brooks, offending hindus

7/27/2019 Brooks, Offending Hindus

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Taking Sides and OpeningDoorSo Authority and In tegrityin the Academy's H induismDouglas R. Brooks

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong but theman who refuses to take sides must always be wrong. Heaven save usfrom poltroons who fear to make a choice. Robert A. Heinlein

WHO IS SPEAKING TO WHOM?Scholars are challenged emotionally as much as they are intellectuallyby the terms Hinduism and Hindu. Our subject, as Thomas Coburn hasrecently rem inded us, is human beings who must never be treated like ob -jects.1 Our goal then is never "objectivity"; in these endeavors, we areourselves subjects that study others and must take seriously our agendasand goals, no m atter who we migh t represent or who may be offended bywhat is said. Geertz put it plainly enough when he noted that "excessive

concern, which in practice usually means any concern at all, with how eth-nographic texts are constructed seems like an unhealthy self-absorptiontime-wasting at best, hypochondriacal at worst" (1). The same, I think, istrue of any type of scholarship, be it textual, historical, or anthropologi-cal. While we may run the risk of talking too much about ourselves andnot enough about our subjects, we need to rem ind ourselves that there isalways more at stake than what we say. At risk is our own humanity shouldDouglas R. Brooks is Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.

1 Coburn's comments came in the context of a paper delivered to the Hinduism section of theAmerican Academy of Religion during its annual meeting in 1999. He was referring in turn toW. C. Smith's comments in Towards a World Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981).Journal of the American Academy of Religion Decem ber 2000, Vol. 68, No. 4, pp. 8 17-829 2000 The American Academy of Religion


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818 Journal of the American Academ y of Religionwe fail to speak with consideration of this more subtle and, dare I say,profound issue of who we are when we speak. Herein lies the crux of ourcredibility in speaking at all.My concern is not tha t we may offend othersfor surely good schol-arship will always offend som eone. And at the risk of sounding as if no th-ing has been learned from postcolonial scholarship, scholars can no longerhold themselves hostage to a conscience that refuses to speak openly forfear of representing another legacy of colonialism. We cannot shrink fromopinions that offend some Hindus because we may stand outside theircom munity. As scholars we have m ultiple voices, even m ultiple agendas.Is it too self-absorbed to say that fundamentally we do scholarship forourselves? It is no t m erely the demands of our self-regulating academ iccommunity to which we must answer. This is not to say that we ignorethe accounts others take of us. At least at the outset of our careers we writeknowing that the future depends on how our work is received by seniorscholars who rely on the institution of ten ure to p rotect honesty and can-dor. When we reach the more-safe harbor of this professional accom-plishment, we gain new opportunities, along with the responsibility tospeak more fearlessly in the company of our peers. We may also writefor others on w hose lives we seek to leave ou r imprin t, no t only the stu-dents or colleagues we serve in our college or university communities.How are we to regard the work that emerges from the havens of ten-ured scholarship? Do we rely on anything other than the usual mecha-nisms of academic accountability? Geertz again offers an insight thatapplies to our humanistic studies, however directed his comments aretoward the work of the anthropologist. He writes, "The ability of an-thropo logists to get us to take what they say seriously has less to do witheither a factual look or an air of conceptual elegance than it has withtheir capacity to convince us that what they say is a result of their hav-ing actually penetrated (or, if you prefer, been penetrated by) anotherform of life, of having, one way or ano ther, truly 'been there.' And tha t,persuading us that this offstage miracle has occurred, is where the writ-ing comes in" (4-5).To speak credibly about Hinduism or Hindus we must convey thesense of having "been there," not merely penetrating but penetrated bywhat we have learned. This is precisely what we do in the classroom whenour students experience our authenticity as hum an beings who do morethan command the scholarly facts. At issue is not merely speaking aboutHinduism but also why we choose to speak at all and what we wish toaccomplish. We come to our subject no t with objectivity at stake bu t withhonesty and integrity. This is what we owe ourselves, each other as schol-ars, our studen ts, and the H indu folk we study. I do no t mean to suggest


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Brooks: Taking Sides and Opening Doors 81 9that honesty has been lacking but, rather, that we need to speak honestlyabou t ourselves to the same degree tha t we express openness toward oursubject. We need to make clear what we seek from our conversation andsituate ourselves in relationship to our subject. There are always conse-quences to speaking honestly and openly when this involves revealing ourpersonal motivations.The veil of scholarly objectivity can legitimately protec t one's privacyjust as it does the truth. By claiming no personal or political stake in thematter, we liberate ourselves to speak accepting the consequences. Yet thisbegs the question, so what? Why would we bother with ideas or mattersin which we have no stake? We all know how importan t it is no t to over-personalize what we say or how we act, especially in the classroom. Thisis not the same as assuming the guise of "ou tsider" looking in . Such a guiseis itself an agenda. The non-personal-stakeholder position is a use ofpower over ourselves, another kind of effort to establish a relationshipwith our subject. Power can be used to create possibilities for revelationand tru th telling just as well as it can staunch the flow of free exchange. Asscholars we always argue views in public ways and presumably accordingto the same rules. We adm it concepts such as factual, authen tic, right andwrong understand ings, and legitimate irresolution. If we choose to stand"outside" our topic and claim to be looking in, we have to accept that wemay sacrifice a level of credibility even as we gain one. On the contrary,the scholar who admits "penetration" of the subject risks being "pene-trated," as Geertz puts it. Legitimacy and authenticity are not resolved bybeing either "outside" or "inside." Instead what is established is a rela-tionship with our subject that everyone in the conversation understands.Standing "outside" the subject or claiming knowledge by entering into itmore directly, more personallythese are not exclusive categories ofunderstanding. Individuals always wear more than one guise. Why shouldour scholarly identities be different from the rest of ou r lives? My point issimply that who we choose to be matters. This is never "off the table" inour "scientific" methods of humanistic study.We need not bare our souls to be credible or authen tic, bu t we do needto make explicit who we are, refocusing our relationship to the subject ineach context. Scholar is no more a neutral or value-free term than Hin-duism or Hindu. W e may be just as unlikely to reach agreements regard-ing any of these usages or meanings.

As a scholar of Hindu Tantrism I have struggled from the outset ofmy formal learning with the challenges involving "insider knowledge" andthe ethics of access and revelation. Tantric texts and traditions presumesecret and initiated knowledge. One discovers that materials are nearlyunintelligible w ithout the inp ut of oral traditionalists, traditionalists who


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820 Journal of the American Academ y of Religionwill only speak to "fellow initiates." If we are to study the H indu Tantraat all, we must adm it that thisfirst evel of access denies admission to thosewho do not, cannot, or will not seek out the secrets of oral tradition.Goudriaan, in a most matter of fact tone, makes the point that we musttake seriously what Tantrikas say and think about themselves in relationto our scholarly interp retations: "If one takes the emphasis on oral ins truc-tion into account,. . . modern scientifically oriented studies of Tantrismexclusively based upon the written literature are liable to appear in-complete and full of misunderstandings to an initiated Tantric adept"(Goudriaan and G upta: 13). We can go further than this now because ourunderstand ing of Hindu Tan tra has evolved. It is more precise to say thattextual understand ings are incomplete without oral input, no matter howthey appear to "insider" initiates. The scholar of Tan trism must adm it thisfact without privileging every insider voice as equally important or evenas equally valid. The scholar must constantly judge the value of the inp utitself, both in terms of his or her own privileged access and by what isdivulged by informants. Once secrets are revealed in the context of ini-tiate conversation, under what circumstances is it ethical to reveal thesein public scholarship? Is it immoral to reveal traditional secrets? How issuch gathered evidence and input appropriate to a conversation that oc-curs in public, one that depends on principles of public discourse andmutual verifiability? How should "scholarship" treat the understandingof materials that are by definition inaccessible and restricted?Scholars of Hinduism are never exempt from ethical challenges in-volving credibility, reliability, and authenticity. While the circumstancesof Tan tric secrecy may exaggerate the insider/outsider "prob lem," schol-ars in H indu studies seem to be more discomforted by this situation thanothers in related fields, particularly Buddhist studies. We find it difficultto say we are "Hindus" (or even simply "insider initiates") if we are notHindu by birth and cultu re. The complexities of this issue are exacerbatedby our historical connections to colonialism, the relationship of Hindu-ism to caste and culture, and our need to disavow religious and culturalimperialism.Hindus, like other religious persons, do n ot need experts, be they re-ligious or scholarly authorities, to formulate their own boundaries andmeanings. Only when definitions and understandings demand some oranother common ground do we need to ask ourselves in a more criticalfashion, "Who speaks for Hinduism?" Whose commo n grou nd is of fore-most concern: in whose setting and context is a given claim, argument,or body of evidence being considered? In other words, how is studyingHinduism as a religion connected with being Hindu? Jonathan Z. Smithhelps to clarify this point:


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Brooks: Taking Sides and Opening Doors 821While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of humanexperiences and expressions that might be characterized, by one crite-rion or another, as religiousthere is no data for religion. Religion is acreation of the scholar's study. It is created by the scholar's imaginativeacts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent exis-tence apart rom the academy. For this reason, the student of religion mustbe exquisitely self-conscious. Indeed, this self-consciousness constituteshis primary expertise, his foremost object of study. (217)To study "H indu s" or "H indu ism" then as a scholar is to sustain this"exquisite self-consciousness," no more or less if one personally main-tains Hindu or other religious beliefs. This is the distinctive position of

scholarship, whether it be purely analytical or theological. What mattersmost is that the scholar declare his or her stance by means of this "pri-mary expertise."We should not labor here over the definitional issues of Hindu orHinduism. As scholars we have enough to identify "Hinduism" as a oneof the world's macrohistorical religions in terms of both substance andmethod.2 In light of J. Z. Smith's comments, we can conclude that beingHind u confers no qualification or privilege for studying Hin duism withinthe academy. But neither would being Hindu, or being religious in anyother way, disqualify one's academic participation.Imprecise or even disagreed-on definitions need not prevent us fromconsidering the issue of who speaks for Hinduism . H induism may not beso much a "what" as it is a "who," regardless of whe ther the term is used(self-)descriptively or to name a theoretical or analytical category.Hinduism describes the religion of people who call themselves "Hin-dus" just as it refers to those whom, for any number of reasons, scholarschoose to call "Hindu." At issue for the scholar is not the religious practi-tioners' agreement or personal preferences; the scholar and the practi-tioners' like or dislike of the term and its various applications are themselvesa subject of study, not delimiting or definitional boundaries. To think ofscholarship as an unemotional enterprise or one in which emotions are leftat the doorstep as we enter the temple of reason is to ignore the realities ofour own involvement. While we may choose to be sensitive to others' feel-ings because we are talking about religion and aware of how we m ight af-fect their understandings, this should not be confused with com prom isingour intellectual integrity. Do theologians or religious people hesitate to maketheir own claims or affirmations of what they believe is true for all?

2 See, for example, Brian K. Smith's "Exorcising the Transcendent: Strategies for Defining Hin-duism and Religion," History of Religions 27/1 (August 1987): 32-55; and John Stratton Hawley,"Naming Hinduism," Wilson Q uarterly (Summ er 1991): 20-34.


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822 Journal of the American Academ y of ReligionThe question "Who speaks for Hinduism?" belongs as much to scholarsas it does to Hindus. It is the selected audience who creates the authority of

whomever is doing the speaking, and that audience undoubtedly has itsown dynamics, history, agenda, and bias. Authority so "delegated" is amoving target as much as we might like to believe that truths endure anduntruths eventually fail or vanish. Furthe r, a person may speak with m orethan one agenda, or for more than one audience, or for multiple reasons.In our zeal to speak the truth or present th e evidence, we need to remem-ber that scholarship is not a religion antagonistic to religion. The sameperson may speak with authority or with multiple agendas in any num-ber of different settings. The point is simply that people are held account-able within each context, sometimes by very different criteria and stan-dards. The consequences of a scholarly viewpoint may be as offensive tosome religious people as any other dissonant or disagreeable view.The extent to which one is willing to go to m ake one 's views public isultimately an individual decision with personal and professional conse-quences. W hat will our peers think? How will our reputations be affected?Before we consider such matters any further, there remain a few pointsto make regarding the study of Hinduism and its evolution as a worldreligion.

