Future of the Present

Swami Tyagananda

Published in Evam: Forum on Indian Representations 1, nos. 1-2 (2002):206-208.

I read with interest Dr. Jeffrey Kripal’s essay “Secret Talk”(Harvard Divinity Bulletin) although the
issues he addresses are not new; his preface to Kali’s Child covers much the same ground. I also read Prof.
Kripal’s “A Response to Swami Tyagananda” and found that it covers similar territory.
It will help if the complete text of my critique is at hand to verify how much of Prof. Kripal’s essay is
really a “response” to the issues I raised and how much of it is a spirited defense against charges that I never
made. For instance, Kripal writes (in the longer version of his essay) that I suggested that he was gay or had
“bad intentions.” One will search in vain to find this anywhere in my critique. Kripal uses this utterly false
charge as a launching pad to introduce the subject of homophobia, to which he returns again, and again,
and yet again. He challenges me to declare my position on homosexuality. I don’t know why that should
matter, but here it is: I see no essential difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Sex is sex.
Period.
But why is Prof. Kripal so preoccupied with the alleged homophobia of his critics? He seems to be
doing exactly what he accuses me of doing, namely, claiming to have divined my intentions. In fact, he
is using a tactic typical of those steeped in psychoanalytic thinking: to accuse anyone who disagrees with
them of insuperable blindness caused by hidden, dark motivations–in this case, homophobia and, as Kripal
says, “darker transference phenomena.” I obviously do not agree with Prof. Kripal’s homoerotic reading of
Ramakrishna’s spirituality. But my disagreement is beside the point. What is not beside the point, however,
is the fact that Kripal’s thesis is based on flimsy and misleadingly manipulated evidence. And this is what
I have argued in my critique1 with the help of innumerable examples from Kali’s Child.
Kripal does not, of course, ignore this problem altogether in his essay. He carefully picks a few stray
examples, quotes them partially, misrepresents my comments on them, then tries to show how there is, in
fact, nothing wrong with his documentation.
In Kali’s Child Kripal often makes bracketed insertions within quoted material–not to clarify an ambiguity
but to radically change the meaning of what is in the original.2 He routinely inserts “interpretive glosses” into
what is represented as a paraphrase of a source text and follows it up with a reference, creating the illusion
of textual support for everything that precedes the reference, and for the conclusions that he subsequently
draws from this so-called paraphrase. All this, he tells us, is a “standard practice in academic writing.” This
claim, however, is not supported by standard references like the Chicago Manual of Style.3
Prof. Kripal habitually gives incomplete and misleading references, particularly when this lends itself to
creating the appearance of evidence in support of his thesis. Here’s one example from his “Secret Talk” essay
(HDB, p.17): Kripal tells us of the “unexplained ’scandalous interpretations’ that one Bengali text records”
when the temple manager gave Ramakrishna women’s clothes to wear. Kripal himself has revealed in Kali’s
Child (105) the name of the “Bengali text”4 but not what it actually says. If we look up the reference, we find
nothing “unexplained” there. The text is very clear: “Mathur’s gift, we know from a reliable source, gave
evil-minded people an opportunity to condemn the Master’s austere renunciation.” I don’t see anything here
to support Prof. Kripal’s conclusion that “the homoerotic thesis is both indigenous to Bengal and about
one hundred and fifty years old now.”
1 Kali’s Child Revisited–or–Didn’t Anyone Check the Documentation?
2 For example, see p. 177 of my essay in this volume.
3 see 10.7-8, 10.63, 10.65 of the 14th edition.
4 LP 2.14.6

1
 Kripal writes that he received “enthusiastic and trusting” responses from many of his correspondents.
But this proves nothing as far as history and accuracy are concerned. A work of fiction can also touch the
hearts and minds of its readers. Interestingly, Kripal mentions about Brian Hatcher’s fieldwork in Calcutta
on the reception to Kali’s Child and how Hatcher “found support for it among Bengalis.” Unfortunately, we
have a different story from Hatcher5 where he acknowledges that it would be “inaccurate” to characterize his
project as “a complete success.” He says that the project was “not able to work” because of the “hostility
that the Bengali people . . . had toward Kripal and his book.” So much for the Bengali “support” that Kripal
assures us his book has!
In his essay Prof. Kripal says that he has never argued something as simplistic as that Ramakrishna was a
pederast. He says that those are “other people’s words, certainly not mine.” Unfortunately, again, that is not
true. While Kripal may not have used those words in his book, that was certainly his conviction which guided
his interpretations. How else can one explain his letter (August 14, 1996) written to the secretary of the
Ramakrishna Vedanta Society, Boston, in which he wrote that it was quite “obvious” that “Ramakrishna’s
mystical states were accompanied, and likely generated, by some ethically problematic acts, among them
pedophilia.” I am disappointed by Prof. Kripal’s response. He evades the central issue–documentation and
translation–which is the core of my critique. He misquotes me and, by quoting me partially, misrepresents
my ideas.
To sum up: The problem I address in my critique is not the sexualized reading per se. The problem
has nothing to do with homosexuality. The problem is with the evidence, and in particular the massive
distortion and misuse thereof in Prof. Kripal’s book. Where there is adequate evidence, let there be
homoerotic, heteroerotic, or otherwise erotic readings of the lives and motivations of saints–and scholars!
But let not the evidence be manufactured.
What we face here is not just a question of the “future of the past.” What is equally at stake is the
future of the present. If contemporary scholars condone sloppy documentation and self-serving translations
to support a thesis, then the future of the present scholarship looks bleak to me.

Works Cited
[1] Kripal, Jeffery. Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
[2] Kripal, Jeffery. “Secret Talk.” Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Winter 2001):17.
[3] Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lilaprasanga. 2 vols. Calcutta: Udbodhan Office, 1991.

5 see http://www.asianetwork.org/freeman/summary-partd.html