A Hindu Vaishnava Perspective on Religious Diversity

Philosophical responses to the problem of religious diversity

Philosophers have responded to the problem of religious diversity in various ways. Such responses are usually grouped into one of the following trichotomous categories: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. One of the most contested areas in discussions of religious diversity concerns the treatment by religions of the salvific[1] prospects of outsiders; in other words, what is the proper way religious traditions should think of the soteriological fate of people who do not belong to such traditions. In terms of the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist trichotomy referred to above, several sorts of responses to the problem of outsiders’ salvific prospects can be anticipated:

·        An exclusivist would argue that salvation is only possible through his or her own religion and that outsiders are destined to soteriologically inferior ends (i.e. hell);

·       An inclusivist would argue that while salvation may be possible for outsiders, the inclusvist’s religion has the most religious value and soteriological efficacy.

·       Finally, a pluralistic response to the problem of religious diversity and more specifically, the question of outsiders’ salvific prospects, is to say that all religions are equally valid and effective.

Thus far, I have framed the problem of religious diversity in soteriological terms, i.e. as regards the question of salvation for outsiders. There is no reason to delimit the discussion in this way, however. For example, one can deploy the exclusivist-inclusivist-pluralist trichotomy to anticipate philosophical responses to another issue at the forefront in discussions of religious diversity: the question of whether outsider religious traditions contain any religious truth (both sets of issue are, of course, closely connected)[2]. Just as you can be an exclusivist as regards the question of outsiders’ salvific prospects, you can also be an exclusivist in connection with the question of religious truth; an exclusivist would hold that only his or her own religious tradition contains religious truth. Inclusivist and pluralist responses can also be developed. In this blog post, I will try to deal with both issues.

John Hick’s approach to the problem of religious diversity

The renowned 20th century British philosopher of religion, John Hick, famously argued that the most important indicator that a religious tradition is not just a creation of the human imagination but is instead in part a product of input from ultimate reality[3] is that it facilitates the transformation of people from self-centerdness to reality-centerdness[4]. The idea that the major world religions serve as soteriological vehicles that transform persons existentially from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness is, I believe, a tremendously useful, accurate and insightful way to conceptualize the function of religious traditions. It is an insight that I feel is consistent with and expressive of the Hindu Vaishnava view and so I will often return to it throughout the course of this post.

An additional insight of Hick’s that readers should be aware of, but one that I have strong reservations about, is his distinctly Kantian emphasis on ultimate reality’s utter ineffability. Hick argued that ‘the Real’, i.e. God, is ineffable and not directly experienced by anyone; religious believers only interact with it indirectly through personal and impersonal appearances of the ultimate reality. Hick’s view was that ultimate reality belongs to the noumenal realm, an area to which we have absolutely no access. All that we can experience are phenomenal appearances of the ultimate.

While there is much that is insightful in Hick’s argument, undue stress on the ineffability of the divine reality impoverishes religion of some of its most attractive and enduring features, i.e. the effectiveness of worship and prayer, the powerful and emotional intensity of religious experience, etc. I will return to this issue later when we survey Hindu Vedantic views on ineffability.

Hindu Vaishnava perspective on religious diversity

Historically, Hindu theologians have responded in diverse ways to the question of whether members of other religious traditions can achieve salvation or liberation (howsoever conceived) at the end of their spiritual journeys. Such responses tend to be pluralist or inclusive in nature. There is, of course, a very important nuance that must be borne in mind when considering and reflecting on Hindu views in this context: the Indic belief in reincarnation means that Hindus believe that the soteriological process occurs over and across multiple lifetimes. In the context of the present discussion, this means that when I speak of the salvific power of other traditions, what I am referring to is not their ability to deliver salvation to their members at the end of this lifetime but rather their capacity to contribute and advance the soteriological and existential transformation of believers in Hickean ways (i.e. by making them less self-centered and more reality-centered).

Indeed, in the Hindu context, the question, can non-Hindus achieve moksha or salvation?, is (as the Buddha would say) an unprofitable question. Why? The vast majority of Hindus will not achieve moksha during their present lifetimes; that being the case, and given that most Hindus would accord pride of place to their own tradition in the economy of salvation, it goes without saying that most non-Hindus will not likely achieve moksha in their current life.

The sheer diversity and heterogeneity that characterize Hindu traditions means that there is no one, single Hindu perspective on the question of outsiders’ salvific prospects. To delimit the scope of this discussion, however, I want to think theologically from a particular Hindu perspective: that of the Hindu Vaishnava tradition.[5] Vaishnavism sets itself apart from other traditions in Hinduism by its monotheistic and exclusive focus on Vishnu (in any one of his forms) as Supreme Lord and by its advocacy of devotion as an important path to liberation. Preliminaries now aside, let us think more deeply about how Hindu Vaishnavas can think about the soteriological fate of outsiders.

Hindu traditions have long recognized the myriad ways in which ultimate reality can be experienced and apprehended. Indeed, the Rig Veda famously remarks that: “the truth is one, the wise call it by different names”.  Differences in nomenclature aside, Hindu religious traditions also recognize that different facets of the ultimate reality appeal to aspirants depending on their own inclinations and theological predispositions. For example, while Vaishnava traditions choose to focus on the personal and theistic aspect of ultimate reality, they do not deny the validity of impersonal experiences of the divine. Impersonal traditions tend to focus on the ultimate as the ground of all being and/or as pure consciousness rather than as a personal and omnibenevolent supreme deity. While privileging their own conception of the divine, Vaishnavas would argue that God’s infinite nature lends itself to be experienced in myriad ways by religious aspirants. Further, for Vaishnava’s, God’s willingness to reciprocate with believers in a manner suitable to their religious aspirations is but a particular illustration of divine compassion and mercy.

