The Place of Devotion

Front matter

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2. I Too Have Some Dreams: N.M. Rashed and Modernism in Urdu Poetry, by

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The Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism, by Sukanya Sarbadhikary (California)

The Place of Devotion

Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism

Sukanya Sarbadhikary

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Suggested citation: Sarbadhikary, Sukanya. The Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal- Vaishnavism. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/luminos.2

Sarbadhikary, Sukanya, 1983- author.

The place of devotion : siting and experiencing divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism / Sukanya Sarbadhikary.—First edition.

pages cm. — (South Asia across the disciplines) Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Vaishnavism—India—Bengal. 2. Sacred space— India—Bengal. 3. Anthropology of religion—India— Bengal. I. Title. II. Series: South Asia across the disciplines.

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To the sounds and silences of faith

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration

I. Introduction: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism

2. Discovering Gupta-Vrindavan: Finding Selves and Places in the Storied Landscape

CHAPTER I Introduction: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism

BACKGROUND

The anthropology of Hinduism has amply established that Hindus have a strong involvement with sacred geography. The Hindu sacred topography is dotted with innumerable pilgrimage places, and popular Hinduism is abundant with spatial imaginings. Thus, Shiva and his partner, the mother goddess, live in the Himalayas; goddesses descend to earth as beautiful rivers; the goddess Kali’s body parts are imagined to have fallen in various sites of Hindu geography, sanctifying them as sacred centers; and yogis meditate in forests. Bengal similarly has a thriving culture of exalting sacred centers and pilgrimage places, one of the most important being the Navadvip-Mayapur sacred complex, Bengal’s greatest site of guru-centered Vaishnavite pilgrimage and devotional life. While one would ordinarily associate Hindu pilgrimage centers with a single place, for instance, Ayodhya, Vrindavan, or Banaras, and while the anthropology of South Asian pilgrimage has largely been single-place-centered, Navadvip and Mayapur, situated on opposite banks of the river Ganga in the Nadia District of West Bengal, are both famous as the birthplace(s) of the medieval saint, Chaitanya (1486- 1533), who popularized Vaishnavism on the greatest scale in eastern India, and are thus of massive simultaneous importance to pilgrims in contemporary Bengal. For devotees, the medieval town of Navadvip represents a Vaishnava place of antique pilgrimage crammed with centuries-old temples and ashrams, and Mayapur, a small village rapidly developed since the nineteenth century, contrarily represents the glossy headquarters site of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness), India’s most famous globalized, high-profile, modernized guru movement.

My fieldwork in Navadvip and Mayapur, however, predominantly involved carrying out an intensive study of different kinds of very rich everyday spiritual lives engaged in by the large number of asceticrenouncers and householder devotees who reside in these places. Within a few months in the field I grasped that there are four very different kinds of Vaishnavas who live in Navadvip-Mayapur, each with its own highly distinctive focus in worship. They include the glossy globalized ISKCON devotees; the much-stigmatized quasi-tantric, poor, illiterate Vaishnavas who practice sexual-yogic religious rituals; the knowledgeable ascetic renouncers living in secluded ashrams; and finally the householder Brahmin priests who are the owners of Navadvip’s large and famous temples. I wanted to explore what it was that made Vaishnavism so many things yet still somehow one. What made my fieldwork particularly exciting was that I was able to relate this classic question in the anthropology of Hinduism, that is, whether Hinduism (in this case Vaishnavism specifically) is one thing or many, in a new way, to broader concerns in the anthropology of space and place on one hand, and the anthropology of emotions and affect on the other. This was possible because I realized that the radically contrasting ways in which devotees embody Vaishnavism in Navadvip-Mayapur are interestingly related, since all Vaishnavas pursue versions of a mode of spiritual engagement that they experience as a form of intensely emotional place-making, a process of attaining an ecstatic devotional goal they all think of as Vrindavan. For Vaishnavas, therefore, Vrindavan is not only a place-name but even almost a shorthand term for intense states of devotional exaltation.

