THE EARLY SPREAD OF VEDANTA SOCIETIES:
AN EXAMPLE OF "IMPORTED LOCALISM"
GWILYM BECKERLEGGE
Summary
Sri Ramakrishna, in whose name the Ramakrishna Math and Mission were created,
and Swami Vivekananda, the disciple largely responsible for their organization, have
been recognized as early examples of the "global gurus" who, over the last hundred
years or so, have attracted both Hindus and those not born into Hinduism. This
article will examine the establishment of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in
the United States and London. As a consequence of its attachment to the ideal of
an emergent universal religion, but one linked to the claim that Hinduism is the
"mother of religions," the movement has looked to the Hindu tradition for authoritative
paradigms. This tendency has been matched by an expectation on the part of followers
not born into Hinduism that the movement's belief and ritual activity should reflect
practice in India. It will be argued that this pattern cannot be explained adequately in
terms of existing theoretical understandings of the interaction between globalization
and localization. Instead, it will be argued that Vivekananda's teaching led to the
emergence of the related yet distinct phenomenon of "imported localism," which has
been at odds with the ideal of a universal religion.
The Ramakrishna Math and Mission: A "Global" Movement1
It remains far from clear whether Sri Ramakrishna (c1836­1886
CE) commissioned Swami Vivekananda (1863­1902 CE) to institutionalize
his legacy.2
Ramakrishna, nevertheless, is honoured today
in 147 Ramakrishna Math and Mission centres around the world. Although
the majority are in India, the contemporary movement would
1 This article is a revised form of a paper given at the European Association for the
Study of Religion, 3rd Congress, at the University of Bergen, May, 2003. I am grateful
to Professor Gustavo Benavides for comments that greatly assisted its final revision.
2 See Chapter 2 in Beckerlegge 2000 for scholarly debate about the extent of
continuity between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.
 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden (2004) NUMEN, Vol. 51
Also available online ­ www.brill.nl
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 297
commonly be thought of as "global." In addition to signifying geographical
extent, "global" may also suggest ". . . a different kind of
consciousness which takes into account a new order of complexity
wherein the particular and the universal, the local, regional, and international,
interact in a quite new and previously unknown way" (King
1992:153). "Globalization," whether understood as a process distinct
from "modernization" or to a significant degree continuous with it (see
Beckford 2003:104ff., 121f.), signals the advent of the profound and
more comprehensive understanding of global unities outlined by King,
with all this implies for human beings singly and collectively. We shall
be concerned with this richer sense of "global" in exploring the extent
to which the distinctive nature of the earliest Vedanta Societies/groups,
which were created by Vivekananda in the United States and Europe
between 1893­1897 and 1899­1900, can be understood adequately
through reference to a relationship between processes of "globalization"
and "localization."
Intimations of a New World Order
Vivekananda's "mission" to the West required the dramatic reordering
of time and space implied by incipient globalization, enabling
him as a "transnational actor" to manage the propagation of his
message (Cohen and Kennedy 2000:33). Lacking the concept of
"globalization," he alluded to increasingly complex inter-relationships
between regions and political, economic, technological and cultural
systems, when he wrote in 1899 of the "virtual presence of England"
behind the armies and missionaries, ". . . whose war flag is the factory
chimney, whose troops are the merchantmen, whose battlefields are
the market-places of the world. . ." (Vivekananda 1989, 4:452). He
recognised the unprecedented power that Britain exercised over the
spread of ideas, and was quick to utilise the media (1989, 3:31f., 40;
6:365f.; 3:223). He relied heavily upon the railways. The developing
international postal service made it possible for him to influence
followers simultaneously in the United States, London and India, and
to foster collaboration between them.
298 Gwilym Beckerlegge
Addressing his "Sisters and Brothers of America" at the World's
Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Vivekananda anticipated
the emergence of a "universal religion," identified with Advaita
Vedanta, which would be in tune with the spirit of the increasingly
globalized age in which he lived and put an end to intolerance. At
this event, arguably for the first time, representatives of different religions
began to make common cause in the light of their shared experience
of global pressures exerted by scientific and other socio-economic
forces. Vivekananda's encounter with the sense of globality fostered at
Chicago in turn may have increased the pressure on him to identify and
clarify the place of Hinduism in the world (see Beckford 2003:115).
After all, he had come to Chicago ostensibly to raise funds to alleviate
conditions in India, and not initially to promote a universalist religious
philosophy. In his first speech at the Parliament, Vivekananda spoke
of religions as different "streams" or "paths" leading to the same goal
(1989, 1:4). Individuals unable to appreciate that their various religions
had arisen from the ". . . same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances
of different natures" (1989, 1:18) were likened to frogs in
their own wells (1989, 1:5). Yet, Vivekananda proclaimed in the same
breath that Hinduism was the "mother of religions" (1989, 1:3).
Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita), one of Vivekananda's closest
western disciples, noted that he ". . . believed that the time had come
when nations were to exchange their ideals, as they were already
exchanging the commodities of the market" (Nivedita 1982:18). By
1894, although Vivekananda continued to elicit financial support for
his project to alleviate material conditions in India, he had come to
view this as part of an exchange for the spiritual wisdom he had imported
from India (for example, Vivekananda 1989, 6:255). The creation
of Vedanta Societies/centres was understood in these terms, as
were the journeys to India by several of his closest western disciples.
