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Gurus and Goddesses, Deities and Devotees

Vasudha Narayanan

in The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States

This chapter discusses the lives and messages of two popular female gurus, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati and Karunamayi Ma, who is also known as Sri Sri Sri Vijayes Wari Devi. They are both portrayed as ... More

This chapter discusses the lives and messages of two popular female gurus, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati and Karunamayi Ma, who is also known as Sri Sri Sri Vijayes Wari Devi. They are both portrayed as deriving their teaching from Hindu sources but being ecletic in their teaching. Kali is predominant in Ma Jaya's worship but she also worships other Hindu deities and it is important to note that her first vision was that of Christ. Karunamayi Ma speaks constantly about the equality of religions. She does not frequently evoke the names of Christ or Mary in her talks like Ma Jaya, but is forthright about her view of other religions.Less

Contesting Patriarchy: The Early Years

Chitra Sinha

in Debating Patriarchy: The Hindu Code Bill Controversy in India (1941–1956)

The chapter focuses on the role of discourse and communicative action in the advancement of gender rights over several centuries, the second chapter concentrates on social, political, and legal ... More

The chapter focuses on the role of discourse and communicative action in the advancement of gender rights over several centuries, the second chapter concentrates on social, political, and legal factors that led to substantive reform efforts in the Hindu law during the twentieth century. It explores the lack of debate on women’s rights in pre-colonial India dominated by religious discourse and the transformation during the colonial era brought about by the emergence of alternate discourses including orientalist perspective, the views of social reformers, and the rise of feminist consciousness. The chapter also dwells upon the crystallization of Brahmanic patriarchy and the challenge provided by the early debates beginning in the 18th century till the codification of Hindu law in the 1950s.Less

Gertrude Bell and the Antiquities Law of Iraq

Magnus T. Bernhardsson

Paul Collins and Charles Tripp (eds)

in Gertrude Bell and Iraq: A life and legacy

As Director of Antiquities in the nascent Iraq, Gertrude Bell was instrumental in laying the groundwork for all archaeological work in the country, including formulating antiquities legislation. ... More

As Director of Antiquities in the nascent Iraq, Gertrude Bell was instrumental in laying the groundwork for all archaeological work in the country, including formulating antiquities legislation. After several years of work and some intense political negotiations, Bell’s law was finally passed in 1924. Bell’s legislation is a hybrid which demonstrates her multiple loyalties – protecting both Iraqi heritage and the interests of foreign archaeologists and institutions. This element is most obvious in controversial Articles relating to the division of finds, where the law does allow, under certain conditions, for archaeological artefacts to leave the country.Less

Introduction: Entering a Landscape of Mindfulness

J. L. Cassaniti

in Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia

This chapter introduces the landscape of mindfulness practices in the regions of South and Southeast Asia, where people overwhelmingly follow the kind of Theravāda Buddhism from which the modern ... More

This chapter introduces the landscape of mindfulness practices in the regions of South and Southeast Asia, where people overwhelmingly follow the kind of Theravāda Buddhism from which the modern mindfulness movement emerged. The chapter begins with a question: what kind of mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions are and could be used in a Thai psychiatric hospital, as part of a broader Buddhist cultural environment? It answers this question by introducing the methodological and theoretical project of Remembering the Present, including an overview of the interview and survey-based ethnographic research into sati with over 600 psychiatrists, monks, students, and villagers in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. It also previews some of the central findings of the book, in relation to what the author calls the TAPES of mindfulness: the ways that people frame mindfulness culturally around issues of Temporality, Affect, Power, Ethics, and Selfhood.Less

