By Gérard Toffin
Relations between Hindu sects in India and Nepal, the two main Hindu countries in South Asia, have not been sufficiently explored and documented in academic literature on transnational Hindu sampradayas. These relations vary considerably from one place to another and differ for different religious organisations. Jangam (Lingayat) priests officiating at Shaivaite temples in the eastern part of Kathmandu Valley have not maintained strong links with their original forefathers from South India and Varanasi. They have long been totally integrated into the Nepalese caste system and very rarely return to India. The Kanphata Yogis of the Nepalese Tarai, by contrast, share very close links with their counterparts in Northern India, as Véronique Bouillier (1998: 116–27) demonstrates. Members of the Caughera monastery in the Dang Valley, for instance, go on annual pilgrimage immediately after the Holi festival to Devipatan, Gonda District, Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, the small community of Kabirpanthis in Nepal retains links with those across the border; their main shastris and gurus circulate between Nepal and India, especially in the winter period when temperatures drop sharply in the Kathmandu Valley, and their ashrams shelter a number of Indian religious sant figures. The Ramanandi followers from the Nepalese Tarai too live mainly within the sphere of influence of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh and tend to visit Haridwar, Prayag, Ujjain and Nasik during the Kumbha Mela (Burghart, 1983). For all these ascetics, and more broadly for most Hindus, Nepal and India share the same sacred geography.
Little is known about whether Nepalese branches of such organisations have achieved their autonomy over the ages or whether they have remained dependent on their Indian counterparts. Likewise, little is known about the processes of adaptation and transformation that Indian sampradayas may have undergone as a result of their contact with the Nepalese context. Little is known also about processes of interaction within the same sampradaya across the 1,800-kilometre long border separating the two countries. Do the otherworldly pursuits of these more or less renunciatory groups transcend political and national borders? To what extent does feeling Nepali/Indian reflects or challenge the shared organisational attachment? Do these links intersect with political identities and national boundaries? Presumably, the more renunciatory and itinerant the sect is, the more tenuous its links with its place of origin. After all, the pure ascetic is supposed to have no ancestral home to return to, no field to cultivate and no sense of national belonging. Most Hindu sects’ messages are directed at all Hindus (and sometimes all humanity), irrespective of their location and nationality.
This chapter aims to contribute to the critical understanding of transnational sampradayas that have bases in both India and Nepal. Despite sharing roughly similar Hindu legacies and Hindu sacred texts, these two countries have had very different histories and followed distinctive national agendas since the Second World War. India adopted a republican and secularist model 60 years before the erstwhile Nepalese kingdom. The strong sense of nationalism in Nepal is often directed against India;1 such antagonism tends to create a sense of national solidarity, particularly among those Nepalese living abroad. They challenge the attempt by some right wing groups to forge pan-Hindu continuity between the two countries.
My focus here is on the Krishna Pranami sect (Nijananda sampradaya)—a bhakti reformist movement originally close to other sant groups such as Kabirpanthis. This sampradaya, introduced into Nepal in the 17th century from Gujarat and other parts of India, has met with remarkable success over the last 50 years or so, especially among Hindu upper castes. This success has been such that since 1950, Nepalese Pranamis have been playing an increasingly important role within the organisation and now head its main ‘religious seat’, gaddi, in Jamnagar, Gujarat. They have tight control over other important sites in India and are the most active social forces within the order. Their prominence has provoked some reaction among Indian Pranamis. A small group of orthodox believers wish to return to the original message of the founder of the sect and defend what can be called a ‘fundamentalist vision’. These are the main issues I would like to examine here. My main argument is that despite the Pranamis’ universalistic theology, boundaries between the two countries still prevail and are of great importance within the sect. More generally, I argue that in striking contrast to the old theme of detachment which ascetics are understood to embody (Feldhaus, 2003: 185–87), most followers of this organisation betray a strong sense of attachment to place and nation.
