The Rise of Radical Ramanandis

The quest for power and influence in the Ramanandi sampraday took place on the ground of the past, and those best able to negotiate that ground ultimately dictated the immediate social and political dimensions of the monastic community. The major transformation in the institutional memory of the sampraday occurred between 1918 and 1921: an extended moment, focused on Ayodhya in what is now eastern Uttar Pradesh, but concluded at the Ujjain kumbh in what is now western Madhya Pradesh. The events of 1918–1921 extended thus to the southwesternmost edge of the Hindi-speaking north, to Malwa, the Vindhya Range, and the headwaters of the Chambal River—a region that represents for many the border between south and north India. The location of Ujjain was geoculturally appropriate for the denouement of the crisis, given the implications of the debate for southern influences in the Ramanandi sampraday. While the object in the early 1700s in Galta was to elevate the status of Ramanand vis-à-vis Ramanuja while restricting the entry of radical anti-varna sentiment into the sampraday, the motive in 1918–1921 seems to have been to loosen that social stricture by making Ramanand altogether supreme and eliminating all mention of Ramanuja.

Though Ramanand’s divine status was practically assumed by Ramanandis at the turn of the century (at least, judging by Bhagvan Prasad’s Bhaktamal commentary), by 1918 a group of Ramanandis rejected vehemently the possibility that Ramanand was a member of someone else’s (i.e., Ramanuja’s) sampraday and insisted instead that he single-handedly founded the order. At stake, it was argued, was Ramanand’s position as the unequivocal proponent of Vaishnava bhakti (love for god) in the north, an issue that naturally would have some bearing on his status as the originator of the sampraday that took his name. However, while many conceded that Ramanand was an important link in the descent of Shri Vaishnava belief, they held Ramanuja to be the original earthly fount of knowledge and devotion.^[58] Conversely, the radical Ramanandi element could stomach no presentation of Ramanand that compromised in any way his complete and total control over his own destiny and the destiny of his religious community. I favor the term “radical” to describe these sadhus because they chose to elevate a core article of faith to force a reconstituted Ramanandi memory. The radical position demanded either allegiance or refutation: a Vaishnava was either a Ramanuji or a Ramanandi. Those who chose to retain the Ramanuja link—regardless of their opinion regarding Ramanand’s divinity—found themselves accused of opposing the avatar status of Ramanand and were labeled (and stigmatized) accordingly. After 1921 both sides would seek the moral high ground by claiming the appellation “Shri Vaishnava.”

Much of the resentment on the part of this new radical element stemmed from the association of Ramanuja and Ramanuji-oriented Vaishnavas with elitist attitudes and commensal practices. For instance, Shivnandan Sahay (Bhagvan Prasad’s first biographer) noted in 1908 that among the many differences between Ramanujis and Ramanandis, the former “only allow initiation to brahmans and kshatriyas.”^[59] In fact, such attitudes were not new. As noted earlier in the discussion of the Galta conference in the early 1700s, there had been a long-standing desire among elements within the order to limit (or at least control the ideological effects of) the entry of low-status individuals. We noted in the previous chapter as well the presence of elitist pockets in the Ramanandi sampraday in the early nineteenth century: Buchanan had observed in 1812 that though the terms Ramanandi and Ramawat were “applicable to either Brahman or Sudra, and in general both live together and are called Avadhut . . . , some Brahmans affect superior purity, will not eat with the Sudras, and are called Acharyas.”^[60] (By 1918 the term acharya, which refers to a person of virtuous conduct, would come to be associated with Ramanuji elements in the sampraday; by contrast, das, which means servant or slave, was symbolic of one’s Ramanandi status.) Finally, it may be noted that the perceived elitism of Ramanuji circles in the north was generally consistent with the historian Burton Stein’s conclusions (albeit for an earlier period) regarding the marked “Brahman-dominated Hindu orthodoxy” of south Indian Shri Vaishnava institutions, especially at Tirupati and Srirangam, which prohibited the infiltration of shudras.^[61]