Defining Arab Nationalism

Adeed Dawisha

in Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Arab nationalism. Throughout his numerous writings on Arab nationalism, Sati‘ al-Husri—the foremost theoretician of Arab nationalism—never lost sight ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Arab nationalism. Throughout his numerous writings on Arab nationalism, Sati‘ al-Husri—the foremost theoretician of Arab nationalism—never lost sight of the ultimate goal of the ideology he so vigorously propagated, namely the political unity of the Arabic-speaking people. He wrote that the happiest of nations were the ones in which political and national boundaries were fused into one another. In another one of his writings, Husri says that he is constantly asked how was it that the Arabs lost the 1948–1949 war over Palestine when they were seven states and Israel was only one? His answer is unequivocal: the Arabs lost the war precisely because they were seven states. Thus, to avoid losing future wars, the Arabs had to unite into one Arab state.Less

Sati‘ al-Husri’s Theory of Arab Nationalism

Adeed Dawisha

in Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair

This chapter discusses Sati‘ al-Husri’s theory of Arab nationalism. In the development of the concept of Arab nationalism, there is little doubt that Husri—both as a thinker and educator—takes pride ... More

This chapter discusses Sati‘ al-Husri’s theory of Arab nationalism. In the development of the concept of Arab nationalism, there is little doubt that Husri—both as a thinker and educator—takes pride of place. Like other twentieth-century nationalisms, Arab nationalism, as formulated by Husri, was based on the intellectual tenets of European ideas on the subject. This statement, admittedly, would have been assailed mercilessly by Arab nationalists during the peak of the Arab nationalist movement in the 1950s and 1960s. These nationalists held jealously to the notion that their nationalism was intellectually “authentic.” By the end of the century, however, few would contest the statement’s historical validity. Indeed, with the decline of Arab nationalism and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, nationalism was being increasingly depicted unkindly as one of the failed imported Western solutions.Less

Arab Nationalism and Competing Loyalties: From the 1920s to the Arab Revolt in Palestine

Adeed Dawisha

in Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair

This chapter looks at a growing number of voices in the three most important Arab domains of the time—Iraq, Greater Syria, and Egypt—who were declaring themselves to be Arabs, sometimes in ... More

This chapter looks at a growing number of voices in the three most important Arab domains of the time—Iraq, Greater Syria, and Egypt—who were declaring themselves to be Arabs, sometimes in conjunction with, at other times to the exclusion of, other identities. Beyond the claims of historical validity, Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s was one of only four countries with a measure of independence, at least in matters of domestic policy. It was in Iraq that the intellectual headquarters of Arab nationalism resided in the person of Sati‘ al-Husri, whose ideas were eliciting a receptive echo among the country’s political elites. Indeed, Husri and other Arab nationalists, many of whom were his disciples, set out to make Iraq the beacon from which Arab nationalist ideas would spread to the rest of the Arab world. The chapter also studies the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.Less

Conclusion: The Social Consequences of ‘Sacralizing’ Women’s Familial Roles

Jaya Tyagi

in Contestation and Compliance: Retrieving Women's 'Agency' from Puranic Traditions

The conclusion shows how women are identified with their bodies in religious traditions; however, women negotiate the boundaries that are defined for them, constantly pushing them. In this endeavour, ... More

The conclusion shows how women are identified with their bodies in religious traditions; however, women negotiate the boundaries that are defined for them, constantly pushing them. In this endeavour, in polygynous societies, they compete amongst themselves and attempt to take up devout roles in order to gain more leverage. However, this can have dire social consequences as they end up underlining rites that are male centric; the role of the living husband becomes critical in these rites and, thus, auspiciousness is associated with the husband and children. If they come to harm, then the onus is on women. The consequence of this ideology culminates in the institution of Sati in later times, indicating how women can use negative agency, obliterating their bodies, when there is no other way of expressing themselves.Less

Hinglaj in Perspective

Jürgen Schaflechner

in Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan

This chapter presents three distinct strains of the Goddess’s history, corresponding to the three main historical discourses shaping the current representations of Hinglaj and the ritual journeys ... More

