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Foreign Swamis at Home in India: Transmigration to the Birthplace of Spirituality

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10702890601162799

1547-3384

Meena Khandelwal,

Socioeconomic Development in Asia

Abstract This essay examines the lives of non-Indians who live as monastics in Rishikesh, India. As transmigrants, they cross national borders and occupy transnational social fields. However, they neither maintain a home outside of India nor use the language of displacement to describe their experience. They speak instead of feeling "at home" in India and of finally finding their place, thus unsettling the emphasis on displacement in models of transmigrant identities. I explore how Foreign Swamis experience India as home and point to certain characteristics that make India eligible to become "home" to non-Indians: discursive constructions of spiritual India, low cost of living, institutional support for the monastic life, and the Hindu doctrine of transmigration of the soul. Foreign Swamis are unusual, even radical, transmigrants in that most move from rich to poor country, with ascetic rather than worldly aspirations, and after renouncing family, employment, and country. Yet their narratives may prompt us to ask new questions about other kinds of transmigrants: What other kinds of people might find home through migration? What makes a place eligible to become home to what kinds of people, and, finally, what other kinds of homes might be possible? Key Words: Hindu renunciationmigrationreligious travelIndia This research would not be possible without the generous help of Swamis Chetan Jyoti, Bodhichitananda, and Mahamedha. I am indebted to numerous colleagues at the University of Iowa who offered comments on this paper, including Virginia Dominguez, Doug Midgett, Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Paul Greenough, Fred Smith, and Philip Lutgendorf. I also thank students and faculty in South Asian studies at the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Kenyon College as well as the anonymous reviewers for Identities and the journal's editors. Fred Cloony shared helpful references on early Christian missionaries-turned-swamis. The American Institute of Indian Studies and the University of Iowa provided institutional support that made this research possible. Notes 1. Diaspora, as Cohen has noted (1997) Cohen, Robin. 1997. "Diasporas, the nation-state, and globalization". In Global History and Migrations, Edited by: Gungwu, Wang. 117–43. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [Google Scholar], can be a site of both oppression and creativity. 2. I use the more general term "swami" rather than the Hindi "sannyasi" here, because the former is more familiar to non-specialist readers. "Swami" is a common term of address and reference for Hindu renouncers. "Foreign Swami" is often used as a term of reference in Rishikesh, as is "Foreign Sannyasi" and "Foreign Sadhu." 3. During three months in Rishikesh in Spring 2005, I conducted ethnographic research on transnational aspects of Hindu renunciation. I stayed in a guest house and three different ashrams that regularly host diasporic Indians and people of non-Indian origin and met with some prominent Indian gurus, foreign spiritual seekers who stay for varied lengths of time, and local residents of Rishikesh. 4. One official at the United States consulate in Delhi told me that his office may see about twenty-five Americans each year who have exhausted financial resources and alienated family members in the United States. If the person wishes to return home and the family is unwilling to help, the consulate will purchase a return ticket for the United States citizen and may arrange for them to be met at the airport by someone in social services. 5. The United States government, I was told by an official, keeps no statistics on the numbers of Americans who obtain Indian citizenship, for this is considered to be a matter between the individual and the Indian government. It is surprising that the Bureau of Immigration for the Government of India considers statistical information on immigration classified. 6. I thank Nisha Agrawal for this observation. 7. See Khandelwal (2004) Khandelwal, Meena. 2004. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar] for a fuller explanation of renunciant aims of cultivating emotional detachment. 8. In New Lives, Tillis (2004) Tillis, Malcolm. 2004. New Lives, Varanasi, , India: Indica Books. [Google Scholar] offers biographical accounts of fifty foreigners who have made India their literal and spiritual home. These accounts suggest that notions of "homecoming" and references to past lives in India, articulated by the three figures discussed here, are common, although many interviewed by Tillis also reflected on initial experiences of culture shock or hardship in adapting to Indian ways of life and religiosity. Abu-Lughod (1991) Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. "Writing against culture". In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, Edited by: Fox, Richard G. 137–62. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. [Google Scholar] has written eloquently about the need to be wary of generalization that produces homogeneity and coherence. My aim here is to produce an "ethnography of the particular" that heeds her call to write against the culture concept. 