the beginnings of religious communities in southern Ghana to miraculous happenings, establishing the churches as “miracle-working churches.” What normally follows is the influx of people there. As a result, people seeking to legitimate the powers of their leaders or their communities would try to make miracles out of the least extraordinary happening in their communities by embellishing accounts of the events. The Hare Krishna stories did not seem to be a part of this tradition. The accounts were quite consistent and the narrators exuded such deep sense of conviction as to make one believe that the incidents really happened. It also seemed that when ripples of the excitement that the incidents generated reached beyond the Hare Krishna communities to the larger public, people attributed the miracles to the extraordinary powers of India. Thus, much as I accepted Srivas’s explanation that their location at Odorkor and the size of their temple accounted for their growth there, I felt Yohannes too had a point in stressing the role of these miracles. It was important for the Ghanaian public to see some signs that the Hare Krishna church could successfully address their indigenous spiritual aspirations, fears, and anxieties especially during such a tumultuous period in Ghana’s history, and the miracles were living testimonies of the community’s powers. Atitsogbi, a 51-years-old female devotee, described the training of the first group of local priests in Ewe, her native tongue. Her account summed up the bits and pieces I had heard earlier about this development: In all they were fifteen men. They were Ewes, Nzimas, Gas, Ashantis, Dagombas, and people from all the tribes. And the Swamis from America rented a house at Alajo and housed them all there. This was in 1979, late 1979. I know that for sure. And all they would do from morning to evening was to learn from the scriptures, learn the rituals, chant the Mahamantra and learn other things about Krishna Consciousness. They ate, drank, and bathed in the teachings. The Swamis “baked” them well in the religion and so they knew their Hinduism well. They were very intelligent and very spiritual people, too. They were the pioneers, the pillars of Hare Krishna worship in Ghana.

Some members of this earlier group of priests were said to be responsible for initiating and leading the Hare Krishna temple communities that sprang up in other southern Ghanaian towns and villages before active proselytizing began. The narrators were so conversant with this aspect of the history that they mentioned the names of the priests by rote. As they would mention a fellow they would also attach a resume of his spiritual accomplishments before the training at Alajo and the things he did after that. I wondered why this important development was completely

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missing from Prabhu Srivas’s narrative but I reasoned that it might simply have been an oversight on his part. I did not expect all my narrators to be able to furnish me with exact dates and names, but at least I expected their versions to be consistent and I was disappointed when this was not always forthcoming. For instance, it was clear to me that for some time the Hare Krishna group switched from one location to the other before settling finally at their present location in Medie. The narrators named four places where they lived before Medie: Akrade, a village in the eastern region of Ghana, Odorkor, Alajo, and Accra-New town, all suburbs of Accra. But the narrators contradicted each other about the chronological sequence of these settlements and the reasons why they moved. In situations like this one, I relied on Prabhu Srivas for direction, and in this particular instance his version proved to be more instructive. Alajo was the first station of the Hare Krishna community in Ghana. The African American missionaries who brought the religion in 1979 established their training center for local priests and missionaries there. The group moved from Alajo to Odorkor in 1981 after the American missionaries left because they needed a bigger space to accommodate their growing number of followers. Here, they established the first temple. But after five years they had to move again. The landlord of their rented house would not renew their lease. From Odorkor they settled at Akrade, a small farming and fishing village on the banks of the Volta River that flows from northern section of Ghana into the Atlantic in the south. Another reason for settling here was to establish a farming community based on irrigation and the fertile alluvial soils along the banks of the river. The spiritual master in the United States of America recommended this move. But Akrade was quite a distance from Accra where the Hare Krishna group was gaining some grounds and it proved to be difficult to coordinate their activities from Akrade. Consequently, they lost some of their followers. It became clear to them that Accra was a more suitable location. Not only were they assured of winning over more converts from the stream of immigrants that flowed daily into Accra from the countryside, but also Accra, being Ghana’s capital, was a more strategic location. While planning the activities marking the tenth anniversary of their presence in Ghana in 1991, followers of Hare Krishna group met regularly at the Accra-Newtown home of Tony Eghan, an accountant and a staunch follower. Tony Eghan’s home became the focal point of the group’s activities throughout the celebrations and from that time the followers met here regularly on Sundays to go through scriptures and sing kirtans. Eventually, Eghan converted his garage into a temple where the group



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worshipped. In 1992 another follower, Kweku Dua, donated the land on which the present temple at Medie is located. That same year the spiritual master consecrated the land when he visited from the United States of America. The Medie temple’s construction began soon afterwards. The temple was completed in 1995. In 1996 the spiritual master, Bhakti Tirtha Swami, brought the murtis or idols of Krishna and other Hindu deities and in an elaborate and colorful ceremony still fondly remembered by followers, installed them in the temple. This event marked the beginning of the life of the Radha Govinda temple as a Hare Krishna worshipping center in Ghana. Prabhu Srivas’s concern for the accuracy of the data I was collecting on the community made him a bit obtrusive sometimes. When I would approach him for an explanation or a verification of an account, he would try to impose, albeit in very subtle ways, his own framework on the story. All too often he would dismiss the interpretations and perspectives of other narrators, omit some key incidents and treat others, like the miracles, as asides. I also came away with the sense that these were his ways of deliberately driving home the point that lay perspectives did not really count for much as did the official version of the history, which was his version. In any case and in spite of his attitude, I still attached great weight to followers’ perspectives and looked for recurring themes in the story rather than rely on Prabhu’s views alone. In all, drawing on Prabhu’s version and those of the lay followers I arrived at what I considered to be a complete picture of the history of the group. I realized for myself the importance of learning perspectives of the lay followers as well as leaders on the history of a religious group. I would have missed some salient events if I had not done this and by hearing lay followers’ accounts, much of what I had learnt earlier from Prabhu made more sense to me. The Temple Community: The Physical Temple The Radha Govinda temple is located on the side of a dirt road that branches off the main Accra to Nsawam highway into Medie. A sign reading “Welcome to the Sri Radha Govinda Temple” greets you at the junction of the dirt road and the highway. The temple is one of the few buildings in this part of the village but it stands out because of its elaborate structure, its Indian architectural style, and it’s brightly colored outside walls. It also has a very large compound. On one part of the compound is a wooden structure, a relic of the old temple before the present one was

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built. During the initial research for this study this was the sleeping quarters of the female temple devotees and the community’s children, and an adjoining room was the community’s kitchen, (which had to be close to the women because they cooked the temple’s meals). Presently (2012) the structure houses the classrooms and offices of the Lord Krishna Academy, the temples’ Junior Secondary school. The women, children and the kitchen have been relocated to some houses behind the temple. Between the temple and the school is an enclosure the community uses as its dining hall. The community keeps its cows in a kraal across the rear section of the temple. There is an open space in front of the temple where members of the community and other followers socialize. A tree standing in the middle of the compound provides shade for members who often sit under it in the afternoons to chat or discuss the Gita and other Hindu scriptures when it becomes too hot to be in the temple. A well in a corner of the open space is the main source of drinking water for the temple. The well is connected to the eaves of the temple’s roof by a small trough made of corrugated iron sheet so that rainwater that collected on top of the roof finds its way into the well where it is stored. In the dry Harmattan season when all the nearby streams dry up, the community allows the entire Medie village to draw water from the well, a gesture which has earned it some good reputation in the village. Pentecostal worshippers of Medie would however only bathe and wash with this water, not cook with it, lest, as one explained to me, “the Indian spirits that have infested it will affect us when we eat the food.” A flight of stairs leads up to the main entrance of the temple. This stairway is perpetually strewn with an assortment of footwear, as followers are not allowed to enter the temple with their shoes on. Playing children run after each other up and down the stairway. The stairway is also a resting place for worshippers who often rest a while and wipe the sweat off their faces before entering into the temple after the long walk from the main road. Because it is located on the outskirts of the town, the immediate vicinity of the temple is very serene, especially in the afternoons. The worship hall is a rectangular room with a marble floor. On entering the hall one faces a stage on which effigies of Hindu deities including Krishna, Radha, Balarama (Krishna’s elder brother), and other ritual paraphernalia are arranged. This is the central shrine. A white curtain separates the shrine from the rest of the temple. This curtain is drawn to reveal the images on the stage during worship. The deity idols (murtis) are dressed and adorned beautifully in saris, dhotis (Hindu male attire) and garlands.



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A large framed picture of a celestial realm (one of the Hindu heavens) hangs on the back wall of the stage, furnishing the shrine with an impressive “heavenly” background. The image of Prabhupada adorned in ochre robe is placed at the base of the shrine. Two candle lights flanking the sides of this effigy burn perpetually. Pictures showing Krishna’s pastimes hang on the interior walls of the temple. One of these pictures showing the young Krishna with a flute seems to hold a great appeal for followers. As devotees would enter the temple they would walk up to this picture cup their hands in prayerful mode and bow or lie prostrate underneath the picture before going to sit down. There are no seats in the temple and worshippers sit on mats during worship. Apart from the place of worship there are other rooms: Prabhu Srivas’s office and living quarters, the devotees’ cubicles, a library and a shop that sells an assortment of Hare Krishna paraphernalia. There is also a store— “The Radha Govinda Store” (established during the research)—across the dirt road, which sells mainly stationary and provisions to the temple community and people in the neighborhood, but where followers sit to rest or engage in chats and debates. Prabhu Goloka, a follower, owns this store. His younger brother Bhakta Yeboah (Yeboah is a Ghanaian name) is the storekeeper. The smell of strong incense and the sound of kirtans and mantras chanted from a cassette player constantly pervade the store. Bhakta Yeboah, the storekeeper, said the strong incense and the mantras protected the newly created store against possible saboteurs, mainly traders in Medie, who, fearing competition, would like to destroy it through sorcery. They also warded off attacks of witches and evil spirits that are inherently malignant and would like to see any good thing fail. Not far from this store is a primary school where children in Medie and the neighboring villages attend school. Hare Krishna Followers The Hare Krishna has more than ten thousand followers and seven temple communities all over southern Ghana. During my 2009 field research some worshippers described how the community expanded, especially in the mid-80s, because of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which displaced thousands of residents, leading to an influx of refugees into Ghana. The Krishna worshippers from these countries joined the Temples in Ghana and many have remained in these Temples. The situations also led to new conversions as refugees who did not like the crowded conditions

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in the refugee camps found refuge in the Hari Krishna live-in temples, where meals and accommodation are free. The community’s creation of Junior Secondary schools since 2001 has enhanced its local appeal. The fact that these schools receive sponsorship from the United States and the good quality of the education they provide is an important source of this appeal for parents, who have become open to their children becoming members. The temple communities are located in Accra, Kumasi, Winneba, Tarkwa, Nkawkaw, Sunyani, and Takoradi. The Accra temple at Medie is the headquarters and has the largest worshipping community. Because all worshipping communities have similar characteristics, I will base my description on only one: the Medie temple community in Accra, where I did much of my observation during this research. The Medie temple community comprises two broad categories of followers: temple devotees and outside members. Temple devotees are people who live permanently in the temple, eat their meals there and devote their efforts to activities that contribute to the day-to-day running of the temple. They must abide by the rules and regulations of the community, follow a daily routine, and perform chores assigned to them by Prabhu Srivas, the president. Children who live in the temple community are normally sons, daughters, and younger siblings of adult members. They are called “the children of Krishna.” All temple devotees are initiated (diksa) and have spiritual names, which they were given on initiation. “Outside members” are a loose network of followers who live in and around Accra but sometimes come from far-flung places and visit the temple for devotional purposes. There is a distinguished group of outside followers called “life members.” These are individuals who have made remarkable contributions to the community such as donating land for temples, sponsoring projects, or making huge financial donations. In recognition of their contributions, life followers enjoy greater privileges, such as eating free meals at Hare Krishna restaurants worldwide and receiving special treatment whenever they visit other temple communities. The Hare Krishna community is open to anyone who would like to become a member. But the leaders are also aware that it could take would-be converts a long time to finally decide to become full-time followers. There may also be individuals who, though interested in the teachings and practices of the Hare Krishna, would not want to become fully committed followers for some reason. The category of followers described as “Friends of Krishna,” was created to cater to the needs of these people. “Friends of Krishna” are uninitiated, not bound by any rules or regulations, but are welcome to programs and to worship, and are regarded as followers.



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Characteristics of Followers The typical Hare Krishna follower in Ghana is a young to early middleaged male or female, unmarried, literate or semi-literate (in terms of ability to read and write English) and belonging to the working class. There are, however, babies as young as a couple of weeks, younger people, and men and women as old as sixty years. I did not find too many couple devotees, though some adults interviewed said they were married. In fairly rough terms the average number of years devotees interviewed have been followers is between seven and ten years. The majority of the male followers work in government offices as clerks, messengers, receptionists and drivers. Others are self-employed as mechanics, welders, drivers, medicine peddlers, and traders to name just a few. Some of them are not employed. There is a conspicuous absence of members from the elite classes in Ghana, though I have met a few highly educated people who describe themselves as sympathizers. Many of the female followers are engaged in petty and long-distance retail trade. Other women are bakers, palmwine sellers, chop bar owners, seamstresses and homemakers. In the Accra temple there are more male followers that females. Leaders of the Community The community has leaders who are in charge of different aspects of its life, and they work together to ensure its smooth running. Prabhu Srivas, the temple president, is the leader, the administrative head, and the spiritual head of the community. He supervises all activities in the temple. He is the spokesman and representative of the community at important functions and appears often on national television to engage in debates with other religious leaders. Prabhu Srivas also controls the temple’s finances. Prabhu Govinda, a thirty-three-year-old, fair-complexioned man from Sierra Leone, is the assistant president of the temple. Prabhu Govinda was a president of a Hare Krishna temple in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, but had to flee to Ghana because of the fighting going on there. Then there are the priests (pujari) men who perform ritualistic roles in the temple. There are three priests; Otchere, who is thirty-four, is the leading priest. Botwe, a forty-year-old man from Accra, assists him. Another pujari, a thirty-year-old Ewe man called Asigbe, is still undergoing training. As the headquarters, the Medie temple is also a training ground for Hare Krishna priests. Tagoe, a middle aged Ga man, is the leader of the proselytizing

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group called “the preachers for Krishna.” This group, made up of sixteen devotees, is responsible for organizing and carrying out the community’s missionary activities. For this reason they are constantly on the move, preaching in new “mission zones.” Prabhu Goka, a forty-five year old Fante agriculturist, is the manager of the Hare Krishna farms located at Akrade. He lives on the farm but visits the resident community at Medie almost every day to see his wife, Yawa, and to report to Prabhu Srivas. Ekwe, Prabhu Srivas’s wife, is in charge of the female devotees and children in the resident community. She listens to their grievances and concerns and reports to Prabhu Srivas. She plans the community’s daily menu, prepares and manages the food budget, supervises all food and firewood purchases and prepares the roster for the women who cook for the community. She determines the needs of the children, ensures that they are bathed, fed and dressed and ready for school each morning. At night she and other women put the children to bed. Bhakta Atiase, a young Ewe man is the driver for the “Preachers of Krishna.” Another driver drives devotees to and from Accra downtown and the temple on assignments. Chebu, a young man from Nigeria, is the temple’s librarian and the storekeeper of the Krishna Spiritual Shop, which sells ritual paraphernalia such as incense, holy water and ash from India to followers and non-followers of the movement. Kwame, an eleven-year-old Akan boy, is the cowherd boy. He looks after the community’s ten cows. The cows were imported from India and each of them has a Hindu name; Bima, Nityananda, Arjuna, Krishna, Radha, Rama, Chaitanya, Aditi, Nirguna, and Ganga. When he was not in the fields nearby the temple watching over the cows as they graze, Kwame would be in the corral, cleaning it up, collecting the urine or droppings from the cows, or somewhere in the nearby bush cutting fodder for the cows. Some Hare Krishna followers in Ghana believe that urine and dung from cows are spiritually charged with Hindu powers, so that they use these to perform a number of personal rituals for protection. For this reason Kwame made a point of collecting as much urine and dung as he could each day. He was in the fenced area constantly watching out like a hawk for cows ready to urinate or drop their dung. At one time he would dash after a cow, receptacle in hand ready to collect the urine. At another time he would quickly place a flat wooden board underneath a cow to collect the dung before it falls to the ground and lose its spiritual potency.



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Life in the Temple Community A pecking order underlies the way relationships between temple devotees are structured. It is not immediately evident whether this derives from the authoritarian structure of the Hare Krishna tradition or from the strong sense of hierarchy and status in traditional Ghanaian culture. Authority in the Hare Krishna hierarchy is determined by both traditional and bureaucratic structures. The line of authority extends from the spiritual master responsible for a community to the temple president. Temple presidents are appointed, and demonstrated leadership qualities, good conduct, age in the community, and knowledge of the tradition are the criteria considered. Temple presidents are responsible for carrying out the orders of the spiritual master and the worldwide community as a whole in their temples, and they often appoint officers within the community to help them dispense their duties. Women occupy a low position in the Hare Krishna tradition. This is based on the Vedic position of women. Considered “charges” to their fathers, girls are handed to their husbands at marriage, and when the husbands die or renounce the world, their grown up sons take charge over them (Daner 1976:67–68). In traditional Ghanaian society a pattern of authority similar to the Hare Krishna tradition exists. Tradition strongly influences authority patterns and age, gender, office, wealth, or achievement, are the criteria. Village chiefs and their councils of elderly males are the most authoritative figures. Next are family heads, and other “social achievers” such as the wealthy, great farmers, or warriors. Tradition does not dispense much authority to women, except when they are old (abrewa) priestesses, or healers or in charge of women-centered activities. Children have no authority. Colonialism has introduced new criteria, such as education and wealth, which are even supplanting age as a criterion for authority.1 These two parallel authority patterns, the Hare Krishna and the Ghanaian, reinforce each other in the temple. Prabhu Srivas, the most authoritative figure in the community, would be compared to a father, the family elder, or the head of a household in the Ghanaian sense. He settles disputes, offers spiritual guidance, dispenses authority, assigns work, and gives devotees practical advice on everyday 1 For a detailed discussion of such changes read Sjaak van der Geest, “Money and Respect: The Changing Value of Old Age in Rural Ghana.” Africa 67.4 (1997):

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problems. He determines who stays in the community and who should not and his authority must not be questioned. Next in line are the leaders of the various groups that Srivas appoints. Women and recent members (bhaktas) occupy the lowest positions and are ranked only above children. Women are under the care of male devotees called “God brothers” until they marry, and they cannot do anything on their own without asking permission. They cannot even go on errands alone. Their low status is reflected in the domestic roles assigned them and their sitting behind the men in the temple during worship. They also bow to men while greeting them. Unquestioning obedience to authority is enforced. Younger members must obey the elderly, women must obey men, lay followers must obey leaders and others in authority and new comers must obey older members. Everybody must strictly comply with the rules of the community and perform tasks assigned them without questions. Although not an officer, some aura surrounds the persona of Kwame, the cowherd boy. He is the “the flute boy” and he always carried a flute, even though I never saw him play it. His role as a cowherd boy and the label “flute boy” identified him with Krishna, a cowherd boy who enchants the gopis—the cowherdesses of vraja—with sweet flute music in the Bhagavata Purana. Even some followers call Kwame “Krishna” and it would seem that the aura around him derives from this association. In any case Kwame also has traits that would seem to reinforce this identification— his good looks and popularity among the young girls ( just as Krishna was, among the cowherd women). I would often see him pulling pranks on the girls, running after them or playfully teasing them. I could not tell whether Kwame deliberately performed these acts to emulate Krishna’s flirtations with the cowherd women in the Bhagavata Purana. It would seem, however, that his traits and behavior reinforced the identification with Krishna that followers imputed to him and this enhanced his image and status in the community, giving him some authority. Male devotees have the name “Prabhu” prefixed to their names. But it would seem that this title is generic for all senior male devotees. The Hare Krishna conventional term for a devotee of Krishna is bhakta. Even though this convention is maintained in the Ghanaian community the term is mainly reserved for male devotees newly initiated or admitted into the resident temple community. When the new member is an elderly member of the Ghanaian community however, he is called “Prabhu” just like any senior male devotee. Old age is still respected; to assign to an elder a title that reflected a low status is to subvert a key indigenous Ghanaian custom.



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Female devotees have the term “mother” prefixed to their names. Followers explained to me that the designation “mother” was aimed at preventing male followers from looking lustfully at the female devotees, “because ideally no man sleeps with the mother.” The style of clothing in the temple is Hindu. Unmarried male devotees are always dressed in flowing saffrons. But some too wear Ghanaian clothes. Married male devotees dress in white dhotis. All the women wear saris but sometimes they are dressed in the traditional Ghanaian kaba (traditional skirt and blouse) and tie their hair with scarves. The men shave their heads but always leave a tuft of hair on their head as an indication of surrender to the spiritual master and to Krishna. Some devotees decorate their faces and other parts of their bodies with tilaka clay, imported from India. Devotees see tilaka as spiritually charged with Krishna’s protective powers. It sanctified the individual and protected them against evil and malevolent spirits. The Daily Routine A typical day at the Medie temple begins at dawn, with the crowing of the first group of roosters in the neighborhood. Normally this occurs between 3:30 and 4 o’clock in the morning. Often, it is the more recently accepted temple devotees, the bhaktas, and the women who wake up first. Since they occupy the lowest stage of the temple hierarchy, bhaktas are assigned the most difficult chores and these are mainly menial. They sweep the compound, use hoes and machetes to uproot weeds on the compound, water the flowers in front of the temple and till the ground when they have to. These tasks require that they get up early. Because women are responsible for preparing the community’s meals, they also get up early to look for firewood, fill the barrels in the kitchen with water from the wells and begin preparing breakfast. They also bathe the children in the temple and get them ready for school. The pujaris also get up early to prepare the shrine and deities ritually for the morning devotion. When temple devotees of the Hare Krishna group at Medie get up at dawn to start their morning chores, it is not only for pragmatic reasons of getting a head start that they do so, but also for the special significance attached to dawn or first cockcrow.2 Apart from women and bhaktas, 2 Dawn or the first cockcrow has a special place in southern Ghanaian as well as Indian religio-cultural life. In Ghana, it marks the beginning of a new day and a new opportunity to celebrate life. Physically, it is conducive for carrying out many activities. It is the

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other devotees get up at dawn to study the scriptures, rehearse songs, deliberate over issues, resolve conflicts among fellow members, and to listen to Prabhu Srivas’s counseling sessions which take place at dawn. By 6:15 a.m. devotees assemble for the morning devotion. They dance to the accompaniment of drums and tambourines and the pujaris perform some rituals. There are announcements after that. Then the president assigns the day’s tasks to devotees. By ten o’clock in the morning the compound of the temple becomes completely deserted as devotees leave to preach in the Medie neighborhood and in the city. Prabhu Srivas’s wife selects the women who would stay behind to go to market and to draw water, wash and prepare the temple’s meals that day. The rest join the other devotees in preaching. Devotees who go out to the city on preaching assignments begin to return from their daily preaching assignments by three o’clock in the afternoon. By sunset all devotees are back. The school children, too, return from school. The temple compound livens up once more as devotees chat excitedly among each other about their encounters during the day and children playfully chase each other about the place. Six o’clock is supper time. The men and children eat first, the women later. After supper there is another devotional service (puja) to Krishna. Once again the sound of devotees singing, drumming, clapping and blowing snail conches fills the evening air drawing residents of Medie out of their homes to once more witness to the “fetish practices of the occult religion from India.” The devotional service ends by eight-thirty and by 9 pm everybody retires to bed. Outlying Centers Apart from the seven main worship centers of the Hare Krishna in southern Ghana, there are pockets of Hare Krishna devotees all over villages

quietest part of the day and activities during this time can go on uninterrupted by any disturbance and even the soothing effect of the cool breeze that blows at dawn in most of the coastal locations of southern Ghana is conducive for carrying out physical activities. Dawn is also the time when people may have rested and become reinvigorated enough to begin another day. Because it is the quietest part of the day, and because people’s energies are renewed at this time, dawn is the best time for intellectual activity. Finally, dawn is an auspicious part of the day because malicious spirits whose nocturnal activities are believed to reach their peak between midnight and two o’clock in the morning return to their bases by this time. Human activity can go on unimpeded by spirit beings at dawn. For these reasons many activities take place at dawn in southern Ghana: “out-dooring” of new babies [showing baby off to the public and naming it], arbitration, deliberations, engagements, and counseling sessions (dawn talks).



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and towns. Because their numbers are small they do not have enough resources to be able to sustain large resident communities. Thus Hare Krishna followers in small towns and villages are predominantly “outside followers.” Such small village and town communities have no temples. They meet in members’ homes, makeshift sheds, and classrooms for worship. In such instances the member would set apart a room in his home as the shrine or build a small shed on the compound as the temple. As most of them still belong to Christian churches devotees meet “after church” on Sundays. They are in constant contact with the headquarters in Accra and the temples in bigger towns near them. Periodically Prabhu Srivas makes a tour of temples in outlying areas and village communities and devotees attach great importance to these tours. Women outnumber men in villages and small towns, and in the communities that I visited most male followers were elderly people. This trend simply reflects the general demographic trends in southern Ghana villages and towns. Younger men normally emigrate into cities and bigger towns to find better paying jobs leaving women, the elderly and children in the villages and smaller towns. Many of these female devotees are petty traders. Some of them are seamstresses, farmers and fisherwomen. The elderly men are mostly retirees, but they farm to supplement their periodic remittances from their children who work in the cities or live abroad. Followers of Hare Krishna are welcome at any temple. Devotees such as traders, whose work entails traveling, stay over at temples on their business trips. During the research I would occasionally meet a village devotee who was in Accra on a business trip and was staying at the temple. Devotees talked excitedly about how easy it was for Hare Krishna followers to travel around in Ghana and even abroad. “You always have a place to sleep, food to eat, and meet with nice people who make you feel at home,” Seth, the traditional medicine peddler commented on this benefit. He also said he stayed in Hare Krishna temples whenever he traveled to South Africa on business trips. Every now and then a devotee would mention the name of a former member of the Ghana temple community currently “serving the lord” in another community in England, the United States, India, or a far-flung location overseas. Through such traditions as the Hare Krishna movement, Hindu religious traditions have spread beyond India, functioning as “interlinked” trans-continental global “systems” that facilitate travel, business, tourism, education and interaction between and among cultures (Narayan 1989:73). Some Hare Krishna devotees in Ghana think this is a big advantage of becoming a member of the religious tradition. In rural villages and small towns, non-members refer to Hare Krishna devotees as “the Krishna people” or “the Indian church people.” At other

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times labels such as “those who do not eat meat” or “those who chant,” are related to their ritual practices. Other labels reflect negative perceptions such as “Those who worship idols,” “the fetish people,” or “the Mame Wata people.” Village followers normally dress traditionally, unlike urban counterparts who often dress in dhotis and saris. Village devotees also do not use their spiritual names in public as temple members in Accra and other bigger centers. The explanation could be that under the constant “gaze” of their leaders in the urban temples, followers feel pressured to go strictly according to the conventions of the tradition. Such close supervision is absent in rural communities. Besides, negotiating a new identity for a devotee in his or her hometown or village is far more cumbersome than doing so in the urban temple environment where the devotee is new and among “strangers.” On the other hand, whether in the village or urban centers Hare Krishna followers continue to play their traditional roles in their communities as family heads, chiefs of their village, heads of market women, linguists in courts etc. They engage actively in activities involving their communities—traditional weddings, birth rituals, and funerals. Some even hold key positions in their Christian churches. A striking element of membership is their somewhat eclectic religious attitude—they do not view their membership in Hare Krishna as a restriction from engaging in any other form of religion. The typical devotee maintains affiliations with other churches even if only a loose one, and continues to contribute to their activities and lives. At Easter, a time when many Ghanaian people visit their hometowns, Krishna devotees attend church services with their non-Hare Krishna family members. This eclectic attitude is an obvious carryover of indigenous traditional attitudes. But the open attitude of the Hare Krishna and Hinduism in general bolsters it. The Teachings: Onyame Krishna, the Supreme Being The community believes in a Supreme Being called Krishna. Devotees use the local terms for God, “Onyame” and “Mawu” for Krishna though they do not assign him any traditional attributes of God. He is a personal deity (oye onipa) and described as a handsome young man with lotus petular eyes, dark skin, and “always smiling.” Onyame Krishna dwells in the heavens, described as Goloka vrindaban, Krishna loka, in the traditional term as esru (heavens) or the local Christian term, paradisomu (paradise). Here he is worshipped by transcendental beings. A sweet, enchanting, loving



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and doting God worshipped in love, Onyame Krishna is accessible to the devotee through the chanting of his names, “Hare” and “Krishna.” His prasadam, the spiritual master, and the murti (arca vigraha), that is, the visible image of Krishna in the temple, are the other avenues of access to him. Accustomed in their own traditions to the depiction of deities in images, devotees do not view the image of Krishna as a mere symbolic representation. For them, Onyame Krishna dwells here and allows devotees to worship him in person. This idea of the Supreme Being depicted in physical image is, however, novel and is a key source of appeal and fascination with the religion as we would read in the chapters on conversion narratives. In view of the numerous avenues to God in the temple, devotees always maintain in Akan: “Ekwan a eko Nyame hor no edooso ewor asori yi mu” meaning, “Paths to God abound in this church.” The Human Condition The community believes that human beings are essentially spiritual because originally they participated in the same transcendental realm of Onyame Krishna. But the present state of human beings is far from their original Krishna nature because they “turned away” from Krishna at some point in time. Borrowing the idea from their earlier Christian backgrounds, devotees describe this “turning away” in terms of a “fall” from an original divine and pristine state. The community attributes this fall to human beings’ abuse of freewill. It is said that, so that he would enjoy the worship of his creation, Onyame Krishna multiplied himself into many living souls. But these “expansions” (they use this English term) became separated from Krishna, their source. Henceforth human beings would be born in a fallen state into a material world, Ewiase (the phenomenal world), essentially a place of chaos, pain and misery. The notion of Kali Yuga explains why. The Phenomenal World of Kali Yuga The community locates the current historical period within the last of a four-age schema called the Kali Age or Kali Yuga. In the first of these ages, the world, newly created, is in a pure state. As creation progressed, the vitality, virtuosity and spirituality of the world declined. In the long run, piety, intelligence and health all declined. The deterioration occurs in four stages, each with its proper form of religiosity. In the Kali Yuga, an

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epoch of immorality, pain, misery and ignorance, devotion to Krishna is the appropriate form of religious practice. Karma The community teaches that human beings go through endless cycles of births, deaths and rebirths–samsara. A person also has social and ritual duties proper to his or her nature, caste, and state in life. One’s duty is called the sva dharma or simply dharma. The strict execution of one’s dharma brings favorable results in the present and future lives. Disregard of proper dharma brings misfortune. This represents the general Hindu discourse on karma. Among lay followers the idea is quaintly expressed as “results” of a person’s deeds. Good deeds ensure good effects and a better rebirth and bad deeds result in a worse condition. Karma, it is stressed, attaches exclusively to the actor and can never be transferred to another person, so that everybody must fully accept the fruits, fortunate or ill fortunate, from all previous deeds even if they were committed in one’s earlier and unknown lives. Salvation: “Nkwa” So long as onipa continues to perform actions in ewiase, karma would ensure humanity’s rebirth into the world of Kali Yuga. Suffering in ewiase is therefore an inevitable condition of life. Salvation—nkwa—means escape or release from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Salvation is through the grace of Krishna. The ultimate result of that grace is Krishna Consciousness, described in terms of the devotee’s reconnecting of that earlier transcendental bond with Krishna. Onipa in this state is above the material world, not subject to human emotions, and becomes one with Krishna. And when he dies his soul dwells in the heavens with the lord. But the grace of the lord is available only to those who lend themselves to it, so the devotee must act consciously to remove all the “worldly” obstacles and clear the way for that reconnection to take place. This entails following a “path.” Bhakti yoga or nyame sum as they described it in Accra summarizes this path. Nyame sum involves an all-encompassing, ever-continuous devotional life. It has both a ritualistic and a reflective or philosophical dimension. The ritualistic aspect of Krishna nyame sum entails the worship of the divine in statue form (arca vigraha) or murti in the temple or in photos



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placed in domestic shrines. There are also effigies of Prabhupada and Chaitanya and the deities and worship is according to stipulations of texts. Another ritual aspect of Krishna nyame sum involves merely hearing, speaking about, singing about, and reciting the pastimes. The pastimes are mythico-biographical accounts of Krishna when he lived in Vrindaban, India 5000 years ago as a cowherd (Stillson Judah 1974:60). They embody tenets of the faith, featuring Krishna’s qualities and activities in association with other divine beings, his splendors, and even the attributes of a model devotee. The pastimes are also transcendental events and they are eternal; Krishna still participates in his pastimes with the heavenly beings in Krishna loka described also as the spiritual counterpart of Vrindaban. The singing, hearing about, and reciting of the pastimes or assembling with other devotees to celebrate the pastimes generates a mood (in the Geertzian sense) in which devotees become aware of that original human divine connection with Krishna. The rationale here is that the more the devotee hears, recites, chants, meditates on him, and visualizes his image, the more he/she becomes attracted to the lord and so recollects his/her original divine nature. These activities transport devotees spiritually into the transcendental realm to participate with Krishna in his pastimes.3 Complementing these teachings and furthering the goal of bhakti is a sensually disciplined and ascetic lifestyle. Devotees are enjoined to live a simple, modest or even austere life. They must not eat meat, fish or eggs, or drink any form of alcoholic beverage—nsa—and they must abstain from gambling and illicit sex. Other prohibitions include indulgence in mundane entertainment forms such as attending dances, robust parties, watching television, and movies. There is a general aversion to associating with the symbols of modernity, as this is a stumbling block on the path of the soul—okra—to Krishna Consciousness. Other symbolic or material expressions of this lifestyle include shaving of the head, and dressing simply. Women must cover their hair, must not use face polishes, and must avoid wearing jewelry.

3 Personally communicated initially by O’Connell and confirmed through discussion with Prabhu Srivas, leader of Hare Krishna in Ghana.

CHAPTER FIVE

“HINDUIZING” FROM THE “TOP,” INDIGENIZING FROM “BELOW”: KRISHNA DEVOTION IN GHANA Hinduization There is a sense in the local Ghanaian public that the Hare Krishna community adopts an aloof stance and seeks to distance itself from the local culture. A non-member commented at one time, “As for Hare Krishna people, they view themselves as being so pure that they do not even want to have anything to do with our customs. They say they are now Hindu people.” When I inquired from a high-ranking devotee whether local traditions have infiltrated into or shaped the community’s practices in any way and whether they have plans to introduce local practices into their tradition, he was defensive, and his response reinforced the public’s position: “What! No! Never! What we do here is purely spiritual. It transcends the cultural. This is a Hindu thing and it must not be contaminated.” When I mistakenly called Yohannes by his local name, he protested vehemently, “No! No longer Yohannes or Nyatefe! Sara Das is the name. That’s my Hindu name and that’s my spiritual name now. No more Nyatefe.” On a day after worship I inquired of Padambadam, a female devotee, whether she considered herself to be Indian when she too had insisted that I should call her by her Vaishnava Hindu name. She said, “Yes.” “What is your caste origin if you are Indian?” I teased. “I mean I am Hindu, not East Indian,” she answered. “What’s the difference?” I asked her. “Hindu is spiritual. Indian is cultural. And Hindu is higher, so I am higher than caste, because I have stopped eating meat and have become a Krishna devotee . . . I am purer,” she explained. “Are your children in Hare Krishna too?” I asked. “Yes.” “They were born here?” I quizzed on. “Yes.” “So you did out-doorings (traditional Ghanaian birth rituals) for them here?” “No, we did the Hindu things . . . because they are Hindu. When they grow up they will have Hindu marriages and when they die they will have Hindu rites performed for them. They are now Hindu.” Padambadam insists on the spiritual nuance of her experience so she distinguishes “Hindu,” which is spiritual from “Indian,” which is cultural. Her “Hindu” category is above culture, whether Ghanaian or Indian, and the basis of her being in this



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category is her “stopping to eat meat.” Her reaction was typical of devotees in the community. The point of these instances is to demonstrate why the Ghanaian public feels the Hare Krishna “distances” itself from them. As far as the Hare Krishna community in Ghana is concerned the category “Vaishnava Hindu” is not cultural but spiritual, and it is the spiritual integrity of the tradition, not the cultural, that it seeks to protect from becoming “contaminated.” Their apparent aloofness is not the expression of an “anti-Ghanaian culture” policy of the Hare Krishna as such. The public misinterpreted the community’s zeal to perpetuate an authentic Chaitanyite Vaishnava practice—a religious culture that stresses complete detachment from the mundane world—in a non-Indian setting. Sometimes, some devotees refined their spiritual status further, arguing that they were not merely “Hindus,” but Vaishnava. Evidence from research on ISKCON in the United States of America points to the community’s strict monastic, or what I would term “out of the society” orientation (Daner 1976; Stillson Judah 1974; Gelberg 1989; Shinn 1987). Scenarios of devotees seeming “distanced” from social realities or “carried away” even as they chanted in public have even led to allegations of brain-washing and “programming” of followers being leveled against the Hare Krishna in America—accusations presumably based on anti-cult movements’ presumption that devotees are de-socialized through the use of certain techniques (Burke 1985; Gelberg 1983; 1989; Melton 1989; Shinn 1987; Turner 1976). O’Connell also notes how the Gaudiya Vaisnavas of the 16th century, the origin of the Hare Krishna tradition, in their strictly devotional practices, detached themselves fundamentally from any given social, cultural, or political environment in order to focus on spiritual life (O’Connell 1993:32). He noted earlier that the category of “Hindu” lent no meaning to Vaishnava in a devotional sense, though it had meaning geographically and socio-culturally as a reference to anything that was indigenously Indian (O’Connell 1970:87). I am inclined to suggest at this point that the distancing of itself from the local culture in Ghana is a heritage from the Hare Krishna community’s mother Chaitanyite Vaishnava tradition. It has more to do with a religious culture that considers the material world to be totally distanced from the higher spiritual advancement, than with deliberate aloofness. From the point of view of Chaitanyite Vaishnavism, mundane involvements must be for the sake of spiritual advancement only (Kumar 2000:188). One premise of my Hinduization argument is that the distancing of the Hare Krishna community from mundane culture not-withstanding, Hare Krishna devotion remains distinctively very Indian and Hindu. Through

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a process of selective appropriation of some Hindu socio-cultural and religious elements and a reformulating of others (presumably with the goal of accommodating different ethnicities) the Hare Krishnas have created their own global Hindu spiritual culture. Accordingly, my argument is that conversion into this community in Ghana is also a socialization of the Ghanaian devotee into a Hindu in the Hare Krishna sense of the word. The reformulation of caste is a core element of the Hare Krishna Hindu religious culture. The Gaudiya Vaishnavas acknowledged caste divisions and recognized the social norms and roles and positions prescribed for each caste category (O’Connell 1970:343). They, however, maintained revolutionarily that one’s piety and devotion to Hari, not the caste identity, guaranteed salvation. A low caste person, or a woman, who was “devout” was better than an “impious” Brahman (O’Connell 1970:345). Building on this heritage, Bhakti Vedanta adopted a new caste schema for the Hare Krishnas, which, though modeled on the Hindu tradition, does not include the Hindu socio-cultural restrictions associated with caste. He divides society into four main groups. The highest of this, paralleling the Brahman caste, is the lazy intelligent—one very much advanced in spiritual matters, who has control over his/her senses, and able to distinguish the soul from the body. The others, busy intelligent, lazy fool, and busy fool, are lacking in some spiritual advancement (Kumar 2000:187). These categories are not fixed—they are fluid—and devotees can advance to higher states through training. Members of all the categories are also equal before Krishna and the categories apply to all devotees, irrespective of sex, or race or ethnic background (Kumar 2000:187). In other words these are seen as spiritual categories, not cultural ones, so one can be Vaishnava Hindu in the Bengali version of it and yet without caste. The Krishnas accept the ideology of caste but not its sociology. We must understand Padambadam’s view that she was Hindu but not Indian, in this context. The community’s open invitation to all worshippers seeking to advance spiritually to participate in this Hindu religious culture irrespective of ethnic background is an allure for Ghanaian worshippers who already have a cultural predilection for seeking spiritual experiences from alien religious worlds. Conversion to Hare Krishna as a Form of Acculturation The nexus between Hindu religion as a whole and East Indian cultural life has implications for the notion of conversion to Hinduism especially when non-East Indian people are involved. The idea of converting to



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Hinduism connotes a conditioning of devotees to patterns and customs of Vedic culture that is more than their mere switching of religious or spiritual affiliations. A stubborn emphasis on the devotees’ strict adherence to Vedic Vaishnava culture in the Hare Krishna community in Ghana reinforces my point. The conversion process involves an orientation phase during which the novice is gradually introduced to the tenets of the new religion and is observed in order to determine whether he or she could be an exemplary devotee. This culminates in an initiation—the Hare nama diksa initiation—marking the devotee’s new Vaishnava Hindu identity.1 A new Vaishnava Hindu name, vows committing the devotee to Vaishnavism, the reception of a personal and secret mantra, and commitment to a personal guru, are the defining characteristics of the devotee’s new Vaishnava Hindu identity. This identity is demonstrated publicly through the wearing of saris, kurtas, and dhotis, and the marking of Vaishnava symbols on parts of the body with tilaka clay. This means that, though considered “spiritual” by the community itself, the Hare Krishna devotee in Ghana has all the attributes of a Hindu in a cultural as well as a religious sense. The community’s insistence on devotees using their Vaishnava Hindu names and thinking as bhaktas, its stubborn emphasis on the use of Sanskrit during scriptural readings, and the application of the Hindu asramas (stages in life) to devotees’ lives further reinforce the sense of the communitiy’s distinct cultural identity. The supplanting of traditional Ghanaian life-cycle rituals by Vaishnava Hindu rituals and the insistence on devotees not eating meat with its implications for Hindu notions of purity and Brahmanism, are signs of the acculturation implicit in Hare Krishna ritual practice in Ghana. But, equally significant is how the Hinduization policy reflects the dynamism of the politics of meaning in the local Ghanaian community. In other words, the community lacks power to independently determine its own Hindu meanings and practices. This has implications for the pattern of indigenization that takes shape within the community. The Politics of Meaning At the official level, the tenets of Chaitanyite Vaishnavism as Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who brought it to the West, interpreted it 1 A detailed description of this ceremony is not possible at this point, as I have never witnessed it.

