Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890–1940(Global South Asians)

Passages Through India offers a study of the phenomenon of Western Indophilia: romanticised engagements around Hindu ideas of India. It argues that affective practices cultivated between major Indian guru-figures (Gandhi, Tagore and Vivekananda) and their white disciples serviced a larger politics of respectability, tied to exigencies of Indian cultural and nationalist politics. Indophile deployments in transnational projects like the abolition of indentured labour and global Hinduism, while anti-colonial, were not quite emancipatory. Such deployments – in Africa, America, Fiji and India – frequently reproduced deep hierarchies around race, class, caste and gender. Unifying distinct strands of western discipleship within a shared tradition of Indophilia, Passages Through India offers a new methodological framework that situates self and subjectivity as central to processes of global mobility and migration.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Section I. Introduction: Indophilia and Its Wider Worlds, 1890–1940; 1. Languages of Longing: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Letter-Writing; Section II. 2. Home in the World: Indophiles and the Ashram; 3. India, Indophiles and Indenture: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Discourse, 1911–1931; Section III. 4. Practices of Discipleship: Vivekananda and His Women Disciples, 1890–1910; 5. Vedanta and Its Variables: The Politics of a 'World Religion', 1890–1910; Epilogue: What Settles After; Bibliography; Index.

Review :
'Biswas explores both the social geographies and the cultural practices of radical devotees in pursuit of earthly transcendence and revolutionary politics, producing a lively account of utopian communities stitched together by spiritual desire and preserved in a rich and vivid archive of letters that testify to the power of affective politics in the making of global history.' Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois 'An elegant account of the mutual but also rival desires that constituted the now classic relationship between Indian sages and their Western followers starting early in the last century. The combination of counter-cultural transgression and conservatism that Biswas describes in such relations makes for a highly original argument.' Faisal Devji, University of Oxford 'Weaving together modern guru–disciple relationships and the journeys of Western figures in pursuit of Indian gurus, this significant work explores a strikingly unusual theme. Each relationship is situated against a broad historical backdrop of contemporary politics and faith, of gender and emotions, in Britain and America as well as in India.' Tanika Sarkar, Jawaharlal Nehru University 'Puts flesh on the bones of the familiar trope of the Indian guru and the Western disciple. It is a useful reminder of the important work of 'white solidarity' in reshaping the global image of India for an anti-colonial project. At the same time, it is clear-eyed about the exclusionary effects of relying on Hindu high culture and a politics of respectability.' Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan