Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Annu Jalais, South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The séance table, where the spirits of dead ancestors came to converse with living members of the family, were not unusual amongst middle-class and elite Hindu families in fin de siècle Bengal—and, indeed, in other parts of British India. Taking the séance and its social history as its cue, this talk will explore the close relationship between global occult movements and the emergence of modern Hinduism at the turn of the twentieth century. Modern Hinduism took shape through a series of encounters during the colonial period, not all of which were contentious. A wide variety of western esoteric movements found a ready and fertile ground in eastern schools of philosophy and metaphysics. These included not just Theosophy, but also Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and Animal Magnetism. Here, I will focus on a specific spiritualist phenomenon—the medium—to uncover the relationship between western esotericism and eastern spiritualism through the lens of yoga and bhakti, incarnation and God, the provincial ‘ghost’ and the (Al)mighty Spirit as discussed in various Vaishnava-inspired spiritualist texts produced in this period.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Varuni Bhatia teaches History at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She is a scholar of religion and modernity in colonial India. Her first book, Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) explored the pervasive undercurrent of Vaishnava bhakti and Chaitanya-infused devotional religiosity that informed many aspects of modern Bengali culture—from literature and language to regional history and culture, and religious life. More recently, Bhatia’s interests include global religious histories, accessed via strains of esoteric religious movements, particularly traditions that drew inspiration from various kinds of non-Western traditions. She is currently working on a research project that seeks to bring together questions of race, imperialism, and comparative religion to bring to light an underexplored chapter in the history of modern Hinduism. Bhatia is also concurrently working on contemporary digital Hinduism, particularly its infrastructural networks through which Hindu devotional content is made available over the smartphone device, as well as its affective dimensions that abet in producing contemporary Hindu publics.

REGISTRATION

Participation in this closed-door webinar is limited and by invitation only. Kindly forward all enquiries to aritm@nus.edu.sg.