Saint Namdev in India

Christian Lee Novetzke. Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. xxii + 309 pp. $50.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-231-14184-0. Reviewed by Madhuri Deshmukh Published on H-Asia (October, 2009) Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin) This book traverses continents, academic dis‐ of bhakti, generally characterized as an intensely ciplines (history, literature, performance studies, personal experience of divinity on the one hand, and religion), and several time periods to illumi‐ or as a movement against orthodoxy or caste hier‐ nate the strange workings of one of Maharashtra’s archy on the other hand. However, Novetzke most enigmatic and beloved fgures. Namdev, a points out, bhakti--like “religion” in India in gen‐ bhakti (devotional) poet believed to have lived in eral--is never just “personal.” It is still articulated the fourteenth century in the central western through the very public modes of performance state of Maharashtra, has appeared and reap‐ and textuality, and thus is also inherently hetero‐ peared in numerous memory archives of North geneous. Novetzke makes the notable point that and western Indian devotional traditions over the the practices of bhakti are animated by a sort of last seven centuries. In this book, Namdev be‐ “will to remember” (p. 131). Bhakti is an “ongoing comes a sort of focal point for bringing into view effort to construct publics of belief, maintained numerous interrelated theoretical reflections on through intricate systems of memory” (p. xi). the workings of history, memory, literacy, and per‐ Drawing on numerous European memory studies formance in South Asia. This is the kind of schol‐ scholars, Novetzke makes the point that memory arship that Maharashtra studies needs, one that “returns the observer to the immediacy of the respects regional specificity but draws it into dia‐ event,” and is thus the “site of continuity,” where‐ logue with the larger world, both within and out‐ as “history is the source of dissociation from the side of India. past through its scientific, factual mastery” (p. 73). The book opens with a series of theoretical And indeed in the Namdev tradition, Namdev is formulations that are subsequently brought to always remembered as someone proximate, even bear on the study of Namdev. First, Christian Lee intimately so. Novetzke very insightfully reframes the concept H-Net Reviews The opening three chapters of the book ex‐ distance from literacy ” (p. 99). Namdev, consid‐ plore the textual and performative practices that ered by many to be the founder of the kirtan in enact the public remembrances of Namdev, in‐ Maharashtra, is always remembered as a per‐ cluding a detailed comparative analysis of the ha‐ former of songs and never as a writer. This does giographical writings on Namdev in both Marathi not mean, however, that the idea of “authorship” and Hindi, an analysis of specific purportedly au‐ is not relevant to the tradition. By looking at “au‐ tobiographical texts by Namdev, an examination thorship” through the lens of the performative and overview of the written legacy of poems and tradition of kirtan, Novetzke is able to draw out songs attributed to Namdev, and a close study of what he calls the “corporate authorship” of the the compendia and anthologies of Namdev songs Namdev tradition. This does not simply mean that since the nineteenth century. Novetzke cuts there are many Namdevs, but that many and one through this rather dense thicket of primary re‐ coexist in a sort of dialectical dance of history and search using insights gleaned from ethnographic memory. As Novetzke puts it, “The Namdev tradi‐ observation, French postmodern theorists, me‐ tion of kirtan in Marathi allows the historical au‐ dieval European literary traditions, South Indian thor to be reinvented ever anew, an idea that does devotional practices, Sanskrit textual traditions, not sit well with the modern notion of author‐ and, of course, Marathi performance practices. ship” (p. 92). The kirtan brings together several A significant contribution of the book is its layers of authorship: the authorship of the kirtan original analysis of one of Maharashtra’s main performer; the genealogical authorship of the his‐ performance traditions, the kirtan, the primary torical poet; and the authorship of the kirtan form medium through which the Namdev tradition has itself, which is subdivided by styles of different been conveyed. Novetzke draws out the ways in founding performers. The historical Namdev is which this medium, itself a fuid and mutable one, “embodied” by the performer of the kirtan, and shapes the fuid legacy of Namdev, a process he he or she becomes “the corporeal site of corporate calls “the dialectic of performance and perma‐ authorship” (p. 91). nence.” Eschewing the more common teleological In the Namdev tradition, writing takes second ordering of orality and literacy, Novetzke draws place to performance. The written legacy of