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determine what is deemed to be “appropriate” Hindu practice in the Ghanaian community of Krishna worshippers. A body known as the Governing Body Commission (GBC), based in the United States of America, is the most authoritative voice of this tradition (Daner 1976:53). This body is comprised of twelve spiritual masters called “regional leaders,” who are in charge of the twelve zones into which the worldwide following of the Hare Krishna is divided (Daner 1976:53). A regional leader is vested with the authority to determine where new centers will be established in his zone and who would be sent to them, and to ensure that the temples strictly follow the Hare Krishna tradition (Daner 1976:53). At the time of the research in 1999 the African, Asian and European communities were under the leadership of a guru called Swami Bhakti Tirtha. Answering to the guru’s authority, the temple presidents in these zones must strictly enforce the Hare Krishna tradition in their temples. For this reason Prabhu Srivas, the Hare Krishna leader in Ghana, is merely a custodian of Chaitanyite Vaishnavism with no authority to determine the local community’s own interpretations of the tradition. Reflecting on what Kalu has described as “the gap between theological reflection and grassroots reality” (1995:49), I suggest that the exogenous control over the local Hare Krishna community and tradition in Ghana does not necessarily ensure a strict Vaishnava Hindu interpretation of Hare Krishna rituals. Neither does it result in a “to the letter” application of the tenets in devotees’ practical lives. At the level of the laity, that is, the grassroots, a synthesis of local beliefs and practices with Chaitanyite Vaishnava tenets or a completely indigenous interpretation is silently taking shape as devotees determine their own meanings. My suggestion in the discussion to follow is that indigenization need not always result from the deliberate official policy of an immigrant religious community to open up to local interpretations and practices—a top-down policy, so to speak— and it cannot be prevented by officialdom. It is an inevitable result of the intercultural religious encounter (Meyer 1992:99–131). In other words Vaishnava tenets and local Ghanaian religious notions and practices dovetail into each other in the lives and thoughts of devotees in the process McKim Marriot refers to as parochialization. The Ghanaian experience of vegetarianism, the kirtan or Krishna devotional practice and the Vaishnava reverence attached to the cow provide good examples of this process. “Not Eating Meat” or Vegetarianism Becoming a vegetarian is a sine qua non for becoming a Hare Krishna devotee and this is strictly enforced in Ghana. In addition one must avoid



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illicit sex and alcohol. These ensure the willful control over one’s sensual pleasures, which is considered to be the hallmark of an initiate’s departure from past sinful ways and a condition for realizing Krishna Consciousness. The foreignness or “Hinduness” of vegetarianism practice is so striking in Ghana that it is considered by devotees and non-devotees alike to be the defining characteristic of a Ghanaian Hare Krishna devotee. While the rejection of illicit sex and abstinence from alcohol are other defining characteristics, because there are churches in Ghana that also abhor these practices they are not considered to be that distinctly Hindu in Ghana. In the Hare Krishna community the expression “stopping to eat meat” is synonymous with conversion, and typically conversion stories ended with the devotee saying, “then I stopped eating meat and became Hindu.” The Hare Krishna practice of vegetarianism and its emphasis on nonviolence as the rationale for it provide another example of how it has appropriated and re-configured traditional Hindu beliefs and practices to create its own Hindu religious culture. Though vegetarianism is generally established as a dietary rule of high-caste Hindus, there are regional differences in India in how this rule is applied—there are regions of India such as the north where Brahmans or high caste Hindus eat meat or fish (Dumont 1980:140–141). Yet the Hare Krishnas, like many modern Hindus of neo-Hindu affiliations, tend to relate vegetarianism generally to Hinduism. Furthermore, although the Hare Krishnas emphasize the avoidance of the violence of killing—ahimsa—as the Hindu rationale behind vegetarianism presumably in their attempt to appeal to the sentiments of their modern non-Indian followers, in traditional Hinduism vegetarianism is not primarily based in nonviolence. It is grounded in Hindu beliefs about ritual pollution caused by contact of a high caste Hindu with a dead animal or any dead thing. Perhaps the importance they attach to vegetarianism and their rules against illicit sex and alcohol consumption form part of the Hare Krishna’s commitment to the ideal of nonviolence. O’Connell makes a note about their mother Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition’s position in this regard: The prohibitions against alcohol and meat are in fact expressions of the Gaudiya Vaisnava’s revulsion against the taking of life and the readiness to do violence that are implied in the partaking of alcohol or meat . . .  (O’Connell 1970:181)

Even more indicative of the implicit Hinduization of the Ghanaian devotees of Krishna are the asramas, that is, Hindu stages of spiritual life, which they must abide by. Bhaktivedanta stressed that for spiritual

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advancement all devotees should abide by the four traditional Hindu stages. In the Vedic tradition, these stages—student, householder, forest dweller, and wandering ascetic—are designed only for upper caste males. The modifications in the Hare Krishna community are that the asramas apply to female devotees, too, and all devotees are treated as if they were upper caste people, warranting application of the asrama scheme. Only the first two stages, students (brahmacaris) and householders (grihastas) are represented in the Ghanaian community. Injunctions against eating meat are not uniquely Hindu. A local Ghanaian motif which cautions against “eating too much meat” resonates with and in fact reinforces the Hare Krishna stress on the moderation of diet. This motif cautions that liking “fatty meat” (srade nam in Akan) or “too much meat” breeds a predilection for superfluity described in local terms as “living the good life,” a trait that is said to frequently lead to moral corruption. Another motif is, however, uniquely indigenous to Ghana. A version of the general Ghanaian belief that people could imbibe the properties of the foods they ate, this motif holds that physical traits associated with animals could be transferred to people who ate meat. Some kinds of meat could pollute its eaters ritually or render them weak spiritually— a sense of “ritual pollution” that has its underlying indigenous logic and nothing to do with the idea of non-violence as in the Hare Krishna tradition. The belief is that evil spirits sometimes inhabit animals and can be transferred to people who eat meat. Such spirits can render a person’s personal spirit—sunsum—which is responsible for spiritually protecting him or her, weak. This particular motif strongly influences the laity’s interpretation of the value of not eating meat. When I asked devotees why they did not eat meat the responses of the leadership mainly reflected the combined influence of the notion of nonviolence and the Vaishnava emphasis on controlling one’s sensual appetites (by both avoiding rajastic, dynamic and violence stimulating food and also avoiding dulling or tamasic food). Below is a compilation of some typical responses: “That’s what we as Hindus do. It’s the rule here.” “So that we will be pure, because eating meat is violence to animals.” “It helps in developing self-control because some foods can make you become aggressive. If one can stop eating meat one can abstain from anything else.” “When a devotee is caught eating meat he could be expelled.” A devotee said her being able to “stop eating meat” encouraged her to remain in the community because it implied that she would be able to go through with all the austerities becoming a Hindu would demand of her. When I asked the laity the same question their various responses revealed a pervasive



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influence of the local motifs, and a synthesis of Hindu and local beliefs. For instance a devotee alluded to the local belief when he said he had become “purer in spirit” and “more fortified” spiritually by his conversion because he “stopped eating meat.” A female temple devotee connected her ability to control her “vices” since she joined the community to “not eating meat”: Because I no longer eat meat I have greater control over my anger, lust, greed, and my aggression . . . You see, all these are animal tendencies in us. And we imbibe them because we eat meat. Sometimes they represent bad spirits in the animals that make us to behave in those ways.

Justifying his adoption of the practice, a village devotee attributed what he described as “the evil ways of the nation,” to the “too much meat and fish we like to eat in this country.” “The inside of our mouths are too sweet (a way of saying, “we crave meat” in Ewe) and so we are vulnerable to the evil spirits that make us do evil things and weaken us spiritually,” he added. A woman said that because she was not sure whether she would become an animal in another life and be subjected to the torture of being slaughtered and eaten she would not want to put any animal through that kind of “ordeal” by eating meat. But she added: “Even meat when you eat it, it only makes your sunsum mre (meaning “dulls or weakens your personal spirit” in Twi ) and witches will have their ways with you just like that,” revealing a mixture of the beliefs in karma, non-violence and indigenous notions. Another devotee, who spoke Ga, said his being able to stop the “life,” especially excessive womanizing, was because he stopped eating meat as a devotee. “Especially goat meat . . . If you eat goat meat all the time you will always be after women, fu be be be be (the bleating of a courting billy goat) just as a he-goat does.” Below is a list of excerpts of other similar views of the laity on why they stopped eating meat: “If you stop the meat you cease to behave wildly like animals.” “So that my blood will remain pure and not be contaminated with animal blood. Animal blood sometimes has evil spirits and they will affect me.” “So that I will not be weak spiritually and I will build up spiritual powers.” “A lot of meat can pollute your spirit.” “If you eat meat you will be morally weak, you can’t overcome temptations, because just like the animals you eat you won’t have control over your urges.” “Maybe too the animal is a witch and the moment you eat its meat you too could acquire witchcraft.” Out of 35 members of the laity to whom I asked this question the answers of only 11 reflected purely Vaishnava teachings. Even they, too, could have been influenced by the similar Ghanaian motif I mentioned above concerning

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controlling of sensual appetites, for only six of these eleven people—all temple devotees—talked about non-violence. What this suggests is that, in addition to the Hindu meanings, local conceptualizations associated with meat-eating and purity, strongly influence the laity’s interpretation of the value of the vegetarian practice and their Hindu religious experience as a whole. For them “not eating meat” went beyond their commitment to non-violence. It also led to a build up of spiritual power, ritual cleanliness, and the ability to control “animal” urges translating into moral uprightness. The Challenges of “Not Eating Meat” Because it is an alien cultural practice “not eating meat” introduces conflicts into the personal lives and social relations of devotees, conflicts that I argue symbolize and epitomize the clash between Hindu and local cultural practices and values. In order to understand the nature of these conflicts we need to know something about eating meat in Ghanaian culture and dietary habits. The Akan term for meat is nam. Nam is the generic term for all sources of animal protein such as fish, meat, and eggs, and I use the word “meat” in this generic sense. There are people in Ghana who may not eat meat, though apart from the “Hindus” I know of no such fellows. It is more common to find people who do not eat a particular animal’s meat for health reasons, or because of a taboo, or other kinds of ritual prohibitions. I would assume, however, that becoming a vegetarian would be difficult for many Ghanaian people. This is because eating meat is a dietary habit people cultivate from childhood and it might be hard to quit this habit. More importantly, friends, relatives and acquaintances may be left to wonder whether something was amiss with the person who suddenly quits eating meat. Meat is considered such a delicacy that some observers may even conclude that perhaps “something must be wrong with the head,” of the person. Even though some five younger devotees said they did not really have much difficulty becoming vegetarians, others, especially the more elderly followers, said they did. Speaking Ga, Seth described his ordeal and how he overcame it: It was a major problem for me. When I would stop, I would start again. How could I a Ga man [a predominantly fishing community with abundant ‘meat’] stop eating meat? Such a delicacy? What do I tell people? Eventually I set a date for myself. The 31st of December 1983, during New Year. I decided



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that I would eat all the meat in the world on that day for the last time and that would be it. That day I ate meat like I had never eaten before . . . The next day I stopped and I became real Hindu.

On a day after worship I overheard some devotees exchanging notes on their “struggles” with the practice. They spoke English. An Indian lady asked a female Ghanaian devotee: “When were you initiated?” “That was in 1989,” the Ghanaian lady answered and went on. “But first it was hard.” “Why was it hard?” The Indian probed. “Ooh it’s the meat thing. How could they ask me to stop eating meat? Such a delicacy! It would have been easy if I was younger, but as a grown-up I have acquired the taste, so it was really hard to quit,” the Ghanaian lady answered. “But that’s the easiest aspect,” the East Indian lady said after a moment of reflection, and continued: “I think it’s an African problem. In India most people are already vegetarians.” “Eii but not here in Ghana.” That was Manuh, a male devotee joining in. He continued, “Look at it this way. In Ghana, meat is scarce, so to be told to stop eating the little that comes your way is hard. As for me at least I drink the soup . . . Only the chunks of meat I don’t eat.” These interchanges reflect personal challenges due to this radical change in the dietary habits of devotees. But their challenges were also social. Opanin Yao Kuntu, an elderly rural devotee, shared his experience with me: When there is a feast and everybody is eating meat and you are not, then you feel isolated like you are no longer one of them. It’s hard when people think you are aloof. My mother makes it harder. She would say, “So Yao, now that you are no longer one of us what shall we serve you?” It makes me feel like I am out there all alone (Interview in Fante).

Naomi described in broken English, her “ordeal” during village feasts when she had to dish out the food: It is harder when you are doing the cooking and dishing out because you would have to taste the food before you serve it . . . . And when I don’t taste it, then people begin to wonder, “Maybe she has put something [poison or charm] in the food for us” . . . People have picked quarrels with me for not tasting food before serving it to them.

The high point of most social events in Ghana is when an animal is slaughtered and the women prepare a meal with it for the group. Refusal to partake of the meal could be taken to mean the person has a grudge against someone or is aloof, and this could jeopardize the person’s relations with others. Sometimes, in resolving a conflict, an offender may be

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required to present a ram to the offended. This is slaughtered and both parties, to signify return to normal relations, share the meat. Given these crucial roles of meat in cementing group solidarity, mending broken relationships, and fostering new ones, the consequences of not “eating meat” could be dire for devotees; they risked social isolation. In the case of Kuntu and Naomi, rural devotees, this problem seemed harder. They live in closely-knit villages where a stronger sense of commitment to their kinsmen required their regular involvement in in-group activities such as out-doorings and weddings and meat was always eaten at these times. I heard many of such stories during the research. A male devotee said his mother-in-law asked him never to visit her again if he would not eat her food (which of course was prepared with meat). A woman’s husband threatened her with divorce for trying to impose not eating meat on their children. A bhakta, who lived with his stepmother, had to hide before eating his meals: “She would starve me to death if she ever got to know I did not eat the meat, meat that she had to squeeze so hard to buy.” The point of these examples is to illustrate some conflicts Vaishnavism introduces into Ghanaian communities as a result of the radical lifestyle and cultural changes sometimes associated with its practice. Another area of ritual where local beliefs impinge on the interpretation of Hindu practices in the community is cow veneration. Veneration of the Cow: “The Cows protect us” There is a general attitude of reverence for cows, especially the twelve cows at the Medie temple. Devotees would bow slightly or lie prostrate on approaching the cows when they are out grazing in the field or in their enclosure. Some devotees would even clap their hands or ululate to symbolize their utmost reverence for the cows. The basis of cow veneration in the community is the belief that cows are divine because of their association with Krishna in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. A Pujari at Takoradi explained in Fante: When Krishna appeared he was a cowherd boy . . . And even at the moment he has spiritual cows in Krishna loka. The cows that we see around are reflections of the cows of Krishna loka.

A leader even said Krishna’s transcendental names reflected his special relationship with cows. Epithets such as Govinda, meaning “one who brings satisfaction to cows,” Gopala, meaning, “the protector of cows,” and



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Bala Gopala, meaning “the child who protects cows” reflect this association of the lord with cows.2 In the indigenous Hindu religion cows are regarded as having divine status. The Mahabharata provides a theological backing for the practice; in it Vyasa specifically instructs cow veneration and spells out the benefits: He who serves kine [cows] with reverence and who follows them with humility succeeds in obtaining many invaluable boons from kine who become gratified with him. One should never, in even ones heart, do injury to kine. One should indeed, always confer happiness on them. One should always reverence kine and worship them with bends of one’s head. He who does this, restraining his senses the while and filled with cheerfulness and filled with cheerfulness, succeeds in attaining to that felicity which is enjoyed by the kine (Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section LXXXI, 1893).

Similarly Vasistha, another sage instructs: One should never go to bed without reciting the names of kine [cows]. Nor should one rise from bed in the morning without a similar recitation of the names of kine . . . As a consequence of such acts one is due to attain prosperity (Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section LXXXI, 1893).

The Vedic Hindu goddess Aditi is identified as a cosmic cow, and her milk is identified with the redemptive invigorating drink, soma, which nourishes creation (Kinsley 1986:10). Conceptually, there is some continuity between the Hindu attitude of reverence to cows and the local totemic principle and practice in so far as the focus is on the sacredness of an animal. In Ghana, lineages may respect lions, crocodiles, lizards, or certain types of plants either because these creatures or items are thought to have been progenitors of the group, or because of a crucial role that they played in the survival of the community, either historically or in mythology (Sarpong 1974:59). Sometimes, the totem mystically manifested itself to some lineage member in the past (Sarpong 1974:59). Another point of contact is the traditional belief in the totem as an embodiment of a community’s “spirit,” its life force. There is a contractual relationship between totems and their communities in Ghana. For this reason there is a worshipful attitude towards totems. Periodic rites are performed in their honor. An encounter with the totem calls for gestures of reverence; bowing slightly, lying prone, ululating, or making a

2 Personal communication with Prabhu Srivas in English.

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libation prayer. Should the totem be found dead, elaborate funeral rites are performed for it (Sarpong 1974:61). In return the totem protects the community spiritually. Unlike cows in Hinduism however, totems are not necessarily considered to be divine.3 They are only sacred. There are signs within the Ghanaian Hare Krishna community that a possible synthesis of the indigenous totemic principle and practices with the notion of the cow’s divinity is producing an image of the cow as a form of totem. Especially in the Accra temple, the Ewe- and Akan-speaking followers in particular sponsor the notion that cows are totems of the community, presumably reflecting the influence of the particularly strong totemic beliefs and practices of these two ethnic groups in Ghana. A follower said to me at one time in Ewe: People who don’t really know what we do here would say we worship animals, so we are a sinful church. But worshipping cows is not sinful. In India the cow is important to Hindus . . . When the lord Hare came into the world he depended on the cow for his livelihood. So for us this animal is divine. They too know something like God [have divine knowledge]. But look at this way too. We too have this thing in our customs. We worship the animals that help us to survive or helped our ancestors before. We say the animals carry the spirit of the people around. That’s how cow worship is like. We, too, the cow is our totem. Don’t you see what cows do for us?

Another devotee expressed a similar view more explicitly in English: Some people don’t really understand the nature of God. So, they feel that God is someone out there, or a Great Spirit. But God shows up in different ways. Cows manifest God’s attributes. They are so dependable, like God. The cow alone gives us milk, meat, dung, leather, horns, and butter. We use it to work on the farm . . . And so many other things. So, our survival depends on it. That’s what we Hindus recognize. We do this in our villages too. Don’t we? We say some animals are special because they are indispensable to our survival. So they are totems. Yes, that’s what our cow worship too means.

Arguing that devotion to Krishna was a modern form of traditional religion, re-directing their focus to forgotten aspects of the local culture, a rural devotee who lives in a village that has the royal python as a totem also explained in Ewe:

3 For detailed discussions of Totemism see John Beattie, Other Cultures: Aims, Methods and Achievements in Social Anthropology. New York: Free Press, 1964), 219 and E.E. Evans Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 41–43, and Meyer Fortes, The Dynamism of Clanship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford University Press, 1945).



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Let’s take cow veneration for one. The cow [enyi] is just like mama da [the great grandmother of snakes, the royal python]. It does so much for us. But we never thought of the cow . . . We must reflect on why, in spite of all that cows do for us, we have no respectful attitude towards it in this land. We need to honor it like we do here.

What seems to be a more striking sign of the influence of local beliefs on the interpretation of cow veneration is the devotees’ instrumental use of the cows and their by-products for supernatural fortification. Cows and their by-products are said to transfer spiritual merit to devotees and provide supernatural fortification especially against witchcraft. Devotees would gather around or in the fenced area where the cows are housed to chant or simply to partake of the auspicious aura around the cows. On the day that Bhakti Tirtha Swami was due to arrive in Accra from Sweden on a visit to Ghana, a group of male devotees chanted in the cows’ enclosure for the entire day. One of them explained the underlying rationale: “So that any obeyifuo (witches) hovering around the vicinity of his plane would be struck, and he would arrive safely.” Another one said in Twi: “Nentwi num su nim bibi. Womu pempam Honhon fi,” meaning, “These cows too know something (have supernatural insights) and they drive away evil spirits.” They repeated the ritual on the day of his departure to ensure the spiritual master’s safe journey and overall well-being. Kwame, the cowherd boy who spent a considerable part of his days filling bottles with cow urine for outside devotees to carry home, explained that devotees drank cows’ urine (gomutra) and bathed with water mixed with cow dung for spiritual fortification. Devotees also dried up and burned cow dung as a form of incense. This highly priced spiritual paraphernalia is heavily used, even by non-Hare Krishna followers and spiritualists who frequent the temple or a devotee’s “spiritual shop” in the downtown area of Accra. A female rural devotee, with whom I had a conversation in Ewe described how she used the ash residue left of the cow incense as an antiwitchcraft charm: When I burn the cow dung incense, that ash that is left, I mix it into Vaseline, or yokumi [shea butter oil]. I smear it on my body every time I am going to bed. It has Krishna’s powers and it drives away the evil forces that would attack me in my sleep. I sleep soundly.

This devotee, a young Ga male, used this antidote especially at 12 Noon: It is best to smear it on your body at 12 noon. That’s when most evil powers descend. That’s why when you teach a child something at 12 noon, nothing goes into his or her head. In offices people take a break at 12 noon because of

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chapter five this . . . So, when it’s 12 noon I smear the cow dung ash and when the witches see me they run and fall.

Appealing to the local motif that witches sucked the blood of their victims, Simon, the Ewe devotee explained to me how drinking cow urine was protective, describing the spiritual mechanism involved: “The cow’s urine is bitter. Spiritually, it makes your blood bitter and that way witches won’t delight in sucking it.” When I asked the leaders of the community about these practices they said it was a Hindu practice and they referred me to the Mahabharata where the sage Vyasa instructs sanctification through reverence for cows and the drinking of cow products such as hot cow urine: One should for three days drink the hot urine of the cow. For the next three days one should drink the hot milk of the cow. Having thus drunk for three days hot milk; one should next drink ghee for three days. Having in this way drunk hot ghee for three days, one should subsist for the next three days on air only (Pratap Chandra 1893:386).

They also referred to Vasistha who instructs purification by bathing in water mixed with cow dung: One should always bathe, using cow dung at the time. One should sit on dry cow dung. One should never cast one’s urine and excreta and other secretions on cow dung (Pratap Chandra 1893:386).

What struck me as somewhat strange, however, was how the leadership seemed oblivious to the laity’s underlying rationale of protection from witchcraft. When I asked him whether the practices ensured protection from witches and other agents of harm, one pujari looked at me, smiled, and said: You are still a karmi [an outsider] so you are seeing things just like one. You always ask about protection. Vengeance against spiritual adversaries is not ours, it is Krishna’s . . . A devotee’s duty is to worship and love the lord. These practices purify us and make us worthy of being the lord’s devotees. You karmis always do something for something, but here we worship God selflessly . . .

Similarly Srivas explained: Don’t read our local practices into these things we do here. These are Hindu practices . . . They sanctify you and they make you pure for the lord. So understand them like a Hindu. If we allow people to understand them in our own ways they will start doing things with these that will turn Hare Krishna into something else [contaminate their practices]. Here we try to keep the tradition pure.



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And when I suggested to Goloka, another leader, that there might be devotees who may be drinking the urine of cows or bathing in cow dung water because these protected against witchcraft, he explained in English: Yes, that is possible. But don’t mind people. There are so many misguided people around here and they will do all sorts of things. Always come to us for clarification on what the true teachings and practices are. We are not saying witches are not there. But leave that problem to Krishna. Nrsimha deva will deal with that in his own time. When a person starts thinking about his own protection, then selfishness starts creeping into his or her life once more. It is in the scriptures that these things, they make you pure and holy.

Though bathing with cow dung and using cow dung incense are not indigenous Ghana practices, drinking urine of humans (not cows) is an indigenous medicinal practice believed to purify the body. But it is the physical properties of urine, not the spiritual, that make this effective. While the official position of the community stresses the sanctification and purification of the devotee by the cow and its by-products, for the laity these are not the ends but the means to an end, which is protection from the ever-present menace of witchcraft attacks. From their indigenous Ghanaian points of view the divinity of the cow invests its by-products with anti-witchcraft powers, too. The kirtan provides yet another illustration of local and Hindu meanings informing each other in devotees’ appreciation of rituals in the community. The Kirtan Experience: The Descent of Krishna Sunsum The sound of mrdanga, jingling cymbals, and chants of “Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!” piercing the evening air of Medie village has become the most identifiable symbol of “the Hindu people’s worship of Klishna (Krishna),” as the villagers describe it. In the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, the kirtan, that is, the congregational sung glorification of Krishna, is considered the most important aspect of the path to salvation. Not only does this congregational singing, dancing, and chanting provide a community setting for devotees to articulate their faith in Krishna, it generates a mood in which the devotee transcends the current setting and is transported to the spiritual world at least temporarily.4 Here, devotees taste the sweetness of

4 Personal communication with O’Connell (class discussion).

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the divine presence. This pronounced emotional or expressive dimension of devotion complements the sensually disciplined, even ascetic, lifestyle of the community. The kirtan is the most significant aspect of temple rituals for the Krishna devotees of Ghana and at Medie the room is always full during kirtan. Kirtans usually last for three hours. Before it starts there is congregational reading and discussions of texts. In keeping with the strict emphasis on the Vaishnava Hindu culture being preserved in the community, the leader first reads out the text in the original Sanskrit from transliterations. Devotees would repeat each verse after him. He then reads the verses again in English before his exposition (in English). At this time devotees sit on mats on the floor, the women and children behind the males. As soon as the readings are over everybody gets up, they all roll up their mats, and the kirtan begins. The kirtan hymns are exclusively in Sanskrit or Bengali, which devotees have learned to sing by rote. The singing begins slowly preceded by blowing of conches and jingling of cymbals. During this slow phase the pujari bathes Krishna and the other deities, changes their clothes, and feeds them. He lights two lamps and two devotees carry these around for us to have darshan (viewing) of the lord. The tempo quickens after these rituals and keeps rising, the mridanga, cymbals, and conches reverberating. There are different chants, each with its tune, but the Mahamantra (Hare, Krishna, Hare, Krishna Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare, Rama, Hare, Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare) is considered the most important. When a song or chant ends, a leading songster introduces another and the group picks it up. The singing, chanting, and dancing, combined with the strongly pronounced rhythm, often played at a deafening volume especially at the climax, generates a mood of excitation among devotees. Devotees dance enthusiastically, leaping in ecstasy or surging back and forth in unison, hands raised. Some devotees hold hands and form a procession in the form of a circle as they dance, chanting “Haribol! Haribol!” Prasadam is shared among us when the kirtan is over. Some Krishna devotees in Ghana describe the ecstatic emotional “feelings” the kirtan induces in the Akan language as the “descending of Krishna sunsum konkron (Krishna’s Holy Spirit) borrowing the vocabulary of the local spiritual church experience of the Holy Spirit “descending” on worshippers. Sunsum means spirit in Akan. In the indigenous Akan society especially before Christianity was introduced, the sunsum was viewed as an intangible element in or close by a person (the term also means shadow), constantly protecting him or her, especially in the context of dreams. It



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departs the body when a person dies. The concept of sunsum took on an added meaning as a result of the synthesis of local and Christian ideas (see Meyer 1994:55–57). Among worshippers of spiritual churches sunsum is not only a separate independent entity, but also a “void in the mind which can be filled either by God’s spirit,” called sunsum konkrong meaning Holy Spirit, or an evil spirit from Satan (Meyer 1994:55–57). Baptism guarantees that the Holy Spirit possesses a person’s sunsum (Meyer 1994:55–57). In the culture of spiritual churches, however, this connection is not permanent—it has to be repeatedly realized through fasting, prayer and worship (Meyer 1994:56). The excited mood that the drumming, singing (often comprising chants of “Holy Spirit come! Come down!”), dancing, clapping, and ululating generates in the local spiritual churches induces the descent of the sumsum konkrong or Holy Spirit (See also Ray 1993:275). The Durkheimian (1965) notion of “effervescence,” that heightened emotional feeling generated through concerted action, vividly captures this experience. It is from this indigenous experience that Hare Krishna devotees find idioms to express the excitation that kirtan induces and hence their description of that experience as “Krishna sunsum konkrong” (Twi). The Hare Krishna community’s kirtan tradition and the local spiritual church “descent of the Holy Spirit” experience, though similar, are however not the same, and devotees acknowledge this. The spiritual church phenomenon of the Holy Spirit “descending” involves the spirit possession of specific individuals while the feeling of the divine presence during the kirtan is a shared experience and no spirit possession is involved. In the local spiritual churches, the Holy Spirit possesses one or two worshippers who often would jerk involuntarily and in frenzy, uttering revelations in unintelligible languages (Ray 1993:275). Sometimes, another worshipper is able to interpret these “tongues.” At other times the possessed falls into a trance.5 Furthermore, this experience is considered to be a mark of spiritual achievement by the recipient of the spirit or the possession. Accordingly Rounds notes of the experience in a Zulu church in South Africa: Congregants seek to achieve a level of purity and righteousness at which they begin to receive and partake of this sacred power. The “receiving,” “gaining” or “achieving” of the Holy Spirit is something of a rite of passage, 5 These descriptions are based on my personal experiences of this phenomenon before and during research for the dissertation on which this book is based. Between 1985 and 1986 I lived and worked as a Schoolteacher in Agateh, a small village in southern Ghana of a population of about 1000 people but with 23 spiritual churches. I was myself a member of “Batenge”, and “Akofafaname” two of these Churches.

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chapter five a second baptism and proof of accomplishment as a Pentecostal (Rounds 1982:70).

In the village of Agateh, a religious and spiritual healing center in the Volta Region of southern Ghana, news of individuals receiving the spirit in church is hailed and quickly spread through the village. Troupes of wellwishers make endless trips to the homes of such people to congratulate them and for days recipients of the Holy Spirit celebrate their achievement by wearing white clothes considered to be a symbol of purity and spiritual achievement. In spite of their heightened emotional states I have never seen a Hare Krishna devotee in a trance, possessed by a spirit, or utter a revelation during the kirtan. Some devotees often reach particularly high states of excitation, but they would sit down to rest and regain their composure before joining in again. Jarathi, arguably the most enthusiastic female devotee in the Accra community, would dance continuously, leap high and scream in Pidgin English, “ooh I go die, I go die for Krishna (I will die for Krishna).” Even then, she would pause for a while to rest before jumping into the action again. In the local experience of “receiving the spirit” “recipients” describe the Holy Spirit as a “foreign” element that has invaded their bodies in order to guide and control them (Meyer 1994:55– 57). In spite of their describing the phenomenon as “receiving Krishna sunsum konkrong,” the Hare Krishna devotees’ descriptions of their “feelings” reflect a somewhat different experience and their choices of terms reflect the Vaishnava flavor of the experience. “We become like the gopis all dancing with the lord at the same time and the feeling is something of a wild but sweet sensation,” a devotee said, implying the shared quality of the experience. Another said in Ewe: You sense an aura fill the temple during kirtan wrapping us all. You feel the lord’s presence yourself. But it’s not as if we are really possessed. Yet it’s no “ordinary” feeling too. Something just falls on you kplo at once [grips or wraps around you].

Some six older members (five females, one male) described a somewhat more intense “bodily experience.” One explained in English: When we chant like that, that’s when Krishna’s Holy Spirit descends on us. It’s like you have a sleeping animal in you, which is awakened by the noise around and wants to jump out of you slowly . . . The sensation is not intense but not dull too. It’s like some sweet feeling inside of you. You feel so high spiritually. It could be greater than that sometimes. Sometimes too, you feel some tingling in your body, on your shoulders.



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Prabhu Srivas described the theology of the experience pointing to its transcendental and physical quality: Your soul and Krishna’s soul used to be in the same transcendental realm but they became separated because of your sins . . . Calling the names of God during kirtans connects you to him. It’s a transcendental state in which your soul remembers all those pastimes with the lord. But the soul, not the body, is involved in this. The only thing you feel is the excitation in you and sometimes this could be quite intense, though not violent. You could feel goose pimples all over your body.

Another devotee struggled with Twi terms to describe it: It’s not easy to describe, unless you’ve felt it yourself. Maybe . . . Let’s say it’s like that feeling, when you meet someone you really really like . . . Or like you have a date with your lover and you simply can’t wait . . . That kind of feeling. It is inside you. But you feel it on your body too.

In the community’s description of the kirtan in the idiom of “the descending of the spirit,” we are confronted with a very interesting phenomenon. A 16th century Bengali Hindu religious experience is vested with new meanings deriving from the local Christian experience. Yet the original Vaishnava Hindu meaning of the kirtan experience is not entirely lost, for the “descending of Krishna sumsum” is also described as a unique kind of “descent” and this uniqueness is expressed in Vaishnava theological and experiential terms: sweetness, intensity, inner feeling, and tingling on the body. In their experience and the description of kirtan, we see Hindu religious and local Christian experiences informing one another. Even more interesting is the fact that the local experience of the “descent of the Holy Spirit” is the product of an earlier local encounter between indigenous spirit possession and the Apostolic Christian (the early church) experience of baptism by tongues of fire. So, the local experience of kirtan is mediated through the product of an earlier interreligious encounter. The kirtan experience of Ghanaians therefore bears the hallmarks of Christian, traditional religious and Hindu influences all rolled into one. Thus far the discussion has tried to show areas of ritual in which local practices and notions affect devotees’ experience of Krishna devotion even though the community expects them to be strictly Vaishnava Hindu. In what follows I describe what seems like an almost complete indigenization of Chaitanyite Vaishnava practice in some countryside locations.

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Another sign of the synthesis of Hindu and local Ghanaian beliefs from below is a form of trial by oracle ritual that I observed developing among lay worshippers, especially those in rural communities. This ritual involved the use of Hindu ritual paraphernalia. The trial by oracle is a popular Ghanaian religious practice in which a ritual specialist can determine through a form of divination whether an individual suspected of a moral breach is innocent or guilty. It involves the manipulation of ritual paraphernalia such as a crucifix, candle, Bible, cowrie shells, the Holy Quran or other scriptural texts. In some instances a suspect may be required to go through an ordeal, the open expression of pain indicating his or her guilt. I observed a form of this ritual taking shape in a Hare Krishna village community in the Eastern region of Ghana. The trial took place in the home of Asempa, a devotee whose domestic shrine was the venue for the village community’s trials. It involved Aboagye, a young male accused of stealing money belonging to his roommate, Sintim, also male. They both said they were devotees of Krishna. In front of a laminated photo of Krishna inclined against a wall of the shrine were a horsetail, three burning candles, a bowl of holy water, japa beads, a copy of the Gita and a key. The scent of incense pervaded the room. The ritual began with Asempa silently reciting a series of mantras. He then tied a chord around the Gita to the head of the key. He held the key upside down and the Gita dangled at the other end of the chord. He waited until the suspending Gita was motionless. He then presented the case before “Gita,” addressing it in Twi as if he were talking to a person: Ooh, Gita we have brought a matter before you. Sintim sitting here [he points to him] thinks Aboagye sitting there has his money. Aboagye insists he is innocent. We whose minds have limits cannot determine the truth in this matter. Therefore, we have brought this matter before you. You know the minds and hearts of human beings. If Aboagye is guilty, Gita, you know what to do. However, if he is innocent, you know what to do.

If the Gita remained motionless, it pointed to Aboagye’s innocence. A slight turning of the Gita did not necessarily mean guilt but some complicity of Aboagye in the theft. The rapid spinning of the Gita at the end of the chord in a clockwise direction would indicate Aboagye’s guilt. For a while, nothing happened. Then the Gita began to spin. At first it was slow but soon it gathered speed and spun around rapidly, pointing to Aboagye’s guilt. I looked on questioningly, very skeptical though careful not to let this be conveyed in my facial expression. However, when a tearful Aboagye sank



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to his knees, confessed, and begged Sintim to forgive him, I too began to have some “faith” in the Gita’s ability to pass correct judgment. I would later learn that this ritual was practiced widely, especially among the village Hare Krishna cells, although it was not an accepted official practice of the community. I have heard stories about individuals tapping the Gita’s powers to achieve other material goals—heal the sick, ward off evil, incapacitate competitors and predict future events. Because modernity has failed to deliver on its promises—wealth for all, good health, access to avenues of upward mobility, a sense of security, certainty and so on—African communities are turning to ritual apparatus, spaces and persons with the capacity to probe the unseen universe for supra-mundane means of controlling, explaining and predicting their lives. To meet their spiritual needs, some individuals in Ghana experiment with spiritual power sources themselves. Some of these people appropriate religious objects and images such as scriptural texts, oils, deities or parts of animals that are flowing in as part of a global circulation, invest them with meanings of power and deploy these powers to mitigate their daily challenges. Some individuals have even transformed the internet into a kind of magical space. Through e-mails and instant messages, they transmit magical spells to “rich men” and “rich women” in Europe and America, with the intent to have them send them large sums of foreign currency. This is the context within which we must understand the adoption and adaptation of the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu sacred text, as a channel into the occult. The Gita’s growing reputation in Ghana as a repository of the wonder-working magico-religious power of Hinduism lends it to such usages. Even the Vaishnava ritualistic practices common among all devotees have added meanings and connotations of spiritual protection for villagers. There were numerous other instances where I observed rural village devotees use Hare Krishna ritual paraphernalia instrumentally for spiritual protection. In many homes that I visited devotees described placing the Gita and japa beads under their pillows at night so that they would not encounter witches in their dreams. In all homes, photos of Krishna hang on entrance doors to repel witchcraft attacks spiritually by “holding the witch down” at the doorstep. Almost every home I visited had a Tulasi6 (basil) plant described in Twi as “Krishna dua” (Krishna plant) 6 The Tulasi is the basil plant. This is a white flowered garden herb whose leaves are used for flavoring in cooking in Ghana. In the Hare Krishna tradition this plant is believed to embody a pure devotee of Krishna and she offers her leaves to Krishna. For this reason

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growing somewhere on the compound as a witchcraft repellant. Four houses, one in my village, the three others in Akrade village, were completely hedged around with Tulasi plants (basil, believed to embody a pure devotee of Krishna who offers her leaves to Krishna) to spiritually fortify them. Before embarking on important ventures such as business journeys, work, or even going to farm, devotees would perform a brief ritual honoring through obeisance, chant, watering and circumambulating the sacred Tulasi. Three village devotees said they plucked a leaf or two to take along for constant spiritual fortification and the assurance of success. They also wore small beads made of Tulasi seeds called kontee mala around their necks both as a sign of their commitment to Vaishnavism and for protection. These practices follow a traditional religious practice common in rural villages where the Onyamedua or “the tree of God” (Alstonia boonei) believed to have mystical powers is planted in palaces, shrines, and houses to repel evil powers. A symbol of their dependence on God, Akan people sometimes placed a pot containing rainwater (called Nyankonsu, meaning, God’s water) on a forked branch of the Onyamedua tree or its stump at entrances to their homes. This water is used to bless the house and its inhabitants. Women in their monthly periods would have to leave the house lest the polluting effect of the menstrual blood rendered the powers of the tree and pot of water impotent. Before the women returned to the house after their periods the head of the household would purify them with the God water (Asare-Opoku 1978:32–33). For the village Krishna devotees, the Tulasi is similar to the traditional Onyamedua tree. Although it is a practice required of all devotees, village devotees attached greater significance to nama japa, that is, individual verbal recitations of the Hare Krishna Maha mantra on prayer beads as a spiritual power-generating practice. Some seven traders treated the string of japa beads as a lucky charm. All the village traders carried it along in a cloth sack wherever they went. In their stalls at markets I would always hear the playing of mantras recorded on cassettes. They said it generated a protective aura or “vibration” that filled their stores and stalls, driving evil forces away and drawing buyers to their wares. Though these interpretations were not totally absent among urban devotees, rural devotees particularly stressed them. Almost every village devotee I talked to said that

it is a sacred plant. It cannot be uprooted without chanting a mantra appropriate to it and it is mystically charged with powers, or so Ghanaian devotees believe.



