International Journal for the Study of Hinduism Volume 22 December 2010 ISSN 1016-5320 Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 Nidān International Journal for the Study of Hinduism 2010 December Durban, South Africa Printed at The University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa ii Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 • Nidān is an international Journal which publishes contributions in the field of studies in Hinduism • Articles published in Nidān have abstracts reflected in Ultriche’s International Periodicals Directory, New Jersey, USA, in Periodica Islamica, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and in the Index to South African Periodicals • Articles published in Nidān are now available on Sabinet Editors Maheshvari Naidu and Usha Shukla Senior Editor P. Pratap Kumar University of KwaZulu-Natal Managing Editor Beverly Vencatsamy Local Editorial Board M. Clasquin (University of South Africa); R. Mesthrie (University of Cape Town). International Editorial Board Deepak Sarma (Case Western Reserve University, USA) William Harman (University of Tennessee, USA) K. Jacobsen (University of Bergen, Norway); M. Bauman (Universität Luzern, Switzerland); P. Bilimoria (Melbourne University, Australia); Y. Sawai (Tenri University, Japan); R. Lamb (University of Hawaii, USA); K. Knott (University of Leeds, UK); Correspondence Address The Managing Editor: Nidān c/o School of Religion & Theology Private Bag X10, Dalbridge, 4041, Durban, South Africa. Tel: +27(31) 260 7303/3120 Fax: +27(31) 2607286 Email: [email protected] ISSN 1016-5320 Copy Right Reserved: Nidān iii Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 Criteria for Submission of Articles Articles should relate to the study of any aspect of Hinduism. As such, the study of Hinduism is broadly conceived to include, not merely the traditionally recognized areas within the discipline, but includes contributions from scholars in other fields who seek to bring their particular worldviews and theories into dialogue with Hindu studies. Articles that explore issues of history, ecology, economics, politics, sociology, culture, education and psychology are welcomed. Papers will be subject to evaluation by referees drawn from a pool of local and international scholars. Papers should be prefaced by an abstract of approximately 100 words, setting out the gist of the paper. The article itself should not exceed 6000 words. Gender discrimination should be avoided, unless it is necessary for the sense intended. Notes should be rendered at the end of the paper and not as footnotes. The author’s full name, address, qualifications and present position must be supplied on a separate page. Each paper must be accompanied by a signed declaration to the effect that the article is the original work of the author. Articles must be submitted on a computer diskette/computer CD using an IBM or Macintosh compatible word processing programme. Articles should be saved as a Word Document. In addition three printed double spaced copies of the paper must be supplied. Note that the publication of articles cannot be guaranteed. Further, an article, which is accepted for publication, maybe held over for a publication in a subsequent issue of the journal. South African Authors of the articles should arrange, through their institutions, to have page costs paid for. iv Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 Volume 22 December 2010 International Journal for the Study of Hinduism Maheshvari Naidu and Usha Shukla Editorial vi Vivian Ojong & Janet Muthuki Religious Conversion and the Renegotiation of Gender Identity Amongst Indian Women in Chatsworth in Durban South Africa 9 Usha Shukla Empowerment of Women in the Ramayana: Focus on Sita 22 Laxmi Samineni & Chenchulakshmi Kolla Mokṣa: The Goal of Life According to the Teachings of Satya Sai Baba 40 P. Pratap Kumar Freedom in the Bhagavad Gītā: An Analysis of Buddhi and Sattva Categories 69 Elizabeth Pulane Motswapong A Super Gift or a Conduit: The Place of the Daughter in the Indian Marriage Exchange 82 Maheshvari Naidu & Vivian Ojong The ‘re-production’ of ‘woman’ and mothering: Women in Hindu and Christian Religio-cultural Traditions 96 v Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 Editorial Hindu Studies: Study of the “Past-present” Nidan aspires to critically engage with, and celebrate contemporary Hindu Studies as a scholarly discipline in which broad questions are addressed across the Humanities and Social Sciences in rigorous scholarly exercise. By inviting scholars in the field to offer studies of diverse instances of textual as well as ethnographic work, by looking back historically and textually, as well as keeping an eye on the archive of lived actualities as they unfold for Hindu adherents in home as well as host countries and diasporic spaces, Nidan