An important scriptural verse in the Vaishnava canon that informs Vaishnava views on this subject comes from the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 4, Verse 11): “According to the manner in which they approach Me, I favour them in that very manner. Men experience Me alone in different ways, O Arjuna”[6] In my reading, this verse brings out quite beautifully the all-embracing nature of divine love. Krishna makes clear here that he “meets every aspirant with favour and grants to each his heart’s desire”[7] It seems quite obvious to me that this reading of the text precludes Hindu Vaishnavas from adopting exclusivist approaches to the question of outsiders’ salvific prospects. God responds with favour to religious aspirants regardless of the way in which they worship or approach him. To link this discussion back to Hick’s understanding of religion’s function, I want to suggest that this verse opens up interpretive possibilities for Hindu Vaishnavas to think about other world religions as representing important  soteriological vehicles that transform persons existentially from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.

Given the many-lifetimes approach that Hinduism takes to the question of liberation, my response to the problem of religious diversity is to suggest that religious aspirants from all major world traditions can and do make soteriological progress when they practice their religion. This means that, contrary to what some religious traditions argue, there is no reason to think that believers from other world religions are destined for everlasting punishment just for choosing to conceive of the divine in different ways. Of course, an important qualification here is in order. The Hindu Vaishnava view does not require that one hold all religions to be equally salvific. All major world religions, allow their adherents to get a keener insight into the nature of reality or God and to adopt dispositional attitudes towards that reality that are life-transforming and soteriologically effective. My view is that this position still creates sufficient room for one to argue that a particular religion or tradition is more effective (vis-à-vis others) in bringing about the sorts of existential transformations that make believers more reality-centered. In sum, the view I have been articulating above does not require believers to hold all religions to be equally true; it does however require that we see all religions as valid (for the reasons described above).

The fact that God’s nature is infinite and that he has the capacity to assume multiple manifestations according to the wishes of his devotees, does not mean that all religious approaches or paths are equally valid. In an important part of the Gita, Krishna speaks of some religious paths as being avidhi purvakam, i.e. contrary to regulative religious principles. However, far from delegitimizing such religious practices and rejecting the worship offered, Krishna makes clear that even in such cases he strengthens the devotees faith in their chosen deity and dispenses himself the gift or material goods sought. This is a striking example of Krishna’s universal benevolence and love for all people.[8]

I decided to frame this discussion early on in the context of Hinduism’s reincarnation thesis: that human beings’ spiritual journey occurs across multiple lifetimes and in the contexts of different successive bodily existences. Without losing sight of this larger context, let us think of a slightly different question: can believers of other religious traditions attain moksha or liberation in their present lifetime?

Most classical Hindu theologians, I think, would respond in the negative to this question: they would suggest that while religious progress is possible in other traditions, the culmination of the soteriological process would require birth in a particular Hindu tradition. On this view, Hinduism must be accorded pride of place in the economy of salvation and so moksha is only possible for Hindus. This is a view with which I agree and one that, in my understanding, best reflects what the Hindu Vaishnava scriptural canon has to say on the subject.

Tying this all together, my view is that while non-Hindu traditions do not likely provide distinct full-fledged routes to salvation, they are not lacking in usefulness in this area, and they can play a contributing role by, for example, removing obstacles to salvation, providing preliminary or preparatory training or useful encouragement. Importantly, I must emphasize that there are no grounds to dogmatize here for indeed a Hindu cannot be certain that members of other religions cannot achieve moksha or salvation at the end of their present lifetime. In any event, all that I have said above demonstrates, I think, that it only requires a bit of imagination and constructive theology to see how it is entirely possible for Hindus to hold that other religious traditions hold important, divinely inspired insights into the nature of ultimate reality. 

The Value of Interreligious Dialogue

One of the biggest problems with exclusivist responses to the issue of religious diversity, is that it renders interreligious dialogue obsolete. If you truly believe that your own tradition represents the only valid way of approaching and worshipping the divine then what need is there to engage in interreligious dialogue. My view therefore is that for interreligious dialogue to be a truly meaningful enterprise, the discourse it generates must be rooted in the following premises: a) a belief that no one religion has a monopoly on religious truth; and b) the primary objective of interreligious dialogue is to allow interlocutors to learn from other religious traditions and not just about such traditions. In other words, both premises require that a participant in interreligious dialogue not be an exclusivist as regards matters of truth; he or she must hold that other traditions hold truths of their own and that we can learn something from them. 

My view is that Hindu Vaishnavas can argue, without contradiction or inconsistency, that their particular tradition is more effective than others in bringing about the sorts of existential transformations that make believers more reality-centered while continuing to believe in the value of interreligious dialogue as a means by which to learn from (and not just about) other traditions. I can see how my argument may be perceived to be vulnerable to the criticism that it doesn’t really permit for genuine interreligious dialogue since a Vaishnava Hindu, on this account, would have little to gain or learn from other traditions given that his or her own tradition represents a soteriologically more effective approach to the divine reality. I’ll leave it for readers to consider the extent to which this criticism holds but I would like to argue that in my own experience, at least, the perceived inconsistency is apparent only. To experience the divine in all its glory and richness, if such a thing is indeed possible, dialogue across religions is not only desirable but necessary. The point is to learn from others facets of the divine nature that one’s own tradition or understanding may not have emphasized.

I should add that my vision of ‘learning from others’ does not necessarily require that we be open to acquiring new or additional beliefs from other traditions but rather that we, at least, be open to deriving from other traditions a fresh perspective or a deeper insight into beliefs that we already hold.