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the tilaka clay marks that devotees made on their bodies for sanctification also protect the devotee, whilst urban devotees did not always emphasize this protective function. The village practices represent instances of indigenization from “below” because they are elements of traditional Ghanaian religious instrumentalism, which the official Hinduization policy of the Hare Krishna community does not encourage. The stronger influence of traditional religion in rural areas, and the stronger belief in witchcraft, the relatively small numbers of village followers and a lack of strict supervision contribute to the higher level of indigenization in the villages. Life-Cycle Rituals My stress on the tenacity of indigenous conceptualizations in shaping the Chaitanyite Vaishnava religious experience in Ghana in spite of official Hinduization does not imply the complete absence of its impact on devotees. In the area of life-cycle rituals the Chaitanyite Vaishnava tradition has completely supplanted traditional Ghanaian religious practices. Here, Hindu life-cycle rituals replace the local “out-dooring” birth ceremony, marriage, and death rituals. For example, a series of complex Hindu namasamskara birth rituals replace the traditional Ghanaian custom of keeping newborn babies from public view for seven days and bringing them out to give them names during the “out-dooring.” No puberty rites exist in the temple. But marriage and death rites are strictly according to Vedic culture. Marriage Devotees planning on getting married inform Prabhu Srivas about their plans. After informing their guru or gurus in America and obtaining their consent, preparations will begin. Sometimes, Srivas and elderly followers of the Hare Krishna would meet with the families of the devotees to inform them and seek their approval. Things did not always proceed smoothly. Families often dragged their feet in giving their consent, asking the Hare Krishna elders “to go and come” repeatedly. Some families refused outright to give this consent. A good deal of the pre-marriage preparations in the temple therefore involves frequent visits by Hare Krishna elders to families of devotees, convincing them to agree to devotees’ marriage proposals. The aim is to avoid any tangles with traditional customs. The

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wedding would proceed anyway even if the families disagreed. What is considered more important is the consent of the individual devotees and their gurus’ approval and blessings. “Outside” and older devotees may complete their own negotiations with their families before coming to the temple for a Hindu wedding. If couples were married before joining the community together they did not have to go through the process again in the community. Devotees like Simona who had split with their spouses before joining the community were encouraged to send the requisite drinks to the spouses’ families’ signifying the official dissolution of the marriage traditionally, or to complete the legal divorce procedures (Western) and remarry a fellow devotee if they so wished. Followers are free to choose their own partners, but Srivas has to give the final approval and I was told he never objected to devotees’ choices. A temple devotee could also ask permission from Srivas to marry a non-member. Normally Srivas would agree on the condition that the spouse would not be a stumbling block to the devotee’s realization of Krishna Consciousness. I was told that in such instances it was up to the devotee to decide whether to do the wedding in the temple or in the prospective spouse’s religious group. Prolonged courtship before marriage is not encouraged as this might result in devotees yielding to the temptations to indulge in premarital sex. Weddings in the community proceed strictly according to the Hare Krishna tradition, though family members who are not devotees are allowed to witness it. During a wedding I witnessed at Medie in August 1999 the bride arrived swathed in a colorful Indian Sari, her face, hands, and feet covered in colored henna markings according to Vedic custom. She remained veiled throughout the occasion. Like the bride, many female devotees wore colorful saris. The pujaris, the bride, and the groom wore garlands of flowers around their necks. The garlands were first placed at the feet of the deities and consecrated. A visiting guru from the United States of America officiated at the ceremony. He sat across from the couple, a hawan kund separating them. Fruits such as bananas, oranges, coconut, eggplants and cauliflower were placed in earthenware pots and brass bowls, surrounding the kund. Devotees chanted the Hare Krishna Maha mantra to mark the beginning of the ceremony. This continued throughout the ceremony except when the guru wanted to say a prayer. The sermon was on the importance of marriage. “Marriage is beautiful but difficult . . .” the guru preached before reminding the couple of their duties as householders. Then the bride’s uncle “gave her away” into the care of the groom. He repeated



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the vows that the bridegroom’s father must repeat according to the Hare Krishna tradition: “I have taken care of Abena since the day she was born, but today I am giving her into your care. Will you accept her as your wife?” The groom answered in English: Yes, I hereby accept Abena as my wife. I promise to take control over her throughout our marriage. Together we shall live in peace in Krishna consciousness and we will never separate.

This was the only point of the ceremony where the Vaishnava theme reflected continuity with Ghanaian culture because the traditional position is that women are never wholly independent just as in the Vaishnava tradtion. A woman must always be under the guardianship of a male, and when she marries, the original guardian hands over some or all of his responsibility for her to her husband (Nukunya 1992:43). In turn the bride promised to care for the groom, bear him “children of Krishna” and keep the flame of Krishna Consciousness burning perpetually in the family. Yao also promised to be faithful and to not marry another woman. Polygamy was prohibited in the temple. This is completely alien to Ghanaian tradition where polygamy is commonly practiced. In most Ghanaian communities it is even customary for an only wife to ask her husband to take an additional wife to give her a companion who will help with domestic chores. In the past a wife may even woo a girl of her liking for her husband.7 There was, however, no indication from devotees that they resented the community’s strict monogamous practice. On the contrary, the general consensus was that monogamy was a virtuous practice. The couple then exchanged garlands and traded sitting positions. The groom dashed a spot of vermilion powder—kunkun—in the part of the woman’s hair and draped her sari over her head. As a symbol of their union the priest tied the man’s dhoti to the woman’s sari; they had tied the knot. The high point of the ceremony is the fire sacrifice, hawan. The pujari chants some mantras, dips a stick in ghee and builds a fire. He mixes the ghee with brown rice and passes it around the devotees. He then says a prayer ending with the phrase swaha–hail and as he utters this word he pours some ghee into the fire and the devotees throw some grains into it making the flames flare up. Then, the couple rises and circumambulates 7 Polygamy is fast becoming an obsolete practice in Ghana. Western education, conversion to Christianity, and the high cost of looking after more than one wife and their children in these times of hardship are some factors responsible for the decline in the practice. All the same, traditionally, men still have the right to marry as many wives as they wish.

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the fire, the woman leading the first three times and the man the next four. The guest throws petals of hibiscus flowers at them, female devotees ululating and singing the traditional wedding praises, Ayeefruu ooh Ayeefruu. Life-cycle rituals are mechanisms of socialization in all cultures. Through them individuals’ statuses become recognized and rights and obligations in a society are clearly spelt out. In that Hindu life-cycle rituals have supplanted traditional Ghanaian rituals in the lives of Krishna devotees, I would suggest that they represent the socialization of devotees into an alternative Hindu culture. In the case of the groom and the bride involved in this marriage not only does a Hindu sacrament sanctify and legitimate the marriage, but Hindu vows also seal the marriage contract and commit them to each other as a couple. As householders—grihastas—their duties as Hindus are clearly spelt out: to work and support the life of the community. Even in the course of the marriage itself, their sex lives will be regulated by Vaishnava stipulations. Ideally they will have sexual relations once a month, that is, on the most auspicious day for conception according to the tradition. Because sex like everything else is for Krishna’s pleasure, they will have to chant fifty rounds on their japa beads to be purified before the act (Daner 1976). And if they ever have children the children will be “Krishna’s children;” they will undergo Hindu naming-ceremonies and be given Vaishnava names. Thus this marriage ritual not only reflects the new Hindu identity of devotees but also produces it. Even though devotees mentioned nothing about conflicts regarding the community’s marriage practices, it was evident that conflicts arise as their non-member relatives contest the Vaishnava meanings and practices that shaped devotees’ married lives. A story was told of an extended family that “descended” on a Temple community at one time to demand of a couple why they would still be childless years after their marriage. The family attributed the couple’s condition to the “constrictions” on devotees’ sexual lives. In Ghanaian culture where children belong to the community and not only a couple, couples’ sex lives could concern the group. This is because traditionally the group is a part of the process that legitimates a couple’s married status, and this particular couple had been married traditionally before joining the community. Besides, traditionally, sex is supposed to be a key ingredient in marriage. Both husband and wife have a right to it, though married women have no right to refuse their husbands sex. A husband could summon the wife before the elders–Mpeninfuo to be reprimanded for refusing him intercourse, and though wives do not have



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the same rights, some women summon their husbands all the same. The idea of a restricted matrimonial sex life is therefore alien and runs counter to traditional Ghanaian practices. I had no way of finding out from devotees whether these practices generated conflicts in their own marriage or sex lives. Marriage and sex are sensitive, private, even sacred aspects of life in Ghanaian culture and unless people volunteered information one cannot easily probe into these dimensions of their lives. This explains why I could not ask Srivas whether the childlessness in his own marraige was by choice or due to celibacy. Nevertheless, in one village I gleaned through rumors a story about a high-ranking Hare Krishna official whose wife, a non-devotee at that time, cuckolded him, and the villagers blamed it on the “church.” One villager commented in Ga: As for Hare Krishna people, once you initiate, they don’t even allow you to sleep with your own spouse. If you were not careful, someone would be sleeping with her behind your back because you are not doing your work. You could even never have children.

This is clearly a watered down village version of the Hare Krishna stance on celibacy and perhaps an over-exaggerated interpretation of what devotees actually practiced, especially when viewed in the light of O’Connell’s description of the traditional Gaudiya Vaishnava position: It would be altogether incorrect to conclude that the Gaudiya Vaishnava encouraged precipitous retirement from all worldly pleasures, in particular from lawful conjugal union. On the contrary, only the person of very advanced piety was expected to break off connections with the spouse (O’Connell 1970:178).

Besides, if the incident did happen at all, it may have been an isolated case. All the same such an “outsider” perception could be a stumbling block as far as the community’s receptivity in Ghana is concerned. The Performance of Texts The regular meeting of devotees to chant mantras, read texts and expatiate on them is another ritual context for the effective “Hinduization” of devotees. Three main texts provide scriptural support for devotion in the temple; the Bhagavad-Gita, the Srimad Bhagavatam, and the Chaitanya Caritamrta. Of these, the Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam are devotees’ favorites. A recompiled version of the Srimad Bhagavatam by Prabhupada

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called KRSNA, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the most cherished because it contains the Lord’s pastimes. Gatherings to hear, recite, read, sing and to discuss the pastimes, are considered crucial in generating the “wrap-around awareness of the Lord” that is integral to the Hare Krishna path of salvation.8 At Medie, devotees sometimes have pastimes meetings in the evenings. These gatherings have sociological and spiritual functions as venues for the articulation of faith, for reinforcing group solidarity, and for the production of models “for” and “of ” spiritual and mundane lives in the temple communities. But I will discuss these functions in connection with village communities where in the absence of temples, these “Gita classes,” as the villagers call the gatherings, are important in sustaining the viability of these smaller cells of worshippers. Even though different scriptural texts are read at these meetings, they are called “Gita classes,” presumably reflecting the influence of the “Bible class” model of the local Christian community in Ghana whereby “prayer and fellowship” groups in churches would meet in members’ homes to read and discuss scriptures. The village Hare Krishna followers view the Gita as a Hindu Bible and associate all Hindu devotional literature with it. At Akrade, the Hare Krishna farm community, devotees sometimes take turns to host these classes in their homes. During one class we discussed a story from the Bhagavata Purana, in which Krishna pulled a prank on the unmarried gopi girls of Vraja by hiding their garments while they swam naked in the Yamuna River. He demanded of each gopi to step out of the water nude so that he could behold the beauty of their naked bodies before giving them their garments. Reluctantly they did his bidding and he rewarded them by giving himself up for them to marry (Prabhupada 1996:152–156). As the discussion leader mimicked the nude gopis shivering as they walked out of the water reluctantly, covering their pubic areas from the lord’s gaze, his gestures sent ripples of laughter through the room. He drew the theological lessons from the story: simplicity, purity, altruism, selfless devotion, and the rewards of devoting to the lord: The story is about the lord and us. The nude gopis symbolize purity, modesty, and simplicity. Though uncomfortable, they did show themselves to Krishna so that Krishna would please his eyes. To do this they had to suspend their own discomfort. This is what selfless devotion is about, giving yourself

8 The expression “wrap-around awareness of the Lord” is O’Connell’s. He used it in class.



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and your life up for the lord to enjoy. But the gopis had no choice. If they should retrieve their garments they had to do the lord’s bidding. In the same way as devotees we have no other way but to serve the lord. And just as the gopis were rewarded so shall we too have access to the lord always if we surrender to him (He spoke Twi).

During another session that I witnessed at a village near Keta in the Volta region of Ghana, we discussed the encounter between Krishna and Arjuna just before the battle of Kuruksetra. Arjuna, a warrior did not want to go into battle anymore because the enemy, he realized, were his own kinsmen. Krishna encouraged him to detach his feelings and just do his duty as a warrior (Prabhupada 1997:35–72). Expatiating on this teaching, Yaovi, the leader, related the themes to the daily lives of devotees, speaking Ewe: We too are constantly engaged in this debate. In our daily lives we face the question of duty. How do we view our duties? And how do we perform them? As a husband, how do you love and protect your family? As a wife, how do you serve your husband and nurture the young ones? In the work place, you have your duty. But you are thinking about how little your pay is, so you constantly waver in your decision to put in your best. The lesson we learn today is to just do our duties and to stop reflecting on what we will gain from doing them. Do what you must do because it is your work.

The readings always generated lively discussions and debates and devotees read their own interpretations into these themes, so that even within this context of effective Hinduization, the devotees still make the Hindu ideals their own. During a “Gita class” discussion of the story of the lovesick Radha wandering about in the forest alone at night seeking Krishna her lover, a devotee gleaned from the theological theme—longing for God in separation, models that could be applied to their mundane lives as well. He said in Ewe: The scriptural lesson aside, it is also a lesson in persistence and perseverance. Going after what you want in life in spite of the odds in your way. Radha was out there alone at night! In the heart of the forest. But that would not stop her from going after what she wanted and eventually she found the lord. That’s how life is, if you persist in pursuing your dreams, you will always realize them.

The teachings underlying the actions of the characters in the stories, the ideals they embody and devotees’ own interpretations contain values for devotees and through these readings they internalize these models. Furthermore, devotees believe that the presence of the deity in the mantras and the pastimes purify the household of the host, spiritually fortifying it

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and bringing forth blessings. This means that the participants are engaged in the production of well-being for each other through these gatherings. This sense cements group solidarity, making the Hare Krishna religion a symbol of community integration in Ghana. The community integration does not end with the regular participation in the “Gita classes.” The sense of solidarity is expressed in other aspects of villagers’ lives. In another village community, when the father of a devotee died, the entire community donated 35,000 cedis, about US$5.00 towards the funeral, and on the day of the burial they turned up to mourn with their fellow devotee. The village Gita class groups also give members mutual support during out-doorings, when a follower is ill, or when some other misfortune befalls a member. During the corn-sowing season while I was in the field, the male members of the Gita class, in my village volunteered to clear the land for an elderly female member so that she could sow her corn seeds. In the urban communities especially, the sense of a common Vaishnava Hindu religious affiliation constantly reinforced through the regular gathering of devotees for devotion and other religious activities is the basis of the unity of communities of Ghanaians from different tribal backgrounds. The significance of this in developing a sense of a pan-Ghanaian identity is poignant given the tendency of other local religious communities to divide rather than integrate different ethnic units. There is a strong tendency in Ghana for religious communities to attract elements from specific ethnic units thereby becoming a basis for division. The positive significance of this sense of pan-Ghanaian unity in the Hare Krishna community is equally crucial when set against the backdrop of the role of ethnic divisions in national politics whereby other ethnic units often direct their antagonism towards elements from the ethnic unit whose people are in power. Lifecycle Ritual Conflict: Death Aside from the conflicts mentioned already, death rituals provide the most fertile grounds for conflicts. Cremation, done within twenty-four hours of death is the method of disposal when a devotee has “left the body.” Rituals are performed for the next twelve days to facilitate the deceased’s journey to the land of the dead. Conflicts arise from the fact that cremation is not considered proper burial in Ghanaian tradition. Funerals in Ghana are elaborate ceremonies and bodies could remain at morgues for months



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while preparations for the funeral are underway. A funeral consists of a “wake-keeping,” that is, a vigil, during which the body, lavishly dressed for the journey to the abode of the dead, is laid in state and mourners file past it wailing, singing, dancing, and addressing it. They send verbal and sometimes written messages to their dead relatives in the ancestral world. Before it is placed in the coffin for the final interment, relatives place favorite items that the dead would use in the land of the dead in the coffin. A coin to be used as payment for the spiritual boatmen who would ferry the dead across a spiritual lake to its final destination is placed in the dead person’s palm. Even Christians perform these rites before the final funeral church service for the dead. An angry ghost could cause illness or death in the family if these procedures are skipped or not done “properly.” For this reason, relatives of dead Hare Krishna devotees prefer to bury them. Another reason is that, being the last life-cycle ritual, death rituals determine and seal a person’s real religious identity. The church that buries the dead is considered their “real” church. As people often have multiple religious affiliations this is the only way to determine where the person owed the main allegiance. The death of a follower was an opportunity for a family to contest and prove his or her real church identity. And if they had not consented to their being Krishna followers this was when they could “wrest back” their son or daughter who “strayed” away. I heard some stories of funeral conflicts. In one story, family members hijacked a body being prepared for cremation, and when devotees showed up for the funeral they were driven away. In another story, family members descended on a temple community upon hearing news of a dead member and seized the body before it could be cremated. To forestall such conflicts, the community demands of devotees to state in writing that they would want their dead bodies to be cremated. “But they have little regard for such documents,” a devotee added, his tone exuding contempt. The Polarity of Asceticism and the Robust Life in “the Here and Now” Though the sensually disciplined ascetic life of the Hare Krishna community runs counter to the Ghanaian ideal of a robust, sensually satisfying life of worldly success, there was no indication from their responses that devotees experienced any tensions within themselves. On the contrary they said the spiritual benefits and the “peace of mind” that accrued to adopting a sensually disciplined lifestyle compensated for any enjoyment “out there” that they might be missing. But some said the polarity was

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an issue in the beginning of their lives as devotees. A devotee said she “nearly stopped on the way” when she realized the community did not tolerate the least exhibition of “life” and “enjoyment:” “It was to be able to live better that I came in the first place. So, initially I felt my purpose for joining was defeated.” She explained, however, that “the teachings kept me here,” and that as she delved deeper into the faith she came to realize for herself the virtues and the wisdom in living simply in contrast with the “tukara out there” (hustle and bustle of worldly life). Another devotee delayed his membership for some years so that he could enjoy the “last” of “life” before committing to the community. He, too, would realize upon becoming a follower that he “wasted too much time” in joining: “The asumdwei (peace of mind in Twi) that I have now . . . nothing comes close to it.” A man described how he would “slip in and slip out again” to “enjoy life small” (to engage in sensually gratifying acts for a while). “That was before Krishna stepped in and stopped the maya (the illusion that worldly enjoyment was satisfying) standing between me and him,” he said. This pattern emerged consistently from several narratives. It was in their interpersonal relationships with outsiders that devotees said they experienced conflicts most because of their otherworldly orientation to life. “Outside” devotees and rural devotees who interacted frequently with nonmembers described conflict scenarios. A village devotee said he was considered a “failure” in his “house” (extended family): “Ooh . . . Yes. I am the black sheep. Everybody thinks I have given up on success in life because I have not gone to Accra to seek after this and that and come back with laksmi (money).” Another devotee described how his nonmember wife threatened him with a divorce because he did not seem to care about the “eye opening and worldly progress that has now come into Ghana,” but only the spiritual things. “She would yell at me, ‘if you put your head into that church too much, you will become a pauper,” he said. A woman said her own children laughed at her because they felt the religion “has turned me into a “colo” woman (a person who does not use modernity to an advantage).” Temple devotees also encountered public ridicule even though somewhat secluded from the larger community. A young Ewe male described the ordeal he suffered at the hands of a fellow kinsman (He spoke Ewe): A man I knew from my village saw me preaching in the market at one time in Accra, and said “Hei is that you? . . . What has become of you? . . . Do your parents still recognize you in those things [his dhotis]?” And when I explained that I was no longer of this world he laughed and said, “Grow up . . . Only a fool would say a thing like that . . . God gave us the world to



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enjoy . . . That’s why Jesus’ first miracle was to conjure up wine so that people would enjoy. Only a fool would live on the banks of a river and remain to be thirsty or drink mud.”

Apart from describing how they often responded by quoting scriptural verses, including Biblical verses, to support their present lifestyle choices, the general consensus of the devotees was that their faith in Krishna armored them against the psychological impact of such social criticism. The point of the discussion thus far is that despite its strict official policy of Hinduization devotees of the Hare Krishna still find cracks within the community in which to create their own local religious syntheses. For the village Krishna devotees, who are more or less autonomous, the local religious culture has almost taken over completely in shaping Hare Krishna ritual practice. In other words, Hare Krishna devotees in Ghana have sustained the impact of Hinduization by investing Vaishnavism with their own cultural identity, not by yielding completely to it. I have also mentioned some conflict areas where Vaishnavism clashes with Ghanaian cultural values and practices and some areas of ritual where the Hinduization policy is actually working.

CHAPTER SIX

SPREADING KRISHNA AND SHIVA WORSHIP IN GHANA Proselytizing Techniques of the Hare Krishna The Earliest Phase The African American evangelists who launched Krishna worship in Ghana in the late 1970s bequeathed to the local Hare Krishna community a vibrant missionizing culture that is responsible for their expansion beyond the urban centers to the rural countryside presently. Organized evangelism in the local Hare Krishna community however started slowly and picked up only after the mid-to-late eighties. The reasons for this slow take-off include the turbulent “revolution” years of the late seventies and early eighties, which did not allow for evangelism without interruption from the political authorities. The relatively small number of followers at that time, and the inability of the newly trained devotees to master the traditional Hare Krishna preaching techniques well enough to determine whether and how to adapt them to the local scene were other factors that prevented early evangelism. An important factor was a scandal involving the Church of Jesus Christ of Djowulu, a Christian sect, in the mid-1980s, which incident resulted in a temporary ban on activities of newly emerging churches by the revolutionary government.1 Even though the ban was quickly lifted, it would seem that the Hare Krishna community still kept a low profile lest its alien and alleged strange ways attract the suspicion of the authorities. Yet what this earlier circle of local Krishna devotees lacked in numbers, know-how or congenial environment, they had in zeal, for it was in the 1 The Rawlings Revolutionary governments of 1979 and 1981 imposed severe restrictions on religious activities. It passed the Religious Bodies (Registration) Law 2989 in June 1989 to regulate religious bodies. By requiring certification of all religious organizations operating in Ghana, the government reserved the prerogative to inspect the functioning of these bodies, including ordering the auditing of their financial statements. The law was designed to check the rampant scandals and abuses taking place in some religious and cultural organizations and protect the freedom and integrity of those that were genuine. This was by way of exposing and eliminating groups established to take advantage of believers. The revolutionary government created the National Commission on Culture to implement this law. The PNDC government repealed the law in late 1992.



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span of these same earlier years that all the major Hare Krishna temple communities were established independently of any well-organized evangelistic activity. These temples crystallized around individual devotees who used their homes in their towns and villages as the rallying points for friends, relatives, acquaintances and kinsmen. Their imaginations fired by the story of Krishna, these groups developed an urge to know more about this Hindu god. According to a devotee’s recollections, the first temple community to be established outside the cradle, Accra, was in New Amanful, near the port city of Takoradi in southwestern Ghana. Gopal Das, a devotee, started this community in the late 70s and early 80s as a cell of Hare Krishna enthusiasts, which met in his home for Gita lessons and to sing devotional songs. Other temple communities sprang up around this same time. In southeastern Ghana two other devotees, Mahamantra Das and Jana Das, introduced Krishna worship into Nkawkaw, their hometown, and began the present temple community there. The religion reached Kumasi, the interior city and capital of the Asante people, when Gita Das, a retired teacher, introduced his former students and his kinsmen to Krishna worship. Enchanted especially by Vaishnava theological notions that were novel yet somewhat similar (to indigenous beliefs), the community greeted the new religion with enthusiasm and aggressively recruited other followers. Using homes of members and classrooms for their meetings during weekends, this group soon expanded to become the second largest Krishna worshipping community in Ghana. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, individual Hare Krishna devotees would initiate more cells that later became temples at Sunyani and Tarkwa, in a village called Cyanide.2 Organized missionary activity by local Hare Krishna evangelists really picked up in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s. By this time the local Hare Krishna community had increased its following, become more deeply rooted locally and confident enough to put to test the traditional Hare Krishna evangelistic techniques and their own innovations in Ghana. Other developments that facilitated missionary activity was the passing of the Religious Bodies’ registration act in 1989 that permitted all religious groups to operate on condition that they registered with the newly created National Commission on Culture, and the constitutional guarantee

2 This reconstruction is based on the recollections of lay worshippers in these locations. My main informants such as Prabhu Srivas could not recollect the vivid details of past events that occurred outside the Accra circle of devotees.

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of religious freedom in Ghana in 1992, which lifted the ban on religious activities. In the predominantly Islamic north however, the intolerant attitudes of some Muslim communities discouraged evangelists from preaching there. The spread of Krishna Consciousness has still not reached these territories. A devotee told me how an evangelistic campaign in the mid-1990s launched in Yendi, a town in northern Ghana, ended violently when the predominantly Muslim town folks attacked the evangelists with clubs, machetes, and stones, describing them as “worshippers of idols” and “infidels.” Paradoxically, the northern section of Ghana happens to be the home region of Prabhu Srivas, their leader. “Preaching” Krishna in Ghana: The Present Phase In the Hare Krishna tradition three main activities constitute “preaching.” These are nama sankirtans or the practice of devotees singing, drumming, dancing and chanting the holy names of Krishna in public places; the verbal communication of the story of Krishna to individuals or groups formally or informally; and the publication and distribution of Hare Krishna literature. From the time of Chaitanya, the Gaudiya Vaishnava viewed preaching as a key aspect of a devotee’s devotion to “the Lord.” In fact telling the story of Krishna to others is a crucial aspect of the Gaudiya Vaishnava sadhana, that is, the prescribed path to salvation. Not only did he admonish his followers to preach about Krishna in every town and village, but Chaitanya’s nama sankirtan also inaugurated the tradition of public preaching currently associated with the Hare Krishna. It is said that Chaitanya traveled widely by foot chanting the holy names of Krishna, attracting thousands of new followers and rejuvenating the enthusiasm of his lax followers (Gelberg 1989:139). Stillson Judah provides a captivating description of a typical Chaitanyite sankirtan: His singing of the love of Radha and Krishna roused the emotions of others. As the volume of the chanting increased, the kholes (drums) and kartalas (finger cymbals) picked up the beat. With hands raised above his head, he would lead the others in dancing, leaping up and down until falling exhausted in an ecstatic stupor (Stillson Judah 1974:34).

Although he is not noted for any writing himself, Chaitanya stimulated the tradition of writing about Krishna as a way of spreading his devotion. He commissioned his closest disciples with scholastic abilities to compile and systematize his teachings as the scriptural foundation for his movement (O’Connell 1970:16; Gelberg 1989:139). Bhaktivinode Thakur,



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who revitalized Chaitanyite Vaishnavism in the twentieth century as the Gaudiya Math, developed this tradition further. He was a prolific writer and was noted for his brilliant expositions on aspects of Vaishnava theology (Hopkins 1989:42). When Prabupada, the founding guru of the Hare Krishna, launched the ISKCON in the United States in the 1960s he revolutionized the Chaitanyite Vaishnava preaching tradition by vesting the term “preaching” with a modern meaning. He stressed the publication of books on the story of Krishna and their distribution as the modern form of preaching in addition to the nama sankirtan (Gelberg 1989:137–140). Much of the Hare Krishna literature that currently circulates in English writing is the result of Prabhupada’s translations and compilations of the original Sanskrit and Bengali texts of the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement. He also connected this preaching mission to the economic support and survival of the ISKCON by urging his followers to solicit donations for the devotional literature they would produce and distribute (Gelberg 1989:137). Since its debut in the United States in the 1960s the distribution of books and the nama sankirtan have been ISKCON’s main modes of preaching. The Radha Govinda temple, like other religious institutions in Ghana, is aware of the importance of publicity and public recognition. But, as De Witte has noted of many non-Pentecostal groups in Ghana, the Radha Govinda Temple has neither the wealth nor people with the requisite skills to produce and broadcast its own programs on radio and TV (De Witte 2010:90). De Witte has also noted how such financially disadvantaged groups such as Afrikania rely on the interest of the media houses and on documentary films, news items, discussions and debates on TV and other formats for publicity even though they have little control over the image of them that is presented to the public (De Witte 2010:90). Another observation De Witte makes is how minority religious groups in Ghana constantly feel threatened by the Christian bias of the media and their frequent representation of non-Pentecostal traditions as Christianity’s evil adversary (DeWitte 2010:91). Aware of these disadvantages, the leadership of the Radha Govinda Temple views itinerant preaching as a more practical and profitable mode of public outreach for the community. In the following discussion I demonstrate how the community aggressively perpetuates the preaching tradition, having come to understand its importance for their growth and expansion and as a sine qua non of their personal quests for salvation. In analyzing the Hare Krishna missionary strategy in Ghana, I will demonstrate how devotees make the necessary social contacts with potential

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followers through preaching. But I will emphasize the “Crusade,” a uniquely Ghanaian innovation and the context in which Krishna preachers make use of indigenous symbols to make the story of Krishna culturally meaningful to Ghanaians. Hare Krishna Preachers and their Strategies in Ghana Scenes of Hare Krishna devotees carrying sacks full of books and pamphlets on their backs and literally scurrying after pedestrians on busy streets and intersections are common in the downtown section of Accra and other big cities in Ghana. In keeping with the Hare Krishna tradition, devotees in Ghana are exhorted to instruct whomever they met in the knowledge of Krishna and thus to “liberate” all persons, and preaching is part of the daily routine of temple devotees’ activities at all the major Hare Krishna temples. Not only are devotees encouraged to “preach all the time,” but preachers must also be forceful and exude confidence. The community makes a point of stressing assertiveness as a quality every good preacher must possess. “Masa (or madam) I greet you in the name of the lord. Krishna has something for you today. You would like it,” an approaching devotee would say assertively to a pedestrian, a smile on the face and a copy of the Back to Godhead magazine or some other book in hand. “And a little something for the lord, please. Just for Krishna,” he might add, if the pedestrian accepts the book, pamphlet, or tract. The objective of preaching is to make social contact with potential converts, introduce the story of Krishna to them, expose them to the tenets of the religion, and invite them to their Hare Krishna devotional sessions. For this reason, at Medie, Prabhu Srivas would assign devotees to “mission zones,” consisting of residential neighborhoods in Accra and its suburbs daily. They would go door-to-door, distributing books, preaching about Krishna and soliciting donations. But devotees mostly preach in and around busy industrial areas and government offices in the cities where they target shoppers, sellers, and workers who come to the city from their villages every day. Nama Sankirtans In addition to book distribution, the nama sankirtan is a popular means of spreading Krishna Consciousness in Ghana. Normally these two approaches are used together. Nama sankirtans entail devotees chanting the names of Krishna, dancing and singing to the accompaniment of



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drums, cymbals, and the blowing of conches on busy city streets, road intersections and public places such as parks. The “Kwame Nkrumah” Circle and the “Tudu Gardens,” arguably the busiest intersections in Accra, are associated with Hare Krishna nama sankirtans, which take place mostly on Saturday mornings. I have also witnessed nama sankirtans at market places on “market days” or during weekends in Accra, Tema, and Takoradi. At one nama sankirtan that I witnessed in Accra devotees formed a circle with the drummer in the middle. The songs were traditional Hare Krishna songs mainly, but occasionally they would “throw in” a popular local tune. Singing and chanting Krishna’s names continued until a small crowd of listeners had gathered. The preaching began. The main theme of the message was the hopelessness of the nation faced with a moral, political, and economic crisis. These conditions, the preacher said, were signs of the Kali Yuga. The only way out, he argued, was for people to submit to the new dispensation of faith inaugurated by Chaitanya and chant the holy names of Lord Krishna. When the preaching was over, the preachers invited questions from the listeners, which they took turns in responding to. The preachers also distributed Hare Krishna books and pamphlets. As they would hand over a book to a person in the crowd, the preacher would first read a section of the book and note some key themes, and solicit “something small for the lord” (donations) from the person. Then they encouraged the audience to “just drop in at the church any time you are free and learn more about lord Krishna.” During another nama sankirtan at Nsawam, a smaller town in Ghana’s eastern region, there was no preaching involved. Devotees only sang, danced, chanted, distributed pamphlets, and solicited donations from the crowd. A nama sankirtan I witnessed at Kumasi in the early stages of my reseach in the 1990s ended with a short “concert” (a play) in which devotees dramatized the message. I described the proceedings in my notebook: The plot was simple but seemed to have been thoroughly rehearsed. The scene opened with a man wandering on the stage in tattered clothes. He launches into a litany of lamentations about the hard life, desertion of family, poverty and hunger [the tattered clothes was meant to show his destitute situation]. Then he resolves to “change” his life situation and consult a fetish for charms [sika duro] that would make him rich, “so that he too would have some happiness in his life.” In the next scene the destitute man is now a rich man. He sits in a lazy chair dressed in expensive kente attire, gold necklaces and bangles around his neck and wrists. Servants fan him. He has concubines and a lot of children, a fleet of buses and chains of stores. Apparently the charms had worked. But when he starts into a soliloquy, he reveals that he was still not happy in spite of the wealth. His concubines

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The drama illustrated some important Vaishnava theological themes: the Kali Yuga’s suffering and pain, surrendering and devoting one’s wealth to Krishna, entrapment by material possessions, a life of peace and contentment as a devotee, and the promise of release and eternal bliss in Krishna Loka. It also drew on local motifs: tattered clothes as a symbol of poverty, pain, and suffering; the practice of consulting fetish for charms to be wealthy; the dangers of excessive wealth and need for constant protection from attack by one’s rivals or enemies. Drawing on these motifs the preachers demonstrated the dangers of living too worldly and the “benefits” of becoming a follower of Krishna, especially the peace and contentment it brings into one’s life. Through local motifs and scenarios of everyday Ghanaian life, the dramatization also presented the message in simple, everyday, concrete and easy to grasp form. This was the only dramatic performance I ever witnessed during a nama sankirtan, but Prabhu Govinda, a devotee at the Takoradi temple, explained during my recent field work that drawing on themes from everyday Ghanaian life to dramatize their teachings was an effective means of contextualizing their message in Ghana. The Public Response to Hare Krishna “Preaching” From some devotees who were members of earlier nama sanskirtan teams and some members of the public I would learn something about the general mood of the public in response to Hare Krishna preaching when it began in Ghana. The scenarios of Hare Krishna devotees in white and orange attire, clay marks on parts of their bodies, the men with “halfshaven” heads, singing strange songs, chanting and dancing in public, in



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the mid-1980s stunned people and created a public stir. Prabhu Tagoe, who leads the preaching team at Medie, tried to explain why in Ga: The public had not seen anything like that before. And our songs did not sound familiar, we danced differently and to be honest with you there were people who did not know who Krishna was or what Hare Krishna was about then.

Emefa, a female devotee, who spoke in Ewe, feels they were an embarrassment to the public and this stemmed from the way they looked like traditional fetish priests: It wasn’t really the way we danced or sang per se. It was the way we appeared in our dhotis and saris. They said our saris made us look strange, like “mami wata” [the mermaid image in which the local goddess is depicted]. Because of the way the male devotees shaved their heads, and the tilaka marks on our bodies, people felt we were some “okomfuo” [traditional priests and priestesses] who had brought our juju to town.

The comments of Awudu, a Muslim who witnessed their presence in the early Krishna years bolsters Holi Dasi’s observations. The first time I met them was at ‘Circle’ [a busy intersection in Accra]. They were singing, dancing, chanting some words and jumping up and down, trotting like horses. They seemed so strange, especially with the men shaving their heads halfway . . . Those heads really looked like axes, and with all those paintings on their bodies one would think they were juju people. “Who are these?” I asked, stunned . . . Then someone said they were Krishna people . . . And I said “Aah . . . Does one have to go through all these just to serve one God? I was really embarrassed (Interview in English).

Descriptions of Krishna devotees’ heads looking like axes are a reference to the practice of male devotees shaving their heads clean, leaving only a tuft. People said it was repulsive. A devotee said the tilaka markings gave them a “primitive” appearance that contrasted sharply with the modern and refined city environment. Another person described the scenario of chanting devotees in the city’s streets as resembling “a bunch of mentally retarded people.” The main issue for the public when the Hare Krishna preachers emerged on the scene was their strange appearances. Paradoxically, it is this same strangeness of nama sankirtans that also explains why they came to attract public attention. Outsiders I talked to and many devotees said it was sheer curiosity that drew them (and still draws people) to nama sankirtans in the street. As nama sankitans became more routine and eventually found a niche among the repertory of public religious

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performances in Ghana people began to appreciate the value of the literature and the content of the preaching. Some non-members I talked to said some good things about the contents of the tracts and books preachers distribute. They said the novel ideas found in these books intrigued them. Others said their philosophical notions are deep and stimulating intellectually. Presently the general public reaction to nama sankirtans in Ghana can at best be described as ambiguous. Sometimes, audiences seem suspicious, disdainful and still embarrassed. People still find their appearances quite repulsive. Other people are openly skeptical or resentful. At one time I heard a man throw a question at a preacher that revealed skepticism and more of a hidden agenda to ridicule the preacher than a genuine desire to learn. He asked why eating mushrooms or plants did not compromise the ideal of non-violence since these acts also involved the taking of life. Apparently he was insinuating at the absurdity of the Hindu rationale for not eating meat when set against the background of the local Ghanaian appetite for meat. But some listeners exude enthusiasm during nama sankirtans, often buying many books and tracts and seeking clarification on Vaishnava theological themes, suggesting perhaps their frequent patronage of nama sankirtans and their familiarity with the Hare Krishna community’s teachings. On the day they staged the play at Kumasi the mood was hilarious and the audience was enthusiastic. They clapped and cheered when the play ended, shouting, “Encore! Encore!” begging for a repeat performance. Not all people are tolerant of Hare Krishna devotees who distribute books and solicit donations in the streets, offices, and homes. Some people resent their sometimes slick selling tactics such as when a devotee would encourage a person to “just look through” a book and then introduce the issue of money when the person, believing the book was free, decides to take it. Other people are incensed by the practice of devotees showing up at offices and their homes without invitation or following them in the streets urging them assertively to “just read a page and see.” In the eyes of the Ghanaian public, Hare Krishna preachers are simply too aggressive and they resent this. The fiercest resentment comes from Pentecostals. Some of them resent the mere presence of Hare Krishna devotees who their churches brand as agents of Satan, witches, and demons. I heard some horror stories from devotees about how they were sometimes treated badly in “the field” because of these suspicions. Prabhu Srivas recounted his experience:



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I visited an office at Tudu one-day to preach and when I entered the office there was a man sitting at a table reading a bible. The moment he saw me enter he dropped the bible on the floor and screamed “ewurade yehowa Nazareth ni [Jesus Christ of Nazareth] save me, the devil is here” . . . I was stunned at first, but I understood. Not wanting any further trouble, I retraced my steps quickly and left the place.

Sunita, a female devotee described how security agents “threw” her out of an office she had entered to preach one day in downtown Accra: Oh they give us the dirty face [make us feel unwelcome] all the time. One day I went to an office in Accra. The moment I entered, a lady screamed her lungs out, “Hei, mami water, water spirit! You Indian witch! Get out! Devil.” There was a man there too. But he seemed more open-minded. He invited me to sit down and we began to chat. Without warning the doors to the office flung open and the room was flooded with security men. “Get out! Get out!,” they yelled at me. And without giving me the chance to explain anything, they threw me out of the office (Interview in Twi).

“When they are see you like that, then they are think that you are from Indian church, so you are bring juju into their office. They can be rude at times, very rude.” That was Kusi, a devotee at the Takoradi Temple lamenting in broken English and reflecting on a bad day he had at the Takoradi port when officials of the port “locked him out” so that he would not “send his Hindu demons” into the port. Another devotee described his encounter as “a brush with death” when a catechist threatened to attack him with a machete for preaching to his daughter about Krishna. Such open and extreme displays of hostility are, however, not typical of the general Ghanaian public’s response to the Hare Krishna presence and I also heard good stories of people being nice to some devotees. On their part devotees did not seem perturbed by public opinion and the occasional ill-treatment they received. “After all we are not this body but spirit,” they would say, noting further sometimes that in the Kali Yuga the proper dharma was propagation of Hare’s story for the rescue of all, irrespective of the persecution by “karmis” (outsiders). Adopting the Pentecostal Format in the Context of Rural Evangelism Pentecostal culture has become the dominant model for religious praxis in Ghana with the other competitors adopting its formats. For instance, missionary-established churches have introduced live band music, and all night sessions typical of Pentecostals, into their worship culture, as a measure to solve the problem of membership loss (Asamoah-Gyadu

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2005:30). De Witte notes how Pentecostalism in Ghana is paradoxically modeling Afrikania’s contemporary reformulation of African traditional religions. She describes how “Afrikania’s Sunday service, its organization, its framing of traditional religion in terms of beliefs, symbols and commandments” among other things are all “modeled” after Pentecostal concepts and praxis (De Witte 2010:89). Islamic traditions have not remained untouched by the all-wrapping influence of Pentecostalism. Some Muslim communities in Accra have adopted the all night worship and healing sessions typical of Pentecostals. Itinerant Muslim preachers target crowds of travelers at lorry stations in the urban centers of Ghana. The Radha Govinda Temple, a new entrant with an alien religious culture, and a strong ascetic orientation, feels a need to sell itself to Ghanaian worshippers in a volatile religious market, characterized by religious pluralism, vigorous competition for forms of religious capital, the delegitimizing of non-Pentecostal religious others, the shaping of other religious players by their agents to a thoroughly Pentecostalized religious landscape, and the strong emphasis on spiritual power. In the next section I begin to look at how this group goes about this task in the context of its proselytizing campaigns in the rural areas. Rural Evangelism By the late 1980s to early 1990s the Hare Krishna community’s organized evangelistic activities were underway. In the beginning the community restricted its operations to urban areas for a number of reasons. First, the prospects of winning converts were more attractive there as the steady influx of the youth into the cities from their countryside provided a regular source of followers. Relatively new to the local religious scene, the community found this group of young followers more energetic and up to the evangelistic tasks that it required to expand locally. They also tended to be more impressionable and open-minded, thereby enthusiastically embracing the new Hindu teachings. In addition, they were more flexible in adopting the lifestyle changes associated with the Hare Krishna culture. Preaching was also easier in urban than in rural areas. As most preachers speak English or Pidgin English, the common media of communication for the heterogeneous urban populations, they faced no linguistic barriers. In addition, tribal cultural values and sensitivities, which are often rural community-based in Ghana become quite diffused in the cities and lose their particularities when people encounter other cultural values.



