New Political Science

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Orthodoxy and Dissent in Hinduism’s Meditative

Traditions: A Critical Tantric Politics?

Farah Godrej

To cite this article: Farah Godrej (2016) Orthodoxy and Dissent in Hinduism’s Meditative
Traditions: A Critical Tantric Politics?, New Political Science, 38:2, 256-271, DOI:
10.1080/07393148.2016.1153194

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2016.1153194

Published online: 22 Mar 2016.

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 New Political Science, 2016
VOL. 38, NO. 2, 256–271
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2016.1153194

Orthodoxy and Dissent in Hinduism’s Meditative Traditions: A

Critical Tantric Politics?
Farah Godrej
Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

ABSTRACT
Hindu philosophy and its associated meditative traditions have
historically been characterized as renunciatory and world-negating,
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producing an ethic of political passivity, quietism, and indifference. In

contrast, I demonstrate here that both the orthodox systems of Hindu
philosophy and the heterodox Tantric tradition have been enlisted
in service of a variety of socio-political commitments and projects,
within and outside India. The more important question is whether
these traditions inspire the ossification of conventional hierarchies or
the emergence of radical, emancipatory, or liberatory commitments. I
argue here that Tantra, a dissident tradition of thought and practice,
contains a progressive potential for critiquing and subverting the
hierarchical, masculinist politics of gender, sexuality, and caste in
contemporary India.

Introduction
Hindu philosophy and its associated meditative traditions are thought to be largely renuncia-
tory and mystical, oriented toward the transcendence of ordinary consciousness in pursuit of
union with divinity. Contemporary scholarship continues to suggest that this predominance
of world negation produces an ethic of political passivity and indifference. Here, I demon-
strate that Hinduism is scarcely univocal on this question; rather, it has historically included
much contestation about combining the renunciatory project with concern for ethical and
political life. Far more interesting is the question of whether its meditative traditions can give
rise to social justice or social critique. In examining this question, I contrast the orthodox
systems in Hinduism with the Tantric tradition, a dissident tradition of thought and practice.
I explore the socio-political salience of each tradition on the textual and empirical levels,
examining what they suggest for the relationship between spirituality and socio-political
engagement, and also how they have informed actual political action. I argue that the met-
aphysics of Tantric philosophy, like that of its orthodox predecessors, can potentially inspire
both extreme indifference to ethical–political affairs, as well as political engagement and
activism. Thus, neither orthodox nor Tantric metaphysics are political or apolitical in any

CONTACT  Farah Godrej  farah.godrej@ucr.edu

© 2016 Caucus for a New Political Science
 New Political Science   257

inherent sense. However, the difference lies in the precise forms of political engagement
that emerge from these respective metaphyics: I argue that Tantra, more than its predeces-
sor schools, has the potential to be subversive toward and critical of unjust socio-political
arrangements in South Asia, rather than simply sustaining existing hierarchies and exclusions
of caste, class, or gender. With a focus on gender and sexuality, I tease out the emancipatory
potential in Tantric philosophy (particularly in its Shakta form), arguing that it can serve as a
much-needed antidote to conservative patriarchial, masculinist, sexual, and caste hierarchies
within its originary context of South Asia.
In what follows, I begin by providing a brief overview of the most prominent schools
of orthodox philosophy within the Hindu tradition, demonstrating how their ontological
precepts have been interpreted to entail a prejudice against socio-political engagement.
However, this is hardly the only way that these texts can be read, and the case of anti-colonial
nationalism in India demonstrates that many modern political actors have drawn on these
traditions for socio-political inspiration. In the second and third sections, I explore the Tantric
tradition, demonstrating how it stands in direct challenge to its orthodox predecessors, while
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noting how it has been employed in service of social and political change. In the fourth and
final sections, I argue for a “dissident Hindu renaissance” that retrieves Tantric principles
from within its own heterodox traditions in order to subvert existing gender discourses
and hierarchies in India. In contrast to the patriarchal, essentialist, anti-sexuality political
discourse that has thus far emerged from the orthodox tradition, Shakta Tantra contains an
untapped potential for imagining a more progressive, emancipatory discourse of gender
and caste in India.
At the outset, two important questions must be addressed. First, no brief summary in
these few pages could do justice to the complexity of these traditions, which are embedded
within millenia-old movements of commentary, reintepretation, and debate. Therefore, my
treatment seeks not to be comprehensive, but rather addresses claims and ongoing debates
within these schools in the broadest of terms, while recognizing the limitations of such an
approach. Second, I do not seek to define these traditions in monolithic, uncontested ways—
rather, I recognize that they are constructed and reconstructed through the imaginings and
counter-projections of their various interpreters.1 Thus, the picture I provide will account for
both the ideas found in the core texts of each tradition, as well as the variety of (re)interpre-
tations which have caused them to be represented in diverse ways. This complex interplay
between the traditions “themselves” and their representations may provide us a more com-
plete understanding of their salience for social justice and politically emancipatory projects.

Sāṃkhya, Yōga, and Advaita Vedānta: World-Withdrawal and Asceticism?

I begin by addressing three of the most predominant orthodox philosophical systems
within Hinduism—Sāṃkhya, Yōga, and Advaita Vedānta.2 The internal complexity of and
vast differences amongst these schools notwithstanding, all have at their core a hierarchy
in which the material world and earthly life are devalued relative to ultimate spiritual reality.
Sāṃkhya’s ontology—developed in the early centuries CE and largely accepted by the later
1
See, for instance, Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003), pp. 11–12, 15–16; Wendy Doniger, “Assume the Position: The Fight Over the Body of Yoga,” in On
Hinduism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
2
Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press, 1998),
pp. 99–105.
 258    F. Godrej

