The Torment of Secracy

The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of Esoteric
Traditions
Author(s): Hugh B. Urban
Source: History of Religions, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Feb., 1998), pp. 209-248
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Hugh B. Urban THE TORMENT OF
SECRECY: ETHICAL
AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL
PROBLEMS IN THE
STUDY OF ESOTERIC
TRADITIONS
If we cannotagreeaboutthe natureof the secret,we areneverthe-

less compelledto agreethatsecrecyexists, the sourceof the inter-
preter'spleasures,but also of his necessarydisappointment.
(FRANK
KERMODE,1979)1
The title of this article has been pilfered, quite intentionally, from Ed-
ward Shils's classic study of governmental secrecy in the United States
during the McCarthyera.2The "torment"to which I refer here, however,
is of a ratherdifferentnaturethan that involved in Shils's investigation of
political secrecy or the interests of national security. In specific, I wish to
engage two interrelatedand deeply entangled problems-one epistemo-
logical and the other ethical-that are inevitably involved in the study
of those traditionsclaiming to be "secret."This "double bind"of secrecy,
as I shall call it, may be formulated as follows. First, how can one study
or say anything intelligent at all about a religious traditionthat practices
active dissimulation, that is, a religious tradition that deliberately obfus-
cates its teachings and intentionally conceals itself from outsiders? And
second, if one does learn something about an esoteric tradition-above
all, if one goes so far as to become as insider, receiving initiation into
secret teachings-how can one then say anything about this tradition to
1 Frank Kermode, The Genesis

of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1979), p. xi.
2 Edward Shils, The Tormentof Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of Amer-
ican Security Policies (Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press, 1956).
? 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/98/3703-0002$02.00
210 Torment of Secrecy
an uninitiatedaudience of outsiders?In short, if one "knows,"one cannot

speak; and if one speaks, one must not really "know."
In this sense, secrecy would appearto representa particularlyextreme
example of the epistemological and ethical problems inherent in every
attempt to understand another culture: it embodies the dilemma of all
ethnography,which has become especially acute in the current"crisis of
representation in the human sciences," as George Marcus and Michael
Fischer have called it.3 It is not only the question of whetherone can ever
accurately understandanotherculture; rather,does not the very presence
of the scholar profoundly influence his data, that is, shape the ways in
which his informants will act and speak? More important,can one rep-
resent anotherculture without distorting, exploiting, or otherwise violat-
ing it, without turning it into yet another colonial artifact or commodity
to be consumed in the modernsupermarketof cultures?As James Clifford
suggests, the problem of secrecy is thus the most acute form of the basic
problems inherentin every cross-culturalencounter.Just as, for example,
elders in an African secret society employ "complex techniques of rev-
elation and secrecy" to transmittheir sacred knowledge to their sons, so
too the scholar encounters a similar dialectic of dissimulation and partial
revelation in the effort to understandthe other:"The strategiesof ellipsis,
concealment and partial discourse determine ethnographers'relations as
much as they do the transmission of stories between generations."4
In what follows I will try to grapplehead-on with this problem, in both
its theoretical and practical consequences. First, I will evaluate the var-
ious past scholarly approaches to the question and suggest my own the-
oretical alternative,which I borrow from PierreBourdieu and his concept
of "symbolic capital." Here I will argue that we need to make a theoret-
ical shift in our approachto esotericism. Secrecy, I submit, is better un-
derstood, not in terms of its content or substance-which is ultimately
unknowable, if there even is one-but rather in terms of its forms or
strategies-the tactics by which social agents conceal or reveal, hoardor
exchange, certain valued information. In this sense, secrecy is a discur-
sive strategy that transformsa given piece of knowledge into a scarce and
precious resource, a valuable commodity, the possession of which in turn
bestows status, prestige, or symbolic capital on its owner.
3 George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experi-

mental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp.
7 ff. For critical discussions of these problemsin recent ethnography,see James Cliffordand
George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography(Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986); Stanley Tambiah,Magic, Science, Re-
ligion and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990); John
Comaroffand Jean Comaroff,Ethnographyand the Historical Imagination (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, 1990).
4 Clifford and Marcus, p. 8.
History of Religions 211
I will then describe some of my own firsthand encounters with the tor-
ment of secrecy among one particular esoteric tradition: the Kartabhajas
(the worshipers of the "master" or guru) who emerged in the area in
and around Calcutta at the turn of the nineteenth century. I have chosen
this particular sect primarily because they offer an exemplary case for
the study of secrecy. As part of the broader Vaisnava-Sahajiya and other
Tantric traditions of Bengal, the Kartabhajas developed a highly sophis-
ticated system of esoteric practice and secret discourse.5 Moreover, they
emerged during a particularly intense period of censorship, repression,
and concealment: the situation of colonial Bengal, amid the rapidly chang-
ing social and moral environment of British imperial rule. And finally,
they are one of the very few esoteric sects about which we have a large
body of fairly reliable historical evidence, drawn from a wide range of
primary and secondary sources.6
Specifically, I will analyze the Kartabhajas' unique and enigmatic form
of esoteric discourse-which they rather appropriately dub the "language
of the mint" (.tyakali bol)-attempting to place it concretely within its
social and historical context, in relation to the rapidly changing milieu
of colonial Bengal. This article will therefore be limited primarily to
5 The
category of "Tantra"is notoriously difficult to define. Most authors agree that it
cannot be defined in any simple, singular, or monothetic way but must be given a polythetic
definition, which simply identifies a series of sharedcharacteristicsor family resemblances.
See Douglas Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Sakta Tan-
trism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 55-71; Andr6 Padoux, "Tantrism,
an Overview," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade (New York: Macmillan,
1986), 14:271-72; SanjuktaGupta et al., Hindu Tantrism(Leiden: Brill, 1979). I have also
traced the genealogy of "Tantrism"in my article, "The Extreme Orient: The Construction
of 'Tantrism'as a Category in the Orientalist Imagination,"Religion (1997).
6 The primary text of the Kartabhajasis Dulalcanid'sBhaver Gita, ed. Ramescandra
Ghose (Goabagan:Aurora, 1882). Here I will use the recent edition printed by Santirafijan
Cakravarti(Calcutta: Indralekha, 1993) (hereafter cited as Bhaver Gita). The other main
Kartfbhajatexts are: Manulfl Misra, Bhaver Gita VyakhydSaha Sahaja tattva Prakasa Va
Sandtana Sahaja Satya Dharmer Adi Itihds (Calcutta, 1911) (hereafter cited as Sahaja
Tattvaprakasa),and Kartabhaja Dharmer Adivrttanta Va Sahajatattva Prakasa (Calcutta,
1925) (hereaftercited as KartabhajaDharmer Adivrttanta). There are also two important
personal accounts by nineteenth-centuryKartabhajamembers:that of Babu Gopal Krishna
Pal in J. H. E. Garrett,Bengal District Gazetteers,Nadia (Calcutta:Bengal SecretarialBook
Depot, 1910); and that of KrishnaPal in William Ward,ed., A Brief Memoirof Krishna Pal,
the First Hindoo in Bengal WhoBroke the Chain of Caste by Embracing the Gospel (Lon-
don, 1823). Contemporarynewspaper accounts include: Samvada Prabhdkara, 18 Caitra,
1254 [1848]; Somaprakasa, 20 Caitra, 1270 [1864]. Among Contemporaryliterary figures
who described the Kartabhajasare Dasarathi Ray, "Kartabhaja,"in DdSarathi Rdyer Pdn-
cali (Calcutta, 1982); Nabincandra Sen, "Amar Jiban," in Kabibar Nabincandra Sen,
Granthabali (Calcutta, 1974); and biographies of Ramakrsna,such as the Srigriramakrsna-
Kathamrta, by MahendranathGupta (Calcutta: KathamrtaBhaban, 1987). Missionary ac-
counts include William Ward, Account of the Writings, Religion and Manners of the
Hindus, 4 vols. (Serampore: Mission Press, 1811); Church Missionary Register (June-
October 1839); Friend of India (April 1839); James Long, Handbook of Bengal Missions
(London, 1848).
the analysis of esoteric discourse, largely as it appearsin historical texts;

therefore, we will have to set aside the very importantquestion of eso-
teric practice, in its ritual or meditative forms, and the question of secrecy
among contemporary practitioners (both of which I have treated else-
where).7 As I shall argue, it is ultimately impossible to know with any
certainty the content of a secret. What we can study, however, are the
various tactics, rhetorical devices, and metaphors, through which secret
information is simultaneously partially revealed and largely concealed.
More important,we can also study the ways in which secrecy operates in
real social and historical contexts, the dynamic interplay between those
who know and those who do not, as it is worked out in concrete material
circumstances. In the case of the Kartabhajas,I hope to show that the
power of secrecy offered a new source of status, prestige, and identity for
a large numberof poor, lower-class, and marginalizedindividuals-those
inhabiting the "underworldof the Imperial City" in colonial Calcutta.
Hence, it offered a new form of "capital" for those who were most de-
prived of economic and symbolic wealth in mainstreamsociety. This was,
however, a deeply ambivalent and problematic sort of capital: if it was
liberatingand empoweringin one sense, this esoteric traditionalso created
new and in some ways equally oppressive hierarchies of its own and in-
scribed its members into new relations of domination and subordination.
I. ENTANGLED IN THE DOUBLE BIND: APPROACHES TO SECRECY IN

THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
He who publicizes these things, I know, is lost and will certainly go

to hell. (Nayika Sadhana tika of Rlpanuga Dasa)8
The past several years have witnessed a remarkableproliferationof in-

terest in the topics of secrecy and esotericism.9 Not only in a variety of
academic disciplines, but also in popular entertainment,in cinema, me-
7 See my articles, "The Poor Company: Economics and Ecstasy in the KartabhajaSect
of Colonial Bengal," SouthAsia, vol. 20 (1997), and "Secret Bodies: Re-visioning the Body
in the Vaisnava Sahajiya Traditionof Bengal," Journal of South Asian Literature,vol. 28,
nos. I and 2 (1995). The broaderdimensions of secrecy and the problems of field research
on an esoteric tradition are treated in my Ph.D. dissertation, "The Poor Company: Secrecy
and Symbolic Power in the KartabhajaSect of Colonial Bengal" (University of Chicago, in
progress).
8
Quoted in Edward C. Dimock, The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in
the Vaisnava-SahajiydCult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp.
234-35.
9A
good deal of literature has been devoted to the definition of "secrecy" and its
distinction from "privacy."According to Shils, privacy is characterizedby the voluntary
concealment of information or behaviors, at the discretion of the individual; secrecy, con-
versely, is characterized by the obligatory concealment, with a prohibition attended by
sanctions in the event of a breach. Carol Warrenand BarbaraLaslett, in contrast, distin-
guish privacy and secrecy, not by the volition of their possessor, but by their moral or legal
content. Thus, privacy refers to behaviors that are morally and legally neutral (i.e., marital
dia, or novels, such as Foucault's Pendulum (and even on the Internet),

there appears to be a growing fascination with the tantalizing regions of
the unknown and the occult. Yet perhaps rather fittingly, despite the grow-
ing interest in the topic, the subject of secrecy still remains poorly under-
stood and theoretically confused within the academic community. Among
historians of religions, such as Mircea Eliade and Kees Bolle, the study
of secrecy has remained disappointingly general, universalistic, and largely
divorced from social and historical context.10 Even Antoine Faivre's ex-
tensive work on Western esotericism takes virtually no account of the real
social and political contexts in which esoteric traditions emerge and with
which they are inextricably intertwined.11
As Beryl Bellman has argued in his work on the African Poro secret
societies, most past approaches to secrecy have been hampered by a per-
sistent problem: namely, a basic tendency to neglect or confuse the key
distinction between the form and the content of secrecy. Even as early as
1906, Georg Simmel's classic study had pointed out this crucial distinc-
tion: for secrecy is a "sociological form that stands in neutrality above
the functions of its contents."12 Nevertheless, Bellman argues, most stud-
ies of secrecy have ignored this distinction and instead defined secrecy
primarily in terms of a "hidden content." Much of the past literature, as we
see in the work Norman MacKenzie, E. J. Hobsbawm, or Mak Lou Fong,
has been limited to the creation of different, often conflicting, typological
sex), whereas secrecy refers to those that are considered immoral or illegal by main-
streamsociety. Within the realm of secrecy, Warrenand Laslett furtherdistinguish between
(1) "private life secrecy"-or the concealment of behaviors, in private settings, that out-
siders consider undesirable or immoral (e.g., homosexuality or child abuse)-and (2) "pub-
lic life secrecy"-which concerns primarilypolitical secrecy by governmental leaders (e.g.,
the CIA or FBI) directed against political opponents ("Privacy and Secrecy: A Conceptual
Comparison,"in Secrecy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. S. Tefft [New York: Human
Sciences Press, 1980], pp. 25 ff.; see also Tefft'sintroductionto the same volume). The term
"esotericism" was first coined by Jacques Matter in 1828, in Histoire critique du gnosti-
cisme et de son influence (Paris: Levrault, 1828). The works on individual esoteric tradi-
tions are too numerous to cite here; for good overviews on Western esoteric traditions, see
Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 1979);
Antoine Faivre, ed., Modern Esoteric Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1992).
10Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraftand Cultural Fashions
(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 47 ff.; Kees Bolle, ed., Secrecy in Religions (New York: Brill,
1987). For a good overview of the main approaches to secrecy-sociological, psycholog-
ical, political, etc.-see Beryl Bellman, The Language of Secrecy: Symbols and Metaphors
in Poro Ritual (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984), p. 1; T M. Luhr-
mann, "The Magic of Secrecy,"Ethos, vol. 17,no. 2 (June 1989). For the major sociological
approaches, see Georg Simmel, "The Secret and the Secret Society," The Sociology of
Georg Simmel, trans. K. Wolff (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950); Tefft; Warrenand Laslett;
Phillip Bonacich, "Secrecy and Solidarity,"Sociometry 39 (1976): 200-208.
Antoine Faivre and Karen-ClaireVoss, "WesternEsotericism and the Science of Re-
ligions," Numen 42 (1995): 48-77. One of the few exceptions to this trend is the recent
volume of Hans Kippenberg and Guy Stroumsa, Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the
History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
12
Simmel, p. 331.
schemes based on the content of secrecy and the resultantforms of secret

