Wandering with Sadhus: Ascetics in the Hindu Himalayas

Introduction: Wandering with Renouncers

• Introduction Wandering with Renouncers For close to three thousand years, ascetics have wandered the Indian subcontinent. On their way to sacred places in the mountains or at the confluences of rivers, they have traveled through cities and through forests , sleeping under trees or by riverbanks as they sojourn. They might be headed to a religious festival determined by the astral calendar, or to a cave in the Himalayas for a period of solitary retreat. Laypeople with whom these renouncers of society came into contact would probably cringe at their otherworldliness—they might be naked, or clothed in only a loin-cloth, or covered in ash from funeral pyres. Their matted dreadlocks would hang long, covering their bodies, or be wrapped tightly onto their heads, into turbans of human hair. They might speak only praises to God, or remain mute out of a vow of silence. To convince laypeople that they were worthy of public respect and support—that they were real or accomplished religious practitioners— they might display the fruits of religious labor in a show of physical strength or austerity. They might keep one arm perpetually raised, for example, letting their fingernails pierce their own atrophying flesh, or lift heavy stones with their penises to display the ability of their bodies to manipulate the material world at will. Depending on the inclinations of village housewives, who would most likely regard them tentatively— with a combination of fear and respect—they might be offered a meal, or a few paisā with which to buy rice. After a night or two in any given village, they would continue on their way.« Jūnā Akhār . ā 2 • Wandering with Sadhus In the fifth century bce, the Buddha followed the practices of Indian wandering ascetics, in an effort to renounce the suffering he perceived in the cycle of birth and death. Alexander the Great sought the advice of the “gymnosophists” in the third century bce, wondering how they held their reign as powerful but naked men of wisdom (Mishra 2004). A thousand years later, the eighth-century Indian philosopher Śaṅkarācārya systematized their sectarian structures, naming them sannyāsīs, or “renouncers ,” so that their previously dispersed or isolated religious efforts would contribute to the project of supporting Hinduism during a period of religious embattlement. By the twelfth century, religious renouncer orders had become military regiments, some of which men and women of any caste could join. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the British colonial government in Bengal went to war with renouncers: the yogī regiments that patrolled the region were claiming their own share of land tax, which was not acceptable to the colonial officials (Chandra 1977). In 1930s pre-independence India, Mahatma Gandhi affected the loin-cloth-clad guise of a sādhu to spread his anti-caste message. Now, just after the turn of the twenty-first century, renouncer festivals are touted by the world media as the largest gatherings on earth, and Himalayan yogīs are invoked by advertisements for fancy teas, boasting the wisdom of mountain solitude and highaltitude daily regimens. Sannyāsīs, yogīs—renouncers, as they are called by scholars of Hindu society, or bābās, as they are called in Hindi—are a perennial presence in South Asia. This book is written in the spirit of an old-fashioned ethnography, in that it describes the study of a group, however its contours are defined. The chapters that follow explore the cultural meanings of the material world for the Hindu renouncer community of South Asia. In turn, they describe how space, time, and matter, especially the material body, are constructed, experienced, and understood by sādhus in contemporary Nepal and India. Through this ethnographic exploration, the book shows how these three facets of the material world are used to create and reproduce meaning among members of the Hindu ascetic community. To link the words “ascetic” and “community” may sound paradoxical, but this book is indeed about an alternative social community. Members of the Hindu renouncer community are known simply as sādhus Introduction • 3 throughout Nepal and India; they are visibly distinct from householder families and communities through their clothes and possessions, their actions and practices, and the places in which they choose to live. In this book, I am interested in how ascetics form a community, despite an ideology that values solitary or isolated religious practice. The...