Dr Julian Strube–Book Panel: Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity

Hello everyone. My name is Lucien Wong, research fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and it's my great pleasure to welcome you all to this book launch and panel discussion on the new Oxford University Press publication Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity by Dr. Julian Struber, who is currently assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Vienna. This event forms part of the New Directions in the Study of Modern Hinduism online series hosted by the OCHS. In brief, the series, along with the broader research project on Rethinking Hinduism in Colonial India, which it is an output of, has been exploring new ways of thinking about Hinduism and colonial modernity beyond the Eurocentric reform-centred paradigm that has long been dominant in this scholarly domain. Julian's work certainly offers ample opportunities for just such a rethinking. In consonance with the basic objectives of the project, his book Global Tantra challenges a ubiquitous diffusionist master narrative surrounding the emergence of modernity in the Hindu religious sphere. As the book highlights in relation to tantra, this narrative has often taken shape in the form of assumptions regarding the exportation of Western esotericism intercolonial South Asia. At the core of the book strategy is a genealogical probing of the Arthur Avalon project, which has been so central to these assumptions. Through laying bare the various Indian and more specifically Bengali actors at the heart of the Avalon project, as well as their participation in transnational theosophical currents, Global Tantra attempts to shine some much-needed light on both the indigenous agency and complex global interconnections that form the essential context in which modern tantra emerged. Thus, as both Julian and the directors of this project saw it, the clear resonances between the overarching aims of our research project and Global Tantra made this online series a natural forum in which to showcase and engage with this exciting new book. I know that we are both delighted to have such a distinguished group of panelists to discuss the book with us today. To briefly introduce each of our discussants in the order in which they will be speaking: Professor Gavin Flood is professor of Hindu studies and comparative religion at Oxford University, academic director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and senior research fellow at Campion Hall. He is also the general editor of the OUP series The Oxford History of Hinduism and a fellow of the British Academy. Professor Hans Harder is professor of modern South Asian languages and literatures in the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University, where he is head of the department of modern South Asian languages and literatures. He is the author of numerous monographs and articles on modern South Asian religious literature and intellectual history. Dr. Bianna Vernico Olison is a research lecturer at the OCHS and tutor in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sanskrit of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. She leads an OCHS research program on Shakta traditions and a research program on the comparative study of religion together with Professor Gavin Flood. Finally, in terms of the format of today's event, each of our discussants will take it in turn to share their thoughts on Julian's work. And so, with that said, I'll hand over to our first discussant, Professor Gavin Flood. Thank you, Julian, for this book. So, I've often thought that someone should write a comprehensive account of modern tantra and the way in which it has entered the West and indeed global modernity, and Julian has done that. His Global Tantra is an account of the, as Lucien was saying, of the modern development of tantra in Bengal and the ways in which it has been conveyed to the West, particularly showing the emergence of the Theosophical Society and its relocation to India and the regional background of Bengali tantra, and also the work of John Woodroffe as Arthur Avalon. So, the book brings out different ideas of esotericism around that were around at the end of the 19th century and the rivalry between the Theosophists and other groups, which I thought was most interesting. The tantric occultism is particularly interesting and Woodroffe's reliance on ancient pundits as his guru, along with his guru Shivachandra, and, you know, I didn't know about all that, and I did know that he relied on indigenous pundits, but I think Julian's book has really brought this out. It was a fascinating account, and I love the analysis of the famous photograph of Woodroffe in the temple. Apparently, he used to go down there at the weekends and get a bullock cart out to the temple there. So, I think this is a very important book that raises questions about how traditions are constructed and reinvented, and one suspects that it's always been like that, and the ways in which tantra became global in the wake of colonialism. One dimension I particularly enjoyed in his book was an account of Western esotericism, from the philosophies to mesmerism to L.F.S. Levi, L.F.S. Levi, sorry, L.F.S. Maybe. I used to have Transcendental Magic as a teenager. I remember doing a ritual to evoke the spirit of the elements, but I didn't, I failed. I think I didn't have the right song. But anyway, I suppose to take the theme of the book for me, the takeaway theme of the book for me is that all histories of religion are indeed histories set within historical and political contexts, as well as developing or unfolding the inner logic of their own traditions. We know about tantra today initially because of these early enthusiasts, or we might even say devotees. And it's interesting. I was thinking how classical civilization in Greece or Rome enters the West through humanist scholarship in the 16th century, Erasmus and people like that, through to the 18th century and scholars like Winckelmann. An Indian civilization likewise comes into the West through the West's discovery of Sanskrit, Ernest Jones and that famous speech that everybody knows. And what's interesting about tantra is that it enters the West not so much through scholarship but through enthusiasm. Avalon is interesting for being both a scholar and an enthusiast, but it strikes me as being different to the earlier reception of things Indian or the reception of things European in terms of the classical Greece or Rome. Only in the last half of the 20th century has philological scholarship in Europe, India, and Japan—one thinks particularly of tantric traditions—developed. One wonders whether this would have happened had it not been for the early expounders that European presents. So, a number of questions were raised in my mind as I was reading the book. Perhaps firstly, the importance of tantra in the history of India and in the history of the West, and particularly the esoteric traditions that have developed in the West and indeed globally now. And a question of, once mapping and description has been done, what is it about tantra? What is it about the tantric traditions that continues to attract globally modern people? I thought, I think that's an interesting question, if a puzzling question, but it's interesting. Does it have something to offer that's absent in Europe and America and indeed the global world in which we live? So, Buddhist tantra, I was thinking, has a monastic infrastructure that has been translated into America and Europe, but not so much Hindu tantra because of, and because of such a lack of infrastructure. It is a question of whether it could have a substantiality or not, whether it has a future, I don't know, in the way that Buddhist tantra does have a future because of the infrastructure. And perhaps Hindu tantra is not as open to the same checks and balances, being more reliant on individual gurus. Anyway, once the infrastructure of tantric v—