Yōga school—sees matter (prakṛti) as inferior to absolute, immortal spirit or ultimate real-
ity (purusha). In a patriarchal, anti-materialist dualism familiar to “somatophobic” Western
ontology,3 prakṛti, the feminine principle of materiality, must be transcended in order to
know purusha or the Self, the masculine principle of ultimate reality. The feminine realm of
phenomenal change—māyā or illusion—is impure and polluting. Nature, the human body
and its functions, and worldly life, especially that pertaining to women—are all “enmeshed in
a net of devaluation.”4 In contrast to Western dualism, the mind and body are both included
in the realm of embodiment: mental and emotional processes are considered subtle forms
of matter, subject to the same illusory tendencies as the body. Along with other classical
Indian philosophical systems, Sāṃkhya and Yōga prescribe complex practices of ascetic
discipline in order to extricate the individual from the grip of the illusory feminine princi-
ple. Liberation— the transcendent realization of the Self in its purity—requires controlled
withdrawal of the senses from the realm of materiality.
The later, eighth-century tradition of Advaita Vedānta (constituting the “central theology
of the modern Hindu renaissance”5) is sometimes thought to challenge this dualism. In the
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nondual traditions of Hinduism, ultimate reality or Brahmaṇ is no different from the individual
Self or Atman. But despite this ostensible nondualism, Advaita Vedānta betrays the legacy
of Sāṃkhya dualism, continuing its negative valuation of materiality and rendering suspect
the status of the phenomenal world. Despite being ultimately identical with Brahman, the
transient world is paradoxically rendered false, impure, and illusory, described as unreal,
repulsive, an irritating intrusion, or a dream, “unhappily engendered by an illness.”6 The adept
is liberated when engaged in concentrated meditative experience (samādhi) in order to
attain the state of kaivalya (isolation) in which the mind, body, and phenomenal world are
transcended.
The prevailing narrative holds that these schools encourage a withdrawal from the phe-
nomenal world and an indifference to, if not emphatic prejudice against, socio-political
engagement. Orthodox elites and scholars have tended to “construe ascetic disciplines and
political actions as incongruous,” emphasizing nivṛtti, transcendence of the phenomenal
world, as more valuable than pravṛtti, involvement in worldly life.7 Ādi Shankara, the founder
of Advaita Vedānta, is thought to have argued that socio-economic processes are consid-
ered undeserving of ethical concern.8 The focus on transcendence is thought to lead to a
radical individualism in which one’s quest for liberation trumps social obligations, including,
famously, family ties. The dichotomy between the householder and the renunciate best
illustrates this. While the householder is involved in worldly affairs such as family, politics,
and social conventions, the renouncer, having fulfilled familial, economic, and social obli-
gations, leaves the world behind in order to devote himself to liberation, detaching himself
from samsāra or the fetters of worldly life.9 Tellingly, samsāra has multiple definitions: it
3
Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1994, p. 5.
4
Ritu DasGupta Sherma, “Sacred Immanence: Reflections of Ecofeminism in Hindu Tantra,” in Lance E. Nelson, (ed.), Purifying
the Earthly Body of God: Religion and Ecology in India (Albany, SUNY Press, 1998), p. 95.
5
Lance E. Nelson, “The Dualism of Nondualism: Advaita Vedānta and the Irrelevance of Nature,” in Nelson (ed.), p. 65.
6
Nelson, “The Dualism of Nondualism: Advaita Vedānta and the Irrelevance of Nature,”p. 74.
7
Veena Howard, Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), pp. 16–17; Greg
Bailey, Materials for the Study of Ancient Indian Ideologies: Pravṛtti and Nivṛtti (Torino: Indologica Taurinensia, 1985); M.G.
Bhagat, Ancient Indian Asceticism (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1976).
8
Alladi Mahadeva Sastry (trans.), The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentaries of Adi Sri Sankaracharya (Madras: Samata
Books, 1977).
9
Louis Dumont, Religion/Politics and History in India: Collected Papers in Indian Sociology (Paris; Hague: Mouton Publishers,
1970).
 New Political Science   259

denotes both household affairs and the chains that bind one to the world, suggesting that
involvement in family, society, and politics are a form of bondage or obstacle to liberation.10
Thus, ascetics must “renounce all activity which aims at improvement of the conditions of
life in this world,”11 and social or political reform seems “pointless, for the world is something
from which to escape.”12 Active engagement in society, family, and reproductive life is all
downgraded relative to liberation, suggesting that the classical schools promote an anti-so-
cial, anti-women, anti-sexuality, anti-family, and perhaps even anti-human disengagement
from society.13
On this view, the injustice of the socio-political worlds may be reduced to the status of an
illusion to be ignored in the quest for ultimate reality.14 Perhaps no text suggests this more
clearly than the Bhagavad Gītā, thought to synthesize the insights of the above schools.15 In
advising the protagonist warrior-prince Arjuna to engage in a fratricidal battle requiring the
slaughter of family members, Lord Krishna teaches that the eternal human soul can never
be truly destroyed since it is essentially one with the Absolute.16 The body may perish, but
the indwelling Self within all never perishes, for it is always perfect and fulfilled. Some argue
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that the text may present a vision of “divinely sanctioned unethical action,” for there is “no
slayer, no slain, and so nothing to ultimately worry about.”17 The realized being, free of desire,
does not truly kill anyone,18 for he does not identify with the body or mind which undertakes
violent actions. Moreover, the flux of the changing world is part of a cosmic spectacle in
which all, having played their necessary parts, dissolve back into union with the Absolute.19
The vastness of the exegetical traditions surrounding the Gītā20 notwithstanding, the text
has been read to suggest that working toward socio-political change is unnecessary. Either
one need not “bother helping anyone because they are already fine as…the perfect and
utterly fulfilled divine Self,”21 or much of what occurs in the earthly realm is a spectacle of
cosmic proportions in which human action is not particularly meaningful. The most radical
interpretation of these passages may be that there is “no human person worth tending to,”22
since the world of human existence is illusory; thus, any action having to do with human rela-
tionships and institutions is pointless. Such interpretations were used in colonial, Orientalist
narratives of an apolitical, apathetic Hindu tradition, in which the “unwashed masses” of India,
in contrast to Western humanism, had “no moral code [and] no sense of human dignity.”23

10
Lynn Teskey Denton, “Varieties of Hindu Female Asceticism” in Julia Leslie (ed.), Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women
(Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991).
11
Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought and Its Development (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1936), p. 2.
12
Arthur Danto, Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1972), p. 39.
13
Agehananda Bharati, The Light at the Cente: Pretext and Context of Modern Mysticism (Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson,
1976), pp. 87–91.
14
Joseph Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004), p. 221.
15
Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition, pp. 251–264.
16
Barbara Stoler-Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
pp. 2.18–2.30, 32–33.
17
Jeffrey J. Kripal, “Debating the Mystical as Ethical: An Indological Map,” in G. William Barnard and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds.),
Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (New York; London: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), p. 25.
18
Stoler-Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War, pp. 18.17, 145.
19
Ibid., pp. 11.32–11.33, 103–104. See also Alter, Ch. 7.
20
Arvind Sharma, The Hindu Gītā: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgītā (London: Duckworth, 1986);
Shruti Kapila and Faisal Devji (eds.), Political Thought in Action: The Bhagavad Gita and Modern India (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).
21
G. William Barnard, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical: A Response,” in Crossing Boundaries, p. 75.
22
Jeffrey J. Kripal, “Seeing Inside and Outside the Goddess: The Mystical and the Ethical in the Teachings of Ramakrishna and
Vivekananda,” in Crossing Boundaries, p. 246.
23
Barnard, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical”, p. 93.
 260    F. Godrej

