Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger's Everyday Hinduism and lived religious practice

1 Everyday Hinduism Aims and Arguments The basic aims and arguments of the author Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger in Everyday Hinduism are to show how Hinduism is practiced in everyday life, what the customs and traditions are, and the manner in which beliefs are held by Hindus today. For example, Flueckiger notes that in the past it was the custom of husbands to part the hair of an expectant wife to bless the pregnancy but that today upper caste men do not practice this custom so much and instead the female-centric tradition focuses more on the exchange of gifts in order to bless the pregnancy.[footnoteRef:1] Flueckiger gives these Hindu traditions and customs a perspective that can be understood by non-Hindu readers. In the case of the pre-birth blessing, Flueckiger likens it to a “baby shower” but gives the Hindu name for it—samskara—so that the reader can understand that which is being described and identify with it.[footnoteRef:2] [1: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Everyday Hinduism (UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 170.] [2: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Everyday Hinduism (UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 170.]

Flueckiger essentially argues in the book that Hinduism can be rightly understand even by Western minds or non-Hindus, as the traditions and practices have a corresponding treatment or value in non-Hindu cultures. At the same time, the author recognizes that there are some customs that simply do not translate into Western cultures and these are depicted simply as they are without apology. Flueckiger in these cases is just presenting the facts without commentary. One example is the manner of healing that some Indians engage in, where diagnosis is rendered through mathematical computations and the “diagnosis of a particular kind of evil eye” is given to the patient.[footnoteRef:3] There is really no way for Westerners to appreciate this type of custom by comparing it to something they do, especially when many people in the West are used to going to doctors who base diagnoses on evidence-based practice. The point that Flueckiger makes, however, is that in India these are the customs they engage in and this is what the life and belief system is like for these people. [3: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Everyday Hinduism (UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 199.]

Filling Scholarly Gaps Gaps that the author is filling have to do with how Hinduism is understood. By taking real life examples and practices from real people in India who practice these customs, Flueckiger gives a type of phenomenological perspective on how Hinduism and life in India, in general, truly is. Flueckiger provides a kind of case study on real life everyday people—like Pujaramma in Tirupati, who engages in possession rituals, using ingredients that are brought to her by the patients seeking her knowledge and expertise. Flueckiger is able to take the concept of Hinduism out of the realm of the abstract and academic and place it squarely in the realm of the plausible, tangible, and consequential. She makes it easy to see how this belief system is embraced, how it is practiced, and provides evocative imagery and sense data that helps the reader to better understand and appreciate just what is being experienced—for instance—at a possession ritual. With descriptions like: “She first draws a geometric design (Telegu, muggu) on the stone floor of her small home, on whose intersecting lines she places nuggets of camphor, which the patients are responsible to keep lit and replace throughout the possession. Sitting cross-legged in front of the muggu, Pujaramma closes her eyes, and begins….”[footnoteRef:4] The main gap hat Flueckiger is thus able to fill is the one in which personal, qualitative experience is provided to the reader for a better and deeper understanding of the reality. Instead of quantitative data sets and statistical analysis, Flueckiger gives a first-person, directly observed report on everyday Hinduism in India, and it is very extensive, thorough and detailed with no commentary or evident researcher bias. [4: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Everyday Hinduism (UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 209.]

