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Hinduism for Women: Present and Future Prospects for Socio-spiritual Emancipation
Nancy M. Martin
This chapter explores the nuanced ways actual women, past and present, low-caste and high, in different regions and religious communities, creatively inhabit Hindu worlds, negotiating and resisting dharmic gender normativity and Brahminical religious authorities to varying degrees. The focus herein is on Hindu norms, narratives, rituals, and exemplars that serve as resources for alternately reinforcing and negotiating gendered identities and lives and potentially for transforming gendered personal relations and the broader social ethos within Hindu communities. Creative engagement with myth, legend, and hagiography are examined, with particular focus on Sita and the innovative potential inherent in oral narrative and song traditions. The religious lives of householder women (including domestic rituals, bhakti devotion, and both informal and priestly forms of leadership) are discussed as well as the contributions of contemporary women saints, sadhus and gurus, some drawing precedent from figures like Mirabai and others identified as incarnations of the Divine Mother.
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Invoking Mirabai: Elision and Illumination in the Global Study of Women Mystics
Nancy M. Martin
From the early nineteenth century, British scholar-officers readily compared Mirabai to European mystics as a way to come to terms with this intriguing and admired sixteenth-century woman as they attempted to order the dense weave of Indian culture and religion through the production of knowledge. And in the twentieth century she would increasingly be cited in comparative works on women’s voices, resistance, and religious lives and on global ethics and spirituality. This chapter will explore the place she comes to occupy, beginning by tracing the ways that Hindu bhakti or “devotion” maps (or does not map) onto European Christian and subsequent scholarly conceptions of mysticism and the challenges of comparison without clear textual traditions of either her story or voice and the resulting lack of access to this individual woman’s thoughts and actions. The context in which this extraordinary woman must have lived includes both emerging institutionalized religious institutions that adopted the feminine persona as the ideal devotee and political configurations with attendant notions of honor, feudal domination, and masculinity that include the exchange of women to cement political alliances. As an actual embodied woman of her time speaking of her own desires with her own direct relationship with God and breaking rank with feudal, familial, and religious authorities, she challenges it all, and songs in her voice and narratives of her life multiply rapidly, offering alternate views of social relations and of gender and gathering force across the centuries as others take up her story and songs. With particular attention to the works of feminist philosopher of religion Pamela Sue Anderson and comparative theologian Holly Hillgardner, this paper will examine how comparisons might legitimately be made between European women mystics and this Hindu woman “saint,” about whose individual subjectivity so little can be verified and yet who remains very much alive in an intersubjective participatory realm of oral performance, identity formation and individual, social and spiritual transformation.
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Mirabai: The Making of a Saint
Nancy M. Martin
This book traces the narrative genealogy of the immensely popular Indian saint Mirabai from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist formations to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence. This iconic sixteenth-century woman is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge thereby to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Though verifiable historical facts regarding her life are few, stories about her have multiplied across social, linguistic, regional, and religious boundaries. With attention to who is telling which story and why, this book examines her place in the developing strands of devotional Hinduism and her role in the gendered and contested terrain of nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates around the education and independence of women and the crafting of Indian and Hindu identities. Consideration is given not only to elite voices but also to those marginalized by caste, class, and gender who find in her a source of solidarity and dignity, shared suffering and resistance, and a precedent for pursuing lives outside of or in addition to normative social expectations, particularly for women. Highlighting the impact also of key individuals from Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi to Mahadevi Varma and Subbulakshmi on perceptions of the saint, the book offers a comprehensive and multilayered portrait of this remarkable and still controversial woman who continues to be a source of inspiration for so many both in India and around the world.
