GAUTAM MUKHERJEE
Former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Veena Sikri, currently the Chair of the ICCR Committee for Assessment of Indian Cultural Centres, recently introduced an erudite Irishman, a no-onion-no-garlic Hindu scholar, to a small group in New Delhi. The gentleman is coincidentally from the Swami Vivekananda era Sister Nivedita’s home-town, in Ireland. The brief interaction, with a select group of invitees, took place at the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation (SPMRF), premises at 9, Ashoka Road, New Delhi. Incidentally, the very rooms occupied by the Foundation today, were once occupied by a much younger Narendra Modi, in the nineties, before he became Gujarat Chief Minister. This was when he was a BJP spokesperson, frequently seen on TV panels broadcasting out of New Delhi.
The best Indian work, and it does exist, is currently is being done in various Ashrams and religious organisations only. But in the public space, the raging debate between aggressive Marxism from the socialist, and the Left, versus the Nationalist Right, are both missing the need to speak from the point of view of India’s considerable cultural and philosophical ‘Heritage’. It is time, said Shaunaka Rishi Das, to plant ‘oak trees’, that no man can expect to see full grown in his lifetime. But still, there is the civilisational need to plant the oak trees anyway.
The Irishman we met is the Director of the Oxford Centre For Hindu Studies (OCHS). This organisation is located in Oxford, that too for the last 20 years, currently on Magdalen Street, in a small space between two shopping malls.
But OCHS is a bona fide part of the hallowed Oxford University offering, with all the academic quality and rigour that implies. OCHS was introduced to Oxford University originally via the good offices of its Theological faculty, traditionally, culturally and historically, devoted to Christian studies. Now OCHS-qualified students go out to research/guide/teach in Religious Studies faculties in Europe, America, Africa, Japan, indeed all over the globe. And Das encourages them to expound their well informed and considered views as ‘public intellectuals’.
India herself has been largely missing in action in this endeavour so far, with a mistaken Nehruvian belief that religion, particularly the Hindu religion, is obscurantism, and will hold back progress. Jawaharlal Nehru, as free India’s first Prime Minister, actively discouraged any governmental involvement or support in the propagation or dissemination of the Hindu religion. He even frowned on private attempts to do so. This tone and tenor set by him, has largely been the story for the 70 years since Independence. Meanwhile, at least in the course of the last twenty years, seeking scholars from all over the world have come to earn a doctorate in ‘Hindu Studies’ from Oxford University.
The Irish-Hindu prime-mover of OCHS we met goes by the name Shaunaka Rishi Das, in the manner of some Western devotees of Hinduism who take on a Hindu name without much regard to caste associations. Or perhaps, in all humility, making sure that ‘service’ to humanity, rather than caste pedigree, is the meaning highlighted in the name chosen. OCHS has been quietly doing serious work on a non-sectarian and apolitical basis over the years. This, said Das, has been a strategic decision to successfully skirt any controversy.
Currently, OCHS is about to inaugurate a Bhagwat Puran project, a mammoth undertaking, as the Purana, in the uncompromised Sanskrit original, is in 14,500 verses. The project will be launched in Chennai between January 6 and 8, 2017. It will draw upon many streams, narratives, styles, and traditions, from different parts of ancient India on the Purana. Another book on the anvil is on the prominent and well-funded Swami Narayan Sect from Gujarat, that not only boasts of magnificent temples in India, but also in London (Neasden) — visited by British royalty, prime ministers, politicians, tycoons, and many-hued celebrities.
Other works in progress include the Bhakti Movement in the ‘Braj era’, Bengal Vaishnavism, and the confluence of Hindu, Christian and Islamic traditions that pre-date the British Raj. Although the OCHS is little known in India as of now, The Oxford University Press, and Routledge, have published a number of its scholarly works on, for example, the Tantra traditions. There is also a Journal of Hindu Studies, and a programme of Continuing Education on Hinduism online as well.
Das made the very relevant point that Indian Christianity is 2,000 years old, and peculiarly and distinctly Indian in its cultural moorings, and Indian Islam is not the same at all as that which prevails in parts of West Asia. The Sufi traditions of Indian Islam are quite unique. OCHS is now working to collaborate with a number of well-established universities in India, who have all been welcoming. Together, it proposes to work on academic explorations of Hinduism so that this work, neglected here for so long, can be extended, into the land of its origin, with both primary and secondary resources developed locally over time.
Das pointed out that faculties of Religious Studies do not exist in Indian universities as of now, but there is a great need to establish them in a format that will work alongside India’s ‘secular’ constitutional position. The manner in which OCHS is strictly non propagandist, sectarian or political, does, in fact, fit the ‘secular’ needs of India. But unfortunately, in the attempt to be secular, there are no serious Hindu studies being conducted in Indian universities at all, leaving the field to be sometimes distorted via Western and other foreign efforts that do not adhere to the highest standards of academic research.
The best Indian work, and it does exist, is currently is being done in various Ashrams and religious organisations only. But in the public space, the raging debate between aggressive Marxism from the socialist, and the Left, versus the Nationalist Right, are both missing the need to speak from the point of view of India’s considerable cultural and philosophical ‘Heritage’. It is time, said Shaunaka Rishi Das, to plant ‘oak trees’, that no man can expect to see full grown in his lifetime. But still, there is the civilisational need to plant the oak trees anyway.
The writer is columnist.