Discovering gupta-Vrindavan:
Finding selves and places in
the storied landscape
Sukanya Sarbadhikary
This article seeks to be a contribution to the recent bourgeoning of studies in the
anthropology of (sacred) spaces, places and landscapes. Ethnographically, it deals
with the social topography of Navadvip and Mayapur, vaishnava pilgrimage places
in the Nadia district of West Bengal. It analyses the contemporary articulations of the
experience and making of a contrasted and consecrated landscape, and its potential in
embodying differentiated community identities. It describes the various public faces of
Bengal-Vaishnava groups and argues in favour of the inherent relationships between
devotional self-experiences and the emotional landscape which is inhabited and constituted
simultaneously. It details the cultural geography of Navadvip and Mayapur as embodied
in the layout of different temples and ashrams, and the circulating stories establishing
their significance. The stories sometimes hunt out lost sites, sometimes legitimise existing
ones and, at other times, override all such concerns over specific sites in favour of a
passionate engagement with the entire landscape. In every instance among the plural
modes of ‘dwelling’ in the mnemonic-fabled sacred space, the vaishnava groups claim to
discover the essence of the landscape and thereby assert their multiform practices of selfexperiences as authentic representations of the sect. In the end, the article also contrasts
the inhabitants’ landscapes and devotional self-experiences with that of the traveller and
throws up new questions in the anthropological understandings of places, landscapes,
journeys and devotion.
Keywords: Place, landscape, pilgrimage, Bengal-Vaishnavism, devotional self-experience,
emotion, stories
Sukanya Sarbadhikary is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Presidency
University, Kolkata. Email: [email protected]
Contributions to Indian Sociology 47, 1 (2013): 113–140
SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/006996671204700105
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114 / Sukanya Sarbadhikary
I
Spaces, selves and stories
It was the month of March and the most important vaishnava festival of
Bengal, Dol (Holi or the colourful spring festival), was being celebrated.
Thousands of pilgrims had gathered in Navadvip and Mayapur. Navadvip
is a town and municipality in the Nadia district of West Bengal, on the
banks of the river Bhagirathi (Ganga). Across the river is the village of
Mayapur, the headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). These twin places are the most important vaishnava
pilgrimage centres in contemporary Bengal.
Bengal-Vaishnavas worship Krishna, his consort Radha and the medieval saint Chaitanya (1486–1533) as the supreme deities. Vaishnavism
in Bengal, also known as Gaudiya-Vaishnavism, began as a movement
spearheaded by Chaitanya. In Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy, Chaitanya
embodies the dual incarnation of Radha and Krishna—the deity-consort
enjoying their pleasures of union in and through the saint’s body.
Navadvip and Mayapur are renowned as the saint’s birthplace(s) and
the abode(s) of his lilas (pastimes). Navadvip is a medieval town with
narrow dirty lanes, old houses and a bustling town-culture. Its temples and
ashrams are spread all over the landscape in the various by-lanes, such that,
a pilgrim would need to walk for several days before she can visit all of
them. On the contrary, Mayapur, a village turned into a pilgrimage town
only in the modern period, has a clean, organised look. Unlike Navadvip,
the pilgrimage organisation in Mayapur is such that the temples (and the
ISKCON campus) are situated in a series along its main road.
Although the temple-towns have a busy pilgrimage life all year round,
devotee participation reaches its pinnacles in the months of February–
March. The devotees’ pilgrimage enthusiasm during these times is like the
swarming of bees savouring the tastes of the land (Entwistle 1991: 83).
However, suspending the festival euphoria, during a field visit to the town,
I looked for a place to sit. I joined a group of women who were resting on
Mayapur fields and grumbled about my aching legs. But to my surprise,
I was met with only sarcastic laughter. One of them said:
We come here every year during Dol, leaving our families and fields.
We are on our feet for over 10 hours a day…, but never complain! You
will stop feeling any pain, once you realise the importance of these
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Discovering gupta-Vrindavan / 115
lands…These are the roads on which Mahaprabhu1 walked and still
walks…This is gupta (veiled)-Vrindavan…The temples here tell us
different stories of Mahaprabhu’s life…2
At this point, another woman explained:
…You are seeing only the physical lands. If you listen carefully to
the stories, with an honest heart, the lands will reveal themselves to
you—you will see the shadows of eternal Vrindavan…3
Devotees refer to Navadvip and Mayapur as gupta (veiled)Vrindavan(s). For Gaudiya-Vaishnavas, Vrindavan is not only a physical
town on the map, but also the celestial abode of Radha-Krishna’s divine
sensuality.4 Thus, I worked in places believed to be the sensuous silhouettes
of another. Since Chaitanya is believed to be the secret embodiment of
Radha–Krishna, his birthplace is deemed to be the veiled-Vrindavan (see
Bharati 1968: 54; Das Babaji 1987: 8–9; Hawley 1992). His lilas during
the first 24 years of his life, before he took renunciation vows and left for
Puri, are thus the spiritual narratives glorifying the Nadia lands.
The gupta-Vrindavan, veiled-landscape, ‘reveals’/uncovers itself to
different groups of devotees, however, through different stories and in
different ways. In every instance nevertheless, those narrating the stories
and those listening to them experience the storied landscape5 in accordance
with the varied ways in which they embody their devotional selves.6 The
1
Devotees refer to Chaitanya as Mahaprabhu (the great Lord). It is Chaitanya’s chief
epithet.
2
Anonymous, March 2010, Mayapur.
3
Ibid.
4
Thus, while the north Indian town of Vrindavan is the most important Vaishnava
pilgrimage centre, devotees also speak of nitya (cosmic) Vrindavan, which manifests in but
is not limited to the physical town.
5
My use of the term ‘storied landscape’ refers both to a narrativised landscape and a
layered geography, that is, a physical landscape concealing within it the essence of another
imagined place.
6
In his fascinating ethnography, Parry (1994) demonstrated how ways in which a sacred
place is imagined and the religious practices of its practitioners have a correspondence.
While Banaras is the quintessential city of death, gupta-Vrindavan is the one of love.
Thus, practitioners define their devotionalisms, in this case, with respect to their affective
orientations towards the lands.