The Krishna Pranami sampradaya originated in 17th century Gujarat and is now sparsely distributed through western and northern India, particularly in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam, as well as in Nepal (see Priyacarya and Sharma, 2009). The religious organisation places great value on asceticism: all ‘seat-holders’, gaddi patis, at major temples and all main religious figures are now celibate. They undergo a specific sanyas diksha initiation, that is, committing themselves definitively to renunciation. Those who have undergone this initiation occupy the highest rank within the sampradaya. The gaddi patis from major temples constantly move from one place to another to attend various meetings and preaching programmes. In some ways they perpetuate the peripatetic life of ascetics. However, the Pranamis do not possess any monastic establishment or ascetic order. Religious life is mainly oriented towards local temples. The major religious centre is Jamnagar, in Kathiawar (Gujarat) in the Gulf of Kutch. The main group’s gaddi (lit. ‘seat’ or ‘throne’) is located in this town, along with the residence of the head of the Pranami sect, the maharaj. The sampradaya’s temples are called mandir or dham and are built in the Indian-Mughal style, with domes and towers called gummat. Some of them house a mausoleum (samadhi) where a saint belonging to the group is buried. These graves are the object of much veneration.
Their religious doctrine, derived from the teachings of Prannath (1618–94), a charismatic figure in 17th century western India, is remarkably eclectic. It claims to transcend Hinduism, Islam and other religions such as Judaism and Christianity. In Prannath’s view, the separate religious identity of Hindus and Muslims was based on worthless customs and false ideas. This universalistic vision is still one of the main elements of the organisation’s message. Prannath’s followers also strongly reject the conventions of the caste system and denounce brahmanical ritualism. They defend gender equality and other egalitarian social values. Theologically, they reject the plurality of the forms of God as commonly understood in Hinduism, emphasising instead the internal spirit of religion, its spiritual essence, to the detriment of ritualism and image worship. Devotion, in the spirit of a lover or faithful wife, as in Radha’s love of Krishna, is seen as the best form of worship. Followers worship the child Krishna, whose divine power is understood to come from the abode of paramdham, situated in the heavenly realm. Yet theologically, it is the couple Krishna and Radha who constitute the main object of veneration.
The organisation originally belonged to the nirgun, ‘without quality’, aniconic strand within the bhakti movement. There are no images on the altars inside the temples, just holy books specific to the group, particularly the Kuljam Svarup (or Kuljam Svarup Saheb) or Tartam Sagar, embodying Raj-Shyamaji, Krishna and his consort Radha, with both divine aspects being merged in the scriptures. The books, placed on a ‘throne’ (simhasana) and carefully wrapped in lengths of cloth, are the main object of devotees’ worship. In ancient times, when these scriptures were handwritten, nobody was allowed to touch or read them without first taking a bath. When travelling, they had to be carried on one’s head. Even today, placing the books on the ground is considered highly disrespectful.
The Kuljam Svarup, which has 18,768 verses (chaupai), is arranged into 14 books written in various vernacular languages—Gujarati, Sindhi, Hindi, Urdu and more often than not in a mixture of all these languages. It is believed that this text, attributed to Prannath, carries the essence of the Gita, the Vedas, the Bible and the Quran. It is viewed as the spiritual body of Prannath and devotees consider it to be the fifth Veda. The Svarup, as it is often called in its short form, is a key cultural marker of Pranami identity. The social and religious activities of the sampradaya centre on this book. Additionally, Prannath’s major biographies (Bitak, or accounts of the past) have been composed by the founder’s disciples, notably Laldas and Mukundas. These hagiographic and legendary life stories, rich in miracles, are constitutive of the community and its identity. The deification of Prannath, the founder figure, greatly contributed to the religious authority vested in these writings. Besides these Pranami-specific texts, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Purana (or Shrimad Bhagavat), are objects of devotion and are read and taught within the organisation, thus sustaining a crucial link with other Hindus and Hindu sampradayas.
In theory, devotees of the sect come from all castes. Everyone has the right to worship, to enter a shrine and to be initiated. Followers are called sundarsath (from sundar, beautiful, and sath, companion) or pranamis (from pranam, a Sanskrit word that means the act of folding both hands and bowing one’s head in reverence to a deity or a respected person). They greet each other with their hands raised to their chest in a sign of pranam. Members are strictly vegetarian. The most orthodox adherents do not eat even onions or garlic. Social service (rendered at orphanages, schools, hospitals, shelters for cows) is seen as the highest form of devotion.