While social and religious elitism was not a new phenomenon in the sampraday, the emergence of a widespread and coordinated opposition to that elitism was. In retrospect, one early indication that a major shift in attitudes was in the air may have been evident in the 1911 census returns for religious sect in Uttar Pradesh. The first response of a sizable number of Vaishnavas, when asked their sect (i.e., Vaishnava or Shaiva) by census officials in 1911, responded that they were “Ramanandis.”^[62] Given the subsequent conflict, it is likely that this response was provoked by increasing resentment felt by Ramanandis in their relations with elitist acharya elements in the order. The catalyst for the conflict was provided in 1918 by a visit to Ayodhya by the head of the Shri Vaishnava Totadri math in south India. Particularly galling to many Ramanandis was the fact that the Anantacharya (eternal leader) from the south refused to prostrate before Sita and Ramchandra images in two major Ramanandi temples, refused to accept prasad (a ritual offering of food or drink), and in general “behaved like a strict Brahman who thought the Ramanandis an inferior community.”^[63]

These angry recollections stand in sharp contrast to those of Swami Dharnidharacharya, a rising young Bihari intellectual of Ayodhya who drew close to the visitor from the south during his brief visit in 1918. Dharnidharacharya, looking back in the 1930s, was so impressed with the philosophical and moral discourses by the Anantacharya held regularly in Kanak Bhavan that, as he put it, “my heart was cleansed and I realized that there would be no better opportunity to become his disciple.”^[64] When he became the chela (disciple) of the Anantacharya, he was given the name “Dharnidhar Ramanujadas,” or Dharnidhar, slave of Ramanuja. This choice of names could not have failed to irritate those radical Ramanandis who had begun associating the elitist elements in the sampraday with the figure of the south Indian theologian, Ramanujacharya. However, the use of “das” as a suffix suggests as well that the Ramanuji-Ramanandi battle lines were not firmly marked out at that time (1918), and that many Ramanandis accepted a servile position with respect to the acharyas in the order.

The radical Ramanandi opinion that began to solidify after 1918—much to the dismay of Dharnidharacharya and similar figures—was characterized by its proponents as svatantra (sovereign or free) and held essentially that Ramanand had originated a religious tradition wholly independent of any connection with Ramanuja and the Shri Vaishnavas of the south.^[65] Central to the propagation of this view was another young Ramanandi sadhu, one Bhagavad Das (later Bhagavadacharya), who had become a disciple of a prominent rasik guru in Ayodhya in 1919.^[66] To redress the many injustices and insults that he felt were being heaped upon Ramanandis by Ramanujis in the sampraday, Bhagavadacharya formed two committees: the “Shri Ramanandi Vaishnava Mahamandal,” a “supra-council” that directed the svatantra movement, and the Puratatvanusandhayini Samiti, charged with identifying and studying historical documents associated with Ramanand.^[67] Both were devoted, ultimately, to purging the sampraday of Ramanuji elements. Bhagavadacharya was soon challenged to a debate, which took place in the Hanumangarhi, the main naga fortress of Ayodhya. After it became apparent that no one had the rhetorical skills to defeat Bhagavadacharya, his guru and reportedly the most powerful intellect in Ayodhya, Mahant Swami Rammanoharprasadacharya of Bara Asthan (big place), was persuaded to oppose him in debate. According to recent Ramanandi recountings of these events, it was felt that since there was no one in Ayodhya who possessed the courage to face Rammanoharprasadacharya, the Ramanuji side would emerge victorious.^[68] In the end, and contrary to all expectations, the young disciple won the day.

The Ayodhya debate, which occured in 1919 or 1920, did not in any way signal the end of the matter. Indeed, according to Ramanandis it only created the need for the more august “historical” debate at the 1921 Ujjain kumbh. The specific question to be addressed was whether the sacred books of the south Indian Shri Vaishnavas offended Ramchandra; implicit to the debate was whether Ramanuja was regarded by Ramanand as a monastic predecessor. The Ramanuji side was defended by Swami Ramprapann Ramanujadas of the Totadri math; Bhagavadacharya argued on behalf of the radical Ramanandi position.^[69] The jury took little time in deciding in favor of Bhagavadacharya and stating that henceforth the Ramanandi sampraday was to be independent of Ramanujacharya and south Indian Shri Vaishnavas. The new guru parampara placed Ramanand twenty-second in descent from Ramchandra and included no mention whatsoever of Ramanuja.^[70] Crucial to the Ujjain victory was the discovery of a fifteenth-century guru parampara that made no mention of Ramanuja; this parampara was said to have been authored by Agradevacharya, a grand-disciple of Ramanand, and was uncovered by the aforementioned research committee (Puratatvanusandhayini Samiti).^[71]

