Globalization of Hinduism
Swadhyaya in England and Sai Baba in Bali
Globalization of religion and varieties of religious and spiritual movements are signs of our times. This includes global diffusion of both political and fundamentalist movements as well as ethical socio-religious movements and spiritual mobilizations. For some scholars, in a globalized world, religious mobilization can only take the form of political mobilization, which is most effective at a sub-societal level since, in a demystified, post-traditional and post-metaphysical world, it is difficult to have public influence on religion at the level of an entire society concerned, not to speak of the entire world. But mobilization taking place in the field of religion in the contemporary, globalizing world is not only political and sub-societal, but also ethico-spiritual, transsocial, and transnational.
By ANANTA KUMAR GIRI
Along with sub-societal political mobilization within the realm of religion, we also witness ethical and spiritual mobilization in the direction of a more inclusive ethical awareness, struggle for a dignified society, and practical spirituality a mobilization which transcends the familiar boundaries of the outsider and the insider, good and evil. But ethical mobilization here is not just doing good for the other but also developing oneself, making oneself a servant of God and a work of art for creating beautiful and just relationships in society.1 Ethical mobilization includes an aesthetic mobilization of self for appropriate self-development, self-fashioning and self-cultivation.2The globalization of Hinduism at the contemporary juncture, while involving the globalization of a much more militant Hinduism such as Visva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Rastriya Swayam Sevak Sangha (RSS), whose activities are widespread in a country like England, also includes the spreading of initiatives such as Swadhyaya which embodies an ethical, aesthetic and spiritual mobilization. The same is also true of the work of the Sai Baba movement in Bali, which owes its inspiration to the life, mission and work of Satya Sai Baba and the movement which follows him in India. In Bali, while providing a constructive critique of, and alternative to, the highly ritualized adat religion which is the customary religion of the land, the Sai Baba movement also provides an alternative to the state sponsored agama Hinduism, which has become part of a bureaucratic state and whose ethical agenda lacks a dimension of depth and self-development. As Leo Howe tells us: '... devotees of Sai Baba, while valuing their Balinese identity in some contexts' are also striving for a more global and deeper identity: 'This new identity is about the individual in the world or more precisely the individual in his or her specific relationship to the universal God. It is an identity based on the essential self deep within one. Experienced and dedicated devotees frequently speak about improving and developing themselves. Over time their nascent identity progressively takes on a specific shape. It is molded by the change in lifestyle that members undergo.'3
The Swadhyaya initiative in England and the Sai Baba movement in Bali both have a history of about twenty years in their respective countries. Swadhyaya came to England in 1978 and Sai Baba to Bali in 1981. Let us begin with the vision and dynamics of Swadhyaya. Swadhyaya is a socio-spiritual initiative in self-development and social transformation in India. It started with the spiritual discourses of its main source of inspiration, Pandurang Shastri Athavale, who is called Dadajee, which means elder brother, and after silent work in villages in Gujarat for thirty years, it took a socially active turn in the building of many prayogas for self-development such as the community worship centre and community farming. Bhaktipheri is the foundational prayoga or experiment of Swadhyaya where the participants go to meet interested people near and far without any expectations. Swadhyaya in England emerged from the pioneering Bhaktipheri that Swadhyayees from Bombay, the co-ordinating headquarters of Swadhyaya, had undertaken in London and Leicester. The Gujarati Hindus of England Swadhyaya has it most active base in Gujarat in India many of whom had earlier come from East Africa, started taking part in this unfolding movement. They also started doing intense Bhaktipheri and this made Swadhyaya spread. In this initial phase, Swadhyayees were listening to the audio cassettes of Dadajee in the Swadhyaya kendra. But then came the phase of video cassettes and on Sundays, the day of the Swadhyaya Kendra, Swadhyayees began to attend Dadajee's video prabachana as an act of worship. This is similar to the way the followers of Sai Baba participate in the Bhajan meetings in India, which is for them an act of worship.4
Social service
Some of the participants of Swadhyaya in England had also participated in the Bhajan mandalis of Satya Sai Baba in East Africa, but they found just attending Bhajans inadequate for fulfilling their desire for more concrete social action. Swadhyaya's practice of devotional labour or shramabhakti, where participants join and share their labour and time together with a spirit of devotion, provided them with an alternative. There are different projects for the offer of shramabhakti in India compared with those in England. But three unique projects of Swadhyaya in England are: Sneha Care (A Care of Affection), Eikya Utpadan (Production of Unity) and Poonam Milan (Meeting on the Full Moon Day). Sneha Care is a day care centre, which is a prayoga of Swadhyaya for the Swadhyayees of London, to take care of the elderly at the feet of God. They take part in this activity for their own self-development. The whole day care centre is run on the basis of the shramabhakti of the participants. For instance, the care workers are devotional volunteers. The same is true of those who drive the van to pick up and to drop off the clients. The Swadhyaya Sneha Care Centre runs in East London and is catering to five local authorities. Those who work in the kitchen are also Swadhyaya volunteers. The volunteers are called pujaris or worshippers. The day care centre needs ten pujaris everyday, but there are sixty to seventy people in London ready to render their shramabhakti. Some of them have to drive for hours to join the day care centre. The centre is managed by Hemanta Bhai and Bhiru Behen who are professional care workers working with the social welfare system of the UK. Since other care workers are not professionally trained, they are given training in hygiene and in the maintenance of client-confidentiality.