No accurate figures are currently available for the total number of Pranamis. The sect’s authorities claim a membership of 5 million throughout the world, a figure that seems somewhat exaggerated. I estimate the number of sundarsaths living in Nepal to be between 300,000 and 400,000—quite a large figure given that the total population of this Himalayan country was 26.6 million in 2011. Unlike some other (more recent) Krishnaite organisations such as the Swaminarayans and Hare Krishnas, Pranamis have not yet spread on a large scale in the West. Only a few temples exist in the United States, two in Tennessee (Nashville and Christiana) and another in Houston, Texas. A small community (50 families) also lives in Canada, with at least three small associations (satsangs) in Windsor, Toronto and Montreal. As is the case with the Swaminarayanṇ movement, here too most of these temples and centres have been built and are managed by Gujarati immigrants. There are about 100 sundarsaths in Britain (in London and Birmingham), mostly from Gujarat, Haryana and South Africa. Yet, so far no temple has been built in this country.
The propagation of the Pranami faith in Nepal predates the unification of the country in the late 18th century and goes as far back as Prannath’s lifetime. However, it took a long time for the sampradaya to be officially recognised by the religious authorities and to gain sufficient number of devotees to become financially viable. Nepalese sundarsaths believe that the first followers of Prannath arrived in Nepal at the end of the 17th century, in 1678–79 (Sharma, 1984). No historical sources document this event, but it is widely believed that one Nepali-speaking brahman from Dailekh, western Nepal, named either Purusotham Mahatma or Krishnadas, went on a pilgrimage to Haridwar, now located in Uttarakhand, India. He met Prannath (ji) at this sacred site, became his disciple and followed the saint (mahamati) for some time before returning to Nepal. The local people in this far western part of the country viewed his teachings with suspicion. Nobody converted to the Pranami doctrine. Krishnadas was compelled to leave his village. For a time he travelled within Nepal before settling in Hokse, 3 kilometres from Palanchok, an area east of the Kathmandu Valley that is now part of Kabhrepalanchok district. The first Pranami altar was set up in this locality. Some members of the sect claim that a Chetri (Kshatriya) group, the Baja Gain, founded the temple.
It is not clear whether the sect was introduced to the Kathmandu Valley from its initial location in Kabhrepalanchok or from elsewhere. Whatever the case may be, the Pranamis’ impact on the Newars (the ‘indigenous’ population of the Kathmandu Valley) dates from the late 19th century. The first domestic altar was set up by a guru called Dayal Das, Nepalese himself, in the house of a Newar, Ram Das Shrestha, in Kilagal (Sapugalli), a neighbourhood in central Kathmandu. Nothing is known of this person, except that his own guru, known by the name of Ratna Das Maharaj, lived for the most part in Panna, Madhya Pradesh, India. Meanwhile, another Shrestha family relative, a timber trader, established a Pranami shrine close by in Nardevi. Ram Das Shrestha’s descendants still live in Kilagal and profess the Pranami faith. The shrine in Nardevi, however, fell into ruin some decades ago and has not been rebuilt.
About the same time, if not earlier, some families belonging to the Sanjel group of the Jaisi Bahuns (brahmans) settled in the Kathmandu Valley and converted to the Pranami religion. These Parbatiya families (Hindus of the hills speaking Nepali as their mother tongue) originally came from Jumla/Dailekh in western Nepal. They migrated to the Kathmandu Valley during the second half of the 18th century, apparently just before the conquest of the valley by Prithivi Narayan Shah (1768–69). They founded the Gauthatar settlement, 6 kilometres east of Kathmandu, in an area that was unoccupied at the time. The Sanjels claim that an ancestor of theirs, a certain Gokunananda, went to Haridwar in the 17th century, met Prannath and introduced the sect to Nepal. Yet this version is contested by other oral accounts. To this day, a number of sundarsaths, mostly Sanjel or from other Parbatiya groups, still live in the Gauthatar area.
