What Makes a Religious Tradition a Religion?

The Case of Mahima Dharma

Sailen Routray

Over the last few of decades studies of religion(s) in India have shifted from an orientalist focus on texts and their interpretation to the study of what are termed as religious practices. Broadly speaking, such attempts have focused on popular religion as opposed to high religion, and have tried to shift the focus from the meaning of texts to meaning-making within religious communities. 

The volume under review is an attempt to map the contemporary scholarship about a Mahima Dharma, a tradition most of whose followers reside in Western and Central Orissa and Chhattisgarh. The introduction by the editors and the first essay of the book titled ‘Mahima Dharma and Tradition’ by Anncharlott Eschmann give a broad overview of the origins of the tradition and provide the context for the discussion in the rest of the essays.

The title of this volume tends to suggest that this is a volume about religious practice. But Lidia Guzy’s essay, ‘Translocal Rituals of MahimaDharma: The Fire and the Prayer’, is perhaps the only chapter in the book that deals with actual practices by the people professing the Mahima Dharma in any detail. She shows the processes through which the Mahima tradition reworks rituals of what she terms as Vedic and Brahmanical traditions to create new modes of practice.

Gourang Charan Dash’s essay ‘Mahima Gosain: Compiling a Hagiography’ sheds important light on the otherwise mystery-shrouded life and times of Mahima Gosain, the founder of Mahima Dharma. The article by Johannes Beltz and Kedar Mishra, titled ‘Ascetic, Layman, or Rebellious Guru? Bhima Bhoi and his Female Consorts’ bring out important facets of the life of Bhima Bhoi, the most important disciple of the founder, and the writer of most of the major texts of the tradition. This essay effectively demystifies simplistic readings of Bhoi’s creative oeuvre by trying to posit his life and work as a mode of effective subaltern articulation.

Johannes Beltz in ‘Apocalyptic Predictions, Prophesies, and a New Beginning: Mahima Dharma and the Arrival of the Satyayuga’ rereads texts written by Bhima Bhoi in the tradition of Malikas (apocalyptic texts in Odia, written primarily by saint poets), and shows how these texts help to constantly refashion the tradition by building up a contrast between what she terms as ‘holy or cosmological time’ (p. 94) and linear time. 

Bettina Bäumer in ‘Tantric Elements in Bhima Bhoi’s Oeuvre’ attempts another kind of rereading of Bhoi’s works. Here she argues that a close reading of his texts shows that he was as much influenced by the Indian tantric traditions as he was by the local Odia tradition of the Pancasakhas (saint poets) and the Vedantic and Buddhist traditions.

In his essay ‘Institutionalization of Mahima Samāja’ Fanindam Deo teases out the process through which the extant institutions of the tradition developed, the socio-economic context of such a process, and the role played by key players such as Biswanath Baba. Ishita Banerjee-Dube in ‘Changing Contours of Mahima Dharma: Bhima Bhoi and Biswanath Baba’ builds a case for viewing Mahima Dharma as a heterogeneous tradition by building up contrasts between the life and works of Bhima Bhoi, the ‘heretic’ disciple of Mahima Gosain, and Biswanath Baba, who made the Dharma respectable by tracing Vedantic roots for the tradition, and by creating conventionally acceptable histories and institutions for it.

This volume does not engage with a foundational question: what makes the Mahima tradition a ‘religion?’ As already mentioned, it also does not completely live up to its title as only one essay in the volume overtly focuses on the practices of the tradition. Despite these reservations the volume under discussion deals with a hitherto neglected tradition, and deserves wide circulation amongst people interested in the thematic area.

Details About the Book: Ishita Banerjee-Dube and Johannes Beltz (eds). 2008. Popular Religion and Ascetic Practices: New Studies on Mahimā Dharma. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors. ISBN 8173047561.

Note: This review was first published in the journal Contemporary South Asia 18 (3) in 2010.