A tale of two Hindu sects

A scholar explores why two 18th century movements challenging key tenets of Hindu worship face very different fates in modern India

In the first half of the eighteenth century, India was witness to two significant developments that over the next many years would leave a deep mark on the evolution of the Hindu religion.

In 1802, the Saurashtra region saw the birth of a new Hindu religious sect — Swaminarayan Sampraday — which under the leadership of Sahajanand Swami departed from Hindu rituals and other caste-based practices. Instead of subscribing to Hindu beliefs, it reposed complete faith in the supremacy of the self that personified god.

A few decades later, a new religious movement grew roots in Bengal, branching away from the traditional Hindu tenets of worshipping god. Founded by social reformer, Raja Rammohun Roy, the Brahmo Samaj did not accept the authority of the Vedas, denounced polytheism and rejected the idea of incarnations, caste system and Hindu rituals such as image worship.

Swami and Roy were contemporaries. Born in 1781, Swami spent most of his life in Gujarat leading the life of an ascetic and floating Swaminarayan Sampraday. Swami, whose name was embedded in the very name of the movement he had steered, died in 1830.

Roy was born in 1772 in Bengal and lived there for most of his life. Apart from launching the Brahmo Samaj, Roy also did some pioneering work in facilitating the spread of a modern education system in Bengal, promoting the use of English and implementing reforms in many socio-religious practices among the Hindus. Roy died in 1833 while he was on a visit to England.

What set the two sects apart, however, was not just the fact of their inception in two different parts of the country, but the different trajectories of growth and following they commanded. One was nurtured in Gujarat and the other in Bengal, but both had broadly similar objectives of ridding Hindu religion of its regressive practices and rituals.

But while Swaminarayan Sampraday remained largely confined to Gujarat and later spread to other parts of the world among Gujaratis settled in Africa and later in the United States, Brahmo Samaj built a strong following among the Bengali elite, largely because of Roy’s extensive work in this area, as a result of which many historians describe him as the father of Bengal Renaissance.

In his latest book, Hinduism Before Reform, Brian A Hatcher, a professor of theology at Tufts University, notes these similarities and differences in the lives and works of Swami and Roy. What intrigues him is the absence of any authentic comparative study to examine these two similar movements with different trajectories.

The followers of Brahmo Samaj quickly became a social and literary force in Bengal and, indeed, in India before independence. Significantly, the British colonial rulers were often helpful in the Samaj’s movement for the emancipation of women or the demand for the abolition of many backward practices such as sati. In contrast, the Sampraday suffered from relative obscurity during the British raj till it gained some salience in Kenya and the US through the non-resident Gujarati population in those countries.

This is a puzzle that Hatcher poses at the very start of his book. What intrigues him more is how the Sampraday has revived itself in the last few decades, riding perhaps on the ascendancy of Hindutva-led politics in India, and how Brahmo Samaj has over the years lost its relevance and robustness and appeal among its followers. 

Hatcher's central premise is that the apparent failure to track and analyse the journey of these two movements can be traced to the historians' obsession with judging religious movements through the prism of reforms. With the help of painstaking research and citations from a range of books and erudite commentaries, Hatcher shows that judging the success or failure of such religious sects on the touchstone of reforms can give rise to flawed narratives.

Hinduism Before Reform

Author: Brian A Hatcher

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Pages: 322+XII    

Price: Rs 699

Worse, the author argues, the commentary on the two sects could be easily biased by considerations of how the reforms were perceived and endorsed by the ruling establishments of the time. Thus, the reforms halo around Brahmo Samaj might have been overblown because this suited the British rulers at that time, just as the Sampraday did not receive a similar generous treatment.  

Having provided extensive citations from different authors to substantiate his thesis on the problematic dependence on reforms to understand such religious movements, Hatcher goes on to underline the need for a different model for assessing these sects. This, he argues, would help in gaining a more enlightened understanding of how Brahmo Samaj has faded into relative insignificance in the last few decades, whereas Swaminarayan Sampraday has seen a resurgence not just in the US, but also in India, where Hindutva-led politics has become a dominant force.

The author believes that there is an urgent need to reframe the general understanding of both the Sampraday and the Samaj, neither of which was more modern than the other. There is need for new comparative perspectives on the two sects, which the author hopes will be a better tool to explain the "ongoing inequities and injustices India faces in terms of religion, caste, class, gender, and sexuality".

This is an academic book that raises important questions on how the reform movements in Hinduism should be studied. Readers would have gained more if the author had dwelt a little more on the contours of the new model that he considers necessary for a more informed understanding of the two religious movements.

While the academic rigour and the deep research that informed the author's analysis are major strengths of the book, its accessibility in terms of the ease of reading is an area that needed closer attention. A re-evaluation of Swaminarayan Sampraday and Brahmo Samaj could have been a fascinating account. If Hatcher had written this book for the ordinary readers, and not the academics as his writing style would suggest, his publishers would have been able to sell a few more copies of this book.