The sampradaya spread to the eastern part of the country from the aforementioned area of Hokse (Shivakothi, 1988). The influence of the sampradaya in Kabhrepalanchok district, as well as in the far eastern zone, especially in Terhatum, Jhapa and Sunsari districts, may date as far back as that in the Kathmandu Valley. Jhapa district at present houses the largest number of Pranami temples and sundarsath disciples in Nepal. A group of Parbatiya brahmans, the Mainali, a Kumai Bahun group that migrated eastward from Kabhrepalanchok, played a key role in this process. Some members of this group have been very active in extending the organisation to that part of the country and are known to have been strong supporters of the Pranamis in the past. A Mainali woman who for years lived in Panna, Madhya Pradesh, is said to have introduced the Svarup religious text into eastern Nepal. She established an important Pranami temple in Phuguwa in 1828, from where the sampradaya spread to the eastern Nepalese Tarai and to the Kalimpong subdivision of Darjeeling district, North Bengal. She also made some converts among the Kiranti Tibeto-Burman–speaking ethnic groups, especially among the Limbus.
During the Rana period (1846–1951), the Pranamis faced considerable difficulty in expanding their sampradaya and preaching their doctrine in Nepal. The Rana establishment was apprehensive about an overtly heterodox religion that criticised brahmans and caste hierarchy. With the Shah royal family, the Ranas had established a theocratic Hindu state that marginalised religious minorities and prohibited conversion. The large number of Urdu words used in Pranami religious books and the sundarsath’s tendency towards monotheism, as well as their custom of burying their dead, led the authorities to believe that they were Din-Islam in disguise, a proselytising Muslim group that had borrowed some Hindu concepts. The sundarsath were even suspected of symbolically killing cows during their rituals.
According to the brahmans, Ranas and Shahs who ruled the country, Pranamis did not really belong to sanatana dharma, the orthodox form of Hinduism that was the state religion and the main pillar of state policy at that time. Instead, they viewed the Pranamis as a Muslim group that had to be kept outside the boundaries of Hinduism, that is to say, outside the country’s boundaries.2 Members of the sect were consequently harassed by officials, many of whom were brahmans. Some were thrown in jail. Others were forced to drink alcohol and eat consecrated leftovers (prasad) of Guhyeshvari, one of the main Tantric Hindu deities in the Valley, whose food offerings are known to contain meat and alcohol. Their sacred books were searched out and destroyed. As a result, the male members of the group were forced to go into hiding, and the sacred texts were secreted away to safe places and hidden, sometimes for months. This persecution reached a climax during the rule of Chandra Shamsher (1901–29) and Juddha Shamsher (1932–45). It affected Newars and Parbatiyas alike. The worst excesses occurred in the Kathmandu Valley, where the central authorities were based.
It was only from 1951 onwards, after the fall of the Rana regime, and particularly after 1990, the date marking the end of the panchayat regime, that the movement gained ground and reached more disciples. From this time on, the sect was able to propagate its religious doctrine and make new converts in a much more open manner and in greater conformity with the law. Nowadays, devotees consider themselves Hindu and are recognised as such by state authorities and other Hindu associations and sampradayas.
Nepalese followers mainly belonged to the Hindu Parbatiya upper castes and still do so today. Despite important differences, these groups find some consonance between their Hindu backgrounds and the guiding principles of the Pranami organisation (such as vegetarianism, veneration of the cow and Krishna-centred devotion). Nepalese from other castes have been attracted by the reformist content of the Pranami faith, particularly its egalitarianism, and anti-caste discourse. Yet, there are very few members from low castes among Nepalese sundarsaths.3 The whole movement is thus torn between two opposite forces: one tends more towards Sanskritisation, the other rejects orthodox values associated with brahmanism and moves towards de-Sanskritisation. This is precisely why some devotees view the Pranamis’ contemporary practices and beliefs as marking a departure from the order’s original reformist, if not revolutionary, message.