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stories sometimes hunt out lost sites, sometimes legitimise existing ones
and, at others, override all such concerns over specific sites in favour of a
passionate engagement with the entire sacred space. The article describes
the practices of this ‘foregrounded’ (contested) physical landscape, the
‘background’ to which is the aesthetics of embodied belonging (Hirsch
and O’ Hanlon 1995: 14).
The article analyses differential sectarian claims to the landscape, which
carve out contrary stories and significances of sacred places from within
the landscape. These narrative claims, as the discussion will demonstrate,
are also parallel assertions of devotional selves. Following Edward Casey’s
Bachelardian notion of ‘topo-analysis’, the power of place he identifies
to ‘tell us who and what we are in terms of where we are…’ (1993: xv;
emphasis in original), I will discuss different clues which unveil the
place secrets—the multiple experiences of gupta-Vrindavan(s). These
will simultaneously demonstrate contested ways of being a vaishnava in
contemporary Bengal.
The physical land ‘manifests’/unveils itself as the saint’s divine
abode to devotees through their participation in the landscape stories.
The ‘invisible’ or the gupta uncovers itself in the visible, with temples
embodying Mahaprabhu’s lilas, ashrams narrating his grace and disputes
that search for and locate his lilabhumi (sites of his divine activities)
for the public. The buildings however don’t generate the sense of belonging in the divine space and time of the saint, as much as embody it
and ‘gather’ a landscape for the community. The primacy of an affective being-in-place or ‘dwelling’ in the devotional space precedes the
buildings which embody them (see Casey 1993: 176; Heidegger 1971:
152; Ingold 1993: 169, 2000) and the stories are expressions of these
multiple dwellings. The interdependence of stories, selves and places
figures the landscape (Wynn 2007: 162).
Till about a decade ago, a festival called ‘dhulot’ used to be celebrated
in Navadvip, when devotees would lie around on the grounds, allowing
their bodies to be smeared with the dhulo (dust) of the haptic geography on
which Chaitanya left his traces. Although dhulot is no longer celebrated,
its logic of embodiment in terms of walking and sensing the landscape is
still the most important way in which one experiences the sacred region
(see also Morinis 1992: 17). It was indeed in my relentless strolls through
the towns, in spending hours listening to stories of the different temples as
recounted by temple attendants, local people and (informal) tour guides,
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and in reading sthan-mahatmyas7 given by town elders that I got ‘glimpses’
of what it means to participate in gupta-Vrindavan.
As pilgrims travel, the stories travel with them, establishing inextricable
bonds among ‘travel, territory and text’ (Dubow 2001: 241), expressing
and creating the devotees’ senses of self and belonging (Bender and
Winer 2001: 5). Walking and talking become performative utterances
and ‘phatic’ enunciations (see Certeau 1984: 108), such that, to re-cite is
to re-site the places. In walking through the landscape, stories sediment
as knowledge (Legat 2008).
Ways of experiencing the landscape are however not homogeneous in
nature and inherent contestations become apparent to the walker. Both
towns are, ironically, famous for primarily the same reason: they claim
to house the saint’s birthplace(s).8 Both these places commemorate
Chaitanya’s pre-renunciation life-events and connect the pilgrims ‘…in
both time (metaphorically) and space (synchronically)…’ (Levi-Strauss
1976, summarised in Bowie 2000: 141; emphasis in original). The imagined landscape(s) of the two places are thus ‘knit together by…repetitions
and homologies’ (Eck 1999: 29), while disputing the ways in which the
other arranges itself.
The geography in question is thus unique in two ways: rather than a
single pilgrimage place which is the common phenomenon characterising
Hindu sacred geography, these twin places are of equal significance to
pilgrims and second, they are bound in an interesting relation of identity
and difference. Thus, pilgrimage processes of each individual place as
well as its relations with the other are important to understand. Hence, I
am ethnographically focusing on the particular pilgrimage places as also
pilgrims’ journeys within and to the other.
Bowen says that ethnographies on pilgrimages either focus on particular
places or the journeys to the same (2002: 226). Appadurai argues that the
category of ‘locality’ and place as an empirical counterpart to it should
be at the forefront of contemporary anthropology (1986: 356). However,
Bowen (1995) criticises the tendency to signify ‘intense localness’ as a
mark of cultural authenticity, thereby exhibiting a mistrust of trans-local
experiences (see also Appadurai 1988). Journeys undertaken between
Texts produced as glorifications of Indian pilgrimage places.
For instances of contested landscapes in different contexts, see Humphrey (1995,
2001).
7
8
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locations also become effective ways to sense places (Casey 1996: 39; see
also Gupta and Ferguson 1992). The mytho-geographic space enveloped
by Navadvip-Mayapur poses a situation wherein the pilgrimage places
can neither be thought of together as a single one (being fraught with
myriad tensions), nor embodying disjointed spatial identities (since they
symbolise the same life-events of Chaitanya). Thus, pilgrims meet with
a complex play of sameness and difference between the places, in their
journeys through the sacred region.
II
The birthplace controversy
I was witness to the predominance of intense place-name contestations
among devotees, during a casual conversation in Mayapur with a group
of pilgrims from Jalpaiguri (North Bengal). I asked them, ‘Where is
Mahaprabhu’s birthplace?’ This simple question opened up a pandora’s
box of responses.
A: From childhood we have heard it is in Navadvip...
B: No, as far as I know it is in Mayapur.
C: Yes, Navadvip means nine islands around this place. Mahaprabhu
was born in Mayapur, in Navadvip.
Local rickshaw-puller: But this is not Mayapur—it is Miyapur…
A: …also, Prachin (old) Mayapur is in Navadvip town...
C: …But Mayapur is Prachin Navadvip...9
Place-name semantics have the capacity to transform the geographical
into the experiential and facilitate historical interventions (Tilley 1994:
18). The toponymic ambivalence in the present case has a century-long
history.
Tracing linguistic roots, fixing phonetic correctness and territorialising names in true places of ‘tradition’ became significant concerns of an
etymologically charged toponymic discourse during the colonial period
(see Kar 2007: 215). Mayapur received its name in 1894 from Kedarnath
Datta, a renowned Gaudiya-Vaishnava (his renunciate name, Bhaktivinode
Thakur). He was a leading public intellectual of the Bengal Renaissance,
9
Conversation with anonymous pilgrims, November 2009, Mayapur.
