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University of California LOS ANGELES UNIVErSITY OF CALIFOrNIA LOS ANGELES Moving Toward Utopia Language, Empathy, and Chastity among Mobile Mothers and Children in Mayapur, West Bengal A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Teruko Vida Mitsuhara 2019 © Copyright by Teruko Vida Mitsuhara 2019 ABSTrACT OF THE DISSErTATION Moving Toward Utopia Language, Empathy, and Chastity among Mobile Mothers and Children in Mayapur, West Bengal by Teruko Vida Mitsuhara Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Elinor Ochs, Chair This dissertation examines the utopian impulse as a historical concept that informs twenty-first cen- tury religious migration and community formations in opposition to late-capitalist modernity. It foregrounds the understandings and experiences of women and their children in Mayapur, a transna- tional village comprised of devotees of Krishna in West Bengal, India. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study offers linguistic anthropological insights into the motivations for why women choose to leave Western and other “liberal” contexts in favor of fundamentalist religious spaces. Through close analysis of everyday interactions in multilingual children’s peer-groups itshows the affordances that growing up in such a utopian community has for the development of “linguistic empathy” across racial and linguistic boundaries, as well as the reflexive understandings of religious and cultural concepts that children acquire, debate, and transform. Beginning with the history of utopia in sixteenth-century Europe to its exportation to India in the nineteenth century, this study identifies ways in which utopian thought shapes the creation of Mayapur. “Utopia” was invented by English saint and satirist Sir Thomas More in 1516 as a double entendre meaning “non-place” as well as “place of happiness.” More did not intend his satirical novel ii to become a blueprint for actual alternative world-making projects. Yet, over the course of five hun- dred years, innumerable attempts to manifest “ideal” worlds have taken place. This study traces how utopian thought impacted nineteenth century Bengali reformer Bhaktivinoda Thakur, who envisioned Mayapur as the homeland of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Gaudiya Vaishnavism centers on bhakti, the devo- tional worship of Radha and Krishna, avatars of the supreme Hindu god Vishnu. This medieval reli- gion was later exported from India to the West by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, who founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in 1966. Mayapur is ISKCON’s headquarters and was prophesied to be the learning center and homeland for all devotees of Krishna. Mayapur is fast becoming a city with around 3,500 Bengali and other Indian residents alongside ap- proximately 2,500 international devotees who are culling together their resources to build their Bengali guru’s Vaishnava utopia. Through participant observation, interviews, and video recordings of face-to-face interactions, this study examines everyday life among those living in utopian communities. It addresses the sub- jective, existential concerns of devotee women, who migrated to this utopian project. Featuring close analysis of devotee mothers’ narratives of entrapment, I suggest that pressures on mothers in the working world has been a catalyst for migration to communal projects that uphold strict gender divides. The main push for family migration is vested in protecting their children from “material world” logics, chief among them, feminism. For devotees, feminism stands as the trickster that duped them into engaging in social commitments for which they were not prepared, delaying motherhood in pursuit of education or career advancement, and placing money or society above one’s family—all framed as anti-motherhood and ultimately practices that they as members of a community of like-minded devotees need to correct in order to birth the Vaishnava utopia envisioned by their guru. Once families migrated to Mayapur, children from around the world and different cultural and linguistic backgrounds began living in close proximity to one another in school, neighborhoods, the temple and other community settings. This dissertation showcases the communicative possibilities in this utopian community. Due to constant migration and ever-changing demographics, the commu- nity is in constant flux. In a place predicated upon a mobile constituency and liminality, thisstudy iii investigates the communicative dispositions made possible in Mayapur. Recorded social interactions among devotee children (ages 8–11) reveals that children assist each other in language learning and display patience for conversational mistakes, referred to here as linguistic empathy. This dissertation discusses how the lifeworlds of girls as highly mobile migrants promote religious flexibility regarding chastity among their generation. The girls transform ISKCON’s concept of chastity from a strict moral code with clear tenets into a demeanor that is contextually variable. Investigat- ing religious change among