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Knut A. Jacobsen, "Hinduism in the World: Migrations and Global Presence" (Routledge, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
It's time to hit Reset. Not the snooze button. Reset the Crank it up, start fresh, Go big. Reset. Dave's Killer Bread believes greatness starts with killer taste, killer nutrition. And now a shot to rock your Reset for real. Kick off the new year with an epic sweepstakes. Enter for a chance to win VIP concert prize packs with roundtrip airfare, luxury hotel stay, and much more. So reset your routine, reset your own soundtrack, reset your expectations. Enter and see full rules for the Rock youk reset sweepstakes@daveskillerbread.com reset. Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hello and welcome back to the New Books and Indian Religions Podcast, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkaran. More importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the podcast Dr. Knut Jakobson, who is professor at the University of Bergen. We are speaking about his brand new Hinduism in the world, migrations and global presence. Welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:04]
C
Thank you.
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B
So tell us the backstory. How did you get into writing a book about migration patterns?
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C
Well, I have been interested a long time for kind of the growing Hindu presence in the world. I mean, I did start with India and did field work there and worked with Sanskrit pundits, but I have also worked with kind of the global presence and I Was interested here in kind of the Hinduism outside of South Asia, because Hinduism has been expanding enormously around the world. And I mean, everyone knows about, you know, Vivekananda and his travel to the United States and Europe, but there are also many others. So I was thinking I would use some empirical material that were kind of less known because the story is much bigger when some of these stories are told. It tends to use the same material and speak about the same persons the whole time. But I was thinking I have some different material and I thought I would present that and kind of tell the story with these stories. This empirical material that is an excellent.
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B
Segue to one of the other loose questions on my list. What is the material? What is the empirical material that you're looking at?
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C
I have been looking first on the first Hindu guru Sannyasin to settle in Europe. And he came from Bengal, Kolkata, unsettled in Europe. Came to Europe in 1912. And then he came to Norway in 1915, 15s and settled there from 1917 and lived there till he died in. Passed away in 1945. So much of the material on him is also in Norwegian language. So I thought and I always wondered. So that was the first. And then on the Sri Lank Elam Tamil Hindu religion and diasporas, because they are in some European countries, they are the largest Hindu groups and they are the most important temple builders. So that's also. They are, I mean, a separate Hindu diaspora. And then on material on shakta traditions in Europe, which are kind of a minority within Hinduism, but also very interesting one because it has its own features. And then on sacred geography, pilgrimage and kind of the expansion of the Puranic mythology to encompass the whole world, things like that. And then on Hindu nationalism and Hindu nationalism's kind of also views on Hinduism in the world. So I started with the Hindu guru. And then I always wondered where his ideas came from, because people who have commented on him kind of think that, oh, it was Advaita Vedanta or that kind of Vedanta. But actually he had this as another guru, a guru which few people have heard about because he has been forgotten. But he was quite well known in Kolkata in that period, the last decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, Paramahamsa Shivnarayan. And so I try to relate his teachings to this Paramahamsa Civinarian. And then the idea of kind of coming to Europe to really missionize for his ideas.
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B
One of the notions you sort of put forth as crucial to the book Is this idea of Hinduism being a sacralization of sort of wherever? Can you say a bit more about that?
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C
Yeah, that's an interesting question. Yes, I think that, yes, clearly Sri Anandacarya came with ideas of sacred India and that was what he was presenting with the Sri Lankan Tamils. Yes, because of Armugan Nawalar who kind of revived the Hindu traditions of the Elam Tamils. He presented kind of their Tamil identity as a Shaiva identity. So while in Tamil Nadu the ethnic mobilization of the Tamils were kind of secular. It was kind of a secular. And the secular literature for instance was promoted and language became the main thing for the Indian Tamil identity. In Sri Lanka it was the Shaiva religious tradition, they think even Ayurmuganavla he promoted only the religious literature of the Tamil. So it, so it was very much a religious revival. And their identity is then very much connected to this religious Shaiva identity and with the Hindu sacred geography. Well, of course that is what I'm dealing with. So of course, since I am a scholar of religion, my focus is also on religion. So in a way it's a critical study of religion, but still the focus is on religion. So with the sacred places, I focus on sacred narratives, sacred places, in a way making, in a way kind of making places sacred and then the places become within. I mean Hinduism takes ownership of these places by making them sacred. You could say.
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B
Yeah, there really is, there really is a fascinating tension in Hinduism with respect to very well mapped out sacred space, sacred land. I mean entire rituals and texts mahoganyas about a certain river, a certain temple. It's very much sort of South Asia centric. And then it's doing that at the same time as extending sort of Middle Earth, so to speak to the entire globe. Extending, extending, taking the sacrality of South Asia or Bharat, however you want to think of this pre modern India and then extending it such that I find it so fascinating. Any temple, even in North America, you will hear the Sankalpa where they're announcing and locating the ritual in ritual space and ritual time. They'll name the epoch, name the year, name the month. I mean that you can get your head around because the time will be the time. But then they will say, you know, Canada, they say, you know, Toronto Nagare. They will literally just infix the local names into this, this ritualization of sacred space. And I find that so fascinating.