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This results in an eclectic cultural situation in the city that makes urban people, more likely than rural people, generally more open-minded and receptive of new ideas and practices. The Hare Krishna community would, however, come to realize with time that Pentecostals were making incursions into the rural countryside to lure the youth into their folds before they made their moves into the cities, literally cutting off their (the Hare Krishna) regular supply of devotees. They responded by quickly joining the race for new followers from the countryside. But this sudden turn to rural evangelism called for a change in the community’s proselytizing format. Communities in the rural countryside tend to be more closed and extremely particular or parochial in terms of dialect, traditional religious beliefs, custom, behavioral traits and cultural sensitivities. Moreover, remote from the urban centers where the influence of western modernity is stronger, rural communities are more conservative and there are more people suspicious of new ideas, especially beliefs and practices seen to be quite alien to Ghanaian traditional culture. Furthermore, unlike their charismatic church competitors already operating in Ghana, the Hare Krishna was new. Its teachings were alien, its rituals and the outward appearance of missionaries considered to be somewhat strange if not repugnant. Thus the Hare Krishna leaders and preachers expected opposition from villagers. Specifically, they expected this opposition to come from the rural Christian communities. Rural Ghana is the main domain of both missionary-established and the Independent African Churches (AICs), also called the sunsum sores or Spiritual Churches. The presence of missionary churches such as the Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, and Roman Catholic in rural Ghana dates as far back as the 1700s when European missionaries initiated them (Clarke 1986; Nukunya 1992; Meyer 1994; Debrunner, 1967). Because of their long history in these areas these “foreign” churches have become more or less indigenous to their communities. The Independent Christian churches, spiritual churches and prayer houses are also particularly popular in rural Ghana where they continue to serve needs of an older and less-educated generation consisting mostly of retirees. This group seeks protection from witchcraft and other agents of supernatural harm affecting them and their children living and working in the cities (Meyer 1995:236–251; 1994: 46–67). Thus both the mission-established and spiritual churches have deep historical and cultural roots in the rural areas and are unwilling to yield their traditional grounds to any invading religion. Furthermore, rural Christianity like the modern, more urban-based charismatic Christianity is quite antagonistic to Hinduism, which Christian discourse relegates to

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the category of the “satanic” religions. Thus for the Hare Krishna community, the move to rural evangelizing means they will have to fish for converts from the “territorial waters” of Christian traditions which have deeper cultural roots and harbor a good deal of resentment for Hinduism. The challenge was for the preachers of Krishna to develop an appropriate evangelistic approach. To meet this challenge they ingeniously adopted the Crusade proselytizing model typical of their Charismatic church predecessors and rivals, encouraged by the success of Charismatic churches in using crusades to recruit new followers. The Crusade, then, is a proselytizing format that Hare Krishna group borrowed from Pentecostals and adapted to meet its unique needs. But it is also a context in which Krishna preachers demonstrate their ingenuity and creativity in using the kinsman, a crucial symbol of tribal and village identity, to make the story of Krishna culturally meaningful to potential Ghanaian followers. Krishna Crusades Among Pentecostals in Ghana crusades are preaching tours, bible schools, workshops, healing sessions and a repertoire of programs and measures designed to attract new followers (Meyer 1995:235–255; Gifford 1994:513– 534). Although crusades are launched mainly in the urban centers, charismatic church “crusaders” also “invade” the “devil” in virgin missionary zones in the rural areas, healing the sick, testifying to the power of Christ, “beating out” (exorcising) demonic powers from the afflicted and consequently “winning new souls for the Lord.” Members of the Hare Krishna community use this Christian terminology to describe their own preaching campaigns in their new missionary zones, that is, villages and towns in the countryside. Hare Krishna crusades are prolonged nama sankirtan and preaching sessions sometimes spanning an entire day or two and involving whole village communities. Vegetarian food, non-alcoholic drink, and Vaishnava religious music flow freely during crusades. Devotees sing, dance and chant, exuding tremendous enthusiasm for the Lord, captivating villagers and town folks and encouraging them to also join in, sometimes. Every temple community has a crusade team made up of ten to twenty members. This team is on the road constantly launching crusades. It returns to the temple for brief periods to rest and replenish its supply of provisions. Sometimes, an entire temple community or a number of temple communities would descend on a town or village for a “grand crusade.”



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The Kinsman Evangelist and His Hometown In the following words Prabhu Tagoe, the leader of the Hare Krishna crusade team at the Medie temple, underscores the crucial role of the kinsman evangelist in rural Hare Krishna evangelism: We know we have similar beliefs and practices with Christianity and traditional religion. We even know that when villagers hear we have Indian connections, they are eager to explore because they will say “this people must have a lot of power.” Our major stumbling block is the negative ideas the church people have about us. It’s all due to their ignorance. All the same, it’s like a hard crust covering the common grounds we share with the church practices and our customs [traditional religion]. If only we break through that crust, villagers will get to know that the religions are all the same and they will begin to like us. But to break the crust requires effective preaching and who best to do this than a “home boy” talking to his own people.

In Ghana, a hometown is the village or town where a people and their ancestors come from. It is the place of origin of custom, which distinguishes it from other towns. Mere residence in a place does not make it a person’s hometown and immigrants from northern Ghana, and spouses from other towns may never be regarded as kinsmen even if they were born in southern Ghanaian communities. The essential factor is a person’s allegiance to a particular body of customs, especially mastery over the dialect. Because the same clans, personal names, and languages are found throughout southern Ghana, dialect is the most obvious and effective means of defining individual and group identity (see Middleton 1979:252). The hometown is a key symbol of kinship community integration and identity. People from a hometown fondly identify each other as “the son” or “the daughter” of the hometown. Collectively, they are commonly called “children of the hometown.” A common sense of community, history and destiny binds them. Underlying this bond are obligations: to remain loyal to the village, to stick together as one people all the time, to promote the overall well-being of the village, and to desist from acts that could bring shame (Akan-enimguasie) and dishonor to the group. The last obligation is expressed through the common Ghanaian saying: “You do not use your left hand to point the way to your hometown.”3 Even in urban centers, kinsmen from the same hometowns often settle together in closed communities. For 3 The left hand is considered inauspicious, so to point a left hand at an item in Ghana is to wish it evil.

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example, in Accra one finds communities of Ewes, Akan, Hausa (Zongos), and Fante people from the same hometowns living in the same geographical areas. Bonded by this strong sense to always be together, kinsmen even follow each other into religious communities and in the urban Hare Krishna communities, the leaders encourage followers to “bring in” their kinsmen or to carry the story of Krishna to them. Also because migrants return to their hometowns in the countryside for periods of time, they are bridges across which patterns of urban life become diffused throughout the rural areas and this includes religious beliefs and practices (Palen 2002:318–331). My stress is, however, on the institutional use of kinsmen in rural Hare Krishna evangelism. While village people may be unwilling to listen to a stranger preacher (outsider) unless encouraged by their Chiefs, elders, or other community leaders to do so, they would gather spontaneously to listen to a “child of the village” as a matter of duty to their fellow kin. With one foot planted in the world of Krishna Consciousness and another in the village, the kinsman evangelist knows the appropriate idioms that would make the Hare Krishna message meaningful and acceptable in the village. Armed with expert knowledge of the village culture and exploiting their extensive networks of connections these men lead the entourage of Hare Krishna evangelists into their villages. They lead negotiations with chiefs and play crucial roles in resolving conflict situations. They arrange for the evangelists’ sleeping place, food, and places of convenience. They draw on peer, old school mates, and extended family bonds to rally their people together to patronize the crusade and play leading roles in preaching because of their fluency in the dialect. So crucial is this figure to the success of rural Hare Krishna evangelism that crusades are seldom launched in villages that have no kinsman or people familiar with the place, its culture, or reputation in the Hare Krishna community. In all the five Hare Krishna crusades I have witnessed in Ghanaian villages, kinsmen evangelists played the leading roles. A detailed description of all these crusades is not practicable at this point. But I will draw on two of them to illustrate the crucial role of kinsmen as agents in the organization of crusades. I will also draw on excerpts of the preaching from other crusades to illustrate how kinsmen, drawing on expert knowledge of village culture, deploy local beliefs and idioms of communication in making the story of Krishna appeal to the indigenous imagination of villagers. A “child of the village” led a crusade I witnessed at Peki-Avetile, my hometown, in the very early stages of this study. He was a teacher called Ara. Before he became a Hare Krishna devotee Ara was noted for his



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profound interest in eastern mysticism, especially yoga. He also dabbled with forms of popular religious practice. He was quite popular among the youth of the village during my childhood there. I have vivid recollections of the evenings when we would gather in his home and listen to his tales, most of which featured the wonders of Hindu powers. Ara joined the Hare Krishna community when he left the village to seek his fortunes in Accra after completing middle school, and because Peki was his hometown he was considered to be the most ideal person to lead them during this crusade. Ara negotiated with the chief and elders for the permission to hold the crusade, and arranged for the venue. He arranged for classrooms where devotees would sleep, where they would bathe, and other places of convenience. A week before the crusade, Ara led a group of Krishna devotees to the village to put final touches to the preparations for the crusade. They drove a van through the principal streets, and using a public address system, Ara announced the events in the Peki-Ewe dialect and encouraged people to attend the event. Banners and posters displaying writings such as “Krishna on wheels to Peki,” “Peki for Krishna,” and “Peki must be saved,” were on some poles and walls along the sides of streets. Ara led the other devotees from house to house letting friends, relatives, old school mates, and his students know about the events. He was the principal preacher during the crusade and even when he was not preaching he would interpret for preachers who did not speak the local dialect. In 1999 I attended another crusade at Swedru, a town located about forty miles west of Accra. Of the five leaders of this crusade only one did not come from Swedru or from the villages nearby. Even then, he too spoke Fante, the dialect of the area. Even though I did not witness the preparations for this crusade I learned that the five leaders had been actively preaching in the town earlier, rallying their people together for the event. The crusade, sponsored by two temple communities, was grand and the five Fante men played visible roles. They did all the preaching, and when the crusade was over, two of them stayed behind in their hometown to cater to the needs of newly recruited converts by teaching them the tenets of the religion. If the leaders of the Hare Krishna community demonstrate resourcefulness in their use of homeboys as bridges into rural communities, the homeboys display tremendous ingenuity by packaging the story of Krishna in ways that whet the indigenous spiritual appetites of their fellow kinsmen for the new religion. Preaching styles of evangelists may differ depending on who was preaching, where, and to whom the message was being

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preached. But I observed a consistent pattern in their styles. They play on villagers’ indigenous religious sentiments, harping on themes that would resonate with them, and skirting around those that have a potential to generate conflict. Well-versed in the conventions of the village oral culture they use their appropriate village idioms such as the common sayings, proverbs, myths, and other symbolic media of communication to couch the message in acceptable terms for listeners. They draw on familiar scenarios of everyday village life to bring their message home. In fact, the effectiveness of the kinsman evangelist becomes even more poignantly evident through his/her preaching. For instance, during the crusade in my hometown, which lasted two days, the preaching started after an hour-long nama sankirtan on the second day. Ara preached in the native Ewe. “Agoo,” he greeted us in the traditional way. “Amen” we responded, urging him to speak on. “My fellow kinsmen. I greet you in the name of Krishna,” he addressed us. “We respond to your greetings, our brother and son, speak, our ears are on the ground (we are listening),” we responded. He then went round and shook hands with some members of the audience in a show of solidarity. This was a part of the village greeting procedure: exchanging greetings with an audience before speaking is a crucial part of the traditional oral culture and social etiquette. To greet appropriately is to demonstrate expert knowledge of, and respect for custom and the audience, and mastery over dialect, all of which are crucial if the speaker must establish good rapport and earn the respect of the listeners. On the part of audiences, a speaker’s greeting is a request to be granted audience and to respond appropriately is to signal good will and the willingness to listen. Ara clearly understood the symbolism of the greeting process and its necessity for the success of the crusade and made the point of going through with it. He continued, drawing on a local proverb to express the urgency of their preaching mission:” If I have returned to the hometown (Ewe-Afe) with strangers and a strange custom (religion) it is because as the elders have taught us, “the fan palm speaks only when it is disturbed by the wind.” Literally Ara’s proverb means every human action was motivated by factors, which may not always be obvious. Short pithy statements drawn from the sundry experiences of everyday life, proverbs contain hidden truths that are implied in the factual truths of the short sayings. These truths must be drawn out through reflection and imagination (Dzobo 1973:v–15; Asare-Opoku 1978:158; Sarpong, 1974). But once a proverb’s teaching is fathomed it is never easily forgotten because it comes in such a vivid, concrete, and graphic language. Because they are indirect ways of speaking and



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they camouflage truths, people use proverbs when they seek to address issues subtly rather than directly. People also use proverbs when they wish to drive home a truth that they would want to be indelibly imprinted on the minds of listeners because proverbs encapsulate truths. The clue to understanding Ara’s use of this proverb lies in his describing the other evangelists as “strangers.” They were strangers because they were “outsiders,” that is, people who come from other hometowns and do not belong in the Peki community. They were also strangers because they were bearers of a strange custom, Hinduism. Even their appearances— their shaven heads and dresses (dhotis and kurtas) were strange. There is an ambivalent attitude towards the category of people known as “strangers” or “visitors” in traditional Ghanaian societies. On the one hand traditional etiquette demands that strangers be given special treatment. Underlying this tradition of hospitality to the stranger is the thinking that as an outsider a stranger is constantly vulnerable, in need, and so must be helped. It is believed that such hospitality would be reciprocated whenever the giver too becomes a visitor or stranger somewhere. It is also said that the impression a stranger carries away about a host community is crucial in shaping the perception others have about the community. A good impression casts a good image on a hospitable host community and a bad impression gives it a bad name. On the other hand, strangers (Ewe– amedzro) could be security risks to a community. As “outsiders” they cannot always be trusted. They can steal secrets—especially the spiritual secrets of the village—and reveal these to rival or enemy communities. Closed communities are therefore wary of strangers in their midst and the sudden appearance of strangers in my village, Peki, may have been quite unsettling for the villagers. But adding to their shock may have been the fact that it was a “son of the village” that led the strange-looking people into the village. Ara therefore owed to his kinsmen an explanation. He could have been more direct in explaining how he and his fellow stranger friends had brought a good religion to the villagers. But a skeptical village crowd would have found this hard to believe given the strangeness of the bearers of the message, its content and their Hindu connection. Ara sought refuge in the indirect medium of the proverb and through this he is able to convey the sense of urgency of his mission; the urgent need for his fellow kinsmen to hear this salvific message of Krishna Consciousness was worth or outweighed the risk of exposing the village to strangers. Through the proverb Ara skillfully conveys his sense of the crucial value of Krishna devotion to his villagers. Ara then goes on to tell us about Krishna Consciousness, introducing Krishna as God, Mawu-Lisa (God, in Ewe).

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The preaching was an exposition of carefully selected themes in the Hare Krishna theology that spoke to the daily spiritual questions of the villagers. It was a local contextualization of Hare Krishna theology. He said we lived in the degenerate age of Kali Yuga, and that was why the times were so “hard” in Ghana. Moreover, our “obsession with material things,” was the root cause of vices such as greed, bribery, and corruption and these distance human beings from God, making their salvation an almost impossible prospect in this epoch of Kali Yuga. Then he stressed the urgency of Krishna Consciousness. Only this religion saves because it promulgates the easiest approach that would enable us to redirect the focus on God and this was by way of chanting God’s secret names. In explaining the essence of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra and its spiritual benefits, Ara appealed directly to the villagers’ traditional religious sense of need, fear, and aspirations and drew on local imageries to drive home his point: Chanting is like calling on God to come. It is like invoking God’s powers. Just as the fetish invokes the medicinal powers of a herb by chanting its secret formula and you evoke the powers of gods by chanting their secret names, in the same way, we evoke Krishna’s spirit by mentioning the names “Hare” and “Krishna.” If you keep calling his name his spirit will come down and fill you up. When Krishna’s spirit fills you up, your eyes are opened to spiritual truths. You will have wisdom to uncover mysteries of the world. You will have power to see beyond our world. What power has a witch over you when you are with Krishna? What could a sorcerer do to harm a Krishna devotee? What power do evil spirits have in his presence? Nothing! Evil spirits flee when they hear the Mahamantra. Krishna’s light is onto you and where there is light, Forces of evil have no room.

Underlying Ara’s exposition is a clear emphasis on spiritual power and protection and this is important in a religious culture where the core beliefs and rituals center around the fear of bad spirits and the protection from deities. Krishna is presented as God, but he is also cast in the image of a local deity whose protective powers are invoked by chanting his secret names, in the same way that the traditional priests invoke healing powers of herbs and the powers of the deity. Equally appealing is the theme of the devotee acquiring personal spiritual power through chanting. This resonates with the aspirations of villagers who have a predilection for personal spiritual empowerment as a way of fortifying themselves against witchcraft and other agents of harm. Furthermore, it generates the impression that becoming a Hindu could eliminate dependence on an external source for one’s spiritual protection. When a puzzled member



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of the audience wanted Ara to expatiate on the issue of Krishna’s powers over witchcraft and demons, Ara drew on the tradition of chieftaincy for an analogy to explain. Let me explain it this way. Imagine that you are the son or daughter of a chief. Even if you misbehave in public will people rebuke you directly as they would rebuke an ordinary person? [There was a resounding ‘No’] Yes, that is because everyone fears the wrath of the chief and knows how much the chief loves his children. When you become a Hare Krishna devotee you are like a prince or princess of Krishna. He is the sovereign lord. The lord of powers. Abonsam [bad spirits] and juju people have less power. Nothing touches Krishna’s children.

Here Ara uses a familiar cultural symbol, the institution of the chief, to illustrate the relationship between Krishna and a devotee. The themes of Krishna’s love, power and protection and the devotee’s special privileged status are effectively conveyed through this analogy. Krishna is compared to a traditional chief (community leader) a symbol of absolute power and as princes or princesses, devotees have special protection from him.4 Drawing on these everyday themes and familiar symbols the truth of the message is concretely and graphically conveyed to villagers. Explaining the nature of the original identity of the human soul with Krishna to the audience during a crusade at a village in southeastern Ghana, the leading preacher used a popular local myth. “Do you know the story of the Abrewa and Onyame?” He asked us in Twi. Some people said “No.” Others said, “Yes.” He started into the myth: All was well in the beginning and God dwelt among his creation. But Abrewa, an old lady, was a real nuisance. She would cook supper late, and when God was in bed the sound of her mortar hitting against the pestle disturbed him. And she would raise her pestle so high [mimicking the act, which generated some laughter] that it would hit Gods chin. Annoyed, God went up higher. But the noise still reached him so he decided to withdraw to the heavens. Saddened by his absence the villagers went after him. They piled mortars together till they reached the heavens. But they were one mortar short, so they took the first mortar from beneath so that they would place it on top and as they removed it the pile came tumbling down. They tried and tried and never got back to him . . . and we have been seeking God till this day.

4 Chiefs are traditional leaders of southern Ghanaian communities. They represent both the living members as well as the ancestors whose stool they sit on. Their connections with ancestors make chiefs religious authorities as well. Chiefs are symbols of tribal authority and have unlimited powers. Princesses and princes are therefore considered to be immune to any kind of social rebuke lest this might invite the wrath of the chief.

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The preacher explained that Krishna was Nyame (Akan for God) in the story and Abrewa and the villagers represented us. He said our souls are distanced from God because of our deeds, just as Abrewa annoyed God till he withdrew. He also said the efforts of the villagers to get to God represented our religious efforts: “That is why we keep moving from church to church and some of you attend several churches at once,” he commented. “Krishna Consciousness,” he told the villages, has the answer to this problem because it proposed “the easiest way to God” and this was simply through mentioning his names repetitively. The alien Hindu philosophy of the Atman and Brahman identity, which finds expression in the Hare Krishna theological doctrine of the original divine nature of the human soul, is rendered meaningful culturally through the medium of a local myth. Not only do the listeners come to terms with such alien Hindu notions, even viewing Krishna through a local myth begins their identification of him as their own. Unlike evangelists of Charismatic Churches who launched attacks on traditional religion directly during their crusades, the native Krishna evangelist often treads a path of caution, always looking for common grounds to make an inroad and finding subtle ways to introduce the novel Hindu ideas. During a crusade that I witnessed in the course of my 2009 fieldwork, the preacher, who preached in English, at one point described the Hare Krishna religion as nonsectarian—a neutral religion merely aiding followers of all faiths to advance spiritually. He said: Strictly speaking we are not really a religion; we have not come to impose a new religion on any one. Our teachings will help you to understand your own God and your own religion so that you can worship your God better and will advance spiritually because we have the answers to every religious question.

This attempt to present the Hare Krishna religion as a non-competitive, and a supplementary source of spiritual truths and power and as a religion with answers to all questions is an attempt to avoid confrontation with the predominant Christian presence in the mission zone. It points to the ingenuity of this native preacher and the use of expert knowledge of the field in dealing with the sensitivities of his people, a predominant Christian community. The preacher went on to identify Hare Krishna devotion with traditional religion and Christianity stressing the conceptual similarities in their beliefs: Our beliefs and practices are not new. In Hare Krishna we too believe in deities and images and worship them. We believe in life after death. We believe in dzikudziku [reincarnation]. Hare Krishna only connects with your roots.



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And our teachings are not even different from what your churches teach either. Krishna is God. And just like God came to the world in form of Jesus, so did Krishna come as Chaitanya to inaugurate a new practice that would make it easier for us to be saved. All you need to do is to chant the name of Krishna. This is an easier option.

Stressing the Hare Krishna community’s points of contact with Christianity and traditional religion is a common strategy of Hare Krishna evangelists in Ghana. The impression created is that, as a devotee one would not need to sever links with the indigenous culture and religion, or with the church. The Hare Krishna community is presented as a mere extension of traditional religious and Christian beliefs and practices but as an extension that leads to the uncovering of deeper truths. The preacher also said: The antelope says that you die a miserable death if you live only in one forest all your life [a local proverb] . . . Krishna is not a jealous God and when you become a Krishna follower you can still remain a member of your church. You can still practice Afa [traditional religious cult], pour libation and all that. And you can be Catholic, Presby, or Methodist . . . You don’t have to leave your church or abandon your culture to be a member of Hare Krishna. You are free to go and come as you wish in Krishna Consciousness.

The proverb about the antelope is an indirect invitation to listeners to be spiritually adventurous and to explore other spiritual options. The preacher is aware of the eclectic religious inclinations of his fellow kinsmen and he appeals to this by extending an invitation to them to explore the new Krishna religion too, stating explicitly the openness of the Hare Krishna religion. This openness, he suggests was more suitable to their eclectic religious attitudes as they would be free to slip in and out to seek spiritual experiences elsewhere without being rebuked, as the pastors of their churches rebuked them. An identity with traditional religion is also implied, as is a contrast with the exclusive attitude of Christian churches. The deployment of a proverb to indirectly convey this invitation reflects the preacher’s sensitivity to the fanatical Christian elements among his listeners. Because of the Christian claim to exclusivity these elements may not take kindly to such an invitation to explore other options if it was said more directly. It would seem however that the stress on the openness of Hinduism, its similarity with traditional religion and Christianity is a preaching strategy. In the temple community at Medie I observed that the tone of devotees is sometimes polemical, and often, the polemics is directed against Christian churches, especially Pentecostals (often called “those new churches”).

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A devotee commented one day: “It would be hard to be a good Christian and a good Hindu at the same time.” “Why?” I asked him. He responded: Christian people have a light attitude towards sinning. One could easily get away with sins just by praying for forgiveness or confessing to a priest. A Hindu cannot avoid the effects of karma so he is more responsible.

Another devotee explained that while devotees are not encouraged to sever links with their churches completely, it was not necessary for a Hindu to continue to practice Christianity, “because that would only slow your spiritual development. Hinduism contains all the truths of Christianity and even goes deeper. Why do you think Jesus would visit India? He went to learn from Hinduism.” That such polemics are absent from the tone of preachers would suggest a conscious effort to present the Hare Krishna religion as a tolerant and open religion to prospective followers. The openness of Hindu traditions towards other traditions enables the preachers to acknowledge Christianity and traditional religion and use them as media for contextualizing their message. But they deliberately stress this openness in order to make the Hare Krishna community appealing to a people in whose religious cultures there already is an eclectic predilection and a sense of fluidity in looking for salvation and saviors. When a person becomes a fully-fledged member, the effort is then directed at entrenching him deeply in the faith. It is possible that by using myths, proverbs and other idioms of communication the crusaders simply followed conventions of their village or hometown oral cultures. This fact notwithstanding, compared with urban evangelists who speak more directly, avoid idioms, and use English, the message of rural evangelists is so pregnant with symbolic language that one is tempted to conclude that they deliberately flavor the story of Krishna to appeal to the indigenous imagination of villagers. Some key Vaishnava theological themes are conspicuously absent from preachers’ messages or mentioned only cursorily: the notion of selfless devotion, the ascetic lifestyle and practices, and “not eating meat.” At the crusade in Swedru I sought for an explanation from a preacher why most preachers did not mention such teachings. He said they represented core issues devotees would grasp fully only when they became members. Emphasizing them at crusades could lead to misinterpretations and misconceptions about the Hare Krishna community, which people already viewed suspiciously, he said. At a later date an apparently puzzled and skeptical listener questioned a preacher about the relevance of making not eating meat a condition for becoming a Hare Krishna devotee. The preacher first responded with



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a proverb, “the crab says that when you see it walking clumsily it does not mean that it has lost its way” suggesting that there was a good reason for the practice even though it might seem unnatural to outsiders. The preacher then pointed to the need for control of sensual appetites as the rationale behind the practice and drew the crowd’s attention to the similar motif in their customs. Surprisingly he said nothing about the notion of nonviolence, a cardinal Hindu basis of vegetarianism leading me to conclude that perhaps preachers deliberately skirted themes that run against the grain of their listeners’ thoughts and actions. In this specific instance to suggest to a people who believed that eating meat was a part of the divine plan (God created animals purposely for human beings to eat) that it was “sinful” because it constituted violence against animals would antagonize some listeners. So the preacher avoided that explanation. My suggestion is that the local Hare Krishna preacher has a vast stock of Vaishnava theological themes to select from in the course of his preaching. Armed with expert knowledge of his people and the village culture he selects and harps on themes that would resonate with them. He transmits the message through local ideas that filter it appropriately. He even slants the themes a bit, though still drawing on his the pool of Vaishnava meanings, to clarify them for his kinsmen. When he attacks Christianity, he is subtle and never direct, using insinuations. In the end he presents the Hare Krishna devotion as not totally alien but a faith that is familiar, yet provides opportunities for devotees to gain keener insights into human mysteries, build spiritual power, and become more moral human beings. Global religious movements must shape themselves to the exigencies of local religious markets if they must survive. Their strategies can involve tapping the local religious discourse, renegotiating their own orientations, and identifying new niches on the local religious market, which they can fill. When the Hare Krishnas extended their missionary activities into Ghana from the USA in the late 70s, their goal was to perpetuate a 16th century B.C. Bengali worship tradition in Ghana. The group would, however, encounter a fiercely competitive religious economy whose shape is largely dictated by Pentecostalism. My argument thus far has been that, in order to survive in this market, the Hare Krishna had to adopt the Pentecostalist crusade strategy and reshape it to meet its unique needs, by creatively using hometown connections of devotees who deploy their knowledge of the home culture in selling the new religion to their kin. We also see how the group tones down aspects of its religious culture that may not appeal to Ghanaians, while selling itself as a meeting point of traditional religion and Christianity.

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Crusades sometimes resulted in the initiation of cells of village Krishna worshippers. In my hometown the cell of Hare Krishna worshippers that resulted from the grand crusade was presided over by a cousin of Ara. Its members assembled nightly in the courtyard of the house of Naomi, a petty trader and traditional birth attendant, to go through the scriptures, sing songs in praise of Krishna, and chant mantras. The leader said he frequented the Accra headquarters for tracts, pamphlets, books, and to learn the rituals and other temple practices. Besides nurturing and sustaining the enthusiasm of the circle the leader was charged with the task of recruiting new followers. I became acquainted with this group in 1991. At that time they were only eleven. During my research visit in 2009 I was told there were about thirty-five members and that the group still meets for Gita classes on Wednesdays and devotional sessions on Sundays, even though not all members show up for such meetings. Some village worshipping cells originated as spontaneous offshoots of the activities of individuals who were inspired to explore Hindu religious practices by India’s reputation for powerful spirits and medicine in Ghana. Many of these village folks had experimented with a variety of local and alien techniques for exploring the occult universe as children; these techniques range from the invocation of Catholic saints, recitation of mantras from eastern religions, to the consultation of ghosts in village cemeteries and the importation of spirits and magical objects from India, before eventually adopting Krishna worship as an organized framework for the pursuit of their spiritual adventures. Such adoptions often follow an introduction to the discourse on Krishna through the reading of some Hare Krishna devotional literature or a conversation with a Krishna devotee. Whether they originate from village crusades or the activities of spiritually adventurous village folks, village worshipping cells maintain constant contact with Krishna-worshipping centers and the headquarters in Accra. These village cells serve as the breeding grounds for devotees, some of who may eventually end up serving in the urban temples or even oversea temples. I attended devotional sessions with a cell at Akrade, where the Hare Krishna community has a farm. Their Gita classes and kirtan sessions, their only form of organized worship, require the offices of no priests. But they keep up with the formalities of temple life such as lying prostrate before the photos of deities in their shrines and taking off footwear in worshipping halls. As the proselytizing crusades of the “Preachers for Krishna” expand into the rural interior of southern Ghana so do



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new Hare Krishna cells spring up in these places, expanding its influence. The Hare Krishna temples also use the community’s free food program to manifest itself in public, spread its message, and attract followers. These “Food for Life” programs involve distributing free meals to the poor. The food served consisted mostly of rice, potatoes, vegetable curry and halava. In Accra the temple community organizes this program periodically. These programs however have significant spiritual meaning. The food served is prasadam, that is, food prepared in the temple and offered to Krishna before it is served to the poor. Thus aside from nourishing the body the food is an offering of the Lord’s grace to people in need. In what I would describe as an informal evangelistic approach Prabhu Srivas used to feature in religious debates with other religious leaders on national television quite frequently in a program called “Contemplation.” Through this appearance tenets of the faith reach Ghanaians in their living rooms. Pressure from elements of the Christian community, however, led to the cancellation of this program in the late 1990s. I did a rough survey to determine the relative effectiveness of the Hare Krishna’s proselytizing techniques. Out of 60 people 27 mentioned preaching and book distribution either by itinerant preachers or during sankirtans as the channel through which they learned about the group for the first time. Seventeen followers mentioned crusades. Twelve people mentioned friends, relatives, co-workers and kinsmen and four people mentioned TV. Charisma and the Spread of Shiva Devotion in the Hindu Monastery of Africa Apart from the evidence of the young Swamiji’s “working” abilities his followers in the Hindu Monastery of Africa also mentioned his remarkable intellectual abilities, despite his checkered schooling history. They said he knew how to read and write before he went to school and they attribute this to the “powers” he was born with. “Listen to how he even speaks good brofo (English) . . . And even he writes books. He was born with all these,” a devotee said at one time, exuding pride in the leader’s intellectual abilities. Swamiji’s charisma drew additional strength from his adoption of Hinduism as the framework for the religious practice of the group he created, and his journey to India to acquire more Hindu powers. These were unprecedented moves, bordering on the fringes of “the revolutionary” in Ghanaian religious circles. It was quite unthinkable for a person to

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publicly declare an affiliation with Hinduism, which many regarded as an occult practice. Equally revolutionary was Swamiji’s decision to sever ties with his family and renounce the world when he returned from India. Renouncing the world and one’s family radically departs from the norms of Ghanaian cultural and social life in which key emphasis is placed on worldly prosperity, and where the group (extended family) is considered a pivotal unit. Seeking material prosperity in “this world” so as to be able to take care of one’s nuclear and extended family, or even the village, are among the qualities considered to be the very essence of “being a man” in Ghana. It is however not only the institutional requirements of Swamiji’s position as a charismatic leader that set him apart from his followers. As can be gleaned from this devotee’s evaluation of their leader’s attributes in Twi, Swamiji’s followers and admirers perceive something exceptional about his personality itself: As for Swami, when you go to him, even the way he welcomes makes your problems begin to seem so light. You feel like you are talking to God himself. He is so reassuring. He would say “Oh don’t worry about it. You will be fine. Problems come and they go just as happiness. These ones too will surely go.” By the time you leave him the problem is really gone.

When I asked Auntie Julie, another follower, what she thought about Swamiji, her response was spontaneous: Ooh . . .  That man . . . [pause] He is our father ooh [stress]. There is nothing in this world you would demand of Swami that he wouldn’t do for you. That’s why the moment something happens to a devotee, ooh we are on our way maza maza [quickly] to tell Swamiji. He takes a keen interest in everybody’s life. He feels the pain you are feeling. And when you go to him, it is like he does not even want you to go away. He makes you feel so wanted. And he can play and joke oooh! When you see him with the children you will think he is a child, he comes down to their level (Interview in English).

Ben, a younger male devotee who described how Swamiji’s helped him to find a job at one time, described how the leader addressed the needs of all devotees: Because he has powers, he determines what is troubling everybody’s heart and mind and what danger lies ahead at the spiritual level . . . And he would intervene even before it unfolds. That’s the extent to which Kwesi would go to help devotees. His devotees are all he thinks about. He is like a hen and we are like chickens always hiding under his strong and spiritual wings (Interview in English).



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After describing some miracles he attributed to Swamiji’s powers, Prof. Torto added, “And he is so humble in spite of all these feats . . . He never even mentions them.” My own experiences with Swamiji left me with similar remarkable impressions. He would always inquire about how my study was going, give me a blessed fruit (prasadam) to take home each time I was leaving the temple, and even though he had never met my family he would always inquire about how they were doing back in Toronto. When I told him a taxicab hit the door of my car his show of concern was fatherly. “Were you harmed in any way?” He asked even before I completed my story. He followed with a joke that made us laugh the whole incident off: “Ooh . . . I know why he hit you. Taxi drivers have lots of wives and girlfriends. Maybe one annoyed him and he was driving without his senses.” Then he assured me: “Don’t worry, my son, just take it to the fitters (mechanics) and leave the rest to Bhagavan. He would see you through.” Swamiji made no secret of his care and concern for people and he would connect with each devotee on a personal level. He extended elements associated with many charismatic persons—an uncanny ability to participate in the concerns of others, a warm impressionable personality, friendliness, fatherliness, hospitality and humility—in the most extemporaneous and generous ways to those who came to him. It is, however, Swamiji’s miraculous powers and news of his feats that are the more crucial factors in the spread of the monastery’s influence. From its inception the monastery has firmly placed miracles and miraculous power at its center. In the eyes of devotees, even its origin was “a great miracle.” Miracles are the hub around which Swamiji’s charisma spins, the miracle stories serving as channels of spreading his influence. The gist of some miracle stories celebrating Swamiji’s charismatic qualities is in order at this point to demonstrate the supernatural elements in them that captivate hearers. Four themes relating to his powers underlie Swamiji’s miracle stories. These are his miraculous healing abilities, his mysterious appearances to redress crisis situations involving his followers, his ability to predict the future, and his ability to effect miracles from a distance. One healing story describes his healing of a leper in Ghana’s neighboring country of Togo by simply making a pronouncement from his monastery in Accra. Desperate for a cure, the leper’s parents approached Swamiji. At first Swamiji declined to help, arguing that he was not a healer and does not deal with clienteles. The couple persisted in their request and Swamiji agreed to help them when they affirmed their faith in Bhagavan’s (Shiva’s) ability to heal their daughter. Swamiji is alleged to have then said to them simply,

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“If you believe that Bhagavan would heal her, then it would be so with your daughter. Go home and Bhagavan be with you.” He also requested that they should chant the temple’s Mahamantra, Om nama Shivaya throughout their return journey to Togo. According to a version of the story, the couple found their daughter healed when they got home. Another version says that, at the very moment Swamiji was addressing the couple in Accra, the leper saw a shadowy figure of a bald man sitting in lotus position with a rosary in hand on the wall of her dimly lit room in Togo. The apparition remained on the wall for a moment and vanished. A few weeks later she was healed completely. In another story Swamiji appeared mysteriously in the guise of an old man to rescue two of his followers trapped in the wreckage of their vehicle. They were returning to Accra from a funeral in Kumasi when their vehicle skidded off the road and capsized. A couple I met at a barber’s shop told the story of Swamiji’s curing of a devotee’s alcoholic husband, even though the man lived far away in England. According to this story Swamiji confronted the woman during worship one evening and complained about her husband’s stubbornness in refusing the advice of physicians to stop drinking, even though he had never met him or been told anything about him before: Your husband, his ears are too hard [he is stubborn]. Haven’t doctors cautioned him about the drinking? I will keep working on him. But I notice he is a very headstrong person. So, call him by phone and talk to him, otherwise the drinking would kill him.

The woman called her husband as Swamiji suggested. But even before she could say anything, her husband described how, each time he would buy a bottle of drink, it would mysteriously fall and break. That was when his wife revealed to him that Swamiji’s spiritual hands were behind the mysterious happenings. He quit drinking immediately, frustrated and terrified by his wife’s revelation. Devotees said Swamiji made appearances to them in the context of fasts, dreams, visions and meditations to offer blessings and assurance especially when they were going through crises. Each time he would appear, they would find kunkun (ash) underneath his photo in the morning. Maki, a female devotee, told of her vision in which she encountered Swamiji. She spoke Ga: As I slept that night, I had a vision, a man appeared to me and asked me “Who is your deity?” I said “Shiva.” Then he said, “Follow me.” So I followed him. We floated in space till we got to a place that looked like a heaven . . . It was beautiful. Everyone there was chanting, “Om nama Shivaya . . . Om nama



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Shivaya,” and each time they would chant it, you would hear it again and again louder in your ears and a flash of lightening would appear. Suddenly a man emerged from a thick cloud of smoke. It was Swamiji! He was holding a white handkerchief and each time he would wave the handkerchief a cloud of smoke would rise up and the tempo of the chanting would quicken. Then he said to me calmly, “Chant, chant, chant all the time to Bhagavan . . . As long as you continue to chant I will always be with you . . .” Then my alarm clock went off and I woke up.

That morning there was kunkun (red powdery substance) at the base of Swamiji’s photo hanging on Maki’s wall in the living room. Swamiji had visited. Other themes underlie the miracle tales in constant circulation; people being cautioned in dreams about future crises, people healed of illnesses initially thought to be incurable, and people experiencing break throughs when they least expected them. These stories are told, retold, embellished and circulated throughout the worshipping community. They also fly around in far-flung towns and villages and have traveled as far as the neighboring West African countries of Cote d’Ivoire, and Togo. As they spread so do Swamiji’s fame and the influence of the monastery. Also important are the rumors, myths, and anecdotes that the stories encourage to fly around. I recall a rumor when I was an undergraduate student in Ghana, in which a prominent government official was alleged to have been secretly consulting with Swamiji for India eduro (Hindu spiritual power]). The rumor said he needed this for the revolutionary government to remain in power for a long time, so that he could keep his job. During my fieldwork I heard rumors about Swamiji’s “works,” from people not aware that I was doing research in that temple. A woman visiting with Aunty Liza one morning told of a childless couple who had a baby after the woman had experienced menopause. The woman became pregnant two months after they became Swamiji’s followers. At a funeral in Accra, I overheard a conversation about Jamra, Swamiji’s son, who allegedly had already started showing signs of his “working abilities.” Not only are the stories about Swamiji’s works captivating, the sense of conviction that the tellers themselves exude makes the incidents seem very real. A hearer believing these stories might not only tell another person but would be tempted to seek Swamiji’s help whenever the need should arise. The point here is to stress the contagious effect of the miracle stories and the rumors they spawn among hearers. Another point is to show that it is ordinary people, devotees and non-devotees, that spread the influence of Swamji’s Hinduism as they go about their daily activities, not missionaries or the clergy.

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There is a constant inflow of new followers to the community, people who heard these stories and for some reason desired access to Swamiji. I met Akutu, a young Ewe man from Togo, who described how he became a follower: There was this cloth-seller near my home who traveled to Accra periodically. Each time she would come back she would come with a new story: “Have you heard what the man has done again? They said he had done this and that and that.’ ” So one day I asked her “Who at all is this man?’ ” She said they called him guru Kwesi and that he was from India and he had many followers. So each time she would come back from a journey I would ask, “Did Kwesi do anything new?” And then she would tell me . . . So when boils appeared on my scrotum mysteriously and I determined that they were not just boils [he had narrated a story about being mysteriously afflicted with boils], I followed her to Accra to see Kwesi . . . That’s how it all began . . . 

Old man Aku, a head teacher in my hometown and a follower, also told me his story in Ewe: One day we were on a bus coming to the village from Accra . . . There was this man, too, traveling with us. Throughout the journey this man kept talking about this powerful medicine man called guruji. The man said guriji had predicted a revolution in which a junior officer in the army would take over from the big men and punish them severely for stealing the country’s money. He said other things about him but I can’t remember. We only listened not taking him too seriously. Two weeks later, the coup came. That was when Rawlings took over and within two months the big men were all rounded up and shot. So when Victor had that problem with his visa we turned to him5. That way we too became followers.