As the "first Hindu missionary" in the West (Brekke 2002:46),
Vivekananda anticipated the gurus of global Hinduism of the 1960s
and subsequently. In much the same way, several of Vivekananda's
closest followers prefigured the Americans and Europeans who made
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 299
"the journey to the East" (either literally or figuratively) during the
latter half of the twentieth century.
The Appeal of Vivekananda's Universal Religion
The relative ease with which Vivekananda established Vedanta
centres in New York (1894) and San Francisco (1900) and gathered
a circle of supporters in London would initially appear to confirm
Jackson's judgement that it was ". . . a story of the convergence of the
right movement and the right time" (1994:1).
The nineteenth century saw assaults on regionally dominant expressions
of Christianity in both the United States and England. Few of
those attracted to Vivekananda's message in the United States were
". . . actively and meaningfully involved with main-stream Christianity.
. . . movements such as Theosophy and Christian Science were
way stations between participation in the institutional Church and an
identification with Vedanta," as were New England Transcendentalism
and New Thought (French 1974:98; cf. Jackson 1994:14; Veysey
1978:216). Some had entirely rejected Christianity and any other form
of religion (for example, Gurudas 1919:163). Several of Vivekananda's
American supporters were from the elite, and through education,
wealth and opportunity were open to new and foreign ideas (Jackson
1994:29; Veysey 1978:212f.). Laura Glenn (Sister Devamata) joined
the New York Vedanta Society, part of "a remarkable non-sectarian
religious organization," having met Vivekananda in 1899 (Devamata
1975:1, cf. 80). A Vassar graduate, she had studied in Europe and spent
time in an Anglican convent but had also read the Upanishads and Bhagavad
Gita, as well as Arnold's Light of Asia (His Eastern and Western
Admirers 1983:122; Jackson 1994:94f.). Leon Landsberg (later Swami
Kripananda) had travelled through Theosophy, finding "some truth" in
all the religions he had studied ". . . but too much encrusted with superstition"
(Anon. 1896:195). Ellen Waldo had similarly tested different
teachers (Devamata 1932:243; Jackson 1994:91f.). Sister Christine
(Christina Greenstidel), a former Christian Scientist, found in
Vivekananda ". . . the touchstone for which we have been searching,"
yet something "strangely familiar" for "I have known that mind be-
300 Gwilym Beckerlegge
fore" (Sen 1930:420). For Josephine McLeod, Vivekananda was ". . . a
Rock for us to stand upon. That was his function in my life, not worship,
not glory, but a steadiness under one's feet for experiments! At
last I'm free. . ." (Amiya 1950:28).3
Some held Vedanta to be compatible with existing religious commitments.
Mary Phillips, a key worker in the New York Vedanta Society,
asserted, "We are not giving up the religion of our forefathers
nor the Christ of Nazareth. . . . It is a delving to the roots of all religions,
leaving us free to worship in whatever form we choose. . .."
She spoke of there being many Christs who had all represented "fundamental
principles of the philosophy of the Vedas" (quoted in French
1974:99). According to Josephine McLeod, however, something of a
divide persisted between those who continued to believe in "the necessity
of Christianity as a saving power" and those willing to relativize
this conviction within the tenets of a universal religion. She
observed that "Our Swami's great exposition of Vedanta Philosophy
always favored rather than denied the mission of Christ, and left Christians
better Christians, and this is what essentially appealed to Mr.
Leggett [first President of the New York Vedanta Society], and in
fact to all of us" (quoted in French 1974:98f.). Nevertheless, some
felt uncomfortable with Vivekananda's criticisms of Christianity (Atulananda
1970:261f.). Miss Dutcher, Vivekananda's host at Thousand
Island Park in 1895, has been remembered as ". . . a devout Methodist
who had difficulty with some of Vivekananda's frontal assaults on her
orthodoxy" (French 1974:65; cf. His Eastern and Western Admirers
1983:164f.).
In Britain, Vivekananda again drew his earliest disciples and supporters
from different clusters of spiritual seekers, similarly disillusioned
with the exclusivism of institutionalized Christianity. E.T.
Sturdy, Henrietta Muller, and Captain and Mrs Sevier had direct acquaintance
with India and Hindu religious thinking. Sturdy and Muller,
who first invited Vivekananda to London, were former Theosophists.
3 Similar testimonies are to be found in the compilation of appreciations of
Vivekananda, His Eastern and Western Admirers (1983:142, 154, 250, 418f.).
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 301
The Seviers, who returned to India to build up the Advaita Ashrama,
declared that Vivekananda met a spiritual need they had been seeking
to satisfy for years (Basu and Ghosh 1969:132). Other supporters,
such as Eric Hammond and Isabel Margesson accommodated
Vivekananda's message within existing personal philosophies already
sympathetic to the notion of a universal truth manifested constantly
in different religions (His Eastern and Western Admirers 1983:291f.,
380). Eric Hammond and Henrietta Muller respectively found points in
common with the Baha'i faith and Christian Theosophy (see Beckerlegge
2000:158­60). Margaret Noble (Nivedita 1982:20) referred to
the "equal truth of all religions" as the "master-thought" to which
Vivekananda constantly returned in his talks in London in 1895 and
1896. She declared, "The doctrine that while no one religion was true
in the way commonly claimed, yet all were equally true in a very real
way, was one that commanded the immediate assent of some of us"
[emphasis added] (1982:21).