science and nationalism and colonial modernity by dr julian struber who is currently assistant professor of religious studies at the university of vienna this event forms part of the new directions in the study of modern hinduism online series hosted by the

ochs in brief the series along with the broader research project on rethinking hinduism in colonial india which it is an output has been exploring new ways of thinking about hinduism and colonial modernity beyond the eurocentric reform-centred paradigm that has long

been dominant in this scholarly domain julian's work certainly offers ample opportunities for just such a rethinking in consonance with the basic objectives of the project his book global tantra challenges a ubiquitous diffusionist master narrative surrounding the emergence of modernity in the hindu

religious sphere as the book highlights in relation to tantra this narrative has often taken shape in the form of assumptions regarding the exportation of western esotericism intercolonial south asia at the core of the book strategy is a genealogical probing of the arthur

avalon project which has been so central to these assumptions through laying bare the various indian and more specifically bengali actors at the heart of the avalon project as well as their participation in transnational theosophical currents global tantra attempts to shine some much needed light

on both the indigenous agency and complex global interconnections that form the essential context in which modern tantra emerged thus as both julian and the directors of this project saw it the clear resonances between the overarching aims of our

research project and global tantra made this online series a natural forum in which to showcase and engage with this exciting new book i know that we are both delighted to have such a distinguished group of panelists to discuss the book with us today to

briefly introduce each of our discussants in the order in which they will be speaking uh professor gavin floyd is professor of hindu studies and comparative religion at oxford university academic director of the oxford center for hindu studies and senior research fellow at campion

hall he is also the general editor of the oup series the oxford history of hinduism and a fellow of the british academy professor hans harder is professor of modern south asian languages and literatures in the south asia institute

at heidelberg university where he is head of the department of modern south asian languages and literatures he is the author of numerous monographs and articles of modern south asian religious literature and intellectual history and dr bianna vernico olison is

a research lecturer at the ochs and tutor in hinduism buddhism and sanskrit of the faculty of theology and religion at the university of oxford he leads an ochs research program on shakhtar traditions and a research program on the comparative study of

religion together with professor gavin fled finally in terms of the format of today's event each of our discussants will take it in turn to share their thoughts on julian's work and so with that said i'll hand over to our first