Another devotee, who said he always sought a guru from India to guide him to “develop spiritually,” described how he learned about Swami through a rumor, in English: “They said there was an Indian man in Accra and he was a guru. They said he was Sai Baba’s representative in Ghana and that the two constantly communicated on a spiritual level.” When a job transfer brought him to Accra he used the opportunity to find his guru. He went to the Sai Baba temple only to be told that the only guru in Ghana was not Indian but Ghanaian and he was in the Hindu Monastery of Africa. They described him also as “the only African guru in the world.” The man found the monastery and became a follower. All of Swamiji’s temples outside Accra developed around people inspired by the experience of their encounters with him. For instance, after learning about him through the stories, Kwesi Brew, a prominent lawyer, approached Swamiji for help in his legal practice. He would eventually become a devotee and form a group at Cape Coast comprising friends,



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relatives, and co-workers, which would expand to become the temple community there. Similarly the ashram in Lome, the capital of Togo, Ghana’s neighboring country, started as a small group around a Lebanese businessman, Erawoc. Erawoc had traveled all the way to Accra to consult with Swamiji for spiritual support and protection for his business to flourish. Convinced that Swamiji’s support was the force behind Erawoc’s success as a businessman, his partners, friends, and relatives encouraged him to initiate a Hindu worshipping community, so that they, too, could benefit from these powers and wonderful teachings. Some of Swamiji’s key disciples and friends also initiated circles of devotees at their work places and communities and one of these would expand to become the Tema ashram. The founder of the circle, Asafo Adzei, was a hotel manager, a disciple, and personal friend of Swamiji. The story goes that Asafo Adzei’s co-workers and subordinates attributed his “good nature” and efficiency to his religion and approached him to teach them about Hindu beliefs and practices. Asafo Adzei initiated a group that met once a week in his home at Tema to learn about Hinduism. This group would expand into the Tema ashram in the ensuing years. Asafo Adzei would go on to create another cell of worshippers among his workers at Takoradi where he was later transferred. Asafo Adzie’s workers, friends and acquaintances may have been endeared to him because of his personal admirable qualities, but his reputation and influence also drew strength from his association with Swamiji and his temple. The role of interpersonal bonds in expanding the influence of Swamiji’s Hinduism is a theme that emerges from these instances. As people would be moved by miracle stories and their actual encounters with Swamiji to join the community they would pull along with them individuals from all the networks of relationships they are engaged in. The widely spread miracle stories aside, person-to-person testimonies about guru Kwesi were crucial means by which people learned about the monastery. A typical devotee would be carrying a symbol of the community: a sticker on a car’s bumper, a copy of the Gita, a mala, or a hymnbook. A curious friend would try to find out about the symbol and the devotee would use the opportunity to divulge information about the guru and his “works” and perhaps invite the friend. Satsangs were also important venues for learning about the group because sponsors of satsangs always invited friends, neighbors, and extended family members. Also the presence of Swamiji at most satsangs enabled non-members who may only have heard of his “works” to see the man behind the miracles and listen to him for the first time. Of the 37 devotees interviewed, 21 heard

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of the monastery through miracle stories. The rest heard about it from relatives, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. Seven out of this group mentioned how an encounter with Swamiji at a satsang was influential on their decisions to join the community. Because of their widespread evangelism the Hare Krishna has a broader based membership comprising rural and urban devotees, older and younger generations, and people from all classes (though the working class is dominant). Furthermore, drawing on the recruiting skills of its devotee preachers who come from hometowns and villages, they are able to penetrate rural communities. The Hare Krishna community therefore has a much more widely spread following in both urban and rural areas. Because Swamiji’s monastery spreads its influence by word of mouth his followers are confined to specific groups of people who constantly interact and share news and ideas and influence each other. These include Swamiji’s Akan kinsmen bonded together by a sense of ethnic identity and common allegiance to their guru kinsman. It also includes family members, friends, acquaintance co-workers and guilds of traders as in the Togo congregation. Swamiji’s village devotees are a loose network of individual followers and sympathizers who were drawn to Swamiji on hearing his miracle stories.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHY WE BECAME HINDUS: CONVERSION NARRATIVES How Ghana’s Hindus Understand Conversion A good point from which to set off in the discussion of conversions to and experiences of Hinduism is to explore how the Ghanaian Hindus understand their conversion. Contrary to the conventional, especially Christian, understanding of the phenomenon of religious change (Nock 1933), for the Hindus, to convert (or “to stop eating meat”) does not imply a radical departure from a devotee’s past religious and cultural life but the acceptance of a new religious community. Bhakta Edze, a Hare Krishna devotee, for instance, is still a catechist of Accra Newtown evangelical Presbyterian Church, and a member of Batenge, a spiritual prayer and healing home at Agate, a village in the Volta region of Ghana. Ofori Yeboah, a follower of Swamiji, still pays tithe in his church and presides over kingship rituals as a traditional chief-maker at Akrade, his hometown. Seth, the Hare Krishna devotee who is also a medicine peddler, describes in English how he juggled attending three churches together with his vocation as a traditional medicine man: From Monday to Friday I am in my shrine preparing and dispensing my herbs. My son stays in the herbal store. Wednesday evenings, I am at “The Apostle’s Revelations Church,” where I am an elder. Then on Sunday mornings, I attend mass at the Catholic Church in Madina, and later at sunset, I am on my way to the temple here.

In the village of Akrade where I attended worship with the Hare Krishna worshippers anytime I visited my parents, I met Atiso, a retiree, and a Hare Krishna devotee who is affiliated with two other churches—the Catholic Church and the Mozama Disco Church. Two main themes emerge from the narratives to explain this eclectic religious attitude, the first one being that God is the same in all religions and cultures so that it really did not matter where a person decided to worship. The second explanation, a follow-up of the first, is that God is a mystery and each religion reveals a dimension of his mysterious nature. The more religious traditions one is affiliated with, the greater access one has to religious secrets and the nearer one gets to uncover God’s mysterious nature. These views are

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r­ epresented in an explanation Swamiji offered me in Fante when I asked him about religious conversion: Who or what changes? And who can claim to convert another? There is nothing like that. Onyankupon ye kro [God is one] and he is everywhere. God is like an elephant and we are blind men trying to describe it. Those standing on the back will say the elephant is flat. Those walking around its legs would say it is round. Then those holding the trunk would say “we have the correct answer,” the elephant is like a pipe. None of this is the complete truth but each contains some truth. Everyone described the same animal from the vantage point. That’s how God is. One religion cannot tell us all about his ways, but if we pick from here and pick from there and put all together we will arrive at a more complete picture and be nearer the truth.

Prabhu Srivas, the leader of the Hare Krishna, offers a similar ­explanation: There are two aspects of religious life, the esoteric aspect, which is what happens within the religion, in peoples’ minds and hearts, and the exoteric, which is how a religion appears on the outside. Only the exoteric aspects of religion are different, the esoteric is the same whether one is Hindu, Christian, Muslim or Buddhist. The underlying factor here is the love of God. That’s what all religions teach, so it does not matter where one really ­worships.

Most of the followers of the two communities share these perspectives of their leaders on conversion. What the new Hindus seem to be doing here is rejecting religious exclusivism, and their approach is consistent with traditional Ghanaian religious thought and action and the Hindu attitude of religious tolerance. For them “adherence” and “acceptance” might be a more appropriate construction of conversion (Jules-Rosette 1976:132–164). The term conversion is misleading especially if we reflect on its parochial Christian meaning as a dramatic change involving a one-direction movement from a religion to another. Why Ghana’s Hindus Converted Deliverance and Supernatural Protection The desperate need to succeed in a globalized and modern world has led to a particular emphasis on symbols of power, supernatural protection, and deliverance in the contemporary Ghanaian religious discourse (Asamoah Gyadu, 1998; Onyinah, 2002; Larbi, 2002; Meyer, 1994). The acquisition of power guarantees progress in life because power protects people and delivers them from evil forces. Hindu devotees’ conversion narratives



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were intertwined with stories of their life struggles—to find work, to find good husbands, to have children, to “make it,” to cure an illness or to protect themselves from direct attacks by witches. Interpreting their misfortunes as signs of the intervention of evil spirits in their lives, they said they turned to Swamiji and the Hare Krishna “church” for supernatural cover and esoteric mystical truths that would deliver them. Here, the wonderworking religious power image of India was instrumental in influencing the new Hindus’ evaluation of Hinduism and their decisions to accept it. The story of Akwesi, the president of Swamiji’s Ashram at Tema, is a compelling testimony of material problems leading someone to Hinduism. Akwesi, who lived and studied in England for fifteen years, said he met Hare Krishna devotees chanting in the streets of London constantly. But Hinduism did not appeal to him at that time: “I used to wonder what kind of religion it was that worshippers would have to shave their heads and dress up in that manner in order to worship God. I was not a wee bit interested in the religion.” When Akwesi returned from England in 1979 with a Masters degree in engineering he was very certain that he would find a good job and enjoy a successful career. But for three years he looked for work without success. So he obtained a loan from a bank and started a transport business. But Akwesi’s business would run aground before it would even take off. Two of his buses crashed mysteriously in the same week. When he put a third bus out for sale so that he could invest the money elsewhere, no one would buy it. Desperate to succeed, Akwesi consulted a fetish priest who determined that his problems were not “human” but spiritual and recommended that Akwesi should seek supernatural help. In his search for deliverance and supernatural cover, Akwesi would meet Swamiji and through this encounter, become a Hindu, a thought he could not even countenance just a few years back: Then a friend heard of Swamiji’s works and said we should go to him. First I was apprehensive. How could I go to a Hindu priest? And I was scared of Swamiji too, because I thought he had India juju. But I believed that being Hindu he would have what it would take to help, so I mustered courage and we went. When I told him my story Swamiji simply asked “Is the truck still there?” “Yes,” ’ I said. “Let me go and see it.” So I took him to the truck. He inspected it briefly and said, “My brother don’t worry, some fellow would soon come for this truck.” Within two weeks someone came for it! And something else happened. When I asked the buyer to pay one million cedis, instead of the original 700,000 cedis he simply paid it and took the truck away. The truck was gone! Only two weeks after I met Swamiji! So I said, “There must be something in this man and his religion.” And that was when I too began to chant. Look at me now . . . These days I even have too many

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Another devotee of Swamiji, a forty-five year old woman called Efi, a hospital registrar, constantly fought back tears while telling me her story. She had put everything into her first two marriages, but both ended abruptly with her abusive husbands “kicking her out.” On top of this, she was laid off from work. Her dreams of a happy married life, economic independence and respect in her family shattered, Efi and her two daughters had no recourse than to “shamefully” (her own word) live with her parents. And this devastated her. Her wake-up call that this series of mishaps were not natural came when visit after visit to medicine men brought no change in Efi’s life. It was her dogged attempt to find lasting spiritual solution that would end up in her accepting to be a Hindu: When my uncle, Mr. Dadzie, said he had found a group whose leader had powers from “India!” I said “Yeh . . . India? [Expression of surprise] Then he must be heavy.” Though I was a bit scared because of the Indian thing, I could not wait to meet this leader. Meeting Swami was for me a wonderful experience. Even before I opened my mouth to talk, he described my problems one after the other. Shiee! [Shocked and impressed] how did he know these? Then he said, “But problems come and go. So, don’t focus on them. You are going to chant the names of God, Om Nama Shivaya. Let the problems take care of themselves.” So I began to chant . . . Every day I would chant and chant. And believe me, not long, I found this job. Then, Maa Durga gave me my husband. And then I got this house and from there all doors began to open for me. So, that was how I became a Hindu. If I should tell you I no longer expect difficulties in my life, I would be telling lies. But I know there is some power in that chant and that Swamji would always cover me (Interview in English).

Efi added that it was not only the protective powers of Swamiji but also the psychological support and the assurance he provides people in crisis that endears him and the religion to her. Some devotees who had been drawn to Swamiji because of his earlier “sharp” healing abilities would come to encounter the Hindu powers he revitalized his healing capabilities with (or so they believed) and decide to join his community. Prof. Torto was one of these people. When he approached Swamiji for help with his daughter’s skin disease, it was because Prof. had known Swamiji from their childhood days as a “very heavy person.” Prof. would, however, encounter a side of Swamiji’s powers that would make him too want to explore Hinduism:



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Albert, we tried everything!. Even the best dermatologist in Ghana could not diagnose the sickness. So, I planned to consult an herbalist, my uncle in the village. That was when I learned Kwesi had returned from India and I went to him. Even before I spoke he said he knew why I came. I said, “Ah, we have not met for fourteen years and you know why I am here?” “Go home. I will come and see her later,” he said. Even when he came later, we only talked and talked and he said he was going home. He did not even ask about my daughter. So I asked him “But Kwesi, what about my daughter?” He said “Ooh, use some green grass on her skin. She would be well.” “But we did that already, Kwesi,” I protested. “Do it again,” he said. We did as he ordered. Then something strange happened. Our house-help began to act strangely. When I reported to Kwesi, he said I should not worry about it. Two weeks later the rash that had been there for six months simply vanished! Shiee! I was really impressed! And I said “There must be something truly mystical about this Hindu religion, I must explore it and find out for myself what this is” (Interview in English).

Not everybody became a devotee of Swamiji because they felt threatened. Some people simply wanted access to supernatural power. A well-placed devotee, a manager, said in becoming a Hindu he considered how he would secure his position spiritually from rivals who had bad medicine, and a woman said it gave her the peace of mind (Twi-asumdwei) to feel that, “someone living, and physically present is always there and looking after you spiritually.” She was referring to Swamiji, her guru. Fertility problems were at the core of the issues that drew five female devotees to Swamiji. Swamiji is credited with miraculous cures although he never healed anybody directly. Auntie Julie, who introduced her son, Siva, to me as “the reason I am in this church,” described how she would miscarry each time she became pregnant. When she conceived Siva, someone who had heard miracle stories about Swamiji’s Kwesi’s powers directed her to the monastery. She would come to the temple regularly and gaze at the lingam until Siva would be born. She named the boy Siva because she believes “it was powers of Shiva that looked after that pregnancy.” Auntie Nurse, a devotee from Ashanti Mampong, had recurrent miscarriages for seven years. She even visited a shrine in Benin for a baby at one time. The pregnancy would stay till full term, but the baby would die just after birth. Desperate for a child, she, too, was directed to Swamiji by a co-worker and has become a follower. She now has three children: Saraswati, Durga, and Rama, all born after she became a devotee. She would proudly show them off each time she came to worship. Sister Mary, the pregnant teacher from Cape Coast, showed me four scars on her left

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cheek, each representing an incision fetish priests had made on her body for each of the pregnancies she miscarried before coming to Swami for help. I would often see younger women gazing at the phallic emblem of Shiva and the murti of Maa Durga (connected with fertility powers) in the belief that these viewings would evoke their powers of fecundity and help the women to become pregnant. Because Ghanaian society mostly puts the blame on women in cases of infertility, and because their social recognition is based on their ability to “contribute” children to the community, some women are attracted to cults and religions associated with powers of fertility. Some of Swamiji’s female followers are drawn to the monastery because of Shiva’s erotic powers, Durga’s powers of fecundity and Swamiji’s ability to dispense these powers though his spiritual ­healing. Some narrators described actual experiences of protection from photos of gurus, deities and their murtis, scriptural texts, mantras, and other ritual paraphernalia such as incense and rosaries by repelling attacks by evil powers. During a visit to a village worshipping community at Keji, a small coastal village, I met the wife of Atigbleh, the driver, who “followed her husband into the Hare Krishna religion.” She narrated an incident that strengthened her faith, in Ewe: He [her husband] used to be sick all the time until he began to chant. Now nothing happens to him even though this time he drives in a city as busy as Accra. Even me, Krishna has saved me all the time . . . And me too I am a trader. I go here and there. All the time I am on the move. One day I was coming back from a trip. It was late. Throughout I kept chanting with my japa. Then I dozed off. I dreamt and a lion wanted to attack me in the dream, so I screamed from my sleep so loud that the driver of the bus panicked. He was so angry that they let me off at the next stop. They said I must be a devil. Do you know the bus caught fire within fifteen minutes after they let me off and many people died? Yes. People died! I could have died too. It was Krishna. That lion I saw was Nrisimha Deva, the form Krishna takes to protect devotees.

I would hear the name Nrisimha Deva emerge constantly as a violent form of Krishna that combats the evil forces that try to attack devotees. As Nrisimha Deva, Krishna takes the form of a ferocious man-lion and it is said that in this form witches and demons could not stand him. I was with Simon when a letter arrived informing him about his father’s illness. It had taken a turn for the worse. “I will go and make misa (charms) for him to be well,” Simon commented in Ewe. He described the misa:



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I will put herbs in a glass of water. Then, I will cover the glass with an opened Gita and using the rosary ( japa) I will chant the Maha mantra, and the mantra of Nrisimha Deva, and then give him the concoction to drink.

A month after his return from the village, he received word of his father’s improved health condition. “It was the misa, it was the power of Krishna, I told you,” he said to me, his voice and facial expression exuding confidence. One devotee linked the notion of purity with protection of Krishna: Krishna is not always violent. He won’t protect by attacking evil powers. When you don’t eat the meat, you don’t chase girls, you don’t drink and gamble and you always chant his names, and do nama japa all the time you become pure because he comes to dwell in you. Once you are pure, you repel evil powers. So, it is you. You [pointing to me] would have to lend yourself to his protective powers (Interview in English).

The point here is that even if the Hare Krishna’s theology emphasizes selfless devotion and detachment from the world, for these Ghanaian followers, it still remains an important factor that Krishna has powers to ensure that their lives in this world would go on unimpeded by obstacles. As for the Hindu Monastery of Africa, Swamiji’s saving miracles, some of which I have already mentioned, emerged in our daily conversations constantly. Speaking Ga, Dallas, a devotee, narrated how chanting Om nama Shivaya saved his life: I had boils and was on admission at the hospital and placed on drips. Throughout my ordeal, I chanted in my head, “Om Nama Shivaya, Om Nama Shivaya.” Then I slept. When I dreamt, I saw Swamji. He said “Hei what are you doing here? Come on, get up and go home!” This made me wake suddenly and what did I see? Blood from my body had begun to sip into the water through the tube and the water had turned bloody. The nurse was fast asleep. Hei, I could have died if it was not for the chant.

Similarly, Qunasah narrated two incidents when during the drought of 1983 they performed a fire sacrifice (hawan), and rains fell on both occasions. Joe Anamoh, who suggested I should ask Swamiji for a mala before going back to Canada, showed me how to use it: “As you chant the Om nama Shivaya keep counting the beads on the mala. That’s how you invoke Shiva’s powers.” He continued in English: An aura would form around you. The aura functions like a protective hedge. No evil spirit can penetrate that. And you would see the benefits of chanting yourself. You would succeed in everything you do. School, marriage, and all that. You see, our religion is practical, we get results.

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Clearly these testimonies reflect the search for an extraordinary power that would enable devotees to reclaim phenomena from evil intentions and from destruction. The search was also directed towards preventing phenomena from falling into the hands of evil and destructive intentions and machinations. The narrators did not say, however, that this factor was the most decisive in their acceptance of Hinduism. All the same the sense that they were protected anchored their faith in their communities. “I Had this Dream . . . And that’s Why I Became a Hindu”: Dreams and Conversion Related to the theme of power and protection was the theme of dreams as sources of the revelation of the power of Hindu symbols to devotees. Throughout the study I heard and recorded thirty-five dream accounts from both communities—sixteen from the Hare Krishna and nineteen from the monastery. Women narrated most. Some accounts were exhaustive, often describing recurring dreams that people had, especially during a life crisis. Often the dreamer encounters a deity, a person or persons who reveals a truth, normally a cure, or invites the dreamer into a religious community. A later interpretation associates the person/persons or deity with Hinduism, thereby generating in the dreamer the motivation to join a Hindu community. Some dreams (10) occurred when devotees were already in the process of converting, thereby sanctioning the move. Some devotees (11) said they continued to have revelatory dreams and visions of Krishna, Shiva, Gurus and Swamiji every now and then, which reinforced their commitment to Hinduism. Considered to be channels of communication enabling spiritual beings to reveal themselves to individuals, dreams are respected in Ghana. Dreams also reveal spiritual power sources, religious truths and other spiritual directives, which may not be ascertainable by other means (Curley 1983:20–30). Also people could be healed through dreams or dreams may simply show that a patient may recover without indicating or providing treatment (Taylor and Lehmann, 1961:281, 283). Dreams have emerged prominently in a number of studies in African Christianity and Islam (Charsley, 1992; Curley, 1983; Fabian, 1971; Fisher, 1979; Jedrei and Shaw, 1992; Sundkler, 1961). Individuals such as Joseph Shadare, who founded the Aladura church in Nigeria, were called and empowered through dreams to initiate religious change (Ray, 1993). Some-



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times, individuals are called to membership of spiritual churches through dreams (Sundkler, 1961:273). In many spiritual churches, dream narratives, which can receive recognition as direct experience of the divine or as a communication with it, are required for membership (Fabian 1971:183–89, 258–67). Though there is a respectful attitude to dreams in Hinduism, there is no official doctrine on dreams in the Hare Krishna community or the Hindu Monastery of Africa. Yet, because of the importance of dreams in the local religious culture, leaders and followers of the Hare Krishna community and the Hindu monastery attach great importance to dreams and dream callings. Before I could complete my question about why she became a Hare Krishna devotee, Kafui interrupted me. Smiling at me she said in Ewe, “It was this one dream I had . . . And that’s how everything started.” Then she started into the story of her ordeal with recurring miscarriages. She had visited one fetish shrine after the other for spiritual help, but to no avail. One night she had a dream that changed everything and also culminated in her becoming a Hare Krishna devotee. She narrated the dream: Some men in white and orange gowns appeared before me and said they had heard my prayers and so had come to help me. They said they were from a Hindu church. Each of them had a serpent wound around the neck and touched my breast area with the tip of the serpent’s mouth. Then they vanished. Though I knew Indian people had powerful medicine, I knew of no Indian church at this time. But you won’t believe this. Shortly after the dream I become pregnant again and when I carried the pregnancy to full term, I knew it was the men in the dream who made it possible. But I kept wondering which church they came from.

She described how the interpretation of the dream led her to the Hare Krishna: Then my brother who is a devotee in Kaduna [Nigeria] visited and I told him about the dream. As soon as I concluded he said “I know them, the people you saw in your dream, I know them. Come, come, I will show you who they are.” So off we went to Odorkor to look for them. And when we got there, I saw them! They were in the same dhotis and kurtas they wore in the dream. I was excited. I said “Ahaa yes, these are the people I saw in the dream!” . . . When I narrated the dream to Prabhu Srivas, he too said it meant my soul had a desire for Krishna. Coming from Srivas’s own mouth, the revelation convinced me all the more that it was through Krishna powers that I became pregnant. From that day I too started coming to church. Prabhu, you must join this church. It is the best church in this land. You will see for yourself what powers I am talking about.

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Delivered from the social humiliation of being childless by Krishna’s powers mediated through a dream, Kafui plunged herself fully into the ­community. In traditional Ghanaian society, sometimes ancestors themselves may appear in a dream to sanction a new departure. Sometimes too, the founding figures, patron saints or deities of the new religion by appearing in dreams fulfill the role of ancestors (Fisher 1979:221). In the story of Abiba (told in broken English), another female Krishna devotee, the invitation to become a devotee came from the deity, Krishna himself, through a series of dreams. Before the dreams, a chain of unfortunate happenings in her life were leading her into believing that her mother-in-law was using witchcraft on her: First my husband just died like that. Then the business went down. People stopped buying. Then, I would be ill all the time and would not be able to work, so I was poor. I would have nightmares and see all kinds of strange animals coming at me. And my daughter . . . She was always ill. That set me thinking that maybe she [her mother-in-law] had killed him [her husband] too.

Though spiritualists’ revelations would confirm Abiba’s suspicions, they could not point to the exact source of the attacks and Abiba’s problems persisted. So these dreams came as an answer: One night, I dreamt. I saw a very handsome man. He said to me calmly “Come.” Before I could walk to him I woke up. The following night he came again. This time he said it was my rival, my dead husband’s wife who was behind the attacks. But he also said if I came to his church all my problems would go away. Then I woke up again. For a while the dreams stopped. But I wondered all this time “Who at all is this man?” Soon I had a third dream. It was he again. He asked me, wearing an angry and worried look, “How many times would I have to invite you?” Before he vanished he said in that calm voice again, “Just come, come and you will see that all the problems will go away.” That was the last time. I never saw him again.

When Abiba’s sister, Darkwa, a follower of Krishna, visited from C’ote d’Ivoire, Abiba told her about her dreams. She described how her sister’s reactions led her to become a devotee: Hearing my story, Darkwa screamed, “Sister! It is Krishna! It is Krishna! He has chosen you. Go, go quickly and look for the group!” The next day we were on our way to Odorkor. That was when I met Prabhu Srivas for the first time. When he heard my story, he, too, said it was Krishna inviting me. And that was it for me.



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Dede, a frail looking Hare Krishna devotee, narrated a similar dream in which the call came from Krishna. This occurred in her village. Their home was not far from the Krishna temple so they always heard them at worship. She would dream each night and see animals coming at her and she would scream, making her mother suspect that the “India witches” of the Hare Krishna were behind her nightmares. When Dede narrated her encounter to some devotees they taught her the Mahamantra and encouraged her to chant each night before going to bed. They also gave her some incense to burn throughout the night. That was when she began to dream about Krishna: This time when I would dream I would see devotees at worship, chanting, dancing, and playing mridanga. There would be some sweet fragrance pervading the room. In one dream, I was standing between two places, one dark, and the other bright. Then a man standing on the bright side beckoned to me. But I woke up before I could go. He appeared again the next night and said he wanted me to follow him. So when I met the devotees I told them about these new dreams. Quickly they said it was Krishna desiring my soul. But I was not convinced so I went to the temple president and he too said the same thing . . . So small small I began to fellowship with them. Then I started reading the Gita. Not long I too stopped eating the meat (Interview in Fante).

A pattern exists in Ghanaian tradition in which particular divinities command through dreams the worship of selected individuals. Some strange events would be followed by recurring dreams in which a guru would direct someone, like this devotee, Afi, to Swamiji’s temple: I was in Methodist and Mozama [a spiritual church] at the same time when I began to contemplate becoming a Hindu, so I joined the local group of the Self Realization Fellowship. Our guru, Yogananda, was in California. I had his photo on my altar at home. Then, we started having some strange experiences. Sometimes my daughter would see Yogananda blink his eyes in the photo. At first we thought she was making it up. But one morning I saw fine ash sprinkled at the base of the photo. Not long after that, I started seeing him in dreams. In my first dream I was reading a Gita when he appeared, took the Gita from me and said “You are on the right path, keep it up.” Then I woke up.

Not long after this incident, Afi’s husband fell ill mysteriously and a pastor predicted a miracle, which would lead to his recovery. That was when she saw the guru again in another dream, and he assured her that she would meet a man who would cure her husband. The guru also recommended that she should become that person’s devotee. One evening Afi followed

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a friend, a devotee of Swamiji, to the ashram, and in a dramatic turn of events an encounter would ensue between her and Swamiji. She interpreted this to mean the unfolding of the guru’s prophecy and following her guru’s directive she became a Hindu: As soon as Swami saw me he said “Ehe I’ve been looking for you . . . your husband . . . He will be okay. Take this mala, just go home and chant to Ganesh . . . He won’t need that surgery.” I was shocked. But how did he know about my husband . . .? I had not told him anything . . . I had not even met him before. Then my husband began to recover! And when we went to see the doctors they said the illness was gone, he did not require the surgery any longer ei! This man! Then I remembered my dream and knew that this must be the man Yogananda was talking about. So I stopped Mozama Disco and stopped eating meat too.

Successful prophecy is a sign of the power of the dreamer or “omen reader” (Ray 1993:55) and, as I will show later, this devotee also believes she was naturally endowed with powers. As Fisher has noted, the process of conversion is “a long drawn-out affair” and needs recurrent reinforcement and dreams provide the vital activation at various stages (Fisher 1979:233). A Krishna devotee already in the process of joining the community had a dream in which her dead mother sanctioned her move. She was in a dense forest apparently lost. Then she saw a figure like Krishna with a machete clearing a path on the forest floor. Too frightened to move, she heard the voice of her mother telling her to follow the man. The path led to a heavenly abode where all she heard was the sound of people chanting. At that point she woke up. Interpreting the heavenly abode as Krishna Loka, she believed her dead mother had endorsed her decision to follow the path of Krishna ­Consciousness. Not all devotees were forthcoming in stating how decisive dreams were in their moves to Hinduism. When I broached the topic of her conversion with Ekwefi, a Krishna follower, the first time, she only described how she was moved by the preaching of some devotees performing a sankirtan in Accra, whose message contained “all the answers” to her questions. One night Holi Dasi, another female devotee, screamed in her sleep. She was having a nightmare. The incident created a stir in the community and had devotees struggling to make sense of it the next morning. That was when I overheard Ekwefi remark in English (with a heavy Nigerian accent): She must really look into this carefully. It is not an ordinary dream. I had a similar dream, but in mine just as the demon wanted to pounce on me a group of preaching devotees just emerged and I run to them. They dressed



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just like the ones I saw during the sankirtan. And that made me believe that my actual encounter with the preachers was not ordinary.

It became clear to me then that Ekwefi’s conviction about the auspiciousness of her actual encounter with the devotees drew strength from her earlier dream experience. Conversion dreams describe or depict the incidents surrounding devotees’ initial contact with or entrance into the Hindu communities. Devotees from both communities said even as followers they continued to have dreams every now and then. They perceived these dreams to be signs of their relationship with the supernatural and this cemented their faiths. Sign dreams, as I would term them, reveal the future, help devotees to uncover aspects of the supernatural, indicate the intensity of their faith and assure them of the supernatural cover. They also signify divine favor, as the deity would only make revelations to favored devotees. In sum, these dreams reinforce in devotees the sense that they have an active spiritual life and are following the paths prescribed by their communities rightly. For some devotees dreams were signs of supernatural favor. For instance, each time I would visit Padambadam, a Krishna devotee, in her village, she would have a dream to tell me about. “The master came again,” she said one morning. “Which master?” I inquired. “The guru. I saw him in a dream. Sometimes I see Krishna himself,” she answered. “You mean, you saw Bhakti Tirtha Swami?” “Yes.” “What did he say this time?” I inquired. “Sometimes he or Krishna would just appear to me. They would say nothing, like today. But each time he or Krishna appears, something significant happens to me.” On my subsequent visit to her, she described how a customer who owed her money for many years just popped in “from nowhere” to pay her and this was significant because at that time she was really in dire need of money and had been chanting consistently. “That dream . . . It was the guru reassuring me that all would be well,” she concluded. Others interpreted their dreams as signs of the intensity of their faith. A devotee of Swamiji who had recurring dreams of Maa Durga the week before the festival interpreted these to mean Durga’s endorsement of the fasting she was doing in preparation for the festival: “It happens all the time. When you fast, you become more spiritual. You will see the deities in dreams. You will become spiritually charged,” she said in Twi, insinuating the belief that the dreams reflected the intensity of her spirituality. Ambara, a follower of Swamiji, had taken the university entrance examinations three times. She told of a dream that she had before she wrote the exams the

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final time in which Swamiji shook hands with her and congratulated her. Ambara passed her exams and is currently in her third year at the medical school. She attributed her success to the dream: “The moment Swami congratulated me I knew all would be well. I knew he was with me all the time. It was Swamiji. He did it for me. The good thing about here is that Swamji would always let you know the outcome of your moves,” she said to me in Twi. Dreams not only led them to the new religion but also help to anchor devotees’ faith in their ­communities. “So that I Too Would See Things:” The Lure of the Transcendental Almost every devotee mentioned some deficiency within his/her former church, which made them seek a higher quality of spiritual life that they found in the Hindu community. These deficiencies included the staleness of their churches’ teachings, the hypocrisy of leaders and some followers, their worldliness, and the lack of adequate and consistent tutorship in the scriptures. They also mentioned the absence of “life” or “heat” (spiritual fervor) in the church, and the absence of living spiritual masters to provide personal spiritual mentorship. Because of these deficiencies they did not feel as “near to God” as they did being Hindus. But what most of them stressed was the quest for transcendental knowledge, experience, and ability, which they hoped to satisfy, and actually did satisfy when they became Hindus. Experiencing transcendental reality for them was the epitome of spiritual life. Both temple communities believe that such practices as mantra chanting, meditating and other yogic disciplines, darshana, enjoying the mentorship of a guru, and communal reading of texts enhance the quality of one’s spiritual life. Most importantly, these lead one to experiencing paranormal phenomena. This was the decisive factor for six devotees of the Hare Krishna community, though others, too, stressed its subsidiary role. Prabhu Srivas was one of those for whom it was decisive. He joined the Hare Krishna community initially because he hoped he would “develop” an innate capacity for experiencing out-of-body phenomena there. He described how earlier ghost encounters generated a desire in him to reunite with his dead mother and set the tone for his spiritual quest: I used to see ghosts as a child. I saw ghosts three times. The third ghost was my mother’s. Not long after she died, she called me early one morning and said she was going somewhere and that I should join her later. That encounter influenced me greatly, especially her words, and I reflected on



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the experience for a long time . . . Where was she going to? How was that place like? . . . I wanted to have a sense of that spiritual realm she said she was going into. Because of this I became an altar boy for a Roman Catholic father, but when I would ask him such questions he would say I was too young for such knowledge. I developed a keen interest in transcendental literature. I read about souls, ghosts, “astral travel” and experiences, and heavenly bodies. And the more I read these books the stronger I had the desire to have these experiences.

He described how this desire led him to the Hare Krishna community: First, I joined Eckanker [an eastern religious group] after school. One day, while describing the plane of souls at a conference our Eckanker leader mentioned that some beautiful flute music played there constantly. During question time, a Krishna devotee asked him who he thought the source of that sweet music was, and when the speaker could not explain, the devotee continued with an impressive exposition on Krishna as the source of that music, which impressed me much. He also said that only devotees of Krishna realized that higher truth. I could not even wait for the conference to end before approaching him. After a chat he gave me a book, The Science of Self-Realization and as I opened it, the first picture I saw was Krishna’s. By the time I had completed the reading of this book I knew this was where I would experience the transcendental reality I had been seeking . . . I cannot give you the details of my spiritual experiences as a devotee. That’s not an achievement to be bragged about. It is just by his grace. I can only say that my spiritual life has advanced beyond what I expected here.

This female devotee described in English her motivation to join the community in terms of a quest for transcendental knowledge: First, I was a Catholic, but when we would go to Church the priests would not tell us everything . . . For example I always believed that, as human beings we would only live in this world for a short time and die . . . So I always wanted to know what was going to happen to me when I died . . . Osofos don’t explain such things to you . . . But that day [at a sankirtan] the Krishna people said so many things about death and what happens after . . . That was what made me feel that if I joined the church I would have insights into many spiritual things.

A younger devotee described being “hooked” on Indian movies as a child. He said the films stimulated an interest in psychic phenomena in him, which translated later into a keen appetite for occult literature, especially of the orient. He also tried practicing some of the things he read about. When he was “getting nowhere,” he joined the Sokka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect and later, the Ananda Marga before settling with Hare Krishna. Explaining his move, he said he did not really understand what being a

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devotee entailed at the time of his initial contact with the community. But the strong feelings of “being near to God” and participating in the transcendental realm with Krishna when he chanted and read the scriptures have strongly influenced his decision to remain a follower. The ability to control sensual appetites, which he described as “no mean feat,” also made him feel there was something spiritual backing him constantly: Practicing this religion is not easy; no ordinary person can do this. To not eat meat, to not drink, to not have sex . . . Not any ordinary person can do this. This makes me feel that some power is constantly behind, guiding my ways.

A rural female devotee first described the decisive influence of the teaching about Kali Yuga on her conversion. While describing her strict Christian upbringing during a later conversation, she mentioned how her constant yearning for a deeper kind of religious experience inspired her spiritual odyssey through the Mozama Disco Church and Eckanker before joining the Hare Krishna finally. In a mixture of Twi and Ewe she described why she remained with the community: The spirit in us is like a battery that must be charged regularly. Each time I felt like my spiritual battery was running low, I would join another church, a church where the spirit is there. At a point I felt like I needed to advance and start seeing things [experiencing transcendental phenomena] That was exactly the time I found this church. But a particular experience made me decide to remain here. It was kirtan and we were chanting and dancing. Suddenly I felt like something was filling me up and lifting me off the ground. I just felt light suddenly, as if I was soaring above the clouds. It was not a trance. Just a spiritual high, and it felt good and very satisfying. After the whole incident, some calmness descended on me and stayed with me for a long time. I had never felt that way before . . . Right now I believe I cannot feel any more spiritually fulfilled than I am as a devotee here . . . And here, the paths to God are so many.

Adzuki, a woman who retailed the incense that the community produced, initially joined the community because the idea of God in image form appealed to her. But she has remained a member also because the pervasive, “all-wrapping” nature of devotion to Krishna makes her constantly “feel near to God” and induces transcendental experiences, such as visions: Hare Krishna is not like our churches where after Sunday service, that’s it, you don’t touch the bible till the next Sunday . . . Your whole being is in it here. It is an everyday, every moment religion. Cooking in the kitchen, your mind is on the lord. In the bathroom bathing you are playing a mantra on the cassette. On the bus to work, your hands are on japa in your pocket . . . .



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Makes you feel kind of very spiritual and always near to God . . . That’s why we see more visions here than when we were in our churches. You see visions when your mind is always on the lord (Interview in Pidgin English).

These devotees have remained followers of the Hare Krishna community because they expected and realized spiritually up-lifting experiences that were beyond the experiences of nominal Christianity. In the monastery the prospect of “developing” her third eye was the main motivation for a devotee like Awu, a female, and four others to join and remain followers. The transcendental episodes described in “The Third Eye,” (a book by Lobsang Rampa), inspired Awu to develop her third eye, too. Accordingly she developed interest in “mystical things.” Not even discouraging comments of her church pastor could stop her. Awu’s first encounter with Swamiji convinced her that transcendental experience was a possibility for her as a Hindu: That day he was holding a bible. I wondered what a swami was doing with a Bible . . . During the conversation he asked me where God was. I said, “Up there,” looking up. “No, God is here,” he pointed to his heart . . . “Everybody has Bhagavan [God] in him. If you develop you can be like him . . . Be born spiritual and you do not have to depend on a priest. You can do all these on your own.”

Awu said ever since she began to engage in yogic meditation and to chant regularly to Shiva, she has become more spiritual and has sensed some development in her intuitive abilities. She saw visions of Swamiji constantly and has a premonition about major future happenings in her life. Narrating his story in Ga, an elderly devotee described how joined the community because he wanted to devote the rest of his life to “spiritual things.” He said old age was a time suitable for spiritual pursuits because “at that stage you have completed your social obligations and you are nearing your death so you must prepare spiritually.” He described how fulfilled he was spiritually in the monastery, though still loosely affiliated with his Presby church that would bury him when he died: I feel closer to God than I have ever felt all my life. Before I came here I was very worldly . . . I was always hoping for the good things in life. Now I have become less worldly because in my mind I have demolished the body and so feel no need to satisfy it. I have become more serving, too, because I understand that service to your fellow man is service to God . . . And also I do not fear death as I used to because there is nothing like death. It’s only the destruction of this body. My spirit will live on. All these give me a peace of mind that I never felt before. If I should fall and die at the moment, I know I am ready.

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What seemed to appeal most to this devotee was the spiritual independence that accrues to being a Hindu: You see, this religion has a lot of good things. One thing it does to help devotees is to open our eyes to deeper truths that we never knew before. Before I became a Hindu, I depended solely on pastors for spiritual growth and needs. When Awo [his wife] would not give birth, it was Osofo [Christian pastors] whom we called to lead us in prayers. Whenever I would have a bad dream, it was Osofo. When we were ill, it was Osofo . . . It was always Osofo, so that, I could not cultivate spiritual power myself. Spiritually I was not self-sufficient. But I discovered here that we all have a certain inner energy in us that we can tap into to develop mystical insights ourselves. What is good about Hinduism is that it has taught me the techniques, like yoga, ascetic practices, and meditation . . . All these help me to tap into that energy . . . And I feel I am advancing. I see things all the time . . . And I do this all by yourself.

Other devotees described signs of the “third eye” that have consolidated their faith in the community. For instance, Prof. Torto stressed how Swamiji’s miraculous healing of his daughter motivated him to become a member of the monastery. But he also described how fulfilled he was spiritually and said signs of his developing “the third eye” have really cemented his decision to remain a Hindu: I feel my spiritual life is on track. Sometimes I would be there and sit down to do my breathing exercises and meditation. Then I would sense this cool calm sensation descending over me. At that time I would become oblivious to my surroundings, feeling lost, my mind focused only on Bhagavan. It happens all the time. There is a sensation of yourself being filled by some force and sometimes you keep hearing this sound huuuuu in your ears for a long time . . . . You will know it’s not ordinary. It’s energy in all of us. Gifted or not, if you learn to harness this you too can have similar experiences. That’s what Hinduism has that other churches don’t have . . . 

And when I asked whether transcendental experiences were necessary and why they were, Prof. Torto explained, uncovering other aspects of his motivations: It is part of growing spiritually. It is a sign that you are getting nearer and nearer to the maker. This is what being on the path means. And it fortifies you because you too begin to participate in the transcendental realm. You attain qualities of the spirit beings. And you have this sense that you are in control of both your physical and spiritual environment. This gift is there for all that desire to have it and are willing to go through the discipline. Elsewhere the Osofo [Christian pastors] and elders may have it while you would never be able to (Interview in English).



