167 Timothy S. Dobe Who Is a Faqir, and How Does One

book reviews 167

Timothy S. Dobe Hindu Christian Faqir: Modern Monks, Global Christianity, and Indian Sainthood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. xvi+363, inr 1295, isbn 978-0-19-998770-2, (paperback).

Who is a faqir, and how does one understand the term and the person it re- fers to? Timothy S. Dobe, associate professor and department chair of religious studies at Grinnell College, Iowa, does an exhaustive and instructive probe into this question, and all the complexities involved in defining and understanding it in the context of the many-faceted and multilayered religious heritage of In- dia. Although the Urdu word, faqir, simply meant a ‘holy person’ or an Islamic Sufi, it has had various connotations during the colonial era. Dobe points to Winston Churchill’s reference to Gandhi, as ‘a seditious faqir of a type well- known in the East’, to indicate the negative connotations that the colonial powers and most missionaries had for the wandering ascetics of India. While there was a sense of awe about one’s willingness to renounce everything and become a lone wandering ascetic, (unlike being part of a community-based monastery in the west), there was also deep ambivalence in the western mind about what it meant and achieved. The ambivalence is also evident in the Indian religious context by the num- ber of terms that refer to persons who undertake such spiritual vocation: sadhu, swami, mystic, monk, sage, yogi, sanyasin, and saint are some of the terms used, each carrying a subtle difference in emphasis not easily recognized. The strength of this volume is that it seeks to explore this question and the dimen- sions that contribute to the idea of ‘sainthood’, not through a theoretical discourse, but by taking the actual lives of two of the Indian ‘saints’ from Punjab who lived during the colonial period—the neo-Vedantin Hindu, Swami Rama Tirtha (1873–1906) and the Christian convert from Sikhism, Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929), who while deeply rooted in his embrace of Christ, followed the path of a Hindu sadhu. Although the biographies of these two saints are generally known, Dobe does an important service by turning to the hitherto- unfamiliar writings by these two (and writings about them) in Urdu, which sheds new light on their own self-understanding and the strivings that brought them ‘sainthood’. In his introductory chapter ‘Unsettling Saints’, Dobe promises that ‘Rather than focus on Indian response to Western rule and the Orientalist discourse, I approach Rama Tirtha and Sundar Singh as individuals, describing the par- ticulars of their religious visions, experiences, biographies and stressing their creative engagement with and partial transcendence of the forces that shaped them. This emphasis is important not only in order to do justice to the depth

168 book reviews of their spiritual striving, but also because of the largely overlooked role of the saints themselves in the pursuit and performance of their sainthood’ (p. 5). The question of the role of the saints themselves ‘in the pursuit and performance of their sainthood’ particularly drew my attention, and in later chapters, Dobe does justice to this promise by a detailed description and analysis of their discourses and actions both in India and especially in their tours in the United States and Europe. In the Indian context, they are presented as vernac- ular saints who shared a common idiom within the fluid religious identities of Punjab prior to its partition between Pakistan and India. These explorations are set in the context of the chapter ‘Resurrecting the Saints’ (Chapter 3) which provides an excellent historical study of some of the early leaders of modern Hinduism, such as Rammohan Roy, Keshub Chander Sen, and Dayanada Saras- wati. Dobe’s intention here is to show that, contrary to understanding of their lives and contributions from some abstract Orientalist interpretations of In- dian spirituality, these leaders ‘highlighted the embodied nature of religious identity, claimed direct religious authority, and constructed new spheres of sovereignty’ (p. 14). Resurrecting these past saints to this new understanding of what they really were, provides the basis for the closer analysis of Rama Tirtha’s and Sundar Singh’s bodily presence, the ascetic authority, and especially their sovereignty on their European and American visits. The chapters that follow deal more directly with the self-understandings of Rama Tirtha and Sundar Singh and the avenues each of them followed on their own striving towards a spirituality that brought them ‘sainthood’. Of particular interest is the role the saffron robes played both in their self-presentations and the recognition given by others. Dobe also shows how Sundar Singh adapted the story of his conversion to Christianity to his western audience, seeking to present it in a clearly biblical idiom ‘suggesting a desire to link himself to scrip- tural precedents and, in particular, the model of St. Paul’. Also of interest is that he was comfortable with pictures of him that had affinity to the popular images of Jesus and would draw parallels between his experience with chil- dren and the crowds to those experienced by Christ (p. 161). In many respects Sundar Singh was unique. Coming from a devout Sikh family, he converted to Christianity but took on the dress and ways of a Hindu sadhu. While he had discounted western Protestant missionary practices, he was relentless in his own pursuit of presenting the ‘Living Christ’ to others. Rama Tirtha, following the example of Swami Vivekananda, and responding to his own context, creat- ed his own understanding of what it meant to be an Advaitin and became the proponent of ‘Practical Vedanta’, demonstrating the relevance of the Advaita philosophy of divine Oneness to everyday life in the modern world.

international journal of asian christianity 1 (2018) 157-173