Abstract
The ‘social’ dimension in faith repertoires comes with HIFMs’ visions of society, social stratification, social ethics, and social consciousness. This further lends into HIFMs’ positions on social issues, action, service, and work. Perspectives on social issues include linear, systemic, structural, theistic, and evolutionary perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
See Reddy and Zavos (2010).
- 2.
See Hatcher (2007). Hatcher’s (2007) observations are based on the exploration of the affinity between one early colonial version of Vedanta and the socioeconomic activities of its bourgeois promoters. Working from a rare set of Bengali discourses delivered at meetings of the Tattvabodhini Sabha during its inaugural year (1839–1840), this essay demonstrates how a re-scripted Vedanta provided members with a worldview that legitimated both their spiritual concerns and their worldly activities.
- 3.
With Lord Swaminarayan as the core and his version of Vaishnavism defined by ekantik dharma, and his pedigree devotee coterie comprising Khachar and Khuman tribes and Kanbi Patidars, Thakkars, and Kathis, institutionalized forms of hierarchy spearheaded by Brahminical supremacy are challenged. These identity narratives, Lord Swaminarayan as the core reference point along with his Paramahamsas (the core disciple group including Gunatitanand Swami and others), and the tailor-caste householder Mahant Pragji Bhagat’s prominence have redefined ideological and structural forces of caste and class. New centre margin hierarchies are created in terms of degrees of proximity to Swaminarayan’s patronage. Hence, the traditional caste ‘totality’ is questioned, the sect having laid down its own norms of transcendence, realization, and levels of attainment—Swaminarayan being the established Godhead and the subsequent Paramahamsas and successors (irrespective of their ascribed origins) at the apex. This apex positioning subsequently leads to a ‘brahminization’ as Paramahamsas and sadhus assume priestly duties in the consecrated temples at various centres. In keeping with the historical trends, however, the patron–client profiles are socially reproduced through historicity, the bourgeois householder adherents forming the next level of hierarchy. Bourgeois attributes include a historical family allegiance (families aligned to head successors of Swaminarayan Sanstha through various temples across Saurashtra), Kanbi–Patidar and Thakkar lineage, which is the flourishing trade community of Gujarat, and diaspora presence (families who have residents in countries where Swaminarayan Sanstha has a presence). Hence, this rejection of traditional caste hierarchies has a strategic position of power in the Swaminarayan Sanstha social fabric—class and duration and source of sect adherence are new sources of status formations.
- 4.
Privileged segregation implies that men and women have designated areas of operation in the social and spatial geographies of Swaminarayan Sanstha. Benevolent separation refers to a spatiality that then assumes the form of a speciality—places of exchange for women are special and remote from renunciants. Accommodation means that women are permitted to study and teach scriptures. Widows are endowed with the affirmative status of samkhyayoginis implying that they can serve the Lord and the fellowship in specially developed spaces, ritually segregated, yet together mystically.
- 5.
As per Vivekananda’s analysis, in a Hindu society this differential is also visualized in terms of remarriage opportunities (the Brahmo culture at that time had focused a great deal on widow remarriage as a tool for women’s emancipation; Vivekananda built on this along with his understanding of caste and transported this to the West as a gender concoction of the Indian scenario). Vivekananda proposed that fewer women in the higher castes lent lesser opportunities of women to remarry vis-à-vis in the lower castes if the situation was reversed. However, for higher-caste women, celibacy as sanctioned and preferred by Hindu religion worked to women’s advantage; more women opting for celibacy post-widowhood. Hence, a cultural ‘othering’ of women encapsulated in institutions of caste is role-defining—women’s ‘happiness’ as perceived in either institutions of marriage and motherhood or self-imposed celibacy post-widowhood was seen as a hallmark of high culture.
- 6.
Lumpen proletariat is a Marxist terminology (term originally used by Marx in 1920s) to refer to the apolitical lower orders of society uninterested in revolutionary advancement.
- 7.
Gurucharitra is a sixteenth-century text of the Dattatreya cult penned by Saraswati Gangadhar extolling the lives of Sripada Srivallabha and Narasimha Saraswati—two seminal figures of the Marathi Datta sampradaya.
- 8.
HIFMs’ stance on moral weight may not necessarily include all the aspects of feminist care ethics, particularly the notion of a relational self that is central to care ethical ideas of a moral agent. It says that bonds of love and care that we have with some others give us a self-identity ‘in-relation’ to them and enable us to take their point of view into consideration in our decision-making. In case of larger social reform, appeals to the relational self become inadequate. What is then introduced is a (re)construction of the self-in-relation to new Others—to people whom one does not consider the self to be ‘in relation’ with. Such reformulation of self-identity presupposes a prior motivation of wanting to connect and constitute a self-in-relation to the hitherto excluded others.
- 9.