This narrative conveniently ignores the evidence indicating that classical Hinduism con-
tains much contestation about combining renunciation with worldly ethics. The Gītā itself
bears out this multivocality, for Arjuna is told by Krishna not to renounce the world, but
rather to stay engaged in it to fight adharma (injustice or immorality). Thus, Krishna’s prin-
cipal teaching to Arjuna consists in the doctrine of karma yōga: disciplined worldly action
according to duty and ethics, while renouncing attachment to the consequences of one’s
actions.24 This message of acting ethically but with complete detachment from desire is
Hinduism’s classic statement on combining socio-ethical engagement with renunciation:
the detached pursuit of transcendence must lead to un-self-interested action, promoting the
worldly welfare of all. This emphasis on collective welfare is representative of a vast body of
secular reflection, including scholastic works on jurisprudence, statecraft, ethical conduct,
social norms, aesthetics, erotic arts, economic policy, military strategy, and bureaucratic
administration. World-negating treatises aimed at liberation or mōksha have long co-ex-
isted with this secular literature.25 While many have argued that mōksha stands above the
other three aims of life (purushārthas) elaborated in the classical tradition—kāma (desire/
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pleasure), artha (wealth/power/material prosperity), dharma (ethics)26—others have noted

the existence of vigorous debates regarding structural tensions between mōksha and social
involvement.27
This structural tension became evident during the anti-colonial era with the emergence
of a “politicized Hinduism.”28 Seeking to synthesize the realms of activism and renuncia-
tion, many Indians began drawing on indigenous renunciatory philosophies for activist
reform movements in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (although some of these
reformers, particularly those interested in gender and caste reform, were admittedly imitat-
ing Western colonial norms having internalized Orientalist critiques of their own culture).29
Perhaps no thinker was more creative in combining Hinduism’s renunciatory heritage with
political activism than Mohandas Gandhi. Like many of his contemporaries, Gandhi relied
selectively and eclectically on a variety of classical sources, including Yōga, Sāṃkhya, and
Advaita Vedānta, as well as texts and concepts from the legal/ethical corpus. Many scholars
have characterized Gandhi’s political project as “ascetic activism:” combining renunciation
of desire with tireless effort toward social change.30 The Bhagavad Gītā and its message of
karma yōga take on a particularly significant role in these colonial-era projects of reinterpret-
ing classical Hindu texts. Gandhi was amongst a generation of Indian reformers for whom
the Gītā acquired new life for “reconstructing a normative language of ethics and politics.”31
Karma yōga was ripe for multiple interpretations by various activists of different stripes, all

24
Stoler-Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War, pp. 2.47, 36.
25
Purushottama Bilimoria, ‘Indian Ethics’,” in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); U.N. Ghoshal,
A History of Indian Political Ideas: The Ancient Period and the Period of Transition to the Middle Ages (London: Oxford
University Press, 1959); Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988).
26
H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India (New York: Meridian Books, 1961); J. Van Buitenen, “Dharma and Moksha,” Philosophy
East and West 7 (1957); A.K. Ramanujan, “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?” in M. Marriott (ed.), India Through Hindu
Categories (New Delhi: Sage, 1990).
27
Patrick Olivelle, The Āśrama System: The History of Hermeneutics of a Religious Institution (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993).
28
Howard, Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism, p. 29.
29
Urban, Tantra, p. 62.
30
Ibid.; Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1967).
31
Shruti Kapila and Faisal Devji, “Introduction,” in Political Thought in Action, pp. xi, xiv.
 New Political Science   261

of whom in different ways called for detached, yet dutiful action toward the welfare of all.
The concept of action-within-renunciation was enlisted in various ways during this political
moment in Indian political life, and devotion to one’s individual spiritual duty [dharma] was
no longer incompatible with devotion to the nation.32
The re-emergence of classical Hindu thought in this period demonstrates the multivocal-
ity of the subcontinent’s meditative traditions. While Hinduism, like its subcontinental cousin,
Buddhism, was repeatedly charged with apolitical quietism, these modern reinterpretations
demonstrate that these traditions lend themselves to quite diverse ways of understanding
the worthwhile human life. For instance, rather than fostering nihilism toward the phenom-
enal world, the detached pursuit of transcendence and ascetic practice may include expe-
riencing the profound love of the Absolute. It may provoke an emergence of unconditional
compassion for others that transcends the boundaries of the individual ego, producing
ethical reflection that casts critical light on limited, egoic, self-serving ways of living.33 It is
this kind of logic that Gandhi cites as the foundation for nonviolent resistance.34 The crucial
differences between Hinduism and Buddhism notwithstanding, similar arguments are made
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by scholars of “engaged” Buddhism who see socio-political engagement as the logical out-
come of the contemplative life.35 So too with yoga: while classical Yōga may have required
withdrawal from conventional relations that render ethics possible,36 the modern life of yoga
has extended far beyond its classical forms, inspiring a variety of human-centric social justice
projects, including anti-colonial resistance by Indians interested in building a fit population
capable of rejecting colonial rule; yoga “camps” in contemporary India where texts like the
Gītā are referenced for the purpose of civic-minded social and moral reform,37 and forms of
yoga “activism” in the West ranging from prison reform to yogic environmentalism.38 While
many have lamented that the Hindu tradition of political thinking has long been moribund
due to its marginalization of worldly aims,39 this has clearly begun to shift in the modern
era, as political actors have drawn upon its textual foundations to produce socially engaged
and activist worldviews. The texts of Sāṃkhya, Yōga, and Advaita Vednta, in particular the
Bhagavad Gītā, have had a colourful socio-political career in both modern India and the West.

Tantra’s Dissent against Hindu Orthodoxy

I now identify a dissenting school which subverts the dualism on which Hinduism’s orthodox
schools are predicated. Tantra, a tradition which first emerged in the early medieval era,
proffers a direct challenge to the patriarchal, ascetic strands of Hindu philosophy described
above, through its elevation of the divine feminine, its transgression of caste hierarchies,
and its world-affirming embrace of corporeality as the ultimate route to divine realization.