Even the conclusion reached at Ujjain did not completely resolve the dispute, and those Ramanandis who are today thought of as Ramanujis continue to reject the validity of the 1921 Ujjain debate. Among their objections are the charges that the fifteenth-century guru parampara was forged by Bhagavadacharya, and that the juries for both the Ayodhya and Ujjain debates were strategically loaded with prominent naga mahants and others sympathetic to the radical postition.^[72] Indeed, it would take years of writing and propagandizing before Bhagavadacharya’s position would be regarded as “orthodox” by Ramanandis themselves. In a 1924 contribution to a major Hindi-language journal of Banaras, one Shyamsundardas continued to insist that the “thread of descent [in the Ramanandi sampraday] began with Ramanuja.”^[73] Three years later Bhagavadacharya would publish his first major work, ShrimadRamanand-Digvijayah (The World-Conquest of Ramanand), a four-hundred-page treatise in Sanskrit and Hindi on the life of Ramanand, thus correcting the hagiographic “deficiencies” of Ramanandi tradition. In the introduction to that work, Bhagavadacharya rearticulated his position on Ramanuja, focusing in particular on the narrative of Ramanand’s life found in the Bhaktamal: “The intention with which Nabha-ji composed his poetic verse is a point of great dispute. There is no harm in suggesting that Nabha-ji’s intent was to show that Shri Ramanandacharya used the very same philosophical system that Shri Swami Ramanujacharya had used to propagate religious ideas.…However, it would constitute a great error to suggest that he intended to depict Shri Ramanand Swami-ji as a disciple of the sampraday and tradition of Shri Ramanuja Swami-ji.”^[74] In the same year (1927), another debate would be held in Vrindaban; according to a recollection of these events by one late twentieth-century admirer of Bhagavadacharya, the Ramanujis were said to have behaved so disrespectfully that, henceforth, they would no longer be considered part of the fourfold division of Vaishnavas (known as the chatuh-sampraday) and would no longer be allowed to share ground with Vaishnavas at the major festivals.^[75] The extent to which the radical position came to dominate Ramanandi attitudes throughout the north is reflected in the fact that Ramanujis failed to take part in the ceremonial procession of the monastic orders at the 1932 kumbh held in Ujjain.^[76]

Many scholars continued to assert into the 1930s, however, that Ramanand was not the sole, independent originator of the sampraday. In the early 1930s, Kalyan (Benediction), a widely distributed monthly magazine published in Gorakhpur, brought out a special number on the lives of famous yogis and swamis, entitled Yogank. This issue described Ramanand as a follower of Ramanuja who had been excommunicated for careless commensal behavior while on pilgrimage. Avadh Kishor Das, a supporter of the radical position and the editor of a 1935–1936 collection of essays on Ramanand and the Ramanandi sampraday, responded by attacking the editors of Kalyan:

We have nothing whatsoever in common with the Ramanuji sampraday. We disagree with them on every point. Ramanand a follower of a sampraday which we do not even accept as legitimate? How many hearts burn with this statement? But it does not end there. This enemy of the Ramanandi sampraday has launched a heavy attack.…

The editor and author of Kalyan should realize that jagat-guru [lord-of-the-world] Shri Ramanandcharya-ji was never a follower of the Ramanuji sampraday but was rather according to the eternal proof of the shrutis [revealed wisdom] and shastras [legal texts] the leader of the Shri sampraday, which later became known by his name. No one excommunicated him and he was not any common devotee, but was the leader of countless devotees and the avatar of lord Shri Ram.^[77]

Avadh Kishor Das concluded by exhorting Ramanandis to confront those responsible in Gorakhpur and demand an explanation and an apology.

