Monks, Networks and Borderlands

About the Speaker

Malavika Kasturi is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, and the author of Embattled Identities, Rajput Lineages and the Colonial State in Nineteenth Century Colonial India (Oxford University Press, 2002), and numerous book chapters and journal articles. She is finalizing her book manuscript entitled ‘Rethinking the Genealogy of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad: Sadhus, Sampraday and Hindu Nationalism in Twentieth Century India'. It examines the relationship between spiritual preceptors, monks associated with different religious traditions (sampraday) and political bodies espousing Hindu nationalism in twentieth century north India.

Abstract

Dr Kasturi’s talk will draw upon her ongoing research project which seek to understand how Shaiva monastic orders like the Nathyogis were shaped by flows of wealth, trade and religiosity both in northern India and along the eastern Himalayan rim from the eighteenth century onwards. Her discussion reflects her intersecting research interests in the histories of religion, monasticism and asceticism, gurus and guru movements and space, place and mobility.

Report

Dr. Kasturi’s talk looked at the history of the Gorakhnath math and raised questions about how the Math balanced in acting with the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, which were not very conducive to asceticism. Through her research Dr. Kasturi analyses to what extent the Math’s embracing of the Hindutva shape the monastic order.

According to her research, in 1947 we see enormous ruptures in monastic orders. Contrary to the often openly hostile relationship that monastic orders have with political fronts like the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, Sampradays were considered inimical in maintaining a ‘Hindu rashtra’. She focuses on the this relationship through the focal point of the time of Baba Digvijay Nath in the Gorakhnath Math. The lines between the heterodox order and the Shaiva tradition is blurred by the Nath yogis. This leads to a mixing of the sacred and the profane in a pre-colonial context. Dr. Kasturi argues that in the 18th century Shaiva orders helped shape political life—Vaishnav hegemony does not eradicate the Shaiva traditions. She looks at the descent of the Nath yogis from Gorakhnath who according to hagiographic sources was a disciple of Shiva who they call Bhairav or Adinath and delves deeper into this counter intuitive relationship that religion and politics have in the case of the Gorakhnath Math and the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha.

Dr. Kasturi’s research is not only interesting but vital in the political climate that is India is currently shrouded in. Her research throws light upon a relationship, which I believe we understand very little of. The surge of Hindu nationalism that has presented itself in the country in the recent times can be best understood by research like this. Of course, for me it is difficult to separate my response to Dr. Kasturi’s talk and my response to the current political climate in the country. I believe that if we stand any chance of fighting the Hindu fundamentalism that has often taken the shape of something very closely resembling fascism, orchestrated by the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, we must seek to understand the history of the organisations as well as the history of their relationship with religious monastic orders.

By Shreeja Sen, Undergraduate Batch of 2019