"My Bones Shall Speak from beyond the Tomb:" The Life and Legacy of Shirdi Sai Baba in History and Hagiography Open Access
Loar, Jonathan James (2016)
Abstract
This dissertation builds the historiography of the hagiographic tradition attached to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918) - a miracle-working, "neither Hindu nor Muslim" saint who lived in the village of Shirdi in what is today the state of Maharashtra, western India. In doing so, I chart the evolution of Sai Baba's life story over a century's worth of hagiographic works in Marathi, English and Hindi. Each chapter features close, critical analyses of various hagiographic sources, including G.R. Dabholkar's voluminous Marathi hagiography Shri Sai Satcarita (1929) alongside understudied texts such as Das Ganu Maharaj's Santakathamrt (1903) and B.V. Narasimhaswami's Life of Sai Baba (1955), as well as Hindi hagiographic films, or hagiopics, such as Ashok Bhushan's Shirdi ke Sai Baba (1977) and Deepak Balraj Vij's Sri Sai Baba (2001). I argue that an intensively historiographic approach to the Shirdi Sai Baba hagiographic tradition demonstrates how the memory of a saint is fluid, contextual, and occasionally contested. By building the historiography of the Shirdi Sai Baba hagiographic tradition, this work is a theoretical intervention in the study of Sai Baba hagiography, one that eschews the quest for the "real" Sai Baba in lieu of highlighting the multiple Sai Babas that have been imagined and constructed in text, film, and online. Concurrently, this dissertation examines how sainthood can function as an adaptive response to modernity, capturing the hagiographical transformations of Shirdi Sai Baba's life and legacy as the saint has been (re)shaped for new audiences and agendas across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Sai Baba of Shirdi... 1
Review of Academic Literature on Shirdi Sai Baba... 10
The First Wave (1972-1999)... 11
The Second Wave (1999-present)... 16
This Dissertation vis-à-vis Existing Scholarship on Shirdi Sai Baba... 24
Hagiography and Pothi... 27
"Hagiography" and "Hagiographic Tradition"... 31
Chapter Synopses... 42
Chapter 1
A Synopsis of the Life of Sai Baba of Shirdi (d. 1918)... 48
The Young Sai Baba Arrives, Leaves, and Returns to Shirdi... 49
Sai Baba's Model of Religious Synthesis in Shirdi... 56
Miracles and the Growth of Shirdi Sai Baba's Popularity... 64
Shirdi Sai Baba's Death and Burial... 72
Chapter 2
Sai Baba Never Gave Philosophical Discourses (Except When He Did):
The "Philosophizing Sai Baba" in Chapter 57 of Das Ganu's Santakathamrt (1903)... 79
A Synopsis of Chapter 57 of the Santakathamrt... 87
Philosophy Wedded to Ethics in Shirdi Sai Baba's Didactic Style... 91
Shirdi Sai Baba's Interpretation of Bhagavad Gita 4:34... 97
The Transformation of G.D. Sahasrabuddhe into Das Ganu... 102
Conclusion... 115
Appendix A: Table of Contents in Das Ganu's Santakathamrt... 120
Appendix B: Das Ganu's 14-Verse Hymnody... 122
Chapter 3
From Neither/Nor to Both/And:
Reconfiguring Shirdi Sai Baba in Hagiography... 125
G.R. Dabholkar and the Shri Sai Satcarita (1929)... 131
The Author and His Text... 131
Sai Baba in the Satcarita: The Categorical Conundrum... 134
Sai Baba and Interreligious Conflict Resolution in the Satcarita... 140
N.V. Gunaji's English Adaptation of the Satcarita (1944)... 145
B.V. Narasimhaswami and Life of Sai Baba (1955)... 150
The Author and His Campaign of Sai Prachar... 150