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who served as a district magistrate, retired in 1892 and dedicated the rest
of his life to ‘modernising’ vaishnavism.
In 1894, Datta claimed to have had the vision of Chaitanya’s ‘true’
birthplace, which had been submerged by flood-waters about a 100 years
before that. This he said was in the town that was then called Meyapur,
literally, the land of Muslims and which he renamed as Mayapur. This
declaration faced severe opposition from erstwhile vaishnava authorities—
Navadvip’s goswamis (householder vaishnavas) and babajis (renouncer
vaishnavas). A certain section of babajis claimed, on the other hand, that
through spiritual insight, they had been able to locate the birthplace in
the northern part of Navadvip, earlier called Ramchandrapur and which
they renamed as Prachin (Old) Mayapur.
Datta floated two spiritual-historical ideas which also became the official language of the Gaudiya Math and ISKCON in the contemporary
period. Gaudiya Math is a monastic order of vaishnava practitioners,
formed in 1918 by Datta’s son, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. With its
headquarters in Mayapur, it has 64 branches in India. Saraswati’s
disciple, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, in turn, was ISKCON’s founder.
Founded in 1966, ISKCON has over 400 centres and followers from
all over the world.
Datta, citing an 18th century vaishnava text, ‘Bhaktiratnakara’, said
that Mahaprabhu’s birthplace was in ‘Mayapur’, the term having been
mispronounced and altered to ‘Meyapur’ by the local Muslim-predominant
populace (Fuller 2005: 234). He also argued that Mayapur was a part of
nava (nine) dvips (islands) around the Ganga, in which Mahaprabhu carried
out his lilas. Mayapur was visualised as the central one of the nine islands
which together resembled the petals of a lotus flower (ibid.: 210–40;
Thakur 1994). As an ISKCON devotee told me, ‘So much confusion about
Sri Chaitanya’s birthplace arises because unaware people conflate the
present-day town Navadvip, with Navadvip—the nine islands. Navadvip
is the birthplace only insofar as Mayapur is its centre.’10
Proponents of the birthplace temple in Navadvip’s Prachin Mayapur
area also pilfer from the same scriptural evidence and keep intact the basic
cartographic and toponymic constructions circulated by the Mayapur ideologues. They maintain the birthplace name as ‘Mayapur’ and the meaning of
‘Navadvip’ as nine islands. They claim, however, that the Mayapur township,
10
Govinda Das (pseudonym), July 2009, Mayapur.
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originally ‘Miyapur’/’Meyapur’, was a medieval Muslim habitat. Thus, they
invert the logic of linguistic-homophonic misrepresentation and suggest that
the original Meyapur had rather been distorted by Datta.
Thus, the toponymic debate between advocates of both birthplaces
and the consequent formation of their own territories is based on similar
texts and assumptions. However, the toponymic-cartographic imaginings of gupta-Vrindavan are rendered more complicated by a third
ideological position, shared by Navadvip’s goswamis. They believe
the birthplace was lost in floods and supporters of both birthplaces are
mistaken in their historical/mythical claims. As a respected goswami
discussed, ‘…The meanings of Navadvip or the idea of Mayapur, as cited
in spiritual texts, are simply poetic referents claiming no correspondence
with any real geographical space.’11 The ideologues of the third camp
propose the meaning of Navadvip rather as ‘Nava’ (new) + ‘dvip’ (island)
(see Majumdar 1995; Mondol 2002: 73; Radi 2004).12
Nadia’s insecure geography carries the annual threat of floods. Thus,
for those who claim to have discovered the birthplace(s), Navadvip, as
meaning nine islands, is a more comforting assumption than accepting the
constant ‘newness’ of the island (which corresponds to the irresoluteness
of being able to ‘rediscover’ sites after they have drowned). On the other
hand, goswamis, who have no stakes attached to either of the birth sites,
but rather to a third important temple, emphasise the ‘newness’ of the island
and correspondingly, the impossibilities of reclaiming lost lands.
In a different context, Carter makes a similar analysis about the name,
‘New Island’:
…the term ‘New’ is a name. It precisely delimits the conditions under
which it came to be known; it resolutely refuses to say anything about
the island…It is a subtle critique of those who might think a name
with a history (‘Old Island’, perhaps) is somehow more appropriate
(1987: 8–9).
Thus, while the material topography and religious experience of the
landscape impact upon toponymic imaginations, place-name semantics,
in turn, impact upon the devotional ‘taskscape’ (Ingold 1993: 162).
11
12
Shyam Goswami (pseudonym), September 2009, Navadvip.
‘Nava’ can mean both ‘nine’ and ‘new’, in Bengali.
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The birthplace controversy had been part of Bengali intellectual circles
since the 1880s (Bhatia 2009: 5). This was the period of the neo-Krishna
movement, when there was a massive change in the public redefinition of
Krishna’s/Chaitanya’s image. Krishna was now the Mahabharata warrior,
not only Vrindavan’s lover (see Kaviraj 1995: 72–106; Lutt 1995: 147). He
could defend his religion and territory. This gave rise to a public culture
of debating sacred places and reclaiming lost sites.
In the contemporary period, however, despite the rare phenomenon of
two competing birthplace temples, pilgrims of Navadvip/Mayapur generally visit both, carrying back with them a little mati (soil) from Chaitanya’s
birthplace(s). Hayden (2002) argues that competitors in spatial clashes
may display tolerance if due to differential access to resources, they are
unable to replace one another. Similarly, claimants of both birthplaces have
produced innumerable documents to corroborate their findings with ‘facts’.
Toponymic stories during the 19th century were necessarily complemented
by archaeological and literary proofs (see also El-Haj 2001: 73–98). Thus,
from within a discursive apparatus of proofs and counter-proofs about
spatial layouts in the past, readings of Chaitanya’s biographies and other
scriptural literature, divine revelations etc., the life-histories of the places
were expressed and the contestations crystallised.
Two recent works (Bhatia 2009; Fuller 2005) have discussed the
Navadvip-Mayapur birthplace controversy. They share some historicalconceptual premises which, I argue, are one-sided when judged from the
perspective of contemporary claims over the landscape. They view the
birthplace controversy led by Mayapur as ‘wresting of spiritual authority
from the traditional establishment’ (Fuller 2005: 210) and ‘indigenous’
vaishnavas of Navadvip. They characterise the Mayapur proponents as the
colonial middle-class, western-educated elite, armed with the weapon of
disciplinary history and archaeology and narrate the story of their victory
over the traditional habitus and faith of Navadvip’s practitioners.
