ePub Hindu Christian Faqir: Modern Monks; Global Christianity; and Indian Sainthood (AAR Religion; Culture; and History) by Timothy S. Dobe in History

Description

In the mid-nineteenth century; the American missionary James Butler predicted that Christian conversion and British law together would eradicate Indian ascetics. His disgust for Hindu holy men (sadhus); whom he called "saints;" "yogis;" and "filthy fakirs;" was largely shared by orientalist scholars and British officials; who likewise imagined these religious elites to be a leading symptom of India's degeneration. Yet within some thirty years of Butler's writing; modern Indian ascetics such as the neo-Vedantin Hindu Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) and; paradoxically; the Protestant Christian convert Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929) achieved international fame as embodiments of the spiritual superiority of the East over the West.Timothy S. Dobe's fine-grained account of the lives of Sundar Singh and Rama Tirtha offers a window on the surprising reversals and potentials of Indian ascetic "sainthood" in the colonial contact zone. His study develops a new model of Indian holy men that is historicized; religiously pluralistic; and located within the tensions and intersections of ascetic practice and modernity. The first in-depth account of two internationally-recognized modern holy men in the colonially-crucial region of Punjab; Hindu Christian Faqir offers new examples and contexts for thinking through these wider issues. Drawing on unexplored Urdu writings by and about both figures; Dobe argues not only that Hinduism and Protestant Christianity are here intimately linked; but that these links are forged from the stuff of regional Islamic traditions of Sufi holy men (faqir). He also re-conceives Indian sainthood through an in-depth examination of ascetic practice as embodied religion; public performance; and relationship; rather than as a theological; otherworldly; and isolated ideal.