Male earpieces

[Kamal Adhikary]

Dear colleagues:
        On February 15, John Hawley, Barnard College, gave a talk on
      "Bhakti Studies in an Age of Hindu Nationalism" at the Asian
Studies, UT Austin.  The abstract of the talk is is given below:


BHAKTI STUDIES IN AN AGE OF HINDU NATIONALISM
				
University of Texas, 2/15/96
Jack Hawley

Rustom Bharucha concludes a recent essay called The Question of Faith   
as follows:

    [I]t is heartening to acknowledge the increased scholarly and 
activist interest in the
    radical religious movements of our past history, most notably in 
studies of bhakti... 
    [F]or a �secualr theology� to exist in India, there would have to be 
a theory that could 
    be adapted within the multireligious context of differing faiths.  
The basis for such a 
    theory is less likely to be found in the existing political rhetoric 
of �religious tolerance�, 
    than in the vision of saints like Kabir, Guru Nanak, and Chaitanya 
who, as Tagore 
    understood so well, �preached one God to all races in India,� 
adapting different idioms 
    of communication.  Secualrists have a lot to learn from the idioms of 
�tolerance� 
    embedded in every religious faith.

    The purpose of my paper is to see what light is shed by current 
scholarship on such luminaries as Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya.  What do 
we now see it takes to �get at� the vision of this cohort of bhakti  
saints?  I do so by considering three realms: (1) textual studies 
striclty speaking. (2) biographical or hagiographical studies, and (3) 
studies of context--hitorical, social, ritual, performance.  I focus 
especially on scholarhsip about Kabir, but make reference also to recent 
work on Mirabai.
    The results are not simple.  Textual studies yield a picture of 
multiple recensions for both saints; hagiographical studies, similarly, 
take us around the �hermeneutical circle�� and contextual studies cause 
us to confront the fact that canons are constructed, not in any way 
given.. What then can we conclude?
    Perhaps the most important point to grasp is that whether of not 
bhakti  is always in some fundamental sense ABOUT democracy-- in the 
sense of articulating a language of faith that would be amenable to the 
cause of national integration-- it nonetheless IS democracy.  Undoubtedly 
there are settings where bhakti   has carefully cordoned off from the 
rough-and-tumble of everyday life, and represented as some splendid, 
polished pavilion.  The pavilion may take the shape of a temple or 
school; or it may be a theology (perhaps even with a commentarial 
literature in Sanskrit explaining the words of a poet who deplored that 
language--Kabir); or it may take the very different form of modern social 
scientese pressed into service for the advancement of a progressive 
agenda.  But the great thing about  bhakti   as a resource for democracy 
and national intergration is that it always escapes from airy pavilions 
such as these.  It is a people�s literature, a people�s religion, and its 
axpressions vary across the social spectrum, with new infusions all the time.



The abstrct is also post at:
	http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/subject/s.asia.sem.962.html

Thanks.
	kamal

_______________
Kamal R. Adhikary, Ph.D.
Internet Coordinator, Asian Studies
UT, Austin, Texas 78712
Tel:512-475-6034
Email:kamal at asnic.utexas.edu