H I N D U I S M AS A W O R L D R E L I G IO NHinduism has always been a multicultural religion. Anyone who haswitnessed its many expressions in South Asia know s that its diversity, evenwithin th is limited geographical setting, has created the practical equiva-lent of a "world religion." There is no culture of H induism or normativeHindu culture , unless, of course, one asks a Hind u for w hom this is a re-

ligious or nationalist issue. Rather, there are multiple religious, cultural,ethnic, and political expressions of Hinduism, and these different modesof being Hindu are not necessarily the same. One can be a "cultural" or"ethnic Hind u" w ithout being particularly "religious"just as it seemsto be the case with certain North American peop le of, say, Jewish, Catho-lic, or Protestant upbringing. Some Hindus limit their interests in reli-gion to the ir need for four wheelsa baby carriage, limousine, am bulance,or hearsebut this certainly does not make religion less important tothem when the time comes. Religious people need not be pious or par-ticularly observant to have opinions about who speaks for their religionor what constitutes an authentic religious identity.One can nowadays be "religiously Hindu" from any number of cul-tural or ethnic backgrounds, much to the chagrin of those who mightprefer it otherwise. To put it another way, Hinduism names a religion,


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Brooks: Taking Sides an d Opening Doors 82 3whereas the term Hindu may be used religiously, ethnically, culturally,politically, or in other ways. World religions have multiple cultural, eth-nic, and historical contexts as religionsthis is precisely what m akes th emworld religions. It is not simply a matter of numbers, the place of origin,or historical m ajorities. C ertainly, the task of defining a religion qua reli-gion is a formidable one and perhaps m ore of an interest to scholars thanpractitioners. But in India today and am ong the H indu diaspora, religiousidentity is no t an issue left on ly to scholarship. Some H indus seem as of-fended by the prospect of "western Hind us" as they are by a multiculturalinterpretation of the M ahabharata . At stake are feelings of religious iden-tity and "ownership" that seem to affect Hindus differently at this pointin history than it does others, like Buddhists or Muslims, whose religionshave long been world religions.Hinduism today is undergoing a profound transformation, not merelyas a religion of South Asian origins and in its diaspora but as a world re-ligion. There are now European and New World Hindus whose ances-tors were Christian by religion and whose H induism was taught to themin ways decidedly unfamiliar to South A sian H indus. As scholars we can-not ignore either what people say about themselves, their religion, or thethings we see them doing. That such Hindus of non-Asian origins m aybe disavowed or poorly regarded by other H indus is simply another factto consider. It is a religious claim of some Hindus both in South Asia andbeyond that to be Hindu is to be (South) Asian by birth; but it is no longer,nor perhaps has it ever been, the case that ethnicity is a defining featureof this religion. While there may be disputes over what it means to "be-come" Hindu , "convert," or simply assume a H indu identitya con tro-versy that is played out among Hindus and Hinduism scholarsthis ispart of the reality of Hinduism as a world religion.

Hinduism is a world religion, a religion practiced by peoples of manydifferent cultures and ethnicities and now also by peoples of "previous"religious origins and identities. There has emerged outside of South Asiaa variety of Hinduisms that are culturally diverse and divergent from SouthAsian Hinduisms, just like the versions one sees in other world religions,such as Judaism or Roman Catholicism.In the Am erican A cademy of Religion we have adjusted to this fact bysingling out H induism as a religion that is bo th part of the phenom eno nof South Asian religions and a religion (qua religion) not dependent ongeography, ethnic origins, or a particular cultural setting. As immigrantHindus in North America watch their children grow up as Americans andHindus, they may not have noticed something else: there are now otherswho claim "membership" in their religion who have had other religiousand ethnic backgrounds. Being a WASH myself, a White Anglo-Saxon


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824 Journal of the American Academy of ReligionHindu, and a scholar of Hinduism by profession has given rise to ques-tions of religious and intellectual integrity that deserve to be addressed.How can one be both religiously authoritative and intellectually honestto the tasks of critical scholarship?

