The
Gatherings of the Elders. The beginnings of a Pagan international
Abstract
Since 2003, the International Council for Cultural
Studies has organized a five-day “International Conference and Gathering of Elders of
Ancient Traditions and Cultures” every third year. Participants include
spokesmen of the Maori, Yoruba, Maya, Lakota etc. religions, as well as
neo-Druids, Romuva Lithuanians etc. Each of the conferences took place in
India, with the main organizational input and sponsoring provided by the ICCS’s
American chapter. The sources of inspiration for what started as a Hindu
outreach to the world’s other remaining or reviving Pagans are several, but can be traced to Hindu philosopher Ram Swarup (1920-1998).
His critiques of Christianity and Islam and particularly his defence of
polytheism conclude with an appeal to global Pagan solidarity and networking.
The triannual Gathering of Elders has become the Pagan International that he
hoped for: genuinely global, rooted in genuine religions and with a positive
message.
A
first impression
In early March
2012, the Dev Sanskriti University campus of the sacred city of Haridwar in the
foothills of the Himalaya saw the “Fourth Conference and Gathering of the
Elders of the Ancient Traditions and Cultures". Present were spokesmen from
Native American, Yoruba, Maori and many other “Indigenous” Pagan traditions, as
well as some European and Euro-American Neo-Pagans, altogether more than 400
delegates representing more than 50 traditions.
A report describes the opening of the Gathering
thus: “The conference started with a colorful procession by all the delegates
in their traditional attires accompanied with rhythmic dances to the tunes of
trumpets and beating of drums. The procession went around the campus of Dev
Samskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya (DSVV) and culminated at the spacious and modern Mrtyunjaya
Auditorium. Latvians with their baritone prayers, Maoris in colorful attire and
dancing Damais from Karnali (Nepal) were the attraction throughout the
procession.” [Samvada 2012]
This is an account of the inaugural session: “Prof.
Dr. Radhey Shyam Dwivedi, President ICCS [International
Center of Cultural Studies], USA, welcomed the delegates to the Conference.
He mentioned that we are all a large family and this was a gathering of
relatives. This was followed by prayers by 23 representative individuals and
groups of various traditions like, Mayan, Maori, Druid, Navajo, Cham, Romuva,..
” [Samvada 2012]
And
this is what the participants did there: “The typical daily schedule started
with the demonstration of ceremonies and rituals of the different cultures.
Several similarities like use of fire, water for their performance was quite
evident. There were also many that were unique. (…) Worshipping Nature was the
underlying principle of these cultures and traditions. Though in different
ways, they all worshipped the five basic elements of Nature i.e. Earth, Air,
Water, Fire and Sky. ‘Love Mother Earth’ was the message that emanated from all
these rituals and religious ceremonies.” [Samvada
2012]
To sum up the message of the event: “Swami Dayanand Saraswati, founder of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam [“Science of the Seers Residential-School”, with headquarters near
Coimbatore and a centre in Saylorsburg PA], delivered the Keynote Address.
He said that as ‘managing trustees’ of the indigenous traditions and colorful
cultures, we need to protect all that we have inherited from our ancestors.” [Samvada 2012]
And finally, “[the]
University
of World Ancient Traditions and Cultural Heritage, USA (UWATCH), awarded honorary Ph.D. degrees to five
eminent personalities for their knowledge of the tradition, distinguished
leadership and outstanding social service to their respective traditions. Dr.
Pranav Pandya (Chancellor of the host university) and Dr. Mohan Bhagwat conferred
the degrees to the recipients. Brief introduction of the five recipients is as
follows. The awardees were Kenneth Kennedy of New Zealand – a Kaumatua (Elder) of the Te Arawa tribe and an
acknowledged expert in Maori Language and culture; Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj of
Guatemala – a Grand Elder of the National Council of Elders of
Mayas, Xincas and Garifunas of Guatemala; Jonas Trinkunas of Lithuania – a
father figure in
the revival and popularization of the ancient Baltic faiths of the Lithuanians and
chairman of the European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER); Grand Chief Stan Beardy of Canada – Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation; and Shri Jagdeo Ram Uraon – President of Akhil Bharatiya Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram [“All-India Tribal Welfare Hermitage”].
This was followed by soul-stirring traditional prayers by Pat McCabe, a Navajo from USA, and Solyomfi Nagy Zoltan of Hungary, representing the White Horse tradition of
the Huns.” [Samvada 2012]
So, that was the
atmosphere. Object of this paper is to map out the contours of what looks like
a fledgling Pagan International.
The
Gathering of the Elders
The First International
Conference of Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures
took place in February 2003 in Mumbai, India. Is was self-described as “organized
by World Council of Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures (WCEAT), a
non-political, non-religious, non-profit socio-cultural forum of ICCS Inc.”,
i.e. the International
Council for Cultural Studies, a loose-structured forum founded °1999. The theme
was “Mitakuye Oyasin – We are all
related”. The five-day conference
attracted representatives of indigenous cultures from 30 countries including Tanzania,
Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, USA, Canada, Austria, Mauritius, Ecuador, Zambia,
Lithuania, and Trinidad and Tobago. The 148 papers presented pertained to
themes like the concept and role of Elders in Ancient Traditions, existing
threats to the Ancient Traditions from various sources, and the revival of
Ancient Traditions.