As can be seen from this brief historical account, the Pranami sect was brought into Nepal mainly by Nepalese followers who had become acquainted with the Nijananda doctrine in India. The sampradaya’s influence spread in the Himalayan kingdom mainly through conversion, not migration. It reveals considerable interaction between India and Nepal, and, within Nepal, between the hills and the Tarai. Indeed, since the 17th century, a constant flow of followers has circulated between Nepal and the main Pranami centres in India: Jamnagar and Surat in Gujarat as well as Panna, near Khajuraho, in Madhya Pradesh; the three main puri, sacred cities; and sacred sites associated with Pranami history.
Journeys to Panna, Surat and Jamnagar are meritorious pilgrimages for the Nepalese sundarsath. They usually undertake such pilgrimages in familiar company and use this opportunity to stop at temples managed or headed by Nepalese acaryas or maharajs (senior religious teachers, leaders of a sect). They are welcomed in these temples where they often come across personal acquaintances or friends. On an average, a Nepalese Pranami follower visits these sites, or one of these sites, two or three times in his/her lifetime. Nepalese members of royal families and other affluent Hindus tend to go on pilgrimage to the various sacred Indian sites (Varanasi, Haridwar, Puri, and so on) in the winter period, taking advantage of the warm temperatures in the plains at this time of year.
In contrast, Indian sundarsaths visit Nepal rather less. The mythological and sacred Pranami geography, centred on Panna, Surat and Jamnagar, virtually excludes Nepal. Yet, I met a good number of Indians in the eastern districts of the Nepalese Tarai who were on a tour of the many Pranami temples in that region. Besides, the Marwari merchants of the Kathmandu Valley, who are of Indian origin and comprise a number of Pranamis, frequently call upon a maharaj from Haryana to deliver religious discourses in Kathmandu. Additionally, in recent times, a number of famous Indian leaders of the Krishna Pranamis were officially received in the former royal palace either by King Birendra or former King Gyanendra (Toffin, 2011). These leaders tend to view Nepalese Hinduism as somewhat backward. For them, the cult of the living goddess Kumari, for instance, is a blatant case of idolatry, and they prefer to throw their weight behind a less ritualistic form of practice such as that of the Pranamis.
Today, the most striking phenomenon is the growing influence of Nepalese Pranamis (or Pranamis of Nepalese origin) in India. Brahmans, particularly those from the Nepalese eastern Tarai, have played a major role in India over the last 60 years.4 A figure such as Mangaldas, born in Ilam District (Melbote), in 1886, acquired major importance within the sampradaya and played a huge role in spreading it to northeast India. This famous guru (or maharaj) founded a massive Pranami temple (now called Mangaldham) in Kalimpong. He is known to have worked miracles and to have been the spiritual guide for a number of leading Pranamis. His popularity is not restricted to West Bengal and the eastern Himalayas; it has extended to many other sacred places in northern and north-western India.
What is more, even the position of maharaj at the Indian headquarters, Jamnagar, has been in the hands of the Nepalese since the time of Dhanidasji Maharaj (1916–44), the twelfth religious leader of the congregation, who was born in Nepal (Balthum, Lamjung district). The thirteenth maharaj (counting up from Devchandra, the guru of Prannath), known by the name of Dharmadasji (1944–91), was also Nepalese. His successor is Shri Krishḥnamanji Maharaj, who spent his childhood in the Jhapa district of Nepal and was born to a Baral brahman family. Krishnamanji Maharaj, the current head of the Krishna-Pranamis, resides in Jamnagar, but usually visits Nepal twice a year. When I interviewed him, in November 2007, he played down his Nepalese origins and presented himself as an all-India leader. He stressed that he was born in India (near Gorakhpur, a short distance from Nepal).
Today, a number of Pranami temples in India, in Gujarat and in West Bengal in particular, are headed by sants and acaryas of Nepalese origin. These persons live in India, are recognised by Indian devotees, but still regularly return to Nepal several times a year. The Padmavatidham of Panna, where Prannath is buried, has been managed over the years by a Nepalese mahant, Gopidas, who has now retired to the Nepalese Tarai.5 Furthermore, a number of young propagators, dharma-pracarak, were taught by learned Nepalese teachers. These young preachers and missionaries, both girls and boys, brought new vigour to the sect, with their enthusiasm and knowledge. Since 1960, they have been trained mostly in Mumbai in various Vedantic schools. At present, the most active training centre is a Pranami meditation institution, Shri Prannath Bani Pratisthan Kendra, built in 2002 in Raygarh (Raygad), Chattisgarh, on a plot of land donated by a Marwari family. This centre is run by Mahendra Adhikari, a brahman of Nepalese origin from Kalimpong.