The Ramakrishna movement's approach to the issue of religious
pluralism has continued to appeal strongly to its western devotees.
For Christopher Isherwood (1948:1), Vedanta was nothing less than "a
statement of the Philosophia Perennis." John Yale (1961:10, 12), later
Swami Vidyatmananda, declared that the universalism of the Ramakrishna
movement enabled him to be ". . . religious without being provincial"
(cf. [Swami] Atulananda [born C.J. Heijblom] 1970:262). Pravrajika
Vrajaprana's (2000) discussion of the recent progress of Vedanta
in the United States refers uniformly to thinkers attracted to mysticism,
notions of a perennial philosophy, and religious universalism.
The ideal of a universal religion has proved equally attractive to
those training in Britain for acceptance into the Ramakrishna Math,
disillusioned with the confines of Christianity and indeed any dogma
maintaining that God ". . . manifested himself at only one time and
place" (Carey 1987:136). In an interview in 2001, Swami Dayatmananda,
Swami-in-charge of the Ramakrishna-Vedanta Centre at
Bourne End, UK, maintained that Vivekananda had disseminated
Vedanta, and not the "ethnic religion" of Hinduism, and that the Ra-
302 Gwilym Beckerlegge
makrishna movement had taken up this task.4
Swami Shivarupananda
(born in Canada and then raised in England) had found that it was
". . . conceivable to think of the Divine as having form and being formless.
. . . I can't see God as a plc, limited to one particular cult, religion
or religious expression." He added, "I can't be really a Hindu. I was
moving into a universal religion."5
Adopting a Vedantin stance, therefore,
had not involved a desertion of Christianity, the religion of his
birth, but was an evolutionary process of moving beyond an attachment
to one form of the Divine. He believed Ramakrishna's ideas to
be in tune with ". . . a world framework now marked by globalization
and unification."
Local Difficulties
Vivekananda's message found a small but ready audience in the
West. The creation of stable organizations, however, was far from
trouble-free. Vivekananda had to face defections and conflict between
his followers. The New York centre survived this turmoil, although
it was temporarily suspended in 1910, but the nascent London centre
collapsed by 1899. The causes of this instability were varied.6
Many
who came to hear Vivekananda were never likely to be drawn to the
Vedantin core of his message. Others brought a greater openness to the
religious challenge of his ideas but very different understandings of
how it related to their existing religious convictions. The temperaments
and ambitions of individuals also came into play.
4 Interview material gathered by this writer in January, 2001, while making the
video programme, "In the presence of gods and gurus," for the Open University course
(AD317) Religion Today: Tradition, Modernity and Change. (Producer: Marinella
Nicolson; Series Producer: Tessa Coombs: BBC, 2001).
5 Writing in 1919, Brahmachari Gurudas/Swami Atulananda (born C.J. Heijblom),
in contrast, identified himself as a "Hindu," but as "a spiritual child of the Indian
Rishis" rather than in a cultural sense (Gurudas 1919:161f.).
6 For a more detailed account of these developments, see French 1974, Jackson
1994, and Veysey 1978 on the United States, and Beckerlegge 2000: Part Three on
London.
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 303
In New York, there were tensions between Swamis Kripananda and
Abhayananda, the first two disciples initiated into samnyasa in the
United States in 1895, and between these swamis and Vivekananda,
and between them and other supporters. The most serious threat
to the future of the New York society arose from a disagreement
over its management between Swami Abhedananda and a cluster
of Vivekananda's closest supporters and financial sponsors (Jackson
1994:54­57). Leggett subsequently resigned as the society's president
and was replaced by one of Abhedananda's disciples, and the
society continued under new rules that gave the swami-in-charge
more control. Leggett, McLeod and Sara Bull then largely withdrew
from the New York Vedanta scene, although did not sever their links
with Vivekananda. Writing in 1900 to his close disciple, Christina
Greenstidel, Vivekananda described the New York Vedanta Society as
". . . nearly broken to pieces" (quoted in Burke 1987:267).
Vivekananda spent less time in England than in the United States
and confined his activity to London. As in the United States, fluid audiences
fluctuated around a core of financial sponsors, such as Sturdy
and Henrietta Muller, and a cluster of unswerving disciples. In 1899,
Vivekananda found himself in conflict with some of these supporters
and sponsors, which proved to be destructive for the immediate future
of the London Vedanta centre. Unlike the United States, in England
these critics turned their fire on Vivekananda's conduct as a samnyasi
(see Beckerlegge 2000: Part Three).
Concerns of the day, common to many religious and social movements,
impinged upon the reception of Vivekananda and his message.