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A woman said Christian churches knew the “secrets” to helping their followers advance spiritually but deliberately withheld these so that their followers would always depend on them spiritually. She has remained a Hindu because, “Hinduism is not selfish”: There is access to all the mystical techniques here. It’s all is up to you to use them. If you were willing to go through the disciplines, you would soon start seeing mystical things (Interview in English).

The ethos of individuation in contemporary Ghanaian society is spawning a corresponding religious culture. Individuals are now more concerned about their personal spiritual advancement than merely belonging to the family church as a social obligation. The stress on a higher quality of personal spiritual life and transcendental experience is a collorary to this development. The Hindu communities appeal to people because they claim to have the techniques that enhance spiritual advancement, including experiencing transcendental reality. In addition, experiencing transcendental reality has a strong cultural appeal in Ghana. Mystical experience is sought after for insights it provides into spiritual and natural mysteries, leading to one’s having more control over the environment. It is a sign of spiritual advancement or of divine favor. Demonstrating that one is in tune with the divine evokes awe, respect, and sometimes fear from one’s adversaries. This could even become the basis of spiritual careers such as healing, charismatic religious leadership, soothsaying, or becoming a sorcerer. But culturally, transcendental experience is believed to be possible only for individuals with the requisite knowledge to tap into Onyame’s (God’s) powers (Akyeampong and Obeng, 1995:483). These include persons born with special intuitive powers, often described as having been “born with it,” persons possessed randomly by spirits or abducted by mystical beings called mmotia who transfer mystical powers to them, or persons called to priesthood by deities (Busia, 1972:215; Asare-Opoku, 1978:73). So, a spiritual quality or an experience that is highly desired culturally is normally available to only a select few. The appeal of Hindu communities therefore derives strength from the fact that their rituals make the possibility of transcendental experiences available to any ordinary person. For this reason, even Christians who aspire to enjoying a higher quality of spiritual life are sometimes inclined to believe that joining Hindu communities increased their chances of realizing this spiritual aspiration. Five devotees in Swamiji’s temple said they were “born with it” and mentioned among their motivations to join the community and remain as

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members “developing our innate powers.” Odeke, a young male devotee in his early thirties, was one of these people. In an earlier chat he had described how he was able to “cast out” witchcraft from witches, interpret dreams for people, and foresee future events because of his Hindu powers. In this conversation he revealed the nexus between his being born with spiritual powers and his becoming a Hindu. Jamra (Swami’s son) had just chided Odeke for pulling up a Tulasi weed on the temple’s compound without chanting the appropriate mantra: Albert: So tell me more about the Tulasi. Odeke: It’s a very spiritually powerful plant. I even used to heal with it. It’s now and here that I am learning why it was that effective. Albert: Are you a healer? Odeke: Well, not really, but I aspire towards becoming one. I was born spiritual, I mean I have healing powers. If I am serious I can develop them. I can obtain the secrets to mystical powers . . . And I am learning so much in this church. Albert: How would you know you had healing powers? Odeke: My mother said when I was born a medicine man had said I was a reincarnated ancestor who was a healer and he predicted that I would become a great healer if I tapped into these powers. As I grew up I began to see the signs myself. Albert: Like what? Odeke: At five years I pulled a rooster’s head off its neck and dissected it in the same way that traditional priests did it . . .  Albert: Really? What else did you do? Odeke: By seven I was already healing with herbs. I would go into the bush, pick herbs and prepare medicine and for some reason, it always worked. I prepared concoctions and charms to drive witches away from people’s homes in Shama, our village. Albert: Ooh, I see . . . So how did you come here? (Interview in Pidgin ­English)

Odeke described how he had a trance-like experience in which he felt his body suspended in space. He believed the reading of The Science of SelfRealization, a Hare Krishna text that a devotee gave him earlier in the day induced the experience. Odeke joined the Hare Krishna later, but would soon leave because “even though they have a good church they do not like to talk about the third eye and developing of powers. They only show you to love Krishna.” Similarly Afi, a female disciple who had earlier narrated a revelatory dream that completed her transition from Mozama Disco to Hinduism, also described how she fulfilled her desire to develop her powers by becoming a Hindu:



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Because all my mother’s children were dying like that [always dying] I lived with a priest in his shrine for protection. At one time the priest discovered that I was born spiritual. He made three incisions on my face and put black powder in them. That way the powers will remain in me so that I could develop them and see things. And from then that was all I sought to do. Even in secondary school I was deep in the scripture union . . . And my friends said when I prayed it reverberated and the walls shook. I would say our soccer team was going to win and they would win. When I said they would lose they lost. I even foretold my grandfather’s death . . . I joined Mozama Disco later because they have powers in that church [Mosama Disco Christo is a spiritual church reputed for its magico- religious rituals]. But Mozama Disco was not good for me. They keep all the secrets to the men and elders, not women. Being a woman I would never be able to develop there. That’s why I left and joined Hinduism. I went to Swami when I learned he had India powers and after being there for some time, I approached him and said “Paa Kwesi, I am ready. Initiate me.” And he did. Here I develop because no one does anything on my behalf. During arti [ritualized worship of the sacred image], I hold the lamp myself; at hawan, I pour ghee into the fire. I chant by myself and I eat the prasad. At home I have my own altar . . . And always I chant, “Om nama Shivaya” and do yoga. All these things are good because they tap into the powers within me and make me see things a lot.

Badu, another devotee, described how an encounter with a devotee of Swamiji ended with him becoming a Hindu so that he could develop his innate spiritual powers: From birth, there were signs that I had something spiritual in me. My birth itself was difficult. Then, when I turned five I became unusually stubborn. When my parents consulted a medicine man he said a spirit possessed me. He also said I would be a great spiritualist someday and that I had reincarnated from India. So, growing up I knew I had powers I could develop and I wanted a guru from India or to go there myself for the secrets to develop. For this reason I first joined the Divine Light Society [another Hindu community] because they had a guru who I thought could put me through some discipline. But that guru is far away in America.

He went on to describe the events that led to his joining the monastery: Something happened . . . I was walking along the streets in Community One [a part of Tema] one night and I saw a man. He walked as if there was a force driving him. “Who is that man?” I asked. “He is one of them. Don’t you see the way he is walking? He is drunk with Hindu power . . . If you play with him he can make you look like a fool by casting a spell on you,” they told me. “One of whom?” I asked. “Ah he is a Hindu. He worships that guru at Odokor,” they said. So, I approached the man and he directed me to Swamiji. In fact when I visited Swamiji I liked the man at once . . . In 1988 Krishnananda came here and I went to his feet and was initiated . . . It feels

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Adiza, a female devotee, felt that her unusual proclivity for liking religion and spiritual things was an indication of her spiritual gifts. Her compassion for suffering people also made her aspire to becoming a healer. She said India attracted her and she always wanted to go there to “develop,” because powers from India were not really as evil as many people thought: I used to fantasize a lot about going to India. People think those mystical powers and powerful medicine from India was juju. But you see that’s not true. Mystical power in itself is not a bad thing . . . It is the way one uses it that matters. There is some strength in Indian power and I always felt I could use such power positively if I had it . . . I mean to use it to help suffering people by healing them, for example.

At first Adiza joined the Hare Krishna community in Accra so that she could cultivate her spiritual power. She transferred to Swamiji’s temple in Tema because she now lives in Tema. For these devotees Swamiji’s Hinduism was a power source into which they are tapping in order to develop their own. The Guru Factor In Hindu traditions the guru is a guide, a living exemplar of renunciation and devotion; a teacher of the path of devotion, an efficacious link between the disciple and God; and a mentor, all rolled into one (Narayan 1989). More crucially the guru is God in human form. As a devotee of Swamiji put it, “Here, physically present in this world, is a human being that is God! And this can be found only in Hinduism.” The prospects of having a guru in one’s life to give personal inner guidance through dreams, inner prompting and other spiritual techniques is a strong motivation for conversion for devotees seeking spiritual development. Interestingly, in spite of the strong guru tradition of the Hare Krishna, the guru factor did not emerge as an important source of the tradition’s attraction for devotees. Almost all the devotees interviewed said something general about their guru and when they would reminisce about their initiation they would talk about the officiating guru in glowing terms. They said they never took an important decision without their guru’s endorsement; they chanted his mantra (the guru pranam) every day and often saw him in dreams. But they said they did not know much



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about the guru tradition before becoming followers so it did not influence their initial decisions. Secondly, the guru factor did not seem to seriously affect devotees’ sense of commitment to the group. In spite of the glowing terms in which they talked about gurus, it was evident that they viewed them as being too far away because they live in America and in India and visited only occasionally. According to the Hare Krishna tradition a guru need not be always physically present to the disciple. But devotees in Ghana seem unhappy about this arrangement. At one time Devaki, a female devotee, who spoke to me in Pidgin English complained about the behavior of her jealous husband. She believed the problem was spiritual and wished the guru were present so that he could advise her on what to do: “But he is here only one time in the year,” Devaki lamented. When I urged Devaki to write to the guru, she answered, “Yes, I can, but he has a lot of devotees writing to him. So he would take a long time to reply. I guess I’d have to wait till he comes.” Another devotee, who said he sometimes had difficult spiritual dreams that required the guru’s presence to explain, vented his frustrations: If the guru were here, I would just go and talk to him to help me. But this is not the situation, so I write down all my dreams until he makes his annual visit. Sometimes I get tired of waiting. And when he comes he stays for a week and is off . . . We do not all get to meet with him in private.

Indeed when the guru visited while I was in the field, he stayed only for a week during which he had so many programs that many devotees could not consult with him. A frustrated devotee lamented to me in a mixture of English and Twi: Some things must change in this community. [Like what? I asked]. Like this guru thing. Every temple must have a guru around. Sometimes you have an issue and you need the guru’s view right away . . . But because he is not here, you have to wait for months for him to get your letter and reply, or wait for him to come . . . And when he comes, he is here for a week or two, then fum he is off. You don’t even get to see him. The guru is supposed to be our Agenkwa, [our savior], yet he is there and we are here. Look at the monastery people. Their guru is here.

The clue to understanding this frustration lies in the indigenous term, Agenkwa, which is how some local devotees referred to the guru. The notion of a guru in the specific Hindu sense, that is, a God-man on earth is novel to Ghanaian devotees. The term Agenkwa connotes the cultural lens through which they view this Vaishnava symbol, and their expectations of the guru. Oduyoye describes an Agenkwa:

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chapter seven The Agenkwa means the one who rescues, who holds your life in safety, takes you out of a life-denying situation and places you in a life-affirming one. The rescuer plucks you from a dehumanizing ambience and places you in a position where you can grow towards authentic humanity. The Agenkwa gives you back your life in all of its fullness (1986:98).

In daily discourses the term is used ambiguously and generally to describe anyone or anything that rescues a person from a bad situation. But, mostly it denotes a salvific spiritual figure. Ideally the Agenkwa must be physically present and available for consultation to effectively dispense the duties, which include spiritual protection, daily spiritual guidance, dream interpretation and psychic functions. In the local Christian community, where Jesus is described in these terms though he is not physically present, the belief is that his very absence, that is, his death, is instrumental to his saving role. Jesus functions as Agenkwa through his dying on the cross (through his blood). Accustomed to the local religious practice of consulting savior figures each time they face a crisis and getting instant solutions, Hare Krishna devotees seem frustrated by the fact that they would have a living spiritual master, yet he would not be within easy reach to address their daily spiritual issues. He “must be there” to deal with our issues daily, a devotee said. For his devotees, Swamiji’s status as the first and only African guru, his physical presence and ready accessibility to them was an important factor they considered in joining his community and in remaining followers. Seventeen of my respondents mentioned this factor, six saying it was one of their major considerations. Seven of them said they chose the monastery over the Hare Krishna community because of the proximity of guru Kwesi. Revealing his Methodist background in a new light, a devotee explained how the prospect of having a living spiritual master was the main reason he joined the community: As a Methodist I believed God to be a mystery. Thinking about the whole thing over and over again this was what gave me the sense that to understand God’s nature I would need to be in touch with someone who has experienced him personally . . . That sent me looking for somebody, some master who had experienced God and understood him so that he would teach me about God. First, I considered joining Krishna people, but someone said their gurus are away all the time. So, I joined this church so that I can see my guru always and grow faster spiritually . . . Now . . . Swamiji is like a driver pushing me from behind spiritually on the right path to my source, which is God. Without a spiritual master one could still develop through his or her activities but you could easily go astray or backslide. That’s why we hear about pastors doing so many evil things. I feel that Swamiji is always



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there backing me spiritually in all I do. That’s what it means to me to be a child of God.

A devotee said he had wanted to belong to a Hindu community from his childhood because he learned there were spiritual masters in Hinduism who could teach him to develop his powers. He joined the Self Realization Fellowship adopting Yogananda, the leader, as his guru. He would leave them for the monastery when he learned it had a guru “who was here in Ghana.” Similarly another devotee explained in Ewe how the quest to “grow spiritually” under the tutorship of a guru sent him “looking” until he met Swamiji: I wanted to grow spiritually and I knew I could grow on my own. But if you are at the foot of a guru it is always better than trying to do it on your own. Spiritual truths don’t come easily to the ordinary person, it could take you forever. First I was in the Keepers of the Flame Fraternity [a mystical group based in California, USA] But I realized that Elizabeth Clare Robertson, our leader, was not really a guru. Then I joined Sai Baba people briefly . . . I even considered Krishna people . . . What pushed me away was their gurus not being always around. I was really excited that Kwesi was right here under my nose. I am happier here because my spiritual life is in the hands of my guru. Churches like Presby and Methodist don’t grow spiritually because they have no living master.

A man who wanted to develop his third eye under the guidance of a Hindu guru described how the distant guru of the Divine Light Society constantly refused to initiate him when he visited the community in Ghana: “He would come here every year but when I would want him to initiate me he would say I was not ready. The last time he came I followed him all the way to Takoradi, but he refused.” The man contacted Guru Kwesi after hearing of him through his “working” stories and after a six-month trial period Kwesi determined he was ready and initiated him as a member and as his disciple a year later. Comparing Swamiji to Jesus and herself to one of his disciples, Auntie Mabel, a devotee of the monastery, believes she has an edge over Christian people, being a disciple of a living spiritual master (Swamiji): One other reason I cannot leave this temple is that I feel like I am having a taste of how Jesus’ disciples felt because like them I, too, I am the disciple of Swamiji, a guru and a God-man just like Jesus. The difference however is that Swamiji is still here, accessible to us, teaching us the way. This is why we feel more privileged than Christians do because they no longer have their spiritual master around. Jesus died and went to heaven. In fact all the spiritual masters of the churches [religions] are dead. Only Hinduism still has living God-men (Interview in Togolese Ewe).

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Similarly, explaining his preference for the monastery, in English, Prof. described Hinduism as the only religion on earth where devotees still “meet God” directly through a spiritual master. He also described Ghana as “spiritually blessed” to have the first African guru: “We lead Africa in everything, even in spiritual matters, because the only African guru is here with us.” Male devotees generally emphasized the guru’s roles as spiritual guide, mentor and advisor, a teacher of mystical secrets, and a personal spiritual protector. They stressed the importance of the guru’s close proximity to them, which enabled them to see him as often as they would want to. For the women, Swamiji’s importance spilled over from the spiritual roles into the sociological and psychological. The litany of terminologies they used to refer to Swamiji testifies to their evaluation of his importance in their lives: our God, our savior, our husband, our advisor, the children’s father or grandfather, our brother, the grey-haired old man, etc. Female devotees were more spontaneous in expressing the value they attached to the guru. When I asked a male devotee why he thought the guru was important, a woman quickly jumped in, in Twi; “Should you have to ask that question? . . . Eeei, as for Swami we are all here because of him ooh.” She rambled on and on about all the good things Swami does for them: dream interpretations, financial advising, helping them directly, and calling on them at home just to see how they were doing. Another woman summed it all up in English: “As for Swamiji it is because he is, that’s why we too are,” meaning their existence was meaningless without the guru in their lives. In wresting back some control over their lives disrupted by years of internal socio-economic and political turmoil and the effects of 21st century globalization, Ghanaian people are frantically seeking after symbols of spiritual power for protection, assurance, and deliverance. Some of the people whose conversion stories I featured above have turned to powerful Hindu spiritual symbols for answers, adding these to their already existing repertoires of spiritually protective symbols. In considering to join their Hindu communities and to remain in them these people were influenced by folk theories connecting Hinduism with power, dream revelations of Hindu power, and their own actual encounters with the efficacy of Hindu spiritual power. Some other people sought to fulfill cultural spiritual aspirations; experiencing transcendental reality and developing their innate spiritual powers. They tapped into Hindu powers to realize these spiritual goals.



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The Appeal of Hindu Teachings “How many people have you been able to chat with so far?” Prabhu Tagoe, the leader of the Hare Krishna preachers, quizzed me in Ga on the morning of the second day of my interviews at the temple, his facial expression exuding eagerness. “Five so far,” I said. “How many of them made reference to the books?” He went on. “Almost everybody,” I answered. “Really!” He sounded amused. “Yes,” I assured him. “Then it’s the books . . . People read the books and they pick up on some lessons they can apply to their lives and feel they must explore this further,” he commented. “If the book you are writing is going to have subtitles (maybe he meant chapters), teachings should be one of them,” he advised after a brief moment of reflection. Tagoe had a point, for many devotees explained the appeal their Hindu traditions held for them in terms of how they are able to make sense of their experiences in terms of Hindu teachings. Some devotees went as far as suggesting that the clergy of their Christian churches deliberately hid the “deeper truths,” giving them watered-down versions of spiritual mysteries that theological insights of Hindu communities have enabled them to unravel. Other devotees said Hindu teachings serve as better vehicles for the clearer expression of indigenous religious beliefs. Devotees of Krishna invariably identified three theological themes as having the most decisive influence on them to become and remain Hindus. These are the notion of the body as essentially non-material, which finds expression in the popular Hare Krishna saying, “you are not body but soul;” the doctrine of karma, which they associated with Kali Yuga; and the Hare Krishna perspectives on the nature of God. “You Are Not this Body But Soul” Boldly engraved on a gold metal plate on the entrance door to the Hare Krishna temple at Medie are the words, “You are not body but soul,” a key theological notion of the community underscoring its understanding of humans as essentially spiritual beings. Chibozo, a young male temple devotee, who spoke English with a heavy Ewe accent, was drawn to the community by this idea. Born of devout Catholic parents, Chibozo’s search for answers to spiritual questions would evolve into an eclectic religious attitude from his childhood: I attended mass all the time. But I was always curious in a spiritual way. I felt I needed answers to many questions. Today I am in this church, tomorrow

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chapter seven I join another, and the next day I am in two or three churches at the same time. But none gave me a satisfying answer . . . And there was always this strong urge in me to develop spiritually, to experience God personally.

Chibozo’s spiritual quest would take a new turn when he moved to Accra to seek his fortunes after finishing school in the village. As he was living alone for the first time, and confronting the difficult urban life in the harsh socio-economic climate of the mid-1980s, questions that arose out of mere childhood curiosity became crucial to Chibozo’s sense of identity and purpose in life: I still thought about spiritual things. But this time, I focused more on myself because everything was just becoming basabasa in my face [my world seemed chaotic]. My father used to say to me, “If you don’t know who you are and where you come from, then you can’t know where you are heading.” Each time I would reflect on these words, I would begin to wonder about whom I was, why I was in the world, and where I was heading.

Within a year, Chibozo had switched to three churches: Aladura (a spiritual church), the Maharishi Movement, and Transcendental Meditation, the last two furnishing him with the general ideological settings in which the assumptions of bhakti Hinduism underlying the Hare Krishna practices would later make sense to him. While listening to a Hare Krishna devotee debate with others on “Contemplation,” a television forum for religious discussions, Chibozo came across the answer that would also lead him to the group: He was answering a question, when I heard him say, “You are not your body, you are a spirit soul.” Later I pondered the statement seriously. It made sense to me spiritually. It was the answer I was seeking all along. It made me understand my life. It dawned on me that the reason I had been seeking after spiritual things was because my nature was essentially spiritual. There was one other thing. He quoted a lot from the Gita. That made me feel I should look at the Gita more seriously. And the more I read, the newer the insights I discovered. Then, I started going to their meetings. Soon I realized this was what TM and Maharishi had prepared me for. But I noticed too that Hare Krishna was deeper and that made me want to remain here (Interview in English).

It was not clear from the outset of his narrative why Bhakta Kodjo, a 24 year-old male devotee from Togo, joined the Hare Krishna temple: I heard a rumor that it was a good church, so I sought their location and joined them. But I backslid after two years. Then I came back, stayed for two years and left again, this time for seven years.



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As the story unfolds it becomes clear how some unfortunate happenings in his life would cause Kodjo to seriously reflect on life and its meaning. Drawing on the Hare Krishna teaching that human beings are essentially spiritual and that it is worthier to pursue spiritual goals, Kodjo would return to the temple community to pursue spiritual life: When I inherited all of my dead father’s property, my elder sister was green with envy, so she wanted to kill me with bad medicine. When that was not possible she made gendarmes [policemen] arrest and torture me for three months by electrocuting my scrotum. In prison I started to reflect seriously on my whole life. I wondered whether property was worth all that pain. When I left prison I lived in Accra for a while, but the drought had come, there was no food and I could also not find work. Yet I could not go to back to the village. My sister was there. Then, the old questions revisited me. Who really was I and what was the purpose of my life? Each time I would reflect on these issues, I would hear a silent response “You are not body, but soul.” That was when I remembered the Hare Krishna teaching. It was as if Krishna was answering the questions. Then I wondered why at all I left the temple. So, I came back . . . to pursue my spiritual destiny (Interview in Togolese Ewe).

When a job transfer from the village sent him to Accra, Seth Torto, a 45 year-old male who said he grew up in a village and was accustomed to the life there, was plunged into a state of mental agony: “I had this aversion to city life. So, I was like a fish cast onto dry land.” He, too, said the hard times in Accra were one reason he did not want to go there: Accra was burning at that time. The soldiers were on the scene and there were six to six curfews. Cost of living was so high and the drought had begun. Life in Accra was unbearably difficult. I pleaded with my boss, but he would not listen. So I arrived in Accra very reluctant and confused. Everything about the city confused me.

This was when he too began to grapple with existential questions: Then I started going over my whole life, our world and the nature of things in general. I wondered, “Why was everything going basabasa [chaotic] with me and in the world?’ What are we as human beings at all? Why do we have to go through all these in life? What was our real purpose in the world?” You see, these are deep questions and they confront you when things become rough, but you can read line after line in the bible, and you won’t find an answer that would satisfy you completely. And as for Osofos, they would only tell you to go and pray about it (Interview in English).

The answer would come from a copy of The Science of Self-Realization, a Hare Krishna publication that circulates widely in Ghana. A devotee preacher handed one to Seth on his way to work:

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chapter seven I liked the idea that we were not of this body but spirit souls who had derailed on our way to God and so must seek him. This booklet made me feel that I should stop worrying about my physical self and rather focus on spiritual truths which are more lasting. It answered all my other questions and even went further. The next time I saw the devotee, I asked him “Hey, where did you get that book from?” Then he spoke to me about the Hare Krishna and directed me to the temple. On the day that I went there, the guru had come from America, and he preached that day . . . I had never heard a man preach like that before . . . . His wisdom blew me away and that I was how I too started (Interview in English).

When Sunita, an orphan, visited the temple for the first time, it was because she believed that her parents’ tragic death and her unfeeling stepmother’s bad treatment of her were the result of a curse. She had come hoping “they had prayers for my curse to go away.” What made Sunita remain to be a devotee, however, was the Hare Krishna teaching on the non-material nature of the human being. For her that notion revealed where the lasting solution to her problems lay: That day the guru from Abrokyiri [America] came. And he preached. And what he said directly spoke to me. He said our purpose in this world was spiritual because we are spiritual beings, and that if we focused on attaining Krishna Consciousness we would not be bothered by our worldly conditions. I had a strict religious upbringing, moving from Catholic to Methodist. Even in high school, I was leader of the scripture union. But this teaching made the most impression on me. It spoke directly to my situation. So I forgot all about the curse and began to pursue a spiritual life, and that’s why I came to live in the temple (Interview in Twi).

Sunita explained her lack of concern for “all the material things people kill themselves for” in terms of the influence of “this Krishna focus on spiritual things” on her outlook on life. For some devotees like Devi, a female, the idea of the non-material self had underlying ascetic implications such as selflessness, simplicity and modesty, which resonated with her personal critique of the consumer capitalist ethos of contemporary life in Ghana. That teaching meant a lot to me. Even before I would learn about it, I would always reflect on life and wonder, “Why do we worry so much in this life about material things?” I realized that materials things did not guarantee happiness. But these days people would go through so much just to gratify their senses. They would want to have all the things in the world: houses, cars, women and all that. They would like to travel to Abrokyiri and all that. Why? I thought all that trouble was unnecessary because, if it brought happiness and contentment, people would stop at a point. All these things only cause basabasa [chaos] in our lives. I know it’s in our culture, but the truth is that, sooner or later we would all die, rich or poor, and leave all these



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things behind. We came naked and we would go naked [lyrics of a popular traditional tune] (Interview in Twi).

She described how a devotee she met on a street in Accra gave her a copy of the Back to Godhead periodical. While reading the magazine she came across the teaching. Strangely it struck her as a familiar idea. When I opened a page it was there, written boldly, so I read it and said “Ohooo ayiwa’ [there we go] that sounds familiar.” Then, it struck me that I used to think in the same way. That was what made me look at Krishna with my two eyes [more closely] . . . When I got into it proper and began to understand the teachings better, I needed no one to tell me this was the church for me. That was when I stopped eating meat.

Like Sunita, Devi attributed what she described her modest lifestyle to the reinforcement she has received from the Hare Krishna discourse. One day after worship, Janardana Das, a well-to-do transport business owner, intimated how the ideal of modesty underlying the notion of nonmateriality strongly influenced him to remain a devotee, and has become something like a creed he lives by: One cannot reject this world completely. We must all seek a livelihood and look after our families. This, we all know. When Krishna says “Renounce and focus on spiritual things” he does not mean we should totally reject wealth. He means we should use it in his service. If one uses money to help others, that’s in the service of the lord because it is to his glory. The problem with us Ghanaian people is this. We would want to be here but live like American people. So, all the wealth they grab they put to unworthy uses, buying this and that. We are too materialistic. And the Jesus, Jesus people [Pentecostals and charismatic churches] encourage it. But that’s the tendency we must check. And that was the one teaching I gained from here that guides my life (Interview in English).

He had narrated to me earlier how life problems literally drove him from church to church till he found the Hare Krishna “church.” The themes in these narratives re-echo Stillson Judah’s (1974) countercultural thesis, which sheds considerable light on our understanding of the success of Hare Krishna in America in the 1960s. The American youth of the 1960s, Judah argues, already had counter-cultural ideas— they had began to question the value orientations underlying the consumerism and materialism of American culture, and ISKCON appealed to them because its teachings resonated with the issues they were concerned about (­Stillson Judah, 1974). There is no such counter-cultural movement in Ghana in the very well-organized sense of the American phenomenon of the 1960s. But some Ghanaian people have beliefs we can

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describe as being ­counter-cultural in the sense that they, too, question the ­hierarchically-structured and status-oriented Ghanaian world and resent the modern preoccupation with material prosperity and the corrupting tendencies this breeds in people. Typically it is working class people who, disadvantaged by their own marginal positions, tend to resent the status quo and those who stand to benefit from it most in Ghana. This fact notwithstanding, even some well-to-do individuals such as Janardana Das, who stand to gain from the materialistic culture and the modern changes, are alarmed by the emerging consumer capitalistic ethos in Ghana, especially the obsession with acquiring the Euro-American symbols of modernity. For these devotees, the prosperity gospel of the charismatic churches contributes to ­materialism. A religious tradition that proposes that material pursuits, sensory and sensual enjoyment is ultimately empty in meaning seems more appealing. In the idea of the non-materiality of the soul and notions of renunciation that the Hare Krishna espouses they find a philosophical or theological foundation for their perspectives on life in general and Ghanaian society in particular. Whether it was younger devotees such as Chibozo going through a process of spiritual soul-searching, older devotees facing the challenges of urban life, unemployment, hunger, and starvation, or people questioning modern Ghanaian attitudes and value orientations, all these narrators were experiencing some kind of value disorientation. They were in need of a value system that would make their lives more meaningful. The overwhelming effect of the “hard” economic times, personal difficulties, the contemporary changes, the influx of alien, mainly American, symbols, and the mad rush for material possessions provide the general context for this value disorientation. The Hare Krishna community’s teachings promised an alternative lifestyle, a spiritual world, or a “microcosmogony” that would enable these devotees to engage the chaos and hardships of the growing modern (American style) materialistic ethos in Ghana. “To Know God” The phrase, “To know God,” has two main meanings in Ghanaian religious parlance: to be devoutly religious, and in a more literal sense to have a keen appreciation of the Supreme Being’s mysterious nature. Both meanings are related because a devout religious vocation is usually predicated on a keen appreciation of God’s nature. A theme that emerged from the



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narratives of some devotees was how they joined the Hare Krishna community or remained in it because they “knew God there.” They meant that the Hare Krishna community’s conceptualization of God as Krishna and the liturgical expressions of this belief deepened their understanding of God’s nature and his relationship with human beings, a subject of great speculation in the local religious culture. The devotees said, as Krishna, God’s nature is depicted more graphically—he has a personality. He is cast in an amiable and approachable image, as a boy, a man, and a lover, and he is very accessible to human beings. They argued that the community’s vision of God uncovered the mysteries surrounding God’s nature in traditional religion and Christianity. Some devotees also said “knowing God” was a spiritual need of “these hard times,” and the community fulfilled this need for them. Describing his tortuous spiritual journey to the Hare Krishna “church,” Mene explained how his “knowing of God” in the community marked the end of his search for answers and the beginning of his life as a devotee: Mene: I was first a traditionalist because my parents worshipped a local deity. But at 18 years I left them for Roman Catholic. Albert: Why did you leave? Mene: I felt I needed to know more about what God was really like and I was more satisfied with the Catholic Church beliefs. They said God is up there, when a person is good and he dies he will go to him. Otherwise he will go to hell. I understood this, but doubts remained on my mind. How do I worship someone I cannot see and how should I worship him? I mean what are the means of worshipping him well? How did men like Abraham worship him so well that they spoke directly to him? The Catholic people only said God was a spirit and we must worship him in faith. So I joined Nichiren Shoshu [Buddhism]. They said God was universal, and he was within us like some energy. When you chant, you evoke that energy. When you worship him well and you die, you will reincarnate and have a better life and you will be happy. That was okay but not fully satisfying. God’s nature was still vague . . . I still could not visualize the form of that energy. The reason I joined Hare Krishna and like it was that I came to know God here. Albert: How so? Mene: The community has a more comprehensive teaching of God and this answered all my questions. Here we are taught that Krishna is spirit, but he manifests in body form, too. Krishna is a person. I see pictures of him in his kingdom and of the spiritual beings that worship him. And I see his idol, too. I mean pictures and an idol of God! Could you imagine that? And worshipping him is easy. All you need to do is to chant his names and to read the scriptures or eat prasadam and God

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chapter seven is there. So I came to know God here. You see, all the bits and pieces about God in the other religions are put together in Hare Krishna (Interview in English).

This worshipper of Tigare (a traditional cult) in Akrade village described how his curiosity about the Hindu God Krishna resulted in a better understanding of Mawu, the Supreme Being among the Ewe ethnic group and led to him becoming a Hare Krishna devotee. Nuku: That time, I was curious, so I would cross the river to the Krishna people, and we would chat [the village Krishna community lived on the other side of the Volta river]. I wanted to know about that their Hindu legba [Hindu idol, meaning Krishna]. Albert: What did you learn? Nuku: Hmm prabhu, a lot. First they said he was not a legba [small deity] but Mawuga [God in Ewe]. Yiee! [surprise] “You mean Mawuga in image form?” I was stunned. “Yes,” They said. “So is this what Mawuga looks like?” I asked, still excited. They said, “Yes.” Then they told me all about Krishna, the gopis, Radha, and how we should worship God. I was fascinated. In the end I realized that all that I knew about Mawuga before that time was only ABC [basics]. The Hare Krishna really has the secrets [deeper insights] to Mawuga’s mysterious nature. Albert: So what happened? Nuku: The whole thing changed my perspective on spiritual life. I noticed that I felt more intimate with God. From then, I could relate to somebody called God. I could see him. I had greater faith that really Mawuga was there. Whenever I would shut my eyes to pray I visualized Krishna and that gave me greater assurance. When I would pour libation and chant “Ooh Ooh! Ooh! Mawuga” [traditional chant to God during libation prayer], all I visualized was Krishna. The whole experience convinced me that the religion was good so I joined them too in 1986. Now, my faith in God is stronger. You see, in Tigare we, too, worship Mawuga, but only through legba, the smaller deities because Mawuga is the greatest of the spirits and must never be reduced to image form. But that can make you worship blindly sometimes because you don’t see the object of worship. You only see legba . . . So I never really knew what Mawuga was like. Hare Krishna religion really opened my eyes to God.

Accustomed to seeing smaller deities in concrete depictions Nuku could relate somewhat to the idea of God depicted in image form, that is, Krishna’s statue image (arca-vigraha). What overwhelmed him was the idea that the Supreme Being, who in the Tigare religion existed only in abstract concepts, was Krishna, a personal deity whose physical representation he could see and touch. This experience drew him to the community instantly and has enriched his spiritual life.



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Speaking English, this senior presbyter justified his frequent visits to the Hare Krishna temple: This is where I discovered the secrets of God’s true nature. The teachings here are comprehensive and clearer. Every facet of God’s being is covered. From his real form as a personal God, Krishna, his deep love for humankind, to all the avenues for worshipping him. Over there [the Presby church] God is still a mystery, a spirit whose ways remain unfathomed.

He also said the depth, consistency, and clarity in the Hindu scriptural teachings about God exposed the shortfalls, especially the contradictions and the lack of clarity, in Biblical teachings about God. This led him to believe that perhaps there was a conspiracy within Christianity to hide the real truths from lay worshippers. He illustrated with an example: Take the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis. When Cain Killed Abel, God cursed him, but he also said if anyone killed Cain the one would be punished seven times. Then God put a mark on Cain so that no one would kill him. And Cain went to live in Nod, east of Eden. My problem here is that if these were the children of Adam and Eve, then at that time there were only four people created in the universe, so whence come the question of someone who might kill Cain, and was Nod an empty city? You see, things like this don’t add up. You feel some facts are hidden. Maybe Adam and Eve were not the first people to be created . . . But when you read the Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, and the Gita Govinda, you feel you can never stop learning some new things about God. Each page reveals a new dimension of God’s nature and deeds clearly.

More typically, devotees connected the relevance of knowing God to their general life situations, arguing that their dependence on God’s protection and benevolence for their daily survival “in these days” made it imperative for them to fathom the mysteries surrounding his true nature. A keener insight into God’s nature translates into a more intimate relationship with him and this guarantees protection, they argued. Referring to the increased participation of people in religious activities in Ghana, a devotee commented at one time in Ewe: Most people here remain because of how the religion helps them to understand God. It is God we are all seeking after . . . Everybody in the present Ghana is seeking God . . . And why wouldn’t we, when it is only by his grace that we get by these difficult days . . . . Do you know why some Christian people especially jump from church to church and would defy pastors and seek the help of fetishes? [I said No]. It is because our churches don’t go to the depths of God’s true nature. Hare Krishna is the only church in Ghana where everything about God is out there for all.

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He went on to explain: When you read the pastimes of the lord, all aspects of God’s nature and how we should serve him are there. When you take that book [he pointed to a text written by Prabhupada with pictorial illustrations] and open it you have photos and paintings of Krishna, God! God is not a spirit. He is a p-e-rs-o-n. A man. He is Krishna and he is love. When you walk into that temple right now you will see his effigy. It is not a legba [idol]. That is God himself. So God is available everywhere here. This is where everybody comes to know God.

When I inquired of Walata, a woman who would spend hours in traffic traveling from Kpong (a Village) to Medie almost every day just to “see Krishna,” why she had to do that she replied in Krobo (an Ethnic dialect in Ghana): It is because I love God . . . And why won’t I, when he sees me through every day. We are at a point in our lives where we need God most. I am excited about this faith because I find God to be here. You show me which church you would go to and find God standing there [she pointed to Krishna’s effigy]. It is only here, only Hare Krishna. This is God’s Church because you see him everywhere in this church. Reading the pastimes, the Gita, in the temple, eating prasadam you encounter God. I used to move from church to church before I came here so that I could really understand God and get to know him. But I have stopped because all my questions have been answered. When you know God well, then you will be closer and only then will he look after you in these difficult times.

For Walata, “knowing God,” means having an intimate relationship with him and the many channels of access to Krishna facilitated this. This is also a guarantee of God’s constant protection “in these hard days.” Another devotee who at an earlier date had stressed the sense of spiritual protection Krishna provides him also described how knowing Krishna personally gives him greater assurance of his protection: Our lives depend on God’s protection so we must worship him the way he deserves but that means we must know him well. Some of us here have been elders in our churches for many years. But it was not until we came to Hare Krishna that we really understood what God was like and how we could truly serve him. You see, when you pray to God for something, you are more certain he will do it for you when you know he is a person and even know what he looks like. Being a Krishna devotee gives you that assurance that God is there for you (Interview in Ga).

He went on to describe how the devotee must be like Radha longing for God all the time:



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And they teach you how you must be as a devotee and serve God. You must seek after God like you would a lover. Seeking after him all the time, he too would cover you.

During a conversation with Kuntu, an elderly village devotee, he launched into a polemic criticizing the difficulty of relating to an impersonal Christian God: You see when you can’t imagine how a being is like you can’t easily relate to the being. How could we always be praying to a being we have not seen before? Our churches put this screen between God and us. They say God is a spirit, he has no forms, he is a mystery, and his ways are beyond our abilities to comprehend. We cannot get to him except through Jesus. They say we should accept him by faith. But faith in a God you have seen, whose ways you fully comprehend, whom you know is well-grounded faith. That’s why our faiths as Krishna devotees are stronger. And this is good for the times because faith in God is the only thing that keeps us going these days (Interview in Twi).

The diverse and sometimes conflicting characterizations of God among Ghanaian communities (as male, female, male/female, father, grandfather, mother) point to the absence of a unified notion as well as vagueness pertaining to God’s true nature. The Akan proverb, “God is one known but not fully known” expresses this sense of vagueness. Compounding this problem is the notion of an otiose God, far away in the skies, and not directly concerned with daily affairs of people. But an aspect of the Akan myth about God’s retreat following repeatedly being hit with a woman’s pestle reflects the sense of a people desiring to be near God and grappling intellectually with his true nature. According to the myth, the villagers, desiring to reach God, piled mortars on top of each other to form a ladder to heaven, but when they pulled out the bottom mortar to pile it on top and reach God the whole construction fell and killed them. So they never got to God (Asare-Opoku 1978:23–24). Gyekye suggests that the myth reflects the local belief that God is beyond the reach of human beings, and that, however much the human mind tries it cannot fully comprehend God’s ways (1998:5). I would suggest here that the typical traditional Ghanaian religious believer’s sense of God’s remoteness must sometimes be understood in terms of his unfathomable or mysterious nature, not only in terms of his absence from the world and affairs of human beings. The belief in God’s nearness to human beings forms the basis for such constant expressions: “God help me,” “If it is the will of God,” “If God grants permission,” “I leave it in the hands of God,” which people mostly

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make at the start of their undertakings. God is believed to be near and in people’s lives, but at the same time remote because his nature is incomprehensible. Christianity and Islam therefore reinforced the notion of a God more concerned with moral questions and with people’s daily affairs rather than with humans’ knowledge of God. But Horton is certainly right in suggesting that Islam and Christianity introduced the direct worship of God into African communities (Horton 1976:482–497). As Meyer has noted, the notion of the three persons of the Trinity; “God the father,” “the son,” and “the Holy Spirit,” is central to the local Ghanaian Christianity. The son, Jesus, decribed as “a gentle and loving figure,” is cast as worshippers’ main source of succor and direction in life. Characterized as a force—sunsum—in Akan, rather than a person, the Holy Spirit is the central figure (Meyer 1999:73–82). In Pentecostal Christianity the goal of worshippers is to receive and partake of this sacred power (See Round 1982:79). But the old questions pertaining to God the Father persist. For these Krishna devotees, Christianity espoused a vague concept of God. Believed to be essentially an impersonal spirit with no visible images, God’s form remains unknown, his ways still mysterious. The traditional sense of God’s remoteness persists, as he can only be approached through the son. God, the father—Fofo in Ewe—is a distant authoritative figure valued for his guidance and help but stern and more the object of “respect,” “even fear,” than “love” (Meyer 1999:73–82). The great florescence of religious innovation in contemporary Ghana is also a reflection of Ghanaian people of deep religious convictions desperate to “know God” as a pre-condition to benefiting from his succor in the wake of the hard times. And in such a time of hardships and uncertainties, nothing could be more assuring to the Krishna devotees than the feeling of intimacy with Krishna, the Supreme Being on a person-to-person basis, and being at the receiving end of his loving and protective grace. This grace flows bountifully through Krishna’s divine presence in the prasadam, the mantras, darshana of the arca vigraha (Krishna’s statue image), and his pastimes. Here, awe, fear, and reverence, symbols of a distanced God are absent. On top of this is the devotees’ exposure to the mysteries of the Supreme Being through the numerous sacred texts that celebrate his qualities, deeds and beauties. When devotees say, “Now we know God,” they mean they have uncovered the mysteries of God, deepened their faith in him, and feel more reassured of his protection in the Hare Krishna community. I noticed a peculiar tendency among some female devotees. They seemed to be particularly drawn to Krishna’s pastimes not only because of



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the underlying themes about God’s true nature there. They are fascinated with the story itself, that is, Krishna’s affair with Radha and his flirtations with the gopi women of Vraja. These female devotees clearly understood the Vaishnava theological themes underlying the stories. Nevertheless, their visions of the events were also colored through the eyes of Ghanaian culture, and their own social and domestic situations as women. They read their own meanings into the interpretation of these stories emphasizing what they view to be the celebration of female spirituality implied in the stories. A female devotee described how she was encouraged by the episodes of the gopi women scurrying out of their homes in response to Krishna’s flute music to join the community: “I know what the story means generally. But it had special meaning for me. I began to view the church differently, as a religion in which we women, too, would have some space.” This woman, who followed her husband to the “Krishna church” for a while before deciding eventually to become a devotee, explained the decisive influence of her interpretations of the stories on her: After reading the stories I would wonder why all devotees of the lord were women and why the writers chose women as illustrations of the ideal devotee. I felt it was because we women are spiritual people naturally. I always reflected on this issue. Look around, who goes to church more often? Who prays more often in our homes? Who makes sure the children know God? It is women. I have always thought that naturally women were made more religious than men were, and the stories validated my position and made me like the church at once (Interview in Twi).