While Vaishnavism, a critical strand of devotional Hinduism, refers to the worship of the deity Vishnu and his incarnations, in Bengal, Krishna, his lover Radha, and Chaitanya are revered as the supreme divinities. Radha and Krishna are never worshipped as independent deities in Bengal, but always together, as the divine couple embroiled in the most passionate erotic relationship in their cosmic abode, Vrindavan. Thus, Bengali temples worship vigrahas (idols) of the two deities together, and devotees always refer to them in the same breath, as Radha-Krishna: the couple united in love.t Furthermore, the Radha-Krishna sacred aesthetic is not only incomplete but also impossible without the imagining of Vrindavan. Bengal-Vaishnavas also consider Chaitanya to be the dual manifestation of Radha-Krishna, the deities enjoying their intense union in and through his body.*

These distinct beliefs and practices are bound within the sophisticated philosophy of Bengal-Vaishnavism: achintya-bhed-abhed (simultaneous difference/dualism/separation and non-difference/monism/union, a simultaneity that is inconceivable by profane sensibilities). This unique relationship of difference/non-difference exists between the supreme deity, Krishna, and his world, including Vrindavan, where he is manifest, and his lovers or devotees, including Radha. The theology asserts that of Krishna’s intrinsic energies, one amounts to the cosmic pleasure principle (hladini sakti), which underlies any manifestation of bliss, including the pleasurable relations Krishna enjoys with his entourage. Since these relations are essentially part of Krishna’s own nature, they are non-different from him, while because they are also different from him, he can engage in intense sensuous relationships with them. This explains why Radha- Krishna and Vrindavan are represented as always-enmeshed entities. The theology further explains that the utmost divine irony was that Krishna, the repertoire of greatest possible bliss, was unable to taste his own sweetness (madhurya), though Radha, by virtue of being his supreme lover, could. With a fine stroke of imagination, the two thus decided to incarnate in the same body, to taste each other’s love (prem) in the same site. So Chaitanya was literally born as the perfect embodiment of achintyabhedabhed between Radha-Krishna.3 Since Krishna’s devotees, a part of his own divine nature, bound with him in the same relation of difference/non-difference, are also potentially able to realize the intense pleasure principle, so the ultimate purpose of Bengal-Vaishnavas is to drown themselves in the refined erotic ocean which blissfully merges Krishna and his world. Partaking in Vrindavan’s pleasures becomes their goal.

Thus, while South Asian bhakti (devotional) traditions in general are widely characterized as personalized devotion with the aim of arousing intense emotional relations with deities, Chaitanyaite devotion holds a special place in this regard. It puts the utmost premium on devotees’ being able to experience these divine erotic moods at their own most embodied, visceral levels.

Engagement with the Philosophy of Place

My two, initially distinct, aims of fieldwork were to study on the one hand the different pilgrimage processes of Navadvip and Mayapur and senses of place engendered therein, and on the other hand the devotional lives of Navadvip-Mayapur’s resident devotees. The most revealing aspect of my fifteen months of fieldwork in the two places during 2009-10, however, was that the connection between my two ethnographic aims was much closer than I had thought. For Bengal-Vaishnavas, senses of place are not limited to physical pilgrimage geographies but interestingly intertwined with their religious practices. My two fieldwork aims thus ultimately merged because distinctive dimensions of place-experience and sensuous apprehensions of divinity through varied spiritual practices overlap, such that devotees experience sacred geography not only in external physical sites but also in interiorized affective spaces of their bodies, minds, imagination, and senses. So my concern is with the exact nature of the rigorous affective and bodily disciplines enacted by different Vaishnavas through regimes of personal and collective practice, and the significant relationships of these practices with the cultivation of senses of place. These practices range from, for instance, spiritual arts of musical exaltation, to the cultivation of impassioned erotic identification with Radha-Krishna and their enactment of cosmic arousal in Vrindavan. So I locate my book within a diverse set of concerns in the anthropology of religion (especially Hinduism), the anthropology and philosophy of place, and the anthropology and philosophy of emotions, affect, and the senses.

