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4. Deodorized Tantra: Sex, Scandal, Secrecy, and Censorship in the Works of John Woodroffe and Swami Vivekananda
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chapter 4 Deodorized Tantra Sex, Scandal, Secrecy, and Censorship in the Works of John Woodroffe and Swami Vivekananda I protest and have always protested against unjust aspersions upon the civilization of India. . . . The Tantra Tàstra is not, as some seem to suppose, a petty Tàstra of no account. . . . It is on the contrary, with Veda, SmKti and PuràJa, one of the foremost important Tàstras in India, governing in various degrees . . . the temple and household ritual of the whole of India . . . for centuries past. Sir John Woodroffe, Shakti and Shàkta (1918) This form of practice must never even be mentioned in the Math. Ruin shall seize the wicked man, both here and hereafter , who would introduce vile Vamachara into His fold. Swami Vivekananda to members of Alambazar Math (27 April 1896) By the dawn of the twentieth century, Tantra had come to represent a troubling, sometimes threatening, and often quite embarrassing problem for Indian and Western authors. Already widely regarded as representing the most primitive, idolatrous, and immoral side of the Indian mind, it had also become increasingly associated with religious fanaticism , terrorist violence, and the failure of the revolutionary nationalist movement. It is not surprising therefore to see various efforts on both the Indian and colonial sides to suppress, control, or eliminate the dangerous practices of the tantras. What is more surprising, however, is that we also find an attempt on the part of more sympathetic figures to defend, revalorize, and purify the Tantric tradition, cleansing it of the taint of li134 centious immorality and redefining it as a noble philosophical tradition. As Sumit Sarkar observes, “Tantric traditions were being made more respectable through excisions, and at times . . . suppressed altogether . . . as stricter ideas about gentility developed in the shadow of ‘Victorian’ norms.”1 We have already seen at least one major attempt to purify or sanitize the Tantras, in the strange case of the MahànirvàJa Tantra and its complex relations to the reforms of the Bràhmo Samàj. But this process of sanitization would only intensify in the early decades of the twentieth century, in the face of rising nationalism, political agitation, and a new desire to reimagine Hinduism in response to the Western world. If Hinduism and the Indian nation were to be defended as strong, autonomous, and independent of Western control, then the foul stench of Tantra would have to be “deodorized,” as it were—either by rationalization and purification, or by concealment and denial. Two of the most important figures in this process were Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), otherwise known as Arthur Avalon, the father of modern Tantric studies in the West; and Swami Vivekananda (1863– 1902), born Narendra Nath Datta, one of the greatest spiritual leaders of modern India.2 A High Court judge in Calcutta, Woodroffe surely stands out as one of the most remarkable and enigmatic figures in the entire history of British India. While maintaining his public profile as a judge and scholar of British Indian law, Woodroffe was also a private student of the tantras, who published a huge body of texts and translations and thus pioneered the modern academic study of Tantra in the West. Yet Woodroffe was also an apologist, seeming to have bent over backward to defend the Tantras against their many critics and to prove that they represent a noble, pure, and ethical philosophical system in basic accord with the Vedas and Vedànta. Vivekananda, conversely, was the chief disciple of the great modern Bengali saint Sri Ramakrishna ParamahaFsa—a man who was deeply influenced by the teachings and practices of the Màkta tantras. Yet Vivekananda would reinterpret, transform, and adapt Ramakrishna’s teachings to his own neo-Hindu and nationalist agendas, turning this ecstatic devotee of the violent Tantric goddess Kàlí into an avatàr of highly abstract, philosophical Advaita Vedànta and Hindu nationalism.3 For Vivekananda and his followers, the Tantric practices of Ramakrishna would become a source of scandal and embarrassment, a dark secret that remained a disturbing presence throughout the later tradition. Yet both Woodroffe and Vivekananda shared several common agenDeodorized Tantra 135 [54.227.136.157] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:44 GMT) das: first, they each sought to redefine and reinterpret Tantra from a modern perspective informed by the encounter between India and the West during the colonial era. And they each re-presented Tantra in a form that was—like so much of...