organization (e.g., religious, political, revolutionary,criminal, etc.).13
All of these approachesto the content of the secret, however, run into
a very basic and troubling obstacle: namely, the double bind of episte-
mology and ethics-the question of how one can ever know with cer-
tainty the true substance of what is hidden, and then, supposing one can,
the question of whether one should reveal it publicly. As Tony Stewart
asks, "Is it professionally ethical to reveal that which was intentionally
concealed? Is this not one more form of exploitation and the brutalwield-
ing of power?"14There is a real danger, it would seem, of doing vio-
lence to another culture, looting the cultural artifacts of anotherpeople,
and replicating the destructive practices of imperialism in a more subtle
form. One of the first and clearest cases of this ethical-epistemological
dilemma, for example, can be found in the early work of Marcel Griaule
among the Dogon. As Clifford has shown, Griaule consistently treated
the secret knowledge of the Dogon as a kind of precious artifactthat had
to be wrested-often forcibly and underhandedly-from the hand of the
native: "the ethnographermust keep up the pressure ... in Sudanese so-
cieties, with their long process of initiation, one had to force the revela-
tion of occult doctrines."15As Griaule himself comments in two rather
astonishing passages, "We would make asses of the old hesitators, con-
found the traitors, abominate the silent. We were going to see mysteries
leap like reptiles from the mouths of the neatly caught liars. We would
play with the victim; we would rub his nose in his words. We'd make him
spit up the truth, and we'd turn out of his pockets the last secret polished
by the centuries, a secret to make him ... blanch with fear"16and "The
role of the person sniffing out social facts is comparableto that of a de-
tective or examining magistrate.The fact is the crime, the interlocuterthe
guilty party, all of society's members are accomplices."17
13According to MacKenzie, there are nine primarytypes: (1) patriotic, (2) racial, (3) po-
litical, (4) economic, (5) civic, (6) religious, (7) military, (8) scientific, and (9) judicial (Se-
cret Societies [New York, 1967]). Mak Lou Fong uses R. K. Merton'ssociological model
of the five modes of role adaptation:conformity, retreatism,ritualism, innovation, and re-
bellion (The Sociology of Secret Societies: Study of Chinese Secret Societies in Singapore
and Peninsular Malaysia [New York:Oxford University Press, 1981], pp. 11-12). For other
typologies, see C. W. Heckerthorn, The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries (New
York, 1965), vol. 1; E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Archaic Forms of Social Movement
in the Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies (New York:Praeger, 1959).
14 Tony Stewart, "Sex, Secrecy and the Politics of Sahajiya Scholarship,"unpublished
manuscript (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 1990), p. 41.
15James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography,Liter-
ature and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1988), p. 67
16 Marcel Griaule, Les Sao Legendaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 74.
17Marcel Griaule, Methode de l'ethnographie(Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 59, as cited in
Clifford, The Predicament, p. 138.
But, of course, native cultures do not always react passively to the

attempts of Western scholars to penetrate their treasured knowledge and
esoteric traditions. Lamont Lindstrom, for example, has shown the ways
in which the peoples of the South Pacific have gone to even greater
lengths than ever to conceal their secret knowledge, to resist the probing
inquiries of the white man: "Our totalizing, textualizing mode of infor-
mation with a discursive will to truth continues to penetrate and absorb
resistant pockets of silence. ... Islanders have blocked exotic knowledge
and disengaged from external conversational conjunctions in order to
protect local truths by burying Christian Bibles . . and by silencing
anthropologists."18
It is rather remarkable that very few scholars have tried seriously to
grapple with these problems,19 and even among those who have, the var-
ious approaches to the double bind have seldom proved very satisfying.
The first and most common approach, which we might call the textual
approach, limits itself to historical texts and makes no effort to penetrate
the esoteric tradition from within.20 Within the field of Indian Tantric
studies, this is the method adopted by the majority of scholars, such as
Giuseppe Tucci, Andre Padoux, Teun Goudriaan, and most recent au-
thors. However, the more honest among them-for example, Edward C.
Dimock-will frankly admit that their knowledge is always partial and
severely limited by the fact that they had never received initiation or oral
instruction.21
Second, there is the initiate's approach-that is, the approach taken by
those who insist that a merely textual understanding of an esoteric tra-
dition is simply inadequate and that the only way to really understand
such a tradition is through direct, firsthand personal experience with its
18 Lamont
Lindstrom, Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), p. 200.
19One of the few authorsto
grapple with the ethical problem is Sisella Bok, Secrets: On
the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Pantheon, 1982); however, Bok's
comments are largely limited to raising the major questions and offer very little in the way
of concrete solutions. In the field of Tantricstudies, Stewart has tackled the problem in his
essay, "Sex, Secrecy and the Politics of Sahajiya Scholarship";however, Stewart'sconclu-
sions are generally quite pessimistic about the prospects of a solution to the problem.
20 This is the approach adopted by most scholars of Jewish and Western esoteric tradi-
tions, such as Gershom Scholem, Antoine Faivre, Kippenbergand Stroumsa, etc. Compare
Scholem, Major Trendsin Jewish Mysticism (New York:Shocken, 1961), pp. 21 ff.; Faivre's
introductionto Modern Esoteric Spirituality (n. 9 above); and Kippenberg'sintroductionto
Secrecy and Concealment.
21 See Dimock (n. 8 above),
p. 39n.; Padoux, Vac: The Concept of the Wordin Selected
Hindu Tantras(Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1990); Guptaet al. (see n. 5 above). David Gor-
don White offers a good discussion of the difficulty in gaining access to living Tantrictra-
ditions and his own opting for a purely "textual" approach (The Alchemical Body: Siddha
Traditionsin Medieval India [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], pp. xi-xii).
living oral form.22 In her work on women in Tantric Buddhism, for

example, Miranda Shaw claims to have undergone extensive initiations
among contemporaryTantric Buddhists and thereby to have gained ac-
cess to an enormous body of hitherto unknown texts and commentar-
ial traditions.23Similarly, in his work on South Indian Tantra,Douglas
Brooks has argued that the only way the scholar can gain access to eso-
teric knowledge is by tapping into the living representativesof the oral,
commentarial tradition, as it has been handed down from Guru to dis-
ciple over centuries: "Since Tantricsmaintain a vigilant guard over the
secret meanings of texts, the scholar's access to tradition is limited to
those living Tantricswilling to discuss openly Tantricconcepts and prac-
tices.... Tantric traditions are most thoroughly understood when both
written and oral sources are taken into account."24While I am sympa-
thetic to Brooks's more nuanced approach,I do not think he really solves
the epistemological problem; if anything, he has only rendered it even
more complex. For, as Stewart asks, how can one be sure that anything
a contemporarypractitionersays-particularly to a Western scholar-is
any more accurate than what a text says? And how can one be sure that
what a contemporarypractitionersays about a tenth-centurytext is any-
thing like what a tenth-century practitioner said about that text? In his
published work, moreover, Brooks declines to mention the fact that he
himself spent much time living in close contact with Tantricpundits in
south India, undergoing numerous initiations in esoteric doctrine; nor
does he engage the deeper ethical questions involved in publishing such
teachings to an uninitiated audience.
Third, there is what we might call (borrowing Eliade's phrase) the
Noah's ark approachto esoteric traditions:namely, provided that he has
the culture'spermission, the scholar is in fact doing a service by preserv-
ing ancient traditionsthat are in many cases rapidly being lost in the face
of the modern world. One of the few scholars who has attemptedto grap-
ple with the ethical questions raised by his research is FredrikBarth, in
his work on the Baktamantribe of New Guinea. Barth himself received
numerous esoteric initiations, going as far as the fifth of the seven de-
grees in the Baktaman system. However, Barth seems to have been far
more aware than most scholars of the ethical issues involved and made
a clear effort to be as open as possible about his intentions in learning the
22
Among anthropologists, this is the approachadopted by Andrew Apter, Black Critics
and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in YorubaSociety (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992). For a good example of this "insider's approach"to the Voodoo tradition,see
Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A VodouPriest in Brooklyn (Berkeley and Los An-
geles: University of California Press, 1991).
23 Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 16 ff.
24 Brooks (n. 5 above),
pp. 6-7.
Baktaman secret traditions: "Publishing this monograph raises a vexing

question, since much of its data are part of a cult secret.... I was told
these secrets in trust and never failed this trust while I was part of the
Baktaman. I made it clear that in my distant home I would share their
knowledge with others who had passed through all our initiations; and
that was acceptable."25Moreover, Barth offers a persuasive rationale for
his work: his intention is not to exploit and plunder the Baktaman eso-
teric lore, but rather to preserve a rich religious tradition that is rapidly
being lost in the face of modernization:"I hope this text will repay them
by salvaging some of what they value from the oblivion of imposed
change which looms ahead."26Barth's position may indeed be the most
ethically responsible; however, it does not resolve the epistemological
problem (and, in fact, only compounds it, since the scholar is only pre-
serving what the tradition wants him to preserve). Moreover, it also does
not tell us what, if anything, the scholar can do if he is not so fortunate
to receive the permission of the esoteric tradition.
In view of these very deep and fundamental obstacles to the study of
secrecy, some authorshave concluded that this is simply an insoluble and
futile task. As EdwardConze very flatly asserts in his discussion of Bud-
dhist Tantra,the problem of secrecy presents an impassible barrier,and
we can, in fact, say nothing intelligent at all about esoteric traditions like
Tantra:"These doctrines are essentially esoteric, or secret (guhya). This
means what it says. Esoteric knowledge can ... under no circumstances
be transmittedto an indiscriminate multitude. There are only two alter-
natives. Either the author has not been initiated ... then what he says is
not first hand knowledge. Or he has been initiated. Then if he were to di-
vulge the secrets ... he has broken the trust placed in him and is morally
so depraved he is not worth listening to.... There is something both in-
decent and ridiculous about the public discussion of the esoteric in words
that can be generally understood."27
SECRECY AND SYMBOLIC POWER
Amongchildren,prideandbraggingareoftenbasedon a child'sbe-
ing able to say to the others:I know somethingyou don'tknow....
This jealousy of the knowledge about facts hidden to others is
25 Fredrik
Barth, Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 7.
26
Barth, p. 6. A similar case occurred among the Telefolmin peoples of New Guinea,
who were about to lose a cult center to the construction of copper mines. To preserve their
sacred lore, they invited an anthropologist to come and study materials that had formerly
been kept strictly secret ("Prompt Assistance for Telefolmin," Cultural Survival, vol. 3
[Spring 1979]).
27 EdwardConze, Buddhist Thoughtin India: ThreePhases of BuddhistPhilosophy (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), pp. 271-73.
shown in all contexts from the smallest to the largest.... The secret
gives one a position of exception.... All superior persons ... have
something mysterious.... From secrecy ... grows the erroraccording
to which everything mysterious is something importantand essential
(GEORGSIMMEL, 1950)28
For my own part, I do not believe there is any real way out of this double
bind. But I do believe there are a few alternative strategies for dealing
with it, which would still allow us to say something useful about the phe-
nomenon of secrecy. First and most basically, I do not think that we can
establish any single definitive ethical stance to the problem, precisely
because the specific moral issues will vary tremendously depending on
the particularsocial and historical context. Nonetheless, following Sisella
Bok, I do think the scholar needs to articulateand observe at least a few
basic ethical principles.29In the course of my own research among the
Kartabhajasin West Bengal and Bangladesh (1994-97), I made every
effort to maintain a policy of up-frontness regarding my intentions and
the nature of my research-that I was first and foremost a scholar, not a
religious seeker, and that I intended to use my findings as the basis for
a doctoral dissertation. I was, in fact, offered initiation by three different
Gurus and, on each occasion, rejected their offers, explaining that this
was simply not my goal. Moreover, I tried throughout my work to main-
tain a balance between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics
of respect: I sought to remain critical and to analyze this traditionrigor-
ously in light of real social, political, and historical interests, while at the
same time respecting the fact that there are portions of this traditionthat
are clearly private and to which I am not allowed access.
Second and more important, I would also suggest that we ought to
make a basic shift in our approachto the very problem of secrecy itself.
Employing some of the insights of Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, I
would argue that it is generally more fruitful to turnthe focus of our anal-
ysis away from the content of secrecy and instead toward the forms and
the strategies through which secret information is concealed, revealed,
and exchanged. Here I wish to undertakea "theoretical shift," similar to
the series of shifts undertakenby Foucault in his study of power and
sexuality. As Foucault suggests, it is necessary to turn from the study
28 Simmel (n. 10 above),