9. Indeed, even the cartographic mapping of East and West, Asia and Europe, has shifted according to historical period and political agenda (Lewis and Wigen 1997 Lewis, Martin and Wigen, Karen E. 1997. The Myths of Continents, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]). 10. Many Hindu renouncers, and especially those initiated into the Dashnami Orders of sannyasa reputedly founded by the eighth century saint Shankaracharya, accept Advaita Vedanta as truth (Khandelwal 2004 Khandelwal, Meena. 2004. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar]; Dazey 1990 Dazey, Wade H. 1990. "Tradition and modernization in the organization of the Dasanami Samnyasins". In Monastic Life in the Christian and Hindu Traditions: A Comparative Study, Edited by: Creel, Austin B. and Narayanan, Vasudha. 281–321. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. [Google Scholar]; Gross 1992 Gross, Robert L. 1992. The Sadhus of India, Jaipur, , India: Rawat Publications. [Google Scholar]; Ghurye 1964 Ghurye, G. S. 1964. Indian Sadhus, Bombay, , India: Popular Prakashan. [Google Scholar]). Advaita is a philosophy of absolute monism. It holds that the true aim of human beings is to attain liberation by realizing that the individual self (atma) and Ultimate Reality (Brahman) are and have always been one and the same and that, ultimately, all else is illusory. Hindu traditions offer a wide range of ascetic practices and philosophies. However, both Orientalists and Hindu reformers, from the late eighteenth century, increasingly emphasized this "mystical" philosophy by reference to the Upanishads (King 1999 King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East.", London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]: 119). The Vedanta promoted by Orientalists, and later by Indian gurus in the United States, was ascetic, spiritualized, and non-activist (Dhar, cited in King 1999 King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East.", London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]: 130–1), but Vedanta offered a different, activist message in India where it helped to unite Hindus in their anti-colonial struggle (King 1999 King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East.", London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]: 133). Advaita Vedanta acknowledges social differences, such as male and female, or rich and poor, but insists that these differences are ultimately transient and unreal. Most modern gurus continue to embrace an Advaita-inspired spirituality in the contemporary era in their attempt to envision a global Hinduism (a world religion) that can not only link Hindus living in diaspora but also more readily incorporate non-Indians. Scripturally-speaking, Vedanta represented the perspective of ascetic sages rather than priests, and as Vedanta came to stand for Hinduism, renouncers became the ideal representatives of "modern Hindu spirituality." 11. A fuller understanding of sannyasa's transnationalism would require multi-sited research, which is beyond the scope of this project. 12. This area was formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, but a movement for independent statehood achieved its goal in 2000 when Uttaranchal became its own state. 13. However, in 2005, foreign devotees from Australia, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Indonesia, and Italy outnumbered Indian visitors to the ashram of Siddha Mahatma Hedakhandi Maharaj in Nainital. (D.S. Kunwar. "Foreigners flock to Hedakhan Ashram" ). 14. According to the Skanda Purana and Varaha Purana, it is the place where Lord Vishnu resided with his consort Lakshmi, and legend has it that both Ram and Lakshman performed austerities here to wipe away the sin of slaying the demon Ravana (Keemattam 1997 Keemattam, Augusthy. 1997. The Hermits of Rishikesh: A Sociological Study, New Delhi, , India: Intercultural Publications. [Google Scholar]: 24–6). The region is also associated with Lord Shiva, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, and the great sages Vyasa and Vashistha (Strauss 2005 Strauss, Sarah. 2005. Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]: 24). 15. Not all foreign ascetics residing in India are followers of Advaita Vedanta or the Dashnami renunciant orders. Brooks (1989) Brooks, Charles R. 1989. The Hare Krishnas in India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], for example, has written about non-Indian followers of the Hare Krishna movement who live in Vrindavan. Advaita Vedanta is not the only Hindu philosophy that attracts foreign adherents but I suggest that this philosophy may be particularly compatible with the turn away from conventional religion and toward spirituality. 16. For example, when Swami Chetan Jyoti arrived destitute at a public hospital in Delhi after her diagnosis of breast cancer, she received unusual attention and care because the Indian doctors were so moved that a Canadian would trust them with her treatment. Similarly, foreign male sadhus seem to be able to interact with women without criticism more easily than their Indian counterparts. 17. In the early 1920s, Sri Krishna Prem (born Ronald Nixon) migrated to India and paved the way for acceptance of foreign devotees of Krishna in the Vaishnava tradition (Brooks 1989 Brooks, Charles R. 1989. The Hare Krishnas in India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 98–101). 