However, both Mayapur and Navadvip proponents use(d) the same
historical and archaeological sources to legitimise their claims. For instance, they used the Calcutta Review (1846), Hunter’s (1875) statistical
accounts and Rennell’s map of 1788 (see also Fuller 2005: 210), and
Navadvip’s proponents claim(ed) a history of ‘recovering’ the birthplace
twice before Kedarnath did. Both contesting groups also foreground their
own mythical recollections of past geographies. For instance, they cite
miraculous experiences of senior vaishnavas at the particular sites,
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discoveries of sacred objects and idols from under the temple grounds etc.,
each of which sanctifies the legitimacy of these places as the ‘authentic’
birthsite(s). Thus, both birthplace temples embody what Upton (1985) calls
‘vernacular architecture’—‘the visual embodiment of a social process, in
which available architectural ideas from many sources…are shaped into
buildings answering the special requirements of a social class, an economic
group or a local or ethnic community’ (cited in Winer 2001: 261).
Chaitanya’s birthplace controversy has resonances with the Ramjanmabhumi debate in Ayodhya. An inter-religious milieu in case of Ayodhya
takes similar discursive forms in the intra-sectarian debate in vaishnava
Bengal. However, while in the case of Ayodhya it is the immutability
of the monument which is of prime significance (Pandey 1995: 378), in
Nadia, it is the sacred landscape—the importance of discovering guptaVrindavan, that is so.
In any case, the notions of sequential time and history are difficult to
grapple with in the context of religious imaginings (Tedlock 2002: 398).
The past is available for thinking from within the lens of ‘presentism’,
thus necessitating a dialectical idea of time (Lambek 1998: 106; Peel
1984: 111). This ‘presentism’ may involve a reflective cultural process
of debating and locating its present with respect to its own (religious)
past (Bayly 2004: 112). The inherent debatability of the past throws light
on the ways in which history can be used as a resource in the politics of
identity formations (van der Veer 1988: 48).
Devotional modalities propagated by ISKCON and Gaudiya Math approximate a modern culture of vaishnavism based on prachar (preaching),
their devotion to gupta-Vrindavan conceptualised as a seva (service)ethic—a democratic model of religiosity—whose significant component
is to spread awareness about Chaitanya’s ‘true’ birthplace.
Babajis, on the other hand, stress the need to focus on private achar
(ritual aspects of religion) as exemplified by Chaitanya and his immediate disciples. It seems paradoxical then for ‘private’ babajis to enter into
public debates with ISKCON and Gaudiya Math. The chief attendant
babaji of Prachin Mayapur birthplace-temple eased my confusion and
said:
…ISKCON do not follow scriptural injunctions properly. Their spiritual
spuriousness reflects in their claimed birthsite as well…Now, every
year, a number of pilgrims come to Nadia. Many come to find gurus…
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If we did not enter into this debate with Mayapur…then pilgrims would
not consider our assertion of the sect as authentic…13
Similarly, an ISKCON initiate discussed:
…babajis’s disciples mainly come from lower, uneducated classes...
They do not need scientific explanations of religion. But our members
are educated... Thus our religion is scientific, democratic and we spread
its rationality, also about the birthplace, to people…14
The birthplace contestation is therefore influenced by and conjures
crystallisations based on authentic notions of the sect and divergent selfdefinitions of devotee proponents.
III
Other sites and stories in Mayapur
The public, democratic values of Gaudiya Math and ISKCON are reflected
in their mode of preaching about other Mayapur temples as well. As Mack
(2004: 71) observes, in addition to inherent spiritual senses of a place, during pilgrimages, landscapes are also ‘engineered to enhance such effects’
(see also Balzani 2001; Creasman 2002; Morinis 1992: 21).
Mayapur temples, commemorating Chaitanya’s life-events, belong
to the Gaudiya Math trust. Many Gaudiya Math devotees come from
the urban middle-class population (mostly Kolkata), while ISKCON
also caters to thousands of international devotees. These pilgrims visit
Mayapur often, in groups, especially during holidays and weekends.
Their visits are a mix of pilgrimage and tourism. Mayapur, with its
beautiful rural ambience and solitude, open fields and the vast stretch
of the river, appeals to these people with otherwise busy, urban lives.
Many pilgrims stay in the comfortable ISKCON guesthouses. Given
their short visits, the topographical arrangement of temples in a syntactical chain along the main road and the narrative neatness that temple
attendants invoke in re-telling the stories of Chaitanya’s lilas, provide
them with the ideal opportunity to satisfy their religious-touristy trips.
13
14
Mukunda Das (pseudonym), August 2009, Navadvip.
Damodara Das (pseudonym), July 2009, Mayapur.
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Securing a large number of annual initiates from among the urban and
international devotees is an important aspect of devotional service for
religious institutions in Mayapur.
Bhatia (2011) mentions how since the 19th century, Chaitanya’s bio­
graphies have been used to assert the accuracies of his life for ‘historicallydetermined’ urban devotees. In a similar vein, Mayapur temple attendants
say that they invoke narratives which are strictly ‘historical’, insofar as
they are based only on biographies.
On some occasions I found pilgrims asking temple attendants about
miracles that may have been experienced by devotees in these temples.
Brahmacharis (monks) resolutely stress that ‘miracles’ could be experienced only by the saint and the founding figures of the organisation. Given
the strict hierarchical structure of these modern religious organisations,
it is heretical for individual members to claim the spiritual ascendancy in
experiencing divine miracles. Also, in their democratic spiritual service,
there is no story that cannot be told to all. Gaudiya Math and ISKCON’s
hierarchical structure and democratic self-representation are not contradictory within their own philosophical justifications. They understand their
democracy to consist in all devotees’ equal acceptance of deities and their
founder gurus’ higher spiritual powers and their roles as equally important
dispensers of seva to the public. Also, by narrating the same stories to all
pilgrims, they engender the sense of an ordered landscape.