32
C.A. Bayly, “India, The Bhagavad Gita and the World” in Political Thought in Action, p. 7.
33
Barnard, “Debating the Mystical as the Ethical”, pp. 83, 86, 93.
34
See Farah Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration,” The Review of Politics
68:2 (2006), pp. 294–298.
35
David Loy, “The Lack of Ethics and the Ethics of Lack in Buddhism,” in Crossing Boundaries; Fred Eppsteiner (ed.), The Path
of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1985).
36
Andrea Jain, Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Mikel Burley, “‘A
Petrification of One”s Own Humanity’?: Nonattachment and Ethics in Yoga Traditions,” The Journal of Religion 94:2 (2014),
pp. 204–228.
37
Joseph Alter, “Yoga Shivir: Performativity and the Study of Modern Yoga,” in Mark Singleton and Jean Byrne (eds), Yoga in
the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).
38
Farah Godrej, “The Neoliberal Yogi and the Politics of Yoga,” paper under review.
39
P.V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, vol. V, 2nd ed. (Poona: Bhandarkar Institute, 1977).
 262    F. Godrej

The term “Tantra” is semantically highly polyvalent in Sanskrit literature,40 historically desig-
nating a diverse body of concepts and traditions. Tantric philosophy is elaborated by differ-
ent thinkers who borrow from different schools, and it contains a diversity of authoritative
texts and sub-traditions. Prior to the modern period, there was no single category of Tantra,
only a series of texts and practices that were later loosely grouped as “Tantras.” Underneath
this diversity, many scholars have, with great nuance, attempted to identify some common
strands of metaphysical belief and practice.41
Tantra is thought to be the most radically nondualist school of Indian thought. In contrast
to its predecessors, Tantric texts assert that the physical world and transcendent reality are
not separate from each other; rather, all is encompassed within “a tapestry woven of one
single intelligent energy.”42 Everything one senses—including dualities such as pain and
pleasure, male and female, and good and bad—is a manifestation of the same divine, uni-
versal consciousness. Crucial to Tantric realization is the sacralization of the human body. In
contrast to the classical schools which considered the body inferior to the transcendental
Self, Tantra holds that the body is a structured receptacle of divine power, and can become
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a vehicle for attaining liberation.43 Tantric technologies teach us to “divinize—literally make

divine—our bodies and minds,”44 since the ultimate reality underlying the universe is the
same as that which forms the embodied state.45 Of particular importance are blissful experi-
ences of materiality: any ecstatic embodied experience—food, music, art, nature, and most
famously, sex—when approached correctly can serve as a doorway to divine realization. As
a result, Tantra upholds the goals of mukti (liberation) and bhukti (worldly success). Worldly
success need not be devalued relative to enlightenment; instead, the two are intertwined.
Tantric metaphysics, particularly in its Shakta form, demonstrate an insistent focus on
the worship of the divine feminine, understood as fiercely autonomous, unapologetically
sexual, and independent of male control. Unlike Western and Indian dualisms which see
femininity as the receptive, passive force of the universe while activity is masculine, Tantric
writers take the view that the feminine principle is the dynamic “life-force behind all evolution
and change.”46 The masculine principle is the still source of awareness and stability, while
the feminine is the causal agent of creativity, sustenance, and destruction in the manifest
world. The union of the two represents the nondual presence that creates and ultimately
transcends everything. Earlier traditions devalued embodiment precisely because of its asso-
ciation with the feminine. Tantra inverts this hierarchy by valorizing materiality, associating
it with the feminine, and elevating the stature of both.47 The phenomenal world, no longer
impure and illusory, arises from a feminine source, a fully real and valuable manifestation
of divine feminine power. When personified as a goddess, this dynamic energy is referred
to as Shakti, the “subtle pulsation of creative potency that permeates all experience.”48 And,

40
Urban, Tantra, p. 28.
41
Katherine Anne Harper and Robert L. Brown (eds), The Roots of Tantra (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002); Georg Feuerstein,
Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy (London: Shambhala, 1998).
42
Sally Kempton, Meditation For the Love Of It: Enjoying Our Own Deepest Experience (Boulder CO: Sounds True, 2011), p. xv.
43
Andre Padoux, “What Do We Mean by Tantrism?” in The Roots of Tantra, p. 21.
44
Sally Kempton, Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013), p.
20; Gavin Flood, The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006).
45
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p. 112.
46
Kempton, Awakening Shakti, p. 12.
47
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p. 107.
48
Kempton, Meditation, p. xv.
 New Political Science   263

although the feminine principle has ontological equivalence to the masculine, some assert
that it “enjoys primacy in the spheres of ritual, devotion and iconography.”49
Shakti takes a multiplicity of forms, each of which is worshipped for her different capacities
and gifts: Durga, the fierce warrior-goddess, subdues powerful male demons single-hand-
edly in battle; her alter-ego Kali, the demon-slayer who licks the blood of warriors with her
tongue, is often depicted naked, wearing a necklace of skulls, wildly sticking her tongue
out, and standing assertively on the prone body of her male consort (sometimes squatting
over his erect phallus); Lalita, the goddess of erotic spirituality and triumphant femininity,
personifies eros in all its forms; Parvati combines the erotic play of the intense, prolonged
sexual encounter with spiritual engagement, representing the union of nondual bliss; and so
on. Certainly not all goddesses worship is Tantric in nature, for the pantheon is replete with
docile, deferential, married goddesses.50 Yet, the dominant construal in Shakta Tantric ritual
and iconography51 is that of the divine feminine worshipped as powerful, fierce, unpredict-
able, autonomous, and unapologetically sexually desirous. Because the power of Shakti is
expressed most fully in the feminine, many Tantric texts enjoin the ritual worship of actual
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women—in some cases, worshipping their genitalia and menstrual blood as the reproductive
forces of nature.52 Certain texts consider initiation by a female guru the highest form of initi-
ation. The female biological cycles onto which Sāṃkhya and Yōga had previously projected
pollution are no longer a source of dishonour. Rather, reproductive capacity and sexuality
mark the woman as the Goddess incarnate, the means toward realization of the sublime.53
Tantric texts and practices are famously divided into “left-handed” and “right-handed”
paths; the latter more conventional, and the former antinomian, anti-establishmentarian,
and transgressive. It is in left-handed paths that Tantra’s transgressive stance toward ortho-
dox Hinduism is most evident. Left-handed Tantra asserts that to embrace the presence
of Shakti in everything, the tantrika (practitioner) must learn to experience divinity within
horrifying and ostensibly polluting aspects of life shunned by conventional morality. Thus,
its cardinal rituals involve forbidden elements (meat, liquor, sexual intercourse, skulls, or/and
cremation grounds), conflating the sacred and the profane, shocking the ordinary mind out
of its familiar dualistic thought patterns into the realm of unity-consciousness.54 The violation
of conventional norms allows tantrikas to enact a world in which the sacred resides within
everything, including the most profane; where power resides at the margins of the orderly
and the circumscribed; and where spiritual freedom is experienced through a rigorous dis-
cipline that engages but ultimately transcends the bestial, the chaotic, and the polluting.55