- [09:56]
C
Yeah, so. So the whole world is in a way Hindu space. One thing I write about in the book, which I know quite a lot because it's the figure of Coppola, because there is a narrative there about Coppila meditating in the kind of northeastern corner and then being accused of having stolen King Sagara's horse and the sons of Sagara being burned to ashes. And then. So that is kind of an event. And then the sons of Sagar had digged up this big hole that then was filled by water and the ocean was created. And then Chandrasekh Karendra, the Shankaracharya of Kanshi, he claimed in around 1930 that this place was in California. So he said that California was really Capilonia, and then the P and L was reversed. And then I think he said also that there was a place in California called Horse. So he identified Horse island or something. So he identified also some places there. And then this was kind of followed up by others trying to explain how that happened. I think. Chandrasekhar Endra used kind of traditional Hindu geography, but others had then tried to connect it to, you know, the narrative of the geological narrative about the. The continent, the original single continent that was divided and then India, you know, was created from these further divisions of the continent several hundred million years ago. And then claiming that this part where Capila was seated and ended up being California on the other side of the Pacific. So. And there is also now a Capila Muerti in California, a Capila temple that in a way celebrates this, that California was the original land where Coppila dwelled. So it's an interesting example of this expansion of the Puranic geography. Because in a way, now that we know the geography of the world, then why would these events only be. Would these events only take place in India? So in a way, some of these stories are also being moved out of India because the whole world, in a way, is Hindu now and not only a limited part of it, according to Dishon.
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B
Well, that's an especially glaring example for the tension because if, as I recall, if I recall correctly, I might need a bit more coffee in my cup. The story of Kapila and his sons has to do with the descent of the Ganges to wash away, to purify. And yet, of course, there's only one location of the Ganges. That's really fascinating.
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C
Yeah. So he is then in the other side of the ocean. But yes, I mean, in some sense it doesn't make sense, but they try to make sense of it by connecting also till the signs of the continents and geological developments taking place many hundred million years, etc. So, yeah, I think this will be. We will see more of that.
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B
Yeah. I mean, there's seems to be a bit of a distinction there where wherever a Hindu ritual is done, the locale will be announced as part of. Part of a geographical space. And then what you're referring to is a particular chronicization perhaps of the space secularization by folding it into the Puranas, sort of imagining that the Puranas, that the vessel of the Puranas is broader than the vessel of the globe, so that everything in the globe must exist in the Purana somewhere. That's a little bit of a. It takes perhaps a leap of faith. Tell us about a category that you discuss in the book called the spiritual migrant. It's a spiritual migrant.
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C
Yes, I saw. I mean, there is. Because I work with Isrianand Acharya, who migrated as. I mean, I think just to spread the teaching of this Paramahamsa Shivnarayan, who had a particular teaching. He was kind of a very original teaching. So he was kind of not. So his migration had spiritual purpose. And then I thought that there are Paramahamsa Yogananda, perhaps in the United States, could also be called a spiritual migrant. That is, I wouldn't call him necessarily missionary, but he had ideas about Hindu spirituality having kind of a global purpose and that this teaching needed to be kind of taught other people that in a way that the whole world needed the teaching of Hindu spirituality, that this Hindu spirituality was not only for India, but that it was for the whole. For everyone, for the globe, for that something the world needed. And so that's the kind of the category. There are. Yeah, there are. It's not that big number, but there are clearly, especially the United States. I think it's a big. It's a bigger category than to Europe. So we can think of many of the yoga teachers who settled in United States. And Bhaktivedanta Prabhupda is perhaps a very good example of a spiritual migrant. He never returned to settle back in India. I don't think that was his purpose. So it's. Yes. I speculate also that the group of Brahmin, Tamil Brahmin priests who kind of work in all the temples abroad, that that's also a sort of spiritual migration, but they do circulate a lot between temples. But this Dhrianatharya, I think that was a key for understanding why he came to Europe and why he settled. He didn't. I wouldn't say he succeeded, but when he came, he got many people to work, some people to work with him to produce books from his lectures and speeches. So he gave lectures without any notes, and then he had people taking notes and produced books with him. So there was a lot of books published in his name. The first, around 15 years that he was in Europe. After that, it stopped. But I've analyzed his writings then and what he was after.