discussant uh professor gavin flood uh thank you julian for uh this book so i've often thought that someone should write a comprehensive uh account of modern tantra and the way in which it has entered the west uh and indeed global modernity and

julian has done that uh his global tantra is an account of the as um as lucian was saying of of the modern development of tantra in bengal and the ways in which it has been conveyed to the west

uh particularly showing the emergence of a theosophical society and its relocation to india and the regional background of bengali tantra and also the work of john woodruff as arthur avalon so the book brings out different ideas of esotericism

around the around that were around at the end of the 19th century and the rivalry between the theosophists and other groups which i thought was most interesting and the tantric occultism is particularly interesting and woodruff's reliance on ancient pundits

as his guru along with his guru shivachandra and um you know i didn't know about all that and i did know that he um relied on um indigenous pundits but i think union's book has really brought this out it's it's it was a fascinating

account and i love the analysis of the famous photo photograph of woodruff in temple apparently he used to uh go down there at the weekends and um get a bullet cart out to the temple there so i think this is a very important book

that raises questions about how traditions are are constructed and reinvented and one suspect that it's always been like that and the ways in which tantra became global in the wake of colonialism and one dimension i particularly enjoyed in his book was an account of western

esotericism from the philosophies to mesmerism to lfs levi lfs levy sorry lfs maybe um i used to have transcendental magic as a teenager i remember doing a ritual to to evoke the spirit of the elements but uh i didn't i failed i think i

didn't have the right song but anyway i supposed to take the to take the um theme of the book for me take the take away fema can that takeaway theme of the book for me is that all histories of religion are

indeed histories are set within historical and political contexts as well as developing or unfolding the inner logic of their own traditions we know about tantra today initially because of these early enthusiasts or we might even say devotees and it's interesting i was thinking how

classical civilization in greece or rome enters the west through humanist scholarship in the 16th century erasmus and people like that through to the 18th century and scholars like winkelmann an indian civilization likewise comes into the west through the west discovery

of sanskrit ernest jones and that famous speech that everybody knows and what's interesting about tantra is that it enters the west not so much through scholarship but through enthusiasm and avalon is interesting for being both a scholar and an enthusiast

but it strikes me as being different to the earlier reception of things indian or the reception of things european in terms of the classical greece or rome only in the last half of the 20th century has philological scholarship uh

in europe india and japan one thinks that particularly of tantric traditions develop the one wonders whether this would have happened had it not been for the early expounders that european presents so a number of questions were raised in

my mind as i was reading of the book perhaps firstly the importance of of tantra in the history of india and in the history of the west and particularly the esoteric traditions have developed in the west and indeed globally now

and a question of once mapping and description has been done what is it about tantra what is that about the tantric traditions that continues to attract globally modern people i thought i think that's an interesting question if if a puzzling question but it's

interesting does it have something to offer that's absent in europe and america and indeed the global the global world in which we live so buddhist time try i was thinking has one has a monastic infrastructure that has been that has translated into

america and europe uh but not so much hindu tantra because of uh and because of such a lack of infrastructure it is a question of whether it could have a substantiality or not whether it has a future i don't know

in the way that buddhist texas does have a future because of the because of the infrastructure and perhaps hindu tantra is not as open to the same checks and balances being more reliant on individual gurus anyway once the infrastructure of

tantric visions has gone with the demise of royal patronage does it become restricted to a more limited range perhaps initiations magic taboo breaking or whatever that happens to attract uh some um you know probably always a minority of the population

but i thought this was an interesting and thought-provoking book and i thank union very much for writing it um so those were my initial thoughts and questions that arose in my mind thank you so much for that gavin um

we'll hand over now to hans yes thank you lucian dear julian dear ladies and gentlemen dear friends um let me begin by congratulating julian schnuber and his publishers for this brilliant book so congratulations to julian for this brilliant book global

tantra has turned out to be a beautiful and impressive publication it's carefully edited elegantly written yet weighty enough weighty enough to create an impact in your hand as you hold it and no doubt on your mind as you read it

um as one of the examiners the second examiner of what was originally a habilitation or post-doctoral thesis at heidelberg university i feel particularly rewarded when i look at the result of julian's research i remember going through drafts of the

manuscript discussing ornate seemingly never-ending sentences on philosophical matters in 19th century bengali with him and even walking by a branch of the theosophical society in rainey darjeeling where we once met a couple of years ago i think it was in 2017.