pp. 332-33.
29 See "Intrusive Social Science Research,"chap. 15 in Bok. Between 1994 and 1997, I
interviewed a numberof KartabhajaGurus in both West Bengal and Bangladesh; foremost
among them were: Sri Rafijit KumarPal, one of the two living Kartas,of Entali, Calcutta;
Afijali Datta (Afiju Ma), a popularand controversialfemale Guruof Taltola,Calcutta;Asit-
kumar Gosvami, a fine singer and songwriter, from Mazdia village, Nadiya district; Tri-
bafga Mahanta of rural Murshidabaddistrict; Sri Advaita Candra Das of Shyambazaar,
north Calcutta.
of "power" as an oppressive, substantial force, imposed from the "top

down" in the political hierarchy, to a study of the strategies through
which power is manifested.30 So too I would suggest that we make a shift
away from the secret as simply a hidden content and instead investigate
the strategies or "games of truth" through which the complex "effect" (to
use Bruce Lincoln's phrase) of secrecy is constructed.31 That is to say,
how is a given body of information endowed with the mystery, awe, and
prized value of a secret? Under what circumstances, in what contexts,
and through what relations of power is it exchanged? How does posses-
sion of that secret information affect the status of the "one who knows"?
As Bellman suggests, "Secrets cannot be characterized either by the
contents of the concealed message or by the consequences ... they are
understood by the way concealed information is withheld, restricted ...
and exposed. Secrecy is... a sociological form ... constituted by the very
procedures whereby secrets are communicated."32
As I wish to define it, secrecy is best understood as a strategy for ac-
cumulating "capital," in Bourdieu's sense of the term. Extending Marx's
definition of the term, Bourdieu understands capital to include not only
economic wealth but also as the nonmaterial resources of status, pres-
tige, valued knowledge, and privileged relationships. It refers, in short,
to "all goods, material and symbolic, that present themselves as rare and
worthy of being sought after in a particular social formation."33 Like
economic capital, however, symbolic capital is not mere wealth that is
hoarded and stockpiled; rather, it is a self-reproducing form of wealth, a
kind of "accumulated labor," which gives its owner "credit," or the abil-
ity to appropriate the labor and products of other agents. Bourdieu then
distinguishes between several varieties of capital: most important, in ad-
dition to economic capital, there is social capital (valued relations with
significant others), cultural capital (valued information or educational
30 "A theoretical shift had been required to analyze... the manifestations of power; it
led me to examine ... the open strategies and the rational techniques that articulatethe ex-
ercise of powers" (Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure
[New York: Vintage, 1986], p. 6).
31 Bruce Lincoln suggests a similar shift in his study of "authority."Rather than a con-
crete entity, authorityis best understood as a complex "effect" produced by a whole set of
interdependentrelations-the right speaker, the right context, the right time and place, the
right props, etc. (Authority: Construction and Corrosion [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994]).
32 Bellman (n. 10 above), p. 144, and cf. p. 5; cf. Tefft, ed. (n. 9 above), p. 321.
33 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge:Cambridge University
Press, 1977), p. 178; cf. "The Forms of Capital," in Handbook of Theory and Research
of the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986), p. 252.
"Symbolic capital is ... economic or political capital that is disavowed, misrecognized and
therebyrecognized, hence legitimate, a credit ... which in the long runguaranteeseconomic
profit"(PierreBourdieu, The Field of CulturalProduction [New York:Columbia University
Press, 1994], p. 75).
qualifications), and symbolic capital (the other forms of capital when

recognized as "legitimate," in the form of prestige and honor).34
Symbolic capital is itself the product of a kind of "social alchemy,"a
process of misrecognition, throughwhich materialcapital is transformed
and legitimated in the form of status or distinction. This is the process at
work, for example, in the purchase of an expensive work of art, which
confers the mark of "taste" and "distinction"on its owner, or in the in-
vestment in a good education, which bestows "cultivation"and cultural
capital. As such, the dynamics of the social field are determinedlargely by
the strategies and maneuvers of agents in their ongoing competition for
these symbolic resources: "Symbolic capital is the product of a struggle
in which each agent is both a ruthless competitor and supremejudge...
This capital can only be defended by a permanentstruggle to keep up with
the group above ... and distinguish oneself from the group below."35
In the context of an esoteric organization,I would argue, two processes
are at work that serve to transformsecret knowledge into a kind of cap-
ital. First, the strict guarding of information transformsknowledge into
a scare resource, a good that is "rareand worthy of being sought after."
To use Bourdieu's terms, secrecy involves an extreme form of the "cen-
sorship"that is imposed on all statementswithin the "marketof symbolic
goods"; for every individual modifies and censors his or her expressions
in anticipation of their reception by the other members of the social
field.36 Secrecy, however, is a deliberate and self-imposed censorship,
which functions to maximize the scarcity, value, and desirability of a
given piece of knowledge. T. M. Luhrmanwrites, "Secrecy is about con-
trol. It is about the individual possession of knowledge that others do not
have.... Secrecy elevates the value of the thing concealed. That which
is hidden grows desirable and seems powerful,"and "All knowledge is a
form of property in that it can be possessed. Knowledge can be given,
acquired, even sold ... secret knowledge evokes the sense of possession
most clearly."37As Lindstromsuggests in his work on the Tannapeoples
of the South Pacific, secrecy is therefore a central part of the "conversa-
tional economy" that constitutes every social order. Secrecy transforms
informationinto somethingthatcan be owned, exchanged, accumulated-
34 Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital,"pp. 252 ff.

35 PierreBourdieu, The
Logic of Practice, trans. RichardNice (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1990), p. 123. "The transformationof any kind of capital into symbolic
capital, a legitimate posses-sion ... is the fundamentaloperationof social alchemy" (ibid.,
p. 129).
36 Pierre Bourdieu, "The Economics of Linguistic Exchange," Social Science Informa-
tion 16 (1977): 645-68, and Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1984), p. 77.
37 Luhrmann
(n. 10 above), pp. 161, 137; cf. Bok (n. 19 above), p. 282: "Control over
secrecy and concealment gives power."
"a commodity, somethingthatcan be bought and sold."38What is most im-

portantabout secrets is not the hidden meanings they contain, but rather,
the "economy of exchanges" or resale value that secrets have as a com-
modity within a given information market:"Secrets turn knowledge into
property that can be exchanged. People swap or sell their secrets for...
money and other goods. Marketable information of this sort includes
spells, songs, metaphoricalwords, etc.... By preserving patterns of ig-
norance in the informationmarket,secrecy fuels talk between people who
do not know and those who do."39
Second, once it has been converted into this kind of valuable com-
modity, secret knowledge can serve as a source of "symbolic capital" in
Bourdieu's sense, as a form of status and power accumulated by social
actors and recognized as "legitimate" in a given social field. As Simmel
himself had long ago pointed out, "The secret gives one a position of
exception.... All superiorpersons have something mysterious."40Secret
knowledge thereby functions both as a form of cultural capital-special
information or "legitimate knowledge"-and as a form of social capi-
tal-a sign of membershipwithin a community and hierarchicalrelation-
ships with significant others. Particularly when combined with a series
of initiations or a hierarchy of grades, this is, like all capital, a self-
reproducing form of wealth, which grows increasingly powerful as one
advances in the ranks of knowledge and ritual degrees.
THE BLACK MARKET OF SYMBOLIC CAPITAL
However, in distinction to most of the forms of capital that Bourdieu dis-

cusses, the symbolic goods of the secret society can only be exchanged
behind closed doors, in the esoteric realm of ritual. Secret knowledge is
not exchanged publicly in mainstream society or in the field of exoteric
relations, but solely within the field of the esoteric society. Hence, we
might even call it a kind of "black market symbolic capital," a form of
capital that is valued only in special circumstances outside of ordinary
social transactions. Indeed, in some cases, this knowledge may even be
considered dangerous, threatening, or illegal in the eyes of mainstream
society. This danger, however, only makes it all the more powerful,
valuable, and desirable.
As such, the strategy of secrecy may be employed for a variety of
different social interests. It may be used by the ruling elite, in order to
38 Lindstrom
(n. 18 above), p. xii-xiii.
39 Ibid., p. 119. See Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 66.
40 Simmel (n. 10
above), p. 337. "The secret operates as an adorningpossession.... This
involves the contradiction that what recedes before the consciousness of others and is hid-
den is emphasized in their consciousness; that one should appear as a noteworthy person
through what one conceals" (ibid.).
reinforce a particular social arrangement or hierarchy of power, or to

mystify or naturalize their own status-in short, "not to disrupt order
and conformity, but to reinforce it."41But, in contrast, it may also be used
by subordinate and marginalized groups, in order to subvert, challenge,
or undermine such hierarchies. In Foucault's words, "silence and secrecy
are a shelter for power, anchoring its prohibitions; but they also loosen
its hold and provide for areas of tolerance."42 As we will see in the case
of the Kartabhajas, the tactics of secrecy could offer a new source of sta-
tus and membership in an alternative social order for many of the poorer,
lower-class, and marginized groups on the fringes of colonial society; but
the tactics of secrecy could also be used, simultaneously, to reinforce and
mystify the status of an elite group of powerful Gurus.
* * *
In response to anticipated objections from my readers, I should note that

this use of Bourdieu's notion of capital and the market metaphor of social
action is by no means a matter of simple reductionism or economic de-
terminism. On the contrary, Bourdieu proposed his own model largely as
a reaction against rigid Marxism or vulgar economism. For Bourdieu, the
economic realm is but one of many fields in the social order, alongside
the political, religious, artistic, and so forth, each of which has its own
laws of exchange and forms of capital.43 Moreover, the use of the eco-
nomic metaphor is not only justifiable, but in fact quite appropriate in
the case of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal. As Sudipta Sen
41 Wade Davis,
Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 284; also see my article, "Elitism and
Esotericism: Strategies of Secrecy and Power in French Freemasonry and South Indian
Tantra."Numen, vol. 44 (January 1997). As Simmel comments. "This significance of the
secret society as the intensification of sociological exclusiveness is shown in political
aristocracies.... By trying to conceal the numerical insignificance of the ruling class, ar-
istocracies exploit the psychological fact that the unknown appearsto be fearsome, mighty,
threatening"(Simmel, p. 365).
42 Michel Foucault, TheHistory of Sexuality, vol. 1,An Introduction(New York:Vintage,
1978), p. 101. On the counterculturalrole of secrecy, see Edward Tiryakian, "Towardthe
Sociology of Esoteric Culture,"American Journal of Sociology 78 (1952): 498-99; Hobs-
bawm (n. 13 above).
43 "The practices we describe as economic in the narrowsense (buying and selling com-
modities) are a sub-category of practices pertaining to a specific field, the market econ-
omy.... But there are other sub-categories of practice which pertain to other fields, the
fields of literature,art, politics and religion; these fields are characterizedby their own dis-
tinctive properties, by distinctive forms of capital, profit, etc.... Bourdieu does not wish
to reduce all social fields to the economy . . . he wishes to treat the economy in the narrow
senses as one field... among plurality of fields which are not reducible to one another"
(Thompson. Introductionin Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, p. 15; cf. Peter Jen-
kins. Pierre Bourdieu [London: Routledge, 1990], p. 87).
has shown, the image of the market or bazaar (bajar) was among the
most common metaphorsused throughoutpre- and postcolonial Bengali
literatureto describe the world as a whole: this mortal realm of constant
exchange, buying and selling, haggling and swindling. This is nowhere
more evident than in the Kartabhajasongs, which center around the im-
age of the "bazaar of the world" (bhava-bdjdr) and are saturated with
mercantile terminology borrowed from the East India Company.44
II. THE SECRET MARKETPLACE: SECRECY IN THE KARTABHAJA

