SEVĀ in HINDU BHAKTI TRADITIONS by VED RAVI PATEL a THESIS PRESENTED to the GRADUATE SCHOOL of the UN
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ENGAGING IN THE WORLD: SEVĀ IN HINDU BHAKTI TRADITIONS By VED RAVI PATEL A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Ved Ravi Patel 2 To Anu, Rachu, Bhavu, Milio, Maho, and Sony, for keeping things light 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank a number of people for the support they have given me. First, I would like to thank both of my esteemed committee members, Professor Vasudha Narayanan and Professor Whitney Sanford, for helping me put together a project that I once feared would never come together. I would also like to thank my colleagues Jaya Reddy, James “Jimi” Wilson, and Caleb Simmons for constantly giving me advice in regards to this thesis and otherwise. Finally, I would like to extend my warmest gratitude to those who took care of me for the last two years while I was away from my family and home in California. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 9 Setting the Stage ...................................................................................................... 9 The Question of Terminology .................................................................................. 12 2 HINDU SEVĀ AS ANALYZED BY THE ACADEMY: A TALE OF TWO DISTINCTIVE EPOCHS ......................................................................................... 16 Making and Breaking Paradigms ............................................................................ 16 Paul Hacker: Setting a Standard ............................................................................. 19 Wilhelm Halbfass: Gently Rocking the Boat ............................................................ 24 Andrew Fort: Rounding out a Millennium ................................................................ 27 Gwilym Beckerlegge: Opening a New Door ............................................................ 29 Andrew Nicholson: Reexamining the Foundation of Hindu Studies ........................ 36 New Approaches .................................................................................................... 42 3 SEVĀ AND SĀDHANĀ: A DELINEATION .............................................................. 47 An Alternate Approach ............................................................................................ 47 Arcana as Sevā ...................................................................................................... 50 Social Service as Sevā ........................................................................................... 54 Sevā in the Ramakrishna Mission ........................................................................... 56 Service to Hindus: The Conception of Sevā in the RSS ......................................... 62 Sevā as a Direct Command of an Avatāra .............................................................. 72 The Idiosyncrasies of the Sevā Binary .................................................................... 78 Sevā as Recitation and Darsan in the Srivaisnava Tradition .................................. 81 Sevā as Internal Service ......................................................................................... 83 A Different Means to Liberation .............................................................................. 84 4 HOME AWAY FROM HOME: HINDU SEVĀ IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA .................. 86 A Practicum Introduced........................................................................................... 86 The Role of Ethnography ........................................................................................ 88 The Hindu Temple of Atlanta .................................................................................. 90 The BAPS Swāminārāyan Mandir .......................................................................... 96 Deep Analysis: Avoiding Superficialities ............................................................... 104 Getting to the Heart: Behind the Public Face ........................................................ 107 Serving Man is Serving God ................................................................................. 108 5 Service to God is Service to Man .......................................................................... 113 An Addition to the Sevā Dialectic .......................................................................... 124 5 CONCLUSION: FINAL REFLECTIONS ................................................................ 126 Finishing Thoughts................................................................................................ 126 New Paths ............................................................................................................ 129 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 132 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 136 6 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts ENGAGING IN THE WORLD: SEVĀ IN HINDU BHAKTI TRADITIONS By Ved Ravi Patel December 2012 Chair: Vasudha Narayanan Cochair: Whitney Sanford Major: Religion Western scholarship has looked at the concept of sevā in Hinduism for many years. The focus of these studies has often been on how the concept of sevā has been expanded, appropriated, and repackaged. On one front, scholarship has looked at the Neo-Vedanta groups that have seemingly absorbed Western methods of social service and guised them as indigenous Indian concepts. The second major area of scholarly interest has been on the Hindu nationalist groups, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that have utilized the concept of sevā as a means to push forth an anti- Islamic and xenophobic ideology. In fact, until very recently, little effort had been allocated to the study of Hindu devotional movements that have both textual and philosophical underpinnings that advocate sevā and a substantial precedent of performing sevā. This thesis argues that the idea of sevā in some Hindu devotional movements is not a form of appropriation or repackaging of a Western service ideal; it, instead, has an innate connection with sādhanā, or a means for spiritual progression. Sevā, even when found in unique forms such as health fairs, blood drives, and education seminars, is felt by practitioners of certain Hindu devotional groups to be deeply connected to and 7 qualified as sādhanā. This research will illuminate the philosophy and historical precedent that underlie the performance of this sevā by these two Hindu groups. In doing so, there is a unique and necessary addition to the ongoing dialectic regarding Hindu sevā. 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Setting the Stage In the 1930s, Paul Hacker began his study of Indology at numerous universities in Germany. By the end of the 1940s, he began studying Indian philosophy, with a particular interest in the Advaita tradition. His study of Advaita often engaged in comparisons by taking Christian theological understandings of concepts such as man and God as paradigmatic, a standard against which other systems should be measured.1 Hacker also tended to study philosophical concepts chronologically, noting the shifts in the meaning of these concepts with the passage of time. Consequentially, his studies of Advaita in this manner eventually lead him to dividing the tradition into two parts: traditional Advaita and Neo-Advaita or Neo-Vedanta. Hacker understood Neo-Advaita to be little more than an adulteration of the original Advaita concepts and teachings.2 One of these adulterations, Hacker reasoned, was the inclusion of an ethical dimension that had no basis in traditional Advaita. Hacker held that this inclusion was a result of Neo-Vedanta leaders being in contact with western and Christian ideas; the idea of ethics in Neo-Advaita was little more than an instance of appropriation of foreign concepts. Accordingly, Hacker sharply criticized Neo-Advaita groups, such as the Ramakrishna Mission, which displayed this ethical dimension in the form of social service projects. This critique of ethics in Neo- 1 Peter Gaeffke. Book review of Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta, by Wilhelm Halbfass, Journal of American Oriental Society, Vol 117, No. 2, 1997, 398-400. 2 Wilhelm Halbfass, Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 8. 9 Vedanta reverberated in western academic religious scholarship for many years, even after Hacker passed away in 1979. By looking at the theological, epistemological, ontological, and performative contexts of two Hindu devotional traditions in the Atlanta area, this thesis will look to add to the western academic dialectic surrounding Hindu sevā, or service. It will commence by closely analyzing Hacker’s claims regarding sevā in the Advaita system and laying out the resulting academic scholarship that followed Hacker’s initial work. Thereafter, a delineation of the different definitions