but let us turn to the book global tantra reading just the first part of the title any innocent reader would probably think that the fact that tantra is known across the globe today goes back to its international transmission in the 20th century and

hence this must be the topic of the book a transmission we might connect with a boom in american and european esotericism since hippy times or if we have more historical background with the mysterious figure of arthur avalon popularizing tantra is occultism in the

early 20th century but this is the wrong track of course because as julian strude's book shows us what the book is what the book deals with is global in a in a different way in a thicker sense and it started being so from

an earlier date already the topic of the book the public learned debates on tantra in the 19th and early 20th centuries among several bengali exponents of tantric theory and practice as well as circles of reference hindu thinkers and activists

and also of course theosophists julian's main aim is to set these debates in the ganges delta in places like nudia calcutta into the context of global religious history his hypothesis is that the new public appearance and propagation of tantra in

the beginning of the 20th century revolving around the name of avalon was not as often asserted the initial impetus that triggered a process of tantra going global but rather a product of a number of colonially mediated global transmissions

based on extensive research of bengali and english source material julian strobe gives us quite a comprehensive portrayal of those earlier developments and thereby allows us to view the religious history of those times in a new light tantra which is often understood as a

residue of archaic beliefs and rituals found in various aspects of hinduism and buddhism has increasingly come under criticism in the 19th century if some parts of tantric doctrines had traditionally been deemed heterodox and transgressive already 19th century reformism affected

further distancing from tantric traditions they seem to be opposed to the new maxims of monotheistic orientation rationalized belief and ethnic predominance that british colonialism had helped empowering let the tantras perish but do not let them perish unstudied this is what

banking chandra choctaw bengali novelist and reformist hindu thinker had to say on the topic in a lecture around 1880 tantra thus could still be of historical interest but it was basically an unhealthy relic of the past to be

dismissed as soon as possible as a viable religious system this seemed to be the consensus in educated society in those states but apparently the situation was far more complex than that exponents of tantric traditions as julian struggles shows us had already in

the 1870s and perhaps even earlier become vocal and looked out for contacts with north american and european spiritualists in the 1880s and after the theosophists became important brokers of tantric ideas and discussions on tantra reached many mainstream circles of hydrolog

society in bengal in a number of densely and yet elegantly written chapters packed with sources julian strobe demonstrates impressively how wide-reaching the impact of tantric ideas was the most impressive to my mind is chapter number six one of the heart

pieces of the book that professor flood already referred to in a sense in this chapter julian furnishes a formidable reconstruction of the ideas and activities of one of the main protagonists of this tantra renaissance shiva chandra vidyaneva or sheep chandrabinda not in

bengali so this charismatic orator and thinker had completely refused english educational institutions and become a tantric pundit he then wrote the tantra tatwa in 1893 one of the central works of this movement and has to be regarded as the main teacher of woodruff

and the whole avalon circle i feel tempted to make an unlikely comparison here amitav gross a plot in quite a post-colonial mindset around the british colonial discovery of the malaria virus by the british medical officer ronald ross in calcutta in 1897

and in this novel grocer fictitiously reveals the way in which the discovery was actually instigated from behind the curtains by an obsession called for a bengali goddess so struggle has not written a novel and his story has less affinities to gothic

fiction but he tells us a similarly revealing story of backstage protagonist strong into the limelight of the pages of his book the view changing impact of julian's book is considerable we have this dominant understanding of colonial history of india or more specifically of

the so-called bengal renaissance as an age of religious reform in confrontation with christianity rationalism science and modernity an age and the course of which traditions were sifted for utility and ethical compatibility and where tantra simply had to go

even tantric folk traditions like that of the bowls of bengal got entry into the modern canon only on the condition of shedding anything smelling too much of tantra if we think of tagore's reception and popularization of the bowels