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B
So taking the bird's eye view of having assembled these studies with the data you looked at with respect to patterns of Hinduism beyond South Asia, shall we say, how would you characterize the bird's eye view of what perhaps surprised you? Maybe trends that are emergent. Well, either way, maybe trends that are emergent that are well documented, written about, maybe new trends. I mean, you have an intriguing perspective and maybe you can say a bit about what that future may look like based on what you've documented thus far.
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C
Yeah, I think it's expanded and very many different ways. So it's this kind of plurality of ways it is expanding. We have, I mean, the migrants and then the missions, the temples, the sacred geography, yoga and the promotion of Hindu India within Hindu nationalism and then new followers and very many new interpretations. So I think it's hard to say, but it is enormous plurality. So, for instance, with the shakta traditions in Europe, with several women who claim to be embodiments of the Goddess, who are worshipped as the goddess, which. Yeah, I mean, a kind of surprising kind of expansion. And also then let me give one example. In Mauritius, I asked one, I write about that in a book. I asked one informant if he believed in karma and reincarnation. And then he said, karma, yes, he believed in that because, you know, people should behave good. But reincarnation, no, he didn't consider because he had never met a reincarnated person. And then I thought, that's really strange. So I confront him again a couple of times. And then he said that, you know, he and his sisters, they see ghosts. And when other people see, you know, two persons standing there, they would see three or four. And then. So he knew that people become ghosts, but he had never seen a reincarnated person, he said. And then he also told that some persons get possessed by these ghosts. If they are insulted, they will, you know, possess the person. And. And then the thing is that in, I mean, a common view in Hinduism is that was that people who live. Live outside of India. They do not. They do not again enter reincarnation. That is, to be reincarnated, you have to die in India and in Mauritius. Then were these people who died there, he believed, then they would become ghosts because you didn't die in the right place. So, and this was a research list and it was a common view in villages in India also that is reported that you have to in a way die either within your village or within a certain area to become reincarnated. And then there were also views about karma. You know, do you produce karma also outside of India? Will you be part of reincarnation also outside of India? And then I discovered these people things are being debated by people on this Internet, you know, discussion groups. If so, so, so that would be, you know, I, I don't think in United States people, you know, that when they come to us, they say now they are outside of the sacred space, if they die here, they will become ghosts. But, but, so we take that for granted. But I think it wasn't taken for granted maybe 100 and 200 years ago and it's not taken for granted by everyone. So there, I think some developments are taking place. But it's a kind of a sacred geography that is being expanded to encompass the whole world. But it hasn't always been like that. Aryavarta was considered the only place where you produce karma, where you are reincarnated, etc. Outside of that is kind of not empty space, but it's outside in a way of the Hindu geography.
- [22:48]
B
I was for whatever reason drawn to this relatively old, I mean it's 50 years old now, this temple that's 50 years old in North America. I mean that's ancient North America Hindu temple built by South Indians an hour or so north of Toronto in a city called Richmond Hill. It's relatively well known. And I met a number of south Indian priests 20 years ago. You know, I went there half as sort of, I can't help it. I'm sort of a half ethnographer. Wherever I go, I enjoy learning about people and places. And I met a lovely priest there who I kept in touch with. And now my great aunt had passed and I think he had done the last rites as per her request. And his son, his son was about 20, 25. Fully ordained Vedic priest, born in Toronto, educated in the school systems in Toronto, educated in the gurukula system through his father's lineage. And I was chatting with him, I said, I don't think you realize that you are innovation in flesh. I don't think you realize that never in the history of your vamsa has there been a full fledged Vedic priest of your lineage born on another continent. That's never happened before. This is the first generation this could possibly happen in. And I mean, they didn't seem to think much of it. And yet I think his father was nodding, realizing that, you know, 200 years ago you would lose caste by crossing the ocean. Now somehow you can graph, you can transplant your caste, no problem, and can continue the lineage. I mean, it's utterly fascinating. This would not have been possible even 50 years ago.
- [24:24]
C
Yeah. So I think. Yeah, so it's a really striking development. And it is a good thing also because we are unable to distinguish between. In a way, Hinduism is much more than Hindu nationalism. It's about many other countries than India. And the example of the Elam Tamils is an example of this also, because they don't care about Indian politics. They have their own place, the Elam, in Sri Lanka. So all these kind of people live in very different geographies and they relate to those places they live in. And of course, India keeps its sacredness so that, for instance, statues for the temples usually will come from India still, I think, and most of the priests probably will come from India for some time. Maybe they will be replaced by lineages. But the development is that the whole world is becoming a kind of a Hindu sacred place that wherever Hindus live is part of the kind of the Hindu sacred lands.