The various spiritual practices I document in this book have the aim of transporting or translocating devotees to Radha-Krishna’s cosmic abode, celestial Vrindavan, which is characterized by devotees as a site at once of sensuous delight, divine sexuality, and spiritual bliss. Transportation to celestial Vrindavan, as discussed through the different chapters, implies different things: traversing Navadvip-Mayapur during pilgrimage; serving the deities emplaced there; visualizing Vrindavan in imagination; hearing Vrindavan’s acoustics; and being able to apprehend within one’s own bodily interiors the erotic heightening that Radha- Krishna experiences in Vrindavan. Thus, my book analyzes complex intertwinings of affect, cultivated emotion, and physical stimulation of sensory capacities, including hearing, visualization, and sexual arousal, all known to be central to Radha-Krishna-centered devotion, but which I explore in connection with different senses of place. I seek to establish that for Bengal-Vaishnavas the process of being a spiritually active devotee is crucially rooted in different ways of realizing specific sensory awareness of Vrindavan; and the various kinds of intense physicality associated with the experience of Vrindavan are what this book documents and analyzes.

FIGURE 1. Idols of Radha-Krishna and their girlfriends with Vrindavan’s scenery in the background.

For Bengal-Vaishnavas, Vrindavan is not only the famous and active North Indian Vaishnavite pilgrimage town with its hundreds of temples and practitioner Vaishnavas, but more centrally the deities’ cosmic abode, celestial Vrindavan, alternatively referred to as Vraja or Goloka, meaning “the place of senses.” The physical town of Vrindavan is considered by devotees the earthly manifestation of celestial Vrindavan. This celestial site of divine activities is imagined by them to be a rustic paradise, a beautiful forested area cut across by the rippling river Yamuna, where spring is the eternal season, where the deity-consort enact their daily and eternal passionate love-plays (lilas), and where their attractive handmaidens serve them and sing melodies in their praise. Many Indian households display the famous oleograph with the best-known Vrindavan image: Krishna dancing with his lovers in the dark forest and love-bower on a full-moon night with beautiful peacocks in the background. For all Bengal-Vaishnavas, Radha-Krishna devotionalism is indeed impossible without the imagining of this sensuous place.

Stewart (2005, 267) argues similarly that imagining celestial Vrindavan’s spatial environment is a prelude to establishing relations with deities, since the deities’ romance is necessarily conceptualized as being emplaced in Vrindavan; and Entwistle (1991, 88) says that this idea of Vrindavan is a mode of “pastoralization” in which the aesthetics

FIGURE 2. Evening temple-sermon in Navadvip.

of imagining the land is a kind of participation with the intention of traveling to the same place after death.

A sense of place is indeed crucial for many Hindu after-life beliefs, for instance the wish to be transported to Vishnu’s heaven on death. The sacred place as soteriological destination provides a sense of religious belonging and security, and theistic Hindu traditions benefit from tangible references to where and how deities reside. Contrary to monistic Vedantist traditions where the soul is considered to eventually merge with the disembodied almighty, dualist traditions assert the reality of embodied deities and the places they reside in, and the distinct relations devotees embody with them before and after death.

In Navadvip and Mayapur temples, for an hour every morning or evening, scores of devotees gather to hear gurus read Sanskrit verses from a ninth-century Vaishnava text, the Bhagavata Purana, and explain their meanings in Bengali.