after reading the book we realized that that picture was partial and that julian strobe has indeed managed to put the learned tantrics on the map and that's quite an achievement i had the pleasure and privilege to provide a few lines as a blurb for the

back cover of julian strove's book and i would like to repeat one line here as my closing statement um makes the tantra story more bengali and more global at the same time and that's quite something so congratulations again

thank you very much chance um and uh is our final panelist bianna over to you yeah yes thank you um uh to union store before contributing to the field but that's a such a great book um as as

eliade once wrote in the opening pages of his classic book on yoga immortality and freedom there's no more absorbing story than that of the discovery and interpretation of india by western consciousness but as strooper shown in his book

from a global religious perspective things go both ways and indeed many weird and wonderful ways through a global circulatory networks of translated knowledge amongst others and the story becomes even more absorbing i still recall the surprise and wonder

when i first went to india some 20 years ago and everywhere i asked about tantra whether it was in recent years about they would always direct me towards those orange books on tantra written by colonial westerner of the strange

and this was really my first encounter with what the anthropologist argenta balati has termed the pizza effect or even the double pizza effect so like so many um avalon's books they mystified me and sparked an interest in both uh tantra and the reception history

really so so stroopy's book is is very insightful and and a rewarding read i think and from time to time it amounts to somewhat of a page turner perhaps which is not always the case with academic books so when reading this book

i noticed that i would often say to myself i knew it but but the fact is that i didn't know it i just had the sense a hunch that there was much more to this story of which we only learned about the

the tip of the iceberg it seemed in kathleen taylor's wonderful book on woodruff chandra and bingo and while kathleen taylor's book uh is of course centered around wutheroff an indian soul in a european body she puts it and his accomplice arthel

biharigusa struggle's book um plays more emphasis on the context on modern bengal and succeeds in throwing new lights on the on the category of central itself i think the global religious and historical perspective and it's it's it seems a very difficult and

daunting exercise i would think to relate these kind of microhistorical studies in many cases based on original sources in bengali to broader historical developments themes and issues and ultimately viewing them in a global religious historical perspective and doing so while maintaining a quite

strict genealogical focus so i think it's it's a very logical endeavor in the context of the comparative study of the history of legions and while when this work throws new light on historical sources and concepts and developments in the intellectual histories

understanding of tantra i think it should also be emphasized how dr stroke's approach turns the category of tantra into a kind of prison that helps us gain a better understanding of current scholarly debates and perspectives on the subjects of tantra

yoga esotericism and religion from a more metatheoretical perspective which is potentially very very fruitful and rewarding i believe so one of the the major insights of of this book is of course that behind the work of avalanche not

only a whole team of people and all following the same guru the shiva chantra i didn't know that but also regional and local historical developments that can be traced back to the bengali intervention of 1880 and which should be viewed in light of the

development of bengali shiata traditions and shiatsu movements [Music] that is since the second half of the 18th century but perhaps earlier and already in 1974 narendra modi wrote a book on the history of the shaitaan religion where he pointed to

the potential that much more work is necessary before we can trace with clarity these developments within shakhtar thought as well as the relationship of those developments to other sectarian orientations in order to really throw a new light on

broader historical and religious developments so there's been a long line leading up to to this um we we know that um ethnographic uh surveys undertaken by bengali pundits on behalf of the british civil servant francis buchanan in the beginning of the

early 1800s revealed that one-fourth of the population's religion was unworthy of the note of any sage as it was expressed that is that it consisted of cults of mainly female village deities or grammar difficulties and of those worthy

of notes one fourth or sections these are tibetans of the goddesses could argue that a hundred years before the national dharma and the ramification of the hindu heartland um um as david white has suggested around 40 percent of the population

of bengal were actually uh shakhtar and bengalis of course remained a hot spot till this day during the colonial era then from the 19th century onwards the exponents of this new neurocentric movement um um this is too much formulated as the

theosophical interlocutors rudrov and the members of shivachandra's society they sought to reconstruct a coherent philosophical and respectable intellectual system variously referred to as deodorized tantra and also as explicated tundra the mysticised tantrums one based on the available saksa manuscripts um at the time