18. For example, Swami Sivananda, founder of Divine Life Society (DLS), sent many disciples to the West, which then prompted more travel to DLS headquarters in India. Brooks writes that the founder of International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Bhaktivedanta Swami, left Calcutta for New York in 1965 and returned with his first foreign disciple in 1967. This American was soon initiated into sannyasa and became Kirtanananda Swami. His Vaishnava message of devotion to Krishna in the tradition of Chaitanya appealed less to American elites and more to those in the bohemian or hippie subcultures. His first temples were established in the East Village community in New York and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. In 1967, Allen Ginsburg and the San Francisco devotees organized a "Mantra-Rock" concert in which the swami shared the stage with such bands as Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead (Brooks 1989 Brooks, Charles R. 1989. The Hare Krishnas in India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 76–81). This Vaishnava tradition of devotional temple worship is associated with Vrindavan and is much more concerned with brahmanical notions of ritual purity, in contrast to Rishikesh which is associated with hatha yoga and meditation, although both are places where one finds foreign swamis. A detailed consideration of these sectarian differences is beyond the scope of this article. 19. Gurdjieff (1877–1949) was a mystic whose ideas influenced such people as Katherine Mansfield, Aldous Huxley, and Frank Lloyd Wright (Thomson 2003 Thomson, Garrett. 2003. On Gurdjieff, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. [Google Scholar]). Born near the Persian border of Russia, he traveled throughout the Middle East and Tibet and then developed teachings that became popular in Russia and later in Western Europe and the United States. 20. These sadhus dismissed the activities of Hindu nationalist sadhus as politics and did not condone violence, but their reification of Hinduism could be compatible with less virulent strains of Hindu nationalism. 21. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was interviewed on Larry King's show. One regular character in the "Little Bear" cartoon for children is a frog who sits, cross-legged with eyes closed, on a lilipad and serenely chants "Om." 22. Attentiveness to the context in which he articulated this message of Hindu spirituality suggests how different it was from the more iconoclastic critiques of Hindu orthodoxy that he delivered in India: The larger aim of the 1893 event was to display the achievements of Western civilization and religion, and the missionary presence was a constant reference point for Vivekananda's comments; it was in this context that Hinduism emerged as a cultural system of thought that would be comprehensible to Western critics (Chowdhury-Sengupta 1998 Chowdhury-Sengupta, Indira. 1998. "Reconstructing Hinduism on a world platform: The World's First Parliament of Religions, Chicago 1892". In Swami Vivekananda and the Modernization of Hinduism, Edited by: Radice, William. Delhi, , India: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]: 20–23, 34). 23. They include Death Must Die by Alexander (2000) Alexander, Ram. 2000. Death Must Die, Varanasi, , India: Indica Books. [Google Scholar], New Lives by Tillis (2004) Tillis, Malcolm. 2004. New Lives, Varanasi, , India: Indica Books. [Google Scholar], The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Sharma (1997) Sharma, Robin S. 1997. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny, Scarborough, , Canada: HarperCollins Publishers. [Google Scholar], and many other recent books. 24. Some foreigner visitors obtain five-year visas with a letter from their guru, but those I met who wished to stay beyond the six months allowed by a tourist visa expressed anxiety about obtaining permission. Claude Apri, born in France and living in India over 30 years, notes the hypocrisy in India's treatment of NRIs (Non-Resident Indian) and FRIs (Foreign Resident in India) ) In 2005 the government of India decided to grant an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) passport to PIOs (Persons of Indian Origin) from select countries to facilitate travel (no visa necessary) and permit business investment. Apri finds it unfair that FRIs must struggle to renew their Residential Permits, even after living in India 40–50 years, simply because they do not represent investment potential. Swami Mahamedha, when I asked him about this, was unconcerned. The Indian government must be cautious, he said, because many foreigners who wish to remain in India have uncertain incomes and employment—many are involved in drugs and contribute little to the country. There seems to be a general anxiety about renewing visas and obtaining citizenship (Brooks 1989 Brooks, Charles R. 1989. The Hare Krishnas in India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 103; Tillis 2004 Tillis, Malcolm. 2004. New Lives, Varanasi, , India: Indica Books. [Google Scholar]). 25. Tomasi notes the importance of mountains in pilgrimage across religious traditions (2002 Tomasi, Luigi. 2002. "Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism via the Journey". In Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism, Edited by: Swatos, William H. Jr. and Tomasi, Luigi. 1–24. Westport, CT: Praeger. [Google Scholar]: 10). 26. However, one American sadhu expressed anxiety about whether his visa would be renewed. He felt that it all depended on the person sitting at the desk on the day he showed up, and if the person happened to be Muslim, his visa would likely be refused.