While the Bhagavad Gita, which exalts Krishna as the Mahabharata’s warrior-god, is popular among many North Indian devotional groups and appropriated by Hindu nationalist-militant organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS (Horstmann 1995; Malinar 1995), Bengal-Vaishnavas, while respecting the Gita, more centrally celebrate the Bhagavatam. Hardy’s (1983) classic work shows how the Bhagavatam, which narrates stories of “sweet devotion,” of Krishna’s childhood and adolescence spent in Vrindavan, became the historical harbinger of “emotional Krishna bhakti.” So Bengali devotees hear about Radha-Krishna’s daily routine in celestial Vrindavan—when they wake up together in the forest bowers after their nocturnal passionate love-acts, what they do in their respective homes through the day, how and where they meet for their secret trysts (since Radha is married to another man), and details of their emotions during periods of intense union and separation. Devotees know these stories by heart but still regularly flock to temples to relish them together. The daily routine of serving deities in all Nadia temples also mirrors the deities’ routine in Vrindavan as described in the Bhagavatam. Bengal’s Vaishnava calendar also celebrates monthly festivals commemorating Radha-Krishna’s special activities in celestial Vrindavan, for instance Holi, the colorful spring festival in February/March, or Ras, Krishna’s circle-dance with his lovers on the autumnal full-moon night in November. Vrindavan is thus a one-word representation for the entire emotional apparatus which makes divine activities possible and worthy of spiritual apprehension by Bengal-Vaishnava devotees.

While Bengal-Vaishnavas conceptualize celestial Vrindavan, the quintessential place of love, as the destination they want to reach after lives of spiritual perfection, they also claim to experience glimpses of the deity-consort and their own devotional selves emplaced in and serving them in celestial Vrindavan, during their present lives’ devotional practices. Their spiritual telos is therefore capable of manifesting itself in their practices of the present, and Bengal-Vaishnavas have three distinct senses of place: the celestial after-life destination; the Navadvip- Mayapur sacred topography where they reside; and devotional practices which help them apprehend sensuous pleasures of the divine place within their own minds, bodies, and senses. It is the second and third of these senses of place which this book analyzes in detail. Thus, unlike Ayodhya, Banaras, and other South Asian pilgrimage places which become important for pilgrims as sites where for instance some key manifestation of divinity occurred, say where Ram was born, or where death-rituals may be performed, in Navadvip-Mayapur we encounter forms of place-awareness which are cultivated in sites far exceeding and more complicated than physical, geographical ones. So, while Hindu pilgrimage centers often derive their importance from being associated with providing devotees the potential of “crossing over” from the present life to the next,* in light of the distinctiveness of Bengal- Vaishnava practices, to which Entwistle’s (1991) account of Vrindavan

8 | Chapter x as a goal for devotees’ after-life attainment does not do full justice, what has not been fully documented by other scholars is the complexity of Vrindavan’s significance in the ongoing spiritual lives of devotees.

Thus, the main question my book seeks to answer is what sites and senses of place beyond physical geographical ones can do to our notions of space/place, affect, and sanctity. While I build on the anthropology of religion/Hinduism and pilgrimage which foregrounds senses of place in relation to the sanctity of physically located spaces, I argue that this is not all, and attention to complexities of place and affect as interacting dimensions of religious experience, by conceptualizing senses of sacred place interiorized in devotees’ minds and bodies, can contribute to diverse anthropological interests in devotional Hinduism, sacred geography, senses of place, and cultivation of affective interiors of the body and mind. The analyses of the book congeal with increasing nuances as the narrative progresses. Traveling through both exterior and interior landscapes, I show that the practitioner inhabits Krishna’s world through every daily religious practice. The synesthesia that results from the overlap of these different planes of experience confirms the intensely transformative power of Vaishnava ritual processes.

The ways in which Vrindavan is experienced are not homogeneous, however, and there are contestations among devotees about the ideal mode of apprehending celestial Vrindavan. These different place-experiences demonstrate the political complexity and plurality of Vaishnava subjectivities in contemporary Bengal. I demonstrate that different Vaishnava groups, while borrowing from the same discursive tenets of Bengal-Vaishnavism, emphasize opposing interpretations of devotional emotions, how these emotions are cultivated and affectively experienced, and their significant ways of embodying Vrindavan.

