Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism

Description

Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Vārtā Sāhitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg's early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early-modern north India, these texts have continued to be immensely popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat-the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today.

Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of "reading" inform and are informed by both intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.

About the author:

Emilia Bachrach is Assistant Professor of Religion and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Oberlin College. Her research focuses on how people's interpretations of religious texts inform and are informed by intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and by changing class, regional, and gender identities in contemporary western India. She also works with oral and written texts in early modern and modern languages, including Braj Bhasha, Gujarati, and Hindi.

Reviews

"Bachrach sensitively guides the reader into the contemporary life of the Pushtimarg's vārtā traditions with the vibrance of the satsaṅg gatherings she portrays. While never losing her analytical distance, she insinuates herself into the performances of these texts so the reader cannot fail to gauge the emotional tenor of what these stories mean to their devotees. The boundary between text and auditor in the satsaṅg dissolves in the act of reading and commenting, an embodied improvisation that transforms the vārtās into a living canon." - Tony K. Stewart, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University

"A charmingly disarming question—Can one offer pizza to God/Krishna?—opens this rich 'ethnography of reading' that focuses on contemporary middle-class women devotees of the Pushtimarg sect. Though this tradition is perhaps better known to outsiders for its opulent ritual art, Bachrach details how intense interaction with a large corpus of 17th century hagiography—transmitted and debated through oral performance, print media, and (now) websites and social media platforms—continues to inform and inflect its often cosmopolitan adherents' daily lives, family relationships, and experiences of both devotion and agency." - Philip Lutgendorf, Professor Emeritus of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa

"Picture a group of Gujarati women on a Thursday afternoon reading a 17th-century hagiography of a Hindu Pushtimarg follower that leads to their discussion of whether or not they can offer pizza to Krishna, and you will grasp what Emilia Bachrach notably characterizes as a 'performative canon' of engaged responses that distinctively shape a relevant continuity with tradition. Devotional reading is a primary religious mode, in which devotees' lively discussions make the past palpable, the present morally actionable, and the future expansive for the Pushtimarg community. Bachrach's illuminating analysis is essential to understanding lived religion in India and comparatively." - Karen Pechilis, Professor of History of Religions, Drew University

Table of contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: An Ethnography of Reading
1. Dialogical Reading: The Pushtimarg's Performative Canon
2. Commentarial Reading: Historicizing Hagiography and Making Modern Readers
3. Public Reading: Debating Text, Temple, and Religious Authority
4. Community Reading: Learning Affective Piety
5. Women's Reading: Navigating Family, Gender, and Devotion
Conclusion: Religious Reading and Everyday Lives
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography
Index