out the ways that performativity and orality--es‐ Namdev compositions is primarily carried in the pecially the kirtan form--structure the written informal handwritten notebooks of kirtan per‐ legacy of Namdev as well as the concept of “au‐ formers called baDas, not in the more formal thorship” in the tradition as a whole. manuscript tradition of pothis. Though there is Determining “authorship” is one of the cen‐ some room to quibble here with some of the inter‐ tral conundrums that modern scholars of bhakti pretations of the texts and some of the descrip‐ literature confront, and Namdev has been the tions of the context, Novetzke offers a close read‐ cause of not a little anxiety on the subject. Most ing and analysis of a baDa that convincingly illus‐ scholars agree that there are other Namdevs who trates how the performance imperatives of the composed songs than the purportedly historical kirtan shape the ways that Namdev’s poems are Namdev of the fourteenth century. This uncertain‐ written down and the ways that Namdev is re‐ ty about authorship is present in the legacy of membered in writing. To my knowledge, this book most of the saint-poets, such as Kabir, Surdas, offers the very frst analysis in English of baDas Mirabai, and others. But, with Namdev, this situa‐ as an important written resource for the bhakti tion is compounded by the fact that Namdev is tradition in Maharashtra. uniquely remembered as creating a “purposeful 2 H-Net Reviews In the second half of the book, which focuses the eighteenth century. This period is often char‐ on the post-seventeenth-century public remem‐ acterized in vernacular scholarship as a “Dark brances of Namdev, it becomes apparent that Age” of Muslim conquest and suppression. Novet‐ while this book is well grounded in the performa‐ zke, in contrast, sees the creativity of the many tive and textual Namdev traditions, its animating “Namas,” emerging in the age of another great theoretical objectives are more lofty: the cultural Marathi poet, Eknath of the sixteenth century, as a study of the idea of history itself, or perhaps more “renaissance,” an indication of a “robust system accurately, of histories as they are performed, en‐ of remembrance” (p. 144). Here, Novetzke seems acted, and articulated in different ways. In his to practice what he is analyzing in other sources: analysis of the remembrance of Namdev by spe‐ he uses the memory of Namdev as a “device of cific publics at specific times in Maharashtra, history” to reshape our understanding of the past. Novetzke complicates the idea of history, without, The fnal few chapters analyze some of the fa‐ however, discarding it altogether as a necessary mous stories and narratives about Namdev, and and useful analytic paradigm. History and histori‐ the use and deployment of these stories as re‐ ography are shown to be at work in the religio-po‐ sponses to specific conditions in the eighteenth etics of the Namdev tradition, but of a different through the twentieth centuries. For example, kind and in a different register. Novetzke examines two famous stories, one about In this second part, Novetzke takes his analy‐ Namdev as a robber who repents and becomes a sis of “corporate authorship” further, suggesting great saint (a tale of social banditry), and another that inherent in the many voices that speak as about an encounter in which Namdev one-ups a Namdev, there is a sort of anamnesis at work, a sultan or a Hindu king. Novetzke attempts to trace conscious effort to recollect and even mimic the the genealogies of these stories by a detailed study past. The many “Namas” or Namdevs appearing of their written transmission, and through this between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries route, attempts to situate these stories as respons‐ make explicit references to the fourteenth-centu‐ es to specific historical periods. He examines why ry “original” Namdev, while at the same time certain stories appear and disappear at certain maintaining a distinct identity and speaking to times. Some of the analysis is historicist in nature the needs of their own time. Scholars vary on the here, but based on a sort of historical speculation number of “other Namdevs,” whose songs appear arrived at through literary analysis of nonhistori‐ in various compendia, but most recognize at least cal texts. These stories allow Novetzke to explore three or four who are distinctly different poets. the ways that Namdev becomes a “device of histo‐ Instead of seeing this proliferation of Namdevs ry,” and this suggests new and innovative ways of over time as a failure of proper textuality and his‐ approaching history in South Asia, though some toricity, Novetzke sees it as authorial continuity may question whether this should be considered created through the practices of “mimesis and “history” at all, and also ask why the designation replication,” which are “systems of public memo‐ of history remains so important.

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