CHiTra Mela II Abstracts
Gil Ben-Herut USF
Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions, Department of Religious Studies, University of South Florida
“Digital Asia: Developing the Connected Bhakti Bibliographies Database”
Starting in the seventh century CE in South India and spreading across the subcontinent’s many regions and languages, bhakti traditions marked major social, literary, ideological, and religious transformations. To overcome the silos that region- and language-specific scholarship has built up, a project conceived by Jon Keune and myself mobilizes a group of thirteen diverse experts to compile and catalog bibliographic entries in their areas of specialization with a common vocabulary of terms that will make research more visible across regions and languages. We call this the Connected Bhakti Bibliographies Database (CBBD).
Michael Fiden
Graduate Student, University of South Florida
“Subsuming a Tradition: Māheśvaras in the Siddhāntaśikhāmaṇi”
One of the primary aims of Śivayogi Śivācārya in the integrative, 14th century Vīraśaiva composition the Siddhāntaśikhāmaṇi is to unite an apparently disparate and fragmented tradition through an authoritative and comprehensive doctrine. This is accomplished via two methods: establishing the textual authority of the Siddhāntaśikhāmaṇi as a natural extension of the Vedas, especially the Vedanta, and subsuming an array of practices and philosophies under the common banner of Vīraśaivism by including them within the saṭsthala system advocated in the text. Śivayogi Śivācārya presents a unified doctrine of Vīraśaivism, including a diverse arrangement of beliefs and practices, while adhering each to his own metaphysical and practical vision. The Māheśvaras are mentioned frequently by Śivayogi Śivācārya in the text, and while he attempts to subsume this tradition under his non-dualistic umbrella of Vīraśaivism, he struggles to position it within this framework. The fact that the beliefs and practices of the Māheśvaras run contrary to the ultimate goal of Śivayogi Śivācārya in the text betrays his methodology, and suggests that the Māheśvaras were indeed a separate devotional tradition present in South India at the time of composition. This presentation will use close, philological reading of select Sanskrit verses from the Siddhāntaśikhāmaṇi to delineate and uncover the Māheśvara tradition as presented in the text, reconstructing this historical possibility. The results of this preliminary study gesture towards the Māheśvaras as a distinct, dualistic form of devotional Śaivism, marked by the wearing of a personal liṅga to which pūjā was offered in the form of food and drink, the practice of a form of renunciation, and the rejection of the authority and positions of other deities in favor of the sovereignty of Śiva alone.
Sucheta Kanjilal
Assistant Professor of English and Writing at the University of Tampa
“The Goddess Trope as Paradox”
This paper considers how Indian women are imaginatively aligned with Hindu goddesses to advance larger political projects. For instance, the concept of Bhārat-Mata, the nation-as-goddess, has been mobilized since the nineteenth century to garner both a filial and devotional allegience to the project of nationalism. Specific Hindu goddesses have also been selectively re-called and re-imagined in popular discourse to argue against oppression and violence experienced by the women of the nation. Scholars such as David Kinsley and Partha Chatterjee have shown us how Hinduism offers an array of goddesses that support religio-national and gender based causes. I discuss a recent effort, a 2013 advertising campaign titled “Abused Goddesses”, made for an anti-sex trafficking initiative named “Save Our Sisters”. This campaign reworks old handpainted images of goddesses to show them with wounds and bruises. I challenge a popular idea is that this initiative is based on: that it is ironic women are ill-treated in a country that worships goddesses. I argue instead that establishing an easy connection between goddesses and women is a false equivalency. The goddess trope continues to emphasize idealized and largely Hindu feminine attributes while remaining distant from the lived and oppressive realities of many Indian women.
Philip Lutgendorf
Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa
“Chai Why? The Making of the Indian “National Drink”
This illustrated talk details the promotion and spread of tea-drinking in 20th century India. Drawing on both archival and field research, it focuses on the mass popularization of “chai” through innovations in marketing and manufacturing, as well as changes in eating habits and social networks, and gives special emphasis to the role played by advertising and large and small-scale commerce in transmitting the “tea habit” to Indians, both before and after Independence in 1947.
Bhakti Mamtora
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Vato as a Genre in 19th-century Western India”
Of the many factors, such as the presence of charismatic figures, the development of literary canons, and the construction of congregational spaces, that give rise to sectarian traditions throughout the world, this paper examines the ways in which sermons affected the development of the Swaminarayan Sampraday, a Hindu devotional tradition founded by Swaminarayan (1781-1830), during the 19th-century. This paper considers the Gujarati vato genre, introduces its characteristics, and discusses how vato (religious teachings) was a significant factor that shaped the community.
