Kālī’s problem child: Another look at Jeffrey Kripal’s study of Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa

Kālā's Problem Child: Another Look at Jeffrey Kripal's Study of Śrī RāmakṛṣṇaAuthor(s): Brian A. HatcherSource: International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Aug., 1999), pp. 165-182Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20106648Accessed: 26-12-2016 21:49 UTC

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Kali's problem child: Another look at Jeffrey KripaFs study of Sri R?makr?na

Brian A. Hatcher

TALKING RAMAK???? A

Not too long ago I was sitting around a friend's living room in Calcutta on a quiet Sunday afternoon. With me was one of my students, who had accompanied me to India to try to learn about Sri R?makrsna Paramaharnsa. There were several of us, including another university professor, a novelist, a couple physicians, and a journalist; admittedly not a representative cross-section of Calcuttan society but a well-read and loquacious group to be sure. We were being fed sumptuously by my friend's mother and engaging in that greatest of

Bengali pastimes?conversation. Given the nature of my student's project and the energy of the group, it was not long before conversation turned to the topic

of Jeffrey KripaTs controversial book, K?lVs child.1

Most of the people in the room were familiar with the book, since not long before there had been a scathing review of the book and a welter of angry correspondence in the pages of Calcutta's major English daily, the Statesman. Judging from those reviews, one would have thought Kail's child had to be right up there with Lady Chatterly's lover. Still, there were at least a couple people present who asked to be brought up to speed on the subject. As it turned out, before either my student or I could step in to summarize KripaTs thesis, one of the other Bengali guests jumped in with a rather slapdash summary, namely, Kripal had argued that R?makrsna's mystical experiences and devotion to the goddess Kali needed to be understood against the background of the saint's anguished homoerotic sexual experiences. Upon hearing this, one of the physicians dropped back in his easy chair and

gave out a belly laugh. "What a marvelous idea!,' he cried, or something to that

International Journal of Hindu Studies 3, 2 (August 1999): 165-82 ? 1999 by the World Heritage Press Inc.


166 / Brian A. Hatcher

effect (we were not exactly transcribing the conversation). It was a memorable, if

low-key, moment. Having seen all the uproar in the Statesman and having read a number of other reviews in which Kripal had been faulted for insensitivity at best, or callow sensationalism at worst, it came as a relief to find that Bengalis might not lash out in anger at the mere mention of the book, let alone its argument. As we continued to talk, our Bengali friends played the thesis off what they knew of R?makrcna, commenting not only on how plausible it seemed but also on how welcome such an approach was. Oh sure, they had questions for Kripal?for instance, 'What could it mean to speak of homosexual behavior in R?makrsna's world?'?but there was no defensiveness and certainly

no outraged Bengali pride. Yet, as I say, this has not always been the case. In light of the wildly varying

responses to Kripal's book, it may be worthwhile to consider some of the issues surrounding its critical reception. This seems an especially timely thing to do, considering a revised second edition is now available (see Kripal 1998a). More importantly, the debates and diatribes triggered by the publication of K?Ws child in 1995 raise important questions for historians, comparativists, and scholars of religion. My goals in writing this essay will, therefore, be to call attention to the challenge posed by Kripal's research; to sample the extensive review literature surrounding Kail's child, with an eye to adjudicating the fairness and/or accuracy of some of the more important criticisms leveled at the

book; and, finally, to offer my own critical assessment of Kripal's work.

WHAT KRIPAL WAS UP AGAINST

At the outset it seems only fair to acknowledge with Kripal that R?makrcna was indeed 'Kali's child.' R?makr?na's own words attest to this fact; popular imagery and calendar art assume it; scholars have convincingly demonstrated it.

Anyone who has experienced Calcutta is bound to be familiar with some image of R?makrsna in rapt devotion before his divine mother. In fact, during that same visit to Calcutta I grew accustomed to seeing a calendar on the wall in the local post office that depicted R?makrcna in blissful sam?dhi, bathed in a ray of light which shone down on him from Kali's third eye. It was by no means an atypical rendering of the saint; it is common, for instance, to find R?makrsna and the goddess posing together in the images that are made for the annual celebration of Kali P?j?. Yet, as many can no doubt attest?and my student quickly discovered?if

one visits an institution like the R?makrsna Mission Institute of Culture in


Kali's problem child I 167

Calcutta's Gol Park, one seems to enter another world altogether. Here one might expect to find the concrete institutional confirmation of R?makrsna's relationship with Kali. Instead, the divine mother's presence is barely felt?that is, unless one substitutes the figure of R?makrsna's earthly consort, Sri S?rad?

Devi, who is now known simply as Sri M?, the 'holy mother.'2 In the foyer of the R?makrsna Institute the triumvirate of R?makrsna, Vivek?nanda, and S?rad?