For example, social constraints predisposed many independently
minded women, such as Margaret Noble, Henrietta Muller and Marie
Louise (Swami Abhayananda), to explore their spirituality within alternative
religious communities. Asceticism also exercised a powerful attraction
for individuals within certain late nineteenth-century religious
and social movements (cf. Veysey 1978:217f.). Both Vivekananda and
popular Hinduism were judged against these and other external criteria
by individuals who took up Vedanta from different starting points,
for example, Henrietta Muller (Theosophy) and Mrs Ashton Jonson
304 Gwilym Beckerlegge
who led the London Vedanta group after Vivekananda's departure
(Christian Science), as well as by individuals who claimed to draw
upon criteria internal to Hinduism when judging Vivekananda as a
samnyasi, for example, Sturdy (cf. Burke 1985:339f.; and Sil 1997:92,
163 on Swami Kripananda).
The development of formal Vedantic organizations superimposed
affiliations to groups under presidents and swamis-in-charge upon
highly personal relationships with Vivekananda (cf. Jackson 1994:55f.).
Having exercised some influence over the direction of Vivekananda's
mission through their financial backing and social connections, patrons
like Leggett and Muller perhaps came to realize that the organization,
if not their individual relationships with Vivekananda, was heading in
a direction that they could not follow as it became a highly distinctive,
modern Hindu movement. This did not preclude enduring loyalty
to Vivekananda, anticipating the importance of the intensely personal
bond between guru and follower in the later American Vedanta movement
(Veysey 1978:214). Josephine McLeod, for example, defended
Vivekananda from the defectors' charges with the same vigour as Sister
Nivedita. Even after the difficulties in New York, she remained
close to Belur Math and the centre in Hollywood run by Swami Prab-
havananda.
Every bit as striking as the dramatic and often public defections
from the embryonic Vedanta centres in the West is the number of
supporters who appeared to stop short of identifying themselves unreservedly
with the core of Vivekananda's religious philosophy, or, according
to Sil (1997:163), "resisted" discipleship. In New York, several
of Vivekananda's intimate and long-standing supporters did not receive
initiation of any kind, and there is no evidence that this was ever a
thwarted personal ambition. Josephine McLeod consistently stated that
she was Vivekananda's friend, not his disciple (Amiya 1950:28). Perhaps
her declaration that the essential appeal of Vivekananda's philosophy
was that it ". . . favored rather than denied the mission of Christ,
and left Christians better Christians. . ." gives a clue as to the kinds of
limits that some individuals set upon their personal involvement with
Vedanta, and the different ways in which Vivekananda's devotees ac-
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 305
commodated his philosophy. Such personal limits may explain to some
extent the painful defections of Henrietta Muller and Mrs Ashton Jonson,
and their respective biting criticisms of Sister Nivedita's willingness
to defend Kali-worship in Calcutta and "worship at Swami's feet"
(see Beckerlegge 2000:196f.).
Henrietta Muller's withdrawal from the British Vedanta scene has
been viewed within the Ramakrishna movement as the result of pique,
but this ignores her consistently stated feminist and personal religious
principles, which she characterised as "Christian Theosophy"
(Beckerlegge 2000:180ff.). To say that she "returned" to Christianity
on distancing herself from Vivekananda's circle begs the question of
the extent to which she ever ceased to be, in her terms, a "Christian
Theosophist." Even though Muller publicly rejected the Ramakrishna
movement, her abiding conviction that Christianity revealed the common,
cosmic truth behind all religions was broadly in line with the
beliefs of many members of the early Vedanta groups in the United
States and London, although not all of these would have identified
with her Theosophical outlook. In spite of falling outside "main-stream
Christianity," few would have felt compelled by their universalist beliefs
to cut their ties to Christianity. Even Sister Nivedita, who only
severed her formal connection with the Ramakrishna movement after
Vivekananda's death because she refused to abide by its declared
principle of political neutrality, stated in 1902 that "I have never broken
with my position as a member of the Church of England nor
is there any reason why I should do so," adding that she was not a
Theosophist (Basu and Ghosh 1969:283; cf. an interview in 1900 reported
in Burke 1987:289). Recalling the days she spent with Swami
Ramakrishnananda at Madras between 1907 and 1909, Sister Devamata
(1975:58) emphasised that "He was always careful to make plain
that I had not changed my form of faith. Almost invariably he introduced
me with the words: `This is our Christian Sister.' He believed in
the practice of religion, not in conversion."
It has been claimed that the influence of western ideas upon Vivekananda's
beliefs constitute an example of ". . . elective affinities, rather
than of imitation," where convergences are sought and exploited in or-
306 Gwilym Beckerlegge
der to bolster existing principles or projects (Gupta 1974:34). Several
of Vivekananda's closest and most important followers appear
to have handled his philosophy in a similar way, incorporating modified
elements of it within their existing worldviews (for example, denominational
Christianity, Christian Science, Theosophy etc.) rather
than necessarily accepting it in its entirety. These responses represent
different reactions to one element within the far-reaching processes
commonly held to characterise "globalization." This capacity evinced
by Vivekananda's early followers, who in many cases were drawn
from higher socio-economic groups, was undoubtedly facilitated by
their educational attainments. The fact that more recent members of
the Ramakrishna movement in the West have continued to respond
to Vivekananda's challenge in this manner may similarly be a consequence
of the way in which the movement has continued to appeal
largely to older, relatively affluent and well educated followers
(see French 1974:171f.; Carey 1987:136f.; Whitworth and Shiels
1982:167).