My study of Hinduism leads me to believe that there are sufficient conceptual resources within Hindu Vaishnavism that justify an approach that treats other religious traditions as valid. One such resource is of course the verse from the Bhagavad Gita to which I have already made reference. Other resources include: (i) the Vedantic insistence on the ineffability of the ultimate; and (ii) the notion of divine revelation.

The ineffable nature of the divine is a natural corollary of God’s infinite and transcendent nature. The Vedanta tradition within Hinduism cautions students that our sensorial and cognitive capacities, including the language we use and study and that of the Vedas, cannot provide us with unmediated and complete access to the divine reality, howsoever conceptualized. In the context of this discussion, this means that religious traditions, by implication, are but provisional attempts at conceptualizing ultimate reality in ways understandable to religious believers. It seems to me that this recognition of God’s ineffable nature provides a promising basis upon which theological dialogue across and between religions can take place. It requires a degree of theological humility on the part of believers across traditions as they recognize that no one tradition can claim a monopoly on conceptualizations of the divine.

I argued earlier that undue stress on the ineffability of the divine reality impoverishes religion of some of its most attractive and enduring features. I want to argue also that ineffability is also a problem for interreligious dialogue. The reason that I don’t want to stress God’s utter inaccessibility to the believer’s imagination is because it would render unintelligible and meaningless any dialogue between religious traditions; after all what exactly is it we would be talking about? If God is so beyond human discourse then all we are really doing is grasping, in the dark, at an unknown realm, to which we have no access and from which we receive no illumination. While some traditions do stress the entirely noumenal nature of ultimate reality, most religious believers would not conceive of their relationship with and understanding of ultimate reality in such religiously unsatisfying ways. Central, therefore, to the coherence of my account is the view that we can speak meaningfully about ultimate reality and that the ineffability of ultimate reality does not preclude soteriologically valuable reflection and meditation on God.

To nuance this discussion further, while religious traditions accept that God exceeds human understanding, most traditions believe that God aids human understanding of his nature by intervening in human history either through the form of his written revelation (i.e. the Qu’ran or the Bible) or through the medium of divine incarnation (i.e. Krishna or Jesus). Divine disclosure as understood in these different traditions enables believers from different traditions to ‘compare notes’, as it were, and to learn from each other the various ways in which God has chosen to manifest or disclose himself. My view is that this still allows us to privilege certain forms of divine revelation over others (in the sense that some can be more complete than others) but at least it forces us to take seriously the claims of other believers as regards their understanding of God through his manifestation in their traditions.

There seems nothing within Hindu Vaishnavism that precludes Vaishnavas from accepting the validity of divine revelation in other religious traditions. From all that we know of God’s omnipotence and omnibenovelence, why must we insist that it was not possible for God to reveal himself (through various mediums) to human communities in other parts of the world. Indeed, I would argue that the richness of God’s nature requires that we accept revelation as pluriform in nature. We can argue that the same divine reality has always been active towards mankind and the differences in religious traditions are, in part, a result of or related to differences in human circumstances. Our differing ethnic, geographical, economic, sociological and historical circumstances have resulted in existing differentiations in religion and culture more generally.

From a theological perspective, all that we need to do to accept this picture of divine revelation is to accept that the ultimate reality is infinite in nature. Different religious traditions are all encountering the same reality but end up expressing the experience of that reality using the idiom and cultural imagination to which they are accustomed. Christians understand themselves to worship a triune God, Muslims understand themselves to worship Allah, some Hindus understand themselves to worship Krishna or Vishnu; other Hindus believe there to be a nonpersonal religious reality. In each case, members of these religions are dealing, in my view, with the same religious reality, variously understood or interpreted.

I should repeat that this remains consistent with an approach that privileges certain forms of divine revelation over others. On this view, a Hindu Vaishnava would argue that: Vishnu’s self-communication extends to all people; the fact that he has tempered his message in line with the historical and cultural contexts of other people does not undermine the argument of universal revelation.

To conclude this discussion, let us reflect briefly on how a Hindu Vaishnava can engage in interreligious discussion. I have tried to emphasize that the point here is not merely to learn about other religious traditions. On this view, questions of religious ultimacy are not paramount: by way of example, the question for a Vaishnava Hindu is not whether the doctrine of the Trinity is supported in the Bible but whether there is value in us thinking about the Divine as triune in nature. What sort of religious possibilities would such an understanding open up for us and in what ways could it be used to deepen our experience of God’s mystery and interpersonal attributes. Similarly, a Hindu Vaishnava can reflect on the Islamic understanding of tawhid and the ways in which the understanding of divine unicity reflect fundamental aspects of the divine reality.

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[1]            I.e. relating to salvation.

[2]           If you are an exclusivist as regards the question of religious truth, then you are more likely to be sceptical of the salvific prospects of outsiders to your religious tradition. However, this relationship need not invariably obtain. You could, possibly but implausibly, argue that while your own religious tradition is true and that of others false, outsiders can still attain salvation by somehow availing themselves of the soteriologically effective spirit of your tradition.

[3]           In this post, ultimate reality, divine reality, God, the Real, should all be treated as synonyms. Some religious traditions (i.e. Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jainism) do not conceive of the ultimate reality in theistic terms and so the term ‘God’ for such traditions is inapposite.

[4]           I.e. God centred.

[5]           I appreciate that, in reality, no such thing exists. Vaishnavism comprises many traditions, all of which offer diverse theological approaches to important religious concepts. However, given the tentative nature of this post and the disutility in too narrow an approach, I would like to suggest that there is a sense in which we can think theologically through the Hindu Vaishnava prism in ways that are conceptually coherent and clear and productive.

[6]           Ye Yatha Mam Prapadyante, Tams Tathaiva Bhajamy Aham,  Mama Vartmanuvartante, Manusyah Partha Sarvasah

[7]           Radhakrishnan’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.