Once pilgrims complete their round of this gupta-Vrindavan, they are
able to form a consistent, standardised story of Chaitanya’s life and the
history of the institutions in sanctifying and preserving vaishnava heritage. Thus, named locales and ‘historical tales’ become woven with ideas
of ‘correct moral conduct’ (Tilley 1994: 33). On visiting each of these
temples, the pilgrim is given a uniform narrative with proper space-time
(historical) correlates. All temple attendants say, ‘This is the exact spot
where Sri Chaitanya’s lila took place. Bhaktivinode Thakur discovered
these places in and after 1894…’
Attendants narrate stories not only of the particular temple they represent, but also of others, following which they ask pilgrims to visit them.
The temples being a part of the same economic-monopolistic establishment
and religious worldview, construct a ‘historical’ syntax among themselves
as embodiments of Chaitanya’s (serially instructive) life.
For instance, around 2 km from the birthplace temple is the headquarters of Gaudiya Math, known as Chaitanya Math. This place is also
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known as Abhinna (indistinguishable) Vrindavan or Vrajapattan (descent
of Vrindavan). The story goes that Chaitanya and his associates had
theatrically performed Radha-Krishna’s Vrindavan lilas in this place for a
whole night and astounded the audience by their real emotional depictions.
This was his way to establish the sanctity of this place as the authentic
gupta-Vrindavan. Thus, this site was chosen in 1918 as the ideal venue
for Gaudiya Math headquarters.
Within the temple premises, pilgrims are taken to visit small ponds
called Shyamkunda (Krishna’s bathing pond) and Radhakunda (Radha’s
bathing pond) and the entire monastic compound is said to be the Govardhan hill. These structures are of prime spiritual importance in the
pilgrimage town of Vrindavan (see Case 2000: 13; Ghosh 2005: 192;
Haberman 1994).
Two other important pilgrimage places in Mayapur are Srivas Angan
and Chand Qazi samadhi (burial). Chronicles of these two places are
intrinsically connected. On several occasions, I travelled with pilgrims to
these temples. The attendant of the former would typically summarise:
This was the house of Srivas Pandit, Mahaprabhu’s important associate.
Every night Mahaprabhu would chant here with devotees…
One day…Chand Qazi (legal officer of the Islamic ruler) sent his people
to cause havoc at this place...Mahaprabhu arranged for a procession
to the Qazi’s house…On seeing the large numbers, Qazi realised
Mahaprabhu’s divinity and became a devotee. Mahaprabhu came as
a hidden god. His lilas are also hidden…Only the elect have the right
to identify them and preach to others…However, later Mahaprabhu
planted a flower-tree on Qazi’s samadhi. The tree is still there. Please
go and visit the place after this.15
We would then proceed to Chand Qazi samadhi, around 5 km from there.
Standing before the huge tree, the attendant there would go on: ‘Mahaprabhu planted this tree. It has miraculously lived for 500 years…The
Qazi left all these lands to him and they now belong to us…’16
Thus, brahmacharis of Mayapur ground significant tenets of GaudiyaVaishnavism in the physical geography, ascertaining ‘relations between
15
16
Gopal Das (pseudonym), Mayapur.
Gopinath Das (pseudonym), Mayapur.
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spatial and signifying practices’ (Certeau 1984: 114), such that they become embodied in the form of temples and trees and democratising this
sense of place for all who visit the lands. The prerogative of ‘discovering’,
explaining and preserving gupta-Vrindavan remains with the institutions,
however.
IV
Goswami temples in Navadvip
Chaitanya’s pre-renunciation life and the inviolability of gupta-Vrindavan
are however interpreted in other ways as well. The affective landscape
configuration in contemporary Navadvip exhibits alternative networks of
power, assertions of authority and corresponding ‘cultural biographies’
(Kopytoff 1986 cited in Peabody 1991: 727) of temples/idols to be foregrounded by the goswamis. Their senses of place and corresponding notions of community differ markedly from the Mayapur institutions.
Goswamis claim descent from Chaitanya’s affinal kin or from his associates. Thus, they relate to the saint and his lands primarily through a
rhetoric of familial attachment.17 Goswamis uphold householder values by
retaining their caste markers18 and holding a great deal of landed property
in Navadvip. Just as ISKCON’s professionalism and babajis’ asceticism
attract initiates, goswamis’ ancestral spiritual heritage makes them gurus
of utmost importance in Bengal. They have a large number of disciples in
Kolkata’s outskirts and primarily in towns and villages of Bengal, Orissa,
Assam and Bangladesh. Goswamis make a distinction between bongsho
(lineage), their line of goswamis and parivar (family), disciples of that
lineage. This indicates the extension of familial idioms to their intimate
relations with the initiated.
The most frequented and celebrated temple in Navadvip is the
Dhameswar (Lord of the Land)-Mahaprabhu Mandir, popularly referred
to as Mahaprabhu Bari (God’s Place). It is owned and served by descendants of Chaitanya’s brother-in-law. The temple’s service schedules are
17
Chaitanya did not have children. His wife’s brother’s and associates’ families are still
present in Bengal, however.
18
Although Gaudiya-Vaishnavism was a movement against the caste system, goswamis
claim to be Brahmins and wear sacred threads.
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passed on through strict lineage-logic and distributed among around 250
family members. But if one does not have a son, it may pass down through
daughters or adopted children considered to be deserving future gurus. The
service towards temple lands must remain, therefore, within the goswami
family. Their temple seva comprises of looking after Mahaprabhu’s regular
needs—serving him his favourite food and other items five times a day—
knowledge about which is said to have come down through Chaitanya’s
wife and the family’s oral tradition.19
Goswamis’ claims to the landscape began with the settlement of
Mahaprabhu’s idol in a most important temple known as the DhameswarMahaprabhu Mandir. I will present narratives that circulate among
devotees about this temple and its mythical origins. These stories do not
re-tell a finished past, but are rather, itinerant iterations (Lund 2008) of
Chaitanya’s eternal manifestation in gupta-Vrindavan.
Mahaprabhu, in 1510, performed sannyas (renunciation vows) and left
for Puri. He left his mother and young wife, Vishnupriya, at home. This
is considered as an epic-tragic event among Bengalis. There are countless
literary/musical renditions of this event, popularly referred to as ‘Nimai
sannyas’.20 A popular soulful song among them says:
O Vishnupriya,
I leave, as you sleep in the early hours of dawn.