For all Bengal-Vaishnavas, reverence for sacred geography begins with physical landscapes. Thus, since Chaitanya is worshipped as the dual incarnation of Radha-Krishna, devotees refer to and sanctify the Nadia region, Chaitanya’s birthplace, as gupta-Vrindavan, where gupta means “veiled.” That is, since Chaitanya is the embodiment of Radha- Krishna’s love, so devotees venerate his birthplace as undifferentiated from Radha-Krishna’s passion-abode, Vrindavan. The notion of gupta- Vrindavan is crucial for this book as both a descriptive and an analytical category and refers not only to Nadia’s landscape but even to interiorized spaces of the body or mind, cultivated and experienced by devotees as Radha-Krishna’s lila-sthal (playground). Referring to these sites as veiled-Vrindavan signifies that they conceal the spiritual/erotic essence of celestial Vrindavan, which is potentially accessible to those who cultivate appropriate spiritual techniques. Thus, the notion of the veil as covering or obscuring is a metaphor for the perceptions of the devotee before his or her connection with the place or meaning of Vrindavan is brought to light. My central concern in this book is with the techniques and experiences of unveiling and emplacement in these diverse affective spaces, a key dimension of Vaishnava spirituality not generally recognized in the literature on devotional Hinduism.

Different practices help different groups of devotees experience Vrindavan in distinct ritual sites including but far surpassing physical geographies: in different ways of relating to Nadia’s consecrated landscape; through services rendered toward the physical place, Mayapur; in the interiors of the body-mind through sensuous imagination; in corporeal interiors through intense sexual arousal; and through intensely experienced aural sensations of spiritual music. All my informants, though representing different kinds of Vaishnavisms, affirmed that through their different devotional practices, Radha- Krishna’s cosmic presence in Vrindavan becomes prakat (unveiled/ apparent) in these very sites. So, while Sax (1990) and Mason (2009, 16-17) have demonstrated, regarding Ramlila in Ayodhya and Raslila in Vrindavan, respectively, that these Vaishnavite theatrical performances carry an emotional import which transports audiences to the corresponding celestial places, for Bengal-Vaishnavas the difference between spiritual reality and theatricality is blurred. Their differential practices claim to manifest Vrindavan in their everyday lives, in their very sites of ritual performances.‘

Crucial implications follow from this. While all devotees living in Navadvip-Mayapur consider their physical locales of residence, and the North Indian town of Vrindavan, sacrosanct, some also emphasize potent ways of experiencing celestial Vrindavan’s sacrality in interiorized sites. Thus, one may well be walking on noisy roads and still consider oneself, in one’s imagination, to be in Vrindavan, and one’s imagination in this case is the sacred place, spiritually as important as the physical town or the Vrindavan heavens. Thus, the sense of place for Bengal-Vaishnavas is marked by the potential of constant reproduction or proliferation, and the different levels of this very complex layered geography, from cosmic heavens to physical places to interiorized affective spaces, are all experienced as equally real.

I grew up hearing innumerable Bengali songs which convey the senses of “I carry Krishna in my heart,” “I have stopped searching for to | Chapter 1

Vrindavan for it is here inside me,” and so on, but I understood only after intensive fieldwork that rather than being merely poetic and metaphoric references these literally derive from Vaishnava experiences of place as interiorized in devotees’ bodies/minds, that is, the sacred place as both sedentary and itinerant, and of Vaishnavas’ devotional selves as both dwellers and travellers. I demonstrate through the different chapters, therefore, that senses of place are not necessarily only embedded in physical locales, and that even when disembedded they are experienced as thoroughly embodied.