The 184 delegates unanimously
passed the “Mumbai Manifesto”, which says in its preamble:
“In the midst of tremendous strides in scientific and technological
progress and material comforts, there is an urgent need for spiritual and moral
resurgence for ensuring the well-being of the human family, for preserving the
larger living world and for strengthening the foundations of durable universal
peace. All human beings are born equal and have equal rights to live peacefully
on Mother Earth, and peace and prosperity at global level can be realized only
when the conflicts within and between the communities vanish and we develop the
spirit of tolerance.”
The
Second International Conference of Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures,
focusing on “Spirituality Beyond Religions”, was held in Jaipur, India, in February 2006, with representatives of indigenous cultures from 42
countries.
The Third International
Conference of Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures took place in Nagpur,
India, in January-February 2009. The theme was “Renaissance of the Ancient
Traditions: Challenges and Solutions”, and 357 delegates from 32 countries attended. As in
Jaipur, the foreign participants also spoke at a number of local schools to
teach the pupils that there is a larger array of religions than those few they
meet in their surroundings. They passed a resolution, saying:
“We, the
participants of the Third International Conference and Gathering of the Elders
of the Ancient Traditions and Cultures, firmly believe that, being the children
of Mother Earth, we are all one: interrelated, interconnected and share the
same spirit of oneness despite our own unique individual identity. We believe
that renaissance is not just a revival of antiquity but also an application to
a new life in new ways. It will lead to an elevated life of mutual
understanding, sharing, tolerance, respect and peaceful coexistence.”
The fourth, as said, took place in 2012 in
Haridwar, and its theme was
“Nourishing
the Balance in the Universe”. The event was jointly organized by International
Center for Cultural Studies (ICCS), Dev Samskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya (DSVV) and
co-sponsored by the Council of Elders of Mayas, Xincas and Garifunas, the European
Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER) and the Children of Mother Earth. A total
of 458 delegates from 33 countries, including 178 from outside India,
participated in the conference.
So,
a steady practice of tri-annual global conferences of Pagans seems to be taking
root. While the participants come from many countries, the Gatherings of the
Elders have all taken place in India so far, and the organizational legwork and
financial responsibility are mostly borne by Hindus.
Bilateral conferences
For attracting a truly
representative sample of Pagan and Indigenous religionists to these global
conferences, the organizers built on the bilateral relations established
between the Hindu core group and a number of Pagan and Indigenous traditions
during local conferences in 1995-2006: with the Maori tradition, Lithuanian
Romuva, African and African-descended religions, Lakota, Haudenosaunee Amerindians,
Hopi and Maya.
The organizing
institution, the ICCS, was founded in Nagpur in 1994 by Prof. S.W. Bakhle. [Organiser 2011] Nagpur, near the
geographical heart of India, is where the headquarters of the Hindu nationalist
movement Rāstriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Corps, °1925) lie. It is also where co-founder Yashwant
Pathak studied before relocating to London, Jerusalem and finally the US. After
a stay in Kenya, where he came across the book African Religions and Philosophy by Dr.
John Mbiti,
he returned to Nagpur with the plan to found an institute for Indo-African
studies, which was indeed the initial orientation of the ICCS. The Nagpur
centre’s publications include Ancient
Afro-Hindu Cultural Affinity, Indo-Native American Cultural Similarities, Decolonizing the Mind, Indo-Aztec
Cultural Affinity, Indo-Inca Cultural
Panorama, Maya-Hindu Hermanos (“brothers”),
The Afghan Connection. [ICCS 2012]
Its first conference was on “Afro-Hindu Cultural Similarities”, in Nagpur 1995,
held at Prof. Pathak’s initiative after his stay in Africa.
The first ICCS conference outside India had
been about “Preservation of Ancient
Cultures and Globalization Scenario”, in Hamilton, New Zealand, November
2002. In practice, this was largely a Hindu-Maori meeting. Along the same
lines, local conferences establishing friendship between Hindus and local
traditions have been held:
·
Indo-Romuva Cultural Conference in Atlantic City, USA, October 2003 on the commonalities between Baltic
and Indian Vedic traditions, including a session on the “influence of Hindu
culture on rebirth of Lithuanian culture”;
·
“Spirituality of Indigenous Peoples”, mainly
the African and African-originated peoples, was the theme of a conference held
in Washington DC, March 2004, in collaboration with The African
Traditional Spiritual Coalition, comprising 14 Spiritual Houses rooted in the
Akan, Kamitic, Vodoun and Yoruba Traditions;
·
Hindu-Lakota
conference in Pineridge SD, July 2004;
·
Conference
about common traditions and interests of Hindus and Haudenosaunee (“”Longhouse
People”: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora) in Rochester
NY, September 2004.
