Connecting and Cutting Networks through the Gift

A Study of Women Ascetics and Holy Feasts in Haridwar, North India

Abstract

Using case studies of transactions concerned with religious feasts, such as information, invitation cards, and the alms received, this paper aims to describe how Hindu women ascetics in contemporary India create social networks. I will clarify that the moral imperative that drives women ascetics to share gifts among themselves is love: more exactly, their observation of the quality of love through the gift, namely, whether it derives from secular attachment or spiritual compassion.

The ascetic who leaves home and hearth behind, generally called a sādhu, is thought to be excluded from social transactions because he or she is a renouncer, that is, an ʻindividual-outside-the-world,’ though most ascetics do live on religious gifts called bhikṣā from lay people. Previous anthropological studies have argued that the male ascetic is not an individual-outside-the-world, but forms a parallel community to lay society based on his particular sect or spiritual family. More often than not, in contrast, a woman is not even regarded as a legitimate renouncer. Several studies focusing on women ascetics have pointed out that they are marginalized in the male-dominated ascetics’ community, and not only in lay society. Those studies have also made it clear that women ascetics do not necessarily belong to the institutions, but depend more on such secular connections as kinship ties or the local community itself.

Previous studies, however, have argued that ascetics’ social relationships lie primarily within the community of existing religious institutions and householders’ lives. Moreover, differences among women ascetics—in terms of caste hierarchy, socio-education, or economic class, for example—were not considered enough. This paper, then, aims to focus on women ʻlay ascetics,’ who are not regarded as either authentic renouncers or ordinary householders, in order to explore how they create social networks through their everyday practices without depending on ascetic institutions or social ties with the laity. I will examine their daily practices of begging for alms, which requires a variety of social interactions and relationships, although authorized texts and discourses have emphasized the aspect of ʻpure gift,’ which causes no reciprocal relations. In addition, it is generally thought that ascetics are indifferent to any moral codes according to the phallocentric ideology of purity. This paper will clarify that women ascetics also encounter various moral difficulties, and in forming social relations, must maintain a balance between the reciprocity and non-reciprocity of the gifts.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)