Muttaki Bin Kamal
Graduate Student, Florida International University
“Differing Functionality and Forms of Shiva”
In this exploratory work, I will trace the imageries of Shiva in Mahabharata. I will try to tally in which imagery between the creator and destroyer (counting the instances of aiding wars also). In the epic, he is represented as “Kirata” when he appeared as an old Shepard in front of Arjuna and defeated him in battle. He also presented Arjuna with his famous bow as a boon to Arjuna’s worship. Secondly, he appears as “Pralaya” in the Sauptika Pavan where he presented Asvatthaman with a deadly sword. Later in the Saptika Parvan, Krishna describes Shiva as to be the primal creator who created the food cycle and left his “Linga”, buried in the ground; indicating that he has attributed fertility on earth. While in some localities in India he is worshipped as the peasant god, he is represented in Mahabharata by the ancient ruling class (Brahmins and Kshatriyas combined). My hypothesis is that he appears in functionality in tribal traditions while he is transcendental in the Vedic or Aryan inclined tradition.
Yudit Greenberg
Professor, Rollins College
“The formative role of Jewish Indian women in Bollywood and their influence on gender roles in 20th Century India”
How do we understand the formative role of Jewish Indian women on the Indian cinema? How does their Jewish identity within the cosmopolitan environment of Bombay and Calcutta in the early and mid-20th century impact their work, the legacy they left on Bollywood, and the redefinition of gender roles in modern India?
Sulochana or Ruby Myers, Nadira or Farhat Ezekiel, and Pramila, or Esther Abrahams were members of the Baghdadi Jewish community in the early decades of the 20th Century, who were known for their major roles on the Indian stage. Their stage names were not meant to hide their Jewish identity, but to enable their Indian audience easy pronunciation. In fact, Indian Jewish film stars attended synagogue, gave to Jewish charities, and proudly filled their homes with Jewish art.
As Indian cinema began in the early 20th century, it was taboo for Hindu and Muslim women to perform in public, so female roles were originally played by men. However, the Jewish community was more liberal and westernized, so many of the early female stars of Indian cinema were Jewish. As a small minority and diasporic group, their dual identity as Jews and as Indians permitted them greater access to territory otherwise forbidden to other Indian women. Furthermore, they pushed the boundaries of Indian cinema by exploiting their femininity. For example, Pramila (Esther Abrahams) went on to be the first Miss India. As anthropologist Priti Ramamurthy articulates it, “racial differentiation was both the condition for women to enter a disreputable profession and the condition for reworking it.”
In this paper, I will examine the ways in which Jewish actresses in Bollywood in the early and mid-Twentieth Century negotiated their Jewish and gender identity within the diverse communities of India, and their integration into the larger and emerging national Indian narrative.
Dustin Hall
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Śiva in Tulsidas’ Rāmacaritamānasā: A Poetics and Politic”
This essay examines Śiva’s role in Tulsīdāsa’s Rāmacaritamānasa. It seeks to answer why Śiva has as much importance as the poem’s protagonist, Rāma, the avatar of Viṣṇu. By means of textual, historical, and literary analyses, this work examines Tulsīdāsa’s use of a Śaiva narrative to frame a Vaiṣṇava narrative. I argue that Śiva is not an extraneous character in Tulsīdāsa’s poem and treating him as such obfuscates the purport of the text as an attempt to unify Hinduism during the Mughal Empire that occupied Northern India during the medieval period.
Joshua McKinley
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Examining the Significance of Natatur Ammal and the Prapanna Parijata”
This essay will analyze a prominent 13th century Śrīvaiṣṇava scholar and theologian, Naṭātūr Ammāl, and one of his most significant texts, the Prapanna Parijata. Ammāl has traditionally been viewed as a preceptor to Vedanta Deśika and the Vaṭakalai tradition, but I will be examining his potential influence for both the Vaṭakalai and the Tenkalai tradition, and therefore the whole of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition. Through a textual examination, I will explore the ways in which Ammal’s theology is juxtaposed to that of the later Tenkalai and Vaṭakalai traditions who trace their origins to Pillai Lokacharya (and his disciple Maṇavālamāmuni) and Vedanta Deśika, respectively, particularly in matters such as the treatment of Śrī and the role of the ācārya.
