Stocktaking Faith
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How do scholars of “guru movements” negate their self-identification as devotees or non-devotees and research their objects of investigation academically? This is an easy question with many answers. Most of them have stated that all gurus are the same without acknowledging a crucial part of the study—the differences among spiritual leaders and their organizations.
This is why it is important to highlight the damage scholarly and journalistic work can do if one does not situate contemporary guru practice in a larger arena where difference is accepted as a valid value to work out that which seeks to examine the creative and social structuring of guru-faith. In other words, if one does not say that so-and-so is a fraud, it leads to a poisonous positionality.
I have explored the notions that scholars possess when they critique gurudom by understanding their premises and biases that impel curiosity and scrutiny to an aspiring academic like me. In positioning my self-reflexivity in tandem with their intellectual dissemination, I contribute to scholarly, journalistic, and devotional perspectives while acknowledging complicity and devotion that bind my own identity as a devotee of a self-realized Master.
I am a fan of four scholars who have unbundled the layers of complexity that enamor those who are interested in explaining the nuances of modernity and tradition in the Hindu fold. Maya Warrier was a great propounder of trust in academe, having written on how Mata Amritanandamayi’s devotees perceived their Master and the implications that their practice had in grasping the modern world.
Tulasi Srinivas, who I respect, is like Maya—both did not relegate self-realization as a burden; instead, they chose to see the discourses that make up Hindu tradition through transnational contexts in which Masters like Sathya Sai and Amma were entangled. Their object of investigation was, literally, “different”—like Amanda Lucia, a clever creature of scholasticism. Her work has teased out gurus and Gurus through a variety of methods that have placed her in the same group as Maya and Tulasi.
They explicitly say they are not for or against charismatic leaders and instead choose to recycle work done in the field to arrive at factual and (sometimes) baseless conclusions. The last teacher who left an impression on me is Smriti Srinivas. She does not say she is a Sai Baba devotee, but her writing reflects the idea that she could be, as she has not deployed Marxist prisms to generate socio-cultural understandings.
My main subjective experience of being a devotee of Sharavana Baba has enabled me to process their work as well as explicate textual bhakti that forms hagiographies consumed for dharmic purposes. There are secular views and sacred views. Both complement each other. But to situate oneself in between the two is no mean task.
Writing for the sacred can be seen as an independent Hindu enterprise because it invariably leads to glorifying the Guru; writing for the secular is to neither accept being a devotee nor push oneself into the unholy nexus between ex-devotees and left-wing activists. I still move into the realm of theorizing as it is my explicit intention as a devotee to accept divinity while noting the political structures governing guru governmentality.
Take, for example, a former RSS worker in Kerala who thought that Amma was part of a “spiritual mafia,” while the journalist lumps saints like her in the same bracket as Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri (who are in the business of spirituality and yoga, not avatars). This shows that there are internal differences within the nation (opposition parties against the BJP) and internal differences within Hindu spaces (like an ideologue who gets disillusioned with the “mafia”).
However, the critique of Hindutva as arising from the land of Bharat is a wanton creation of scholars who have repeatedly asserted that anything remotely connected to dharma should be seen as a violation of secularism, socialism, and social justice. This means feminists can catcall female gurus, engendering a kind of democratic republic where there is a need to address social inequalities through identity politics.
These unremarkable assertions of “just because they are Hindu I will not support them,” have taken an ugly turn with the rise of social media. The web has embraced and enabled a cacophony of voices that are adharmic and lead to nowhere. There is an explosion of content on the internet as well.
Suddenly Nithyananda—a crazy fool—becomes the genuine Sai Baba who has to justify being innocent in the eyes of the public, and through a reiteration of scholarship and mediated communication, he occupies in turn a pedestal for which Hindus are to blame. Every other citizen will therefore blame the Hindu for giving birth to Nithyananda, and the obvious illegitimacy of his claim to fame will fall on our shoulders. We become strangers in our own country as the Pope and Prophet get away with their halos.
Yet, the Pope meets Amma to end slavery. An inter-faith dialogue appears as a means to an end, the end being a better world. But nobody sees it. What we witness in the media today is a spectacular bursting of a shared system of beliefs where none is exempt from the glaring camera, where reputations of powerful people are shattered while our self-realized Masters carry on their work and are subjects of caricature and humor.
Splicing the area of inner engineering is the scholar and journalist who try to blaspheme and eradicate from the authentic, genuine Other the actual workings of their good work. That the job of the Master is to help the world remain unseen. Experience is given no importance. And “blind faith” interspersed with “godmen” and “godwomen” are invoked to buttress arguments of the Hindu state being dropped into a chasm of fascism and hatred.
How sad! Good Hindus will blame Hindus for not speaking up. This is why, when we correct misrepresentations, we are forced into silos of “fascist” and “bigot.” We are expected to be silent as Western domination through Christian conversions, communist sloganeering, and heavy-duty academic sophistry bolster and reshape our sense of India, its heritage, and its innumerable saints.