Tantric Politics and Socio-Political Subversion

Tantra, no less than its predecessors, has been criticized for fostering an approach to the socio-po-
litical world that may be quietist and apolitical. The Tantric adept’s goal is to deconstruct all

49
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p. 109.
50
Loriliai Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007), p. 5; June McDaniel, Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2004), p. 4.
51
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p.111.
52
Hugh Urban, The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010).
53
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p. 113.
54
Ibid., p. 118.
55
Padoux, p. 20; Urban, Tantra, p. 185.
 264    F. Godrej

oppositions of good and evil, employing radical nonrejection and embracing all aspects of divin-
ity, including the destructive and the terrifying, as aspects of the Goddess. Tantra’s predecessors
were criticized for suggesting that moral distinctions between good and evil are an illusory,
divine drama. Tantra is similarly critiqued for suggesting that “‘transcendence’ can be experi-
enced through a complete …abandonment of the self to everything…abnormal and impure,”56
realizing Shakti in all her manifestations.57 At best, such a pursuit could result in an apolitical
indifference to suffering; at worst, an amoral lack of distinction between right and wrong. This
view of Tantra as degenerate prevailed in British colonial legitimations of the imperial project.
With its valorization of sexuality, its worship of violent Goddesses demanding blood sacrifice,
and its transgression of moral laws, Tantra was cast as representing the Indian tendency toward
depravity.58 Meanwhile, Indian elites who internalized Orientalist paradigms demonized Tantra
in their attempt to retrospectively reconstruct a Hinduism consonant with British rationality and
monotheism, villifying Tantra as an inauthentic accretion which made India appear “uncivilized,
and immoral in comparison to the West.”59
But scholars are quick to note that this is a caricature. A variety of Tantric texts insist that in
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the ordinary world of materiality and convention, aspirants must discriminate between the
harmful and beneficial and be held accountable for their actions—only at the highest level
of realization do all dualities dissolve.60 And, while Tantric commitments may produce apathy,
this is counterbalanced by the celebration of the material world as a manifestation of Shakti’s
life-giving power. The recognition that Shakti is in everything can provoke reverence for the
material world, and the others with whom one shares it. Tantric commitments thus cut both
ways: the tantrika accepts and embraces everything including horror and destruction, but
because the phenomenal world is itself divine, s/he is inspired to make it free of suffering.61
Rather than producing socio-political indifference, Tantra contains emancipatory potential
for an anti-establishmentarian and socially critical politics within the context of established
Indian hierarchies. The predominant metaphysics of Sāṃkhya, Yōga, and Advaita Vedānta
are largely co-extensive with Brahminical Hinduism—that orthodox branch which accepts
and reveres the canonical authority of the Vedas, considered to be the dominant tradition
of moral reflection. As we have seen, according to the dualist ontology of these traditions,
masculinist asceticism and withdrawal from materiality are privileged over a devalued fem-
inine, corporeal realm. The caste and gender hierarchies of orthodox Brahminical Hinduism
have historically comported with this dualism: women and lower castes perform social and
material roles which are corporeal and closer to nature, freeing men and higher castes to
engage in the all-important pursuits of contemplation and renunciation. Classical Hinduism
has historically been interpreted in support of a social order where hierarchies of gender
and caste must be upheld in order for the moral universe to sustain itself. We shall soon see
that the issue of whether the orthodoxy of classical Hinduism is inherently conducive to
these hierarchies, or whether it is an artifact of later interpretations, remains an open ques-
tion. However, at least some scholars argue for the former, given that classical metaphysics
explicitly devalue corporeality and associate it with the feminine construed as impure.62

56
Alter, Yoga in Modern India, p. 224.
57
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence”p. 119.
58
Urban, Tantra, pp. 45, 48, 52, 58.
59
Ibid., p. 72.
60
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence” pp. 121–122; Kempton, Awakening Shakti, p. 29.
61
Ibid., p. 124–126.
62
Nelson, “The Dualism of Nondualism;” Sherma, “Sacred Immanence.”
 New Political Science   265

In contrast, Tantra inverts these hierarchies by valuing the material world, elevating
embodiment and desire as expressions of divinity, and worshipping biological functioning
and autonomous, fierce, female sexuality.63 Arising out of an orthodox Brahminical order
deeply reliant on distinctions between purity and pollution, Tantra has “proceeded to shatter
[such] distinctions…[proclaiming] the innate purity of all things and the potential divinity of
all beings” through ritual transgressions highly offensive to conventional Hindu sensibility,
and an understanding of divinity counter to all normative models of sanctity and desecra-
tion.64 This antinomian view recognizes divine presence in the embodied human regardless
of class or caste.65 In contrast to the determinism of orthodox Hinduism, Tantra “empowers
individuals to take life into their own hands…[to] shape it according to their own vision.”66
As a result, some scholars observe that Tantra was once a movement which involved mar-
ginalized and “impure” peoples at the edges of the Hindu socio-political order.67
These emancipatory aspects have been enlisted in a variety of modern contexts. During
the anti-colonial movement, some radical Indian nationalists invoked the terrifying image
of the violent Goddess as a source of revolutionary inspiration. 68 The militant, destructive
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Goddess Kali, mythically interpreted as death to the ego, was now personified as Mother
India herself, demanding blood sacrifice, arousing revolutionary fervor, and inciting polit-
ical violence. Tantra was cast as the awesome, uncontrollable power of the Indian people,
“[threatening] to consume the…masters.”69 In post-colonial India, the few attempts to enlist
Tantra in anti-hierarchical politics have remained largely at the theoretical level. Some Marxist
scholars, despite their suspicion of religion, saw Tantra as an egalitarian vehicle for reforming
India’s exploitative social order and regaining the rights of women and the lower classes: 70
worshipping the reproductive powers of feminine sexuality would reflect a classless social
order in which women were empowered, emphasizing the primacy of materiality in contrast
to Brahminical Hinduism’s ascetic, masculinist, caste-based order.
Tantra’s salience in India has, however, steadily declined since the colonial era. Tantra was
sanitized by nationalists who sought to revalorize Hinduism by “cleansing it of…licentious
immorality and redefining it as a noble philosophical tradition.”71 Its formerly transgressive
left-handed paths were gradually institutionalized, made compatible with orthodox tradi-
tions for more conventional audiences.72 The autonomous and violent figures of the Goddess
were transformed into benevolent and docile ones, representing a shift to an increasingly
popular, right-hand form of worship.73 The more transgressive forms of Tantra, meanwhile,
are thought to have been driven underground, turning Tantric practice into a secret, margin-
alized activity, linked in the conventional Hindu imagination with the illicit and the occult.74
Instead, it is in the contemporary urban West that Tantra’s anti-establishmentarianism
seems to have resurfaced. Tantric philosophy was appropriated in the West’s countercultural