[8]           A recognition of the provisional legitimacy of religious practices that are expressly inferior and not recommended can be found in the Old Testament. For example, Deuteronomy represents the religions of non-Jews as divinely approved, even if inferior to the religion of Israel. Deuteronomy 4:19 reads as follows: “when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under heaven” (emphasis mine). Commenting on this passage, S. R. Driver wrote: “The God of Israel [assigns] to every nation its objects of worship; and the veneration of the heavenly bodies by the nations (other than Israel) forms part of his providential order of the world.”[8] Further, in his Anchor Bible commentary, M. Weinfeld endorses the same explanation of the verse: “The heavenly bodies as objects of worship were assigned to the nations by God himself”[8].

Book Review: Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam

Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam is Shahab Ahmed’s study of early Muslim attitudes to the Satanic verses incident. The story of the Satanic verses narrates the occasion on which the Prophet Muhammed is alleged to have mistaken words suggested to him by Satan as being divine revelation. These Satanic verses praise the pagan goddess deities of Muhammed’s tribe and acknowledge their power to intercede with God. By uttering the Satanic verses, Muhammed thus committed the error of Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam is Shahab Ahmed’s study of early Muslim attitudes to the Satanic verses incident. The story of the Satanic verses narrates the occasion on which the Prophet Muhammed is alleged to have mistaken words suggested to him by Satan as being divine revelation. These Satanic verses praise the pagan goddess deities of Muhammed’s tribe and acknowledge their power to intercede with God. By uttering the Satanic verses, Muhammed thus committed the error of compromising the fundamental theological principle of tawḥīd, the exclusive unicity of God. The facticity of the Satanic verses incident is universally rejected by Muslims of all sects and schools. Ahmed’s study, however, demonstrates that the Satanic verses incident constituted an absolutely standard element in the memory of early Muslims in the life of their Prophet: in other words, the early Muslim community believed almost universally that the Satanic verses incident was a true historical fact. Islamic orthodoxy came to reject the authenticity of the Satanic verses incident on the basis of two epistemological principles: the theological principle of ‫iṣmat al-anbīyā and the Hadith methodology principle of assessing reports by their isnāds. The principle of iṣmat al-anbīyā holds that Prophets are protected from the commission of error in the transmission of divine revelation- otherwise there would be no guarantee of the integrity of the Qur’anic text. The historiographical principle on the basis of which the Satanic verses incident is rejected is the fundamental principle of Hadith methodology. The basic principle of Hadith methodology is that the truth value of a narrative report is assessed on the basis of the reputation for veracity and reliability of the individuals in the chain of transmission. Further, the chain of transmission must go back in an unbroken chain to an actual eyewitness. This chain of transmitters is called the isnād. As regards the Satanic verses incident, all but one of the fifty reports that narrate the incident are carried by defective chains of transmission- that is by chain of transmitters that include unreliable transmitters or by chains that are incomplete and do not go back to an eye witness. A central part of Ahmed’s project is to show that the acceptance of the Satanic verses incident in the early Muslim community indicates that these two epistemological principles in later Islamic orthodoxy did not enjoy universal authority in the early Muslim community. ‬ In the second chapter of his book, Ahmed carries out a close textual anaylsis of the earliest narratives of the Satanic verses incident that are preserved in the Islamic ligature. Through his analysis of early narrative reports, Ahmed demonstrates that the Satanic verses incident constituted a standard, widely circulated and generally accepted element in the historical memory of the Muslim community on the life of Muhammed in the first two centuries. In other words, the almost universal contemporary rejection of the Satanic verses incident by Islamic orthodoxy represents, Ahmed argues, the rejection of something that was held to be true by early Muslims. Interestingly, Ahmed begins his last chapter of the book by quoting Tony K. Stewart, an important scholar of early Bengali Vaishnavism, known particularly well for his scholarship on biographical narratives in early Bengali Vaishnava literature. Stewart writes: “What the narratives do when they uniformly agree is to document the historical beliefs aimed at the biographical subject, beliefs which are held by the author, and perhaps the community that the author represents. The history is far more one of the authors, than of the subject”. Ahmed’s point here is to show that the historical memory of the Prophet in the early Muslim community was not monolithic but rather constructed and transmitted in three distinct discourses: sīrah-maghāzī, tafsir, and Hadith and that in the first few centuries of Islam these three genres were not merely distinct literary genres but distinct cultural projects with different goals, practitioners, materials, methods, forms and values. More importantly, and this is key, the identity of the Prophet as constituted by each of these discourses is directly related to the identities of the genres, projects and practitioners that remembered him. The differences between the three historical memory projects or discourses is dealt with early in the book. The aim of the scholars of the Hadith movement, as it took shape in the early centuries of Islam, was to define and establish legal and creedal norms through the authoritative documentation of the words and deeds of the Prophet as produced from the historical memory of the early Muslim community. Ahmed argues that the Hadith scholars were concerned with prescribing the specific content of Islam, and as a result, the project of Hadith fused with the authoritative and prescriptive project of the elaboration of Islamic law. The Hadith project’s appropriation of the historical memory of the Prophet for the purposes of prescribing Islamic norms required not only a particular method but also, and this is key, a particular type of Prophet suited to its authoritative and prescriptive purpose. Given the centrality of the authoritative persona of the Prophet to the logic of the Hadith movement, the idea of an infallible Prophet whose words and conduct might reliably be taken to establish a model for detailed pious imitation must have possessed a particular appeal for the early scholars of the Hadith movement. Coming back to the Satanic verses incident, the image of Muhammed contained in the incident, i.e. that of a Prophet who fell victim to Satan and erred in the transmission of Divine Revelation, was entirely inconsistent with and, indeed, constituted a normative challenge to the Hadith movement. It is for this reason that, despite its wide circulation in the first and second century genres of tafsir and sīrah-maghāzī, the Satanic verses incident was not included in any of the canonical Hadith collections. It follows that those responsible for remembering the Prophet in the first and second century project of sīrah-maghāzī were not primarily concerned with establishing norms of religious law and praxis for pious mimesis, but rather with constructing a narrative of the moral-historical epic of the life of Muhammed in his attempt to found the divine human community and set it on the path to salvation. Similarly, the Prophet of the tafsir, Ahmed argues, was the Prophet of the text of God’s allusions, and thus the heir to a long line of Prophets to whose histories of trial, sin and repentance God also alluded. The Qur’anic exegetes accepted the Satanic verses incident as another in this series of divine citations of Prophet-defining moments. More controversially, the Satanic verses incident was seen as illustrative of Muhammed’s ongoing struggle to comprehend the enormity of his Prophetic mission, and to retain a clear sense of its nature, as well as to perform that mission with clarity in the face of complex and difficult circumstances. In sum, the early Muslim community accepted the Satanic verses incident because, for them, there was simply nothing anomalous or problematic about it. It was entirely consistent with a number of other narratives which they took as explaining passages of the Qur’an that also appear to allude to Prophetic error.