Earlier the day care centre was running three days a week, but now it is running two days a week as it has moved to a new community centre. There is a growing demand for this service of Sneha Care from the people of the Asian community as the mainstream social service system of the UK is not sensitive to the cultural world of the Asians. Says Hemanta Bhai: 'The centre charges a fee of 35 pounds per person per day to the local authorities, which is much less compared to other private contractors. The objective here is not to make money but to provide a model to the local society and toprovide a platform for the Swadhyayees where they practise giving their prime time.' Eikya Utpadana, or production of unity, is another prayoga of Swadhyaya. In this, the women participants of Swadhyaya meet around an activity such as preparing food together. In the Hindu families in England, even if it is not an extended family, if there is more than one woman in the house it becomes difficult for them to agree on the food item to prepare. The Swadhyaya prayoga of Eikya Utpadana helps them to produce unity among women in the household as well as in the larger society. Another prayoga, or experiment, is the Poonam Milan or meeting on the full moon day. In this, women meet on the full moon day just to be in the company of other women.
Peter Beyer argues that in the globalized world pure religion comes at a discount, and religion seeking to influence believers, as well as have a wider public influence, has to be applied. In Swadhyaya we see many applied activities of religion though, unlike Beyer's presupposition, these activities are not only immanent, they also embody a vibrant link with the Transcendent in the form of practical spirituality. Yogeswara Krishi is another applied or practical project of Swadhyaya in which Swadhyayees come and offer their devotional labour in the field of agriculture. Whatever is produced from this becomes the impersonal wealth which is shared with the needy members of the community as a gift from God.
When Swadhyaya began in England there was a feeling of uncertainty on the part of the participants as to whether they would be able to go to another person's house without prior appointment as part of Bhaktipheri. But encouraged by Dadajee, Swadhyayees started doing it. Now, they also undertake Bhaktipheri in distant towns. For example, Swadhyayees from East London go in Bhaktipheri to Nottingham, and those from Leicester, to Cambridge. They go in Bhaktipheri once a month for one weekend. For them to leave their work and to join in Bhaktipheri requires a great deal of preparation, but through this they learn to develop themselves and to live for others and God. Swadhyaya provides the participants frameworks for creative identity formation. This is especially true of the younger generation. Living in English society, both in the school as well as in the wider society, they are asked questions about their religion. Children are subjected to quite derisive comments in the school: 'Oh, your religion has monkey God (referring to Hanuman) and Elephant God (referring to Ganesh).' Swadhyaya teaches the participants about the symbolic meaning of such Gods, as well as about the scientific basis of religious rituals. In the context of a coming of a post-traditionalist rationality and globalization, Giddens argues that followers of religion are required to 'justify their beliefs, in an implicit way at least, both to themselves and to others.'5 Swadhyaya is confronted with such a question of justification, but its response is not confined only to a rational reconstruction of religious ritual but includes experiments in practical spirituality, prayogas of self-development, and holding the hands of the other. Here justification is much more than Habermasian rational argumentation and application, which is divorced from a transcendental inspiration of love and practice in these experiments, while embodying a critique of scholastic reason is much more than rational strategies of Bourdieu.6
Churches to temples
In both London and Leicester, RSS and VHP also work. While the participants of sakhas of RRS appreciate the role of Swadhyaya, they complain that Swadhyaya does not fight with those who attack Hindus and does not do enough to save culture. In a discussion on this held in Nottingham during my visit, one Swadhyayee activist told the sakha activist: 'While by culture sakha means the culture of the land and has a territorial notion of culture, Swadhyaya has a much wider notion of culture which is Vedic. Protection and nurturance of this culture requires silent cultural work.' Swadhyaya further argues that Hindu culture cannot be saved by building temples. Hindus in England seem to be taking satisfaction in the fact that they are buying churches to build temples as many of the churches are suffering from the problem of low attendance. Swadhyayees warn the builders of temples that if they do not make religion a practical and spiritual quest in the life of the participants, then temples would have the same fate as the mainline churches in the West.