TRADITION OF COLONIAL BENGAL
Brother,I'm afraidto speakof such things, lest, hearingit, you are

scared shitless!! (Bhaver Gita)45
Having outlined the main theoretical issues, let me now engage the prob-
lem of secrecy in one particulargroup with which I have some extensive
firsthand experience, the Kartabhajas,or "Worshipers of the Master."
Throughoutthe Bengali world, the Kartabhajashave a long and controver-
sial reputationbecause of their supposed engagement in secret, scandal-
ous, and immoral activities. As the orthodox Muslim leader, Muhammad
Riazuddin Ahmad, wrote in 1903, "The class of Fakirs called the Kar-
tabhajas ... is a group of necrophagous goblins [pisac] who have spread
their terrible poison throughout our community."46Even today, the
dangerous power and lurid attractionof the Kartabhajassurvives in the
Bengali imagination. As we see, for example, in widely read novels like
Kalakuta'sKothdySe Jan Ache, the Kartabhajasare surroundedby a tan-
talizing aura of danger, power, and allure-an allure made all the more
intense because any commerce with this group was explicitly forbidden
by Kalakuta'sconservative Brahmin family: "My first trip [to the Kar-
tabhajagathering]was not at all pleasant.... Even going to the gathering
was forbidden. The instructions of my guardians were quite clear: That
is a forbiddenplace.... In our family, as among many Brahminfamilies,
it was forbiddenbecause of its infamous reputation.But the veryfact that
44 Sudipta Sen, "Passages of Authority:Rulers, Tradersand Marketplacesin Bengal and

Banaras, 1700-1750," Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. 17, no. 1 (1996), and "Conquest of
Marketplaces: Exchange, Authority and Conflict in Early Colonial North India" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Chicago, 1994). On the Kartabhajas'use of economic terminology, see
my article, "The Poor Company" (n. 7 above); Sumanta Banerjee, "FromAulchand to Sati
Ma: The Institutionalizationof the Syncretist Karta-bhajaSect in Nineteenth Century Ben-
gal," Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. 16, no. 2 (1995); and RamakantaChakrabarty,Vais-
navism in Bengal: 1496-1900 (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1985), pp. 378 ff.
45 Bhaver Gita (n. 6 above), p. 159. The word I translate as "shitless" is atisar, which
means, literally, to suffer "morbid looseness of bowels, diarrhea,dysentery."
46 MuhammadRiazuddin Ahmad, ed., Islam Pracarak
(January 1903).
something is 'forbidden' also means that there is always an urge to trans-

gress that prohibition. For every veil, there is a desire to unveil. The
more secrecy there is, the more one's curiosity grows."47
Founded by a semilegendary holy madman named Aulcanid (ca. 1686-
1779)-who is said to have been Sri Caitanya in the disguise of a poor,
crazy fakir-the Kartabhajas stand out as perhaps the most important
later branch of the Vaisnava-Sahajiya tradition that survived in colonial
Bengal.48 A sophisticated and profoundly esoteric school, the Vaisnava-
Sahajiya tradition emerged out of the rich confluence of two major reli-
gious currents: on the one hand, the very old and highly esoteric school
of Buddhist Tantra known as the Sahajiyas (dating to at least the eighth
or ninth century); and on the other hand, the revival of the Vaisnava tra-
dition of mystical devotion (bhakti) to Lord Krsna, inaugurated by Sri
Caitanya (1486-1533). In the resulting Vaisnava-Sahajiya synthesis, the
esoteric rituals of the Sahajiya Buddhists fused with the devotional love
of the playful, erotic child-God, Krsna; and the erotic relationship be-
tween male and female practitioners, united in ritual intercourse, was ex-
alted as the supreme symbol of the divine relation between Krsna and
his illicit lover, the goddess Radha.49
THE "POOR COMPANY"
The Kartabhajas, however, represent a fascinating transformation of the

older Vaisnava-Sahajiya tradition under the new conditions of British co-
lonial rule. Indeed, this sect emerged at a critical historical moment and
47 Kflakuta, Kothay Se Jan Ache (Calcutta: De's Publishing, 1983), p. 25; my italics.
Kalakuta is a famous Bengali author who has written a number of novels about religious
sects like the Kartabhajas,Bauls, and others.
48 As BimalkumarMukhopadhyayconcludes, "Among the sects spawned by the Sahaji-
yas, the Kartabhajasare to be mentioned first and foremost. In terms of age, it is also the
oldest" ("PravartakakendrikSahajiya: Kartabhaja,"in KartabhajaDharmamatao Itihasa,
vol. 2, ed. S. Mitra [Calcutta: De Book Stand, 1977], p. 1). See Chakrabarty,chap. 20.
where he identifies the Kartabhajasas the most importantof the various deviant sects or
heterodox cults stemming from the Sahajiya tradition. Other scholars who identify the
Kartfbhajasas the most importantlater branchof the Vaisnava Sahajiya school include Ra-
tan Kumar Nandi, Kartabhaja: Dharma o Sdhitya (Naihati: Asani, 1984); Debendranath
De, KartabhajdDharmer Itivrtta (Calcutta:Jigasa Agencies, 1968), pp. 7 if.; Upendranath
Bhattacarya,Brigldr Baul o Baul Gdn (Calcutta:University of Calcutta, 1981), pp. 69 if.;
TusharChatterjee,"Some Observationson GuruCult and Minor Religious Sects of Bengal,"
Society and Change (January-March 1981), pp. 207-11. Dinescandra Sen, Brhat Bahga:
Supracin Kal haite Plasir Juddha Parjanta, vol. 2 (Calcutta:De's Publishing, 1993), p. 893.
49 On the Vaisnava-Sahajiya tradition, see Shashibushan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious
Cults, as a Background to Bengali Literature (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1935);
ManindraMohan Bose, The Post-Caitnaya Sahajia Cult of Bengal (Calcutta:University of
Calcutta, 1930). As Dimock (n. 8 above) summarizesthis doctrine: "The end of Man is the
perpetual experience of divine joy. Man is divine and has within himself the potential for
this experience .... Love between man and woman thus reduplicatesin microcosm the love
of Radha and Krsna"(p. 15).
geographical location-the area in and around Calcutta, the "Imperial

city,"at the turnof the nineteenth century,the high point of early colonial
and capitalist development in the subcontinent. The majority of its fol-
lowing was drawn from those classes who had been most negatively
affected by the rapidly changing economic context under colonial rule. In
the village areas, they came primarily from the poorer peasantry of rural
Bengal, who faced increasing hardshipsunder the new land-revenue pol-
icies of the British East India Company: "Memberswere low caste, poor,
illiterate people engaged in agriculturaloperations .... Change was in the
air.... Because of chronic rural indebtedness, landlord oppression and
famine... thousands of the poor low caste people were seeking some-
thing better."50
In the colonial center of Calcutta, the sect attractedthe poor laboring
classes who had recently migrated to the city from the villages and now
filled the slums and hutments of the "Black Town." As the nineteenth-
century paper Somaprakdsareported, "This religion holds sway partic-
ularly among the lower classes. According to Hindu scriptures.... They
do not have any freedom ... but in the Kartabhajasect they enjoy great
freedom."51As Sumanta Banerjee suggests, the Kartabhajasrepresented
the "underworld of the imperial city," the lower strata inhabiting the
slums of Calcutta's Black Town, who were an embarrassing eyesore to
the wealthy, Western-educatedupperclasses or bhadralok(civilized folk):
"One sect that raised a lot of controversy in those days was the Kar-
tabhajagroup. Although its headquarterswas ... Ghoshpara,a few miles
from Calcutta, it drew a lot of people from the poorer classes of the
city.... [T]he stress on equality of all peoples irrespective of caste...
drew the lower orders to the Kartabhajasect in large numbers."52Indeed,
drawing a large portion of their following from the porters, petty traders,
and factory workers laboring in the lowest rungs under the British East
India Company, the Kartabhajascalled themselves by the appropriately
50
Geoffrey A. Oddie, "Old Wine in New Bottles? Kartabhaja(Vaishnava) Converts to
Evangelical Christianity in Bengal, 1835-1845," Indian Economic and Social History Re-
view 32, no. 3 (1995): 329. As Banerjee comments, "almost all the contemporaryrecords"
show overwhelmingly that the Kartabhajafollowing came largely from "depressed castes,
untouchables, Muslim peasants, and artisans, as well as women" ("From Aulchand to Sati-
Ma," p. 44).
51
Somaprakasa, 20 Caitra, 1270 B.S. [1864]; cf. Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and
the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull,
1989), pp. 69-70.
52 Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets,
p. 1. For general descriptions of the social and
economic context in Calcutta in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see
S. Chaudhuri,ed., Calcutta: The Living City, vol. 1, The Past (Delhi: Oxford, 1990); P. T.
Nair, ed., Calcutta in the Eighteenth Century: Impressions of Travelers (Calcutta: Firma
KLM, 1984).
ironic title of the Poor Company (gorib kompni).53 As they sing in their
mystical-esoteric songs, entitled Bhdver Gita ("The Songs of Ecstasy"),
Look: the wonders of my Poor Company are truly delightful!

The Emperor gives no commands; the king punishes no one.
If someone in need of money commits a theft, the Company gives
him infinite wealth!
His poverty disappears and he no longer covets anything!54
According to Kartabhajarereading (or perhaps strong misreading) of

sacred history, the great Vaisnava movement led by Sri Caitanya in the
sixteenth century had been progressively corruptedand pervertedby the
later Vaisnava lineage; althoughinitially opposed to caste hierarchiesand
Brahminicalpower, it had graduallyreintroducedsocial divisions, ortho-
doxy, and ritualism, while progressively marginalizing the poor lower
classes. Therefore, the story goes, Caitanya himself decided to become
reincarnatein the form of this poor, wanderingmadman,Aulcand, in or-
der to found this new religion as a simple, easy (Sahaja) faith, a religion
of humanity (Manuser Dharma) for the sake of the poor, simple people.
"At present," Caitanya-Aulcanidthought, "there's no simple method of
worship for the poor, lowly, powerless people; that'swhy I have revealed
the easy path, so they can worship the truth within themselves, the wor-
ship of Man."55According to one of the most telling Kartabhajameta-
phors, the old marketplace-the old, orthodoxVaisnavacommunity-had
become corrupt and full of thieves; therefore, it was necessary for Cai-
tanya to come in a secret (gupta) form, to found the secret marketplace
(gupta hat), which is none other than the Kartabhajatradition itself.56
53 See
my article, "The Poor Company"; Banerjee, "From Aulchand to Sati Ma"; and
Chakrabarty'sdiscussion in his chapter on the Kartabhajasin Vaisnavismin Bengal. The
majority of the songs of the Bhaver Gita center aroundthe lives of porters, petty brokers
or middlemen. coolies and laborers in Calcutta and often in the service of the Company
(e.g., Bhaver Gita [n. 6 above], pp. 65-67, 116-20, 154-60, 214-20).
54 Bhaver Gita, p. 220.
55 Manulal Misra,
Kartabhaja Dharmer Adi-Vrttanta,in Bhattacarya,p. 64: cf. De, pp.
34-35.
s6 The
image of the "secret marketplace"is a play on a famous verse of the Caitanya
Caritanmrta (Antya Lila, 19.18-21), which uses the image of the marketas a metaphorfor
the devotional path, and in which Caitanya sells the spiritual goods of love and devotion.
See De, pp. 5 ff. On the image of the "secret Caitanya"and the secret Vrndavana,see Sat-
yasiva Pal, Ghospardr Sati Ma o Kartabahaja Dharma (Calcutta, 1991): "Caitanya...
remainedhidden for long time. But then he reappearedhere in here in Ghospara,and the dev-
otees of Vrndavanacan know him if they see him secretly with their secret eyes" (p. 246).
In the words of the great poet of the Sahebdhanisect, KubirGossain (d. 1879): "Ghospara
has become the secret Vrndavana, manifest to both boys and girls, rays of red sun light"
(cited in S. Pal, p. 83). There is also a Baul song attributed(falsely) to Lalan Shah, "Atthe
Ghospara Mela there is no distinction of caste; in Ghospara, the Secret Vrndavana,I can
find the Man of the Heart"(ibid.).
In essence, Kartabhaja philosophy and practice is rooted in the older

Vaisnava-Sahajiya and other Tantric traditions of Bengal. The supreme
reality and unifying force pervading all things is known as Sahaja-the
"in-born, spontaneous or innate" condition of all things in their true
nature, unobscured by the veils of ignorance and the illusion of the phe-
nomenal world.57 Sahaja is in fact present within every human being,
dwelling in the form of the Man of the Heart (Maner Manusa), the divine
spark of the Infinite within us all. As is sung in the Bhaver Gita,
All things and all events lie within the microcosm of the human body;
Whatever is or will be lies within the Self-Nature,
There is no difference between human beings
The infinite forms in every land, all the activities of every human
being, all things rest in Sahaja.58
As such, the means to attaining Sahaja does not lie in rigid rituals or in
the tenets of orthodox religion; rather, it lies in and through the individ-
ual human body, through techniques of yoga and meditation, and, in some
cases, through rituals of sexual intercourse between male and female
practitioners. When asked, "To which caste does Sahaja belong?" the
Kartabhaja sings,
Sahaja is of the Human caste.