Mysticism, Devotion and the Place of the Erotic in Devotional Expression: Reflections on Andal

Andal

In this blog post I would like to explore the life and poetry of the famous South Indian devotee-poetess Andal. The intense emotionalism and highly charged eroticism of her poetry has exercised a profound influence on the religious, devotional and artistic imagination and self-understanding of South Indian Hinduism. Moreover, whether in her role as an exemplary devotee or goddess, Andal continues to evoke and inspire devotion in the hearts and minds of the faithful. The hagiographical narratives that developed following her death reveal the complex and at times deeply creative ways in which succeeding theologians sought to make sense of the poetess’ life, poetry and unique devotional self-expression. As the hagiographical corpus on Andal developed, the poetess was made to undergo numerous transitions and transformations. By studying the development of the Andal narratives we can track the multiple trajectories entailed in Andal’s transformation from poet to saint to goddess; here though I am not so interested in the ontological implications of Andal’s eventual apotheosis- my objective here is to study the various roles that Andal assumes in the self-understanding of the Sri Vaishnava community.

The ambiguity inherent in Andal’s position seems to me to speak to not only the remarkable polyvalence of her poetry but also to the tremendously protean nature of her religious experience. This is not to suggest that Andal’s mysticism is of a particularly unstructured variety (after all, all mysticisms are by definition fluid and at least to some extent unstructured) but only to point out that the various guises that Andal employs in her devotional self-expression reflect in some important ways the various roles that her tradition have subsequently assigned her. In other words, when Andal speaks of the intense suffering that she experiences as a result of her separation from God, she speaks as an intimate devotee of the Lord. When she speaks of the felicity that her passionate union with the Lord engenders, she speaks as the Lord’s consort. Equally however, when Andal speaks of the nature of devotion to God, the means by which to achieve the Lord (etc) she speaks as a saint par excellence. All of these patterns of mysticism structure Andal’s poetry; Andal embraces all of these roles but as the hagiographical corpus devoted to her demonstrate, theologians following her chose to emphasise or privilege one role over another. This privileging process, of course, is fascinating since it reveals the complex dynamics at play in a religious community’s attempt to situate or position an influential religious figure in the broader tradition.

Andal’s deeply idiosyncratic life, the emotionalism of her poetry and the intensely erotic tenor of her devotional outpourings all combine to make the poetess a fascinating subject of study and reflection; I should, however, admit to a personal interest in my subject. I have been deeply attached to the poetry of Andal ever since I first encountered it almost a year ago. The path-breaking poetry of Andal forces us, in my view, to confront the widely held but all-too-often infrequently explored presuppositions that inform our understandings of, among other things, devotion, mysticism and the place of the erotic in devotional self-expression. Moreover, the subversive nature of Andal’s life reveal more generally the complex ways in which devotees are often required to negotiate the deeply entrenched social orthodoxies of their milieu in their attempt to express themselves devotionally; this tension between devotionalism and orthodoxy that Andal’s life does an important job of illuminating is in many respects a perennial one that finds expression in all of the major theistically-oriented world religions- I hope to be able to explore the issue in more depth as the post progresses.

Introductory remarks aside, let us now move on to consider Andal’s life in a bit more detail. Before we do so, however, it is important to point out that according to the religious imagination and theological self-understanding of the Sri Vaishnava tradition, Andal and her poetry are not self-standing. As many scholars on Hinduism know, devotional poets were often coopted by religious traditions and communities in an attempt to bolster their own legitimacy and self-standing within the wider community. The religiously competitive and deeply pluralistic nature of Indian society meant that religious communities depended not just on political patronage for their sustenance and development but equally, and perhaps more importantly, on the possession of charismatic or influential figures capable of inspiring commitment and devotion to tradition. Andal doesn’t quite fit into this pattern of religious formation. The sort of co-opting and contrived affiliation that we see with other poets doesn’t seem to have happened with Andal. In order to flesh out Andal’s positioning within the wider community of the Alvars, a few words need to be said about the background of the Alvars and Andal’s place among them.