A devotee who had to defy her husband to join the community described in Twi how the gopis’ behavior in the story inspired and emboldened her: I derived some inspiration from their actions. They made me bolder. One day after devotion I said to myself: “Even in the Hare Krishna Bible, when the lord called the gopis they simply left all that they were doing and followed. They were not thinking of their husbands, even though they were married. It meant that when it comes to God, loyalty to your husband is secondary. So, if Krishna were calling me, I would go.” So, I went to him [her husband] and said “Mewura [my lord or husband] even the Krishna bible teaches that if God calls, you must obey no matter what.” Still he would not budge . . . I initiated anyway.4

A woman said that initially she did not intend to remain with the community: “just thought I could be visiting from time to time to learn new things and to supplement my knowledge.” She explained that she remained because the prominence given to Radha, Krishna’s loving consort, and her qualities bolstered her self-image and her spiritual value as a woman:

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chapter seven I simply fell in love with Radha for her qualities. It began to dawn on me that by our very nature as women we have spiritually superior qualities. We have all the qualities of the ideal devotee.

She enumerated some of those qualities: We women are sweet and know what it feels to share Krishna’s sweet love. We give unconditional love to our children and husbands, we are humble, and we are faithful. These are the ideals Prabhu always stresses. This realization made me feel that hei! Here was a religion that respected us for our spiritual nature, and that made me feel more comfortable here (Interview in English).

Living in a patriarchal society that sometimes hinders the expression of female spirituality and reading their own meanings into these stories, women determined that the free expression of female spirituality had a theological foundation in the Hare Krishna community. They joined the community, encouraged by the prospects of worshipping in an environment where as women their spirituality would be acknowledged and avenues would exist for them to express it freely. The Importance of Earlier Affiliations: “If it is in the Bible, then What the Hare Krishna Preacher is Saying Must be True” While some devotees maintained that its novel insights into questions that Christianity and traditional religion inadequately addressed attracted them to the Hare Krishna community, other devotees said the similarities of the Hare Krishna teachings and liturgical expressions to those of Christianity and traditional religion encouraged them to join and remain in the community. Here, my findings support Horton’s and Peel’s (1976:482) stress on the role of points of contact between world religions and local traditions in the acceptability of the former by African communities. Similar teachings and liturgical expressions of the Hare Krishna with Christianity and traditional religion serve as bridges for local Ghanaian devotees. Such similarities stimulate interest and smooth the transition to and adjustment in the Hare Krishna. It also consolidates the move by anchoring the devotees’ faith. Some devotees even said emulating the familiar Hare Krishna practices in their own churches has enhanced their personal as well as the churches’ quality of spiritual life. Catholicism provided a general liturgical setting in which Hare Krishna practices would become familiar to devotees with Roman Catholic affiliations making them view Hare Krishna as a mere extension of their Catholic spirituality. They main-



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tained however that devotion to Krishna guaranteed the unraveling of deeper Christian truths. Describing his step-by-step conversion process this former Catholic churchgoer notes how his discovery of “similar things” sped the whole process: At first I was excited. The whole thing seemed new and alien. But I was cautious too, taking it two steps forward one step back. Then came my pleasant surprise. The whole thing was like some new Catholic Church, because, the japa beads, I had seen it before in the rosary . . . And we used to chant in Catholic. We even had effigies there too. I thought the guru was like a father, Prabhupada, like a saint. And worship was simply a more intense form of mass, with numerous rituals. In fact for a long time, I still felt very Catholic. Then it occurred to me that, perhaps lord Krishna made me a Catholic to prepare me for his devotion. That was when my faith deepened in the community. And you know, I no longer feel guilty about betraying my parents. Each time they complain about my being a Krishna, I say they are all the same (Interview in Ewe).

Ekana Das, a male temple devotee, described his earlier days as a devotee, when he was still “discovering” the Hare Krishna teachings. He, too, was in the Catholic Church and would come to realize that the Hare Krishna community validated Catholic teachings: Then, bit by bit we began to go through the Gita. When they would reveal a new teaching, I would realize that I had learnt something about it in the Catholic Church. What really struck me was the Gita’s detailed treatment of the soul and its destiny. The Gita made me feel that all the things that I learnt in the Catholic Church were true. But I noticed that the Gita went further. It is deeper. It shows you the true nature of God and the way to worship him. It is like when you finish high school and enter the university and start treating the same old topics in greater details. Looking back I believe my whole Christian life was a preparation for this higher stage.

Similarly, Jarathi who still attends the “Catholiki church” on and off described her situation in a mixture of Ewe and English: At first I was not too sure whether I wanted to join the community. I initiated any way . . . And during the initiation, I felt like I was undergoing another catholic baptism and being initiated into a higher Catholic order. The initiation was p-e-p-e-p-e [almost exactly] like the Catholic practice. That made me more certain that the religion was not really as alien or as “pagan” as people said. It was certainly a more spiritual form of the Catholiki tradition. That’s why I only go to my Catholiki Church once in a while. All I get from there I get from here and I get more. And I felt that, if it was like Catholic, then it must be a true religion.

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Others mentioned the community’s monastic lifestyle as resembling a Catholic tradition. A devotee said temple devotees were just like nuns and monks. Another said even the saris and dhotis were analogous to the habits and cassocks in Catholic monasteries. Others mentioned the heavy use of incense, candles, and holy water, as similar to Catholic practices. The consensus was that they came to realize that the Hare Krishna community was not all that alien. Even devotees with non-Catholic affiliations said the familiarity of their own teachings and practices with the communities were instrumental in their becoming devotees. On her journey to Krishna Consciousness, Holi Dasi came to the point where the only stumbling block was how to stop eating meat. She would draw strength from biblical teachings to clear this hurdle: A Krishna neighbor preached to me the entire time saying, “You have to stop eating meat and worship Krishna.” But I would argue, “I can’t survive without meat. What would I eat instead if I should stop the meat?” One day he said, “It’s even in the bible that we must not eat meat.” “Where in the bible? Tell me. Where?” I quizzed him. He quoted Roman 14, verses 20–21. So, I checked and he was right. Then, I began to reflect on what he said and to wonder, “But why does our pastor say we could eat anything?” I went back to the Krishna preacher and asked him, “So whom should I believe? You or the pastor?” He said, “Decide for yourself and choose the one that suits you better.” I thought about it for some time and said, “If it is in the bible, then really what the Hare Krishna preacher is saying must be true.” That’s why I stopped eating meat and joined the group (Interview in Twi).

For Holi Dasi the bible was the yardstick for measuring the truthfulness or falsity of any new Church’s teachings, so the fact that a Hare Krishna teaching has a basis in the bible gives the religion legitimacy. A female devotee said the similarity between the notion of the saving grace of Krishna in prema bhakti devotion and the idea of salvation by the grace of Christ was what inspired her to make an initial contact with the community. What proved to be more decisive for her was how she realized that she became a better Christian by applying the community’s teachings to her life: I have become more cautious about my personal conduct because of karma . . . I am also kinder, and freely giving because I know that everything I do for people is service to the lord . . . These things the Methodist people should be encouraging but they don’t . . . So, I am becoming a better Christian as a Hindu (Interview in English).

At one time, a male devotee, an elder in a spiritual church, argued that the practice of chanting names of God was not exclusively Hindu. He said chanting was analogous to the Christian practice of calling on Jesus’s



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name in times of crisis. He maintained however that because this was not routine Christian practice Christian people were deprived of its spiritual benefits. The repetitive chanting of mantras inspired him to join the community. He said he saw a more developed form of a practice that was still in its rudimentary stages in Christianity in the Hare Krishna practice of chanting. He described in English how his introducing a “Jesus chant” into his church brought new life into it. They like it and they are seeing the benefits. The spiritual life is hotter this time. Hare Krishna is not too different. But the spiritual life is higher and we must draw inspiration from their practices and emulate them in our churches.

Equally decisive in the conversion of some devotees is the connection they establish between traditional religion and the practices of the Hare Krishna community. The basis of this alleged connection is the similar rituals such as chanting, the drumming, singing and ecstatic dancing, the sacrifices, even the mode of dressing (because they resemble traditional priests) and similar teachings such as karma and reincarnation. Even though they would not want their practices to be “contaminated,” the leaders of the community stress this connection significantly. I heard ­Srivas explain one day at worship: Hare Krishna is traditional religion. At first we were all one people. The Hindus and us. Then the world broke into several parts and we all drifted away [invoking the plate tectonic theory]. That’s why our religions are so ­similar . . . Hinduism is the source. Hare Krishna religion represents the original form of our traditions.

When I asked Simon whether he would like to visit India he was emphatic, “Yes of course. Why not? Is that not where we all originated from?” “You mean we came from India?” I probed. “Yes that is where our traditional religion originated. That is why they are so similar. Don’t you see we do the same things here, like deity worship, sacrifices, and ­chanting?” “We were all Hindus at first,” he continued, reechoing Srivas’s view. There is no scientific basis to this very popularly held belief in traditional religion’s origin in Hinduism, but devotees have come to use a watered down version of the plate tectonic theory to explain why Hare Krishna traditions are similar to traditional religion in spite of their different geographical locations. Older village male devotees particularly stressed the appeal of this connection. This farmer from Dodowa, a village near Accra, who said he was reluctant to establish contact with devotees at first because of their appearance, described in Ga how this connection lured him eventually:

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chapter seven The first time I entered the temple and saw the deities, I said “But this is just like Afa [a traditional religious cult].” Look at the deity images. Look at the japa beads. They are like talismans. Look at the horsetail that pujarii holds . . . I said “This is just a modern version of traditional religion.” Then came kirtan time. The way they drummed, and sang and danced simply blew me away . . . And I said, “As for this one, [in this particular instance] I am not lost, I am home.”

For this rural male devotee, the Hare Krishna doctrines of karma and reincarnation are the basis of the community’s traditional religious connection that appealed to him: The India people they think just like us. So their religions are the same with ours. Going to church [Christian church] is good, but sometimes you cannot reason with what they teach. I always had a problem with heaven and hell . . . It is like this . . . Like, whether you are an evil person or a good person, you would have to wait till you die and go to heaven or to hell to be punished or rewarded. I always felt that was too long. As for human beings if you don’t pull their ears [punish them] now, now, now, they don’t learn . . . And that’s what karma is teaching. The karma thing I am talking about, it teaches that you will receive your reward or punishment here now, now, now, not in the future. That teaching made me think that this religion was just the same as our own religion (Interview in Twi).

Underlying the Christian teaching of heaven and hell is a lineal sense of history—a single life in which a person either ends up in heaven or in hell. The notions of karma and transmigration espouse a cyclical model of history in which human beings die and come back and are responsible for their actions in the here and now. For the devotee this teaching brings the community more in tune with the traditional religious emphasis on the “here and now.” During a conversation with Ekana (also called Ekana Das), an elderly devotee, he too stressed this appeal: Our conversation was in Ewe. Ekana: The things that we do there, they are just like our own tradition. So they bring us back home. That’s why most of us like it. Albert: Are you saying you joined the group for this reason? Ekana: Yes it’s among the things that made me like it. Albert: In what ways? Ekana: Aah . . . Look yourself. Don’t you see we basically do the same things? Look at our sacrifices. Look at the deity images. Look at how we relate to the deity’s images. Even, look at our drumming and dancing, our funerals and birth rituals and our initiations. Look at how we too believe in demi gods. These same things, our forefathers did. So we feel at home here. The only difference is that, in our customs we don’t have our philosophical teachings spelt out clearly like the Hare



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Krishna church. In this church everything is well explained, so you know why you are performing a ritual and what the outcome would be . . . We feel too that we are on a higher spiritual plane here.

Another devotee enumerated the contact points: Our forefathers were concerned with moral questions like abstention from sex before puberty, alcohol, and all that. They had secret societies and before you became a member you had to be initiated and take vows like we do in Hare Krishna. They insisted that devotees strictly obey rules. These are the same things we do here. So in this community we feel that our ways are not really lost. We still feel that connection with our past ways (Interview in English).

The importance of tradition is emphasized more in villages and these older villagers feel Hare Krishna practices fit into the village culture. Being older, these devotees have stronger connections to traditional practices that were much more alive when they were younger. For them Hinduism was an extension of traditional religious spirituality and through Hare Krishna they felt connected to customs of the ancestors. But some younger urban devotees also stress this appeal. Vaisnava theological notions and liturgical expressions have emerged in Ghana at a time when many people feel that modern changes engender new questions that their religious traditions do not address adequately. They turn to the Hare Krishna community because they feel its teachings and practices formulate better answers to their questions. In their moves to this new community they also consider the familiarity of the new symbols and also its ability to speak to their traditional religious and cultural sensibilities. I now turn to the monastery, where its “teachings” and liturgical expressions carry little weight in making devotees initiate contact with the community but are more decisive in making devotees remain in the community once they joined. The Traditionality of Hinduism: Swamiji’s Followers A number of reasons explain the relatively little weight of the influence of teachings in devotees’ decisions to initiate contact with the monastery. First, the community’s preoccupation with spiritual power translates into an emphasis on ritual, especially spiritual exercises intended to generate shakti or power within the devotee. Knowledge of the teachings is not stressed in the community. Second, the blended Hindu and traditional religious tradition of the monastery has too little if anything at all

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in ­common with the Christian backgrounds of devotees, the majority of whom are Protestant, to serve as a point of contact. The traditional religious flavor of the community’s tradition is certainly a potential source of attraction. But devotees come to know of this aspect only after becoming members. In keeping with their tradition to not “convert,” but to rather expose individuals to the Hindu faith and Hindu spiritual techniques, so that they would worship God better in their own traditions, proselytizing is not encouraged. For this reason, the community’s teachings are not “out there” or “floating around” for potential converts to evaluate and base their considerations to join it on. Nevertheless, the moment individuals become followers and begin to delve into the teachings and to experience the rituals the conviction that they had “chosen a good spiritual path” anchors their faith in the monastery. While the relatively less-educated Hare Krishna followers value teachings mostly for the insights they provided into the happenings around them, what Swamiji’s devotees, comprising generally better educated and some elite people and their children, stressed was the appeal of the intellectual culture Hindu religious practice produced. Especially, for the younger, well educated, or school-going followers of the monastery, the intellectualism of the tradition made the religion more conducive for the pursuit of knowledge and academic exploits than other local traditions. They said Yogic practices such as breath control, meditation, and concentration put the body and mind in the mood for studies. They also said the mythologies and philosophical ideas of the scriptures and the theologians were deep, and pregnant with novel and keen insights. Intriguing and fascinating, these insights provided food for thought, stimulating devotees’ imagination and creativity and inspiring them to reflect on their own environments and also to write. They said, even, that mental challenge of learning and reading Sanskrit, reciting Sanskrit verses and mantras by rote, and translating Sanskrit texts developed the intellect. “Our Hinduism is Like Traditional Religion with Scriptures” What seemed to be a more crucial consideration of devotees, especially older followers, to remain in the monastery is the connection they establish between the teachings and liturgical expressions of the temple’s tradition and traditional religion. While this factor was decisive for 8 devotees almost every adult follower had something to say about its appeal to them.



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They stressed how this connection enabled the tradition to satisfy their indigenous religious and cultural needs. They mentioned two aspects of this connection. They said Hindu ritual practice generated strong traditional feelings in them because Hinduism resembles traditional religion in many respects. The strong traditional religious flavor of the temple’s practices and beliefs also reinforces the sense of this connection. A factor that explains the importance they attach to this connection is their own strong traditional religious backgrounds. Swamiji himself stressed the Hindu/traditional religion connection while explaining the forces that drove him to establish a monastery. A youth with strong sensitivities to the political issues of his time, Swamiji was a keen observer of the pre-independence political scene in the 1950s. At the time of his visit to India, Swamiji shared with the contemporary Ghanaian politicians the sense of the need to revitalize the religious and cultural heritage of Ghana severely undermined by colonialism. He described in a mixture of English and Twi how his sensitivities shaped his experiences in India: I have always felt strongly about the arrogance of Akwesi broni [the white man] and our own foolishness in collaborating with him to destroy those valuable traditions that we had. While in India I realized how so similar Hinduism and our religions are. I was also impressed by the height of Hindus’ spiritual advancement. I think they have developed far greater than we have spiritually. Soon, I understood that it was because they still respected their traditions in spite of their colonial experience. And I realized that it was because earlier generations of Hindus wrote down every aspect of their religion in texts. So the tradition has been preserved over the years for subsequent generations. This is where we failed. It then dawned on me that we have to look to Hinduism for models in revitalizing our traditional religion.

Swamiji described how this was possible: We too can start writing our traditions down. We can refine them and support them with systematic theologies like the Hindus have done so that ours too will grow with us and serve our modern spiritual needs. We can draw on similar Hindu rituals and beliefs for perspectives to understand ours better. You see, the Hindus have a philosophy behind every ritual, so you simply don’t practice. You understand the rationale behind the ritual and that’s what the modern mind seeks. We too can do the same. We can do these because both traditions are the same.

Swamiji also believes that Hindu practice could generate “traditional feelings:”

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chapter seven Even by us practicing Hinduism we can generate traditional religious feelings. Traditions may change over years but emotions don’t change easily. When we do puja, or prostrate before the deities, or perform yajna, the feelings we have are the same feelings our ancestors had when they worshipped our gods and ancestors. Sometimes when we sing those songs and drum and dance, don’t we sound like traditional worshippers? So by being Hindu we too feel more African. Our children too will experience something of their religious heritage. So, in Hinduism we have a framework, and through this we could still practice traditions we have lost.

It was not clear from their narratives whether Swamiji’s followers had these same feelings before joining his community or they became influenced by their leader’s rhetoric. But they too expressed similar views, emphasizing different aspects of the Hindu/traditional religion connection that anchored their faith in the community. When I commented on the similarity of some of the temple rituals to traditional practices, Okanta, a middle-aged devotee agreed, commenting spontaneously in English: That’s one thing that has made me like this temple. Just like traditional religion, the many rituals make you feel you are really performing action that would better your life situation. And they are so engaging. Whether it is arti or hawan, everybody is involved in all aspects of the worship from beginning to end. So the worship is not boring. Did you find anybody dozing off there?

Jane Obosu, who said she had to join the monastery because her husband became a follower, enumerated the traditional elements that endeared the community to her: The first is how Hinduism is so open and nobody minds whether you worship somewhere else. Then, we have deity images and we all have our personal deities. Then come the many rituals that make you feel like you are in a traditional shrine. Even such beliefs as reincarnation, destiny, souls, and the spiritual world are all traditional. And we initiate you like they do in the Yewe cult [traditional religious cult]. The only difference is the scriptures and the temple style of worship, but that’s what makes this version modern. Our Hinduism is traditional religion with scriptures (Interview in Twi).

Amponsah, a male member who belonged to other churches before joining the community, said he visited the shrine of Akkonedi, a local deity from time to time. For him, the ability to “swing freely from Swamiji to Akkonedi,” which was not possible in his churches, makes him feel “more traditional” and “at home” in the community: As for me I am a real traditionalist. In religious matters, I am Ghanaian before anything else . . . We believe in our numerous gods and ancestors and



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to worship them all is custom. So, I cannot take that ‘there is only one God’ teaching. Swamiji acknowledges our tradition and makes us feel good about it. He would tell you to go to Okomfo [the traditional priest] if that became necessary. Hinduism is open and that’s one thing I like about it (Interview in Twi).

The openness of Hinduism is the basis of its traditionality to Amposah. It suits his eclectic religious tastes. Accordingly, it was his quest for protective powers that lured him into the community initially. A devotee said that in that the temple combines aspects of Hinduism and traditional practices in a modern institutionalized framework Swamiji was pioneering the move and providing a model for revitalizing traditional religious practices. He said the feeling of being a part of this revitalization process was crucial in his decision to remain a follower: “We talk about Sankofa (salvaging the heritage) all the time . . . This is the best model for it.” And a woman said because Ghana and India share a similar traditional culture and colonial experience it is proper that Ghanaians practice Hinduism because “Indians have done better than us in protecting their traditions, so we can learn from them how to revive and protect ours too. I feel good about learning to cherish our forefathers’ practices.” When I challenged Dr. Billard, a professor, to explain what he meant when he said he liked the temple because he felt more like an African through the temple’s practices than he had felt as a Presbyterian, he replied with this brief lecture in English: We have a problem on our head in this land. There are many people out there yearning to connect with the cultural heritage on a deeper level but cannot because people would deride them . . . Sometimes too they just don’t know where to go, what really to do or how to do it. You see how Damuah and others tried and failed. It is hard to impose a modern organizational framework on our religion. But it is easy to blend it into a similar tradition and use that framework to satisfy our local needs. So, apart from the rich Hindu religion we enjoy practicing, we are using the Hindu framework. We need that connection, that feeling . . . And it comes through the chanting, the libation, the deity worship and things like that.

The tip of his pen gently tapping a page in his notebook, Prof. described the affinity between Hinduism and traditional religion within the framework of a common human history stressing how this appeals to him: This religion we call Hinduism is simply the primal religion of India. In the distant past, every region of the world had its own version. In fact, it was strangers who called the Indian version Hinduism. So, essentially traditional religion and Hinduism are the same things. But the Indians were

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chapter seven very advanced, so they wrote scriptures, developed complex temple organizational patterns, and worship forms. That’s why theirs is still intact. Our ancestors wrote nothing down, so we lost part of ours to the colonial master . . . So by practicing Hinduism, essentially we are only practicing an original form of traditional religion . . . And for those of us passionate about tradition this does for us [where we find fulfillment]

Filtering her views and feelings through the medium of a proverb, Mrs. Kwakwa a member of the monastery described how she too would discover an Africaness in this Hindu tradition that would consolidate her faith: You see no one living on the bank of river would wash hands with dew water unless the river had dried up. That’s our plight. We would wish our own tradition was still intact and could be organized in this way. But it is not. But in the absence of that, the old man’s church [Swamiji’s temple] serves our needs. But this is because Hinduism is not really alien. It is the same as our traditions . . . Only that it is more modern because of its teachings. And you know what . . . Hindu teachings even explain our own practices better.

She gives me an instance: For instance we say okomfuos [traditional priests or priestesses] must not have sexual relations before a ritual lest the ritual would be polluted . . . But how could sex be polluting? Sex, something that brings new life cannot be polluting at the same time. Our ancestors don’t explain this. Hinduism has a better explanation. Sex is related to spiritual power. One stores power by not having it and loses power by having it. For a priest to be tuned up proper for a spiritual ritual his own spirituality must be at a certain height and to ensure this he must not have sex. That’s a much clearer explanation . . . so Hindu practice makes me understand aspects of tradition better (Interview in Twi).

Some devotees viewed the investment of their energies into temple practices as a channeling of their anti-colonial feelings. When I commented on his zeal for Bhagavan, a devotee replied in Ewe: Yes I embrace the religion wholeheartedly and flaunt it at the colo people [people who believe in superiority of Western culture] because for me it is a discovery of truths, and secrets to our advancement, that the colonial masters deliberately hid from us to stifle our development [he meant both of Hinduism and traditional religion].

He said he felt privileged to be exposed to these secrets. Another devotee revealed his anti-charismatic church sentiments through this harsh polemical evaluation:



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Isn’t it a shame, that the new churches would condemn our own traditional religion? That’s why I feel their minds are still colonized. They practice American-style religion . . . And some people are there because Aid comes from America to the churches. I’d rather be a Hindu than join a charismatic church and sell my soul. Through practicing Hinduism we don’t only feel more at home but we too are learning to treat our traditions in the same way, with the same respect as Hindus do.

Not only does this man feel Hinduism is more familiar to him, it provides a model for how he should regard his own tradition with respect. This devotee was openly political and unable to conceal his nationalistic side. He linked the satisfaction of being a Hindu to the patriotism of his youth. Being critical of Christian religious forms he found in Hindu religion a symbol of resistance: I was a young pioneer [ joined the fight for independence] because I love my culture and I am fond of the homeland. So, it pains me to see people not valuing our ways nowadays. If others should respect us, we ourselves must respect our ways first. You may feel these practices are Indian, but in essence they are traditional religion in Indian garb . . . But even if it comes from outside our culture, Hinduism is not as distant from our practices as the new churches’ religion. Hinduism is nearer home. Charismatic religion is American religion . . . It represents the other side of things and it takes you farther away from home (Interview in English).

When I was not really sure whether the connection devotees established between Hindu religion and traditional religion was based on the resemblance, or on the temple’s traditional religious practices, I quizzed Mr. Pimpim, a temple president about it. He explained in Twi: It is both. We are able to practice aspects of tradition that we cannot always do outside or openly nowadays, like worshipping deities in image form, or sacrificing, or pouring libation. But we draw much from the uniquely Indian Hindu aspects too, like the teachings in the scriptures, the epics, and the values the deities embody. Then, some similar teachings expand our own beliefs and make them clearer, like, karma and reincarnation . . . So you see, the whole thing is like some modern form of traditional religion that satisfies our minds and feelings.

Four themes underlie these views. First, the temple’s tradition provides a veneer for devotees to practice otherwise outlawed or looked-downupon traditional religious rituals. Second, the tradition articulates a form of modernized traditional religion serving as a model for the revitalization of some lost or dying traditions. Third, liturgical expressions of the

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community generated traditional religious experiences and sentiments ­connecting devotees to the “customs of the forefathers.” Fourth, there were also people who, in practicing Swamiji’s Hinduism were motivated by anti-colonial sensibilities. I will analyze these themes in terms of how they interact to help us make sense of the underlying motives of the narrators. In doing so we must first reflect on how the British colonial experience undermined Ghanaian traditional religion and culture, and the growing sense in contemporary Ghana that globalization is obliterating what has remained of indigenous traditions. We must also consider the older ages of the narrators, their strong traditional religious backgrounds, even their general class and status as an urban elite group. The views of these devotees reflect their sensitivities to contemporary developments in Ghana. Steeped in traditional religious beliefs and practices, conservative, and jealously protective of Ghanaian cultural heritages and sense of identity, some of these narrators are resentful of the rampant inundation of the local cultural landscape by western (mainly American) cultural values. Those who were involved in the pre-independence political struggles are still sensitive to the issues that fueled the independence movement: national pride, cultural, and religious identity. They feel dutybound to protect the hard won independence and the values it stands for. Being well educated and very much politically aware has even made them more sensitive to these issues. But they seem frustrated by the inherent weaknesses of traditional religion that make its reconstruction and modern practice almost impossible, and also by the problems facing modern people openly practicing traditional religion in Ghana. The stories of the narrators are therefore about their yearning to be traditional, their frustration with the challenges of doing so, and their appropriation of similar symbols in Hinduism to fulfill their spiritual and cultural needs. The stories are also about their zeal to reverse the threat globalization poses to indigenous religions by revitalizing what has remained of it through the framework of Hinduism. With scriptures, organized temple style of worship, philosophical ideas, pseudo-scientific practices such as yoga, Swamiji’s Hinduism has all the hallmarks of a modern religion. Yet it also has such traditional elements as deity worship, sacrifices, initiations, and libation prayers. This way the monastery’s tradition is sentimentally and intellectually suitable to a modern educated elite group reluctant to sever links with its traditional religions.



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New Visions of Moral Life In both temples devotees talked about how the moral visions of their communities resonated with their personal moral sensibilities. They also emphasized how these moral teachings provided better guidelines for how “religious people should live” and informed how they engaged their daily affairs. They lamented how the “struggles” to “survive” in Ghana have engendered greed, corruption, pilfering at work places, embezzling of government money, cheating, the commodification of sex, and other excesses. What was more alarming, some respondents argued, was that the breakdown of societal values and the influx of foreign influences (the Euro-Americanization) have resulted in immoral practices such as pornography, public and group sex, homosexuality and other kinds of unusual sexual behavior, and serial murders, hitherto unknown or uncommon in Ghana. In the monastery where there is a stronger influence of traditional religion, devotees described these immoral acts indigenously as musuu (grave moral breaches) distinguishing them from bone, which are “ordinary” moral breaches such as stealing, or quarrelling. A musuu violates the codes of conduct sanctioned by the spirit powers, especially ancestors. For instance murder, having sex in the bush or in public, or incest are all musuu. To commit such acts, uncommon in the past, is to violate a taboo. The culprit is said to have “broken” or “eaten” the taboo. The consequences, meted out by the spirit powers themselves, are dire and often spill over from the offender to the whole community. Such violations result in serious illnesses or death of the culprit and social calamity (Sarpong 1974:53; Dovlo, 1973; Asare-Opoku 1978:157). Some acts that are generally described as musuu are not necessarily considered to be direct offences against the spirit powers. They are deemed to be “unnatural” or “unthinkable” and described as “things that are never to be done” because they cross the boundaries of normal human behavior as defined by a community and may disrupt human relationships. Examples are acts such as betraying one’s community, or having coitus with two or more brothers or sisters or with close friends (Dzobo 1973:19). From the points of view of devotees, modern “immoral” sexual conduct such as homosexuality, anal sex, and group sex fall under this category of musuu. It is believed that the commission of these acts results in automatic punishment, such as being involved in a fatal accident, or contracting mysterious illnesses such as

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AIDS. While Hare Krishna devotees generally stressed how their emphasis on moderation checked excesses of these “nowadays times,” worshippers at the Hindu monastery particularly stressed how their emphasis on control of sexuality deterred immoral sexual conduct, which was crucial because of AIDS. “The Church Helps You to Grow Up into a Good Person” Many devotees described how they engaged the Hindu discourses of their temples in making important moral decisions, emphasizing how the application of such teachings in one’s life can make the person more moral. Azumah, a young male, said the rules of the Hare Krishna community help him to live a morally upright life, “even in these modern times of temptations and trials:” The community helps to make me a good person. They tell you “Don’t take drugs,” “Don’t chase girls,” “Don’t eat your money on things like lotto [don’t spend your money on Lotto].” Nowadays, if I see girls I don’t even feel like talking to them lest they might put some ideas into my mind. If you follow all these you would be moral and pure because temptations nowadays are as plenty as the hair on my head (Interview in Ga).

Similarly a female follower of Swamiji in her twenties described how the leader’s constant moral exhortations checked her tendency to indulge in vices she associated with modern life in Ghana: The way life in Ghana is these days, if one does not have good guidance he could remain stuck in it [local expression for engaging in vices]. Look at how people smoke Wee and use cocaine nowadays. First we thought it was only an Aburokyiri problem. But these days, it is here, too. You will see young men roaming the streets with blood shot eyes. It’s all Wee and cocaine. Our general sense of morality is basabasa [in chaos]. So many young people are drinking, and sleeping around than before. People go to cine just to watch sex cinemas [pornography]. All around there are temptations and if you are a young person and not careful you will fall to them and spoil your life. So the church is good because here you can’t have illicit sex, or drink or smoke anything. And Swami too is there, on you all the time, watching and insisting that you must live a moral life (Interview in Ga).

A young devotee of Swamiji also explained in Ewe how her fear of accumulating bad karma has prompted her to check her bad attitude:



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Hei look, I used to be quarrelsome . . . I had an attitude and I was disrespectful. My mother really worried about me. Me . . . hmm [sighs], if you made the mistake of insulting me one time I did not care whether you were older than me or younger. I would reply with ten insults [very disrespectful to respond to insults of an older person in Ghana]. I was bad, really, really recalcitrant. But now I am calm. I would only look at you and walk away even if you offended me and it’s all because I know I’ll pay dearly if I did not [bad karma]. At home my mother comments on my changed attitude. She says I have come a long way and she is very happy.

Atute, a young female Krishna temple devotee described her preference for her new community in terms of the better moral guidance it provided her when compared with the Seventh Day Adventist church, which she was no longer associated with: I changed when I came to Accra. I felt no one was watching over me so I could do what I liked. At a point I felt my moral life was basaa [in chaos]. I began to date a lot. When I would need money I would date people’s husbands. I smoked cigarettes [smoking, especially by women is considered immoral in Ghana] and drank alcohol. So I started attending church. But shoaa [expression of disgust], the SDA church is full of hypocrites. The pastors are even worse. Could you believe that even the Osofos tried to have sex with me? . . . I even joined Action Faith Ministry [a charismatic church] briefly but that church is not real. Everything is about the devil, and how one could prosper. No one really cares how you lived your life after church (Interview in Twi).

She described how the Hare Krishna community adequately addresses her moral concerns: The first thing I learned was the rules that would make me live a purer life: no illicit sex, no alcohol, no gambling. At first, I wondered whether people truly abided by the rules or whether they were merely empty rules. But soon I noticed this church was different. They are serious. Here, every thing is orderly, there is discipline, and the men are not lustful. In Hare Krishna you just can’t do what you like . . . There are rules, and people care about your moral life too. Sometimes we need rules to remind us what to do especially when we are still growing and our minds wander constantly.

And Sunkwa agreed explaining further in Twi: “You see, sometimes you can’t stop by your own power. Sometimes, someone must tell you and give you guidance . . . That was what I could not get from the Assemblies of God. I mean that guidance. But it is in Hare Krishna. The teachings help

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you. The rules help you. And you get to see many people living good lives here. Prabhu too is always watching you . . . I feel purer being here.” The Teachings of the Temple Have Helped Me to Achieve Other Things in Life Some devotees mentioned how the moral guidance offered by their Hindu communities has translated into “progress” in other aspects of their lives, the Hare Krishna followers in particular stressing again how the “order” instilled in them by their regimented temple culture sometimes provides a much needed preparation for partcipatating in Ghana’s increasingly competitive business world. A Hare Krishna corn mill owner and a wealthy businessman and disciple of Swamiji, said because their temples insisted on members leading simple and modest lives, not drinking, or “wasting” their money, and “not chasing women,” they always had money left from their profits to plough back into their businesses. They attributed their successes to their hard work but insisted that their membership in the Hindu communities reinforced their efforts. This male follower of the monastery enumerated the various dimensions of his moral life that have been reformed and what he has achieved because of this: Now that I have stopped the drinking, I think more clearly. At work I am more dutiful. And I am even a more responsible father. And because of these, my life has gone on well . . . Since I became a Hindu, three times I have been promoted at work. I have even saved enough to start building my own house [a “manly” achievement in Ghana] . . . So it [the temple] helps us in good ways (Interview in Ewe).

Hinduism Has the Answers to the Nation’s Problems While younger respondents typically described how the teachings and practices of their temples spoke directly to specific moral challenges confronting them, the older devotees from both communities reflected more on general moral questions and described the appeal of Hinduism in terms of how the teachings addressed the declining state of morality in Ghana. Presumably, the older devotees had already resolved or at least learnt to deal with the kinds of personal moral challenges facing younger devotees. In a conversation with an elderly male Krishna devotee after worship, he applauded the revolutions (the 1979 and 1982 Ghanaian revolutions) but lamented how they resulted in the influx of corrupting influences of



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the West because the leaders of the revolutions quickly turned to Western investors, Western people, and Western cultural values, for answers “when things became hard.” He described aspects of this corruption— people embezzling money to acquire material things, gang activity and crime, especially, armed robbery, and gay and lesbian practices. He said the community had the answers to these modern problems: I still fellowship with Apostle’s Revelation Church. But what I believe personally is that true religiosity has to do with how you live your life and not only hearing the word of God. Hare Krishna teaches us how to live life simply, and to be accountable and honest. The rules regulate your daily life well if you are serious. So the religion is practical. You live what they teach, so you don’t easily yield to the temptations around. With the kind of moral laxity around, this is what this land has to practice . . . This is the church that can take us through the times (Interview in Pidgin English).

Not all devotees were this explicit and sometimes I had to glean their views from insinuations or responses to situations. For example Ayibi, a male temple devotee, never said anything about his moral persuasions throughout our earlier interchanges, but on one occasion, he reacted to a news editorial commentary in a way that gave me a sense of the moral positions that endeared the Hare Krishna community to him. The author of the commentary was arguing a case for the cancellation of Ghana’s debts by the rich Western nations. Apparently incensed by the writer’s arguments and unable to contain his disgust Ayibi gasped, whispering to me from his seat, “Prabhu, did you read this? It is absolute nonsense.” He explained why, speaking Ewe: If the big men were honest and used the loans well they would make enough profit to be able to pay back loans. But we live in a land with very dishonest leaders. In fact all of us are guilty. We are not accountable. We love to chop money [embezzle money]. We want two, three, four cars, big mansions, marry two, three women, send our pikins [children] to school abroad . . . And this is what is bringing us down as a nation. Why should they forgive us loans when we squandered the money? [I agreed with him.] And this is why I have been saying that only this Krishna Consciousness church can open our eyes to things and show us how these things affect us. All these things block our path to God, and we only accumulate bad karma . . . That’s why in spite of the wealth they steal, people are never happy or satisfied and the nation continues to suffer. It is our bad karma [he was sounding more passionate] People in this land need a good dosage of Hare Krishna teachings. That’s only when the change will come.

Govinda, another Hare Krishna devotee, was more spontaneous and explicit when I asked him what he liked most about the community. Without hesitation he shot back in Ga:

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chapter seven The teachings! They are what this nation needs to change. They make you a moral person. The idea that too many material things will stifle spiritual and moral life is good for everybody. It encourages us to control the sweetness of our bodies [sensual appetites], and to not be selfish or greedy. This is the number one problem in this land and I used to reflect on these issues even before joining Hare Krishna. I worry about people’s excesses in this nation and, I tell you, Krishna Consciousness is the answer [He knocks on a table to emphasize the point].

The narratives of Swamiji’s followers revealed similar themes. Whenever I would visit with “Prof,” we would exchange perspectives on the shameless attitudes of government ministers who received bribes and embezzled government money, and greedy businessmen who cheated their clients and the state. One day Prof lamented passionately: I cannot understand why some people do these wrong things knowingly. Everybody is living on stealing and cheating nowadays. But they can’t take all the blame. The life has become so hard that people feel that is the only way out. And because it’s the norm these days, people who do not steal at the work place or cheat are rather viewed as being odd. But the churches too are not doing anything thing about this. They even encourage this by putting pressure on followers to meet certain high life standards. That’s where we Hindus are different. A Hindu understands that material things are not important. The body will decay someday . . . It’s your soul that you must feed (He spoke English).

He then started into a lecture on how becoming a Hindu has made him cherish being modest in all aspects of his life. Occasionally Swamiji would say to me in English, “My son, my advice to you is to live in the world without allowing the world to live in your head. The day you allow the world to start living in you is the day you too will join in the killing of this land.” During his sermons he would tell devotees: Keep life simple. Be modest. You cannot satisfy all desires. Don’t look up to see the tall mansions people are building [don’t think big]. Live in the hen coop [a symbolic way of describing a modest house] that fits your size and show your co-workers that Bhagavan is the one dwelling in you.

During an interview with Mr. Omari, a follower of Swamiji, the news reported the discovery of a sixth dead female body in Accra. Mr. Omari used the opportunity to comment on how the values that the temple stressed helped devotees to check tendencies that possibly led the murderers to kill the women. Rumor flew around that the murderers killed the women for their blood, which they used in the performance of rituals to enrich themselves:



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The religion enforces the same moral values our forefathers cherished. Respecting life, and being wary of retributions for any evil done. If you abide by these teachings, would you go to the extent of murdering a fellow human just to be rich? We all know the times are hard. But I blame people’s churches too . . . Wealth is good. Even, Hindus too like wealth, but the new churches emphasize it so much that some of their misguided followers feel that it is only wealth that matters. Have you seen the musuu things [grave offences] people are committing just for the sake of riches? It’s all because of these new churches. A Hindu wouldn’t do a thing like this . . . This [killing] is real musuu (Interview in Twi).

Another devotee connected the murders to the modern influence of American serial murderers that the local perpetrators saw or heard about on CNN. He too believed that Hindu teachings reinforced traditional moral values that abhorred such musuu (taboo) acts. Sexual Morality In the Hare Krishna temple some devotees generally discussed the community’s insistence on abstinence from illicit sex at length, often emphasizing how it was a “good thing” because it addressed the laxity in contemporary Ghanaian sexual morality. In the monastery, where celibacy and control of sexuality is the core of the tradition, sexual morality was also a key issue that emerged in our conversations. There, devotees stressed the link between the need for sexual morality and controlling the spread of AIDS. They said the answer to the AIDS crisis involved a return to traditional Ghanaian teachings relating to sexual conduct and emphasized the effectiveness of their Hindu tradition in the enforcement of traditional moral values regarding sex mores. The link between sex, spirituality, asceticism and celibacy, which the monastery stresses, is deeply rooted in the Hindu folk theories about sex. Because sex entails the spilling or exchanging of bodily fluids it is considered to be spiritually impure in Hinduism. The Brahman caste, the highest and purest of the Hindu caste categories, especially, must “abstain” from sexual intercourse “as far as possible” (Narayan 1989:128). Members of this caste must use sex for procreation only. But Hindu religious discourse also links control of sexuality to powers of mental concentration and meditation as noted by Kirin Narayan: To conserve semen is to increase vitality, strength, and radiance, and to sublimate sexuality upwards into the head is to bring about a gain in spiritual power . . . With its powerful outward-oriented drives, sexuality distracts the

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chapter seven ascetic’s preoccupations from within to without: Ascetic ideals fall away in the face of passion; altruism is replaced by individual gratification (Narayan, 1989:127).