The remarkable expansion of Krishna Pranamis in Assam, Meghalaya, and more generally in northeast India, is also linked to the considerable waves of migration from Nepal to these areas since the 19th century. Indeed, the prominence of the Nepalese stream within the sect was clearly visible at the huge religious festival (mahotsav), organised in November 2006 by the head of the Navantanpuridham temple, in Jamnagar, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival in this city of Devchandra, a famous initiator of the sampradaya, and the 375th anniversary of the founding of the Navatanpuri temple. A huge number of Nepalese sundarsaths, amounting to about a third of all visitors—estimated at 400,000—attended the ceremony.
How do the two branches interrelate in daily religious life? At first sight, nationality, caste as well as other forms of social affiliation only play a minor role. What matters, as repeatedly stated, is devotion (bhakti), service (seva) and knowledge (gyan). Everything else is superfluous. Most Pranami temples in India and in the Nepalese Tarai welcome sundarsaths of both nationalities with no distinction. In the eyes of Gujarati followers, the fact that the main priest, pujari, might be of Nepalese origin does not have any impact on the life of the religious site. However, a closer look reveals more conflictual situations and some tension. Indeed, the ongoing influence of the Nepalese branch provokes envy and jealousy among a minority of Indian followers. Sometimes complaints that more than half of the Pranami temples in the state are in the hands of Nepalese maharajs or mahants make the headlines in Gujarati newspapers. The question of what may be called the ‘Nepalese connection’ is an issue that is taken very seriously within the congregation. Some Indian devotees clearly fear that their whole community has fallen into the hands of the Nepalese. The current maharaj of Jamnagar has been accused of being a foreign agent involved in an obscure conspiracy. The destination of funds and donations seems to be a particular source of conflict. All these internal issues are, of course, very far from the ideal image that the group wishes to portray to outsiders.
It is very difficult to obtain information concerning financial movements between the two countries. As a rule, the organisation of the sampradaya is rather decentralised. Each temple constitutes an independent administrative and financial unit. These bodies are registered as ‘Charitable Trusts’ by the local authorities. The most prominent are managed by an administrative committee where the main donating families and the religious authorities, some of them from far away, are represented. Maharajs or shastris chair these committees. The devotionalist order depends entirely on lay support and patronage. Economic resources include land income and donations made by devotees at festivals and other ceremonies. In principle, all sundarsaths have to contribute weekly to their nearby temple what is called a muthi dan, ‘a handful of rice’, a gift mostly payable in cash. Each temple is managed individually, even if it is difficult to exclude money transfers from one place to another. An encompassing central committee, called Shri Pranami Bishva Parishad, representing all the salient religious figures and the main temples of the organisation, meets regularly. Its members deliberate on financial and religious issues. Each temple is run by a general manager called kothari, who is in charge of food and storage. This person stands in third place in the local hierarchy, after the maharaj (or shastri) and the pujari (priest). Unpaid service is the general rule, all contributions to the temple being seen as an obligation towards Raj-Shyamaji and a means to acquire religious merit.
The significant presence of Nepalese members in the organisation has led to some internal changes. In particular, recent decades have seen the sampradaya undergo an interesting re-conversion to orthodox sanatana Hinduism. Pranamis now tend to forget the strong influences of Islam on their theology and beliefs as well as the presence of Islamic religious terminology in their texts. They attribute these borrowings to contingent historical circumstances and therefore view them as unessential. The sundarsaths currently define themselves as a pure Hindu group, defending proper Hindu values against foreign religions, especially Christianity and Islam. They extol the exploits of Maharaja Chatrasal, a fighting Bundela King converted to the Pranami faith, who revolted against the Mughals and against Aurangzeb’s so-called ‘tyranny’ in particular. A number of Pranamis, especially in India, share aspects of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s agenda (for instance, arguing for the need to strengthen Hindu values among Hindu youth), although they insist on their total independence from the Sangh Parivar and right-wing Hindu nationalism. These changes present striking parallels with the Hinduisation of the Sikh religion in the 19th century (Oberoi, 1994).
