Session 85: Alternative Narratives of Religious Change in Western India: Understanding Gujarati Religiosity in its South Asian Contexts

Organizer and Chair: Douglas E. Haynes, Dartmouth College

Discussant: Ajay Skaria, University of Minnesota

Keywords: religion, identity, history, Gujarat, South Asia.

Studies of religious change and religious identity in Gujarat have given considerable attention to high-caste Vaishnava and Jain traditions stressing devotionalism, asceticism and non-violence. Much of this literature has dealt with Gujarati religion in isolation from larger South Asian and global contexts, a fact that has sometimes led those working on religion in other areas to treat the region as peripheral to their concerns. Recent communal violence in Gujarat, and the participation of low-status groups (including low-ranking castes and "tribals" ) in this violence suggests that scholars need to reconsider the religious history of the region. This panel consists of four historians who provide alternative ways of looking at religious change and religious identity in Gujarat. The panel will devote special attention to groups that have been treated as marginal in the general religious culture of the region, ranging from Muslims, low-caste groups and, "tribals" to Hindu nationalists. Each of the panelists places his/her understanding of religious change in the context of broader developments that are not unique to Gujarat: pre-colonial religious networks that stretched across mainland South Asia as well as the Indian Ocean, colonialism and the missionary activity associated with British rule, Indian nationalism and the assertion of "subaltern" identities, and the emergence of Hindu nationalism. The purpose of the panel is to reposition Gujarat to a more central place in understanding of religious change on the subcontinent and at the same time to promote an appreciation of major religious developments in this region among South Asianists.

Religious Conversion and the Expression of Difference in Precolonial Gujarat

Samira Sheikh, Oxford University

Issues of religious belonging and difference appear in many of the texts of medieval Gujarat. From the twelfth century, the prosperity and diversity of Gujarat had attracted priests and missionaries of a variety of denominations, Hindu, Islamic and Jaina, all in search of converts and patrons, especially from amongst the merchant and pastoralist groups of the region. Gujarat became a religious marketplace where proselytizers had to evolve new religious vocabularies and forge alliances to be effective.

This paper will discuss instances of religious conversion in precolonial Gujarat. Narratives of conversion offer valuable perspectives on religious boundaries which may challenge currently held views on the porosity of pre-colonial identities. Seen in historical perspective, these instances often reflect a pragmatic attitude towards conversion and multiple affiliations. It is hoped that this paper will cast light on general processes of religious identity formation in Gujarat and western India in general, while questioning whether medieval identities and boundaries were necessarily more ‘fluid’ or transmutable.

Religious Change among the Adivasis of Gujarat

David Hardiman, University of Warwick

This paper examines religious change among the adivasis of Gujarat from around 1860 onwards. The British categorised these peoples as ‘primitives’ with animistic beliefs, and anticipated that these would change as they became subject to the ‘civilising mission’ of the colonial power. In fact, their ritual and belief systems were already much entangled with those of caste Hindus and Jains, and change, when it came, often involved a dialogue with those systems, leading to syntheses that were more of a bricolage rather than an obvious move from one to the other. From the 1880s onwards, Christian missionaries also began to try to convert the adivasis, confident that Christianity would appeal to people with such ‘backward’ beliefs. They had a few successes, but on the whole failed to make conversions on a large scale until quite recent times. During the twentieth century, Indian nationalists began to work in adivasi areas, trying to convert them to their form of Hinduism. In more recent years, the Hindu Right has adopted a more strident campaign of active proselytism that is directed specifically against conversion to Christianity. This has created great tension and led to violence against Muslims and Christians in the adivasi areas.

Peasant Politics and Religious Identity in Gujarat: Remembering Daduram, 1906–1996

Vinayak Chaturvedi, University of California, Irvine

This paper examines peasant politics and religious identity in Gujarat during the twentieth century through an examination of a movement led by a bhagat (village-priest) called Daduram. Between the years 1906–1909, Daduram led one the largest peasant movements in Gujarat that incorporated popular and egalitarian traditions of Vaishnavism, and challenged the dominance of local elites, Indian nationalists, and the colonial state. Daduram opposed the caste system and protested peasants who made claims for a kshatriya status. He established an active religious community that continued to raise political concerns even after his death, although the religious identity of the movement changed quite dramatically with the emergence of peasant nationalism in Gujarat and the creation of a postcolonial nation-state. Today, Daduram’s fourth generation disciples identify themselves as kshatriyas and nationalists—claims that Daduram would have certainly opposed at the beginning of the twentieth century. They remember their leader as the father of India (Bapu) who forced the British to leave the countryside, but also as an intellectual descendant of religious leaders dating back to the fourteenth century. For some disciples, Daduram has achieved the status of an incarnation of the deity Vishnu, while others identify Daduram as the political figure M.K. Gandhi—the Mahatma.

Princely Baroda and the Hindu Imaginary: Exploring the Cartography of Hindu Nationalism in Colonial India

Manu Bhagavan, City University of New York, Hunter College

Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, in the early twentieth century was a philosophy premised on exclusivist notions of "nation-ness" and "nation-state-ness." India, proponents of such religious nationalism claimed, had since the earliest times been the pitrubhumi and the punyabhumi of "Hindus," their fatherland and holy land. This ideal realm had since been corrupted by Muslim and Christian "invaders," foreigners who defiled and split asunder "Akhandbharat," the one-India of Hindus. In the context of British rule of the subcontinent, Hindu nationalists mirrored colonial claims and held the native princely states as exemplars of "tradition," as territories unspoiled by foreign hands and thus representative of the "true India." Not incidentally, the idea of Akhandbharat itself came from a prominent member of princely state bureaucracy, K. M. Munshi, who served in leading positions in Baroda. This paper will explore how and why princely states were idealized in the Hindu imaginary and what role reformers, here represented by Munshi, played in perpetuating hardline ideology. By exploring the regions on which early Hindu nationalism was mapped, I hope to further illuminate the teleology of Hindutva, while simultaneously providing a better understanding of the place of princely states, particularly Baroda, in the politics and society of colonial India.