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Life-Journeys of Western Spiritual Practitioners in Pondicherry

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Life-Journeys of Western Spiritual Practitioners in Pondicherry Imagining India as a Spiritual Place: Life-journeys of Western Spiritual Practitioners in Pondicherry Tuhina Ganguly October 2016 Department of Sociology and Anthropology School of Language, Social and Political Sciences University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy For Ma and Baba CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ii Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Finding the research question ............................................................................................ 1 Meandering to Pondicherry ............................................................................................... 6 Pondicherry ........................................................................................................................ 8 From spiritual tourists to expatriates ............................................................................... 14 Doing fieldwork at home among Westerners .................................................................. 19 Chapter outline ................................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 1.The Bigger Picture .................................................................................................. 30 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 30 Antimodernism and multiple modernities in a transnational context .............................. 31 The making of spirituality ................................................................................................ 35 India and spirituality via Orientalism .............................................................................. 45 Sri Aurobindo and Indian spirituality .............................................................................. 54 Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator and their teachings .............................................. 58 The development of the ashram and the “spirituality versus religion” question ............. 65 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 70 JOURNEYS AND MOVEMENT ........................................................................................... 71 Chapter 2. Travelling Eastward: Arrival Narratives and the Re-enchantment of India ......................................................................................................................................... 72 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 72 Coming of age in the sixties ............................................................................................ 74 Disenchantment and disaffections ................................................................................... 80 Turning toward India via difference and distance ........................................................... 87 Hitting the road ................................................................................................................ 94 Juxtapositions ................................................................................................................... 99 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 3. Travelling Westward: Place Enchantment and the Global Network of Indian Spirituality .................................................................................................................. 104 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 104 The transnational network of Indian spirituality ............................................................ 106 Indian gurus in the West ................................................................................................ 109 Transitions in personal journeys .................................................................................... 116 Guru quest and geopiety ................................................................................................ 124 Movement within the Integral Yoga Network ............................................................... 131 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 135 SETTLED LIVES ................................................................................................................. 137 Chapter 4. Re-enchanting the Self: The Discourse and Praxis of Authentic Selfhood .......... 138 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 138 Narrating the self ........................................................................................................... 140 Departing from Christianity ........................................................................................... 143 Darshan: Authenticating the self ................................................................................... 150 Divine offerings: Surrendering and agency ................................................................... 157 Interpretive tools: Karma, connection and calling ......................................................... 161 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 170 Chapter 5. At Home in India? The Enchantments and Disenchantments of Life in the Elsewhere ............................................................................................................................... 172 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 172 Home (Elsew)here: The end of exile ............................................................................. 173 Reading Savitri: The eternal flame of the past .............................................................. 182 The disenchantments of home: The inner versus the outer divide ................................ 188 Indian materialism, Western spirituality ........................................................................ 194 Future aspirations ........................................................................................................... 203 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 207 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 208 Concluding Thoughts ............................................................................................................. 209 Reference List ......................................................................................................................... 217 List of Figures Figure 1: Map of India showing Pondicherry ............................................................................. 9 Figure 2: Spatial segregation into “white town” and “black town” in Pondicherry ................... 9 Figure 3: Restored French heritage building on Rue Romain Rolland ....................................... 9 Figure 4: Sri Aurobindo ashram main building ............................................................................... 9 Figure 5: Sri Aurobindo Ghose ................................................................................................. 54 Figure 6: The Mother ................................................................................................................ 59 Abstract This thesis is a critical engagement with the ways in which India continues to be constructed as a spiritual place in global imaginaries and transnational discourses of spirituality. Ground in ethnographic fieldwork among primarily North American and Western European spiritual practitioners settled in India, specifically Pondicherry, home to Sri Aurobindo ashram, this research situates their relocation to India within the historical-political trajectories which have constructed the trope, “spiritual India”. The expatriate spiritual practitioners’ narratives of relocating to India offer an antimodernist critique of technological and industrial progress in Western society which, they believe, has led to the destruction of nature, culture, and religion. At the same time, they create India as the site of invoking nostalgia for a premodern lost past of ancient spirituality. This thesis argues and demonstrates that their antimodernism as a response of and to the discontents of modernity is in fact thoroughly modern, albeit exemplifying an alternative modernity. This argument is based on the following: First, the alternative in the form of supposedly premodern India is in itself a modern creation available in the here-and-now due to colonialism, Orientalism, and Indian nationalism (including teachings
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