Swamiji constantly mused about the misuse of sexuality with his devotees, stressing the Hindu themes outlined above to drive his point home. Explaining the rationale behind this particular focus, Swamiji revealed that his emphasis was also in keeping with traditional Ghanaian attitudes to sex. Sex in the traditional Ghanaian religious thought and life is sometimes connected with spiritual power. An increase in sexual potency could lead to increase in spiritual power. Sex is also considered to be “sacred” because procreation is the basis of life and therefore a community’s continuing existence. Sex enables human beings to share a process with the Supreme Being: creation. But sex also has a peculiar sense of morality attached to it. Because sex is considered to be sacred or special, there are prohibitions relating to it so that it may not be profaned or abused. For example traditionally, only the legally married are considered privileged to have sex. Sex must be done in secrecy and decently. Sex in the open, on the ground, or in the bushes is “disrespectful” to the earth goddess and to the entire community. Sex before puberty or marriage is discouraged and pre-marital pregnancy brings disgrace to the families of the people involved. To ensure premarital chastity, the virginity of a girl was formally tested at marriage among some communities in Ghana (Dovlo 1973:6–7). If it was found out that she was not a virgin, the marriage would be annulled and her family ridiculed. Adultery by a married woman (but not by married men) is considered a very serious offence (Dovlo 1973:6–8). Thus Swamiji’s stress on abstinence from illicit sex, though in keeping with the Hindu tradition, was also continuous with Ghanaian indigenous traditions. Yet, there was another crucial factor why Swamiji stressed abstinence or control of sexuality: the AIDS scare. This emerged during one of Swamiji’s discourses on sex. He was talking about a pastor who was reported in the news to have raped a female church member, when he commented in Akan: You see where his penis has landed this man of God? But I tell you, he is not alone. Go to America and hear what the Roman Catholic fathers too are doing. So, even men of God are not spared the temptations. But the lack of control over one’s sexual urges has now become a life or death ­matter. AIDS . . . AIDS . . . AIDS . . . Are your ears hearing? That is the problem now. That’s why I keep telling you to use your viveka shakti [self-will] and put those things [genitals] in your pants. Because these days you are not only



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making yourself weak by not controlling sex. You can die too, krimm [emphasis]. Six feet [the grave]. Just one he-goat-like act and you are gone forever. Bye bye [He gestures and we all laugh].

The HIV/AIDS situation in Ghana has not reached the epidemic or pandemic proportions of the South and East African situations where media sources report the decimation of whole villages by the disease. A World Health Organization source estimates the number of reported AIDS cases in Ghana as of 2000 to be 340,000 (UNAIDS/WHO, 2000). Of this number 330,000 of the infected were aged 15 to 49: people “youthful” and very sexually active. A World Vision Report on Ghana (2003:1) also notes that 33,000 people have died of the disease, leaving behind 170,000 orphans. The report points to the potential for a more rapid spread of the disease, since eighty percent of commercial sex workers examined in 2002 in Accra tested positive for AIDS (World Vision Report on Ghana, 2003:1). Many of these sex workers are still on the streets engaging in prostitution, which for some of them is their only source of income. Besides, while the “fast life” and morally lax urban culture encourages promiscuity, especially the practice of having multiple sex partners, the use of condoms is sometimes considered culturally inappropriate in Ghana. While the World Vision report also estimates that two hundred people are infected daily (2003:2), this seems a rather conservative figure. For a culture that is so life-affirming and where premature death—referred to as “hot” or “bad” death—is dreaded, the dehumanizing effects of AIDS and the certainty of death at a young age makes the threat seem so real to Ghanaian people. The fear of AIDS has made the concern for sexual propriety particularly acute. The devotees of the Hindu monastery argued that the teachings and practices of their community furnished them with viable alternative codes of sexual conduct, and provided frameworks in which the traditional practices that would curb the spread of the illness could still be enforced. Dr Arthur, a male follower described how he effectively checked his womanizing habit when he became a Hindu. He believed this saved him from possibly contracting AIDS: I used to lust after women too, before I became Hindu. Big women! They were my weakest point. Even when I would be driving in a car and see a big woman pass by, I would stop the car and fix my gaze on her buttocks until she was out of my view [the comment sends ripples of laughter and shouts throughout the listeners]. No, it is no laughing matter. If there was one thing that gave me the final push to follow Swamiji, it was the constant pressure he put on us to control our sexual urges . . . so that we can build shakti and

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chapter seven develop the third eye. Left to me alone I was too weak to resist the temptation of chasing women. In fact if I was still out there in the world I would have had AIDS by now. Maybe I would have died even [laughter]. Nowadays when I see them [big women] I take two long strides away. I keep myself away [comment draws a loud applause]. Paa Kwesi has plucked the scales off my eyes (He spoke English).

Aunty Matilda, a follower of Swamiji, views the monastery’s strict rules regarding abstinence from illicit sex, especially by young unmarried followers, as analogous to the past traditional religious sanctions: The church is good because it keeps the young people, especially girls out of trouble. Because the rules help them to not know men until they are married. It’s just like when we were younger. The custom was for us to perform gboto [puberty rites] before knowing men. And it is good . . . Because this is what we need, because of this new sex illness [AIDS] (Interview in English).

Comparing the monastery to Pentecostal Churches, a young male devotee described in Ewe how the monastery had a better way of enforcing moral teachings especially regarding sexual morality, and he stressed the relevance to the control of the spread of AIDS: It is not a simple matter of saying don’t do this don’t do that . . . There should be a way of enforcing these dos, and don’ts. In our temple our practices have our dos and don’ts built into them . . . So we are about doing, not merely saying. We don’t only say, don’t sleep around. The fact is that we all would want to build shakti [spiritual power]. But to do that you have no choice but to control sexual intercourse . . . Otherwise your meditation will yield no gains. So your spiritual growth is connected with your sexual behavior. Just like our own customs where the okomfo [traditional priest] must control sexual intercourse or lose his powers. If you even look carefully, our church is bringing the traditions back and in these times that careless sexual behavior can cost you your life, [AIDS] this is what we need . . . 

Sometimes themes gleaned from Swamiji’s devotees’ comments and insinuations during group conversations conveyed how strongly they felt about the declining sexual morality and their sense of the community as a refuge from such contemporary moral challenges. On a Saturday morning, during “community labor” in the Tema temple, a conversation on HIV/AIDS started between two devotees quickly developed into a group discussion on gays, lesbians, pornographic movies and other themes related to the “modern” sexual moral breaches. It was a comment by Adzo, a female devotee that sparked off the discussion. “I can’t believe this disease is



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still there and keeps spreading and spreading. At first I thought it was something that would just go like that (be cured easily), but now even I, I am getting scared. We are all going to die.” “Hooo (meaning, that’s not the real issue) as for AIDS, it is only those who court it who get it . . . If you keep your thing (genitals) in-between (your thighs), you are O.K. It is people who contract AIDS. AIDS does not come to visit anyone at home.” That was Akolor, the old man, explaining the problem away. Durga, a female, commented emphatically: “The problem is trust. Partners cannot trust each other these days . . . There is just too much sex going on around us . . . You could be there keeping yourself. But your partner could bring it to you from town,” “Yes, you are right,” Mary, a younger female devotee jumped in. She continued. “It is even worse than that. The world is now bassaaa . . . (In chaos). Nowadays, even men, they are sleeping with men and women with women, I am telling you.” Adzo reinforced Mary’s point. “Ehe. Just go to Osu (a much modernized sector of Accra noted for gays and lesbians). They are there right now. They say it is what has now come (trendy). If you live there and you are not one of them (gay or lesbian) then as for you, you are still colo (not abreast with current trends).” Akoloh, the old man, exclaimed in Ewe with disgust expressed on his face: That whole thing still beats my imagination . . . In high school the female students used to have special female friends called supees, but I never heard of women marrying each other. As for men? Woou! I cannot really imagine how a man can marry another man! Do they sleep together? And how is that possible? Woou! That is beyond musuu [taboo], the kind of musuu that does not tie its head before coming to town [immorality beyond human comprehension]. Where are we heading with this? The evils people commit nowadays are not ordinary. These are musuu things . . . They are really sickening!

The conversation then shifted to other acts of sexual misconduct: prostitution, consumption of pornography, the Lebanese and Syrian businessmen who paid girls to produce pornographic films, etc. They said some cinemas showed only “cinemas of people having sex in the open, even on the ground,” and lamented the practice of illicit sex especially orgies, arguing that there was nothing “sacred” or respectful about sex any longer. A follower said the “sex cinemas” came from “America” and “London,” places where “there are no taboos and people do what they like.” When I commented that there were “dos” and “don’ts” in America and Canada and people in these places did not condone pornography, a female devotee challenged me, insisting in Twi:

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chapter seven Yes I know, but there is no musuu [concept of taboo] there, so people do unthinkable things in America. Everybody does anything there and gets away with it. Unfortunately the been-tos [Ghanaians living abroad] bring those musuu things here too and the young ones copy them and say it is what has come [trendy].

The discussion ended with a follower describing AIDS as a “curse” resulting from the “unnatural” forms of sexual behavior practiced in modern times. He argued that, to remove the curse people in Ghana needed to go back to the old ways of our elders and enforce those sanctions on sexual behavior or s imply become Hindus. Though they did not all state explicitly that their concerns about sexual immorality in contemporary Ghana motivated them to join the temple community, it seems plausible to suggest that the community’s stance on abstinence and control of sexuality resonated with devotees’ thoughts and feelings about the laxity in sexual morality in Ghana and endeared it to them. Critiquing the Morality of Other Churches Devotees of the two temples seemed very critical of the Pentecostal prosperity discourse, attributing the ethos of excessive consumerism and corruption in Ghana in part to the over-emphasis of this discourse on material success. Truly religious people must orientate their lives toward loving God and other humans, rather than focusing on material needs, they argued. This can distract worshippers from reaching their spiritual goals. Moreover, material success does not bring lasting fulfillment. But humans are blinded by maya (illusionary perception) into believing that the pursuit of material wealth should be the goal of life. In contrast, they argue, their Hindu temples’ emphasis on moderation, selflessness, and avoidance of worldly pleasures, promote personal and national moral and spiritual advancement. Some devotees argued that the difference between Hindu Temples and Charismatic churches in Ghana was that former maintained a strong connection between spirituality or “holiness” and morality, and the latter did not. Their varying perspectives on this difference shed more light on the moral persuasions that endeared them to their communities. A devotee attributed the hiatus between morality and spirituality to the excessive concern of charismatic churches with material success,



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And they misinterpret everything. Only one line of The Lord’s Prayer says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But their focus is only on the bread aspect. They emphasize it too much, so their main focus is worldly things. And because of this, they overlook other aspects of the prayer and religious lives . . . Hindus teach simplicity, control, and how to live a good life. We say “Don’t focus on the body.” We feed the soul rather (Interview in English).

Another devotee attributed it to the greed for wealth and power that motivated leaders of these churches: He [the pastor] would come to the mike [microphone] and say, “Donate beautiful money to the lord! Don’t put in only 5000 Cedis (about 70 cents). Donate more. Show your money up so we all can see. The Lord God will multiply everything you give to him. You will be rich!” And these poor people with problems and seeking help will empty their pockets. When they have emptied their pockets he would then flatter them . . . “Beautiful children of Jesus, wonderful sons and daughters of God, clap for yourselves.” At the end of the day he would go home in his Benz [Mercedes Benz car] and the followers would trek home on foot . . . They are no good role models . . . They lead this nation astray. Swamiji would not even mention money here, he does not need it . . . You give what you can to the lord ( Interview in Ewe).

A female devotee said the charismatic churches’ emphasis on faith and saving grace resulted in a lack of concern with deeds, including moral conduct: It does not matter to them how they conduct their lives. They teach that once you believe you will be saved. So it is dzidie [faith in his saving grace], not how you conduct your life. You could do bad things, but if you believed in the blood [of the lord], God would forgive you. It is not so here. Salvation is by deeds. Every bad deed gives you bad karma and you will suffer for that . . . There is no escape. So we are more careful about moral conduct (Interview in Twi).

I found the Hindus’ general evaluation of the charismatic churches’ stance on morality to be too harsh sometimes. Charismatic churches express concern about declining morality in Ghana, too, and addressed this through their teachings and practices. While many do not emphasize moderation, purity, and the control of one’s sexuality as much as the Hindu communities do, they preach against fornication and marital infidelity and stress the virtues of monogamy, the need for sobriety and abstinence from vices such as smoking. Some churches encourage the youth to marry early in order to prevent pre-marital sex, many going as far as to sponsor weddings to reduce the financial burden on young followers. These views above,

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then, are polemics that stem from strong anti-Charismatic church ­feelings. Fueling this resentment is the way the Charismatic churches and Pentecostals directly attacked traditional religion and Hinduism, the very religions, Hindu devotees consider as holding the answers to the nation’s moral problems. For Swamiji’s devotees the “Pentecostals” plunged the nation deeper and deeper into a moral crisis because by undermining traditional religion and its moral sanctions, they created a vacuum that they filled with their overly modern and materialistic religion that “produced” an ethos in which immoral tendencies thrived. Swamiji’s Eyes See You Apart from the influence of Swamiji’s moral exhortations and the temple practices, the belief in his invisible presence in devotees’ homes, his ability to “pierce” through devotees to their thoughts and to detect misconduct of devotees including those committed in his absence, deterred immoral conduct. Accordingly, Dallas, a young male follower said: His presence in your life alone reminds you constantly of the need to do the right thing all the time. Because if you do the bad things and you go to him, you will realize that he knows about it. The man has powers. Swamiji’s eyes see you all the time (Interview in Ga).

Afi, an Ewe lady whose husband lives in the U.K, said to me at one time in Ewe: “As for me he has warned me. He said to me after my husband left. ‘Right now that your husband is in England, if you like go in for a boyfriend . . . I will catch you.’ He seemed to be joking but I know he meant it . . . Even as we are sitting and chatting here he knows all about us. If you are a member, you know that no evil act of yours will be undetected.” Ben, a younger devotee described how even a mere invitation by Swamiji could mesmerize him: As for him, when you do bad just leave the church, because he will know. Any time he sends after me, my heart begins to pound krim kirm krim [heartbeat]. Even if I did not do any bad thing I would be scared . . . I would try to recollect all my activities to determine whether I had misbehaved somewhere . . . So I am always on my guard not to fall into any temptations because Swamiji would definitely know about it. He will know even when your thoughts are evil and he will say something to you that will make you drop those ideas. Eii that man! (Interview in Ga).

Whether devotees themselves are haunted by their guilt feelings whenever they appeared before their leader or he truly was able to see through



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their thoughts and actions we cannot say, but it would seem that the belief in his invisible presence is a strong deterrent to devotees’ immoral conduct. The emerging capitalist consumer ethos and the liberal attitudes towards sexuality that practices such as pornography and homosexuality reinforce, challenge local notions of sexuality and raise moral questions for many Ghanaian people. The AIDS epidemic is not seen only as a consequence of the crisis, it epitomizes it. In an ironic twist, whilst scientists and folk beliefs in the West link AIDS with the Third World, tracing its origin to Africa in particular, folk theories in Ghana hold AIDS to be a “modern” disease originating from America and Europe, resulting from Western people’s liberal attitudes towards sex and “their careless” sexual lifestyles. What is deemed in the West to be a “sexual revolution” is for many traditionally-minded Ghanaians nothing but the epitome of human sexual promiscuity. As far as the new Hindus are concerned, the new “born-again” churches are a part of the problem. Their “prosperity gospel” reinforces the consumer capitalist ethos and they do not address the moral situation adequately. Also, their teaching that local custom or tradition is “devilish,” undermines the effectiveness of traditional religious and customary practices that promote morality. In search of moral direction, the devotees in this chapter turned to the Hindu traditions.

CHAPTER Eight

CONCLUSION At the outset of this study I asserted that attention must be paid to the circuits and networks that were inadvertently created between the colonies on the periphery during the 19th century colonial project in Africa, and how these linkages have proven to be just as powerful in shaping local religious situations in the post-colonies, as linkages from the colonizing powers. I suggested that the transfer of Hinduism from India to Ghana which started at the tail-end of the British colonization of the two communities exemplifies one such colony-to-colony religious ­traffic. Throughout the study we have gained insights into how Ghanaians have appropriated Hindu religion in order to cope with the demands of modern realities. The study emphasized the creative religiosity of the ­Ghanaian actors in this process in that the origin of these Hindu temples is not due to Indian immigration but to the religious imagination of the Ghanaians themselves. Through intensive field research in the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temples, I demonstrated how the religious discourse provided by the Hindu religious framework has helped modern Ghanaians to re-create and shape their sociopolitical and material realities. We have seen how Hindu religion has become a vehicle by which Ghanaians appropriate religious coping mechanisms, while re-accessing their own traditional religions and at the same time contesting Western-imposed modern realities such as globalism, charismatic Pentecostalism, and even gender discrimination—women negotiate the Hindu Goddess, Durga, enlisting models they associate with her, as additional ammunition in their quest for gender equality in their temple and the larger Ghanaian society. It has become clear that worshippers of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temple feel attracted to their Shaivite and Vaishnavite traditions because their rituals help them to address both their traditional and their modern insecurities. The discourses of their Hindu temples also offer these worshippers conceptual means of engaging what they perceive to be chaos in their lives and in the nation.



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Globalization has come with opportunities for upward social mobility— trade both local and international, travel, tourism cultural exchange and education, in-flows of wealth, and an improvement in living standards of many. There are some worshippers for whom being a member of a Hindu temple facilitates participation in this globalized and modernized world. For instance, some worshippers of Krishna talk about the advantage of the local community’s international links for international business. For other devotees the moderate lifestyles their temples encourage have translated into accumulation of profit for reinvestment. Some Hare Krishna devotees view the highly regimented temple life as a form of orientation for the discipline one needs to successfully participate in modern business in Ghana. Members of the Hindu monastery talk about how the tradition has a learning culture which facilitates their educational advancements. But they also seek spiritual help from the guru to back their mundane efforts in their business endeavors. Others benefit from Swami’s connections with well-placed members to secure loans and jobs. There are other worshippers who feel that their temples’ emphasis on the link between abstention from sex and the cultivation of spiritual power produces a healthy lifestyle that can check sexual promiscuity, sheltering them from HIV/AIDS. This study is also an exposition in many ways of the understanding of how important spiritual power or magico-religious power is in the African religious context. Although many Africans have become Christians or Muslims, there is still an expectation of magical/spiritual power that will transform both spiritual and material realities for the believer/­ practitioner. In Ghana, survival is tied to the capacity to access spiritual power. The study has demonstrated the overwhelming influence of notions about the wonder-working religious power of Indian gods, in the social imagination, on the public perception of Hinduism. These ideas make Hinduism appealing to many of devotees of Shiva and Krishna, seeking magico­religious cover or transcendental experiences that will enable them to cultivate their own spiritual power. Cultivating spiritual power individually is an experience that is highly desired culturally and even persons with affiliations to Christian churches, who aspire to enjoying a higher quality of spiritual life, are sometimes inclined to join Hindu communities in the hope that they will realize their spiritual aspirations there. As the most recent of alien religious traditions to be rooted in Ghana, Hinduism has not yet fully secured a strong foothold in the Ghanaian religious field. Yet the socio cultural milieu and political climate—­characterized

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by a general openness to new and alien ideas and lifestyles, exposure to religious traditions aside from Islam, Christianity, and traditional religions, through the study of them at Ghana’s university campuses, and constitutional reforms guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of religious practice— favors the Hindu religious groups. Hinduism has interacted with individual experience as well as changing historical and socio-political circumstances in Ghana. Over the years the relevance of Ghanaian Hinduism has evolved in response to changing socio-political, cultural, and religious situations. From the indigenous understanding of Hinduism as a repository of superior magico-religious power, it acquired additional meanings as a source of deep philosophical and moral ideas, a link to Ghana’s indigenous religious past, and a model for how to modernize this heritage. The religious landscape offers a context in which groups and individuals articulate their views through their pronouncements and actions. Different voices on this landscape offer alternative views. Birgit Meyer (1998) has written extensively about the Pentecostal understanding of western modernity as representing progress and the indigenous traditions as representing the past, or backwardness, and their discourse calling on their followers to sever linkages with tradition. Marleen De Witte describes how the view that traditional resources must be reconfigured in the context of modern institutions in order to make them relevant is motivating activities of agents of the indigenous religions such as Afrikania (2010:83– 100). Underlying the discourse and actions of Ghana’s Hindus is another response. This response subscribes to a distinction between modernity and westernization and expresses a concern with the uncritical adoption of western ways of life, especially the materialism that comes with capitalist consumerism. Ghana’s Hindus express concern about the malcontents of this culture. They attribute practices such as the ritual killing of people in the pursuit of wealth through occult practices, the commodification of female sexuality either through pornography or prostitution, and rampant corruption in governmental circles, to a capitalist mindset which drives people to make money at any cost. Moreover, they view western modernity as a form of imperialism that co-opts local African communities such as Ghana into a western agenda. For the Hindu worshippers, an Indian modernity is a more suitable context for finding answers to modern questions. It has elements that link it with the Ghanaian religio-cultural heritage, the emphasis on gods, a highly ritualistic culture, and importance attached to the magicality of spiritual power, its inclusive orientation, and its concern with sexual morality. Furthermore, Ghana’s Hindu ­worshippers



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demonstrate agency in the creation of new Hindu religious worlds. Esel’s Hindu tradition offers such a world. The Krishna ­hegemony imposed a Vaishnava culture on local worshippers, but the laity has fashioned their own Hindu world out of their indigenous ­religious resources and the newly adopted Hindu tradition. And just as there are modern Ghanaian families who have appropriated lifestyles of the rich and famous of the U.S.A., there are other Ghanaian modern families who through religion have adopted East Indian cultural lifestyles. They are vegetarian, view themselves as householders, adopt Hindu names, dress in Hindu attire, and practice Hindu life-cycle rituals. This study then is about a minority that has a preference for an Indian modernity in Ghana. Ghana’s Hinduism stands out among other African expressions such as can be found in South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya for being heavily inflected with indigenous religious beliefs and practices. Ghana offers a unique case of Hinduism growing up more or less spontaneously among a non-Indian community. The presence of Hindu practices in locations outside of India has always been linked with the flow of Indian migrants into these places. Though pockets of local Hindu worshippers have been reported in other African countries, such as, Togo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria, in the absence of systematic research in these countries, it is still not clear whether their origins followed the pattern observed in Ghana. Aside from its history as an important source of African recruits for the colonial army, RWAFF, which was engaged in campaigns in the Far East during World War II, this development owes a lot to Ghanaian indigenous creative religiosity and spiritual adventurism. Ghanaians are inclined to seek spiritual resources anywhere on the globe, and as I have demonstrated, have a preference for outside and unfamiliar spiritual resources. More important, Ghana’s Hindu experience has ushered Hindu religious practice in Africa into a new stage, that is, the beginning of its status as an African religion. The East and South African expressions of Hinduism that started from the turn of the nineteenth century when East Indians migrated to these places as British indentured laborers can hardly be described as African. Hindu religious practices in these places are still restricted to its indigenous agents, the Indian migrants. Currently Ghana is not the only African country with local Hindu worshippers. A few written (Hackett 1989), but mostly oral accounts describe the presence of local Hindus in other west African countries such as Togo, Sierra Leone, ­Liberia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. In the absence of systematic research in

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these countries, we still cannot tell how widespread the influence of Hinduism is. Though it might be presumptuous to predict its future in Africa at this point, the fact that there is a local interest in Hinduism is indicative of the presence of niches on Africa’s very pluralistic religious markets and it would seem that Hinduism is among the options local worshippers are seriously considering. Ghana’s religious field and the two temples covered here are also being transformed as Ghanaian worshippers participate in the Hindu worlds offered them, bringing elements from the local traditions into Vaishnavism and Shaivism and transforming them into hybridized forms. Devotees even talk about how the churches they are affiliated with are adopting the Krishna Maha mantra chant. Shiva and Krishna are icons in some indigenous shrines and spiritual churches. Many Ghanaians are adopting Hindu names and cremation is becoming a more common way of disposing the remains of the dead, especially in the face of the rising cost of funerals. Vegetarianism is becoming commonplace even though the rationale reveals a mixture of Hindu and traditional Ghanaian religious beliefs. In other words as these Hindu traditions become indigenized, the Ghanaian religious landscape becomes Hinduized (Wuaku 2012:354–355; 2009:403–428). There might be a few Hindus in Ghana in contradistinction with the millions, who belong to the dominant Pentecostal tradition. A religion with a total following of less than a million in a nation of 23 million people is clearly a small group, but nevertheless significant as one of the ways in which Indian influence has been felt in Ghanaian society. Furthermore the strength of Hinduism’s presence in Ghana must not be determined exclusively by the number of followers who claim they are Hindus, but should include the growth in the number of Hindu temples in Ghana, the fact that Hindu terms have become part of popular religious parlance, the domestic Hindu shrines that can be found in homes of many Ghanaians nowadays, and the growing trend of Ghanaians practicing Hindu naming ceremonies and giving their children Hindu names. The fact that Hinduism exists as a religion in Ghana in the absence of a strong East Indian presence should be sufficient quest for an investigation. The story of the local adoption and use of Hindu religion in Ghana reminds us of the agency of people of African descent as they have and continue to struggle to meet the demands of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts that are more often than not imposed upon them. It provides us with yet another lens of analysis and another perspective from which to view the African experience and its encounter with



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s­ lavery, ­colonization, neo-liberalism and globalization. It is my view that the inquiry into this story is also timely, as the influence of India grows both economically and artistically in sub-Saharan Africa through the extremely popular medium of film. It is my hope that my portrait of this newly emerging but unexplored African religious landscape, will direct more scholarly attention to it. Any account of the contemporary religious complex in Ghana that does not include this landscape cannot be considered complete.

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Index Aborampah, O. 10 n Abrokyiri 79, 270 Accra 1, 17, 19, 27–34, 43–45, 50–52, 62–67, 75–84, 90–123, 153–239, 241, 246, 252, 262, 268–271, 283, 295–298, 301, 303, 315 Acheampong, General I.K. 61, 64 Achebe C. 72 Adinkra 106 Adjebeng J. 84 Adome 65 Agateh 191n, 192, 241 Ahimsa 120, 179 Akan 10–11n, 19, 25n, 33, 39, 46, 81, 83, 99, 106, 110, 113, 115–116, 119, 122–125, 128–129, 134, 135, 138, 164, 171, 180, 182, 186, 190, 196, 221–222, 228, 240, 277, 278, 300 Akrade 153, 158, 164, 196, 202, 232, 241, 274 Akwesi Besia 83 Akyeampong 10n, 13, 259 Alajo 153, 157–158 Amadiume, Ifi 11n Amankwa 33, 58, 65, 75, 78, 81 America, American, Americanization, North-America 22, 81–82, 108–109, 151, 152, 153, 158, 159, 175, 178, 195, 197, 198, 208, 261, 263, 271, 272, 292–293, 299, 307 Ananda, Marga 27, 30, 64, 255 Anti-colonial protests/protestors/feelings/ sensibilities 63, 290–292 Apter, A. 18 Apostolic 149, 193 Aranyakas 89 Arcanum Nama, Shivaya 27, 65 Appadurai, Arjun 5, 23, 24 Arya Samaj 30, 37 Arya Vedic 67 Asamoah-Gyadu 14, 27, 28, 61, 62, 64, 110, 217 Asantehene 100 Asare-Opoku 2, 196, 224, 259, 277, 293 Ascetics 88, 89, 90, 100, 111 Asrama 89, 177, 179 Assimeng, M. 2, 12, 19, 27, 65 Atiemo, M. 84 Aura 38, 66, 82, 105, 117, 166, 187, 192, 196, 247

Auslander, M. 18 Avatar 148–150 Awuah Amoh 44, 49, 64 Ayodhya 143 Barnes, Sandra 41 Bastian, Misty 18 Beattie, J. 86n Benares 91 Benin 27, 245 Berger 7 Bettison, D. 38 Bhagavata, Purana 151, 166, 202, 275 Bhagavadgita 61, 65, 147, 195, 201 Bhakti 88, 147, 150, 172, 173, 268 Bhaktivedanta, Prabhupada 151, 161, 173, 176–177, 202, 203, 211, 276, 281 Bhu 117–118 Bible/Biblical-teachings 65, 84, 97, 101, 194, 217, 220, 256–257, 269, 279, 282 Blowman 54–55 Bollywood 5, 26, 50, 53 Brahman 87–89, 116–118, 120–121, 147, 176–179, 228, 299 Brahma, Kumaris 30, 67 British, colonial rule 1–7, 11, 15, 17, 26 In East and South Africa 28–30 During world war II 44–46 Brokensha, D. 54n Burke, R. 175 Burma 44, 48–49 Busia-junction 259, 106 Celibacy 92, 201, 299 Center for the Awareness of African Spirituality 32, 69 Charles, W. Ankor 67 Chaitanya 103, 149–151, 164, 173, 201, 210, 213, 229 Charisma/Charismatic 18–20, 34, 72, 87, 94–96, 105–106, 115, 209, 219, 220, 228, 233–235, 259, 271–272, 290–291, 295, 304–305, 306–308 Charsley, S. 248 Christ, Yoga Church 65 Christianity 2, 9, 13, 31–33, 45, 69, 74, 132, 190, 199, 211, 219, 221, 228–231, 248, 257, 273–280, 283, 310

322

index

Circulations 2, 6 Clark 45–46, 72, 219 Cole, Catherine 44, 46, 56, 58 Colony 2–3, 10, 63, 85, 308 Comaroff & Comaroff 4, 18 Communitas 26, 115 Concert party 57–58 Conversion 18, 22, 36, 74, 94, 146, 154, 161, 171, 176–179, 181, 199, 241–243, 247–252, 253, 256, 262, 266, 281, 283, 285 Cooper, F. 24 Cote d’ Ivoire 237 Coup d’etats 3, 17, 63, 67–68, 122, 238 Cowherdess 150, 166 Crusades 84, 220, 222, 228, 230, 232–233 Cultural, Traffic 2, 4, 6, 7, 26 Curley, R. 248 Curtin, P. 62 Cyril Henry, Hoskin 61 Damuah 69, 289 Daner, F. 165, 175, 178, 200 Darshana 73, 115, 141, 254, 278 Debrunner, H. 219 De Witte, M. 69, 85, 211, 218, 310 Diaspora 5, 26, 30 Divine, Life Society 30, 90, 93, 104–105, 119 Divine, light mission 27, 67 Divine, mystic path 20, 97 Domestication 22, 123 Dovlo, E. 27, 28, 49n, 94, 293, 300 Dreams 73, 190, 195, 236, 237, 248, 249, 250–254, 260, 262–263 Drewal, H. 26, 42, 43 Drought 67, 130, 156, 247, 269 Durkheimian 191 Dzobo, N.K. 224 East Indian 62, 71, 311 Eastern-mysticism 61, 223 Eckanker 255–256 Effervescence 191 Ellis, S. 38, 103 Evil spirits 25, 48, 64, 124, 128, 129, 155, 161, 180–181, 187, 226, 243 Fabian, J. 248, 249 Fadama, [New] 65 Falzon 64 Fernandez, G. 7 Fernandez, J. 102 Fisher, H. 13, 22, 76, 248, 250, 252

Folk theories 15 82, 121, 130, 266, 299, 307 Foucault, M. 8, 23, 24 Freemasonry 64 Gandhi, Mahatma 107 Ganesh 2, 27, 92, 107, 116, 120, 122, 131, 252 Gaudiya-Vaisnava 175, 179 Gayatri 66, 139 GBC 178 Gbidukor Zaa 70 Geertz, C. 7, 15, 39, 173 Gelberg, S.J. 175, 210–211 Geschiere 18 Ghanaba-Kofi 69, 70 Gifford, P. 19, 69, 84, 220 Gold coast 1, 10, 43, 44, 51, 58 Goody, J. 18 Grass Roots 23, 178 Greater-Accra 32 Gray, R. 2, 13, 44 Gujarati 26, 30, 42, 43 Guru-Maharaja 27 Gye nyame 106 Gyekye, K. 277 Hackett, R 12, 13, 27, 74, 311 Harmattan  48, 106, 156, 160 Hausa 5, 6, 8, 222 Hawley, J. 26 Hettne, B. 44 Highlife 58, 79 Hillman, E. 72 Himalaya-Mountains 20, 87, 90, 91, 93 Hinduization 22, 25, 174–177, 197, 201, 203, 207 Holbrook, W. 44 Holy Wars 68 Hopkins 211 Horton 2, 7, 13, 14, 24, 68, 121, 278, 280 Inda & Rosaldo 2, 4, 6, 23, 24, Insecurities 3, 80, 84, 85, 305 Intercontinental 1, 2 Jedrei 248 Jehu Appiah 65 Jnana 88 Joshi 50–51 Judah, S. 71, 151, 173, 175, 210, 271 Juju 18, 37, 41, 54–55, 61, 95, 154, 215, 217, 227, 243, 262 Jules-Rossetta 242



index

323

Kali yuga 68, 148, 171, 172, 213, 214, 217, 226, 256, 267 Kalu, O. 2, 13, 17, 23, 178 Kasfelt, N. 381 Killingray, D. 44 Kinsley 87–89, 124, 125, 126, 138, 147, 148, 150, 151, 185 Kunkun 113, 199, 236 Kumar, P. 29, 175, 176 Kurtas 177, 225, 249 Krobo 276 Kubchandanis 62, 67

Narayan 88, 89, 120, 147, 148, 169, 262, 299, 300 Narayanan 147–148 Navaratri 25, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142 Nimbarka 90 Nkrumah 63, 213 Nock 241 Nonviolence 120, 179, 180, 231 Notsi 70 Nrenzah, G. 10, 10n, 11n Nukunya, G. 19, 45, 72, 199, 219

Lakshmi 26, 42, 43, 116, 120, 128, 129, 148 Larbi, E.K 47n, 242 Larkin 5, 8, 26, 50, 53n Larteh 45–49, 59, 64 Linkages 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 31, 63, 74, 308, 310 Lobsang, Rampa 61, 257

Obeng, P. 2, 10n, 13, 259 Obeyesekere, Gananath 15, 16, 39 O’Brien, C.D 18, 19 O’Connell, J. 151, 173, 175, 176, 179, 189, 201, 202, 210 Odorkor 31, 33, 34, 94, 99, 104, 105, 106, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 250 Oduyoye, M. 263 O’Flaherty, W. 91, 92 Okomfo 144, 289, 302 Opoku, Onyina 84 Oracle 194 Ortner, Sherry 23, 24 Osu 45, 67, 93, 105, 303 Outside-knowledge 41

Madva 90 Magic/Magicians 42–43, 57–58, 59–61, 101 Mahabharata 185, 188 Makola 11 Malaya 90 Mallam 13, 56, 85, 86, 106, 114 Mami wata 42, 42, 65, 215 Marginalization 11, 81 Marriot-McKim 23, 24 Medie 31–33, 69, 149, 152, 158–161, 184–189, 190, 198, 201, 202, 221, 229, 267, 276 Meditation 49, 64, 65, 67, 73, 89, 91, 93, 117, 123, 129, 150, 236, 257–258, 268, 286, 299, 302 Meyer, B. 5, 14, 19, 22, 24, 27, 28, 35, 37, 41–42, 43, 50, 51–52, 66, 68, 84, 178, 186, 191, 192, 219, 220, 242, 278, 310 Modernity 5–7, 17, 38, 83, 173, 195, 206, 219, 272, 310, 311 Moksha 87, 88, 116, 117, 118, 147 Morality 81, 82, 83, 118, 139, 172, 294, 296, 299, 300, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 310 Mozama-Disco 65, 241, 251, 252, 256, 260, 261 Mridanga 155, 156, 190, 251 Musambachima-Mwela 38 Myths 38, 39, 40, 61, 82, 130, 152, 154, 224, 230, 237 Namasankirtans 210, 212, 213, 215, 216 Nankani 51, 52, 53, 62, 63

Palen, J.J. 222 Panafest 70 Partition of India and Pakistan 51, 58, 63, 292, 308, 311 Patriarchal 10, 11, 12, 134, 135, 280 Peel, J.D.Y. 2, 7, 13, 24, 121, 280 Peki 14, 24, 27, 37, 42, 49, 66, 70, 222, 223, 225 Preachers 22, 164, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 223, 230, 231, 232, 233, 240, 253, 267 Premabhakti 149, 282 Professor-Hindus 42, 57, 59, 60, 61 Proverbs 39, 224, 225, 230 Quran 97, 194 Rajastic 180 Rama 143–144, 148, 164, 245 Ramakrishna 30 Ramanuja 90 Ravana 143, 144 Rawlings 10n, 11, 63, 67, 68, 76, 208, 238 Ray, B. 191, 248, 252

324

index

Redfield, R. 23 Rishikesh 20, 90, 91 Robertson, R. 21, 265 Roman-Catholic 101, 111, 219, 255, 273, 280, 300 Rounds, J.C. 191, 192 Routinization of charisma 19n Royal python 186, 187 Rumor 38, 39, 80, 106, 151, 201, 237, 238, 268, 298 Rush, D. 26, 27 Sackey, B. 11n, 135 Sadhu 20, 87, 88, 90, 91, 99, 104, 114, 115 Sahlins, M. 24 Sai baba 27, 30, 61, 62, 67, 74, 238, 265 Samskaras 25 Sanneh, L. 13 Sannyasi 88, 89, 105 Sarpong, P. 2, 185–186, 224, 293 Satsang 35, 67, 142, 143, 239–240 Satyam 117 Scapegoating 11 Sea 40, 42–43, 65 Senegal 5, 6, 8, 50 Senya Breku 19, 95, 96, 100, 102 Sex 83–90, 92, 116, 117, 118, 150, 173, 176, 179, 198, 200–201, 250, 285, 290, 293, 294, 300, 310 Shaw, R. 248 Shinn, L. 75 Sindh/Sindhi 29, 51, 62, 63, 67, 93, 105 Sivananda 90, 91 Skanda 2, 92, 107, 116 Soldiers 3, 11, 28, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 60, 63 South Africa 28, 29, 30, 44, 62, 67, 169, 191, 311 Spiritual-science 64, 64n

Sundkler, B. 248, 249 Sunsum sori 63 Synthesis 24, 25, 35, 178, 181, 186, 191, 194 Tamasic 180 Tarkwa 54, 162, 209 Third Eye 61, 73, 95, 115, 117, 118, 257, 258, 260, 265, 302 Tilaka clay 167, 177, 197, 215 Togo 27, 43, 112, 137, 235, 236–240, 265, 269, 311 Transcendental 18, 64, 67, 87–88, 117, 120, 170, 171, 172, 173, 184, 193, 254, 255, 256–257, 258, 259, 268, 309 Tulasi 66, 195, 196, 260 Turner, J.S. 175 Turner, V. 25, 26, 115 Ukah, A. 21 United States 30, 75, 79, 82, 151, 158, 159, 162, 175, 178, 198, 211 Upanishads 89, 89n, 116, 120 Vaisnava 175, 179, 285 Vallabha 90 Vegetarianism 121, 178, 179, 231, 312 Western-imperialism 7 Williamson, S. 2 Wilson, B. 7, 72 Witchcraft 17, 24, 32, 40, 42, 55, 66, 84, 130, 181, 187, 189, 195–196, 197, 219, 226, 227, 250, 260 World-War II 3, 47, 58, 63, 311 Wuaku, A. 2, 14 Wyllie 2 Yamuna 202 Younger, Paul 28, 29, 30

Illustration Section



Figure 1. Some young female devotees of Krishna having Darshana at the Radha Govinda Temple in Medie

Figure 2. Front view of the Sri Radha Govinda Temple at Medie



Figure 3. The main entrance to the Radha-Govinda Temple at Medie

Figure 4. Devotees of Krishna arriving for the Puja on a Sunday afternoon at Medie



Figure 5. Krishna Devotees discussing the scriptures at the Medie Temple

Figure 6. Some male devotees of Krishna getting ready for Kirtan at the Medie Temple



Figure 7. A pujari officiating during puja in the Radha Govinda Temple at Medie

Figure 8. A group of female devotees dancing during Kirtan at Medie



Figure 9. Prahbu Srivas, Temple president, Medie, leading Kirtan

Figure 10. Children of Krishna dancing during Kirtan



Figure 11. Singing Krishna’s Praises

Figure 12. “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna . . .”: Krishna Devotees Chanting the Mahamantra



Figure 13. Experiencing the descent of Krishna sunsum konkrong

Figure 14. Prasadam



Figure 15. Villagers of Medie drawing water from the Hare Krishna well

Figure 16. The Hare Krishna Junior Secondary School at Medie



Figure 17. Krishna’s Sacred Cows

Figure 18. The Community’s Dinning Hall at Medie



Figure 19. Temple devotees socializing

Figure 20. After Kirtan