Know, in a hint, what its nature is-
Public exposure is impossible, but a taste of it is possible:
its arising lies within the Body itself!
It is unrestricted by good or bad;
So what use will known laws be?
It is without refuge in any religious views
Hear this law: "Man is supreme."59
THE LANGUAGE OF THE MINT (Tyaksdli Bol)
One who is secret is liberated; one who is open (outside the veil), is
an adulteress. (KartabhajaMint Saying [tydksali bol], no. 121)
Although the easiest and most expedient means to liberation, the Sahaja
path is also potentially the most dangerous and-from an exoteric social
point of view-the most transgressive and morally objectionable. Hence,
57 As Bose
explains, Sahaja is a Sanskrit term meaning "what one is born with... the
naturaltendency one possesses from birth.... Love is a naturalcharacteristic of the Su-
preme Being which is possessed by man by his origin from the Eternal Spirit" (p. vi).
58 Bhdver
Gita, p. 33, Answer 2; p. 32, Question 1.
59 Ibid., p. 48, Answer 3.
228 Tormentof Secrecy
it must be deeply concealed behind the layers of secrecy, transmitted

only through guarded initiations at the hands of authoritative Gurus.
"Canjust anyone understandSahaja?" asks the Bhdver Gita, "this is not
an affair of spoken words / you must sit inside the unenterableroom and
keep this knowledge hidden far away!"60
The tactics of secrecy and concealment have long been a part of the
Tantrictraditions of Bengal.61However, it would seem that the practice
of secrecy assumed a new and more central importanceamidstthe chang-
ing political circumstances under British colonial rule. In the eyes of the
British orientalists and colonial administrators,the Tantrasquickly be-
came identified as the most extreme example of all the idolatry,polythe-
ism, and licentiousness that had corruptedHinduism in modern times. If
the orientalist scholars identified the "golden age" of India with the
Vedas, they also identified its most perverse and darkest age with the
Tantras("superstition of the worst and most silly kind," as Sir Monier-
Williams put it).62
Correspondingly,within the educated and reformed Hindu society of
Bengal, there appears to have been a growing sense of embarrassment
and repugnance toward anything smacking of Tantraand an increasing
desire either to sanitize or, more frequently, to repress or eradicate any
such phenomena:"Tantrictraditionswere made more respectablethrough
excisions, and at times suppressed altogether... as stricter ideas about
gentility developed in the shadow of Victorian norms in the nineteenth
century."63As Stewart has argued, the Sahajiya schools, with their use of
sexual rituals and their rejection of mainstreamsocial hierarchies, faced
increasingpersecutionthroughoutthe colonial period.Progressivelyforced
underground,ever deeper into the realm of self-occultation, the Sahajiyas
developed new and more ingenious methods for concealing their prac-
tices from the eyes of the outside world: "The encryption of Vaisnava
Sahajiya texts begins in earnest during the... British colonial period.
Even then the movement does not appearto have gone 'underground'until
the nineteenth century, when the British exert full control over the
60 Ibid., p. 414, Question 3.

61
Compare Dimock (n. 8 above), pp. 103 ff.; "The Sahajiya is an esoteric cult that needs
esoterism to live; it is a flower that blooms in the darkness and is destroyed by exposure
to light of day. What is unseen is unexposed, and to take on the protective coloring of
orthodox Vaisnavism is ... to allow the Sahajiya to remain unseen" (ibid., p. 109).
62 Sir Monier-Williams, Hinduism (London, 1894), p. 129. On this point, see my articles,
"The Strategic Uses of an Esoteric Text: The Mahanirvana Tantra,"South Asia, vol. 28,
no. 1 (1995), and "The Extreme Orient"(n. 5 above). "The enduringlegacy of Orientalism
is a contrasting set of images: the golden age, which is Indo-Aryan,classical Brahminical,
and elitist, versus a subsequentdarkage, which is medieval, popular,orgiastic and corrupt"
(David Kopf, "A HistoriographicalEssay on the Idea of Kali," in Shaping Bengali Worlds,
Public and Private, ed. Tony Stewart [East Lansing, Mich., 1989], p. 114).
63 Sumit Sarkar,An Exploration of the Ramakrishna VivekanandaTradition(Simla: In-
dian Institute of Cultural Studies, 1993), p. 45.
delta.... With the growth of colonial power, the Sahajiyas began to feel
pressure to become more invisible than ever, not simply to obscure their
rituals, but to transform their rahasya ["mystery"] into the truly secret,
in a Western sense."64
This phenomenon of increasing persecution from the dominant soci-
ety and an increasing need for secrecy is nowhere more evident than in
the case of the Kartabhajas. Emerging at the center of colonial rule (the
imperial city of Calcutta), at the high point of orientalist scholarship,
missionary activity, and Hindu reform movements, the Kartabhajas were
commonly singled out as the most scandalous of all Tantric sects-as the
"foremost of the Aghorapanthis," and as the most "degenerate form of
Tantric worship."65 As the nineteenth-century saint Ramakrsna described
it, the Kartabhaja path is a kind of back door or secret door (guhya
dvdra)-a very rapid, powerful way of reaching God, but also a rather
seedy and filthy one, comparable to entering a house by the latrine door
(methar dvara) instead of the front door.66
In response to this kind of scandal and attack, the Kartabhajas culti-
vated the tactics of concealment in new and more creative ways. Indeed,
they actively sought to cultivate two separate identities, a kind of split
self or double life-an orthodox, exoteric, conventional self (vyavahd-
rik) in mainstream society and a secret, occult, supremely liberated self
(paramdrthik) within the confines of the Kartabhajas sect. At the same
time, they also developed an extremely sophisticated system of esoteric
discourse and the coded transmission of information, which they dubbed
(very appropriately, I think) the "language of the mint" (.tydksali bol). This
mint language is expressed primarily through the medium of music and
highly esoteric, deeply encoded songs, which are traditionally ascribed to
the second and most famous Karta, Dulalcanid (or Lalsasi [1779-1833]),
and eventually collected in the Bhdver Gita.67 In the first decade of this
64 Stewart (n. 14 above), p. 39.
65 On the
Kartabhajasas "foremostof the Aghorapanthis, see Ray's satiricalpoem, "Kar-
tabhaja"(n. 6 above), pp. 667-68; on the Kartabhajasas a "degenerateform of Tantra,"see
RamacandraDatta, Tattvasara(1885; Calcutta: ShashadharPrakashani, 1983), p. 99.
66 On Ramakrsna'sview of the Kartabhajasand his characterizationof their path as "the
secret back door" or "latrine" entrance, see Jeffrey J. Kripal, Kali's Child: The Mystical
and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995), pp. 287 ff.
67 The Bhiver Gita (also called the Sri Juter Pada) is a collection of
songs pieced to-
gether from a variety of handwrittenmanuscripts and oral traditions. Though all the songs
are attributedto Dulalcand (Lalsasi), they are in fact so diverse in their style and language
that they are almost certainly not the product of a single author, but more likely, they are
the works of many anonymous authorscomposed in the years between Dulflcand's lifetime
(1793-1833) and the first printed editions of 1870 and 1882. The oldest known source for
these songs is a handwrittenmanuscript titled "KartabhajaGan,"Bangiya Sfhitya Parisat
MS 964, dated 1228 [1821]; the first printed edition appearedas Kartabhaja Gitavali (Cal-
cutta, 1870) and the first full edition, containing over six hundredsongs, was collected un-
der the title of Bhaver Gita by Ghose (n. 6 above). The most famous edition of the songs
are those of Migra (Calcutta, 1907, 1911, 1917, 1922).
century, the mint sayings were then collected in a list of some 204 short
cryptic utterances and published by the most importantKartabhajatheo-
logian, Manulal Misra, in his Sahajatattva Prakasa (The Revelation of
the Essence of Sahaja).68
First, we should ask, why are these strange esoteric utterances called
the language of the mint, and what is the significance of the image of
coinage here? On one hand, this is quite probably related to the histori-
cal context in which the Kartabhajasongs were composed, in the early
and mid-nineteenthcentury; this was in fact precisely the same time that
the colonial government in Bengal was trying to standardizeand regu-
larize the hitherto chaotic array of different kinds of coinage (cowry
shells, old Mughal coins, French arcot, the Company's silver coins, etc.).
During the 1830s-precisely the same time that the Kartabhajasongs
were composed-the Company's programof coinage reform resulted in
the establishment of the silver rupee as the standardcoin in Bengal. And
finally, in 1831, the Company built the famous new mint in downtown
Calcutta, where the British "first started to strike coins in its own name
without reference to the Mughal Emperorin Delhi."69
But still more important, as I will argue below, the importance of
these mint sayings lies precisely in the productionof value: the creation
of valuable and exchangeable pieces of information. As Misra explains
in his introduction to the sayings, these secret teachings are a kind of
"coinage for the poor (gorib)," a source of power and wealth for those
who are most needy and neglected by mainstreamsociety: "These Mint
Sayings are neither for the Marketplacenor for wealth; they are only for
the Poor."70Let us first survey a brief sampling of these mint sayings and
then make some effort to fathom their meaning and intended purpose
(because there is no apparent linear continuity from one saying to the
next, I have chosen a sampling of the most representativeand interesting
of them):
3. The nameof Manis a "Farce"or a "Jest"[Tamasd];the nameof his work

is Sahaja [the "innate"or "natural"stateof supremeBliss]. His formis
variegated.
4. Onemustnotforgetthe stagewhenhe collectedcakesof cow dung.
23. One need not taste a hot chili in anotherman's mouth.
34. A bath in a scum-covered betal-grower's pond is better than a bath in the
Ganges.
46. If one dies alive, one never dies.
50. I am not, you are not; He is.
68 Misra,
Sahaja TattvaPrakasa (n. 6 above), pp. 71 ff.
69 J. P. Losty, Calcutta: City of Palaces: A Survey of the City in the Days of the East India
Company, 1690-1858 (London: Arnold, 1990), p. 102.
70
Misra, Sahajatattva Prakasa, p. 58.
69. If you work zealously amidst the rubbishof the house, a pile of garbage can
become a mass of fine essence [sara].
85. I wish to become a poor man; if one attains the true condition of Poverty,
there is supreme happiness.
105. Everyone is the wife of the Husband, and everyone knows the name of the
Husband.But if one does not enjoy Him sexually [sambhoga kare], the love
is mere hearsay.
116. There are crocodiles in the Gangees; but a cat is only a fat tiger in a forest
of tulsi trees.
132. He who is born as a maggot in excrement still dwells in excrement, even if
he is seated in heaven.
133. If one lives in the kitchen, what will happen? He'll have to walk around
carrying the stench of the place.
136. All jackals make the same sound.
184. The name of the land of one's [true] Mother and Father is the "Poor
Company."
189. When one pulls the hair, the head comes along.
204. One can engage in moneylending with little wealth; but if there are debtors,
the Moneylender dies. Thus, one must engage in Moneylending with great
discretion.71
And finally, there is perhaps the most famous (though generally least un-
derstood) of the Kartabhaja secret sayings: "The woman must become a
Hijra [a man who has had his genitalia removed] and the man must be-
come a Khojd [a eunuch or impotent man]; then they will be Kartab-
hajas."72 Having outlined the historical context and basic form of the
Kartabhaja's esoteric discourse, let us now turn to the more formidable
task of trying to make some sense of these cryptic statements.
III. EXTREME INDETERMINACY: INTERPRETINGTHE KARTABHAJA