M? gaze down on the passing crowds. One has to look hard to find Kali.3 Considering the squeaky clean ambiance of the Order's properties?a

comparison of the bustling Kali temple at Dakshineshwar with the Order's immaculate Matha at Belur provides striking testimony to the almost compulsive cleanliness of the R?makrsna folks?and the absence of any iconic references

to the dark goddess, one might be forgiven for suggesting that the monks and devoted laypeople within the Order have thrown the mother out with the bath water. One takes a certain pity on the orphaned R?makrsna, packed off to

the stern and orderly confines of the Order. And 'order' does seem to be the operative word. Indeed, the emphasis on order that pervades an establishment like the R?makrsna Institute or a temple precinct like that at Belur seems to reflect not the emotionally charged relationship between mother and child but

the more sober responsibilities of a legal guardian. It is as if Kali's child has become the ward of a benevolent, if somewhat straight-laced, father.

We might call this new father Master Ved?nta. When he dons his saffron robes to minister to the sick and needy or deliver discourses on ultimate reality,

he is not without compassion and spiritual warmth, to be sure. But even so, there is little in the Master's house that evokes the 'mansion of fun' in which

R?makrsna so often claimed to live.4 Instead, the man-making religion of Sv?m? Vivek?nanda and his followers has created the religious equivalent of a respectable Victorian home?a space in which the weaknesses and irrationalities of religion have been swept from the parlor. All is quiet; everything has been put to rights. One begins to suspect, as I think my student did after his first few visits to Gol Park, that if R?makrsna was Kali's child, there are some who have

found him to be a problem child as well.

One of the more problematic aspects of the saint's life is highlighted by asking whether R?makrsna was in fact the modern avat?ra of nondual Ved?nta (as the Order would have it appear) or whether he is better described as a Tantric

devotee of the goddess Kali. This question has been asked many times before, and most will agree that it has been satisfactorily answered, at least since Walter

Neevel's (1976) illuminating analysis (see also Olson 1990). Again, the answer seems to be that R?makrsna was definitely Kali's child.5 Yet, the very fact that scholars continue to remind us that R?makrcna was more of a Tantric devotee than an Advaitin is enough to make us aware of the degree to which some have



attempted to 'reform' the problem child. This should suggest just how dicey it can be to write about R?makrsna.

We must bear this in mind when picking up a book like Kripal's, recognizing what it takes to attempt a critical or revisionist assessment of issues at the very

core of the R?makrsna movement. If the metaphor will be pardoned, to read a book like Kail's child is to stand with the author at the bottom of a hill, the

flanks of which are heavily guarded. If one is going to join Kripal in his work, one is going to have to join in an uphill battle. Every inch of ground will be contested. Even if one should make it to the top of the hill, one is sure to meet

at least one more resolute defender, who will send him tumbling head over heals

with a resounding cry of 'neti, netV In its zeal to take the Upani?ads, and not the Tantras, as its foundational

texts, the R?makrsna Order might well have adopted the famous words of the sage Yaj?avalkya, '/ /i, netV (not this, not this), as a kind of unofficial motto.6

As the quintessential apophatic reply to any metaphysical question, 'neti, netV accurately conveys the Order's resolute adoption of the nondual philosophy of Ved?nta. While the Order recognizes the devotional path, which acknowledges the world by saying 'this, this' (iti, iti), it is nevertheless clear that accepted doctrine holds the ultimate goal of devotion to be the nondual state of awareness known as nirvikalpa-sam?dhi (see S?rad?nanda 1996, 1: 13-17). Not surpris ingly, any attempt to foreground the fact of R?makrcna's powerful Tantric devotion to the mother will be met with the denial: 'not this, not this.'

However, no amount of denial can change the fact that R?makrcna endorsed a decidedly un-Ved?ntic view of reality. R?makrcna lived in a Tantric world, and everything in that world, in that mansion of fun, reflected the glory of the

goddess. And his enjoyment of this Tantric vision of reality led him to repeat edly reject the Ved?ntic 'neri, netV (see Gupta 1987, 1: 46, 3: 77,4: 34, 244).

I am not saying revisionism is always right; nor am I saying that to assert what the Order denies is to gain the advantage of the truth. I am simply pointing

to the incredible challenge and frustration of getting one's arguments heard, when confronting a century-old institution whose origins amid the vortex of colonial power/knowledge and nascent nationalism more than account for its curious philosophy of dogmatic toleration and inflexible apologetic.7 Clearly there was (and still is) a great deal more at stake in the Order's posture than theology or metaphysics. The followers of R?makrsna are not just touting a s?dhana, they are defining and defending a cultural tradition. For better or worse, the linchpin for that defense is the figure of a rather crude, if charismatic,

mystic. If one were to discover that what made this mystic function were the esoteric

practices of Hindu Tantra and the dynamics of homoerotic desire, one had better



believe one's research will be of more than historical interest to anyone remotely

sympathetic to R?makrsna and the R?makrsna movement (which amounts to a large part of the population of Bengal and many, many more throughout India

and the world). To borrow the terminology used so effectively by Kripal, one is

now threatening to reveal a secret that has been kept carefully guarded for a century.