Eventually the views of the radical faction came to dominate the Ramanandi sampraday. Ramanandis became those who adhered to the svatantra, or independent, position and refused all links with the Ramanuja heritage, while those who retained those links were known as Ramanujis. Since guru parampara represented a fundamental element of Ramanandi identity, the dispute was certain to affect everyone in the sampraday. Even Sitaramsharan Bhagvan Prasad, who by all indications endeavored to remain aloof from Ayodhya politics and left little in the way of comment on the radical interpretation of Ramanand’s life, seems to have been touched by the controversy. In 1908, a decade prior to the eruption of the dispute, Bhagvan Prasad’s guru parampara had placed Ramanuja tenth and Ramanand twentieth in descent from Ramchandra.^[78] Bhagvan Prasad passed away in 1932, over a decade after the Ujjain decision. In a 1940s memoir written by one of his admirers and dedicated to explicating the subtleties of Bhagvan Prasad’s teachings, a guru parampara is given that is said to have been taken from the pages of Bhagvan Prasad’s 1928–1929 diary.^[79] This guru parampara makes no mention whatsoever of Ramanuja. Likewise, in subsequent editions of Bhagvan Prasad’s commentary on the Bhaktamal, a guru parampara of Ramanand is given that places Ramanand twenty-second in descent from Ramchandra, again omitting mention of Ramanuja.^[80]

There remain, however, pockets of Ramanuji strength throughout north India. Vaishnava centers today dominated by Ramanujis include the Janaki-asthan in Sitamarhi, north Bihar (said to be the exact location where Sita was discovered emerging from the furrow left by her father’s plowing), and the Galta Pith on the outskirts of Jaipur. Indeed, even Ayodhya continued to harbor many sadhus who chose not to accept the parampara advanced by Bhagavadacharya. Among them was Dharnidharacharya, who returned in 1924 despite bitter memories of Ayodhya as the center of the movement to repudiate Ramanujacharya. Indeed, as far as he was concerned (writing in the 1930s), a final decision was never reached regarding the official guru parampara.^[81]

Bhagavadacharya himself would rise, in the 1970s, to the very pinnacle of Vaishnava monastic authority as a result of his lifelong efforts. His was a circuitous route to the top, however, and along the way he would alienate many within and beyond Ayodhya, including his own guru, Mahant Rammanoharprasad, whom he defeated in debate.^[82] Even though his ShrimadRamanand-Digvijayah was published in 1927, and despite the fact that his radical position was gaining increasing acceptance among Ramanandis through the 1920s and 1930s, it would appear that Bhagavadacharya was regarded as something of a revolutionary for many years. Indeed, in 1929 Swami Raghuvaracharya of Bara Asthan (the math in Ayodhya that Bhagavadacharya had joined in 1919 and had been obliged to leave after defeating his guru in debate soon thereafter) authored a commentary on the Anandabhashya (Discourses on Bliss), which was purported to be the specific teachings of Ramanand; this text would remain unchallenged through the 1930s and 1940s as the authoritative statement of Ramanandi doctrine.^[83] Following the tumultuous 1920s, Bhagavadacharya would retire to a cave at Mount Abu and begin formulating his scholarly campaign; he would eventually shift his base of operations to the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat and begin writing in earnest.^[84] In 1955 Bhagavadacharya publicly took issue with the way Ramanandi doctrine was being taught, denounced Raghuvaracharya’s Anandabhashya commentary as completely devoid of any connection to Ramanand’s true teachings, challenged all comers to a debate on the veracity of the sources for that text, and promised to produce a document of his own. His opponents remained (according to him) silent, so in 1958 he published ShriJanakikripabhashyasya (The Discourses of Shri Janaki, or Sita).^[85] In 1963 Bhagavadacharya authored yet another treatise, entitled ShriRamanandabhashyam (The Discourses of Ramanand), which created considerable consternation among major sampraday figures in Ayodhya and Banaras.^[86] In 1967 his first major work, ShrimadRamanand-Digvijayah, was reissued (as ShriRamanand-Digvijayah) by the Adhyapika Shrichandandevi Press, Ahmedabad, signaling the consolidation of his position as India’s preeminent Ramanandi intellect.