The Alvars were a tremendously influential group of poet-saints who composed poetry in praise of their beloved Deity, Vishnu (in any one of his innumerable forms). [The word Alvar derives from the Tamil root Al ‘deep’ and the term Alvar ‘one who is immersed in the love of God’ was employed by the Sri Vaishnava community to refer to the twelve poet-saints- See Carman and Narayanan’s ‘The Tamil Veda’.] Unlike the sacred hymns of the Vedas and their corollaries, however, the Alvars wrote and sung in the vernacular. The vernacularization of devotion across the pan-Indian landscape has been the subject of detailed academic study but the important point to note for our purposes is that the Alvars were very much the progenitors of this tradition. This vernacularization of devotion and the bhakti movement that it gave rise to was to have an indelible impact upon the pan-Indian religious landscape. The notion that devotion could be expressed in the mother-tongue, ‘a language continuous with the language of one’s earliest childhood and family, one’s local and folk lore’, and not just in the religious lingua franca of the time (Sanskrit) transformed the nature of religious devotion in the subcontinent and gave rise to an intermingling of cultures and languages, vocabularies and themes whose effects we continue to experience quite palpably today. The Tamil hymns of the Alvar poet-saints (known as the Nalayira Divya Prabhandam) came to be seen by the Sri Vaishnava community as of equal revelatory significance to that of the Sanskrit Vedas. The two-fold Vedanta (Ubhaya Vedanta) that this gave rise to was a tremendously important innovation that was to distinguish the Sri Vaishnava community from its counterparts across the Indian religious landscape. There is much that can be said about the attribution of Vedic authority to the hymns of the Alvars. As interesting as that discussion may be, I don’t want to get into it now. Let us, instead, move on to consider Andal’s place within the Alvar lineage.

Of the twelve Alvars, Andal was the only woman. Later hagiographical developments, however, were to problematize Andal’s positioning within the Alvar lineage. Notwithstanding the vital role that her poetry played (and continues to play) in the religious and ritual imagination of the Sri Vaishnava community, Andal’s eventual apotheosis meant that she had, in some sense, transcended her Alvar affiliation in ways that other Alvars had not. Notwithstanding the ambiguous if also contested nature of Andal’s place within the Alvar lineage, Andal was, historically at least, very much an important part of the devotional milieu of the Tamil bhakti poets. Her poetical compositions display the same intimate familiarity with the conventions of secular Tamil poetry that characterize the Divya Prabhandam as a whole. Moreover, her exclusive devotional focus on Vishnu and the manner in which she expresses her devotion to the Lord’s iconic incarnations (so characteristic a feature of Alvar poetry) very much makes her a part of the Tamil bhakti movement.

Much of what we know of Andal comes to us from two important documentary sources: the Guruparamparaprabhavam 6000 or the ‘6000 Verses on the Splendor of the Succession of the Gurus’ (composed by Pinpalakiya Perumal Jiyar) and the Divyasuricaritam of Garudavahana Pandit. The hagiographical nature of both texts means that it is very difficult to construct a historically verifiable account of the poet’s life. However since my interest here is less in the historicity of Andal and more so on her place in the religious and ritual imagination of the community, this isn’t a problem. The following account of Andal’s life presents the key components of her life story as it is remembered in the Sri Vaishnava tradition.

Born probably in around the 8^th century in Sri Villiputtur, Andal as an infant was found in the flower (Tulasi) garden of Periyalvar (who was himself an Alvar) and was raised and brought up by the latter with great love and paternal affection. As a precocious child, Andal developed an intense yearning to marry God and to live with him in deep, lasting union. Her father, Periyalvar, was responsible for making the flower garlands for ritual offering to the presiding deity of the Sri Villiputtur temple, Lord Visnu. However, unbeknownst to her father, every morning, in a playful enactment of her fantasy as Visnu’s bride, Andal would wear the sacred flower garland that was meant exclusively for the Lord’s pleasure. One morning however, her father ‘caught her in the act, chastised her for the ritual transgression, and refrained from offering the polluted garland to the deity in the local temple.’ However, to his astonishment, Visnu appeared in a dream that night to Periyalvar and made clear his displeasure at not being offered Andal’s worn and used garland. [This famous episode, which forms the centerpiece of most Andal narratives, earned the poet the famous epithet cutikotuttanacciyar (meaning the ‘lady who gave what she had worn’)] The revelation notwithstanding, Periyalvar remained oblivious to his daughter’s increasingly intense desire to achieve union with the Lord. As Andal reached marriageable age, Periyalvar’s mind naturally turned to the issue of his daughter’s marriage: Andal, however, would have none of it. She vociferously ‘rejected the idea of marriage with a mere mortal: her womanhood was to be dedicated to none other than Visnu. According to the hagiographies, it was at this time that Andal produced her famous poetical compositions: the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli. I will explore both of these compositions in greater detail as the post progresses.

Before I progress with Andal’s life story, it is important to say a few words about the notion of iconic-incarnation as it is understood in the Sri Vaishnava tradition, especially since the former forms an important part of the narrative focus of Andal’s life. According to Sri Vaishnava theology, the Supreme Lord makes himself tangibly present in various iconic-incarnations in response to the requests of his most intimate devotees. These famous iconic-incarnations are considered to be real, embodied manifestations of the Deity: they express and concretize God’s redemptive power and grace and speak to the extent to which the Lord can go to make himself accessible to his devotees. In fact these iconic incarnations are regarded as the ultimate in God’s descent, entailing as they do the apparent diminishment of the Lord to a level even lower than that of his devotees. The particular sites of these divine manifestations are especially sacred to the Sri Vaishnava tradition and are known by the name ‘divya desams’ (literally, divine abodes). These forms of the Lord have their own interesting personal histories that are invariably related to either the more famous pan-Indian Hindu epic narratives or to more sectarian Sri Vaishnava tales. Much, much more could be written about the theology underpinning the devotional notion of iconic-incarnation (or archa-avatara) but for our purposes, this much is enough (of course, I should also point out that I have written an earlier blog post on the topic of image worship in Hinduism and so readers interested in the subject are advised to consult that post).