mobile devotee girls complicates ideas about children’s role in migration as “passive” dependents who mirror the sentiments and ideologies of their parents. From the per- spective of the girls’ families, utopia is about protecting their daughters from the “world-out-there.” Yet, because of their constant migratory experiences, devotee girls are periodically exposed to that world. Rather than categorically reject or embrace it, the girls display an ability to modify or switch moral frameworks surrounding chastity. This study discusses cultural changes initiated by thenext generation of devotees as an outcome of their cosmopolitan life, especially their frequent geographical mobility, which exposes them to variability and affords contestation of localized values. iv The dissertation of Teruko Vida Mitsuhara is approved. Alessandro Duranti Marjorie Harness Goodwin Akhil Gupta Norma Mendoza-Denton Bambi B. Schieffelin Elinor Ochs, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 v To my mother and the memory of my father, for pushing me forward to dream. And to Jan, for dreaming alongside me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Anthropology of Utopia ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 1 1.1 The Audacity . 4 1.1.1 Utopia—What’s so Unreasonable? . 4 1.1.2 The Shadow Side of Utopias . 5 1.1.3 “The World Out There” vs. Mayapur . 7 1.2 The Safe Haven, the Intentional Community . 14 1.2.1 Community . 15 1.2.2 Intentional Community . 17 1.2.3 Utopian Community . 20 1.3 Anthropology and Utopia . 21 1.4 Chapter Outlines . 25 2 Fieldsite and Methodology :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 27 2.1 Entry into Mayapur . 29 2.1.1 Fieldnotes and Ethnographic Writing . 33 2.1.2 Participant Observation . 34 2.2 Setting the Stage . 35 2.2.1 Schooling in Mayapur . 37 2.2.2 Moving In . 40 2.2.3 Community Demographics and Parental Consent . 40 2.2.4 Meeting the Parents and Children . 42 2.2.5 Introducing Myself to the Children and Children’s Assent . 44 2.2.6 Being an “Adult-Child”—Researching Children . 47 2.2.7 Reciprocity and Saying Goodbye . 50 vii 2.2.8 Being a Female Researcher in a Gender Conservative Space—Marriage and Transracial Subjectivity . 51 2.3 Research Participants . 53 2.3.1 Sundari—Mauritian-Indian and Polish Family . 55 2.3.2 Krishangi—Bengali Family . 57 2.3.3 Gopi—Russian-Kazakhstani family . 59 2.3.4 Chaturika—Russian Family . 60 2.4 Audio-visual Ethnography . 61 2.4.1 Photography . 62 2.4.2 Video-recording Naturally Occurring Interactions . 62 2.4.3 Schedule of Video-recording . 63 2.4.4 To GoPro or Not To GoPro . 63 2.5 Interviews . 66 2.6 Multilingual Transcription and Analysis . 67 3 Utopia—Evolution of an Idea ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 70 3.1 The Concept of Utopia . 73 3.1.1 More’s Utopia . 73 3.1.2 The Communitarian Ideal . 75 3.2 Seventeenth Century to Nineteenth Century Utopian Socialists . 76 3.2.1 The Utopian Socialists . 78 3.2.2 Nineteenth Century Utopias and India . 80 3.2.3 Religious Utopia in the Bengal-Vaishnava Imaginary . 82 3.3 Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Dystopia—Migration to Utopia . 85 viii 4 Introducing ISKCON—Vision of a Vaishnava Utopia :::::::::::::::::::: 89 4.1 The Background of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu . 90 4.2 Discovering Mayapur . 92 4.3 Modernizing Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnavism . 94 4.4 Gaudiya Vaishnavism Goes Around the World . 101 4.5 A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada and ISKCON . 104 4.6 ISKCON Beliefs and Practices . 107 4.6.1 The Meaning of bhakti within ISKCON . 108 4.6.2 The Four Rules and Regulations . 110 4.7 Mayapur Today . 113 4.7.1 Mayapur and the Communitarian Ideal . 117 4.7.2 Mayapur as Utopia . 119 5 Narratives of Entrapment—Dystopia/Utopia ::::::::::::::::::::::: 122 5.1 The “Non-Liberal” Religious Woman . 124 5.2 Tricked, Trapped, and Unprotected . 126 5.2.1 The Material World . 127 5.2.2 Being Unprotected—“Feminism Failed Me” . 129 5.2.3 Being Duped . 134 5.2.4 Being Tricked—Realizing “It’s a Real Trap” . 136 5.2.5 Getting Out—The Spectre of Stress . 140 5.3 Trapped On Several Levels . 145 5.3.1 Dystopia and Kali Yuga . 146 5.3.2 Deep Cosmic Time . 149 5.4 Concluding Thoughts . 152 ix 6 Linguistic Empathy among Highly Mobile Children ::::::::::::::::::: 154 6.1 Language Contact and Multilingualism . 156 6.2 Empathy . 159 6.2.1 Intersubjectivity and Empathy . 161 6.2.2 A Cautionary Stance with Empathy as Altruism . 164 6.3 Empathy and Conversation . 164 6.4 Spontaneous Brokering of a Three-Year-Old . 165 6.5 “Nearly Right”—Empathetic Peer Correction . 175 6.6 Playing with Language . 179 6.6.1 The Trouble with “kaj” . 179 6.6.2 The Russian Federation Song . 183 6.7 Utopia—Spaces of Abeyance . 186 6.8 Concluding Thoughts . 188 7 Mobile Children, Contextual Morals ::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 190 7.1 “She’ll Remember” . 191 7.2 “You’re Not Chaste” . 197 7.3 Concluding Thoughts . 215 Conclusions ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 216 Reflections on the Girls Now .
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