By the late 1960s Bhagavadacharya was approaching his hundredth year and presumably had outlived most if not all of his opponents from the 1920s; indeed, his very longevity may have contributed to his ascent in sampraday politics by the 1970s. More important, however, were his organizational and literary energies, which during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were manifest in social reform efforts to eradicate untouchability, in his authorship of more than forty articles and books in both Sanskrit and Hindi on Ramanandi doctrine, and in his editorship of a journal, Tatvadarshi (Reflections on the Supreme Spirit).^[87] In 1971 his centenary was celebrated with great fanfare in Ahmedabad. Judging by the hundreds of luminaries in attendance, Bhagavadacharya had attained great stature both within and outside the Ramanandi sampraday—particularly in Gujarat state politics and in the all-India associational politics of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj (or Indian Sadhu Society).^[88] Finally in 1977, at the Prayag kumbh, a wide array of sampraday leaders would declare him the first jagadguru-Ramanandacharya (universal leader [wearing the mantle of] Ramanandacharya) since Ramanand himself, and the twenty-third in descent from Ramchandra, in gratitude for his lifelong service to the sampraday.^[89] Not only would this mark the pinnacle of Bhagavadacharya’s career, the granting of such an honor to the firebrand of the 1920s would signal that the radical Ramanandi view had achieved wide acceptance in Vaishnava circles by the 1970s.

In a variety of ways, then, the concerns expressed in Ayodhya in 1918–1921, which continue to ripple through north India today, mirrored those of the early eighteenth century in Galta. The important difference, however, is that in the early twentieth century the side generally perceived to have predominated—the radical Ramanandi faction—favored a radicalization of the meaning of Ramanand’s life with respect to Ramanuja and varna.^[90] By articulating a guru parampara free of any mention of Ramanuja, radical monks were in effect rejecting the very notion of social superiority which, in their view, fueled the Ramanuji “acharya” avowals of religious exclusivity. Given the details of Ramanand’s contested life and the core Ramanuji assertion that Ramanand was expelled from the society of monks for careless eating practices while on pilgrimage, an opinion after 1918 on the question of Ramanuja as a spiritual antecedent of Ramanand could only be articulated with reference to caste and commensality. While this question is taken up in greater detail below (“Caste and the New Ramanandi Order”), it should be noted that van der Veer has argued (rightly) that caste was not the only consideration in an individual’s decision to support either the Ramanuji or the Ramanandi position. Van der Veer cites as evidence the fact that “even abbots of Kurmi and Barhi [cultivator and carpenter] castes chose to become Ramanuji.”^[91] While I agree generally with van der Veer’s position, I disagree with two assumptions that are implicit in his observation. The first is that the low ascriptive status of Kurmis and Barhais was self-evident (to observers and to the subjects themselves) and remained unchanged through the twentieth century. While this assumption was shared by the brahmanical and colonial elite in the early twentieth century and appears commonplace in the discourse of backward classes of the late twentieth century, it was probably not an assumption shared by many Kurmis and Barhais themselves in the 1920s. For Kurmis, Barhais, and others, caste in the first half of the century was very much in the eye of the beholder, and many in those communities held themselves to be of high-caste status and were actively promoting programs of varna reidentification in an effort to claim for themselves a noble, kshatriya past.^[92] And, I would argue, whether they considered themselves high caste in the 1920s depended very much on whether they conceived of varna merely as a social idea to be manipulated or as a fundamental, essential, and all-encompassing mold from which there was no escape—in a word, as caste.

Van der Veer’s second assumption, which emerges out of the first, is that given a low ascriptive status, Kurmis and Barhais should have supported Bhagavadacharya’s radical position, thus demonstrating a disdain for caste hierarchy. While quite plausible at first glance, this assertion should raise a logical query: if in fact Kurmis and Barhais indeed believed themselves to be of low status, how could they possibly evince a disdain for caste in the first place? The answer, of course, is that while they were no doubt aware of the many assertions that they were socially inferior, they did not necessarily consider themselves to be of low status. Rather, the overt Kurmi and Barhai support for the Ramanuji position should be read as a conscious expression of their own perceptions of themselves as high status, which would be consistent with peasant attitudes toward caste and status that were coalescing outside the sampraday. And again, a belief in one’s high status requires a commitment to the very idea of hierarchy.

Varna, jati, and caste are slippery concepts under the best of circumstances. This is in part because the very idea of status had long been a matter of contention in north India. Crucial to my understanding of caste is the examination from within of all casual assertions of ascriptive status, including caste. I would argue that the success of the radical Ramanandi faction in the Gangetic region after the 1920s (and particularly by the 1970s) signifies that caste no longer represented an all-encompassing, unquestioned social code for a critical mass of Vaishnava sadhus. Discerning what such ideological shifts may have meant for “ordinary people” outside the sampraday is a task for chapters 3 and 4.