When visiting Nepalese Pranami temples and attending ceremonies performed by their devotees, the observer is struck by features common to other saguna (iconic) Vaishnava sects and popular Hinduism. Admittedly, there is no worship of images in these centres, and Raj-Shyamaji (Krishna and Radha) are represented by crowns. But images of Krishna as a child are to be found all over the walls. Photos, chromolithographs and paintings of the founding members of the sampradaya are represented in an entirely devotional way. These illustrations are not just respected, they are venerated. Raj-Shyamajis are embodied in the altar in the form of books. They are wrapped in thick cloth, and garlanded with flowers, like the images in most Hindu temples. The pujari (priest) offers numerous quotidian ritual services at the altar, making offerings of flowers and performing the arati at night. The presence of these Vaishnava saguna elements in India and Nepal requires more ethnographic and historical research. They must have been present in the sampradaya since the 17th–18th centuries, as is the case with most organisations founded by sants (cf. Vaudeville, 1996). Yet these features are obviously now being re-emphasised. As a result, Pranamis have found themselves closely associated with other Vaishnava groups, even if they strongly criticise these others for being materialistic and money-minded. They have less and less to do with the Kabirpanthis, who for most part have maintained a stricter nirguna profile.
The phenomenon of ‘sagunisation’ has acquired particular importance over the last decades, particularly in and around the figure of Mangaldas in north Bengal. Recasting Pranami society in more explicit Hindu terms has set up new boundaries within the sampradaya and has provided its members with a new identity allied with Hindu values. This development has led to internal conflict. Some members disagree with the current leanings of the sampradaya. They criticise the ritualism and the tendency towards deification and image worship in the sampradaya. They consider it a mistake to identify Prannath with Krishna and refuse to consider this deity a symbol of the Supreme Being (as the Vallabhacari sect does). They are distrustful of the large mahotsav meetings recently organised by the Pranamis’ religious authorities; they are extremely suspicious of the devotional reverence shown towards the maharaj; and they feel sceptical about the growing importance of the Pranamis’ Jamnagar ‘seat’. Maharajas, gaddipatis (literally ‘seat holders’), celibate gurus and public rites concluding with the distribution of prasad and asirbad (blessings) have all come to be viewed with hostility.
A dissenting minority, led by Shri Suryanarayan, the current pontiff of the Surat (Gujarat) Mahamangalpuridham temple (Mota mandir), is demanding a return to Prannath’s initial universalistic message. Shri Suryanarayan, born in Bihar, no longer participates in the group’s major events and no longer pays respect to the maharaj of the sampradaya based in Jamnagar. He has created his own parampara or lineage, and presents himself in his posters as seventeenth in the line of succession since Prannath. He and his followers have endorsed the traditional name of the sampradaya and now prefer to call themselves Nijanandis. They wear white rather than the saffron-coloured attire now often worn by the most devout among the Krishna Pranamis. Saffron, they claim, is the colour of sannyasis and of Shankacharya. It belongs to sagun philosophy, not to the nirgun ideas of the original Nijananda movement.
The sampradaya is thus divided at present between two different factions, each asserting its own distinctive identity. The major stream, to which Nepalese sundarsaths belong, remains loyal to the present maharaj of Jamnagar. The second, based mainly in Surat, as well as in some temples in Punjab, opposes it. The sacred sites and holy books remain the same, but the two groups now each have their own networks and funds. So far, these dissensions have not threatened the overall unity of the sampradaya. Most sundarsaths visit the temples of both groups. They are not greatly concerned with theological differences expressed, for instance, on the website (http://nijanand.org) of the second group. In Valsad, south Gujarat, the two groups of followers coexist, each with its own temple. There is no hostility between them. On the contrary, a certain form of collaboration exists. Pranamis of this city possess a common past, both historical and legendary, have a shared sense of identity, venerate an uncontested and much revered book, the Kuljam Svarup, and share similar religious practices. These centripetal elements bind adherents together and counterbalance divisions.
