Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal

What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of Vaishnavism--a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition emanating from the Krishna devotee Chaitnaya (1486-1533)--in Bengal. Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both Vaishnava modernizers and secular voices among the educated middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to efforts to recover a "pure" Bengali culture and history at a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment. In the late nineteenth century, debates around questions of authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere. These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of established scholars. Underlying them was the question of "true" Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of Bengali culture and society. Who was an authentic Vaishnava? Many authors excluded those groups and communities whose practices they found unacceptable according to their definition of Vaishnava authenticity. At stake in these discourses, argues Bhatia, was the nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity inscribed through what she calls the politics of authenticity. It allowed an influential section of Hindu Bengalis to excavate their own explicitly Hindu past in order to find a people's history, a religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic religion.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration, Spelling, and Diacritics Introduction Chapter 1: Religion in Decline in an Age of Progress Chapter 2: Untidy Realms Chapter 3: A Swadeshi Chaitanya Chapter 4: Recovering Bishnupriya's Loss Chapter 5: Utopia and a Birthplace Epilogue Glossary Bibliography

About the Author :
Varuni Bhatia is Assistant Professor of Hindu and South Asian Studies at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Review :
"Unforgetting Chaitanya is a worthwhile reading for anyone interested in religion and the colonial encounter, rich in information and insight and gracefully written."--Aleksander Uskokov, Reading Religion "What Bhatia has done for Chaitanya in Bengal should be applied elsewhere by other scholars to observe the ways figures of India's past become antennae for colonial era re-imaginings of India, present and future. Bhatia's careful work, so well documented and conceived, forms an admirable book that is both essential for the knowledge and ideas it conveys, and important for the model it provides for other scholars."--Christian Lee Novetzke, author of The Quotidian Revolutions: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India "Brilliantly marshaling religious, historical, literary, and journalistic sources, Varuni Bhatia presents a compelling assessment of Vaishnavism's place in the making of a modern Bengali Hindu identity. Keenly sensitive to the nuances of caste and linguistic distinctions, she reveals a little-known side of middle-class Bengal."--Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University "Taking up the life histories and literary output of two late-colonial intellectuals, Varunia Bhatia foregrounds the sense of loss and longed-for recovery around a figure central to Bengali cultural understanding. Unforgetting Chaitanya is an engaging exploration of memory, affect, and argument in the work of regional and national self-fashioning."--Brian Hatcher, Professor and Packard Chair of Theology, Tufts University