Rodney Sebastian
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Mapping the Manipuri rāsalīlā : Theme, Ritual and Structure”
From the 18th to 19th century, religious themes, especially from Bengal Vaiṣṇava traditions fused with indigenous Meitei religious practices to produce culturally hybrid rituals, performances and festivals. The Manipuri rāsalīla dance drama is one of the effects of this religious and cultural fusion. In this paper, I attempt to answer the question: how does the structure of the rāsalīla reflect the fusion of Meitei and Vaiṣnava traditions. Based on ethnographic research of the rāsalīla, and local Meitei performances in Manipur, and interviews with artists and scholars, I examine the fluidity of cultural boundaries in Manipur with respect to the flow of religious ideologies, ritual practices and aesthetics. I will show how that besides being derived from an array of Meitei and Vaiṣnava rituals and themes, the Manipuri rāsalīla was also constructed with specific innovations that cater to Vaiṣnava theological themes. Thus, local actors configured the religious imports of a colonizing religious tradition, in a way that resonated with their own sociocultural context, and simultaneously reflected the theology through performance.
Venu Mehta
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“From Romantic Tale to Religious Tale: Identifying Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī as Historiographic Metafiction; and its Repletion with Jaina Belief”
The period after the finalization of the canon in the present form in the second council at Valabhī is marked with a prolific literary activity of the Jains which resulted in the composition of narrative literature. In this case, Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī is the earliest work of Jain narrative literature, written by Saṅghadāsagaṇi Vācaka around early decades of 6th century CE in Jaina-Māhārāṣṭrī language. Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī, the post-canonical Jain narrative literature is also considered as the oldest witness to the lost Bṛhatkathā of Guṇāḍhya; and in its narrative content, King Vāsudeva, the father of Kṛṣṇa plays the role of the main hero. Studies of non-canonical Jain narrative literature situates study of Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī in a stimulating disposition for this paper to explore its style of narration and religious import. In this paper, I argue that Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī manifests literary style of historiographic metafiction; and with this style, the text proliferates Jaina religious exhortation. My argument imbibes the wider context that Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī, though belonging to the period of late antiquity can be identified with historiographic metafiction, a postmodernist literary style. To support my argument, I will identify the ways in which Vāsudeva Hiṇḍī, a romantic tale, uses historiographic metafiction as ‘narratio’ for didactic purpose to demonstrate Jaina belief. I will draw on select narratives from the text to demonstrate with select examples from the text that replete with Jaina belief.
Roland Mullins
Graduate Student, Florida State University
“The Atharvaveda and its Connection to Tantric Vidyā: Reception in Literature and Ritual Manuals”
Deepa Nair
Assistant Professor, University of Central Florida
“Finding Women’s Voices in Indian Textbooks”
Prea Persaud
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Hindu Cremation and the Politics of Resistance in Trinidad”
The Gangadhara Festival, the brainchild of Ravi Ji, a Hindu activist in Trinidad, is the yearly celebration of Ganga Ma. Envisioned as a pilgrimage through the waters of the Marianne River, the festival both sacralizes the landscape of Trinidad and connects participants to their ancestors who were indentured laborers. Trinidad’s sacredness is understood to be the result of the continued practices and traditions brought by their ancestors. The resilience of the laborers and their ability to conquer the land and promote their traditions indicates the “specialness” of Trinidad. The Gangadhara festival connects Indo-Trinidadians not so much to their Indian roots as to their ancestors who are said to have worshiped in the same river. Through this performance of memory, offerings at the Gangadhara festival become an act of remembrance for these ancestors.
Madelyn P. Ramachandran
Graduate Student, University of South Florida
“Living Tradition Through Pilgrimage: Kedarnath and the Mahabharata in Contemporary India”
Recently, PM Narendra Modi spoke on creating a Kedarnath that would be a model for all other pilgrimage sites emphasizing that it would have something for everyone while maintaining the nations traditional ethos.1 This push for modernization uses the traditional knowledge of the Mahabharata to promote India’s sacred geography. The use of personal guides, program descriptions, and web advertisements promises pilgrims exciting excursions and blessings from the divine. How will the movement of Hindutva reconcile the culture of consumerism, the growth of the middle class, and PM Modi’s idea of “something for everyone,” while maintaining the ideology of “Hinduness” and its intimate attachment to myth and sacred geography?
Priyanka Ramlakhan
Graduate Student, University of Florida
“Hindu Cremation and the Politics of Resistance in Trinidad”
Hindu death and grieving culture in Trinidad was influenced by a series of social and political events, beginning with the arrival of Indian indentured laborers in 1845. For most Hindus, cremation of their dead is compulsory, however in colonial Trinidad Indians were denied this right, resulting in the emergence of a distinctive style of Hindu burial. In 1953, after decades of negotiation, the state legalized the Hindu method of open-air cremation and disposal of ashes in natural rivers. Despite legalization tensions between Hindu groups and the state persisted. Hindu revivial in the late twentieth century contributed to cremation becoming a standard practice and the subsequent establishment of public spaces dedicated to death rituals and communal ancestor worship. This paper examines the Hindu struggle to care for their dead and the construction of mortuary rituals informed by text, local customs, and diasporic memory. Transformations in tradition resulted in a localized form of Hinduism and its discourses on death and mourning illuminate the politics of resistance and community-building solidarity among Trinidadian Hindus.