Contrary to the pure tradition of ascetic renunciation, Pranami renouncers display a strong attachment to place, temple, region and country, and pose a sharp contrast to Louis Dumont’s model of the renouncer as an ‘individual-outside-the-world’. National links still prevail and play an important role in sustaining the shifting identities of the sundarsath. Despite increasing transnational connections, being a Nepali or an Indian continues to determine a devotee’s sense of belonging. The recent construction of a major Pranami temple, called Navtandham, in the Kathmandu Valley, can be interpreted as an attempt to broaden the sacred geography of the Pranamis, which has so far focused on Indian holy places. This temple, near Gauthatar, is supposed to be the new centre of the sampradaya in Nepal. It was inaugurated on 29 March 2010, in the presence of Ram Baran Yadav, President of Nepal, and Swami Ramdev (Baba Ramdev) who happened to be in Kathmandu at that time for a Yoga training programme. The ceremony was followed by a recitation (parayan) of the Kuljam Swarup. The aim of the religious leaders was clearly to include geographically the heart of Nepalese culture and politics within the devotionalist order, even if such a sentiment was never overtly expressed. Such an event constitutes an important step in the development of the sampradaya and undoubtedly represents some success for the Nepalese branch.
Thus, national consciousness and identity do matter in Hindu religious affairs, even between two very close countries such as India and Nepal. This is borne out also by the recent debate (November 2008–February 2009) that took place in Nepal about South Indian priests officiating at Pashupatinath temple, in the middle of the Kathmandu Valley. This temple in the past symbolised the unity of the Hindu Nepalese state and the Nepalese royal dynasties always maintained close links with it. The Bhatta priests presiding at the temple, with a reputation for ritual knowledge and orthodoxy, had been assigned their position more than four centuries ago by Nepalese Kings. Soon after the fall of the monarchy (2008) and the proclamation of the Federal Republic of Nepal, these priests became the focus of heated debate. For nationalistic reasons, the leftist (Maoist) government at the time decided to replace them with Nepalese priests. The decision provoked a violent reaction and was finally revoked. The Indian account of the Nepalese Pranamis’ presence in India and the Nepalese account of the Indian priests at the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu run in parallel, even though they are not linked. In both cases, nationalistic chauvinism clearly threatens the historic relations established long ago between Nepal and India.
Ethnographic data were collected between 2004 and 2010 in Nepal and India. I would like to express my gratitude to Krishna Prasad and Anuj Rimal who assisted me during my fieldwork in Nepal.
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1 In reality, though, things are not that simple. Nepalese Madheses sometime feel closer to Indians from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh than to Pahari or Pahade hill people from Nepal; conversely, Indians of Nepalese origin living in the Darjeeling district, north Bengal, may feel closer to the Nepalese from the other side of the border than to Bengalis.
2 These suspicions about the sect are not specific to Nepal. Dominique-Sila Khan (2003) reports similar concerns about the Pranamis in present-day Rajasthan.
3 Some members of Tibeto-Burmese–speaking ethnic groups have also been converted and have become teetotallers, following a widespread process of Hinduisation.
4 It is not by mere chance that Pranamis are much more influential in the Nepalese Tarai than in the hills. There is greater proximity between India and Nepal in these plains which share certain major social and religious features from each side of the border, and where in many regions Hindi is still the lingua franca. As a matter of fact, only at a later stage in history were the boundaries between the Nepalese Tarai and the bordering Indian districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar clearly demarcated. The Nepalese plains were under the East India Company’s administration during a large part of the 19th century and some contentious areas still exist to the present day. By contrast, the boundaries between the plains and the hills have been more effective, politically and culturally, for a much longer period, principally because of the difficulties in crossing the Mahabharat range that forms a natural barrier.
5 The Panna temple played a major role in spreading Prannath’s message in Nepal in the course of the 19th century, before the nomination of Nepalese maharajs in Jamnagar from 1916 onwards, as mentioned above.