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The Gendering of Voice in Medieval Hindu Literature
Nancy M. Martin
"To fully grasp the implications of the gendering of voice in this literature, we must first understand the religious context that generates these voices and the life stories of the saintly figures in whose names these voices continue to be spoken. Accordingly, we will trace the origins and nature of devotional Hinduism. Theologically gender inclusive and embracing a feminine spiritual identity, the stories and songs of its saints will nevertheless reveal an ongoing bias against women and upholding of patriarchal norms that is continually challenged, particularly by women saints whose life stories follow very different trajectories than their male counterparts, and that male and female devotees alike must transcend. We will explore the nuances of male saints speaking of their love for God in female voice, in contrast to women saints doing so. Such analysis will lead us to consider the larger implications of subsequent devotees, both male and female, speaking in these gendered saints' voices. While touching on a wide range of male and female saints' stories and songs, we will focus in more detail on arguably the two most popular poet-saints-the sixteenth century royal female devotee of Krgia, MirabaI, and, by way of contrast, the fifteenth-century low-caste male devotee of the Lord beyond form, Kabir."
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Exile as “Place” for Empathy
Ilana Maymind
"Historically, exile has been a political act that has various philosophical and psychological ramifications. In the Roman world, exile was a substitute for physical death.1 Adorno argues that exile is a 'life in suspension' as a result of being placed in the diasporic conditions of estrangement. For Adorno, 'it is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home,'2 since being in exile makes one a perpetual stranger and sharpens one’s ethical stance. The idea of being a stranger leads to the significance of the issue of empathy. In this chapter, I discuss Shinran and Maimonides as I maintain that the focus in some of their writings demonstrates the effects of exile as 'place' for empathy. I further propose a link between empathy and ethics by viewing empathy as a measure of genuine ethical concern."
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Invest Your Humanity: Celebrating Marvin Meyer
Julye Bidmead and Gail J. Stearns
Edited by Julye Bidmead, Gail J. Stearns
Foreword by Daniele C. Struppa, Elaine Pagels
This volume is dedicated to Marvin C. Meyer, a person of passionate spirit and personality, known to many as the preeminent scholar who brought to life the Gnostic Gospels. Meyer made ancient discoveries relevant to our lives: from his work with National Geographic, informing thousands, to the time he spent with individual students, opening their eyes to the mystery and meaning of a Coptic text. Friends, students, and scholars here pay tribute to Meyer with reflections, new pedagogies, and explorations in biblical texts, ancient magic, and archaeological discoveries.
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Fluid Boundaries and the Assertion of Difference in Low-caste Religious Identity
Nancy M. Martin
"The boundaries of religious traditions are being actively contested in India today, though in practice their internal and external structures are fl uid and open. Each religion takes a wide array of forms, refl ecting the diversity of the communities and adherents who fi nd relevance and meaning within it, and symbols and practices fl ow readily across what prove to be very permeable and overlapping boundaries between religious traditions. However, religion has been used by the powerful to assert and maintain dominance and in national and regional communal politics, at times fanning the fl ames of extreme violence. Fundamentalists and politicians today are engaged in ongoing attempts to drain away the fl uidity of religious traditions and to build solid walls that both shut down diversity within a given religion and clearly separate and protect one from the other."
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Transforming Love: Holiness and the Vocation of Justice
Nancy M. Martin
"Though we may draw a distinction between the saint and the social or peace activist and though the activist may criticize the saint for being insufficiently socially engaged, I will argue that the pursuit of holiness is not an alternate path to the pursuit of justice. It is not to be practiced only by saints, bodhisattvas and monastics, but rather is an integral part of the religious vocation of justice. Indeed the cultivation of holiness is a key element of the vocation of pursuing peace and justice even as the pursuit of justice, arising within the wider horizon of love and compassion, is a key to the practice of the religious life, particularly in the twenty-first century. I will begin by examining the path to holiness and the nature of the holy person presented in the world religions—in the monotheisms of the West, and in Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. I will then briefly explore the relationship between justice and the love and compassion embodied by such holy persons. This essay will conclude with a look at the lives of contemporary figures who bring together holiness and justice in their own vocations and therefore offer us models for living the religious life and working toward justice and peace in our time."