Ian Reed
Graduate Student, University of South Florida
“Ritual Communities: Religious Co-Participation in Durga Puja and Murharram Celebrations”
My presentation will examine contemporary examples of Durga Puja and Muharram, paying specific attention to examples where both Muslims and Hindus co-participate in these festivals. I will examine the motivation behind this co-participation, paying particular attention to the importance of these celebrations for generating communal, ethnic, and religious identities, and examining how this co-participation also aids in actively managing the relationships between these communities, especially when there are power imbalances between these communities.
Padma Sugavanam
Professional musician and Independent Scholar
“A female narrative in the musical composition of Annamācārya”
Archetypes for gender roles, have been a basis for composition in dance, drama and music for centuries. This kind of composition particularly caught the imagination of composers and spectators, after Jayadeva’s 12 CE magnum opus – Gīta Govinda. Annamācārya (15 CE), who is believed to have been greatly inspired by Jayadeva, adopted the madhura bhakti style in many of his compositions. He works with his principal characters – viz. Lord Vēṅkaṭēśvara – the hero, Alamēlu maṅga – the heroine and many other female characters. A man assuming the states of woman protagonists, has a larger canvas of archetypes to explore poetically, than female poet-composers such as Āṇḍāḷ and Mīrā, who sang in their own voice and were in a way, restricted to their own perspective. Annamacharya deals with such a vast palette of human situation, emotions and psychological states, that his female characters go significantly beyond the well-established archetypal framework of the aṣṭa nāyikā-s of described by Bharata. My research involves the study of some atypical female characters and their narratives in annamācārya’s śṛṅgāra saṅkīrtana-s.
Steven M. Vose
Professor, Florida International University
“A Fifteenth-Century Collection of Jain Kathās on Women’s Śīla in Old Gujarati”
The 1469 CE Śīlopadeśamālā-Bālāvabodha, or The Garland of Instruction on Virtue for Teaching Novices, by the Kharatara Gaccha Jain monk Merusundaragaṇi, is a relatively early collection of didactic stories in Old Gujarati (or Māru-Gūrjara). Each story illustrates the lengths to which various women go to protect their śīla, by which the stories usually mean their chastity, but may also extend to virtue and piety. This paper will survey several of the stories in the collection to try to understand some of the ways in which “women’s virtue” is tied to Jain soteriological concerns and, thereby, proper ethical conduct (ācāra) for women. As an examination of an early “vernacular” text, the paper will also seek to determine some of the distinctive narrative features of the text by locating earlier Prakrit and Sanskrit tellings of the selected stories. Finally, I will offer a few thoughts on what the collection of the specific stories suggests about a possible larger rhetorical project Merusundaragaṇi had for the text.
Albert Wuaku
Professor, Florida International University
“We see ourselves in Veera and Kumkum Bhagya”: Indian Soap Operas in Ghana and Ghanaian Viewers”
Presently Ghanaians rank Kumkum Bhagya and Veera, two Indian soap operas aired on Ghanaian television channels, as the most popular soap operas in the country. Barely two years after their introduction to Ghana these soap operas have become part of the regular television watching routines of over twenty percent of Ghanaian viewers. In November 2016 Kumkum Bhagya became the first foreign soap opera in Ghana to be dubbed into local Ghanaian dialects, especially Akan, a dialect most people speak in Ghana. At the moment, there is a kind of euphoric high in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, because the cast of Kumkum Bhagya is visiting.
In this presentation, I unravel the reasons why Ghanaian viewers are drawn to Indian soap operas, particularly, Kumkum Bhagya and Veera. I suggest that Ghanaian viewers see Indian soap opera as more than an artistic expression or fictional form. Seen by Ghanaians as windows into Indian culture, Kumkum Bhagya and Veera provide opportunities for viewers to experience Indian traditions of marriage, child-raising, conflict resolution, dressing, and romance, and to use these cultural practices as foils for debating, critiquing and contesting their post-colonial realities. Ghanaian viewers of these soap operas argue that Indian culture as they have come to experience it, is “like Ghanaian culture, but also different at the same time” and that the insights soap operas from India offer into ways of being in the world as “a man, a single woman, a married couple, an in-law and a child” etc. in “today’s word” are new and refreshing. I suggest that Indian soap opera is a crucial cultural currency in her current engagement with Africa; in Ghana, it epitomizes India’s cultural outreach.