- [25:46]
B
Yeah, certainly I've become well acquainted, as I've said, with secret spaces being created sort of through temples or whatnot. So, you know, you know, you have a secular space in whatever city you're in, whether you're. You're in Paris or Toronto or wherever, but then you have the sacred space through the temple. But I've covered some recent. Some recent work by Tracy Pinchman and some other work where I'm realizing more and more that it's not just the sacred structures and the sort of the Pranapanisha of the mortis, but the actual land of these of various continents are either considered innately sacred to be recognized as such Allah Hinduism, or the actual land is being sacralized. And that I find that a little more. They're both intriguing, you know, the sort of. The extent to which one can craft a temple and quote, unquote, shaktify it, that doesn't surprise me at all. But the extent to which one can come across a river somewhere in America and say, well, this is a Hindu holy river, that I find quite intriguing, actually.
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C
Yeah. I write about in a book also with a couple of Venkatesvara temples, one in the United States and one in Britain, that reduplicates the sacred geography of the Venkateshwa with the seven mountains or seven mounds. So it's the whole. In a way, it's not the temple, as you say, it's the whole kind of sacred setting, the whole site that is being kind of reduplicated. But it makes also sense when they start building a temple. At least when I started to build a temple in Oslo, they started digging a hole in the ground where they kind of put a sacred, kind of the seed of the temple and a shrine with different matters. And the temple in a way grow out of that. So it's very much connected to the site. It's not kind of placed on top of the site, but it's kind of growing out of it.
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B
So let me circle back to this one more time. What do you see? As I know you don't have a crystal ball, but you have a bunch of data and an imagination, what do you see as the future of migration and global presence of Hinduism? Where do you see this going?
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C
I think. Yeah, I think it will be very. I don't think see this will being reversed. I see in a way, Hinduism becoming, let's see, Hindu spirituality is clearly being adopted also by many people who have no background in India. So that is being kind of spreading widely, I think. And Hindu communities with background from many countries like Bali, Indonesia, Elam, Sri Lanka and Singapore, etc. Are living in many places. Of course, there they work to preserve heritage and language. So that will be interesting to see because with globalization and easy communication, etc. So it's not. I mean, that will be something new. I think so. No, it's difficult to. It's very difficult to predict. I mean, historians, even if they were specialists on, you know, Eastern Europe, didn't predict the fall of the Berlin Wall. So it is. It's easy, I think you can study, you know, the past, but. But you can't really study the future in the same, same way because there are so many unexpected things that happens. So, so, so I. I don't want to.
- [29:52]
B
100%.
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C
Yeah, it's. It's difficult, but. But at least now it's being pluralized. It's being expanding in very many different ways. But what will happen next? I'm open for surprises also.
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B
Well, I certainly think there's an element, irrespective of one's view of determinism or not on the most fundamental levels of reality. Certain life is full of surprises and things combine in ways that are unexpected and things are thrown into our field when we least expected. So we'll see what happens, what Would you most hope folks might take away from this book and at the same time perhaps fold in? Who's this book for? Who might benefit from this book?
- [30:41]
C
I think it can be used by students as a kind of a book on Hinduism in the world, Hinduism as a world presence. But these case studies, these are quite specialized so that I think people can learn new things from that. I mean, Srianacharya has never been studied in relation to his guru. I think people were not even aware that he had a guru and that his teachings come from him. And with it, Elam, Tamil, Hindus, you also have, you know, a big Sivayas Subramaniya swami, who was an American, who was a disciple of yoga swami, a guru. So he kind of spread their religion into made their religion global. So there are many of these kind of surprises that. How Hinduism already 100 years ago, or at least many years ago, had this big worldwide presence. That it's not something that has happened just, you know, the past decades, but that is, this is a process that has been going on. And so I. And also that there was already, you know, 100 years ago with Sriadobindo, this idea that, that Hinduism needed independence because India had, through Hinduism, a global mission, that India existed for the sake of the world, which is also promoted by Hindu nationalism with this idea of Vishwa, Guru, etc. So these ideas have been around for a very long time. And it's important to understand in a way, this global expansion of Hinduism, that many of these definitions of Hinduism, understanding Hinduism that comes from kind of textual studies, old texts etc, need to be read together with these modern developments, these global developments, to put these ideas into a kind of a contemporary context, I think.
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B
Excellent. Was there anything else about the book or the project that you'd like to share today before we close?
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C
No, I think I have presented. I mean, I could continue to speak about the details in the book because I'm kind of excited about many of them, but I think we have kind of talked enough about them maybe.
- [33:35]
B
Yes, yes, indeed. We've. We've sufficiently teased some of the details so people can venture into the book if they so desire. Great. Well, thank you very much for appearing on the podcast today.
- [33:47]
C
Thank you for having me.
- [33:48]
B
For those listening, we have been speaking with Dr. Knut Yakobson, who is a professor at the University of Bergen, on this brand new Routledge publication, Hinduism in the World, Migrations and Global Presence. Until next time, keep. Well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating Hinduism, whether in South Asia or beyond. Take care.