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Rajasthan: Mirabai and her Poetry
Nancy M. Martin
"Mirabai (born c. 1500) is among the most well-known and loved of the Hindu women saints devoted to Krishna. Her devotion to her Lord is absolute, as her life and songs attest. Her story is a romantic tale of star-crossed lovers—one human, the other divine—marked by perseverance and triumph in the midst of great suffering. Songs sung in her name speak of the joys and trials of the devotional life and evoke the full range of romantic love, from the devastating longing that marks separated lovers and the blazing anger of a woman betrayed to the sweet and intoxicating pleasures of union. This woman of the sixteenth century has inspired and captured the imagination of fellow devotees across the centuries, so much so that her story has been told and retold in innumerable forms and more than a thousand songs have been sung in her name. Within the context of the wider Krishna tradition, this exemplary devotee provides an important bridge between the idyllic and eternal world of Braj, where the gopis and Radha sport with Krishna, and the world of samsara, wherein ordinary people must practice their devotion to the amorous Dark Lord."
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Hinduism and Holy People
Nancy M. Martin
"In Hinduism, there are both a relatively large number and a wide array of types of people considered holy. Such people are deemed to be spiritually advanced, having reached the highest levels of spiritual realization, and to have the power to guide others toward that realization. They are thus treated with respect and reverence. A person can be transformed merely by being in their presence through the experience of darshan (both seeing and being seen by a holy person), even as a person can be transformed by being in the presence of deity. Such holy people may be seen to have accrued spiritual power through the practice of meditation, moral purity, devotion, and/or asceticism. They may even be considered incarnations of the Transcendent, conceived in personal terms, or of some earlier holy person who has again taken birth. There is no central authority in Hinduism that would validate the status of such holy people; rather, they are deemed holy by the consensus of communities and individuals who encounter them and experience them as such."
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Rights, Roles, and Reciprocity in Hindu Dharma`
Nancy M. Martin
"Hinduism offers both views of social relations – that of hierarchical complementarity and that of egalitarian complementarity. In what follows I will begin with a closer examination of the Hindu notion of dharma and the basis for these two views – hierarchical and egalitarian complementarity – within Hinduism, and then, disagreeing with Ambedkar, I will argue that Hinduism has a valuable contribution to make to global discourse on human rights, both (1) through the teachings of Hinduism which advocate non-violence and compassion and thus relativize the meaning of hierarchies of difference and (2) through the Hindu vision of human community as marked by an egalitarian complementarity which incorporates both responsibilities and difference in a rich manner that a call for individualistic egalitarianism does not and indeed cannot attain."
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Introduction: Inter-Religious Understanding
Nancy M. Martin
An introduction to Ethics in the World Religions, co-edited by J. Runzo and N. M. Martin.
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The Holocaust Chronicle
Marilyn Harran, Dieter Kuntz, Russell Lemons, Robert A. Michael, Keith Pickus, and John K. Roth
The complete full-text of a seminal book for Holocaust studies, The Holocaust Chronicle. The site contains every word of the main text, as well as the index and all of the images from the print edition. The information within was gathered and fact-checked by top Holocaust scholars, and covers everything 1933-1945, beginning with the restrictive laws passed when Hitler took power to the deaths of at least six million Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, Communists, and others.
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Loving the Goddess in Hinduism
Nancy M. Martin
"But what if ultimate reality is experienced as female, as Goddess? How is love for Goddess in Hindu traditions experienced and expressed? Who is she? In what sense is she feminine? And on what terms does a human man or woman approach her?"
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Love and Longing in Devotional Hinduism
Nancy M. Martin
"As Julius Lipner has so eloquently stated in his chapter earlier in this ..r\. volume, Hinduism is stubbornly multiform, a tapestry of interwoven worldviews, practices, and beliefs characterized by a fundamental and irreducible orality, a movement from multiplicity and outward appearance toward identity and interiority, and a search within a constantly shifting world for ordering principles and centers of meaning around which to shape meaningful lives. I would now like to explore one current within this broad river of tradition - the devotional or bhakti path. The passionate love shared by devotee and God that is the driving force of this current yields a distinct perspective on life's meaning and offers a compelling example of a tradition marked by the fundamental relationality which, Joseph Runzo has argued in the previous chapter, lies at the ground of the religious life."
Below you may find selected books and book chapters from Religious Studies faculty in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
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