WHAT SCHOLARS HAVE SAID ABOUT K?WS CHILD

For those of us in the academy?for those of us who see the validity and value within the academic study of religion?it probably is not a question of whether Kripal has any business mounting his charge but a question of how he should conduct his campaign. No matter what image of R?makrsna we happen to favor,

the answer should nevertheless be one we can all agree on: he should proceed on

the basis of thorough and painstaking spadework, which will include a mastery

of the relevant sources in their original languages and the attempt to situate those sources in their broader sociocultural and historical context; he should

apply a clear and coherent research methodology (or set of methodologies); he should be cautious in his weighing of the hermen?utica! issues at stake; and, he

should be honest and humble enough to consider alternative explanations and points of view.

It would be difficult to fault Kripal for being ignorant of these goals or for failing to meet the general demands they place upon him as a scholar and an author. As a glance at the reviews will show, Kail's child has been praised by scholars of religion (see Haberman 1997; Parsons 1997) and by experts on South Asian culture more generally (see Radice 1998; Vaidyanathan 1997). Granted, some of these reviewers have their misgivings?and later in this essay I will raise one of my own?but their overall verdict has been an approving, and

at times highly laudatory, one. However, there have been scholars who have taken issue with, even offense at,

Kripal's book. While I cannot inventory all of their concerns and objections, it may prove instructive to consider some of them. We shall see that these scholars

and critics raise important issues of methodology and interpretation. One is struck by how many critics have claimed Kripal lacks an authoritative

grasp of the Bengali language that would allow him to effectively support his claims. It is commonly asserted that he has misunderstood at best, or deliber

ately mistranslated at worst, basic Bengali concepts (see ?tmajn?n?nanda 1997; Oppenshaw 1995; Ray 1997; Vrajaprana 1997). Indeed, in his review of Kail's



child, ?tmajn?n?nanda goes so far as to say that Kripal 'has no working knowl edge of the Bengali language or familiarity with the original sources' (1997: 400). While both assertions are inaccurate, as I hope even this brief essay will demonstrate, ?tmajn?n?nanda was not without grounds in calling into question some of Kripal's choices. For instance, he was correct to find fault with Kripal's

decision to translate the Bengali mag (wife) as 'bitch' (?tmajn?n?nanda 1997: 405). Kripal has subsequently conceded the point; in the second edition he asks his readers to view it as 'a perfectly honest mistake' (1998a: xix).8

What bears noting, however, is not simply the fact that Kripal has attempted to correct many such errors in the second edition. More importantly, he

maintains that none of these errors have 'had any significant bearing' on his overall thesis (Kripal 1998: xx).

Perhaps in light of such criticism it is worth looking at the central Bengali text?Mahendranath Gupta's Erlirir?makrsnakath?mrta?to satisfy ourselves not only that Kripal is familiar with the text but also that he renders accurately what he finds there. Let us take a look, in fact, at a passage that appears to feature that troublesome word, 'penis.'9 In the Kath?mrta, R?makr?na is reported by Gupta (or 'M' as he is known) to have been discussing some of his Tantric practice. R?makrsna tells those gathered around him:

beltal?y anek tantrer s?dhan hayechila. mad?r m?th? niye. ?b?r...?san. b?mnl sab yogad ka 'rto.

(haripader dike agrasar haiy?)?sei avasth?y cheleder dhan, phul-candan diye p?j? n? ka'rle th?kte p?rt?m na (Gupta 1987,4: 232).

I render this passage into English as:

I used to practice Tantra at the foot of the Bel tree using human skulls and...postures. The Br?hmana woman [Bhairav?] made all the arrangements.

(Moving toward Haripad)?In that condition I could not resist worshipping the penises of boys with flowers and sandalwood paste.

While Kripal only summarizes most of this passage, his rendering of the last? and most intriguing?line is virtually the same as my own: 'In that state I couldn't help but worship the little penises of boys with sandal-paste and flowers' (1998a: 161).

It is hard to quibble with this.10 More fruitful, surely, is the question just what R?makr?na is telling his disciples?especially in light of the fact that on the preceding page R?makrsna speaks of playing with the penis (dhan) of a naked man who appeared to him in a vision.