IN TEG RITY A N D A U TH O RITY : BHEDABHEDA,OR DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITYWho speaks for Hinduism is less a matter of authority than one ofintegrity. Any Hindu is authoritative at least for her- or himself. Themanner in which their claims apply to others is something that may be

measurable. Taking people at their word as an assumption of scholarlywork is not the same as believing that everything they say is "true." Rather,it is assessing their statements to deduce what we wish to know. It is notthe "t ruth" of such a claim that is the proper matter of scholarly inquirybut, rather, its basis and comparison. Jacob Neusner, who along withWilliam Scott Green and others has worked to distinguish Judaism fromJewish identity, makes clear how description and comparison define thescholarly endeavor:Descriptive analysis of "a religion" is a labor of comparison and differ-entiation. To begin with, subject to the work of comparing and con-trasting are the diverse systems of life and thought, the various societ-ies or cultures, finding a place within said "religion." Because thesesystems or societies or cultures are alike, they discern commonalitiesand important traits of sameness. What one thing shows me can beapplied to two things only when both things show the same one thing(among other things). (229)Comparison as such requires that we establish grounds located in adiachronic setting. W hen we consider Hindu ism as a world religion (andnot merely South Asian, ethnic, or political, etc.), we endeavor to see "agiven religious tradition extending over a long period of time and manycountries," and so "we must seek moments at which we may fairly andreliably speak of a particular place and time of proximate uniformity.Then, and only then , will the exercise of differentiation becom e possible,so that we may apply what the one thing shows m e to be the case of twothings" (Neusner: 229).Scholars assess if persons are acting in good faith, that is, with authen-ticity and honesty. When we think people are acting in bad faith, that theyare deliberately misleading or lying, then tha t too becomes part of the storyof religion. Sustaining a religious view even as one engages in the presen-tation of scholarship does not by definition subvert the scholarly endeavor.


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Brooks: Taking Sides and Opening Doors 825Scholarship in Hinduism must learn to take conviction as a subject ofscholarship as well as part of its critical endeavors. Integrity can be judgedonly in a context in which each person is granted the courage of convic-tions. This presumption is part of an ongoing process of making choicesand judgments. Scholars should indeed judge the integrity and validityof religious claims in their contexts. Just because our subject is religionor Hinduism and we may be neither religious nor Hindu by birth, thiscreates no exem ption. Likewise, being of any religious persuasion, includ-ing Hindu by birth or by choice, neither qualifies nor disqualifies a workas scholarship. There is no privileged authority conferred by birth, cul-ture, or religious persuasion in the contexts of academic study. Our colo-nial history notwithstanding, Hinduism is not merely the same religionin different places and contexts. Hinduism is, if you will, a plural religionor even a "religions" to be studied comparatively.Not long ago it was tacitly assumed that those who study a religion ofAsian origins and who were not born into that religion (or ethnicity)should not be "adherents." To "go native" was a violation of scholarlytrad ition . This situation has been seriously challenged by the propagationof Buddhism in the West and especially its popularity within the acad-emy. Buddhist scholars can nowadays be seemingly both Buddhists andscholars in ways that have hithe rto been reserved for Jews, Christians, andMuslims. Why is this not true of Hinduism scholars who are religiousHindus but not of South Asian origin or ethnicity? Of course, Buddhisttradition not only accepts "converts" bu t has its own centuries-old tradi-tions of evangelism. In the case of Hinduism, however, this shift to non-native adherents who have adopted the religion (and perhaps not "gonenative" culturally) has been far more p roblematic. Surely it is no t caste orbirthright that defines the religious boundaries of inside and outsideHindu bhakti (devotion) and Tantra have long defied any such limitations.But even within these traditional categories by which thresholds of ex-ten t and limit are measured we see a much deeper uneasiness among bo thscholars and traditionalist Hindus. Is it merely scholarship's relationshipto the colonialist past? Then why have Buddhists made this transition from"honest scholar" to "true believer" so much more easily than those whoclaim to be scholars and Hindus?The issue of authority to speak about or for a religion takes us directlyinto the realm of the normative. The question "Who speaks for Hindu-ism?" quickly becomes "W ho should speak for Hinduism?" Religious au-thority involves more than who is speaking for themselves or about theirreligion with integrity. Just as with the terms Hinduism and Hindu, wemight consider the matter of authority from two perspectives: as a mat-ter of religious persons and as a matter of scholars. These are distinctive