This chapter presents three distinct strains of the Goddess’s history, corresponding to the three main historical discourses shaping the current representations of Hinglaj and the ritual journeys relating to her. The first surveys the various mentions of Hinglaj Devi in ancient Sanskrit sources, including her link to the myth of the Goddess Sati. The second demonstrates how Hinglaj rose to her role as an important caste and clan Goddess for contemporary South Asian Hindus. The third provides a glimpse into how the shrine’s Zikri-Muslim history has transformed the Goddess into a representative of communal understanding between Muslims and Hindus in today’s Sindh. Laid over this approach is an overview of the recent infrastructural and other developments at and around the shrine and their effect on these historical narratives, including the recent emergence of the Lasi-Lohana caste as a new and powerful actor in the process of writing and rewriting the history of Hinglaj.Less

The Making of Modern Hinduism in Medieval Nepal

Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz

in Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal

Chapter 4 focuses on the first two of three key phases in the development of the Svasthānīvratakathā textual-narrative tradition in which select stories culled from the Sanskrit Purāna corpus were ... More

Chapter 4 focuses on the first two of three key phases in the development of the Svasthānīvratakathā textual-narrative tradition in which select stories culled from the Sanskrit Purāna corpus were woven into the “original” fabric of the Svasthānī narrative. The beginning of the text’s Purānicization, or transformation from local vrat kathā to authoritative Purāna text, occurred between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It is during this period that the Svasthānīvratakathā domesticated the Shiva-Satī Devī-Daksha Prajāpati narrative cycle and the Madhu-Kaitabha creation story. These narratives expanded the geographical, temporal, and ideological parameters of the Svasthānī tradition in a manner that articulated and reinforced Nepal’s emergent identity as a united Hindu kingdom.Less

Burning Matters: Sati

Susmita Roye

in Mothering India: Women's Fiction in English Shaping Cultural History (1890-1947)

Sati in British India came to simultaneously refer to the widow-burning rite as well as to the self-immolating widow. With growing imperialist interests in the Empire in India, the British ... More

Sati in British India came to simultaneously refer to the widow-burning rite as well as to the self-immolating widow. With growing imperialist interests in the Empire in India, the British administration detected in the sati issue a powerful opportunity to promote the image of a progressive, reform-minded, benevolent Raj. An endeavour to know how Indian women themselves portray sati in their writings is of unfailing interest. Caught between the loud crossfire of the two warring camps of pro- and anti-Sati campaigns, the Indian woman—both the subject and the object of the entire sati discourse—hardly gets a chance to claim for herself the attention of a perceptive audience. The silence of the sati victim is, of course, nearly insurmountable and only a voice, seeped through another agency, reaches us. This chapter concentrates on three such mediated voices (Cornelia Sorabji, Snehalata Sen, and Sita Devi) as presented in their fiction.Less

Caṇḍī

Saswati Sengupta

in Mutating Goddesses: Bengal's Laukika Hinduism and Gender Rights

The ubiquitous goddesses dotting Bengal are referred to by the epithet mā/mother and commonly trailed by the suffix Caṇḍī and usually calcified as the Brahmanical wife of Śiva. The Caṇḍī ... More

The ubiquitous goddesses dotting Bengal are referred to by the epithet mā/mother and commonly trailed by the suffix Caṇḍī and usually calcified as the Brahmanical wife of Śiva. The Caṇḍī maṅgalakābyas by Brahmanical male poets from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries helped propagate the śāstrik framing of the laukika goddesses. The narratives start appearing as the Afghan sultanate of Bengal is incorporated into the Mughal Empire, proliferate in the seventeenth century as the Mughal conquest is consolidated, and stagnate by the end of the eighteenth century as the empire begins to disintegrate and the British Empire start rising. The modern canonized criticism of the Caṇḍīmaṅgalas argues that the genre represents the agenda of shaping a Hindu community in the context of Muslim rule and Caitanya’s critique of Brahmanical norms. But an ideological silence shrouds the detrimental implications of this patronizing project on customary caste and gender practices and rights.Less