…
In those tender moments, you held me in your slender arms
But when you wake in the morning, I will be gone…
You will break your bangles and shout to everyone,
That cruel is Nadia’s Nimai, I know you will…
O Vishnupriya, but I must go.
…
Listen, O people of Nadia, lovers of mine,
I leave to search for Krishna’s touch.
O Vishnupriya…I leave…
For descriptions of similar personal worship in the Vallabha order, see Bennett (1993:
182–83).
20
Nimai was Chaitanya’s pet-name.
19
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A goswami woman explained:
Mahaprabhu is not a distant god to us, as to others (implying ISKCON).
He was married into our family...While others celebrate his renunciation, we mourn it…Navadvip cries for Nimai, as Vrindavan wept for
Krishna…when he left his mother and lovers.21
There are mythical representations of this grieving landscape. Nimai left
at dawn-break. When his mother awoke, shocked and angry, she cursed
the Navadvip banks which he had crossed and the crows which did not
cry long enough for her to wake up. Those riverbanks are still known as
‘Nidoyar ghat’ (pitiless banks) and it is believed that crows cannot reside
in Navadvip. Thus, the entire landscape and natural habitat are believed
to respond to goswamis’ emotions.
Chaitanya is said to have come back one last time to meet his mother.
Vishnupriya was then at home, desperate to meet him. At this point, he
appeared before her and asked her to make his idol from the wood of the
Neem tree under which he was born. Other accounts say the idol appeared
before her miraculously, some others say he appeared and gave her the
idol, while others remember how she received orders from her husband/
god in her dreams.
Vishnupriya served the idol for the rest of her life. Chaitanya had also
left his sandals for her service, which like the idol, is a most venerated
object in the Bengal devotional world. She is believed to have eventually merged into the same idol. Thus, this 500 year old idol is sometimes
dressed in a sari and at other times in a dhoti. Her pearl nose-ring is attached to the idol as a mark of their union. The idol is the vehicle of their
everlasting presence in Nadia.
Apart from the mythical significance this idol/temple carries, its position in the pilgrimage landscape is also charted out by the power positions
of those who claim it. The story goes that the idol was kept at Chaitanya’s
birthplace, where his wife lived, till floods were about to destroy it. Goswamis served the idol in hiding then, as the public worship of a god-saint
like figure was not allowed by the mother goddess-worshipping rulers
of the time. The idol was therefore rotated amongst family members,
indicating the ‘volatility of charismatic authority’ (Peabody 1991: 728),
21
Vinodini Goswami (pseudonym), September 2009, Navadvip.
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since goswamis had not yet established their authority in Navadvip’s
religious topography.
In 1798, Manipur’s king had Mahaprabhu’s vision in his dreams.
Mahaprabhu requested him to arrange for his public worship. It was
under the orders of Manipur’s king that Nadia rulers finally allowed
Mahaprabhu’s public veneration. A west-facing temple was constructed
to house the idol. A large stone was brought from the birthplace-temple
and placed over the main door, which still signifies its authenticity to
devotees (Goswami 2007; Mondol 2002).
This marked the beginning of Mahaprabhu’s idol-worship cult on a
large scale in Bengal. Thus, interplays of power equations and competing
emotive mnemonics resulted in a mode of affective Chaitanya-idolism.
In 2006–07, the central government gave the Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu
Mandir the status of a heritage building.
When the temple was built, the goswamis shifted to the locality and a
busy pilgrimage centre gradually developed around it. This area is known
as Mahaprabhu-para (neighbourhood), currently the most prominent
neighbourhood, bustling with pilgrims and shops. Devotees flock to the
temple for arati (light-offering) five times a day. No household occasion
in Navadvip, such as weddings, initiations, funerals or birthdays, are
celebrated without Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu’s blessings.
However, Mayapur’s proponents find Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu’s centrality and the parallel familial, anti-renunciatory rhetorics of goswamis
difficult to grapple with. The head brahmachari of Mayapur’s birthplacetemple suggested, for instance, that Vishnupriya never served any idol at
all but rather served a painting of Chaitanya she had made herself. He
added, ‘Chaitanya was a preacher of religion…His renunciation is a matter
of pride, not lament!’22
Goswamis’ claims of consanguinity and spiritual ascendance are not
limited to Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu Mandir. There are other goswami
temples in Navadvip’s sacred topography, ranging from 50–200 years
of ‘history’. They are popularly known as lila-smarak (commemorating)
mandirs. While Navadvip has temples venerating all the events that are
also prominent in Mayapur (ones that Chaitanya’s biographies refer to),
there are also mythical ones with no exact ‘historical’ reference.
22
Ananta Das (pseudonym), September 2009, Mayapur.
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Since the purpose of these temples is not mere ‘occupation’ but rather
‘inhabitation’ of the consecrated landscape (Wedlock 2008), goswamis
relate to and constitute the sensorium of the emotional landscape—their
gupta-Vrindavan—through temple stories representing Hindu familial principles. For instance, there are temples depicting Nimai’s mother consoling
Vishnupriya after Nimai’s sannyas, Upanayan-lila (celebrating the saint’s
initiation into Brahmanism), Bibaho-lila (depicting a Hindu marriage ceremony between Chaitanya and Vishnupriya) etc. In the Upanayan Mandir,
temple attendants also sell sacred threads and vermilion, adding that prayers
in this temple for good marriages and children are always answered.
Most of the temples, including Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu Mandir, mention miracles associated with them: how the temple courtyards resound
Radha’s/Mahaprabhu’s anklets, how devotees have seen deities walking
around in the temple compounds during early hours of the day, how
attendants find the idols’ beds dishevelled in the morning, how during
festival times, Mahaprabhu participates in the celebrations and devotees
feel his presence through an unknown sweet smell etc. However, they
insist that there are also stories and personal experiences which one must
not mention to others. Thus, unlike ISKCON and Gaudiya Math, there are
stories not meant for ‘public’ democratic appraisal, but only for vaishnava
practitioners.
The goswamis serving these temples are also attendants of the
Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu Mandir. The profit that each member makes
from Dhameswar Mandir revenue is not always considered sufficient.