Kail's problem child I 171

Consider how Sv?mi Nikhil?nanda, who was responsible for translating the Kath?mrta into English as The gospel of ?rl R?makrsna, renders the passage about R?makrsna's practices under the Bel tree:

Under the Bel tree.. .1 practised the various sadhanas prescribed in the Tantra. I needed many articles?human skulls, and so forth and so on. The Brahmani used to collect these things for me. I practised a number of mystic postures (1996: 814).

There is no mention here of boy's penises nor earlier of the penis of the naked man.

This brief translation exercise is enough to suggest the sense of discovery Kripal must have felt upon reading the Kath?mrta. Indeed, far from nit-picking

about a few excusable errors, we should thank Kripal for making the Bengali text come alive for English-language readers in a way it never has before. For those with a knowledge of Bengali, I can acknowledge here that it is a delight to read Kail's child with the five-volumes of the Kath?mrta by one's side; again and again we are sent into the text to share with Kripal the sense of surprise and discovery.

One can certainly understand why it seemed to Kripal that there were secrets in the Kath?mrta, hitherto unbeknownst to countless English-speaking scholars

and devotees. One of the most intriguing things Kripal noticed was that R?makrsna often designated some of his utterances as being 'secret' (guhya) or 'extremely secret' (atiguhya). Kripal refers to these passages as the 'secret talk'

passages. As he spells out in an appendix, there are eighteen of such passages, if

one includes under this rubric only those passages in which the phrase guhya kath? (secret talk) occurs.

Now the question has been raised?though not necessarily answered in the affirmative?whether Kripal has merely taken a handful of the more outrageous of R?makrsna's sayings and blown their significance out of proportion (see Radice 1998). Certainly Kripal gives a degree of prominence to these 'secret talk' passages in the Kath?mrta. But it needs to be noted that

the weight of Kripal's thesis does not fall solely on these passages. These passages allow Kripal to develop the hermen?utica! key that unlocks the mystery of the entire Kath?mrta. The idea is that once one has become aware of the

content of these secret talk passages, it casts the remainder of R?makrsna's experiences and teachings in a new light. Kail's child is not simply about eighteen strange passages in Bengali; rather, it is an attempt to read the Kath?mrta in light of a hermeneutic developed with those passages in mind.



Before turning to the question of his hermeneutic, it should be noted that one

of the tools Kripal uses to unravel these controversial 'secret talk' passages comes to him in the form of Tantric Hinduism. It will hardly be surprising to find that some have suggested that Kripal might have benefited from a better grasp of the nuances of Tantric philosophy and practice (see Padoux 1996). Yet it is hard to see what nuances are lacking. If anything, one might say that it was

precisely his sensitivity to the dynamics of Tantric practice that led Kripal to his discovery. Certainly there have been those, such as David Haberman, who have concluded: 'A major contribution of the book is a fairly detailed picture of a particular and lived understanding of Hindu Tantra that promises to flesh out the

more textual and ideal representation found in most books on Tantra' (1997: 532).

The other tool Kripal brings to bear on these secret talk passages is psycho analysis. Perhaps it is not surprising to learn that there have been critics of Kripal's psychoanalytic reading of the saint. Most noticeable have been the cries of 'reductionism' that have been heard from several quarters. Among the reviewers who have leveled this charge, there have been those who have urged Kripal simply to give more thought to competing ways of reading the literature on the saint (see Larson 1997; Radice 1998; Ray 1997). However, there have also been those who have used the alleged fact of his reductionism to condemn his interpretation outright (see Sil 1997; Vrajaprana 1997).

Among the latter, Narasingha SU's (1997) ad hominem attack on Kripal in the pages of Calcutta's Statesman was downright rancorous (see also 1998b). In his most recent work on R?makrsna, Sil states that he has no time for what he calls

Kripal's 'ludicrous' display of 'psychoanalytic mumbojumbo' (1998a: 99). In the same work, however, Sil admits that 'It is difficult not to admire Kripal's imaginative and ingenious treatment of Ramakrishna' (1998a: 6). This from the scholar who announced in the pages of the Statesman that the best Kripal could

serve up for all his imaginative research was a dish of 'plain shit.' Interestingly, this was not the verdict of William Parsons (1997), who has

compared Kripal's book with Sil's R?makrsna Paramahamsa (1991) in a review essay dedicated to recent works that have attempted psychoanalytic readings of R?makrsna. Parsons' reading of both Kripal and Sil is sensitive and sympathetic. While Parsons does not contest Sil's grasp of psychoanalytic theory, he ironically finds his approach to be a textbook example of Freudian reductionism. Sil's R?makrsna is summed up by Parsons as 'infantile, anti social, vulgar, and crude' (1997: 355). According to Parsons, Kripal's book offers the best antidote to such a reductionist dismissal of R?makrsna. He goes as far as to say that Kail's child should be 'required reading for psychologists and comparativists alike' (Parsons 1997: 359; see also 1999). All in all,


K?Ws problem child I 173

Parson's essay provides excellent grounds for taking Kripal's work seriously as announcing a new paradigm for the psychoanalytic study of mysticism, one which explicitly attempts to avoid reductionist readings.