As Andal’s days passed in increasing absorption in her beloved Lord, Periyalvar’s understanding of his daughter’s predicament developed. He inquired from her as to which form of the Lord she particularly desired. In response to his daughter’s request, Periyalvar sung of the glory and deeds of the Lord in each of his forms. As Andal listened rapturously, her love for the Lord of Sri Rangam (one of the most famous iconic-incarnations) intensified. Andal’s resolute commitment to Ranganatha (the Lord of Sri Rangam) concerned Periyalvar who became increasingly anxious about his daughter’s future. However, gracious as he is, the Lord appeared (yet again) in a dream to Peryialvar, assuaging the father’s deep concern and assuring him that he would accept Andal as his bride. The hagiographies indicate that the Lord himself arranged for Andal to be brought from Sri Villiputur to Sri Rangam for the sacred marriage. Indeed, it is said that when the bridal procession eventually arrived at the sanctum of Ranganatha, Andal emerged from the palanquin and after embracing the feet of her beloved Lord, merged into the divine iconic-incarnation. Her union with the Lord, after much agony and anguish, had been finally consummated.

Now, what are we to make of this wonderful story? The question of the historicity of the events related above are not my concern here; indeed, the only real historical evidence that we have regarding the life of Andal is the internal evidence of her poems. In terms of their historical content, these poems do not give us much to work with. However, in terms of their theological and mystical content, these poems constitute a veritable repository of devotional themes and motifs that help illuminate Andal’s (and by extension, the Sri Vaishnava tradition’s) understanding of devotion, separation from and union with God, and the place of the erotic in devotional expression. Before I go on to reflect more deeply on Andal’s mysticism, let us take a closer look at the main themes of her two poems, the Tiruppavai and the Nacciyar Tirumoli.

Andal’s Tiruppavai occupies an incredibly important role in the ritual and theological imagination of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. As its title (pavai) indicates, the poem is structured on and around a famous religious rite (vrta) observed in South India (but also across certain sections of North India) by aspiring brides during the sacred autumnal month of Margasirsa. The purpose of the rite is to secure for the aspiring bride an ideal husband. The Tiruppavai is, if you like, Andal’s own imaginative reenactment of the rite in which she herself becomes a participant in the ritual. Of course, here though, her desire is not so much to secure an ideal (mortal) husband, as it is to secure the Lord himself as her groom. As an aside, it should be pointed out that the pavai ritual is featured in the Bhagavata Purana as well, all be in it in a slightly different form. There the cowherd maidens (gopis) construct and propitiate Katyayani’s sand image on the banks of the sacred Yamuna river. The pavai ritual’s defining moment, as it were, is the predawn ritual communal bathing that precedes the propitiation proper. All of the ritual motifs that are present in Andal’s pavai reenactment are rich with symbolic and theological meaning; these are brought out expertly in the commentaries that were written on the text. Dissecting the poem here would render this blog post inordinately lengthy but in my subsequent posts I hope to be able to go through each stanza of the poem in more detail, looking closely at the way the poem features liturgically and theologically in the imagination of the Sri Vaishnava tradition.

Andal’s poetry forces us to confront the question of the use of the erotic in devotional expression. Before we dive deeper into Andal’s idiosyncratic use of erotic imagery in her poetry, it would be useful to abstract from Andal’s particular context a little and say something more generally about the issues at hand. The devotional use of the erotic sentiment is of course, not a distinctly Hindu phenomenon. Every major theistically oriented world religion contains within itself certain traditions or mystics who have taken recourse to erotic imagery in their articulation of the relationship between God and man. I think that the reason why sexual imagery features so prominently in such articulations is because it is, in some sense, the most effective means by which to articulate something of the passion and intensity that is entailed in a deeply intimate union with God.

When poets and theologians speak and write of ‘transcendental issues’ they employ secular vocabularies, idioms and themes that are broadly well understood among the laity- to shed light on the unfamiliar we take recourse to the familiar. This is how we make intelligible issues that are otherwise overly esoteric in their scope and comprehension. I think that something very similar happens in the poetry of the great mystics. Their task is to invite us all to share with them the deep and profound religious experiences that animate and sustain their lives. But of course the more intimate and esoteric one’s relationship with God the more ineffable it becomes- ineffability, however, is a problem for those who wish to say something about the nature and the depth of their religious experiences. So what do they do? Well, [many of them] they take recourse to the erotic imagery of our world because that comes closest to approximating something of the intensity, passion and deep and enduring intimacy that characterize their relationship to God.

Think for example of the use of alcohol or wine in the poetry of the Sufi saints. They find themselves so deeply immersed in God that they wish to express something of that experience. But how do you go about doing that. This is where the metaphor of intoxication becomes important. To help those of us who lack intuitive insight into the divine reality and the effects of ‘drowning in it’, the Sufi mystics employ the imagery of alcohol and intoxication since it helps to convey, didactically at least, something of what is involved in the experience of monistic union with (or in) God. It is also what helps to explain, for example, Omar Khayyam’s remarkable statement in his Rubaiyat: ‘I will leave all reason and religion behind, and take the maidenhead of wine for mine’. Or better still: ‘Piety and moral goodness have naught to do with ecstasy; stain your prayer rug with wine! (Hafiz)’.

Looks can, of course, be deceiving. It is vitally important not to lose sight of the fact that there are profound philosophical strategies at play in the poems and other such compositions of the great mystics. I want to telescope back into the Indian traditions in this part of my discussion since it is the area that I am most familiar with. Moreover, even though my preceding two paragraphs focus generally on the employment and use of secular themes and imageries in devotional expression, let me move this discussion back into the primary subject matter of this blog post: the use particularly of the erotic in devotion.