Thus, some of them have constructed these personal temples. They pay
taxes for their ownerships and revenue collected from pilgrims’ offerings
constitute their personal income. Thus, even though a part of the same
family and trust, a sense of economic competition exists among goswamis. Most goswamis claim no exactitude about space-time coordinates
and are candid about the fact that their temple constructions are only to
re-live Mahaprabhu’s times. Some however do claim that their temples
are on the exact spots of Chaitanya’s historical incidents. However, the
economic-competitive logics are such that other goswamis immediately
dismantle their claims by providing alternative stories.
If ‘historical’ thought is defined as having unambiguous space-time
chronologies (Pandey 1995: 372) and mythical imaginings as being partial
about such claims, then a spatial conditioning of ‘community histories’
and ‘mythical’ connections can be imagined, such that, Mayapur adopts
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a clear-cut ‘historical’ stance with respect to its devotional experiences,
religious selves and temple stories while Navadvip exhibits a more diffused relation with its past.23 In Mayapur, places are always legitimised
in terms of their references in scriptures, while in Navadvip, the stories
also respond to familial/emotional contours. Also, historical syntax and
economic monopoly in Mayapur and economic competition and mythical
fractures in Navadvip have been shown to have a connection.
The description does not suggest a neat division between historical
and mythical thinking either. Myths make use of available historical clues
in the formation of alternative stories, while historical attempts remain
partial and invoke the sense of miracles, just as mythical operations. In
general however, the Mayapur and Navadvip sacred topographies respectively approximate Tilley’s distinction between controlled, ‘useful to act’,
‘disciplinary’ spaces where ‘architectural forms resemble each other’ and
architecture as embodiments of myth and cosmology (1994: 20). This is
further exemplified by babaji-ashrams in Navadvip.
V
Babajis’ akhras in Navadvip
The landscapes of gupta-Vrindavan are also home to reveried mythemes
experienced by hundreds of babajis in Navadvip. Often far from the
bustle of the town centre, they live in ashrams (known as akhras in the
vaishnava context), leading their relatively more private lives. Babajis are
renouncers wearing white loincloth and following strict ritual discipline
demanded of ascetic vaishnavas.
There are two kinds of devotees who frequent akhras. First, devotees,
who are already initiated by babajis, come to spend time with and learn
from their gurus, especially during festival times. Second, many not-yetinitiated devotees come in search of appropriate gurus, since the severe
abstinence and thorough scriptural knowledge of babajis is widely revered,
many others come in search of appropriate gurus.
In popular Bengali imagination, archetypal babajis are remembered by
feats of spiritual discipline—the enormous number of times they chanted
The discursive similarities in the birthplace debate are exceptions. On debates about
historical/cultural memory, identity formations and what Fabian (2003: 489) calls ‘popular
historiology’, see Lambek (1998: 111) and Pinch (1996: 570).
23
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132 / Sukanya Sarbadhikary
daily, number of days they could keep fasts, long hours (sometimes days)
they meditated, extraordinary lengths of their lives and their capacities
to predict their own deaths, etc. This corresponds to Horstmann’s idea
of the exemplary renouncer-figure as one revealing what becomes of a
devotee who exercises his devotion till its ‘radical end’ (2001: 175). Thus,
the prime modes of asserting sectarian authority, ashram histories and
claims to gupta-Vrindavan among babajis are through idioms of ascetic
excellence and scriptural knowledge.
Apart from burials of important babajis,24 many ashrams have preserved
scriptures that babajis consulted, jap malas (sacred beads) they chanted
with, their clothes, sandals and paintings which hold tremendous spiritual
value for present generations of ascetics and devotees. These material
belongings embodying the hallowed sobriety of renouncers are believed
to permeate the mythopoetic atmosphere of ashrams with the sacrality of
the lands (see also Humphrey 2002). Most babaji temples are associated
with phenomenal miracles accompanying them. As Tilley argues, when
stories are sedimented in landscapes, they dialectically reproduce each
other; stories derive their life-force and mythical-historical significance
from being associated with materialities people can touch and see (1994:
33). For instance, one of these ashrams, Harisabha Mandir, is reputed for
its founder babaji, Vrajamohan Vidyaratna. One night as he was returning
from a nearby town, he lost his way. A little boy escorted him to his house
to stay overnight. In his dreams, the boy appeared as natua (dancing)
Gour (Chaitanya). He then established this temple with an idol depicting the figure of his dreams. Then as days passed, townspeople started
complaining of a mad man called Nehal Khyapa, who would sleep in the
temple-compounds and shout every night saying, ‘My deities have been
stolen!’ Then after a few hours he would shout, ‘They have come back!’
One night, the babaji stayed with him to solve the mystery. He found
that Nehal carried a jhola (sack) with idols of Radha and Krishna. In the
middle of the night, the idols would unite into the figure of Mahaprabhu
(embodying their night-time intimate encounters) and by early morning,
divide into their separate forms. These Radha-Krishna and Natua Gour
idols are still worshipped in the temple.
In another such story, a wandering ascetic used to carry his Gopal
(child Krishna) idol on his kontho (throat). Once, as many times before,
24
Unlike caste-Hindus, babaji-vaishnavas are not cremated.
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as he offered food to it, a little boy snatched it away. Realising he was
the baby Nimai, the babaji established a temple with Konthogopal as the
presiding deity.
The famous Haribol Kutir (hut) was similarly established in memory
of an ascetic who used to wake the Navadvip people before dawn, crying
out ‘Haribol’ (Take Krishna’s name) around the town-lanes. One of his
disciples, Haridas Das (1898–1957), is one of the most renowned vaishnava scholars. Haridas’s underground bhajan (meditation) room is still
shown to devotees. There are many more akhras with exemplary ‘milieu
de memoire’ (Nelson and Olin 2003: 74), which devotees revere with
affection. Akhras are indispensible elements of gupta-Vrindavan, embodying Mahaprabhu’s grace on the paradigmatic virtues of ascetic vaishnavas,
which in turn constitutes the impact of ashram chronicles.
VI
Pilgrims of the region
With an abundance of temples, discourses and contestations in the
Navadvip-Mayapur region, we have the unique situation wherein the
differences of/about the multiform landscape become as visible as sites.
How then does popular ‘nomadic discourse’ (Carter 1987: 28) negotiate
with the chaotic pilgrimage geography? Thousands of pilgrims come round
the year to Nadia, leaving behind their agricultural work, struggling in
local trains and buses and sleeping for nights on railway platforms—all
to ‘taste’ the lands. It became perplexing to comprehend the inspiration
behind such passions.