·
Conference on “Hindu–Maya Cultural Similarities”, Maya Village Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, May 2005, in collaboration with
the Council of Elders of the Sacred Mayas, Guatemala.
·
“Hindu-Hopi Joint Workshop”, Sedona, AZ, March-April 2006.
Local
bilateral conferences keep on taking place, e.g. the Hindu-Maori conference of
October 2012 in New Zealand. From its press release:
“The first
Hui (gathering) of Maori Indians with the theme ’Coming together, working together, growing together’ was a real
success. It was organised under the auspices of the Hindu Council of New
Zealand. More than 80 delegates, aged from 1 year to 79 years old, participated [...]. It commenced with a powhiri (official Maori welcome) on Friday, 5 October and closed with poroporoaki’s
(farewell speeches) on Sunday,
7 October 2012. […] The
sessions concluded on the Sunday with two panel discussions – the first on ‘Inter-cultural
Relationships’ chaired by Teena Jaram and the other on ‘Growing up Indo-Maori’
chaired by Raewyn Bhana. [....] As
a meat-free event, participants were treated to delicious vegetarian dishes […]
The Hindu Council of New Zealand also announced the formation of the
International Centre for Cultural Studies (ICCS Aotearoa) and the Aotearoa
Bharat Friendship Society (ABFS). The Hui is a step forward in Hindu-Maori whakawhanaungatanga (relations). […] participants are already thinking about likely topics
and workshops for next year’s Hui such as Indian mihi and whakapapa,
language and religion, and the development of whakapapa connecting participants. Rotorua will be the venue of the
next Maori-Indian Hui to be held in October 2013. It will run alongside the Rotorua Deepawali
Festival.” [Hindu Council NZ 2012]
Further, ICCS
conferences have pertained to:
·
“Science of Survival in the Ancient Traditions and
Cultures: Hands on experience with the Traditional Techniques of Survival”, Rochester, NY, April-May 2005, to “explore ancient traditions that
predate the ‘Christian era’ and their application in today’s society”.
·
“Ancient Family Traditions of Asian, African, Latin,
Hebrew and Native
American Cultures and their Relevance in Modern Times”, Atlanta GA, September 2005.
·
“Achieving Inner and Outer Balance in the
Ancient Traditions and Cultures: Exploring Ancient Paths to Emotional
Well-Being”, Rochester NY, August 2006.
·
“Spirituality in Indigenous Cultures and Religious
Traditions”, Lanham MD, October 2009.
·
“Continuity and Connectivity in the World’s Ancient
Traditions and Cultures”, Newport
VA, October 2010.
·
“Eastern and Indigenous Perspectives on
Sustainability and Conflict Resolution”, Tampa FL, November 2011.
Of course, outside the ICCS, such bilateral conferences also take place,
though not so frequently. One hears little of bilateral initiatives between
Wiccans and Asatruar, for instance. The problem is that if locally, different Pagan traditions
co-exist, it is precisely because there are differences of opinion so serious that
they preclude even occasional collaboration. Alternatively, through migration,
different traditions may come to co-exist innocently, and then meetings and
friendly relations may become possible. That is precisely the situation of the
Hindu diaspora.
Yashwant
Pathak
Co-founder and
animator of the ICCS and convenor of these tri-annual Gatherings is Yashwant
Pathak (°1955), Professor of Pharmacy, mostly at Sullivan University, Louisville
KY, and author/editor of a number of specialized books in that field. He is an office-bearer
of the Hindu nationalist mass-movement RSS, with some 6 million members the
largest Non-Governmental Organization in the world. All office-bearers
mentioned on the website of the ICCS’s US chapter have Hindu names.
The main thing to understand about this
movement is indeed its roots in Hindu revivalism. The first Gathering took
place in Mumbai “in association with Vishwa Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai; Rambhau
Mhalgi Prabodhini International and SNDT Womens’ University, Mumbai”. To
outsiders, these names may not mean much, but insiders know that the VAK (°1997)
and the RMP (°1989) are members of the Sangh Parivar, the “family” of
organizations around the RSS. The highlight of this year’s conference in Haridwar
was the conferral of honorary doctorates by an important leader called Mohan Bhagwat.
Those who are in the know, are aware that he is the Sarsanghcālak, “he who walks at the head of the association”,
the RSS President.