Similar issues have been at stake in the more protracted public conversation between Kripal and Gerald Larson, who wrote a review essay in which he praised Kail's child for revealing to us 'an important dimension of the manner in which sexual fantasies, and especially homosexual fantasies, relate to our understanding of the mystical and/or religious experience of Sri Ramakrishna'

(1997: 658). However, having said this, Larson went on immediately to add that Kripal was nevertheless guilty of a species of 'monocausal reductionism' (1997: 658). According to Larson, Kripal's argument is that everything about R?makrsna can be understood in terms of the saint's frustrated homoerotic

impulses. Larson quotes Kripal (1995: 322) to the effect that 'without the conflicted energies of the saint's homosexual desires...there would have been no "Ramakrishna" ' (Larson 1997: 659; see also Ray 1997:101).

Two concerns immediately arise: (0 has Larson provided a fair and accurate summary of Kripal's position?, and (ii) if so, is the reductionism in question as

simplistic as Larson would suggest? We must answer both in the negative. In a rejoinder to Larson's essay, Kripal has accused Larson of quoting him out

of context, 'despite the fact that this passage [that is, the one quoted immediately above] and its claim are nestled in and glossed by a twelve-page explanation of why I am rejecting a reductionist reading' (Kripal 1998b: 629).n Kripal's rejoinder notwithstanding, it must be admitted that Kripal does in fact make isolated assertions (such as the one quoted above) that might well lead a reader to conclude that his goal is simply to reduce R?makrsna's sainthood to his sexuality. The very fact that Larson was by no means the only reader to draw this conclusion may suggest either that Kripal needs to be more careful to explicate his methodology (see Olson 1997; Ray 1997) and to demarcate it from approaches he does not endorse or that Kripal has written a complex monograph that bears careful and repeated reading to ensure one has understood the many

directions in which his analysis moves. Or perhaps both statements are true.

While Larson would surely not wish to admit that he had quoted Kripal out of context, there are good grounds to suspect that he selected his quotations for maximum effect. While he adduced the above-quoted assertion to prove his charge against Kripal, Larson failed to note that, as Kripal notes, the assertion is embedded in a lengthy (some might even say drawn-out) warning against simplistic, one-way cause-and-effect reductionism. Clearly Larson chose to overlook this extended disclaimer.

If one examines what Kripal does in fact say in the passages overlooked by Larson, one finds that Kripal takes great care to define the methodological



principles that guide his reading. Far from seeking monocausal explanations, Kripal repeatedly declares his goal of avoiding reductionist explanations. At one point he reckons his work to stand closer to that of Jacques Lacan than it does to 'the more traditional, and reductionistic, methods of the classical theorists'

(Kripal 1998a: 326). Indeed, it is precisely Kripal's attempt to probe what he calls the religious or ontological basis of mystical experience (rather than the merely biological or emotional)?along a trajectory suggested to him by the work of Lacan and Sudhir Kakar?that makes Kail's child such a challenging read. This is the material in the book that should attract some of our most

serious attention (see Kripal 1998a: 40-41). Far from being monocausal, Kripal tells us his method is inspired by

Gananath Obeyesekere's (1990) concept of 'dialectical hermeneutics.' The goal of such a hermeneutics, according to Kripal, is to find ways to account for the dynamics through which psychological symptom and religious symbolism play off one another. Adopting such a hermeneutics allows us to acknowledge both a regressive movement back to R?makr?na's early sexual trauma and a progressive movement through which such trauma is linked to the symbolism of mystical vision and thereby transmuted (see Kripal 1998a: 322-25, see also 1999). In other words, a monocausal framework is explicitly rejected; everything does not reduce down to Ramakr?na's repressed homosexuality.

While Kripal does keep one eye firmly fixed on the developmental dynamics behind Ramakr?na's hom rotic desires, he also keeps an eye on the culture and traditions of Hindu Tantra. He insists that it is only by holding these two matrices in tension that we can hope to arrive at an understanding of Ramakr?na's mystical experience.