The non-carnal nature of the erotic themes that we find, for example, in the poems of Andal, is best brought out by reflecting theologically and philosophically on the role that love for God plays in the theology of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. According to Sri Vaishnava theology, the individual soul is utterly and existentially dependent on God; this relationship of dependence that obtains between the individual soul and God indicates that the former exists solely for the pleasure of the latter. Why is it that in so many of their poems, the Alvars conceive of themselves as consorts of God? Well, the ‘consort-hood’ concept, I would argue, brings out important themes that critically underpin the devotional experience involved in relating to God as a servant. For example, the notion of being absolutely dependent on God, of being firm in the decision to serve none but God and the conviction that God is the most enjoyable object of devotion and love are all effectively personified in the consorthood concept; and yet all equally signify the defining characteristics of the experience of ‘servitude to God’. In other words, what I am trying to say here is that assuming the guise of a consort of God acts as a particularly effective means by which to draw attention to the defining characteristics of our relationship with God. What appears to be a poetic device then becomes on closer inspection an incredibly effective theological strategy that it enables the poet to speak meaningfully (if also didactically) about the experience of God. The conjugality of the poems, then, function as symbols that are expressive of the deep, mutual and passionate attachment that the individual soul has for God.

For the sake of clarification let me be clear that I am not suggesting that poets like Andal are best understood as theological strategists, creatively and intentionally crafting poems that work didactically for the benefit of the religious community of which they are a part. Andal’s poetry is, in the first instance, a spontaneous expression of her deep, intimate love for God. There is, I would argue, little that is calculated about the way she sings or expresses herself. However, her employment of certain guises or ritual motifs are best understood when the theological parameters that implicitly structure her poetry (and her tradition’s understanding of her poetry] are made clear and explicit. This requires a detailed analysis of the ways in which Andal’s poetry makes use or relies upon theological assumptions that inform devotional expression more generally in the Indian religious context.

As a starting point, it needs to be pointed out that Andal’s yearning for the Lord, which in her poetry tends to be expressed in overtly erotic vocabulary, represents, more theologically, an estranged soul’s longing for reunion with the Lord. This intense yearning and longing that Andal experiences is expressed in deeply poignant fashion in her Nacciyar Tirumoli, a poetic composition of 143 verses wherein Andal, in the guise of a gopi in love with Krishna, implores the Lord to consummate her desire for union with him. In a remarkably touching passage, Andal declares, again, in deeply erotic language, the complete offering of herself to God: ‘My voluptuous breasts swell for that lord alone. [If there is even talk of offering my body to mortal men, then I cannot live. It is equal in violence to a forest jackal stealthily entering and sniffing at the sacrificial food the learned Brahmins [] offer the gods in heaven.] Andal’s breasts here symbolize the poet’s femininity or womanhood: it is this that she has offered to her Lord. In other words, here Andal offers her most intimate possession, the attribute that arguably defines the most, to God, thereby affirming that she exists solely for the Lord’s pleasure and not for the use or pleasure of ‘mortal men’.

While experiencing anguish born out of separation from the Lord, Andal often seeks to convey her feelings of grief through birds and objects of nature as messengers. This of course is a poetical strategy quite common to the kavya genre of Indian literature; Kalidasa’s Meghaduta, for example, is arguably one of the finest examples of that rhetorical strategy at work. According to tradition, however, these various objects employed by Andal and other such Alvars represent the spiritual preceptors who act as mediators in between God and the individual soul. These preceptors assist the faithful by pleading on their behalf to secure divine grace.

In the preceding paragraphs I sought to demonstrate, if only very briefly, the myriad ways in which theistic mysticisms are structured. Interestingly, Andal’s mysticism is distinguished from that of other Alvars since the former did not need to adopt the voice of the lover of God: she was the lover of God. Again this goes back to the theological self-understanding of Andal within the Sri Vaishnava tradition: as an avatara or incarnation of Bhudevi, Andal’s relationship with the lord is the relationship towards which all devotees aspire, it is, to put it another way, representative of the ontological relationship that all individuals have with God.

Earlier I alluded to the tensions that often exist between devotion and social orthodoxy. The question can be raised, to what extent (if any at all) is Andal’s mysticism of socio-political consequence? This brings me back to the various hagiographical developments that Andal was made to undergo. As her hagiographies developed, Andal was transmogrified into an ideal mystic; the ‘idealism’ of her mysticism and her dual status as mystic-goddess essentially meant that her poetry was prevented from being construed in socio-political terms. The domestication of Andal in the process of universalizing her importance is expressed brilliantly by Vasudha Narayanan:

‘Every Sri Vaishnava bride is dressed like Andal and during wedding rituals, a particular set of songs in which Andal describes her dream in which she gets married to Lord Vishnu is recited. In one sense, the human bride is likened to Andal; but the theological explanation is that all human beings- the bride, the bridegroom, and the guests- ought to be like Andal, all devotees of the Lord. While this theme of Andal as paradigmatic devotee is unquestioned, it seems to me that the Sri Vaishnava community subscribes only to selective imitation of certain features of Andal’s life. What is important to note here is that the community has avoided the issue of making Andal a social or dharmic role model, and has instead opted to make her a theological model or model of one who seeks moksha; she then becomes a model for all human beings. Thus, the Sri Vaishnava community, does not encourage young girls to socially imitate Andal’s life; that is, girls are not encouraged to be unmarried and dedicate their lives to the Lord. Andal’s rejection of marriage and her subsequent union with the Lord is seen as a unique event and as suitable only for her’.