In addition to devotees’ experiences of physical geographies, therefore, through the different chapters I also discuss Vaishnava understandings of the place-in-the-body/mind and so on, that is, the body-as-place, the mind-as-place, and the auditory sense as apprehending senses of place. So, while the contemporary anthropology of place and embodiment, following Edward Casey’s (1993) philosophy, is dominated by the idea of body-in-place, my book seeks to extend his formulations by also analyzing cultural constructions and experiences of place in the body, mind, and so on. My analyses have resonance with Gaston Bachelard’s notions of space. In The Poetics of Space (1994, xxxvi) he talks about the “topography of our intimate being,” locating the fullest possible experiences of place and space, from the most intimate to the most immense, within the interiority of the self. Thus, he too articulates the notion of a “layered geography” (viii) and demonstrates, especially with respect to imagination, that senses of place can equally be non-physical.

Bachelard’s philosophy, although much lauded, has recently been criticized as subjectivist and mentalistic. Casey (1998, 295) for instance says that Bachelard’s philosophy, or “psychography,” with its emphasis on the “psychical topography and the inner structure of inhabitation,” relies much on ideas of the psyche and does not account for embodied experiences of the body-in-place (1993, 306). In fact, both the anthropology of place and the anthropology of emotions, affect, and senses have recently criticized studies of interiority, primarily on two related grounds: first, that they highlight dimensions of the mind and consciousness rather than embodied experience, and second, that they assume the idea of the autonomous, bounded, sovereign, thinking subject (Ahmed 2004; Hirschkind 2006, 28-29).

However, Bachelard’s ideas hold much relevance for my work in thinking about people’s notions of space and place as both exterior and interior to the self. But in contrast to Bachelard and in agreement with the recent anthropology of place and affect, I show that Vaishnava

Introduction | xr place-experiences in every instance are thoroughly embodied rather than relying only on abstract mental dimensions. Also, in many cases these interiorized embodied experiences are intensely affective, that is, they arise from pre-conscious or supra-conscious and pre- or supra-subjective levels of bodily and mental dispositions. As gushes of sensation, these affective excesses overwhelm consciousness and therefore also the sense of subjective autonomy. Thus, I argue that the anthropology of place and affect have much to gain from conceptualizing people’s relations with both external geographies and interiorized spaces of the mind, body, and senses, and I seek to demonstrate throughout the book that interiorized place-experiences, rather than being biased toward the Cartesian dualist category of the mind, are also experienced as thoroughly embodied and affective.

Engagement with the Anthropology of Hinduism

I grew up observing that many fellow Calcuttans from educated, professional, upper-middle-class backgrounds criticize Vaishnavas, calling them over-affected and hyper-emotional at best and debased at worst. They make fun of Krishna’s popular image as the flirtatious lad of Vrindavan; they laugh at how Vaishnavas roll around and cry out with emotion when listening to devotional music describing Radha-Krishna’s spiritual/erotic activities (kirtan), and at their admitting the poorest and low-caste people into their religion. Urban Bengali films have ample comic songs parodying kirtan tunes, and references to fake gurus as almost always Vaishnava. Also, many urban people who disparage Vaishnavas associate them with dirty sexual practices.

These understandings have insistent pasts. The colonial stereotype, especially among the Western-educated Indian elite, was that the heightened emotionalism associated with the worship of Krishna, the lover-god, was improper for zealous nation-building, while the aggressive masculine vigor associated with Ram-worshipping cults was appropriate. There was also the Vedantic assertion that Hinduism is high and exalted only when disembodied, and Krishna cults, with their emphasis on erotic love between deities and on sensuous devotion, were seen as licentious.

