Mystics, Scholars, and Spiritual Cosmopolitans in Modern South Asia: An Introduction

This introductory chapter revisits the existing theoretical and conceptual repertoire for a critical study of early twentieth-century Indian religio-intellectual life. It interrogates the very ideas of, and different approaches to, the esoteric and the mystical in Indic traditions with particular reference to their larger socio-political ramifications against the backdrop of broader historical forces since especially the early twentieth century. The turn towards Indic and Indo-Islamic traditions by a generation of South Asian mystics, thinkers, and scholars in a period characterised by certain worldly asceticism did not necessarily mean a cultural nationalist effort of uncritical imitation of Orientalist projections, or linear attempts at reversing any simplistically formulated European discourse. Theirs were sophisticated creative endeavours to engage with wider cosmopolitan and global processes, sensitised at once to the nuances of ‘Western’ episteme and all the while remaining anchored in their critical understanding of, and approaches to, key aspects of Indic or Indo-Islamic traditions. The present intervention endeavours to better appreciate this global religious history. In the upshot it signals two important characteristics, viz. (i) the need to move beyond conventional understanding of a ‘Western’ contra ‘Eastern’ or ‘coloniser’ contra ‘colonised’ typology and (ii) explore the boundaries of the worlds of mysticism, spirituality, and institutionalised academia, which, in fact, often remained blurred.