and the notice robert writes that this is really a prime example of how different understandings of religion and historicism were in a process of being produced and constantly negotiated through a global exchange and this was a process going on throughout

the 19th century so in the case of woodcroft's project this attempted reconstruction of a shaktivada as it has been told a shelter viewpoint was summarized by his biographer kathleen taylor as a subtle monistic advisor philosophy allied to a psychologically profound

ritual system with a spiritual or mystical goal and supported by contemporary western philosophical and scientific ideas that's all we of summing it up and and rudolph and his companions um they they did manage to present tantra as a form of

indian esotericism or or occult science in a way that placed it in a tradition with the highly respected readers and western science and at the same time or to point to some similarities with the essence of the catholic church

has been shown and in india his his books um they represented a reinterpretation of the country tradition which could now take its place as an accepted aspect of modern hinduism and um this is really the reason why his

books are still suggested in india to anyone interested in tantra and zeitzman including me when i first went there so the point i would like to make is in relation to the research history of the field of shaktism

encompassing both tantric and non-traditions and as well as local and village traditions descended on goddesses um in the this this conflation with the notion of tantrism from the very outset um through books um of avalon and and the neo-centrist movements of

bengal had perhaps as a collateral damage that the study of shaktisms shared the same fate as tantrism of becoming a somewhat neglected research area uh unworthy of serious attention or as douglas brooks formulated once an unwanted step child

in the family of hindu studies and the shaitism even came to be identified with hindu tantrism power excellence and rather than referring to goddess worship it came to denote the hardcore tantra as for example david white is using the

term so as as the shakti traditions um research program has shown we're still struggling with with these definitions and entanglements of the concepts of shiatsu and tantra and this has really has brought implications for our understanding of writings of the history of indian

religions and introductions handbooks companions and so on increasingly still very wisely between two or three major hindu traditions with which has been taken either as an extreme subject of medieval shaivism as tantra parks lungs in in wuterov's sense or as a major hindu tradition but

perhaps more than 100 millions follows us as june mcdaniel has noticed uh modern estimates of the shelter population in bengal they now vary considerably ranging from eight million to eighty million according to to how one defines shaitan and tantra

so i i was i'd like to uh in this response um as with a quote from from huge urban actually who proposed a study of tantra seen neither as a cd capital of libertines and subversives and nor is an

abstract set of purely philosophical texts but rather we need to take tantra and i would then add shaktism seriously as a living embodied tradition with an enormous diversity of forms and variations within its many social and historical contexts

and we need in short to move beyond the abstract level of disembodied sanskrit texts to present tantra not in its ideal state but in its lift compromises and contradictions and perhaps then we might begin to move beyond the construction of

tantourism as the exotic extreme orient and instead as a very concrete a very historical even a rather messy and problematic category in the history of religions and then i believe that this is uh what you have done in in your

book and that you have succeeded in doing so so thank you very much for that perhaps if i if i should pose a question from my side it would be uh if and how your view of the relation between

shaitism and tantra might have changed during and after writing this book both locally in bingo and globally thank you very much for that bianna um and uh now we'll hand over to julian to give you some you know opportunities to

respond to the comments oh thank you thank you so much for these comments i i'm very humbled by them and i appreciate them very much like i appreciate the form you're giving me and i appreciate that you're highlighting

some of the aspects that actually were most important also to me um it's also great to see some familiar names and even faces in the audience kathleen hi i'm very happy to see you you made this project possible in some ways

by preparing the ground for woodruff himself and his closest collaborators i i really like that let me highlight that and i do highlight that too and i'm very glad to see i hope we see each other in person again as soon

as possible uh so i i'll just go through uh your your wonderful comments and i will pick up some uh some central points that you highlighted i tried to make some connections between them and uh of course there is that

first word of the title the global and as you all know this this whole notion uh tends sometimes to be used in a rather inflationary way and um there are very different understandings of what that means so one thing that was important to me is to

show how this perspective of a global religious history a an approach that combines religious studies uh global history south asian studies and possibly a number of other things how that can really help us to understand uh not only