In colonial Bengal, similarly, the urban, educated middle class (bhadralok) displayed ambivalent responses toward Vaishnavism. While Chaitanya’s charismatic personality was celebrated, the bhadralok had internalized notions of puritanical religiosity via their colonial education, and a great part of their anxiety centered on the embodied and therefore emasculating tendencies of Chaitanyaite devotionalism.’ In this milieu, during the late nineteenth century in Calcutta, a Western-educated colonial bureaucrat, Kedarnath Datta, decided to redefine and consolidate a new Vaishnavism which would no longer be associated with what many of his contemporaries represented as excess emotionalism, and which would have urban, upper-caste, educated devotees, instead of its usual influence among rural people and “prostitutes, beggars and untouchables” (Fuller 2003, 207). Datta’s version of Vaishnavism was extremely popular in urban Bengal, and it was the precursor to modern reformist Vaishnava institutions, the Gaudiya Math (established in 1918) and ISKCON (established in 1966). Calcuttans’ opinions of Vaishnavism were in fact tempered by Tagore’s compositions resembling Vaishnava songs and the increasing influence of Gaudiya Math and ISKCON among them.

My fieldwork, however, exposed me to many faces of Vaishnavism. While Mayapur’s religious landscape is permeated with the kind of Vaishnavism represented by ISKCON and Gaudiya Math, the champions of reformist Vaishnavism, this is far from the entire gamut of Nadia’s or rural Bengal’s devotional variety. The river Ganga is like a divider of devotionalism, and on the opposite side, in Navadvip, I found Vaishnava groups which represent wild diversities in celebrating “alternative Krishnas” (Beck 2005). Navadvip’s Vaishnavisms have no shame of their sensuous pasts, and retained their intense religions all through the colonial period. Their relationships with Vrindavan are exalted only when affective, their religion considered high only when embodied. Rather than any aggressive masculinist bias, their practices emphasize the need to cultivate feminine subjectivities and moods as Krishna’s lovers or Radha’s handmaidens. So my concerns about Bengal-Vaishnava devotionalism differ from the analytical tropes of older studies of Vaishnavism and Hinduism.

Fuller (2003, 187-91) infers that with the ascent of Kedarnath Datta’s puritanical Vaishnavism as the unequivocal modern progressive fulfillment of religion, ISKCON and Gaudiya Math became most powerful in Bengal, with the marginalization of other Vaishnavas, including traditional Vaishnavas of Navadvip. I argue that his inference has an urban bias toward what he calls the “bhadralok habitus” (203). It is not entirely correct to assume that the predominant form of religion to study in Bengal is that of the puritanical urban minority, since their pursuits are not representative of the wider Bengali religious world.

However, my focus on the emotive articulations of bhakti, while primarily built on ethnographic evidence, is also heavily influenced by the philosophical history of Vaishnavism. Bengal-Vaishnavism ascribes singular importance to the worship of Krishna’s “sweeter” moods (madhurya), as opposed to his kingly warrior moods (aishwarya), and accordingly to cultivating emotional relationships with him. Hardy (1983) argues that “emotional Krishna bhakti,” a later historical development, evolved with the popularity of the Bhagavata Purana, as the psychological merger of aesthetic, erotic, and ecstatic devotional levels. Intellectual, non-emotional bhakti which focused on yogic concentration on the divine, as propounded in the Gita for instance, received more scholarly attention, however.

But studies of Hinduism which downplayed emotion severely restricted its epistemological possibilities. It is important to recognize the productive analytical capacity of emotion, especially when it is the structuring principle of religion, as in Bengal-Vaishnavism, while also to avoid reified understandings of emotion, by highlighting traditions of debate over it.

The distinctiveness of Bengal-Vaishnavism is that the different groups constitute an intensely competitive topography of contested emotions, each claiming to represent the ideal mode of being Vaishnava. Their debates include contestations over the best way to experience the sacred place, the best way to love Radha-Krishna and place themselves in relation to their sexuality, and the role of the body in devotion. So the situation in Navadvip-Mayapur differs from that of Ayodhya and Vrindavan described by van der Veer (1987, 1989) and Brooks (1989), where inherently very different modes of religiosity—of feminine/ecstatic and militant, and of modern (ISKCON) and traditional varieties, respectively—cohabit peacefully.