What I Find of Interest What I found to be of interest most in the book was the way the author could describe everything with such objectivity and never allowing authorial intrusions to enter into the descriptions, either to justify the actions of the Hindus in India or to condemn them. I really thought that this was the best part about the author’s work: it allowed me to see the Hindu practices and to understand them without forming judgments in my mind. I liked this perspective as I believe that understanding is very important when discussing differences. For example, with religious differences, people can sometimes be quick to judge and to condemn without really knowing anything about the actual people, what they practice, how they practice it, why they practice, their background, heritage, culture, and so on. What Flueckiger helps to show is the reality of the situation, the reality of the lives of these people, and that helps to create empathy in the reader. The author is not attempting to politicize the lives of these people or her work. She is not attempting, really, even to make an argument or to try to prove a thesis. Her aim is to show it as it is and that comes through very clearly. In some cases, she tries to find a similar custom or concept in our own culture so as to help us see the Hindu practice in a light that can be familiar. In any case, there was never a moment reading it where I felt that the author was trying to hit me over the head with a point of view that was persuasive, argumentative or bullying. Criticisms and Agreements I have absolutely no criticisms of this book. In fact, I am very happy to say that I would recommend it to others who are interested in learning about India and the lives and practices of Hindus. I thought this book was extremely thought provoking primarily because it did not push any thoughts onto me. It simply presented the facts and allowed me to draw on my own experiences and knowledge to form an opinion of the subject. Having known a few people from India, I can say that a lot of what I read in this book is supported by the descriptions that I obtained from them. So I did not find anything in the book to be over the top, untruthful or slanted to promote a particular political, philosophical, social or religious objective. I do not think I would have enjoyed the book so much had it been written in a different style or in a manner where the author was trying to make the case that the Hindu culture and religions is just like any other culture or religion. In my experience, it is not, and from the reading I could show as much—for example, with the possession ritual. While someone who is not Catholic could say, “Yes, well, you Catholics have the same thing—a priest who does a ritual and uses ingredients and says words, etc.” But knowing the particulars of the Christian ritual, I can say that it is different from a religious perspective. But that is another debate and what I liked about this book was that it did not try to get into any debates like this but rather its primary aim was just to present the facts. Comparing “Hinduism in America” and “Wrongs and Formations of Violent Identities: Theorizing Caste and Race” to Everyday Hinduism Boopalan’s “Wrong’s and Formations” attempts to identify the why behind the formation of caste and the acting out of violence as a manifestation of ideologies, and when compared to Flueckiger’s book it comes across as quite different in tone and style. Boopalan is attempting to argue a point of view, and I never really felt that Flueckiger was trying to do that at all. For that reason, I was less compelled to embrace Boopalan, as I was conscious of the fact that I was meant to be analyzing not only what he was saying but the premise of his argument as well. This is especially difficult for me, because if I take issue with a premise of an author, then paying attention to the argument seems beside the point, as I have not even accepted point A in order to be willing to move on to point B. For Boopalan, he is trying to accomplish too much right off the bat and he identifies four tasks that he is trying to achieve.[footnoteRef:5] I felt that the work could have been much simpler and much more effective had it eased off the pedal and not made such a grand attempt to be meaningful in an academic sort of way. Flueckiger’s book is very meaningful and very insightful without all the jargon or academic posturing that Boopalan engages in. [5: S. John Boopalan, “Wrongs and Formations of Violent Identities: Theorizing Caste and Race.” Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites. Palgrave, 2017, 25.]

Lucia’s work “Hinduism in America” is much more in line with Flueckiger’s in the sense that it is mainly about presenting information and facts—i.e., telling the history of Hinduism in America—and avoiding making any grand pronouncements on the why of any particularly “pressing” academic, social or political issues that are trending in these circles at this time. I found Lucia’s work to be very engrossing and informative and I was happy to learn a lot about the subject that I had not known before. I even appreciated how Lucia would give both sides of an issue if there was discrepancy among scholars as to the actual topic. For instance, Lucia states, “On one hand, constructivists have argued that the term Hinduism (as well the modern category of religion) was imposed upon the distinct and only minimally interrelated religious traditions of India, which were bounded exclusively by geographical location. Defenders of the category of Hinduism argue that while the British may have been instrumental in establishing the term itself, there is and has always been a unified religious system among indigenous Indian Hindus. Like many polarizing debates, the truth of the matter likely lies somewhere in the spaces between.”[footnoteRef:6] This type of balance between providing understanding for the reader and presenting both sides of the story is exactly what an author should try to do in a work where information that is likely unknown to the reader is being presented. [6: Amanda Lucia, “Hinduism in America.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford University Press, 2016:  http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore- 9780199340378-e-436]