To relativize this, it may be pointed out that most Hindu organizations
have organizational or at least friendly ties with the RSS. When former RSS
president Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiyya) visited the Netherlands, he made sure
to pay a visit to the aged Maharshi Mahesh Yogi, who lived in a castle in
Vlodrop. When Financial Times
correspondent Edward Luce tried to get in touch with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, he
received his reply through the RSS. [Luce 2006:180] Most Gurus are hand in
glove with the RSS, and those who aren’t, usually have a quarrel with the RSS
on intra-Hindu doctrinal matters (like caste: conservative leaders don’t like
the RSS’s reformist line), not on the points which have given the RSS its bad
name viz. its real or perceived attitude to Muslims and Christians. Conversely,
those who speak out against the RSS, more often than not can also be quoted as
speaking out against Hinduism itself. Usually, turning against Hindu
nationalism means turning against Hinduism itself. There are also Hindu
arguments against the RSS and its political wing, the Bhāratīya Janatā Pārti
(“Indian People’s Party”,BJP) [see Elst 1997], but they are espoused only by a
small minority. If common Hindus have their doubts about the Hindu quality of
the RSS-BJP, they are reminded by Hinduism’s declared enemies that RSS and
Hinduism are virtual synonyms.
And even the RSS record as supposedly anti-Christian or anti-Muslim is
not what it seems to be if you believe the Indian “secularist” elite or the
India-watching “experts” in the West. Thus, most India-watchers predicted in
the early nineties that if the BJP came to power, it would “put the Muslims in
gas chambers”, but when it effectively came to power (1998-2004), nothing of
the kind happened. Religious riots were fewer than before, and the party took
peace initiatives towards Pakistan in spite of the Pak-initiated Kargil war of
1999. Even the lone Gujarat riots of March 2002, making over 800 Muslim and
over 200 Hindu victims, were a moderate affair compared with the 80s and early
90s, when religious riots were a frequent occurrence under non-BJP governments,
and were far smaller (though they received far more media coverage) than the
killing of some 3,000 Sikhs by the secular Congress activists in 1984. The RSS
weekly Organiser never contains
fundamental criticism of Islam. Indian Muslims are quick to take offence and
demand the banning of books or cartoons; but they have rarely if ever singled
out an RSS publication.
It should also be understood that the word “nationalism”, which has
acquired a negative meaning in the West, does’t have this connotation in the
ex-colonized world. In India and many other countries, it has the very positive
connotation of the anti-colonial freedom struggle. That (and its decisive role
in holding Srinagar against the Pakistani invaders, 1947, and in the resistance
war against the Chinese invasion, 1962) is where the RSS, as an offshoot of the
Indian National Congress in the 1920s, earned its reputation for “nationalism”.
Yashwant Pathak
told us that so far, no negative reaction has been noticed from among foreign
guests to the RSS, which is not involved in organizing
the Gatherings in any case. [Pathak 2012]
The good thing
about Hindu nationalists, poor as they tend to be in intellectual
sophistication, is that they are disciplined workers and easily move into
action. Recent economic developments also means that they have a lot of money
at their disposal and are capable of organizing a global platform. This is why
the ICCS has succeeded where others kept on speculating or where they had begun
the work but then failed.
Sources
of inspiration: the Amerindians’ Gathering of the Elders
Among
the sources of inspiration which gave US-based Hindus the idea of a Pagan
International, was actual attempts by surviving Pagan communities to keep their
traditions alive. These are not hard to come by in America: many Amerindians
are in this situation and some have given visiting Hindus a warm welcome.
Yashwant Pathak first learned of the Amerindian efforts through Hindu friends
who had visited native
American reservations and discussed the similarities in these cultures and the
role of the elders. Pathak personally worked in tribal areas of India and was
first hand witness to the role of elders in such traditions and cultures, and
discovered the same fact among Maoris and Australian Aboriginals.
Thus,
the Amerindian natives of British Columbia already had a tradition of annual
gatherings where ceremonies are held and issues discussed. Just recently, they
concluded the “36th Gathering of the Elders of British Columbia”.
[BC Elders 2012] It is from this meeting between Hindus and Amerindian
traditionalists that the global Gatherings of the Elders emerged.
Sources
of inspiration: the WCER
Another factor
in its genesis was the precedent of the World Council of Ethnic Religions,
founded in Vilnius in 1998. Hampered by intellectual and organizational
amateurism, it looked still-born and only gained a second lease of life after
refounding itself in 2010 as the European Congress of Ethnic Religions, a name
acknowledging the fact that it had attracted only a European membership, and no
doubt also inspired by the lure of EU sponsoring. But the idea of a global
federation of pre-Christian religions had been launched and was taken up by the
ICCS. Note how the ECER’s Bologna Declaration (2010) reaffirms the privileged
relations of world Pagans with Hinduism:
“We also decided
to strengthen our ties with the Parliament of World Religions and work together
with India’s cultural and religious organizations.” [AVA 2010, ECER 2010]
At any rate, the
Gatherings of the Elders set out to do what the WCER had promised to do at its
founding: bring together all the world’s surviving Pagans.
Sources
of inspiration: Ram Swarup
A rarely-mentioned but all-important
source of inspiration was the Hindu philosopher Ram Swarup (1920-1998). He was
an Economics graduate from Delhi University but otherwise kept himself far from
the academic circuit. A Gandhian freedom fighter in his young days, then
evolving through Leftism to active anti-Communism in the 1950s, he turned to
cultural and religious questions, writing critiques of Christianity and Islam
[1992, 2009] and a major defence of polytheism:
“And yet the birth of Many Gods will not herald the death of One God; on
the other hand, it will enrich and deepen our understanding of both. For One
God and Many Gods are spiritually one. (…) A purely monotheistic unity fails to
represent the living unity of the Spirit and expresses merely the intellect’s
love of the uniform and the general. Similarly, purely polytheistic Gods
without any principle of unity amongst them lose their inner coherence. (…) The
Vedic approach is probably the best. It gives unity without sacrificing
diversity. (…) Monotheism is not saved by polytheism, nor polytheism by
monotheism, but both are saved by going deep into the life of the soul. (…)
Depending on the cultures in which they were born, mystics have given
monotheistic as well as polytheistic renderings and interpretations of their
inner life and experiences.” [Swarup 1980:128-133; likewise 2000, 2009 passim].
He advocated the survival of
the remaining Pagan religions and the revival of the eclipsed pre-Christian
religions, with a guiding role for Hinduism as the largest among them, endowed
with the oldest unbroken literate tradition. He also explicitly sympathized
with the Amerindian cause. [e.g. Swarup 1991, repro. in Swarup 2009:126-129]
Ram Swarup lived
like a hermit and was averse to travelling, so his outreach to the surviving
Pagan traditions elsewhere remained largely theoretical. However, while no
formal links can be established, his posthumous role in the creation of this
Hindu-initiated Pagan International is undeniable. Yashwant Pathak confirmed
that his attention had been drawn by an article on Ram Swarup, that he then read
Ram Swarup’s own publications and finally visited him in person. [Pathak 2012]
Sources
of inspiration: the Tribal Welfare Centre
The Vanavāsī Kalyān Āśram
(“Forest-Dwellers’ Welfare Hermitage”) was founded in Jashpur in 1952 by
Ramakant Keshav Deshpande, who worked with the Department of Tribal Welfare and
was an RSS member. Strengthening contacts with the tribals was also a pet
project of the late RSS leader Moropant Pingle, who helped Yashwant Pathak in
his tribal contacts, and of the dynamic leader of the RSS-affiliated World
Hindu Council, Swami Vigyananda.
The history of the VKA is one of the most successful chapters of the
Hindu nationalist movement’s history. Since the British days, the Christian
missionaries had felt entitled to the souls of the tribal population, whom they
could hope to convert more easily than the organized Hindu population. They
labeled the tribals as Ādivāsī-s,
“Aboriginals”, a Sanskrit word that gave the false impression of native
familiarity with the new-fangled theory that the tribals were native and the non-tribals were invaders from abroad.
This theory played into the hand of a colonial strategy to classify the
mainstream Hindus as earlier invaders, no more (or no less) entitled to the
Indian soil than the British. They posited that Hindus are related to the
tribals the way Euro-Americans are to Amerindians. As a historical theory, this is controversial
at best; but nonetheless, it became the dominant way of looking at the tribals.
The
missionary strategy involves delinking of the tribals from Hindu society at the
cultural and religious level, arguing that they espouse a totally different
religion than Hinduism. Thus, they say that the Santal tribe (whose language
was promoted to official language status by the BJP government) is
monotheistic, worshipping Sing Bonga, the sun god, alone. That is not true, there
are many Bongas (gods) in the Santal pantheon. But even if they worship the sun
god, wasn’t the quarrel between conquistador
Francisco Pizarro and the Inca Athahualpa precisely about the latter’s
worshipping the sun god instead of Jesus (“Your god died on the cross, but our
god rises every day”). Isn’t sun worship precisely the most popular form of
Pagan worship which both the Bible (Deut. 4:19, 2 Kings 23:5) and the Quran
(6:76) prohibited? And anyway, sun worship is an established option in
scriptural Hinduism, existing since the Vedas, where some hymns are addressed
to Sūrya, the sun god. The difference
between Sūrya and Sing Bonga is only
linguistic, not religious.
So, the VKA counterstrategy is to show that the line between tribals and
non-tribals is very blurred: (1) some tribals speak the same language as the
non-tribals; (2) even among those who don’t, among those most isolated from
Hindu society, who e.g. don’t observe the Hindu taboo on beef-eating, the Hindu
gods and festivals have penetrated long ago and become part of tribal life; (3)
Hindu society itself has come about by the transformation of tribes across
India into castes, the cells of an expanding Vedic society (as B.R. Ambedkar
said: “the tribes have become castes” [1990:VII:303]), and most of its contents
has likewise been derived from hoary tribal traditions; and (4) anyway, from a
Christian viewpoint, no matter what the differences between tribals and
non-tribals may be, they will all end up in hell for they are all foreign to
Christ, all Pagans. Against Christian welfare efforts and education financed by
Western donors, they place native welfare efforts and native education from
native resources.
Hindu society has a tradition of opposing missionary efforts since
colonial days. Mahatma Gandhi said that: “If I had the power to legislate, I would ban all
proselytizing”. [Harijan, 5 Nov.
1935; more similar quotes gathered in Knapp 2012] However, the VKA is the first and still the
only major organization that fought the missionaries with their own weapons.
E.g., Swami Lakshmananda, who was murdered along with four assistants by
Christians with the help of the Maoist guerrilla in 2008, led an orphanage and
school for tribals. [Parker 2009] It is no surprise that American anti-Hindu
forces, both Indian-born Marxists and Christian Churches, have sought to
delegitimize the VKA’s support base that has recently come about among US-based
Hindus, viz. the Indian Development and
Relief Fund. [IDRF 2012, Campaign 2008]
About the religion of the
Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, a participant in the Gathering of the Elders
gave a very good philosophical account. [Riddi 2006:121-126] Unlike other
tribals, the Arunachal tribals were till recently very isolated and are really
very different from mainstream Hinduism as well as from the surrounding
Lamaism. The Hindus here gave an example of what they, both through the VKA and
through less organized efforts, have accumulated of experience in dealing with
different traditions, an experience that is replicated on a global scale in
their meetings with traditions worldwide.
Representativeness
How representative are these Gatherings?
Anyone can volunteer a paper, or simply participate. So, the field of delegates
is not selected for representativeness. So far, purely random facts of Hindu
implantation and contacts with locals have decided which regions are under- or
overrepresented. Thus, one apparently underrepresented region is South America,
where the revival of native religion under nativist leaders like Hugo Chavez
and Evo Morales is the most conspicuous, but is not sufficiently reflected in
their presence at the Gathering of the Elders.
Effect
on participants
What does this emerging global network do for
its participants? Does accession to this International already show up in the
self-understanding, self-legitimation and negotiating positions of the
communities represented? Do they feel strengthened by their membership?
A report on the latest Gathering claims:
“The 4-day event had transformed the delegates
who arrived as strangers but returned as relatives. They felt empowered with
the new connections and network. They could communicate with each other not
with the help of a language but by their love, warmth, respect and affection
for each other. The delegates returned with a renewed vigor and a greater
clarity as to why the revitalization of their traditions is the need of the
hour for the welfare of the world through a balanced and holistic approach.”
[Samvada 2012]
The reporter, at least, believes that the
Gatherings have their effect: “Like Inra Jaka, who represents the small
community of native Cham Hindus of Vietnam, convincingly stated that his
struggle to retain everything that he finds closer to nature including arts,
clothing, and philosophy is strengthened through this conference. His
conviction for preservation of his tradition has grown thousand fold now.”
[Samvada 2012]
Some personal testimonies
confirm this eloquently: “Dr. Gulnara Aitpaeva attended such Gathering in
Bharat for the first time and before setting off for her group’s journey back
home to Kyrgyzstan said, ‘we would be attending the next conference in larger
number and would also try to get representation from our neighboring countries.
This conference has bolstered our self confidence.’” [Samvada 2012]
Yashwant Pathak told us
that, while quantification may be difficult, there is a palpable effect which
always goes in the positive sense:
“Measurable
outcomes include:
1.
This is the first gathering of its kind
where many traditions and cultures from all the continents meet every three
years.
2. The
attendance of the Elders gathering is ever increasing.
3. More
than 30% of the attendees have attended all the four conferences except for a
few who made their way to nirvana, but many are very keen on the opportunity
they get at the Elders’ conference to interact with others from different
traditions and cultures and also learn a lot from such interaction.
4. Many
elders and the delegates, when they heard about RSS and similar Hindu
organizations in India reviving the pride, felt every culture of the world needs
to have something similar to such organizations in their countries and increase
the awareness and participation of youths.
5.
We are exploring having some youth camps
on the RSS line but the philosophy and cultures discussed are the indigenous
one but the philosophy ‘giving one hour
out of 24 hours selflessly to one’s own
culture, society and nation’ is very attractive to people
We had conferences in more than 26
countries based on our contacts developed in Elders’ conferences, and the name
of ICCS has a significant credibility. I am getting requests about the 2015 Gathering
of the Elders.” [Pathak 2012]
Victimization
Given the religious
conflicts of history (and sometimes of the present as well), and given the de facto negative definition of “Pagan”
and “Indigenous” religions as “all religions except for the
Prophetic-Monotheistic ones: Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, what is the
attitude of these Elders to the latter religions? Now that hundreds have spoken
their minds about everything that seemed pertinent to their own tradition’s
situation, we ought to get an idea from their explicit statements.
As shown by the
contents of the delegates’ papers, and as confirmed in private talks, the
tendency to victimhood vis-à-vis Christianity and Islam, which would be all too
understandable, is not much in evidence at the Gatherings. The host at the 2012
conference hinted at Christianity and Islam but without naming them:
“Dr.
Pranav Pandya,
Chancellor, DSVV, in his Presidential Address remarked that incomprehensible
damage has been done to ancient cultures and traditions by a few groups who
could not appreciate the diversity. ” [Samvada
2012]
There are a few
papers against the Christian missions [Sanu 2006:135-145] and an indictment of
the Bangladeshi government for persecuting its religious minorities:
“There are 45
distinct indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. (…) The ideals and values of a
multicultural democratic society are not respected in Bangladesh. (…) The
indigenous peoples and religious minorities need constitutional recognition of
their distict identity”. [Bhikkhu 2006:73, 80]
But these make up
only a very small percentage of the papers presented. Moreover, these don’t
stop at the two major “predatory religions”, Christianity and Islam. Thus,
there was also a complaint by the Veddas or Wanniyal-aeto (“forest-dweller”,
also the pseudonym of the speaker) in Sri Lanka against the ruling religion,
Buddhism. [Wanniyal-aeto 2006:146-151]
As for Judaism, its
situation vis-à-vis Paganism is totally different from that of its Christian
and Islamic offshoots. This has always been recognized by the Hindu nationalist
movement, which supported the Zionist project from the beginning and greatly
admired the Jews for surviving in adverse circumstances and reviving their
ancient language. It turns out that, unlike some European Neo-Pagan factions,
the ICCS and its invitees do not see Judaism as an enemy or as part of an enemy
bloc. One ICCS-US conference on family values was termed: “Ancient Family
Traditions of Asian, African, Latin, Hebrew and Native American Cultures and
their Relevance in Modern Times” (Atlanta
GA, September 2005).
The reason is fairly obvious: Judaism as an
ethnic religion doesn’t proselytize, and consequently doesn’t pose a threat to
the survival of other religions. Indeed it explicitly recognizes nature worship
or Paganism as the natural and God-willed religion of the non-Hebrew peoples. About
Islam and especially Christianity, active in proselytism like never before,
some speakers have expressed their misgivings, whereas about Judaism it is all
hunky-dory.
This became even more true in 2008, when a
Hindu delegation led by the aforementioned Swami Dayananda Saraswati, convenor
of the Hindu monastic organization Hindū Dharma Ācārya Sabhā (HDAS), extracted
from the Israeli rabbinate the acknowledgment that Hinduism does not constitute
idolatry as defined by the Halakha
(Jewish law). This “Jerusalem declaration” constituted a rare diplomatic
victory for Hinduism and for Paganism as a whole. [HDAS 2008]
New Age
Is there, within those traditions that have
been represented, any opposition to the whole idea of the Gatherings or to
specific positions promoted by the ICCS? So far, at any rate, we haven’t heard
of it. Evaluating this
initiative ourselves, we wonder whether there isn’t a contrast between the
traditional culture of the Pagans and the modernist human-rights, ecologist,
feminist, globalist “common denominator” at the Gatherings of the Elders. To
act as devil’s advocate, we can argue that the world Paganism in its historical
form is at least more complicated than the close-up we get to see at the
Gatherings.
The theme titles
and poster captions of the ICCS tend to include elements that purist scholars
of Pagan religions will dismiss as “New Age” or as UN human-rights platitudes
about “universal peace”, “unity in diversity” (the motto of the European Union,
Ex varietate concordia, and of many
other contemporary institutions), “the spirit of tolerance” etc. The goal of these Gatherings is defined as “reaching
out to all the ancient traditions of the world, exploring the commonalities in
them and bringing them together to foster the sense of oneness in humanity” [Samvada 2012] It raises the question to what extent these surviving
or reconstructed Pagans are simply trying to live up to modern fantasies of the
Noble Savage, naturally liberal and feminist and ecological, and to what extent
they really represent the heritage of the Elders.
Some New Age elements that have percolated to the
spokesmen of their traditions include the following:
“[Dr. Pranav Pandya]
recalled the Mayan belief that a New Era is due in 2012 and proclaimed that the
DSVV would be the epicenter of the same and hoped that differences would melt
and [the] future is sure to be of humanity seeking welfare and well-being of
everyone.” [Samvada 2012]
Two distinct New Age
elements figure in this lone sentence: (1) the belief in the Mayan calendar and
its claimed expectation of a big change on 21 December 2012; and (2) the expectation of an era of harmony, a
variation on the Age of Aquarius.
Consider
also what the supposedly hard-headed Hindu
nationalist leader said:
“Dr.
