“Cultural Criticism”

 

    The term “cultural criticism” refers to a heuristic concept developed by Agehananda Bharati to elicit data regarding the deeply-held attitudes of people as anthropological informants. For example, modem Indians hung-up on Gandhi’s “spurious”, “Hindu Renaissance” type of spirituality could be one target amenable to the use of this tool; the responses elicited through such inquiry would possibly indicate their underlying fear of loss of the semen virile, and the resultant “archaic” fear of loss of soul. These fears are pandemic to Indian culture, and were thus probably part of the etiology of the Mahatma’s politically successful and public celibacy, and resultant sainthood. 

    Assam is one of the very few places in India where the Tantric tradition has been, subversively, operational. This is not surprising, because the Assam and Bengal regions have often been called the original home of Tantrism, these practices dating here from the early centuries A.D.

    The traditional strength of Shaktism in Assam is due to the large tribal sub-stratum of the society; these tribal groups are till today even more matrifocal and liberal as compared to the greater Assamese society, in which itself the position of women is very definitely much better than in the rest of India. The robustness of the Tantric tradition in Assam is, therefore, due to the fact that the society and culture have always held comparatively very positive attitudes towards women.

    In addition to this great stream of Shakti-worship, there has been another major religious stream in Assam, viz. the Sankardevite brand of neo-Vaishnavism, which has had a profound influence on Assamese culture from the fifteenth century onwards. There are quite a few differences between these two cultural streams. For example, in the Chaitanya-inspired Vaishnavism propagated by Shankardev, they have group-oriented activities like kirtans and satsangs, where most of the members present are observers, rather than direct participants in mystic praxis. Then, the neo-Vaishnavite theology is more authoritarian, and pronouncedly theistic, which means that there is little real philosophy as such in their ideology. Again, like the Sikh gurdwarasa the Assamese namghars usually have no idol, only the book, viz. the “Bhagavat Purana”. Contrast this with the healthy polytheism of Shaktism, with its multiple and pulchritudinous female targets for meditation and mystic consummation.

    Further, the neo-Vaishnavite sampradaya is rather puritanical and anti-woman: Chaitanya inveighed continually against women, and deprecated contact with them. In doing so, however, he was going very much against the grain of Bengali culture, since male-female inter-action has traditionally been healthier and more liberal in the Bengal region as compared to the rest of India; this openness has at least partly been due to the pervasive hold of Shaktism and Tantrism in the area. Also, the dour neo-Vaishnavism of Chaitanya was substantially mitigated by the strength of the Vaishnava-Sahajiya variant of this sampradaya, as so well-documented by Dimock; this latter erotic Radha-Krishna brand of Vaishnavism did not, however, become so popular in Assam.