I was most intrigued by the utter uncertainty of public response to the
splintered religious discourses in circulation. It was common to find pilgrims with divergent sectarian affiliations and gurus sit and chat together.
Until asked, the predicaments of toponymy, exactitudes of Chaitanya’s
birthplace and hierarchy of the various specialists in the preference for a
guru or the gradation of Navadvip/Mayapur in the run for ‘authentic’ vaishnavism did not create much anxiety. But once these issues were discussed,
the anguish of scepticism and violent disparities among devotees, as well
as their contrary response of decisive rejection of the issues were obvious.
It was a complicated interlock of emotions towards the storied landscape.
After one such conversation with pilgrims in a Mayapur roadside hotel,
I began to make sense of the logic of this uncertainty.
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A (in search of a good guru): It is difficult to say which of the places
has the birthplace. The original and imitation are impossible to distinguish. New things are given old looks and old things polished anew
these days!
B (initiated with a goswami family): Different scriptures say different
things… We dress the same god in different clothes… For some people,
advertising the birthplace is important, for someone else, simply seeing
Mahaprabhu is (implying the Dhameswar-Mahaprabhu idol).
A: How does it make a difference? These days people have two sets
of parents—a set of birthplaces won’t make a difference! (Laughter
from all).
C (wants to be initiated in Gaudiya Math, Mayapur): See, in foreign
places, safety is more important than authenticity… So we go where
we are safer (implying Mayapur). Also, ISKCON plays good music
and the foreigners dance well!
…
A: But it is more expensive in Mayapur…
At this point, some others, overhearing our conversation, point out,
‘During Dol festival, you will find people following their gurus/institutions
in traversing the region. But once it is over, most of them, barring the city
people who leave from Mayapur, will go around all the places.’
Slightly confused, I asked them whether the sacrality of places per se
has no importance during pilgrimage:
B: Of course they do! But sacredness cannot be measured in historical and economic terms. As long as we can emotionally remember
Mahaprabhu, historical detail does not matter. The whole landscape
around this region is sacred because Mahaprabhu’s lilas will be apparent
wherever a devotee searches…The stories we hear in different temples
create an orientation with which we taste the landscape.
A: In this process, we do watch different vaishnavas’ lifestyles and
might choose gurus for ourselves from among them, but that never
stops us from traversing all places associated with Nimai.25
25
Conversation with anonymous pilgrims, November 2009, Mayapur.
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It is thus evident that devotees structure their pilgrimage despite controversies, but not independent of them. What accounts for pilgrim-travellers’
complex reactions to debates over the sedentary landscape? How can one
conceptualise their often apparent indifference to the debates? Do their
travelling subjectivities put into question basic devotional commitments?
The solution to this problematic lies in a careful hearing paid to the pilgrims’ creative ‘chorus of idle footsteps’ (Certeau 1984: 107).
Evidently, it is from within the belief for the landscape that practitioners invoke further belief in historical specificities of ‘sites’, while some
pilgrims venerate particular sites and others maintain their affective orientations towards ‘places’ alongside a critical sidestepping of historical
debates over those specific sites.26 This ‘historical surplus’ constitutes the
‘creativity’ of popular subjectivities (Hastrup 2007: 204).
Casey’s philosophy suggests that individual sites cannot exhaust the
ontological possibilities of places (1996: 26), which is similar to Heidegger’s
assertion about sites following from prior senses of dwelling (1971: 154).
Thus, pilgrims’ journeys embody a passionate engagement with the entire
sacred landscape. Their affective dispositions towards the Nadia region’s
sacrality are as strong as resident practitioners’, without however being
restricted to particular physical sites. Gell argues similarly that contested
details of production do not matter to devotees, when the concern is
about what the image (in this case, the landscape) can do to her (1998:
36 cited in Tilley 2008: 34). The storied landscape therefore manifests
itself as the divine abode to both inhabitant and travelling devotees of
Nadia, in distinctive ways, according to varied modes and predicaments
of devotional experiences.
VII
Conclusion
This article has described the manifold public faces of vaishnava groups
in Bengal and their ‘multiple implacements’ (Casey 1993: 74), their experiences of belonging in and assertions of authority over Nadia’s sacred
geography. This devotional landscape, the gupta-Vrindavan, unveils itself
through countless stories, both to those who narrate them and to those
26
As Gaffney argues, a sensitive anthropology of religion should think about both the
‘assertion of authority’ and ‘the discourses of contrast’ to official languages (1992: 39).
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136 / Sukanya Sarbadhikary
who listen. An emotional engagement with gupta-Vrindavan is common to
all devotees, as is the competitive logic of economic, social and political
claims over the sect and landscape. Dimensions of both affectivity and
contestation embody multiple senses of dwelling in the landscape and
the stories express these ways of dwelling experienced by the different
devotees. In narrating, listening to and carrying the contested stories with
them, religious actors consolidate their devotional selves with respect to
their relations with the lands.
Thus, there are stories of ‘historical’ debates over ‘true’ locations of sites
and buildings, which express modern, rational and democratic devotional
selves; stories of a ‘mythical’ landscape and sites anguished by the saint’s
absence, which express familial attachment as a religious virtue; and stories recounting miraculous experiences in the sacred topography, which
express renunciate spiritual assets. Finally, there is the distinct mode of
dwelling embodied by travelling selves, whose itinerant devotions spell
out Edward Casey’s conviction about senses of place preceding (and in
this case, superseding) sites (1993: 143; 1996: 26). They listen to stories,
which like a bricolage, unveil the multiplicity and passionate sacrality
of the entire landscape. However, in every disputing instance, the article
has demonstrated how ways of experiencing, consolidating and asserting
devotional selves are in intimate and necessary relations with the ways in
which sacred places are experienced.
Acknowledgements
I thank two anonymous referees and the editorial team of Contributions to Indian Sociology,
David Sneath, Partha Chatterjee, Sibaji Bandopadhyay, Susan Bayly, participants of the
Cultural Studies Workshop organised by CSSSC in 2010, my friends in the department
of Social Anthropology, Cambridge and Rohan, Sayam and Upal for their most valuable
comments on the drafts of this article.
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