SECRETS
From even this brief sampling, we can see that the Kartabhajas' esoteric
discourse leads us into the most difficult snarls involved in every herme-
neutical quest for meaning. Not only are there a wide variety of radically
divergent interpretations among contemporary scholars, but even among
later Kartabhaja commentators and Gurus there is rather enormous dif-
ference of opinion as to the meaning of these cryptic sayings. As one fa-
mous nineteenth-century observer, the poet Nabincandra Sen, described
them, the Kartabhajas keep their teachings secretly encoded, much like
the European Freemasons: "One Kartabhaja sang some of their religious
songs for me.... I couldn't understand a word of it! The words were in-
deed Bengali, but the meaning could not possibly be understood! There
71
Ibid., pp. 58-71.
72This phrase is actually not included in Misra's list of 204 mint sayings, but it is widely
accepted as the most famous of the Kartabhajis' secret phrases; Misra discusses it else-
where (see, e.g., Kartabhaja Dharmer Adi Vrttanta,p. 31).
is a secret key to understandingthem. Revealing that key to anyone who

is not a Kartabhajais for them the supreme 'heresy' [the English word
is used here]. This is their version of 'Free Masonry' [again, the English
word]."73Like Nabincandra, I encountered a similar frustration in the
course of my own fieldwork among contemporaryKartabhajas.On one
hand, I found some gurus-such as one particularlysurly and gruff old
fellow, Tribafga Mahanta-who would tell me virtually nothing at all or
else mask his words in an impenetrabletangle of bizarremetaphors,rid-
dles, and cryptic symbols. In fact, when I continued to press him on the
question of sexual practices, Tribafigafinally became very impatient and
asked: "Well, are you married yet?" When I said no, he let out a snort
and scoffed, "So what can you know of such things? I'll say nothing more
to you!"74 Still more problematic, however, I also encountered some
Gurus-including RanijitKumarPal, one of the two living Kartas-who
seemed more than happy, and even a little too anxious, to tell me any-
thing he thought I might want to hear, even when it became apparent
that he had little idea what he was talking about.75
To make matters worse, even within the Kartabhajacommunity itself,
we encounter a tremendous variety of different, often contradictoryin-
terpretationsof the same "secret truths."Take, for example, a key mint
saying, which is one of the most often quoted, that the woman must be-
come a hijra and the man must become a eunuch. We should note how
very peculiar the first half of this statementis: for, typically, a hijra refers
to a particularkind of male who has had his penis and testicles removed;
the hijra then becomes part of a semireligious community of men who
dress as women and often engage in homosexual prostitution.76In the
course of my own textual research and fieldwork, I have encountered(at
least) the following eight different interpretations:
1. According to the more conservative or "orthodox" interpretation,
like that of the recently deceased Karta,Satyasiva Pal, this phrase simply
means that the Kartabhajamust be extremely chaste and pure, as austere
and sexless as a eunuch.77
2. In complete contrast, according to the more "esoteric" interpreta-
tion, this phrase means that the Kartabhajadisciple must be capable of
73 N. Sen (n. 6 above), p. 187.
74 Tribaiga Mahanta, interviewed by author, Ghoshpara,July 11, 1996.
75 I interviewed Ranjit KumarPal numerous times at his home in Entali, north Calcutta,
between July and October, 1996. Although a very kind man, Rafjit Kumarclearly had a
vested interest in promoting his tradition and saw me-a wealthy Western researcher-as
a golden opportunity.
76 See Serena Nanda'sexcellent study of this community,Neither Man nor Woman:The
Hijras of India (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990).
77 S. Pal (n. 55 above), pp. 219 ff.; as DinescandraSen comments, "Everyoneknows the
verse of Baba Aul: the woman is a hijra, the man a eunuch, then you will be a Kartabhaja.
If one cannot fully control the senses, one has no authorityto enter this religion" (Bahga-
bani [Jaistha, 1922]).
the most difficultTantricritualof sexual intercourse-but must do so with-

out giving in to mere sensual lust. This paradoxical and dangerous feat
(impossible for most ordinaryhuman beings) is said to be like "making
a frog dance in a snake's mouth,"like "bathing in the ocean without get-
ting your hair wet," or like a woman becoming a hijra.78
3. For others, this statement has a more spiritual and mystical mean-
ing: it refers to the ultimate state of divine union and bliss-a kind of
"spiritual androgyny"-in which the Kartabhajaexperiences both male
and female principles within his own body.79
4. For some, it means that both male and female devotees must be-
come symbolically "feminine,"passive and receptive in relation to God,
who is the only true "male" in the universe.
5. And for still others, it simply means that the Kartabhajamust go be-
yond all dualities altogether-to the "formless state," beyond male and
female, beyond body and spirit, beyond good and evil.80
6. It is ratherstriking that at least a few have interpretedthis sentence
quite literally, taking it to mean that the Kartabhajamust really by a
hijra-that is, part of a special community of castratedmales, who dress
as women and are involved in homosexual prostitution (as Ramakrsna's
biographer,RamchandraDatta, described them, their "repulsive lifestyle
is worse even than that of prostitutes").8'
7. Some suggest that the meaning of this statement is not fixed or sin-
gular, but rather that it varies depending on the disciple's capacity and
level of initiation.82
8. Finally, I should also note that, in the course of my interviews with
several Gurus,I raninto the ratherfrustratingproblemof self-contradictory
and changeable interpretations,receiving one answer on one occasion and
a completely different answer on another.
In sum, what we encounter in the problem of secrecy is an especially
acute example of what Paul Ricoeur calls the "conflict of interpretations"
and "indeterminacy of meaning," which is inherent in every discourse.
78 CompareAksaykumarSen, Srisriramakrsna-punthi(Calcutta,1976): "Takinga woman

is the true method of practice; but how many men in a million are capable of such a prac-
tice? The Lord said that this path is not easy-The woman must become a hijra, the man
must become a eunuch, then they will be Kartabhajas,otherwise, they will not. At every
step the practitioners fear falling" (p. 116). See also Bhattaicarya(n. 48 above), pp. 69 if.
79 These last two readings are given by Advaita Das, Saigit o Darsan (Calcutta: Caya-
nika, 1992), pp. 69 ff.
80 This is the
explanation given by a KartabhajaGuru named Trailokya Mahanta, inter-
viewed in Sudhir Cakravarti,Pagcim Baiger Meld o Mahatosab (Calcutta: Pustak Bipani,
1996): "One must remain in the formless state. It is as if the woman becomes a hijra and
the man becomes a khoja" (p. 177).
81 Kripal (n. 66 above), pp. 224-25.
82
Compare Advaita CandraDas, Sri Satlma Candrika(Calcutta:Firma KLM, 1986), pp.
70 ff; and Sri J. [pseud.], "KartabhajaderSamrbandhe Krorapatre,"Bandhava 6, no. 9 (1288
[1881]): 395.
For every text and every utterance is subject to multiple, divergent read-
ings in different social and historical contexts, to a constant process of re-
reading and reinterpretation within every group of readers. Hence the
meaning of a given text is never fixed but is always in process, always
being made and remade, deconstructed and reconstructed: "To interpret
is to appropriate here and now the intention of the text ... the intended
meaning is not the presumed intention of the author but rather what the
text means for whoever complies with its injunction."83 As literary critics
like Roland Barthes have shown us, the meaning of any utterance is always
profoundly contextual, its significance derived more from the social and
historical context in which it is read or received than it is from the orig-
inal intention of its speaker: "The ability of a text to make sense depends
less on the willed intention of the author than on the creative activity of
the reader. ... A text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination."84
Precisely because of its intentionally ambiguous and mystifying char-
acter, esoteric discourse is perhaps among the most extreme cases of this
basic hermeneutic problem: it is subject to a kind of maelstrom of in-
terpretations. Because it is so obscure, so deliberately hidden, a secret
utterance may be given radically different meanings, depending on its
context-depending on which Guru is interpreting it, to whom he is re-
vealing it, in what context, at what stage of initiation, in which historical
period or social milieu he is speaking, and so forth. Hence, it is not simply
the case that secret discourse is semantically "empty" or devoid of any con-
tent; it is not a kind of "McGuffin," to use Alfred Hitchcock's metaphor.85
83 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneuticsand the Human Sciences (Toronto:University of Toronto

Press, 1986), pp. 161-62. See Mario J. Valdes, introductionto A Ricoeur Reader:Reflection
and Imagination (Toronto:University of TorontoPress, 1991): "Ratherthan a transposition
of meaning from author to reader, literary criticism becomes a process, a movement, back
and forth between text and critic for the benefit of all those who are in the textual
commentary ... there can be no claim to definitive meaning of the text, for this claim
would kill the text" (p. 11).
84 Clifford, The Predicament (n. 15 above), p. 52, paraphrasingRoland Barthes, Image
Music Text(New York: Hill & Wang, 1977), pp. 146, 148.
85 As Hitchcock explained in a 1966 television interview with Francois Truffaut,the
"McGuffin"is a metaphorfor that mysterious elusive thing that everyone is runningaround
trying to find, but which never actually exists; it is thus the driving force behind most good
mystery and spy stories (see Frangoise Truffaut,Hitchcock [New York:Simon & Schuster,
1967]). A good example of a McGuffin appears in Hitchcock's spy film, The Thirty-Nine
Steps, in which we are constantly told about a mysterious secret spy organizationcalled the
"Thirty-NineSteps,"but we never actually find what it is or even if it exists. Some scholars,
like Walter Burkert, have suggested that the "secret"of cults like the ancient Mysteries is
a McGuffin-something banal and meaningless; what was importantwas simply that it was
highly prized and could grant prestige (Walter Burkert, "Der Geheime Reiz des Verbo-
genen: Antike Mysterienkulte,"in Kippenbergand Stroumsa(n. 11 above), pp. 79-100. How-
ever, as Apter points out, even though it may be tempting to dismiss cult secrets as mere
"vehicles of deliberate mystification" or a "manufacturedillusion," this is ultimately in-
adequatefor understandingthe deeper power of secrecy: "The possibility thatritual vessels
are semantically empty is intriguing but inaccurate . . . ritual symbols are neither arbitrary
nor meaningless, but are icons and indices of political power" ([n. 22 above], pp. 107-8).
On the contrary,we might say that it has too many meanings, it is capable
of bearing an enormous variety of different interpretations.Secret dis-
course, in short, is extremely indeterminate and radically contextual. It
is in this sense, perhaps, more like what Barthes calls the "degree zero
signifier": "the pure sign that means everything,"the "sign to which all
meanings can be attributed."86
So the question remains, if we have undergone initiation at the hands
of a Guru-and, in fact, even if we have undergone initiation-how can
we make any sense of these deliberately confusing and obfuscating eso-
teric statements? It may well be true that I can never know the ultimate
referent of these statements (and it may also be true that there is, in fact,
no single, ultimate referent), but I can examine the metaphoricforms and
discursive strategies through which they are transmitted-the tactics of
disguise and dissimulation, of simultaneous revelation and obfuscation.
Most important,I would identify the following four strategies.
1. "Advertising" the secret: The dialectic of lure and withdrawal.
The first and most basic strategy is the "advertisement"of the secret-
the claim to possess very precious, rare, and valuable knowledge, while
simultaneously partially revealing and largely concealing it. For a secret
is only worth anything if someone knows you have a secret. As Bellman
suggests, this is the very paradoxof secrecy: it is based on a "do-not-talk
prescription," which is contradicted by the fact that "secrecy is a so-
ciological form constituted by the very procedures whereby secrets are
communicated."87
In the case of the Kartabhajas,we have the ratherironic phenomenon
that teachings that are supposed to be very dangerous and powerful have
also been published, distributedpublicly, and made fairly readily avail-
able in the printedform of Bhaver Gita or Misra'scollection of mint say-
ings. As Misra himself openly declares, "Out of compassion for the poor,
lower class people ... Dulalcaiidrevealed these most secret teachings ...
In this precious treasury [of mint sayings], many valuable meanings are
contained within each word." Yet the deeper meaning or significance of
these truths is always held in reserve, kept only for initiates and, ulti-
mately, for the highest-level initiates. As Misra continues, "But He re-
vealed ... these most secret practices in a very cryptic form. Not everyone
can understand the meaning of these secret teachings."88The supreme
reality of Sahaja, the Bhaver Gita repeatedly tells us, cannot be com-
municated through ordinary language and must not be revealed to the
uninitiated exoteric or bestial man (pasu): the readeris regularly warned
86 Roland
Barthes, The Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Hill & Wang,
1995), p. xxiii. See also Barthes, WritingDegree Zero (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977).
87 Bellman (n. 10 above), p. 144.
88 Misra,
Satyadharma Updsana vd Sukrabdrer Yajana Prandli (Calcutta: Indralekha
Press, 1398 B.S. [1991]) (hereafter cited as Satyadharma Upasana), pp. 66-67.
"never speak of this openly to anyone!"89And yet, ratherironically, the