Vivekananda's "Glocal" Religion and "Imported Localism"
Beckford (2003:104, cf. 125ff.) has argued that it is ". . . unquestionably
helpful to `think with' the notion of globalisation, provided that
the concept's limitations are kept in mind." For example, any reference
to "globalization" begs the questions of its relationship to modernization
and, as in the case of modernization, how far back the historical
roots of this process should be traced. The periodization offered in response
to these questions would appear to set clear limits on the categories
of religious phenomena to which theories of globalization could
be applied. As Beckford (2003:110) has pointed out, however, ". . . notions
of globality have long been a feature of many faith traditions. . .."
Many of the most widespread "missionary" religions, moreover, have
a long history of transplanting their teachings into new cultural settings
by translating them into new cultural forms.
The evolution of a universal religion not bound to one authoritative
form of cultural expression could be regarded as a predictable manifestation
of the process of globalization and its effects upon systems
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 307
of belief. As we have seen, this view has been adopted within the
Ramakrishna movement. Consequently, it might be assumed that the
growth during the 20th
century and subsequently of a global religious
network like the Ramakrishna movement would particularly lend itself
to explanation in terms of pressures generated by globalization,
stimulating a reassertion of the local ("localization"), whether in terms
of social/national identity, general cultural preference or in matters of
religious belief and practice.7
The ideal of a universal religion promoted by Vivekananda not only
differed from the ideals and goals that provided the dynamism behind
the expansion of longer established "missionary" religions but also, as
we shall see, marked a break with earlier expressions of Hinduism. For
these reasons, closer examination of the growth of the Ramakrishna
movement in the United States and London will test the usefulness
of insights and explanatory concepts generated by the critical debate
surrounding "globalization," suggesting a need to modify the way in
which the relationship between "globalization" and "localization" has
been commonly delineated.
The claim that Swami Vivekananda offered his followers a "universal
religion" did not stem simply from the aspiration, found in certain
earlier religions, that there should be no cultural or social bar to
their worldwide expansion. Vivekananda's "universal religion" would
". . . have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the
God it will preach . . ., which will not be Brahmanic or Buddhistic,
Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still
have infinite space for development . . ., which will recognise divinity
in every man and woman. . ." (Vivekananda 1989, 1:19). Anticipating
a religion that would not be linked to "place or time," Vivekananda
was convinced that diversity of belief and practice would continue but
would come to be understood as the consequence of temperamental,
cultural and historical factors, each being ". . . true as far as it goes"
(1989, 2:383).
7 Compare, for example, Schaefer's (2002) study of Pentecostalism.
308 Gwilym Beckerlegge
Vivekananda's advocacy of the timeliness of deriving principles of
a universal religion from Advaita Vedanta has undoubtedly contributed
to ". . . a distinctive approach to religious plurality [that] has been
associated with Hinduism. . ." since 1893 (Sharma 1979:59). Hacker
has asserted, however, that Vivekananda and other Neo-Hindu thinkers
merely exploited the same "inclusivism" found within traditional
Hinduism and that this was essentially different from tolerance (see
Halbfass 1995:245).8
Throughout its history, Hinduism has indeed
shown a capacity to assimilate regional traditions. It has permitted the
maintenance of fuzzy boundaries both between its different schools
of thought and, at a popular level, between it and other religions
such as Sikhism and even Islam, absorbing ". . . aspects of other
religions without feeling the need to acknowledge their existence"
(Smith 2003:34; cf. Copley 1997:57). Ramakrishna, Vivekananda's
own guru, regularly affirmed the validity of different spiritual paths.
It is important, however, to distinguish between this pattern and
the new undertaking by those nineteenth-century, Hindu intellectuals
who, being more fully exposed to global religious pluralism, felt
drawn into a dialogue with representatives of European religious
thinking (Copley 1997:57; cf. Young 1981:13). Vivekananda, in an
unprecedented manner, created a modern organization that utilised
certain resources from the Hindu tradition to invite both Hindus and
those not born into Hinduism to participate in what he presented to
them as a universal religion. The question of the extent to which his
universal religion was other than a reinterpretation of Hinduism is one
to which we shall return in the latter part of this article.
Vivekananda's redefinition of the Indian system of Vedanta in terms
of more general emphases that would strike chords across cultural and
religious boundaries may legitimately be said to represent a degree of
strategic, "glocal" tweaking of received Hindu tradition (from "glocalization,"
the provision within global marketing for the marketing
of difference according to local taste; see Robertson 1992:173f.). This
8 Hacker's theory of "inclusivism" and its relationship to Hacker's Christian
position are discussed in Halbfass 1995:10ff., 244ff.
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 309
ploy may be compared with those acknowledged within the doctrinal
frameworks of religious traditions with histories of missionary activity
and expansion, although clearly this was a novel departure within the
Hindu tradition.
When expounding his ideal of a universal religion, Vivekananda
(1989, 1:17) frequently pointed to the acceptance of diversity within
Hinduism, to its recognition that ". . . all the religions, from the lowest
fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the
human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite. . .." Sceptical of the rationality
of belief in a personal God, he asserted the superiority of belief
in an impersonal reality on the grounds that it alone can be infinite
and can include the sum of personal understandings. The Impersonal,
therefore, is "our highest generalisation" (1989, 2:334). He presented
his argument that one must proceed from the particular to the highest
possible level of generalization and explain the particular in terms of
the general as consistent with modern science and in accord with rationality
(1989, 2:329, cf. 334­37). Sharma (1978:135) has noted that
Advaitins in the tradition of Shankara had long recognised that to speak
of the Ultimate as "formless" is a "mere formulation" of what can only
be experienced. Advaita, according to Sharma, ". . . shares Hindu plurality,
it does not supervise it" (1978:135). Vivekananda did not hesitate
to affirm the superiority of the monistic position over the personalist
stance while maintaining that the personalist stance is not lost or
destroyed but is included within and explained by the higher level of
generalization offered by monism. It was to Vedanta that Vivekananda
referred, and not the religion denoted by the term "Hinduism."
Vedanta represented for Vivekananda the highest insight of Hinduism
and the clearest anticipation to date of the universal religion.
In nineteenth-century Bengal, Vedanta was widely held to be synonymous
with Advaita, and, by 1896, Vivekananda had come to identify
"Vedantist" with "Hindu." The elasticity in the usage of "Vedanta,"
"Advaita," and "Hindu" served Vivekananda's purpose when he turned
to a non-dualist form of Vedanta as the "highest generalisation" of religious
metaphysics and ethics. When speaking of Advaita/Vedanta in
this vein, Vivekananda was prepared to reduce the complexities of this
310 Gwilym Beckerlegge
long-established Hindu philosophical tradition to a very generalized
level of meaning. Its secret was, "Believe in yourself first, and then believe
in anything else" (Vivekananda 1989, 3:426). In a letter to Sturdy,
he warned against inflicting "jaw-breaking Sanskrit terms and technicalities"
upon western readers (1989, 7:490; cf. Jackson 1994:64).
Vivekananda was similarly responsible for shaping a representation of
Ramakrishna for western consumption, which detached Ramakrishna
from his moorings in popular religion in Bengal, and instead highlighted
more universal themes in Ramakrishna's teaching within the
framework of Vivekananda's version of Advaita.
Vivekananda did not lace his own teaching with justifications taken
from Ramakrishna's life and discourses, repeatedly reminding his
brother-disciples that they should preach the principle, not the person
(for example, 1989, 5:227; 6:274, 310). The emergent "universal religion"
that Vivekananda presented to his western audiences, nevertheless,
was one that appealed to Hindu textual authorities (particularly
the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads) and Hindu exemplars (including
Chaitanya and Krishna), as well as to reason and current notions of
evolution and social progress. But, as the proponent of a universal
religion that claimed to be the "sum total" of beliefs and not simply
a brand of Hinduism, Vivekananda opened up the possibility that his
hearers, already sympathetic to the universalism of his message, might
test both his teaching and conduct within the terms of their existing
personal philosophies. Consequently, Vivekananda's mission provoked
markedly different "localized" responses. This was the result in part
of the bringing together of individuals and groups with very varied expectations,
and in part of the difficulties in promoting a religion centred
upon the universal and "formless" transcending cultural particularities.
Vivekananda's earliest followers on both sides of the Atlantic can be
differentiated according to the extent to which they shared not merely a
commitment to promoting a universal religion but also identified with
their teacher's Hindu background and plans for India. His most enduring
followers were those who accepted initiation as his disciples, in
some cases adopting Hindu-inspired religious names/titles (for example,
Laura Glenn [Sister Devamata], Ellen Waldo [Haridasi], Christina
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 311
Greenstidel [Sister Christine], Margaret Noble [Sister Nivedita], probably
the Seviers), those who spent extended periods with him in India
(several of the above and other American followers such as Josephine
McLeod and Sara Bull), and those who resettled in India (the Seviers,
Sister Nivedita). It is evident, nevertheless, that even these enthusiasts
valued and responded to this connection to India and things Hindu
in different ways. Ellen Waldo [Haridasi] declared that, in spite of her
close association with Vivekananda, ". . . the idea of renunciation never
once occurred to me. Nor did I ever think seriously of following him to
India" (Devamata 1932:242). On the other hand, some followers, notably
Margaret Noble, once in India were complicit in Vivekananda's
intention of "Hinduizing" or "Indianizing" their outlook (His Eastern
and Western Disciples 1989, 2:325, 337). Then there were close followers
who appear not to have sought or to have resisted initiation,
while one at least was refused brahmacharya (Henrietta Muller). A
small minority claimed sufficient familiarity with Hindu tradition to
criticise Vivekananda's conduct as a Hindu samnyasi against criteria
they judged to be appropriate to this role. Finally, there were those
who distanced themselves from Vivekananda and his movement.
Not all the disciples who identified with the Indian dimension
of Vivekananda's work remained committed to him. Both Henrietta
Muller and Sturdy had travelled in India prior to meeting Vivekananda.
By the time Muller joined Vivekananda and other western disciples
in India in 1897/98, however, Vivekananda had rejected her plea to
take up the discipline of brahmacharya, and her relations with the
group as a whole had soured to the extent that she travelled separately.
She was on the brink of announcing the end of her association
with the Ramakrishna movement. Her direct experience of India had
made her highly critical of popular Hindu practice, and she gave
the need for reform as the public reason for her separation from
Vivekananda and "return" to Christianity. Having married just prior
to his association with Vivekananda, Sturdy had bound himself to the
life of the householder, bitterly observing, "Many things have come
too late for me in this incarnation" (quoted in Burke 1985:217).
312 Gwilym Beckerlegge
The reason for the seeming need to foster an attachment to India
and forms of Hindu religious practice in the pursuit of a universal
religion is not immediately clear. Something of the challenge facing
Vivekananda in the West as the organizer of a religious movement,
however, is illustrated by a discussion with Sturdy in which, contrary to
his customary stance, Vivekananda considered devising a collective ritual
of worship in order to meet the expectations of potential followers.
On this occasion, it was Vivekananda who had to be dissuaded from
this idea (Vivekananda 1989, 8:356f.; cf. Burke 1985:254ff., 306f.).
As Vivekananda's not altogether successful attempt at preventing the
worship of Ramakrishna at Advaita Ashrama (dedicated to non-dualist
ideals) illustrates, members of both the Ramakrishna Math and Mission
in India and the West have shown a consistent desire to perform
rituals of worship derived from established Hindu models, including
chanting of texts and the distribution of prasada (Beckerlegge
2000:123f.; cf. Cooke 1966:23; Jackson, 1994:103f.; Miller and Wertz
1976:136; Whitworth and Shiels 1982:165). The association of the
movement's origins with Bengal inevitably has permeated to some extent
the cultic activities of its Indian centres, but not to the exclusion of
the celebration of festivals and great personalities associated with other
regions of India and marking certain major festivals of other religions.
For those not born into Hinduism, the compelling attraction of a previously
unfamiliar form of ritual may stem not so much from its character
as a Hindu practice but as a means through which to pass through
the liminal state of adopting a new world-view. The very unfamiliarity
of the ritual may give rise to a state of heightened self-consciousness,
in contrast to the routine performance of more familiar rituals, which
is no less beneficial to those taking up Vedanta. Similar points might
be made about other aspects of the external organization and practice
of Vedanta societies in the West.
Vivekananda had to manage his western audiences' expectations.
He was determined not to delegate responsibility for the work in
India to his western disciples, but he did speak of his intention of
initiating some from their number to place in authority over his
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 313
supporters in the West. Some of these followers, however, were
disappointed on finding Vivekananda's place filled by Kripananda
(Burke 1985:466f.). In London, Abhedananda had more problems
than Vivekananda in maintaining large audiences. Yet, Abhedananda's
removal to New York proved to be a blow to the English wing of the
movement whose members were thrown upon their own resources,
no longer having a direct disciple of Ramakrishna as a spiritual
leader. Sympathisers in both the United States and London looked
to India and swamis who were the direct disciples of Ramakrishna,
and pre-eminently Vivekananda, as authority-figures. To this day, the
movement continues to place Indian samnyasis, trained at Belur Math,
in charge of its centres.
During the early phase of the movement's development in both the
United States and England, we have seen that a significant number of
followers were anxious to maintain the distinction between Hinduism
and the universal religion dubbed "Vedanta." On finding either that it
was not possible to do so or that the movement's direction was blurring
this distinction, some distanced themselves from the movement.
Perhaps for them, Vedanta was never more than a useful portmanteau
in which to place universalistic religious sympathies that previously
lacked a name. Even more recently, individuals training in Britain for
admission to the Ramakrishna Math have been keenly aware of a tension
between "the Mission's ideal of religious harmony and universalism"
and its "cultural tradition" (Carey 1987:141). Like some of
Vivekananda's earliest American followers, these more recent trainees
have spoken of their deep attachment to Christian values and western
monasticism. Having entered the Mission to expand their vision,
they were troubled by their encounter with "the Hindu cult trappings
of the Order" or "the devotional aspects of Hinduism" (Carey, 1987:
142f.). Commenting on the American movement, Jackson (1994:74)
concludes that ". . . thousands of Americans have joined the Vedanta
societies since 1893, in the process abandoning Christianity for a modern
form of Hinduism. Despite all protestations, the swamis appear
314 Gwilym Beckerlegge
to work as missionaries of Hinduism in the West."9
McDermott (Unpublished:
2­4) has described tensions resulting from the "new Indianization"
of the Vedanta movement in America, which followed the
increased migration of Indian families to America after 1965. She has
referred to the lid being taken off the "bubbling cauldron of discontent"
by a fierce debate between those ". . . calling for a revitalization
of Swami Vivekananda's original vision for a truly Western Vedanta,"
and those who have pressed for Hindu food, music and ritual and who
have been more accustomed to the style of relationship between devotees
and swamis found in India.
On the other hand, although seemingly offered the universal religion
of Vedanta as distinct from Hinduism, many of Vivekananda's
earliest and most devoted western disciples and their successors either
have chosen to ignore this distinction, or finding it meaningless in
practice have been untroubled by this. This tendency might be termed
"imported localism"; i.e. a self-imposed "Hinduizing" distinct from
"localization," the reassertion of immediately local markers of identity
(whether, for example, Christian, Christian Scientist or Theosophical),
Vivekananda's "glocal" version of Vedanta as the universal religion,
and his "Indianizing" of Nivedita in India. This relocation of selective
elements of Hindu religion and Indian culture was largely mediated
by Vivekananda in his role as transnational actor. It has given rise to
expressions of Hinduism that are different from both earlier forms of
popular religious activity in India and Vivekananda's "glocal" philosophy
of Vedanta. The development in the West of a cult centred upon
Ramakrishna and the use of Hindu ritual forms and artefacts, which
were not central to Vivekananda's philosophy, and the maintenance
of close links with the movement's Indian centres are examples of the
persistence of this "imported localism." While the continued, exclusive
appointment of Indian samnyasis as leaders of the movement's centres
may reflect an engrained sense of "cultural tradition," it also matches
the expectations of a significant number of western followers.
9 Contact with Vedanta has also led some to view Christianity in a new and positive
light. See Jackson 1994:101; Gurudas 1919:163, 183ff.
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 315
Conclusion
The introduction of the term "imported localism" to describe the
"Hinduization" so eagerly sought or accepted by many of the most
prominent of Vivekananda's early followers in the United States and
London inevitably begs the question of what Vivekananda himself intended,
and more specifically whether his promotion of the universal
religion of Vedanta was ever more than a device to be deployed
against the West as part of a Hindu apologetic, while he acted to encourage
"imported localism."10
His western devotees repeat his assertion
that he had come to make them better Christians, not Hindus
(for example, Atulananda 1970:259, 264; cf. Vivekananda 1989,
3:501; Swami Ashokananda, quoted in McDermott, Unpublished: 7).
Whatever Vivekananda's motives might have been, his affirmation that
diversity of religious belief and practice was nothing more than a consequence
of temperamental, cultural and historical factors, and thus
only ". . . true as far as it goes" (1989, 3:383), should have provided no
inducement to take up previously unfamiliar and culturally alien forms
of religious practice in pursuit of the universal religion.
Forsthoefel (2002:114) has argued that Shankara's system of Advaita
combined ". . . a theoretical universalism and a fundamental internalism,
but heavy doses of externalism as well." He suggests that
a "radical form of Advaita," which relies more consistently upon an
internalist epistemology based on reason and religious experience,
". . . may be properly universalist." He finds this in the thinking of
Ramana Maharshi in a form of Vedanta that ". . . transcends . . . the
social and cultural settings of South Asia," while discerning a similar
universalism in Vivekananda's philosophy (Forsthoefel 2002:154f.).
Our study of the early phase of the Vedanta movement in the West
suggests the need to qualify Forsthoefel's judgement on the extent to
10 For fuller discussion of this, see Beckerlegge (forthcoming). See also Basu
2002:67ff., who argues, citing Nivedita, that Vivekananda's "universalisation of
Hinduism," based on "the Advaita principles of Universalism," formed part of his
nationalist endeavours.
316 Gwilym Beckerlegge
which Vivekananda's system reduced dependence upon an externalist
epistemology shaped by Hindu forms of knowledge and practice,
whether related to texts, forms of worship or the disciplines of spiritual
training. Vivekananda's championing of India and its "mother of
religions," while proposing that Vedanta could provide the foundations
of a universal religion in the West, limited the extent to which he was
able to rely more exclusively upon the kind of internalist epistemology
that Forsthoefel (2002:114) argues would be more in harmony
with the "theoretical universalism" of early Advaita. A legacy of these
two aspects of Vivekananda's role as a transnational actor is arguably
the tension that continues to the present-day between the Ramakrishna
movement's ideal of religious universalism and its "cultural tradition"
(Carey 1987:141).
As long as the search for a universal religion is tinged by some
degree of conscious rejection of the "local" religion, it is likely that
individuals will respond warmly to the form of the system that appears
to hold out the possibility of realising a more comprehensive vision,
even when its mediator appears not to require this of them. The
adoption of previously unfamiliar rituals, this article has suggested,
might assist in strengthening the individual's identification with a
new world-view as well as providing a measure of confirmation of
its "universalism." Consequently, "imported localism" is likely to
continue to be a characteristic of what aspires to be a global, universal
religion. This may not be an exclusive characteristic of enterprises
centred upon the ideal of a universal religion, although it is likely to be
more pronounced in such instances because of their inherent claims.
Distinguishing between "glocalization," "localization" in its broader
sense, and "imported localism," therefore, may assist in the analysis of
the transplantation of religions more generally.
Department of Religious Studies GWILYM BECKERLEGGE
The Open University
351 Altrincham Road
Manchester M22 4UN, UK
G.Beckerlegge@open.ac.uk
The Early Spread of Vedanta Societies 317
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