And just how does Kripal understand that experience in the end? Contrary to what many assume about the book. Kali's child is not an attempt to show up R?makrsna as a lunatic, a failure, or a fraud. Kripal does not want to explain away R?makrsna's mystical experience by uncovering its sexual pathology. As he makes clear in the preface to the second edition, he does not wish 'to reduce the quite genuine mystical experiences of Ramakrishna to simple sex' (Kripal 1998a: xviii). ?tmajn?n?nanda (1997: 417), for one, seems perplexed that Kripal can be so 'sincere' in referring to R?makrsna as a saint. But this is only because he fails to appreciate how Kripal's hermeneutic departs from classic reductionism. That Larson failed to notice this aspect of Kripal's work is surprising. While one might have wished that Larson had given a more adequate account

of Kripal's hermeneutic, their conversation has nevertheless been a fruitful one; it has prompted Kripal to clarify his original position. If nothing else, their exchange also serves to illustrate how easily an attempt to put religion in


Kali's problem child / 175

play with the erotic can be misunderstood. In this, it seems, we remain as skittish and closed minded as Sigmund Freud's contemporaries. For, as Kripal points out in the preface to the second edition of Kali's child, Freud's readers commonly saw in the libido only sex. They flatly resisted his attempts to put the libido into relation to such phenomena as filial love, friendship, or mystical awareness. Similarly, Kripal (1998a: xv) finds that his exploration of the erotic is often taken to be nothing more than sex talk.

The exchange between Kripal and Larson also offers us an excellent opportu nity for reflecting upon the hermeneutical task in the study of religion. At the most basic level we have Larson's assertion that Kripal should have allowed the R?makr?na Order a chance to provide him with feedback on his work in advance

of publication. As Larson benevolently, if somewhat naively, put it:

I am inclined to believe that his book would have been much more balanced

and would have avoided reductionism had he taken the trouble to engage in a

frank intellectual exchange about his interpretation with the community about which and in which much of his material centers (1997: 663).

This certainly sounds sensible on one level; and one can find methodological arguments to support this kind of approach, such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith's (1959: 42) dictum that we not say anything of a tradition that its adherents would not themselves acknowledge. But what would such a restriction have meant for Kripal's project? As Wayne Proudfoot has argued, Smith's advice may be legitimate when we set out to make descriptive statements about a religious tradition but 'explanatory accounts are not subject to this restriction'

(1985: 198). Clearly Kripal was attempting to offer more than a description. He

set out to explain the nature of R?makrsna's profound spiritual experiences. That he had no intention of explaining them away is more than clear from his attempt

to apply a nonreductive hermeneutic.

While Kripal does not invoke Proudfoot, he does address this issue clearly in his conversation with Larson:

Larson is right about one thing, though: Had I engaged the culture earlier in an open fashion and learned what I know now (after the hatemail and a movement to have the book banned in India), I indeed would not, could not, have written this book, but not because of some idealized balance I would

have achieved. I simply would have been too afraid, like my whispering friends and nervous intellectual colleagues in Calcutta. I understand and accept Larson's best intentions that he is not suggesting that I should have allowed the tradition to censor me, but this, if the textual record means anything, was



an all too real possibility. I simply was not willing to take that risk (Kripal 1998b: 632; emphasis in original).

As Kripal went on to say, 'The subsequent reactions in India to my work.. .have convinced me that I read the situation correctly' (1998b: 632).

No scholar or creative writer can help but sympathize with the spirit of this remark. What would have remained of his thesis?indeed the bulk of

his research?if Kripal had asked the R?makrsna Order to go through his manuscript? As an academic scholar of religion and a historian of religion, Kripal should be under no compulsion to have his work vetted by the R?makrsna Order. Whether the same thesis could have been brought forth in a kinder, gentler fashion is a fair question. Personally I am inclined to think it could have. However, I am not prepared to demand that Kripal be silenced because he dared to write a provocative book.

Without a doubt, Kripal finds a measure of delight in telling us the Order's secrets; he seems to find the whiff of scandal thrilling. Indeed, as one reviewer

has pointed out, Kripal's work since its earliest inception while studying at the University of Chicago has often appeared like a 'serialized scholarly mystery* (Williams 1997: 1). Many of us have found the mystery gripping; some may think it overblown. But, in fairness to Kripal, we need to recognize that his apparent fixation on secrecy is in part a function of what he experienced as a scholar attempting to discuss theories and propose conclusions that were not the

sort of thing discussed openly within the R?makrsna Order.

PUTTING RAMAK??NA IN CONTEXT

Regardless of where we stand on the question of Kripal's sensitivity in delivering his thesis, the issue of hermeneutics has ramifications that extend well beyond the intramural debates of scholars of religion. When Kripal ponders, in the long passage quoted above, the implications of engaging 'the culture* in a more open, dialogic fashion, most of us recognize that what he means by 'culture' is really the tradition created and promulgated by the R?makr?na Order. Yet, it is somewhat telling that Kripal chooses not to name this single tradition but to speak in terms of the more comprehensive concept of

culture. In so doing, he, perhaps unwittingly, opens up one further area of concern regarding his approach. Has he, in fact, adequately grounded his study of R?makrsna in its historical and cultural context?