Kartabhajasconstantly, perhaps obsessively, refer to their possession of
secret knowledge-albeit it in roundabout and sidelong ways, such as
gesturing indirectly by means of hints, symbols, or enigmas (praheli,
abhdsa); the Bhdver Gita states, "one must understandthroughshadows"
and "Know, in a hint, what its natureis-public exposure is impossible,
but a trace of it is possible."90In sum, the advertisementinvolves a skillful
dialectic of lure and withdrawal-the interplay between the promise of
awesome secret knowledge and the continuous (perhapsinfinite) deferral
of revelation. The true meaning of a real secret is always reserved for the
next meeting, the next stage of spiritual attainment.As one Kartabhaja
Guru, Asitkumar Gosvami, enthusiastically proclaimed, "I know many
secret things I can tell you!"91
2. Hierarchalization of truth and controlled access to information.
The second of these strategies is to construct a graded hierarchy of lev-
els of "truth"and then to restrict access to these truthsby means of ini-
tiation. As Barth observes, "If you seek to create highly valued infor-
mation ... you must arrangeworship so that few persons gain access to
these truths."92Although the mint sayings themselves can be obtained in
printed form by more or less anyone, whether initiated or not, the mean-
ing and value of these odd statements is strictly guarded and accessible
only through the teachings of an authoritativeGuru. Thus, like most es-
oteric organizations, the Kartabhajashave constructeda complex hierar-
chical system of initiations. The sect as a whole is organized according
to basic tripartitehierarchy,consisting of the Karta (the "master"or chief
Guru, identified as Lord Krsna incarnate), the Mahasays (the regional
Gurus with authority over a given village or locale), and the common
baratis (ordinarydisciples). The bardtis, in turn, are furtherdivided into
the common or gross (sthila) exoteric devotees, at the lower levels of ba-
sic devotional teachings, and the truly poor (kangal) esoteric disciples,
who are initiated into the most profound and powerful secret practices.
And finally, within the class of the poor, there is yet anotherhierarchyof
degrees, according to one's level of spiritual attainmentand knowledge:
these consist of the four progressive stages of (1) the pravarta or begin-
ner; (2) the sadhaka or practitioner;(3) the siddha, the accomplished or
perfected disciple; and, finally, (4) the siddher siddha, the perfect of the
perfect, who has attained the highest state of cessation (nivrtti) or living
death (jydnte mard) in which the individual self is annihilatedin the in-
89 Bhdver Gita,
p. 153.
90 Ibid.,
pp. 97, 45.
91 Asitkumar Gosvami, interview by author,Mazdia village, Nadiya district, September
10, 1996.
92 Barth
(n. 25 above), p. 217.
toxicating madness and ecstasy of Sahaja.93 The hierarchy thus looks

something like this:
I. Kartd (God incarnate)
II. Mahdsay (regional guru)
III. Barati (disciple)
A. The "poor" (kdagdl) or esoteric disciples
1. Nivrtti (extinction) or siddher siddha (the most perfect of the
perfect), attainmentof divinity and supreme bliss
2. Siddha (perfect), the stage of lesser gods
3. Sadhaka (practitioner)
4. Pravarta (novice, beginner)
B. The "coarse" (sthila) or exoteric disciples
At each of these stages, as he advances in devotion and skill in esoteric
practice, the disciple is entrustedwith more and more of this secret knowl-
edge. As one anonymous reporterdescribed this system in his study of
the Kartabhajasin 1881, "The practices of the Kartabhajasare conducted
in secret. Their secrets can only be revealed according to the class of the
disciple. Gradually, as he rises to higher and higher grades, the disciple
gains authority to learn the most profound secrets."94
For example, an ordinaryKartabhajanovice is first entrustedonly with
simple teachings, such as the initiatory mantra given on first entry into
the cult: "O sinless Lord! At thy pleasure I go and return!Not a moment
am I without thee. Save me, great Lord."95The most profound pieces of
secret information are to be entrusted only to the most advanced disci-
ples, who have attainedthe final stages of liberation and extinction in the
divine abyss of Sahaja. These include, for example, the references to the
supreme condition of living death-"If one dies alive one never dies"-
or the realization that everything that exists, including the human body,
is pervaded by and united with God-for example, "I am not, you are
not; He is." Above all, the most precious and guardedof the mint sayings
are those dealing with erotic metaphors(e.g., "Everyone is the wife of the
Husband.... But if one does not enjoy him sexually, the love is mere
hearsay"),particularlythose containing references to esoteric Tantricrit-
uals or the use of sexual intercourse as a sacramental act.
To make matters all the more complicated, the same statements may
often be given very different, even contradictory,interpretationsat differ-
ent stages of initiation. Take, for example, the mint saying, "the woman
must become a Hijra and the man must become a eunuch; then they will
93 This hierarchy is summarized in Misra's

Sahajatattva Prakasa (n. 6 above) and ana-
lyzed by Nandi (n. 48 above), pp. 69 ff.
94 Sri J.
[pseud.] (n. 82 above), p. 395.
95
Chakrabarty(n. 44 above), p. 368.
be Kartabhajas."As one of the two living Kartds, Ranjit KumarPal, ex-

plained to me, this statement has a very ordinary exoteric meaning for
novices and lower-level initiates: it means simply that the Kartabhaja
must have restraintover his senses and desires, he or she must be like a
eunuch, chaste and pure. For the more advanced and developed initiates,
however, this statement has a far more profound esoteric meaning: it re-
fers to the ultimate state of divine union and bliss-a kind of spiritualan-
drogyny-in which man and woman are united as one, both experiencing
the supreme nondual unity of male and female within themselves.96In
short, ascending the esoteric hierarchyis much like peeling an onion, of
which each layer is deconstructedand negated as one proceeds beyond it.
And it is just this progressive unveiling, this constant peeling of the lay-
ers of secrecy, that ensures that the power and value of the secret as a
form of capital always remains in tact. As a self-reproducing form of
wealth this capital only continues to increase and grow, becoming ever
more awesome and valuable as one ascends in rank and status.
3. The skillful use of obscurity: Mumbojumbo with exchange value.
The third of these strategies we might call the intentional and systematic
use of ambiguous language. Secrecy is thus a key part of what Bourdieu
calls the process of "misrecognition"or mystification, the "modalities of
obliqueness and opacity, which endow certain persons with the mysteri-
ous auraof power, prestige, or legitimate authority."97 This is what Robert
Thurmanhas appropriatelydubbed the "skillful use of obscurity"or the
"deliberateuse of ambiguityin the controlof religious ideology."98Forex-
ample, mint sayings such as "Alljackals make the same sound"or "There
are crocodiles in the Ganges; but a cat is only a fat tiger in a forest of
tulsi trees" seem to carry little clear significance but appearto be inten-
tionally confusing and deliberatelyopaque.And others,such as "Whenone
pulls the hair, the head comes along," or "If one lives in the kitchen....
he'll have to walk around carrying the stench of the place," seem to be
little more than relatively innocuous and ratherbanal aphorisms.
However, if many of these statementsappearnonsensical, pointless, or
even completely absurd, this is surely only another part of that mecha-
nism that transforms ordinary words into rare, precious esoteric knowl-
96
Rafijit Kumar Pal, interview by author, Entali, Calcutta, July 14, 1996.
97 Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (n. 35 above), p. 141.
98 For a
good discussion of this "skillful use of obscurity"in BuddhistTantra,see Robert
Thurman,"VajraHermeneutics,"in Buddhist Hermeneutics, ed. D. Lopez (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 1988). For a good analysis of its role in Aboriginal society, see
Ian Keen, Knowledge and Secrecy in Aboriginal Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). "The
constitution of guarded religious knowledge was founded in ambiguity. I posit a general
structurein the control of knowledge, both between groups and age/gender categories, rest-
ing in the ambiguity of meaning . . . mystery was in the hands of the few, who deliberately
used devices of obscurity in the control of religious ideology" (p. 21).
edge. As Lindstromsuggests, nonsense plays a very powerful role in the

information market,precisely because it points to something mysterious,
unknowable, and awesome; as a kind of mumbo jumbo with exchange
value, it allows the speaker to circulate a highly valued utterance, with-
out really revealing anything. Lindstrom writes, "This opaque nonsense
is an important discursive procedure that permits people to seem to be
revealing knowledge while maintainingits secrecy and its continuing ex-
change value.... People suspect that nonsense, were it to be plumbed
successfully, might reveal itself to be powerful information.... Discur-
sive nonsense ... permits a spokesman to circulate knowledge and at the
same time maintain the secret of the statement."99
4. Semantic shock and extrememetaphorization. The fourth of these
strategies we might call (borrowing Ricoeur's phrase) the power of se-
mantic shock-namely, the effect that deliberatelyjarring,unusual, weird,
or even offensive juxtapositions of words have on their audience. As
Ricoeur suggests, this shock effect is seen above all in the case of a good
metaphor,in which two very differentsemantic fields are suddenlybrought
together in a new and unexpected way: the result is a temporarysuspen-
sion or even destruction of the ordinary semantic function of ordinary
language, with a flash of new insight that forces us to think of things
in a new and unexpected way. Richard Kearney writes, "It is the 'seman-
tic shock' engendered by the coming together of two different meanings
which produces a new meaning. Imagination... is the power of meta-
phorically ... forging an unprecedentedsemantic pertinence."100Indeed,
by temporarily shattering the usual system of reference, by suspending
the common function of language, a powerful metaphorhas the potential
to reshape our vision of the world itself, to open up a new world of mean-
ing and insight-indeed, in Ricoeur's words, to "remakereality."It is just
this kind of semantic shock, I think, which occurs in the Kartabhajas'ex-
cessive use of strangemetaphorsand bizarresymbolism-maggots born in
excrement, scum-coveredponds, eunuchs and androgynes, stinking fruits,
cakes of cow dung, and so forth. They seem to delight in particularin
contradictions or disquieting paradoxes (e.g., "the woman must become
a hijra").As in the case of a good metaphor,the purpose of these odd im-
ages is not so much to communicate information as it is to jar or shock
their listener. As Ricoeur puts it, "The strategy of metaphoricaldiscourse
99 Lindstrom (n. 18 above), pp. 121-22.

100Richard
Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard (London: Harper
Collins, 1991), p. 152; see Paul Ricoeur, "The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imag-
ination and Feeling," in On Metaphor, ed. S. Sacks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978): "The sense of a novel metaphor... is the emergence of a new semantic congru-
ence ... from the ruins of the literal sense shattered by semantic incompatibility or ab-
surdity ... the suspension of the reference properto ordinarylanguage is the condition for
the emergence of a more radical way of looking at things" (pp. 151-52).
is aimed not at facilitating communication or improving the efficacy of

argumentation,but ratherat challenging and even shatteringour sense of
reality through reflective redescription."101
The Kartabhajas'use of esoteric discourse, however, goes far beyond
even Ricoeur's concept of semantic shock and the destructionand remak-
ing of language. For the Kartabhajasaim at actually shatteringtheir very
experience of reality, annihilating dualistic conceptual thought and im-
mersing the self into the infinite bliss of Sahaja. The deeper function
behind these bizarre statements and the paradoxical language is not sim-
ply a literary exercise or a kind of code language to be deciphered on an
intellectual place; it is a soteriological technique, the aim of which is pre-
cisely to shatter and deconstruct ordinaryways of thinking and viewing
the world, to thrustthe initiate into an ecstatic mystical experience. This
nondual, suprarationalstate of Sahaja can only be described by paradox
and absurdity-like being "dead while alive," like "bathingin the sea of
nectar without getting your hair wet." By reflecting on these seemingly
irrationalphrases, together with techniques of meditation and yogic dis-
ciplines, the initiate is led into the "paradoxicalsituation,"as Eliade calls
it, the state in which the ordinaryconceptual structuresand categories by
which we carve up reality are suddenly shatteredand transgressed:"San-
dhdbhasa ... seeks to projectthe yogin into the paradoxicalsituation....
The semantic polyvalence of words substitutes ambiguity for the usual
system of reference in ordinary language. This destruction of language
contributes ... to breaking the profane universe and replacing it with a
universe of convertible and integrable planes."102
But in addition to this soteriological goal, the deliberate use of shock-
ing or offensive imagery also has a very importantrole within the linguis-
tic market. For it also works very effectively to intensify the symbolic
value of a given piece of secret information: it maximizes the aura of
danger, the "sexiness" and power that surroundsa particularstatement,
making it appearall the more awesome, mysterious, and even potentially
dangerous. This is especially the case in those statements with explicitly
erotic imagery (e.g., references to esoteric sexual practices or the ritual
of parakiya love), which violates normal social conventions and reli-
gious boundariesand which is even regardedas immortalor illegal in the
eyes of mainstream society. According to a key mint saying (no. 121),
"The one who is secret is liberated;the one who is outside the veil is an
adulteress."Indeed, as the Kartabhajassing in the BhdverGita, "I'mafraid
to tell you about this, lest you be scared shitless!"
101Ricoeur, A Ricoeur Reader (n. 83 above), 32.

