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Conversion, Sanskritization and the Dissolution of the Multiple in Advaita Missionary Movements

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Conversion, Sanskritization and the Dissolution of the Multiple in Advaita Missionary Movements Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 28 Article 9 2015 Non-Dual Belonging: Conversion, Sanskritization and the Dissolution of the Multiple in Advaita Missionary Movements Reid B. Locklin St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Recommended Citation Locklin, Reid B. (2015) "Non-Dual Belonging: Conversion, Sanskritization and the Dissolution of the Multiple in Advaita Missionary Movements," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 28, Article 9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1608 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Non-Dual Belonging: Conversion, Sanskritization and the Dissolution of the Multiple in Advaita Missionary Movements Reid B. Locklin St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto IN a series of articles from 1957 until his death both styles of argument, among others, can be in 1979, the influential Indologist Paul Hacker adduced in Hindu, Christian and Muslim advanced the claim that those Indian traditions traditions; the harder and more important task generally classified as open and tolerant should is, in his telling, to attend to the distinctive in fact be labeled “inclusivist.”1 Rather than strategies of engagement with religious others engaging religious or philosophical opponents in any particular text or tradition. in their integrity, he suggested, such traditions Such critiques notwithstanding, it remains subordinated such others and assumed them true that some type of inclusivist into their own doctrinal systems. This term was accommodation of religious difference can be deployed polemically by Hacker against a adduced in many modern Hindu traditions. So number of Hindu traditions, above all the also, in at least some cases, apparently irenic, modern forms of Advaita Vedānta advanced by inclusivist accommodation can shade into more the likes of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) assertive images of conversion or conquest, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). This particularly in those movements that have broad thesis has been widely criticized, not taken missionary shape outside the Indian least by Hacker’s translator and editor Wilhelm subcontinent. Several important studies, Halbfass.2 Particularly suspect is Hacker’s including especially Reinhart Hummel's sweeping contrast between inclusivism and landmark 1987 monograph Indische Mission und tolerance, and the correlations from these neue Frömmigkeit im Westen and Carl Jackson's positions to Indian and European thought, 1994 Vedanta for the West, have traced such respectively. As Halbfass has demonstrated, diverse movements as the Ramakrishna Reid B. Locklin holds an associate professorship in Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition at St. Michael’s College and the Department of Religion, University of Toronto. He is the author of Spiritual but Not Religious? (Liturgical Press, 2005), Liturgy of Liberation (Peeters, 2011) and other works in theology, Hindu-Christian studies and spirituality. He has also recently co-edited two works in the scholarship of teaching and learning, Teaching Civic Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Comparative Theology in the Millennial Classroom (Routledge, 2016). He can be reached at [email protected]. Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 28 (2015):88-99 Non-Dual Belonging: Conversion, Sanskritization 89 Mission, the Self-Realization Fellowship, the seeking followers not only in India but also International Society of Krishna Consciousness, overseas, especially in the West.”7 Transcendental Meditation and other modern What, however, is the precise nature of Hindu missions as they spread throughout conversion in these Hindu traditions? In his North America and Europe.3 In 1999, the Indian 1987 study, Hummel made the observation that theologian C.V. Mathew published a more such conversions only rarely take the form of a critical account of what he viewed as a single, straightforward change of religious belonging; relatively coherent “Saffron Mission” in both instead, they more closely resemble gradual India and the West. This has been followed by acculturation, in which members slowly shed several more pointed and polemic studies by a prior religious identities without ever formally Salesian priest, J. Kuruvachira, between 2006 renouncing them.8 Arvind Sharma’s recent and 2008.4 For Mathew, the emergence of monograph, Hinduism as a Missionary Religion distinctively modern movements like the