Swadhyaya is engaged in a constructive critique and reconstruction of Hinduism. Bhaktipheri is a social force in Swadhyaya. The Sai Baba movement in Bali is also engaged in a critique and reconstruction of both the ritualistic Hinduism of Bali the adat religion and its more formalized agama religion. Working in Bali since 1981, it has centres in many towns and, though it does not have any formal membership, five to six thousand people regularly attend the meetings. While in adat religion, to be a member of the temple congregation one has to pay a membership fee, in the devotional Hinduism of the Sai Baba movement there is no such requirement for payment of fees. The centres on the other hand, have both educational programmes in which religious education is imparted as well as community development programmes for the spiritual development of the participants. As Howe tells us: 'Members make charitable donations (money, materials, labour) to help others whether these are followers or not. They also help to clean and renovate hospitals, schools, Balinese temples, and commercial facilities'7. Followers of Sai Baba in Bali also 'condemn competitive ritual display, gambling, cock-fighting and the slaughtering and eating of animals, all of which are central to local adat religion'. They also provide an alternative to the orthodoxy and hierarchy of both the adat and the agama religions. Though the Sai Baba movement in India bears the mark of class and caste, Bali it is relatively egalitarian. It 'provides the unique combination of a personal and loving relationship with a loving God together with a relatively egalitarian theology and social organization which help maintain the struggle against the inequalities embedded in Balinese institutions.'8
There seems to have taken place some shift in globalization of the Sai Baba movement. The Sai Baba movement in India is much more controlled by hierarchies of caste and class than it is in Bali.9 Under the weight of hierarchical social and religious institutions, the Balinese have probably interpreted the universal message of love of Sai Baba in a much more radical manner than what was perhaps intended. Though Bhajan is a key activity in both the Sai Baba movement in India and Bali, in Bali social outreach programmes in which there is voluntary sharing of not only resources but also time and labour seems to be more common. But this voluntary sharing of time and labour seems a minuscule gesture in comparison with its intensity, scale and primacy in Swadhyaya. In Swadhyaya, devotional travel and sharing of devotional labour is a foundational activity. The Sai Baba initiative in Bali can reflect on the need to create more platforms of sharing of devotional labour, and through this generate resources for community development. Though the community development activities in the Sai Baba movement are supported by the donations of participants, it would carry the egoistic traces of the giver but for the spiritual development of the participants and for the realization of a more dignified equality. It is important that the activities are not run on the patronage of the rich clients. In the Swadhyaya movement in both England and India, the rich participants do not have a determining voice. This is possible because the primary source of wealth in Swadhyaya is not money (either the state grant or donation from private philanthropists) but time and labour which are deployed with a spirit of Bhakti in several initiatives that generate well-being, such as Sneha Care and Yogeswara Krishi. The deployment of devotional labour and the sharing of time in these initiatives create wealth which, in turn, is spent on the amelioration of suffering in the community and on undertaking new community development programmes. The Sai Baba initiative considers making devotional labour a key ingredient in its devotional engagement. It also rethinks the primacy it accords to miracles by having a dialogue with Swadhyaya, which does not have any faith in miracles and has an intellectual and rational approach to religious practice and ritual. At the same time, the Swadhyaya movement in India and England can learn from the Sai Baba initiative in Bali, the way and the extent to which it has been able to overcome the hierarchy of caste. Though in its rhetoric and certain domain of its practice, Swadhyaya has been able to overcome the distinctions of caste, caste hierarchy still poses a major challenge to the socio-spiritual movement of Swadhyaya. *
Notes
1 Cf. Ananta K. Giri, 'The Calling of an Ethics of Servanthoood,' Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 1998; Michel Foucault, Care of the Self (New York: Pantheon, 1986); and Eliane Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
2 Cf. Ananta K. Giri, 'The Calling of an Ethics of Servanthoood,' Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 1998; Michel Foucault, Care of the Self (New York: Pantheon, 1986); and Eliane Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
3 Leo Howe, Sai Baba in Bali: Identity, Social Conflict and the Politics of Religious Truth (Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge: Paper, 1999, p.28.
4 Cf. Lawrence A. Babb, Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987).
5 Giddens (op. cit., 1999), p. 45.
6 Cf. Jurgen Habermas, Justification and Application (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
7 Howe (op. cit., 1999).
8 Howe (op. cit., 1999).
9 Babb (op. cit., 1987).
Dr Ananta Kumar Giri works at Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.