Mohan ji Bhagwat,
[most honourable] Sarsanghchalak of the
RSS, delivered the Keynote Address where he stressed the need to nourish the
balance of nature. He praised the efforts and resolve of the Elders in
preserving their traditions and cultures. He recalled the priceless treasures
of Indian thought like ‘Live and Let Live’, ‘Unity in Diversity’, ‘World is one
family’ and ‘Let us ennoble the world’, and remarked that these have extreme
relevance today. Universal outlook is the hallmark of Indian thought and the
happiness and well-being of everyone is always sought, he reminded. Dr. Bhagwat
(…) also felt that it is our responsibility to show to the world that the age-old
traditions have solutions to modern problems. We (…) need to organize ourselves
for the benefit of everything in this creation, he concluded.” [Samvada 2012]
Hindus in general show this
tendency, e.g. by pretending that the New Age-sounding slogan Vasudhaiva kutumbakam (“the world is one
family”) sums up the essence of their philosophy. Thus:
“The Hindu Council of New Zealand
believes in the spirit of community well-being on the principle of ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam’.” [Hindu Council NZ 2012]
This phrase is not from one of their authoritative texts, like the
Vedas or the Bhagavad-Gita, but from a fable collection, the Hitopadeśa, and is uttered there by a
wily character out to fool a warner against his criminal plans into
complacency. The fable warns against
this trusting attitude of universal brotherhood. [Tiwari 2008] To be sure, the
fact that the jackal in the fable uses this maxim in a bid to convince his
opponent, shows that it carried some weight; but to pretend that it was
universally accepted in Hindu culture and even sums up its essence, is
definitely not true. Its present popularity is very typical for the tendency
among most lip-service traditionalists to pick from their tradition those lines
that conform with the now-dominant values.
To give another and
rather crude example: no one at the Gatherings spoke in defence of human
sacrifice among the Aztecs or among the Pagan ancestors of the Germanic and
Celtic peoples, nonetheless a reality of Pagan life (though abolished by other
Pagans in the case of the Celts, viz. the Roman conquerors who abhorred the
practice). The role division between the sexes among Pagans was very
traditional and fixed, not quite the feminist equality that the UNO is
promoting. As for “gay liberation”, not all
but many Pagan societies (notably among Amerindians) accepted
homosexuals in their midst, but they allotted them a specific role: unlike in
the modern world, sexual lifestyles had consequences. There was no principle of
equal rights in premodern societies. The much-touted sense of environmentalism
among Pagans should also be taken with a pinch of salt: while living in nature
made them much more aware of the ecological processes, it didn’t stop the
Australian Aboriginals from causing the extinction of some large mammal species
in their continent. Briefly, the picture of world Paganism is less idyllic than
the Gatherings of the Elders make it out to be.
Unlike the ECER,
whose members have almost to a man been raised in Christian or secular
households and who have had to reinvent their Paganism, inevitably making it
more modern than it originally was, most speakers at the Gatherings belong to
ancestral Pagan traditions. Many of these are still firmly rooted, but many
have interiorized modern soft-Christian and post-Christian assumptions to
varying degrees. A global platform only tends to strengthen this homogenizing
tendency.
Yashwant Pathak
points out that some New Age slogans are taken precisely from Hinduism, and
that values like the transcendence of differences in a common brotherhood is an
ancient Hindu insight:
”I did not feel any contrast, on
the contrary there are lot of similarities, we believe firmly in Sarve bhadrāni paśyantu (‘ let
all see the noble things around them’, let us propagate the positivity, from a
very common prayer dating back to the Upanishads). This attitude really helps all of us and will
help the world also.” [Pathak 2012]
As for the other religions, in his
study of and acquaintance with Pagan traditions worldwide, he has genuinely
found a lot in common:
“The common denominator in these
traditions are many. To name a few:
1. Concept of God;
2. Realization
of God in some form or other;
3.
Gods and Goddesses;
4.
Human relationship with
God;
5.
Thought for total
humanity;
6. Thought
for Human being in totality;
7. In
many cases rebirth in some form or other;
8. Soul
and role of soul;
9.
Elders concept;
10. Oral traditions;
11. Respect
to somewhat extended family structure;
12. No conversions, neither missionaries;
13. All-inclusiveness
to not only humans but to all creation.
14. Existence
of divinity in the creation of God in some form or other. “
So, Yashwant Pathak thinks that the Gatherings
accurately reflect Paganism as Pagans nowadays see it and live it. The
descendants of the Aztecs, even when they want to revive their ancestors’
religion, no longer practice human sacrifice. If we don’t place ourselves in
the position of an anti-Pagan polemicist, that question simply does not arise.
Modern Pagans, however, have a lot of basic religiosity and worldviews in
common, and that common denominator now has a global platform to express
itself. If some elements sound “New Age”, that is because the New Age
Westerners chose to adopt elements from past or
present Paganism. What is dismissively called “New Age” did not fall from the
sky but has a pedigree among existing religions.
Conclusion
The world has changed. For centuries,
Paganism was an annoyance that colonizers had to deal with, but fortunately it
was on the way out: missionaries and modernization would inevitably cause its
extinction. There were foci of Pagan worship, but they were different from
place to place and not coordinated, not an organized force capable of mobilizing
resistance against the forces that would inexorably lead to its disappearance.
But now the Pagans have formed a global forum to assert their presence. They
have the spirit of the times going for them, with the reassertion of communal
identities. We will hear more from them.
This development is also good for the host. The Hindu nationalist family
ought to learn from its cousins, the world’s Pagans. But principally, this
mutual recognition of common interests and common beliefs and attitudes is good
for the Pagan and Indigenous traditions.
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