focuses the gaze on a wide range of current themes in Hinduism. Nidan invites scholarship of the “past-present”, a term coined by the famed post- colonial writer Homi Bhaba (1994) in his work Location of Culture , where he shows how histories and cultures constantly intrude on the present. Bhaba points out the need to recognise that, what tradition bequeaths is only a partial form of identification with cultural and religious, et.al. forms of heritage. He claims that restaging the past introduces other, cultural temporalities into the ‘invention’ of tradition (Bhaba 1990: 2). These ‘other cultural temporalities’ are often from within the repertoire of ones own historical and cultural trajectories, and sculpt out new expressions and enactments for the participants in the religion. With the rise of Anthropology and other Social Sciences in the early to middle 20th century, the textual focus of the field is seen as being also broadened with the emergence of new and vital directions of scholarship. Hinduism is not just about static structures- there is a practiced lexicon that lends itself to ethnographic studies and empirical analyses of Hindu religious phenomena, and the actors within the religion. By inviting work that captures the multi-faceted phenomena of ‘Hinduism’ and the multiple subjectivities of the actors themselves, the Journal intends to create new communities of readership and stimulate new directions and dialogue among scholars across the spectrum of disciplinary approaches who are working in areas in Hinduism. Thus what is aimed at, is greater intellectual exchange and interdisciplinary scholarly studies about Hinduism through diverse perspectives of the Humanities and Social Sciences. To this end the contributors in this issue are drawn across the fields of Sanskrit and Hindi Studies, Anthropology and Gender Studies. There are six female and one male scholar represented among the contributors, with several of the female scholars writing from articulated feminist stances. The articles themselves are nuanced works that work with hermeneutics of textual materials, as well as articles offering rich ethnographic data. vi Nidān, Volume 22, December 2010 While there is no master narrative for the rich tapestry of beliefs, rituals and philosophies that go by the rubric of Hinduism as a religion, the ‘notion’, or as adherents would understand it, the ideal of moksha is integral to many of the philosophical systems as well as the theistic systems in Indian philosophies and the diverse strains of Hinduism. Laxmi Samineni and Chenchulakshmi Kolla in their paper entititled, Mokṣa: The Goal Of Life according To The Teachings Of Satya Sai Baba offer a discussion of the hermeneutical analysis of the notion of ‘Moksha’ as explained by Sri Satya Sai Baba and attempt to relate this to the wider hermeneutic within monotheistic Advaita Vedanta and Hinduism. One may well maintain that the scholar’s hermeneutic task is to complicate existing conceptions of a tradition, by creating the awareness that what appears commonsensical from the insider perspective, is actually an artifact of time (Hawley 2004). Problematising the conceptual fluidity that exists in many contemporary Hindu movements in their promotion of the Gita’s interpretation of ‘freedom’, Pratap Kumar offers a fine grained discussion of ‘Freedom’ as contained in the Bhagavad Gita, vis à vis the concepts of Buddhi and Sattva. In the recent decades there has been an increasingly ‘loud’ beckoning for the gendering (both theoretically and methodologically) of religious scholarship. Usha Shukla in her work Empowerment of Women in the Ramayana, examines how Sita negotiates the questions of freedom, dignity and what would be contextualized in the contemporary context, as human and women’s rights, and beckons our attention to what might be the lessons to be sketched for a new, gendered social contract between men and women. Studies such as these bring into our gaze that one of the main goals of hermeneutics is to recognise the variety of means by which a text is able to communicate. Another work that works with textual materials is that of Elizabeth Pulane Motswapong who draws a contemporary gaze to the discussions on woman and dowry. In her paper A Super Gift or a Conduit, she uses the heuristic mechanism of ‘conduit’ in explaining how the bride or kanya is positioned in the traditional Hindu marriage. She claims that the ‘shift’ in status of the daughter as a ‘super gift’ to a conduit facilitates the dowry custom and that this has significantly affected the status of women in contemporary Indian society, but reminds us, most importantly, that there are multiple (male and female) participants in the act of ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ the dowry. Maheshvari Naidu & Vivian Besem Ojong in their comparative study entitled The