major developments when it comes to religion in the 19th century modernity reform tradition uh all these big subjects that this lecture series also revolves around and that you're doing so wonderful work about at the center in oxford but how that can also help us to

understand what was going on in local context and that in fact those two levels are very often of course not categorically but very often interconnected and we need to zoom in and zoom out and and combine these macro and micro

perspectives to really understand better of course you're never able to understand it fully but to understand better how certain historical developments unfolded and um i think uh that is also what helps us think about uh what kevin highlighted like the

historiography of religion uh like histories of religion are histories like we we have to tell story we have to base our story on something and uh i think there is no wide agreement that we we need to decenter these stories as far as

possible and move beyond this narrative of like the projection of western religion on the rest of the world the invention of uh hinduism out of nothing out of colonial orientalist fantasies and so on so there is an importance uh to really look

in like at a context such as the the bengali context in its own right and um that will uh yield significant in your insights at least i i hope that kind of succeeded in doing that partially here and there

of course it is interesting to think about why tantra was so attractive as as gavin asks and and i think that is on one hand uh linked to the importance which is another point that kevin highlighted uh of tundra in itself uh

it's always imagine quotation mark of course we're talking about some very heterogeneous um that's the importance especially in bengal of these traditions that can be linked to tanka and on one hand we have on the ground tantric ideas at the core of uh

indian traditions uh indian practices indian ideas uh it's nothing marginal it's nothing primitive it's nothing deranged it carries a lot of philosophical and and and other weight which in itself uh means that there is a great value to it that still deserves to

be studied which is exactly the point that arthur avalon made and uh the people surrounding it on the other hand uh when it gets received across the world um and this is more on the speculative side or perhaps also based on a number

of great studies on that like why are people so attracted to it and to focus on this question of infrastructure that that you highlighted it is actually in the promising route because of the the focus on individualism uh you

do have something that is precisely not monastic that is precisely not structured uh that is not institutionalized in the same way as for instance a a buddhist tongue break order so the it lends itself uh to a highly

idiosyncratic individual focused kind of reception and that is precisely what we can observe in these uh both indian and western contexts where all these self-referential isoteresis occultists spiritualists and so on get fascinated in turn look at the subjects

not through the same kind of lens that we can find in missionary accounts the most orientalist accounts uh tantra has black magic devil worship and so on but they say oh so that's occultism that's magic great the exact opposite of uh of the the

prevalent perception we want to learn about this and this is exactly what is taking up on the ground in india they say um yes that's true and not only that but it is a superior form of occultism and and that

means in that contemporary debate also of religion and science this claim that you all know very well from these 19th century debates the ideal religion has to be both scientific and religious it has to be that synthesis of religion signs of

philosophy that lends itself so well to this discourse around tantra and and this is what also was highlighted by by hans and and by mjarna um for instance hans you um highlighted these uh these interactions between spiritualists uh theosophists uh from all kinds of the

world in all parts of the world including bengal and and this is exactly the the context in which those movements in their own right emerged or had emerged since the the beginning of the 19th century debates about religion and

science debates about the the origin of religion the supposed aryan civilization that stood at the core of these orientalists conceptions and religious studies conceptions such as those uh by by maximum um so from the very beginning we have the same

context of emergence of spiritualism occultism orientalist studies religious studies comparative religion other academic disciplines sanskrit studies comparative philology and so on all of those revolved around these questions and miller is a great example of that because his concern was

precisely to create to recreate as he thought this this original pure uh synthesis of religion and science that he himself termed theosophy while he had his beef uh with the theosophical society so you see how people were constantly struggling

struggling around these notions and all that really comes in in that bengali context and you need to to zoom out and have a look at these macro perspectives and and try to understand the emergence of orientalist studies spiritualism

these tantra movements and so on in like as being interlinked and only then can you see all these these con uh connections and this of course relates also uh to the relevance of tantra and bengal in its own right uh which is what

was highlighted by all of you like hans you highlighted one of my arguments that we should not just look at the 20th century i would say we should not even just look at the 19th century we have to look at