63
Ibid., p. 113.
64
Ibid., pp. 116–118.
65
Ibid., p. 109.
66
Ibid., p. 125.
67
Urban, The Power of Tantra, p. 32; David Kinsely, Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1993).
68
Urban, Tantra, p. 74.
69
Ibid., pp. 87, 104.
70
Ibid., pp. 196–198.
71
Ibid., pp. 134–135.
72
Urban, The Power of Tantra.
73
Urban, Tantra, pp. 65, 168.
74
Ibid., p. 38; The Power of Tantra, Ch. 6.
 266    F. Godrej

“liberation” movements of the late twentieth century, inspired by its transgression of con-
ventional sexual norms, its much-needed affirmation of embodied existence and the powers
of nature and fertility, its ideal of sensual, imaginative self-divinization, and its elevation of
femininity and materiality.75 Famously cited in the New Age embrace of sexuality, celebrated
by hippies, “sexperts,” self-help gurus, and other sex-positive movements, Tantra is seen as a
“cult of ecstasy,” a healthy approach to “spiritual sex” in contrast to the West’s repressiveness.
Meanwhile, Western feminists in search of symbols of empowerment have repeatedly turned
to the more sexual, fierce goddesses. More recently, the seemingly heterosexual practices of
Tantra have been adapted in the service of gay, lesbian, and transgender calls to liberation.76
By no means should we see contemporary Western appropriations of Tantra as unprob-
lematic. Many have criticized what they call “neo-Tantra” or “pop-Tantra:” distortions that
reduce a rich philosophical tradition to a means for preoccupation with instant gratification,
“jettisoning the old ritual trappings as outdated and irrelevant…taking only the most expedi-
ent elements of these age-old techniques, mixing them with contemporary self-help advice,
and adapting them to a uniquely late-capitalist consumer audience.”77 Such appropriations
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can blunt the critical edge of nonWestern traditions, whose challenges to consumerist values
are transformed into alternatives that “promote accommodation to the social, economic
and political mores of the day.”78 Tantra may be particularly susceptible to this, for much
like the prosperity gospel, its elevation of bhukti (success/pleasure) and mukti (liberation)
as co-equal goals of the spiritual endeavour may make it uniquely suited to late-capitalist,
consumerist society, leading its practicioners to extract from it promises of greater abun-
dance and worldly benefits.
This danger is exacerbated by Tantra’s tendency toward radical individualism. Although
Tantric practice in medieval India often happened within groups, Tantra was not typically
seen as a path for mitigating collective suffering. Rather, it was an intensely personal, largely
asocial quest for union with the divine. The self was often seen as a microcosm of the universe,
but the converse has not historically been true; tantrikas have not been encouraged to see
the world as the macrocosm of the self.79 This may advance an atomized notion of Tantric
practice as a private affair oriented toward self-advancement. This is particularly relevant
when Tantra is imported into a neoliberal context where social problems are privatized,
requiring individual solutions rather than collective action. As Tantra is increasingly employed
as a personal, sexual resource rather than a means to social critique, it converges with “a
therapeutic culture and discourse of self-help,” exacerbating the dangers of a neoliberal
society “premised on a highly privatized sense of self…withdrawn from the public sphere.”80
At best, it may be seen as a path for personal salvation; at worst, another banal self-help
technique. Both of these “covertly depoliticize[d] socio-economic problems, localizing the

75
Urban, Tantra, pp. 168, 171, 185; Jeffrey Kripal, “The Roar of Awakening: The Eros of Esalen and the Western Transmission
of Tantra,” in Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Kripal (eds), Hidden Intercourse: Essays on Eros and Sexuality in the History
of Western Esotericism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010).
76
Urban, Tantra, p. 229; The Power of Tantra, Ch. 5, available online at: <http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/queering-Tantra-
beyond-masculine-and-feminine/>.
77
Urban, Tantra, p. 205.
78
Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.
79
Sherma, “Sacred Immancence,” p. 126.
80
Ronald E. Purser, “Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness: a Response to Monteiro, Musten,
and Compson,” Mindfulness 6:1 (2015), p. 37.
 New Political Science   267

causes of distress…within the individual.”81 As such, Tantra’s individualism is a double-edged

sword, producing a sense of empowerment through valuing the “inherent divinity of the
self,”82 but perhaps also serving the production of a pacified, neutered citizenry for whom
citizenship is reduced to self-care.83
Nor should we assume that Tantra’s celebration of the divine feminine automatically pro-
motes progressive political commitments regarding gender and sexuality. Many Western
feminists have attempted to reclaim Tantra as a positive celebration of female freedom,
power, and sexuality, for Tantra seems “inspired by a genuine awe for the female as the
seat of reproduction, the source of all life…[and] the womb as a powerful place of produc-
tion.84 However, conceptions of gender in which women are identified solely with biological
characteristics may be seen as regressive by feminists such as Judith Butler, for whom the
conflation of the category of women with “the ostensibly sexualized features of their bodies”
undermines their freedom and autonomy.85 The identification of women with immmuta-
ble characteristics leads to the conclusion that much of Tantra may be “founded on a very
clear…gender essentialism” that has long served patriarchal needs.86 “Placing women on
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pedestals and honoring their reproductive abilities is one of the oldest…tropes in patriar-
chal discourse,”87 used to identify femininity with functions such as reproduction that serve
men’s needs, while limiting women’s access to power in the public realm. Moreover, the
metaphysics of Tantra, which assumes that the male–female heterosexual binary (including
the conceptions of masculinity, femininity, and the union of the two represented by heter-
osexual sex) is fundamental and universal, is undeniably heteronormative.88
Even if feminism is understood in the most generic terms as a remedying of gender hierar-
chies, a Tantric metaphysics has not led naturally to such a reversal. Many feminists have noted
that a textual reverence for the feminine has resulted in no radical change in women’s position
in the Hindu social structure.89 Others note that Tantra has often been co-opted by conventional
androcentric Hinduism, as India’s goddess traditions and symbolism are “employed to express
the interests, anxieties and religious experiences of South Asian men.”90 Some have described
Tantra as a “primarily masculine affair,” in which women are used as passive objects and sources of
raw power, primarily for the benefit of male practitioners.91 Although some women in India have
been elevated to the status of Tantric gurus, and communities of female Tantric practicioners do
exist in India, these appear to be exceptional rather than normative, perhaps co-extensive with
the decline of transgressive Tantra in modern India. Many argue that women in India are not so
much empowered by Tantric practice, but rather used to further the spiritual advancement of
men, reinforcing a highly patriarchal social system.