advances a similar claim.9 Sharma Ramakrishna Mission abroad, as well as the acknowledges a prevailing consensus that reconversion work of the VHP and other Hindu Hindus remained “non-missionary” at least nationalist organizations in India, can well into the modern era; nevertheless, he ultimately be traced back to much older contends against this consensus that patterns of Sanskritization and Brahminization “Hinduism has always possessed a missionary embodied in the Vedic dictum kṛṇvanto character.”10 He locates some of the most viśvamāryam, “Let the whole world become compelling evidence in the Vedic and Classical Aryan” (Ṛg-Veda 9.63.5).5 While Kuruvachira periods, adducing not only the Ṛg-Veda more strongly emphasizes the novelty of this exhortation noted by Mathew, but other Vedic development in the modern period, he also passages, the Manusmṛti and the epic literature interprets processes of Sanskritization, explicit to suggest that foreigners could be and not (re-)conversion rites developed by Hindu infrequently were re-construed as “lapsed nationalists in the modern period, such as Hindus,” rendering them eligible for śuddhi (“purification”) and parāvartan incorporation into Hindu tradition and into the (“welcoming”), and especially Swami twice-born castes, more particularly.11 Even Vivekananda's oft-quoted exhortions, “Up, here, however, Sharma finds the received India, conquer the world with your terminology an obstacle—especially the spirituality,” and “the world must be language of conversion. Parsing terms conquered by India” as, collectively, an carefully, he insists that, even as a “missionary unambiguous mandate to convert.6 “In the religion,” Hinduism does not “seek converts” in course of time,” Kuruvachira writes, “increased a traditional sense; it re-defines conversion travel facilities, modern communications itself in non-exclusive terms as “acceptance of networks, globalisation, rise of Hindu cultural a universal point of view.”12 Stated another nationalism, better organisation and animation way, there is and has been “conversion” to of the Hindu diaspora and so on have Hinduism, but the distinctive character of contributed greatly in making Hinduism Hinduism transforms the meaning of the term emerge as an 'aggressive' missionary religion, “conversion.” 90 Reid B. Locklin In this essay, I explore the theology of focusing not on “Hinduism” as such, but only conversion and religious belonging that on the Advaita Vedānta tradition of the eighth- emerges from the teachings of several century teacher Śaṅkarācārya and his many, contemporary missionary traditions associated diverse successors in the modern and with the non-dual tradition of Advaita Vedānta. contemporary periods. Such a choice may In the first section, I draw a contrast between appear arbitrary, but there are intrinsic two broad frameworks within which to reasons for such a focus. Not least, these understand a transformation of religious include the prominence of Swami Vivekananda belonging: “conversion-over” and “conversion- and his Ramakrishna Mission in any discussion up.” In the second section, I return to of Hindu missionary movements in the modern Mathew’s notion of Sanskritization as a period. I also judge that it makes good sense to resource for understanding the dynamics of seek clarity on a broad point of interpretation belonging in these traditions. These traditions, by attending first to a single, delimited case I contend, do advance a specific form of study. Far from enshrining Advaita as the true religious belonging—albeit one that implies the core of Hinduism, such an approach can bring sublation of rival points of view rather than out the historical contingency of the tradition their explicit exclusion. and its complex relations with other traditions in the broader Hindu stream. Conversion-Over and Conversion-Up The fundamental teaching of Advaita—that Some of the difficulties with Arvind is, the ultimate non-difference of self and God, Sharma’s study, like the earlier contributions of of multiplicity and unity—also renders these Hummel, Jackson, Mathew, Kuruvachira and traditions, at least arguably, particularly prone others, follow not only from the ambiguous to ambivalence on questions of religious meaning of “conversion,” but also the belonging. At the 1893 World's Parliament of ambiguity of yet another defining term, namely Religions, for example, Swami Vivekananda “Hinduism.” Though some continue to insist famously eschewed conversion, declaring, “Do I that Hinduism either has existed eternally or wish that the Christian would become Hindu? was the invention of the British colonial God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or project, an increasing body of scholarship Buddhist would become
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