Narasimhaswami's Brahmin-to-Muslim-to-Brahmin Narrative... 154
Shirdi Sai Baba: The "Living Emblem of Hindu-Muslim Unity"... 162
The Sai Baba "Remix"... 169
Sathya Sai Baba and the Revelations about Shirdi Sai Baba's Origin... 176
The Reincarnation and the Triple Sai Incarnation... 176
Sathya Sai Baba's Revelations... 182
Other Contemporary Approaches to Shirdi Sai Baba's Origin... 186
Conclusion... 193
Chapter 4
The Politics of Compositeness: Devotees and Detractors of Shirdi Sai Baba, a "Syncretistic" Saint in Modern India... 196
Definitions, Redefinitions, and Objections to "Syncretism"... 198
Pairing "Syncretism" with "Anti-Syncretism"... 203
Shirdi Sai Baba: A "Syncretistic" Saint on Film... 210
Manmohan Desai's Amar, Akbar, Anthony... 210
Ashok Bhushan's Shirdi ke Sai Baba... 219
Some Detractors of Shirdi Sai Baba... 228
Swami Swaroopananda's Anti-Sai Baba Campaign... 228
Anti-Sai Baba Rhetoric and Imagery on Facebook... 238
The Politics of Compositeness in a "Syncretistic" Saint... 254
Chapter 5
The Time Sai Baba Lit Lamps with Water:
Miracles in the Shirdi Sai Baba Hagiographic Tradition... 260
Lila and Chamatkar... 262
Finding the Meaning of Sai Baba's Miracles Hagiographically... 266
The Lamp Lighting Miracle across the Hagiographic Tradition... 272
Early Iterations of Sai Baba's Lamp Lighting Miracle... 274
More Recent Iterations of Sai Baba's Lamp Lighting Miracle... 279
The Miracle: A Contentious Category in Colonial and Postcolonial India... 288
Chapter 6
"Common Sense" and "Medical Opinion" or Faith and Forbearance: Considering the Epistemological Conflicts in Some Sai Baba Miracle Stories... 296
S.B. Dhumal Experiences Sai Baba's Miraculous Protection... 300
Some Accounts of Miraculous Healing in the Shri Sai Satcarita... 302
Bhimaji Patil... 303
Bala Ganapat... 303
Bapusaheb Buti... 304
Three other stories... 305
No Charms, No Spells: Shirdi Sai Baba Cures Madhavrao's Snakebite... 306
The Anthropology of Credibility: An Approach to the Academic Study of Shirdi Sai Baba's Miracles... 310
The Supra-Logical Quality of Sai Baba's Miracles... 319
Shirdi Sai Baba and the Middle Classes in Late Colonial India... 324
Postscript: A Confirmation of Faith in Mississauga, Canada in 2014... 329
The Miracle in Mississauga... 329
Is It Normal to See Sai Baba (or Jesus) on a Wall (or in Toast)?... 332
Chapter 7
Miracles and Caste Critique in Encounters between Shirdi Sai Baba and Brahmins in Hagiographic Text and Film... 336
Sai Baba and Brahmins in Dabholkar's Shri Sai Satcarita... 339
Shirdi Sai Baba Appears as Guru Gholap... 340
Shirdi Sai Baba Appears as Rama... 343
H.S. Dixit: The Doubly "Good" Brahmin... 348
G.D. Kelkar: Did Sai Baba Make a Brahmin Eat Meat?... 350
G.R. Dabholkar: Hagiographer and "Bad" Brahmin Made "Good"... 352
Dabholkar's Satcarita - A Brahmin's Response to Anti-Brahminism?... 355
Brahmin Villains in Bhushan's Shirdi ke Sai Baba... 366
Sai Baba Summons Khandoba and Redefines Untouchability... 370
Sai Baba Appears as Krishna to a Shaivite Ascetic... 373
Sai Baba Resurrects His Brahmin Antagonist... 375
Sai Baba and the Politics of Caste Critique in Bhushan's Hagiopic... 377
Conclusion... 382
The Many Sai Babas in the Shirdi Sai Baba Hagiographic Tradition... 383
Sainthood as an Adaptive Response to Modernity... 389
"Shirdi Sai Baba Studies" on the Eve of the Mahasamadhi's Centenary... 395
Bibliography... 399
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