81
Purser, “Clearing the Muddled Path of Traditional and Contemporary Mindfulness”, p. 42.
82
Urban, Tantra, p. 226.
83
Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization,” Political Theory 34:6
(2006), pp. 695, 709.
84
Urban, The Power of Tantra, pp. 125–127.
85
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 19.
86
Urban, The Power of Tantra, p. 134.
87
Ibid., p. 136.
88
Ibid.
89
Sanjukta Gupta, “The Goddess,Women and Their Rituals in Hinduism,” in Mandakranta Bose (ed.), Faces of the Feminine in
Ancient, Medieval and Modern India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 95; Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl,
Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (New York: NYU Press, 2000).
90
Jeffrey J. Kripal, “ A Garland of Talking Heads for the Goddess: Some Autobiographical and Psychoanalytic Reflections,” in
Is the Goddess a Feminist?, pp. 240–241.
91
Urban, The Power of Tantra, pp. 126, 142.
 268    F. Godrej

Toward a Dissident Politics of Tantra in Contemporary India

Thus, we see that Tantra has not always resulted in a transgressive or socially critical politics,
nor are its theoretical precepts free of essentialist assumptions that militate against such
a politics. There is no reason to assume, therefore, that Tantra is either inherently progres-
sive or inherently conducive to hierarchy; rather, its emancipatory potential depends on
the contexts in which it is employed, and the specific ways in which its precepts might be
interpreted. Its main career has been in the West in the latter half of the twentieth century,
where it has been invoked mainly for personal, spiritual purposes, mostly involving sexual
techniques. When enlisted in neoliberal, consumerist Western contexts, Tantra appears to
have been interpreted in a predictably trivializing and distorting fashion, in danger of reify-
ing the most conventional and perhaps unemancipatory aspects of that culture. But this is
not to suggest that this danger is exclusive to the West, for a neoliberal culture has certainly
gained ascendancy within India in recent years. However, Tantra may speak in ways that are
quite unique to the problem of gender and caste hierarchies in the Indian context. I now
argue that conditions may be ripe for Shakta Tantra to subvert the continued assertion of
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Brahmninical patriarchy in the Indian context.

As we have seen, many nationalists including Gandhi relied upon the Bhagavad Gītā in
their struggles against empire. This may suggest that orthodox Hinduism plausibly lends
itself to subverting existing power structures. Gandhi’s famously public stance against the
practice of untouchability within the Hindu caste system, inspired in part by his creative
reading of select Hindu texts, may also bolster this idea.92 However, these examples notwith-
standing, the vast majority of contemporary attempts to revive classical Hinduism for political
purposes have almost exclusively followed the patriarchal, Brahminical model described
earlier, where gender and caste hierarchies are seen as appropriate reflections of a dualist
metaphysics that devalues the feminine and the corporeal.
In contemporary India, these revivalist attempts are commonly associated with the Hindu
right wing, whose platform has included, at various times: the reification of an exclusively
“Hindu” nation expunging Islamic influence on India; high-caste resentment regarding the
socio-economic mobility of lower castes; and the invocation of a retrograde conception of
gender and sexuality requiring traditional, domestic roles for Indian women, associating
the “pure,” asexual Hindu woman with the purity of the nation itself, and frowning upon all
expressions of sexuality—particularly female sexuality— as foreign to Hindu culture. Such
right-wing appropriations of classical Hinduism generally cite the works of nationalists such
as V.D. Savarkar, whose militant, exclusivist nationalism and defence of caste hierarchy is
often thought to stand in contrast to Gandhi’s pacifism and insistence on Hindu–Muslim
unity and caste egalitarianism. Yet, despite this stark divergence, Gandhi in fact adhered
to the same philosophical worldview which inspired his right-wing Hindu counterparts:
namely, the deeply masculinist, highly ascetic, and dualist worldview of the orthodox
schools, which he cited often. Famously terrified of sexuality, Gandhi was legendary for
his consuming preoccupation with control over bodily desire, rejecting corporeality in a
manner completely consistent with classical dualism, while advocating a deeply puritanical
morality that included traditional roles for women, excoriating all expressions of sexuality
92
It is important to note here that Gandhi’s vision for caste reform was considered by some to be rather conservative and
retrograde; fierce critics like B.R. Ambedkar instead renounced Hinduism through a public conversion to Buddhism, arguing
that Hinduism could not be rescued from the blot of caste. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (Jalandhar: Bhim Patrika
Publications, 1936).
 New Political Science   269

(with particular contempt reserved for female sexuality), and advocating celibacy in all cases
except reproductive necessity. 93
Many Indian feminists argue that contemporary Indian society accordingly continues
to reflect this strong influence of classical Hinduism’s dualism, resulting in a “monolithic
patriarchal order” in which “sexual desire has been read as the singular property of the
male.”94 The representation of sexuality has been amongst the greatest public controversies
in post-colonial India,95 involving the (often state-sponsored) moral policing of sexuality and
its representations through obscenity laws predicated on the assumption that sexuality taints
the moral fabric of a nation, reinforcing the essentialist, patriarchal ideal that true respect for
women is equivalent to treating them as asexual.96 In the long and troubled nexus between
nationalism and female (non)sexuality in India, the bodies of women, thought to stand in as
proxies for the purity and morality of the nation itself, are particular targets of such policing,
for they represent the state’s ability to reify normative ideals about the family.97 The Indian
state has repeatedly colluded with conservative forces in regulating sexuality, as evidenced
not just by the recent landmark Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homosexuality, but also
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by laws governing prostitution used to penalize any woman who is sexually active outside
the marital relationship.98 The nation state, one scholar argues, has “[become] a site of anxiety
… where the dissident sexual subject threatens the social, cultural and economic boundaries
of the national imagination.”99
Within such a context, Tantra’s reverence for feminine sexuality may provide an indigenous
source for such dissidence. Indeed, some note that “a feminism that attempts to legitimize
female (sexual) desire is nothing less than a violent intervention in the far more conserv-
ative sociocultural traditions of India.”100 Certainly, there is no “ singular ‘Truth’ about the
status of female sexual desire on the Indian subcontinent.”101 This internal heterogeneity of
Indian feminism notwithstanding, many Indian feminists have called for the reconstruction
of Indian female sexuality in a way that legitimizes the representation of female (and/or
alternative) sexual desires: “Where the expression of sexual desire…has long been considered
a male prerogative…its takover by the female seen as eminently radical.”102 Tantra, as a rich
long-standing tradition of thinking about sexuality that emerges from within India’s own
philosophical heritage, can serve twin goals: resisting both a patriarchal essentialism that
casts female sexuality as a moral aberration, and the myth-making in which all expressions