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826 Journal of the American Academy of Religionbut not exclusive categories. An authoritative religious person need notbe scholarly at all, if by that we mean either educated or engaged with acommunity of academics inside or beyond one's own religious group.There are any num ber of ways to be religiously authoritative and , thu s, avoice within and for a given religion. To be authoritative or scholarly fromwithin Hinduism strikes me as no different from the issue in any otherreligion: it is a matter of audience, not of normative or even agreed-onstandards of right and wrong or correct and incorrect. Scholarship in thetradition of the western academy considers the integrity of a given voice,its bias and agenda, its claims, sources, and contex ts. W ith all this infor-ma tion we m easure the value and importance of a religious voice (i.e., towhom it is authoritative and in what ways it stands for a group or com-mu nity); we evaluate its purp ort against other m easures and standardssuch as historical sources and the trad itions of learning that distinguishthe enterprise.In this sense scholars have religious au thority as their subject, regard-less of whether or not they are participating in it. To stand within thecommunity of scholars is to be held accountable from within that com-munity, and in this sense the traditions of western scholarship bear re-semblance to religion. Scholarly tradition speaks for Hinduism insofar asit takes the measure of everything said and done by those we as scholarsidentify as H indus. Of course everyone has her or h is own religious andnonreligious views; what makes "religion" any different from other sub-jects in this way? Scholarship about religion is responsible for creating itsown standards of authoritative work and for assessing its integrity; we areno different from political scientists, historians, or anyone else. Scholar-ship abou t religion is not about advocacy anym ore than it should be aboutthe subversion of religious views. We walk a high-wire when we describeand critique the religion of H indus no t because we assess their truth claimsbut because we consider their modes of creating autho rity and the integ-rity of their voices. We use the evidence and make judgm ents on the basisof our own integrity and the degree to which we create a deeper self-awareness regarding ou r claims, agendas, or preferences. O ur task is nei-ther to privilege religious claims nor to dismiss them. A religious belief,conviction, or practice is what we see and understand it to be in light ofthe other evidence before us.Like all humanistic endeavors, scholarship is only as good as the in-tegrity of those involved in creating and sustaining it; scholarship simplydemands that people declare their m ethods, biases, agendas, and sourcesin a way that opens them to the criticism of their peers and anyone elsewho cares to consider their work. Scholarship requires a willingness notonly to play one's hand in the pub lic game bu t to reveal one's cards. This


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Brooks: Taking Sides and Opening Doors 827is not, it seems to me, the same for those religious persons who do notidentify their work within the academic guild.

MEDITATION REVOLUTION:HO NEST Y IS N O T OBJECTIVITYScholars have never been imm une to their personal choices and theeffect these have on their work, be it in religion or any other subject.But in the study of religion we distinguish theology am on g the forms of"critical"scholarship. We might say that one important difference is"doing religion" (or religious scholarship) and the "study of religion."

While the former is marked by the "we" who acknowledge advocacy andmake clear endorsements, the latter seeks the subtle advancement of anempathetic distancethis is what "they" think or do as we see it. Thekey po int of self-conscious distinction is whether or not "we" and "they"are the same group. When "we" admit to being "them," the terms ofscholarship have changed. But this is exactly what happens in the aca-demic study of the western mono theisms and now Buddhism. These aresubjects populated by "true believers." Is Hinduism to be singled outfor some special reason?Somefiveor six years ago I was asked, along with a group of colleagues,to write a history and theology of Siddha Yoga Meditation, the movem entestablished in the west by Swami Muktananda and now un der th e leader-ship of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. We undertook the project with de-votion to Swami Chidv ilasananda and with the clear intent to place SiddhaYoga in a "favorable" theological light. We sought to take seriously SiddhaYoga's religious claims and assert a certain degree of theological author-ity with respect to its interpretation. In my own view, we received thistheological "authority" to speak for Siddha Yoga from Swami Chidvila-sananda herself. Further, this authority was granted to us on the basis ofher view of the authors as scholarly authorities. I believe she asked us towrite a Siddha Yoga theology because we already had the authority to doso from within the guild of scholarship. The ou tcom e, Meditation Revo-lution: A History and Theology of Siddha Yoga, has drawn considerableattention from colleagues, critics, and devotees. Some wonder if we have"sold out" our scholarly objectivity or have been censored; others havequestioned our integrity openly and have suggested that we can no longerwrite "academically" with authority. Did we see all the evidence, and werewe willing to consider it? Were we willing to discuss Siddha Yoga in lightof the criticisms of those w ho have critical or unfavorable views?First, it should be clear that Meditation Revolution was deliberatelywritten as theology, primarily by western scholars who have long been part