There are specifications in the Shikshapatri about the wifely duties being sexual satisfaction of the spouse and ensuring progeny; giving away her own material resources, if required even sthreedhan for the progress of her husband. Domestic work and child rearing are declared exclusive responsibilities of women, and even in the diaspora face of women, where increasingly women work outside the homes, the Shikshapatri mandate remains unchanged (in fact, what is projected is the benevolent face of the sampradaya which ‘permits’ its women to take up paid work outside). Hence, although their work participation is liberating to one extent, it is only partial; for ‘true adherents’ of the sect domestic chores and raising children are still relegated to women—at times manifesting as double workload. What emerges then is, for Delphy (1970), two modes of production: industrial and domestic—the first giving rise to capitalist exploitation and the other to patriarchal exploitation. In the Swaminarayan Sanstha sect social structure, women’s identities are further intertwined by caste and class realities—although patriarchal subordination prevails, its manifestation across the haves and have-nots in the Swaminarayan Sanstha social realm differs. For instance, the Kanbi Patidar women’s constructions of patriarchal exchange and negotiations differ remarkably from that of a Kathi woman. Further through the Balika, Kishori, and Yuvati mandals, femininity is inscribed (Chodorow, 1978), thereby leaving very little to conscious choice and much to the realm of the unconscious or psyche.
- 10.
Sri Aurobindo Society actively promotes indigenous forms of medicine and natural healing. It brings out a periodical called NAMAH—New Approaches to Medicine and Health, which discusses various aspects of this healing through current and ongoing research.
- 11.
Jayasree (2006) has provided account of the services of the Church of England Zenana Mission Society in Trivandrum during the period 1864–1964 based on two documents, The Land of the Conch Shell by Augusta M. Blandford, the founder of the mission at Trivandrum, and an unpublished document prepared by another missionary, D. Taylor, who joined the mission in 1964. The two narratives tell the story of a school, built brick by brick, and together form a corpus that gives valuable insights into the making of colonial modernity in a small principality in the south of India. Aspects such as microhistory and Judith Butler’s performative acts in gender and social construction have been used for the analysis.
- 12.
Cojocaru, Cojocaru, and Sandu (2011) have examined the phenomenon of social services in post-1989 Romania and have emphasized the role of faith or the religious factor in the establishment and operation of non-governmental organizations active in the area of family and child protection/child welfare. However, it was also found that during implementation there were aspects of dilution, secularization, and fragmentation in response to secular donors. Secular donors, on the other hand, focused on the building–restoring of faith establishments rather that exclusively towards the social programs.
- 13.
According to Srinivasan (2010), moral altruism does not dissolve the ego but only shifts it to a moral plane. In altruism, serving others becomes a means of self-satisfaction of the moral ego and this moral satisfaction has great danger for the spiritual seeker as it extinguishes the spiritual aspiration. The main focus of the spiritual seeker is his own spiritual development, which leads to the discovery of his true self. To concentrate on one’s spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak—and to grow in spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that help them. This applies not only to individual development but also to the growth of the collectivity. When we look deeply into the root cause of all conflicts, misery, and violence among human individual and collectivities, we will find at the bottom the human ego and its greed, ambition, and attachments, so the greatest good we can do to human evolution and progress is to facilitate the spiritual evolution of the individual and the collective from its confinement within the ego to the egoless and limitless unity consciousness of the spirit.
- 14.
This link has been made in Kantian Lectures on Ethics (Infield, 1963), the central themes expressed within his moral philosophy include the ideas of equality and the moral autonomy of rational human beings, faith as teleological ethico-theology encompassing theological and ethical dimensions within it, and a rational theology which along with proof of existence of God is also the course of morals and ethics. God as the entity ultimately distinguishes between ‘good’ and ‘evil’—with the purport of establishing/founding the kingdom of God on earth (Greene & Hudson, 1960). Thereby, moral imperatives emerge as categorical imperatives—psychosocial evolution then implies the spiritual growth in man. The development of a spiritual-social character is then in this religio-social-centred will—householder then spiritually grows into the citizen. Finally, this creatively feeds into national integration—nation-building through man-making through devotionalism as the foci.
- 15.
Commencing with the base of life’s values and purpose, the eventual movement is towards the transcendental quest—or searches for the eternal, which all individuals as deemed to possess as per the self-actualization proposition. Service is then an outcome of this journey—self-reconstruction (i.e., orientation towards higher concerns) leading to self-realization (inwardness along with a sense of oneness with the Absolute and the other) and eventually tangible service for national reconstruction.
- 16.
Penumakka (2006) compares Luther’s communication of attributes to Sankara’s pure Advaita. Where Advaita oneness entails shedding of historical and personal attributes resulting in dubbing suffering as unreal, Luther’s communication idiomatum gives place for a healthy soteriology—as here the ‘human suffering’ is dignified by receiving a place in God’s reality.
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Pandya, S.P. (2019). Faith Networks: Interplaying Social Issues, Action, and Service. In: Faith Movements and Social Transformation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2823-7_4
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