93
Farah Godrej, “Ascetics, Warriors, and a Gandhian Ecological Citizenship,” Political Theory 40:4 (2012), pp. 441–445; Madhu
Kishwar, “Gandhi on Women,” Economic and Political Weekly (20) 40 and 41, October 5 and 12, 1985; M.K., Gandhi, Self-
Restraint v. Self-Indulgence (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1928).
94
Brinda Bose, “Transgressions: Female Desire and Postcolonial Identity in Contemporary Women’s Cinema,” in Bishnupriya
Ghosh and Brinda Bose (eds), Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women’s Literature and Film, p. 120.
95
Brinda Bose, “Introduction,” in Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and Culture in India (New Delhi: Katha, 2002),
pp. x–xi.
96
Ratna Kapur, “Who Draws the Line? Feminist Reflections on Speech and Censorship,” Economic and Political Weekly
xxxi:16–17 (20–27 April, 1996); Flavia Agnes, State, Gender and the Rhetoric of Law Reform (Bombay: SNDT University
Research Centre for Women’s Studies, 1995).
97
Jasodhara Bagchi, “Introduction,” Indian Women: Myth and Reality (Hyderabad: Sangam Books, 1995); J. Devika, “Bodies
Gone Awry: The Abjection of Sexuality in Development Discourse in Contemporary Kerala,” in Sanjay Srivastava (ed.), Sexuality
Studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013).
98
Kapur, “Who Draws the Line? Feminist Reflections on Speech and Censorship”
99
Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, “Introduction,” in The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in
Contemporary India (Oxford: Seagull Books, 2007), p. xvii.
100
Bose, “Transgressions,” p. 122.
101
Ibid.
102
Bose, “Introduction,” xiv; “Transgressions,” p. 129.
 270    F. Godrej

of sexuality are ostensibly foreign interventions into India’s “pure” culture. Tantra offers many
portrayals of the feminine understood as powerful, autonomous and, crucially, unapologet-
ically sexual. A revival of Tantric feminism in contemporary India, and a renewed interest
in Tantric text and practice by Indian scholars and/or activists, may be one route toward
subverting reigning orthodoxies.
Such a potential retrieval may need to grapple with the problematic aspects of Tantra
outlined above, de-sanitizing it and emphasizing its transgressive aspects over its essentialist
ones. A focus on Tantra’s transgressiveness may require stressing the feminine as the active,
dynamic, source of creativity, instead of passive or receptive, with sexuality serving as a
source of honour and respect rather than revulsion. It may also require de-emphasizing the
more traditional, essentialist forms of Tantra in which the feminine is honoured simply qua
biological possessor of womb and exploited for male interests. Meanwhile, Tantra’s putative
heteronormativity is only one interpretation of Tantric metaphysics: other scholars argue
that the language of the divine masculine and feminine refers to “eternal principles that
are fundamentally beyond gender—though they may be expressed through gender.”103
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Interpreted in this way, Tantric metaphysics may even be employed in India’s flourishing
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) movements. Tantra has yet to be
enlisted within the many complex battles for the rights of India’s former “untouchables” and
other populations marginalized by caste. But its insistence on subverting orthodox notions
of purity and pollution on which caste rests make it an obvious choice on which to predicate
indigenous dissidence about the very concept of caste hierarchy, a notion which continues to
enjoy popularity amongst orthodox Hindus today. While I lack the space here to explore the
many potential subversions that a revival of Tantra may introduce into contemporary Indian
politics, such subversions are yet to occur, perhaps because, as one Indian feminist has noted,
Hinduism has been so thoroughly appropriated by the right wing, that it is virtually impos-
sible to speak of its philosophical legacies without the baggage of contemporary nativist,
exclusivist, nationalist, patriarchal, anti-sexual, Islamophobic discourse.104 Thus, a dissident,
feminist (or LGBTQ or caste-subverting) Hindu renaissance, retrieving Tantric principles from
within its own heterodox traditions, is yet to be imagined. At the very least, it may lead to “a
new space of possibility within the construction of gender,” sexuality, and caste, along with
a “renegotiation of power relations.”105
Contrary to the common view that the meditative traditions of Hinduism tend to produce
only political passivity and indifference, I hope to have shown that these traditions can
and have inspired much social and political change. Both the orthodox systems of Hindu
philosophy and the heterodox Tantric tradition have been enlisted in service of a variety of
socio-political projects, within and outside India. Only by taking the most reductive, unnu-
anced view of these traditions can we reach the conclusion that they promote political qui-
etism alone. Meanwhile, I hope also to have shown that the rather more important question
is whether their respective metaphysics are productive of continued hierarchy or of eman-
cipatory, dissident commitments. Of the two schools, the former, despite its enlistment in
the anti-colonial project, has historically been largely productive of patriarchal, masculinist
hierarchies of gender and caste in India. The latter, however, contains a liberatory, progressive

103
Kempton, Awakening Shakti, p. 31.
104
Brinda Bose, private communication.
105
Urban, The Power of Tantra, p. 138.
 New Political Science   271

potential, although I have emphasized that this potential is context specific rather than
inherent. Contemporary India presents a fertile context for the employment of Tantra, a
rich yet relatively untapped philosophical resource for subversion within the contemporary
politics of gender, sexuality, and caste.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Farah Godrej is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California,
Riverside. Her areas of research and teaching include Indian political thought, Gandhi’s polit-
ical thought, cosmopolitanism, globalization, comparative political theory, and environmen-
tal political thought. Her research appears in journals such as Political Theory, The Review of
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Politics, and Polity, and she is the author of Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice,
Discipline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). She was the recipient of the 2013–14
UC President’s Research Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities
.