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82 8 Journal of the American Academ y o f Religionof the academic guild. That we should "come o ut" as theologians seemsunfortuna te to some colleagues who find such an endeavor anathem a toacademic honesty. Can we ever be trusted to write with candor or open-ness again when we freely adm it to being pa rt of a religious organization?Among the authors only Swami Durgan anda is not a m ember of the aca-demic guild. Her history of Siddha Yoga, which forms part 1 of Medita-tion Revolution, makes no claim to being "objective" and was certainlynever meant to be "definitive." Hers is but one history, and surely otherhistories and stories will be told. Perhaps in future editions more of thecontroversial history of Siddha Yoga needs to be presented publicly fromSiddha Yoga's own perspective. Our task was to present Gurum ayi Chidvila-sananda's Siddha Yoga as it is understood from within its living tradition.As a kind of modern Tan trism, Siddha Yoga is a guruvada and so is de-fined by the teachings and practices of the current guru. The history ofthe movement seen from this perspectivea theological oneis part ofthe contem porary movem ent's self-understanding. In this sense, the "his-tory" of Siddha Yoga presented in Meditation Revolution offers the sortsof insights that only an "insider" can prov ide.The remainder of Meditation Revolution is perhaps less controversialin content bu t no less unusual for being a theology focusing on a modernHinduism written by western academics. The autho rs, new to the categoryof scholarly theology, hope othe r theo logians and scholars will engage thebook in ways that revise, correct, and supplement its content. Using re-ceived knowledge from within academic trad ition , we sought as well toexpand tha t body of data. However, the value and worth of this scholar-ship need to be assessed in light of it being theological. At no time duringits composition or internal review was there any form of censorship, norwere any subjects or ideas considered "out of bounds." Our discussions"inside" the Siddha Yoga context and c om munity were frank, open, andoccasionally contentious. Ultimately we, as scholars and theologians, wereleft to our own devices and decisions. My own experience with academicpresses and publications has, in fact, proven much more interventionist.The choices we made regarding content were decided on by the authorscollectively; we did not always each "get our w ay." This is simply the na-ture of true collaboration.For the theological section of Meditation Revolution we concluded thatthere was little reason to discuss any controversial issues raised by thehistory of Siddha Yoga. However, in our discussions of these topics weapplied a standard of academic/journalistic verifiability. W hen faced w ith"facts" or "assertions," we employed "the Watergate principle": there m ustbe at least one additional corroborating source for any claims, a standardof truth beyond a reasonable doubt, and relevance to the topic under


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Brooks: Taking Sides and Opening Doors 829consideration. Just because something may have been said publicly in a"credible" source, such as a respected journalistic publication, or reiter-ated with frequency was not itself enough for us to consider it "news" or"newsworthy." Too often we discovered nothing more than accusationsand hearsay. But it is also the case that claims regarding the behavior orteachings of Swami Muktananda were considered relevant primarily inthe con text of Swami Chidvilasananda's Siddha Yoga. In o ther words, ourmission was to describe the theology of Siddha Yoga as it exists today,under the leadership of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.While we expected that Meditation Revolution would prompt some dis-cussion and even controversy, we did not anticipate how its publicationwould raise anew questions of academic integrity, the insider/outsider is-sues in studying religion, or its part in the "new" Hinduism as a world re-ligion. Scholars of Hinduism need not limit themselves to any one genre ofscholarship, be it strictly descriptive and "critical" or theological. We areresponsible to ourselves, to one another, and to anyone who chooses toengage our conversation. At stake is not our authority, which is a matter insome sense beyond our personal claims or control, but our integrity. Andintegrity is measured as much by our own religious views as it is by what-ever standards and traditions make up our community.

REFERENCESGeertz, Clifford Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford:1988 Stanford University Press.

Goudriaan, T., and Hindu Tantric and Sakta Literature. Wiesbaden: Otto1981 Gupta Harrossowitz.Neusner, Jacob "Alike and Not Alike: A Grid for Comparison and Dif-

1983 ferentiation." In Take Judaism, for Exam ple: Studies to -ward the Comparison of Religions, 227-235. Ed. by JacobNeusner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago:1982 University of Chicago Press.


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