While Kripal should be bound by no oath of loyalty to R?makrsna Order



doctrine, as a historian of religion he might have directed more of his attention

to the cultural ethos and religiopolitical context of colonial and postcolonial Bengal. One shortcoming of KdlVs child in this respect is that it does not give adequate consideration to a whole host of issues, not the least of which concern the origin, development, and continuing agency of the Order within modern Bengal. No historian studying the movement can afford to overlook such issues, least of all one who has claims to make about the relationship between R?makrsna and the devotees and disciples who have intervened in our understanding of him. This may be what led Larson to comment that Kali's child 'lacks balance and proper contextualization' (1997: 658).

This is not to say Kripal owes the Bengali cultural ethos (however we might define that) any greater debt of deference than he does to the R?makrsna Order.

However, it is to say that as a historian it is incumbent upon him to explore the

conditions out of which the R?makrsna movement arose and the subsequent political, intellectual, and social history to which such a movement contributed in the nationalist and postindependence eras. If I have one misgiving about

Kripal's book, it is that it treats R?makrsna and his followers in a sort of historical and political vacuum; it seems benignly unconcerned, for instance, with issues of colonialism and representation. While in its best moments K?lVs child reminds us of Vivek?nanda's role in reconstructing Ramakr?na, few example, it never pauses to ask why and wherefore. Yet clearly, if one accepts Kripal's depiction of Ramakr?na, one is compelled to delve into the precise nature of the very profound relationship he shared with his most famous disciple. What is it?to take a single pressing question?in the development of

sociocultural attitudes during the nineteenth century that brings Bengal to the point where a half-literate rustic saint can so scandalize?and in some cases mesmerize?a crop of college-educated youths like Narendranath Datta and Keshub Chunder Sen? What attitudes toward domestic life, civil morality, personal sexual habits, the workplace, and religion have so gained hegemony by the late nineteenth century that R?makrsna's fulminations against 'women and

gold' or against the workaday world of the Bengali clerk manage to take on such

deep and striking resonances? These sorts of questions go begging in Kripal's book (but see Chatterjee 1992, 1993; Roy 1998; Sarkar 1985, 1993, 1997).

For that matter, setting aside the question of personal sexual pathologies, one wants to know more about the R?makrsna Order's zealous espousal of Ved?nta in the face of the widely published sayings of R?makrsna to the contrary. What

are we to make of the fact that the Kath?mrta continues to be reprinted through

the auspices of the R?makrsna Order itself, a publishing enterprise that is otherwise synonymous with Advaita Ved?nta, the Upani?ads, and Sankar?c?rya?



While Kripal makes much of the way R?makrsna's secrets have been concealed by his followers, one would have to say that they have done a somewhat poor job of concealing; after all, one can purchase the complete Bengali utterances of R?makrsna right in the foyer of the R?makrsna Institute in Gol Park! Granted,

they may not be displayed as prominently as Gambhfr?nanda's translations of the Upanisads, the collected works of Vivek?nanda, or the multivolume Cultural heritage of India, but they also are not passed under the counter with a wink. This suggests, by the way, that scholars might find the 'packaging' of R?makrsna?for instance, as evidenced by the display of literature at the R?makrsna Institute sales desk?to be worthy of careful attention; there is surely

much still to be written on hagiography, iconography, and the institutionaliza tion of charisma within the R?makrsna Order.

And when one considers the profound role played by the R?makrcna Vivek?nanda tradition in such areas as the construction of modern Hindu

spirituality, Indian nationalism, and the postcolonial identity of Indians at home and abroad, one grows eager to explore the political imperatives that have operated on a figure like Ramakr?na and a work like the Kath?mrta. After all, the latter, while purporting to give us the words of Ramakr?na, is in fact a text

that came together much later; we must recognize that its genesis follows upon the institutional origins of the Order and coincides with events of enormous social and political significance for the making of contemporary Indian culture. For all that Kripal's book represents a rigorous engagement with this central text, these issues of context go begging.

In advancing these critical concerns, I do not wish to suggest that had they been addressed Kripal's striking thesis would have (or should have) been avoided or attenuated. Instead, I mean to say that more sensitive attention to the

dynamics of cultural formation that gave us both R?makrsna and the Ramakr?na

Order might have given a Bengali reader, at least, the sense that Kripal had more

on his mind than a smear campaign. In choosing largely to ignore the genesis and articulation of Bengali attitudes toward religion and sexuality in favor of advancing a provocative argument about the mystical and the erotic, I fear Kripal

has created a book that may never find a readership among an audience that might potentially have been one of its greatest.