uh the the preceding centuries to understand what was going on on india the uh the emergence of um devotional philosophy of um ism of uh like like like these these kinds of very significant movements that explain the prominence of tantra not as

something marginal underground and dynomian but as an integral part of what was referred to then in the 19th century as grammatical orthodoxy so we have to adopt this diacronic perspective we have to look at the local context and

then we understand why it was so interesting for cultists and orientalists and all these different actors to look at tundra uh also what viana highlighted this uh talk of deodorized sanitized um domesticated kind of tundra that's another argument that i'm more or

less picking up actually i'm not making this argument because i'm also not a sanskritist but we we have these um integrations of shakhtar philosophy of other parts that's as you point out very problematically i just subsumed on the

tundra are already like in i mean like like a thousand years before that and we have all the debates resulting from that and and we have in in india and other parts of bengal this integral integration of the tundras in

in sense critique grammatical learning and so on so it's not just a modern deodorization of something that has been previously rejected and that was underground uh we have these debates that also were highlighted by by by hans uh the reformers the so-called and one

of the the points i try to make is that there is no clear distinction between so-called reformers and so-called revivalists or orthodox or traditionalists the situation is so much more complex and and you can really use theosophy as a great example of that um

how these these theosophists were really perceived as revivalists for instance while they were westerners like at least initially become dominated by people coming from the west uh they were advocate advocates of female rights so they found in girls

schools uh they they used modern and they praised modern and progress and science in every single seven sentence they uttered so it's not just like a traditional orthodoxy or something like that and it's something that was negotiated in india and in europe

uh you have similar debates in europe going on in north america going on which is another reason why you sh i don't find it helpful to think about like the ex part of the european understanding of religion or of science into the rest of

the world because in europe nobody or perhaps more accurately everybody thought that they knew what religion and science means but they disagreed on that there was no ready-made expert of religion or science or modernity that could have been just transplanted from

europe to the rest of the world and and this is something we can understand particularly well when we look at these diaconic uh developments in nudia and elsewhere and then we find someone like ship genre or shivajana who

is often presented as this traditional pundit uh learn the trained in classical learning and then uh you discuss sixth century thumb trust to explain ship jungle um whereas at the same time we have someone who takes woodroff as his disciple

who on one hand rails very polemically and i love your reference sons to our non endless sentences you were referring to his sentences he was a great orator so he had this extremely colorful language um and he was reigning using that language against

modernity and and western influences and so on but at the same time he had he was writing in bangla not in sanskrit and then he had he had his main work translated into english by uh the avalon team and many more

examples could be given that i discussed in the book so these categories don't help us much they help us as a starting point because they are there periods they use their use in the 19th century but we have to untangle them and

and see um in what context they emerged and they were constantly debated and this is something i appreciate also that that was highlighted um that i'm not only quote unquote discussing these historical sources uh in bengal and elsewhere but i

do try to make a small modest contribution to these ongoing debates as you know highlighted ghana about how we can perhaps write about religion are avoiding the trappings of both these old eurocentric um models and on the other hand also some

tendencies uh from the other spectrum at the end of the spectrum from uh people who might be inclined towards postcolonial perspectives uh who tend to over emphasize um like for instance cultural appropriation um western oppression uh and thus end up also focusing on

white westerners doing stuff uh rather than looking at local context and see that these people were of course not just passive recipients of every anything and but they contributed to these debates despite the the extremely relevant power asymmetries that we have in the colonial

context so there's a lot of traps and and a lot of fine lines to walk and i'm sure i sometimes probably messed up with that but i tried my best and i hope that some of the the insights can stimulate

these more abstract uh more general discussions and of course there are many lacuna including those that were highlighted by bianna in the end for instance my focus on textual sources on a certain intelligencia on the podroc on pundits

and indeed in order to paint a more comprehensive picture we would have to move beyond text be moved beyond disembodied abstract context to to incorporate anthropological field work all these kind of things that you are doing and and other aspects as well

uh so i hope that there will be more exchange on that in the future and i i thank you very much uh for the for this feedback i hope i didn't forget something super important please bring it up if i did uh i thank you for your

time anyway and i appreciate the invitation so much thank you