CONCLUSION

Having said all this, we need to remind ourselves that Kripal has written an award-winning book.12 Some have already dared to call it a classic (Parsons


Kali's problem child / 179

1997: 359). Yet such acclaim comes largely in spite of, rather than as a result of, a constructive dialogue with Bengali scholars and intellectuals. One cannot help but be struck by the fact that critics who are themselves Bengali are far less

inclined to grant high honors to Kripal for having written a book that works so

indefatigably at recasting (they might say tarnishing) a modern cultural hero. What appears to Parsons be a 'highly entertaining' book, may well strike Bengali (and, one might add, other Indian) readers as being too clever by half.

Perhaps this is not fair. After all, one could scarcely fault Kripal for not wanting to spread his forces too thin, for concentrating the brunt of his forces on a hermeneutics of R?makrsna's mystical experiences. He set this goal for himself and fought his way through to a convincing conclusion. Along the way

he managed to write a creative, sophisticated, and intellectually challenging book. As John Hawley has put it, Kail's child is one of those books that 'make such a major contribution to their field that from the moment of their

publication things are never quite the same' (1998: 401). It is certain that scholars of mysticism will have to reckon with this book; one only hopes it will eventually kindle new insights into the life and legacy of R?makrsna. Those of us in the study of religion have surely benefited from Kripal's exploration of the erotic and the mystical, as well as from his attempt to apply and defend his nonreductive dialectical hermeneutics. Hopefully Kripal will return in future work to the sort of cultural and historical issues I have outlined

above. But even if he does not, his book is certain to continue to prompt discussion and discovery.

Notes

1. Work on this essay was begun while mentoring a student research project on ?r? Ramakr?na conducted in Calcutta during the summer of 1998. Funding for that project was provided by an ASIANetwork Student-Faculty Collaborative Grant. I would especially like to thank Andy Busch, for initiating the project and for pursuing it with such enthusiasm; Jeff Kripal, for helping us get our hands on some of the harder-to-find reviews of Kail's child; and, the two anonymous readers who

provided helpful comments on the original manuscript. 2. My thanks to one anonymous reader for pointing this out. 3. The iconography of what we might call the holy family is standard within the

Ramakr?na Matha and Mission. However, the question of S?rad? Devi's relationship with Ramakr?na is anything but clear, especially in light of Kripal's argument about the latter's sexuality. As Hawley puts it, 'If Ramakrishna was homosexual, a certain doubt is cast on one major justification for placing Sharada among these greats: that she joined her husband in a marriage of exemplary self-denial' (1998: 402).



4. The theme of the 'mansion of fun* (Kripal's rendering of the Bengali phrase, maj?r kutt) is taken up at Kripal 1998a (176-79). One anonymous reviewer of this essay objected to Kripal's use of *mansion' for kutl, a choice the latter defends (see Kripal 1998a: 352n37). While he might have chosen 'house' or 'cottage' if aiming to be literal, Kripal coined a phrase that delivers the appropriate punch in English. However, that kutl could mean anything else is impossible (see Bandyop?dhy?y 1988, 1: 640, where kutl is glossed as choto p?k? b?di). 5. It is worth noting that Kripal nevertheless suggests R?makrcna's attitude

toward Tantra was marked by a 'profound ambivalence' (1998a: 86). 6. The more official motto is that which appears on the title page of all works

published by Advaita ?arama, the Mission's press: tanno hamsa pracoday?t, a mantra formed by analogy to the G?yatri mantra. R?makrsna is, of course, the paramahamsa, or Great Swan, 'a title commonly given to a Vedantic sage' (Kripal 1998a: 337nl).

7. I have explored some of this problem with respect to Sv?mi Vivek?nanda in Hatcher 1999.

8. This is not to say that Kripal accepts all of ?tmajn?n?nanda's criticisms (see Kripal 1998a: xix). Often these criticisms concern crucial pieces of terminology such as the symbolism of the 'lap' (kol), the phenomenon of R?makrcna's excitement (uddlpan), or the significance for the saint of 'women and gold* (k?minl-k?ftcan).

9. In the second edition Kripal has substituted the word 'penis' for the word 'cock.' While such a change hardly affects his argument, 'cock' was probably a better choice to reflect R?makrcna's often rather crude idiom.

10. In support of his reading, Kripal cites the definition of dhan offered by Jfi?nendramohan Das (1988, 1: 1119): ?i?ur ?iin, that is, 'the penis of a small boy' (see Kripal 1998a: 351nl8).

11. For his part, Larson responded to Kripal's rejoinder not by dropping the charge of reductionism but by increasing the charge; from being monocausally reductionist, Kripal's thesis had become 'doubly reductionist* (Larson 1998: 638).

12. Kail's child received the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions prize for the Best First Book of 1995.

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BRIAN A. HATCHER is Associate Professor of Religion and Humanities at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington.


Kālī’s problem child: Another look at Jeffrey Kripal’s study of Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa

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