p.
102 Mircea Eliade, Yoga:Immortalityand Freedom (Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniversity
Press, 1958), p. 250.
BLACK MARKET SYMBOLIC CAPITAL: "COINAGE FOR THE POOR"
Just as one must protect his wealth and possessions from thieves, O
Beloved, so too, Devi, one must protect this Kula worship from ordi-
nary bestial men. O Devi, Kula ritual should always be kept secret, as
a woman does not reveal her pregnancy by her lover. The Vedas, Pu-
ranas, and Sastras display themselves like prostitutes,but this wisdom
is secretive like a daughter in law. (Kularnava Tantra,XI.82, 85)103
The net result of these various discursive strategies-these tactics of re-

stricted access, deliberate obfuscation, or metaphoricshock-is precisely
the creation of value: together, they serve to transforma given piece of
ordinaryinformationinto a rare,highly valued resource or precious com-
modity. And precisely because secret discourse is extremely indeterminate
and radically contextual, its value does not lie in its content or substance,
but rather in its exchange. Like money or coinage, secret discourse is
something that is always (whatever its content) to be exchanged, to be
transmittedfrom Guru to disciple, from insider to outsider, from higher-
level initiate to lower-level initiate. Hence, to possess this rare, mys-
terious, potentially dangerous knowledge is to possess enormous status,
prestige, and symbolic capital. As Misra himself explains in his intro-
duction to the "mint sayings," this language is called "the mint"precisely
because, like a coinage mint, it creates highly valued objects, which must
be carefully hidden within the vault of esoteric discourse: "The essen-
tial meaning of Tydksali [the Mint]. Out of compassion for the poor,
lower class people ... Dulalcafid revealed the Sahajapath.... But he re-
vealed ...these most secret practices in a very brief form. Hence, not
everyone can understandthe essential meaning of these secret teachings.
All these divine teachings are called Tydksali.For, just as, by means of
the Mint-that is, the device by which coins are fashioned-gold, silver,
etc., are sealed and can be stored up in vast amounts, so too, in this pre-
cious treasury,many valuable meanings are hidden within each word."104
This is, however, no mere ordinarycoinage, no mere wealth for the greedy
and powerful men of the marketplace; rather, we are told, it is specif-
ically a coinage for the poor, a form of wealth and power for the weak
and disadvantaged. As we read again and again in the mint sayings:
123. TheseMintSayingsareneitherfor theMarketplace

norfor wealth;theyare
only for the poor.
124. Thecommandof theDivineMouthis: "thePoorbelongto me, andI belong
to the Poor."
103Kuldrnava
Tantra,ed. UpendrakumarDas (Calcutta: Nababharata,1383 B.S.).
104 66-67.
Misra, Satyadharma Updsana, pp.
184. The name of the land of one's [true]Motherand Fatheris the "Poor
Company."
As such, this mint language or coinage for the poor played a series of
important roles within the specific social and historical context of the
Black Town of Calcutta in the early colonial period. First, it opened up
the possibility of an alternativesocial space or what Bourdieuhas called a
free marketof linguistic exchange. Creatinga new arenafor discourse and
social interaction,concealed from the dominant social order, it opened a
new space in which poor, lower-class individuals could find a tempo-
rary freedom from the burdens of caste and labor in mainstream soci-
ety. As Misra himself explains in an explicitly "economic" metaphor,the
Kartabhaja'sesoteric language opens up a new, secret marketplace-the
Marketplace of Truth (satyahat) or the Market of Bliss (ananda-hat).
Concealed from the eyes of the rich and powerful, this is a market in
which the poor lower orders(kadgal, gorib lok) can attainvast new wealth
and spiritual commodities: "Manusa-cand's[Aulcdad's] Marketplace of
Truth.In this marketplacewhere is nothing but the buying and selling of
pure love. The genuine disciples engage in the business of truth in this
marketplace.... No merchantscome here intoxicatedwith greed.... This
is only a marketplace of the poor [e sudhha kdngaler hdt]. What one
engages in buying and selling in this marketplace,there is never any loss,
and all one's desires are fulfilled; one can become rich in infinite
wealth.... In this marketplace of bliss, there is no distinction between
kings and subjects, rich men and poor men."105In this sense, esoteric dis-
course operates in a way not entirely unlike slang. As Bourdieu suggests,
slang is an intentionally deviant form of discourse, which is exchanged
and understood only within a very specific context, among a particular
group of insiders. Hence, it offers an alternativekind of distinction, com-
munal identity, and symbolic capital, particularlyfor those groups who
are marginalized or deprived of actual capital in mainstream society
(racial and ethnic minorities, poor working classes, etc.). It is thus "the
product of the pursuit of distinction in a dominated market. It is one of
the ways in which those individuals... who are poorly endowed with
economic and cultural capital are able to distinguish themselves."106
The Kartabhajas,however, take this a step further.Indeed, they seek
to create, not only an alternative social space or "free market"of social
exchange, but also two separate identities, two distinct "selves." In the
external world of society, they live a conventional (vyavaharik)or exo-
teric life, in conformity with the laws of caste and religious orthodoxy;
but in the inner life of the Kartabhajasect, they attain an ultimate or su-
105Ibid., pp. 59-60.
106
Thompson (n. 43 above), p. 22.
preme (paramarthik)identity, transcendingnormal social restrictionsand

orthodox religion. With a kind of dual or schizophrenic personality, the
Kartabhajacould thereby "respect social norms and performduties main-
taining a traditionalfacade, while secretly worshipping the Karta."'07As
DineshchandraSen writes, "The Sahajaremains like one blind in the day-
light, and his true life begins at night. In the daytime he has to do con-
ventional things, observe the rules of caste and pay respect to the Malik,
the Missionary and the Brahman..... But he becomes the true man at night
in secret societies.... There they pay no heed to the rules of caste and
other social relations."108
And finally, the possession of this secret information, and the progres-
sive exchange and accumulation of the coinage or capital of the mint
sayings, offers the initiate the opportunityto ascend an alternative social
hierarchy-to attain what Winston Davis calls a kind of "upward reli-
gious mobility."109For, like all forms of capital, secret knowledge is not
mere wealth that is stored up and hoarded;rather,it is a self-reproducing
form of wealth, which grows in mystery and power as one ascends the
esoteric hierarchy.The furtherone advances in knowledge of these mint
sayings, the more layers of hidden meanings he unpeels in each secret
word, and the higher he rises in initiatic status, the more his symbolic
capital accumulates interest and generates more capital. As former Karta
Satyasiva Pal explains, the disciple rises successively through the de-
grees of initiation until he reaches the highest, the most powerful-and
also the most dangerous, even deadly stage-of knowledge, which is
possible only for the rarestof individuals: "One after the other, one must
rise through the levels [of initiation].... The final stage is very difficult,
for there is no food, no pleasure, no sleep, no eyes, no ears, no worldly
thoughts.... Then he will be dead while living [jyante mara]. If there is
a single mistake, there is a possibility of destroying the body. That'swhy
this stage is not permitted for everyone. Only one in a million can per-
form this practice."110Thus, as one outspoken Kartabhajadisciple, Go-
pal Krishna Pal, explained to the Bengal District Gazetteer in 1910, the
Kartabhajapath offers a rare opportunity for poor and downtrodden
individuals on the bottom of the social ladder to attain new levels of
107
Chakrabarty(n. 44 above), p. 365.
108 DineshchandraSen, Chaitanya and His Age (Calcutta:University of Calcutta, 1924),
p. 402. As ParthaChatterjee aptly observes, "[A] distinction has been innovated between
the vyavaharik,the practical social aspect of life and the paramarthik,the supreme spiritual
aspect. The former ... markedthe groundof ... surrenderto the dominantnorms of society
and the latter the secret preserve of autonomy and self-assertion" (The Nation and Its Frag-
ments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1993], p. 187).
109Winston Davis, Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modem Japan (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1980), pp. 239 ff.
110 S. Pal (n. 56 above), p. 255.
"distinction."By ascending this alternative,esoteric hierarchy,by increas-

ing his capital of secret knowledge, even the poorest man may rise in
status and power above those who are, in exoteric society, his superiors:
"All members stand on the same footing and distinctions based on caste,
wealth, etc. are not recognized, so that a person of however low a so-
cial status ... is accepted as the spiritual guide by those who are socially
his superiors. Thus persons who had no status in Hindu society find ...
vast opportunities for... distinguishing themselves.... Here, degraded
humanity finds a cordial welcome and ready recognition."111Indeed, not
only do the Kartabhajasengage in a skillful appropriationof the lan-
guage of the marketplace,of coinage and the mint, turningit into a new
form of status and symbolic capital, but, even more audaciously, they
seize on and turnto their own advantagethe language of the British Com-
pany itself. Hailing themselves as a new company-a "PoorCompany"-
they claim to offer a new kind of wealth, together with a host of "spiritual
commodities" and a new form of capital (jamd) for the lower classes and
petty laborers of colonial Calcutta. As sung in the Bhdver Gita,
Ten,twenty,thirtyPoormen gathertogetherin one Company!
He who sits with a brokenbeggingbowl in his arms,

we call the "Rulerof the land."
Thosewhose bodies areemaciatedby famine,
we considerthe PrincesandMinisters.
Look-they cannotreallybe called "Poor."
I call him trulygreatwho at no time has had any riches.
He who possessesno wealthis the Lordof the threeworlds
None of them has ever seen real "poverty."112
CORPOREAL TAXATION (daihik khajana): SECRECY AS A STRATEGY OF

ELITISM AND EXPLOITATION
If it is true that the secret discourse of the Kartabhajasoffered a new kind

of identity, status, and freedom, we must also avoid romanticizing this
Ill Garrett (n. 6 above), pp. 49-50; my italics. In fact, some of the leading social re-
formers of nineteenth-centuryBengal-such as respected poets, like NabindcandraSen, or
the leading members of the Brahmo Samaj, like Sasipad Babu (and some say even Ram-
mohun Roy himself)--praised the Kartabhajasfor their seemingly "modern"and socially
progressive "humanism,"egalitarianism, and universalism; more recently, some scholars
have even hailed their founder, Aulcfid, as a kind of "folk RammohunRoy"-that is, a
poor, lower-class reflectionof the social reformstakingplace among the upper-classelites of
nineteenth-centuryCalcutta (cf. JahnavikumarCakravarti,"KartabhajanerRup o Svarfip,"
in Kartabhaja Dharmamata o Itihdsa (n. 48 above), p. xv.
112Bhdver Gita (n. 6 above), pp. 218, Answer 3. The "Company"as a term for the Kar-
tabhaja sect appears throughout the Bhdver Gita; see, e.g., pp. 65-67, 116-20, 154-60,
214-20.
tradition as a kind of noble victory of the downtrodden lower classes

against their colonial oppressors. Rather, like most cases of indigenous
responses to colonial situations, this tradition is one in which (as John
Kelly aptly puts it) the "heroes are flawed and their successes mixed with
failures."ll3For, despite their constantrhetoricof egalitarianismand free-
dom for all castes, the Kartabhajassoon developed their own highly sym-
metrical hierarchies and often oppressive power structures.The practice
of secrecy, in this as in most esoteric traditions, could also very easily be
turned into a strategy of elitism and exploitation within the community
itself-a means of obfuscating of inequalities, constructing new hierar-
chies of power, or concealing of more subtle forms of oppression. As
Simmel long ago pointed out, the practice of secrecy naturally lends it-
self to the construction of hierarchies: it is a basic strategy of masking
and mystification, which simultaneously conceals the numerical insig-
nificance of the elite, while exaggerating their aura of power, awe, or
114
mystery.
Within the Kartibhajatradition, as we have already seen, the practices
of secrecy only take place within a graded hierarchy of initiations, ex-
tending from the Karta, to the regional Gurus (Mahasays) down to the
four grades of common disciples (baratis). By the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, this initiatic hierarchy had also come to be combined with a com-
plex economic hierarchy and an elaborate system of taxation between
Gurus and disciples; the exchange of secret information and the accum-
ulation of symbolic capital, in other words, went hand in hand with the
exchange of actual economic capital. In a sophisticated interconnected
system of revenue collection, each regional Guru had to pay the Karta
a full half of his annual income; each Guru in turn took a fourth part of
the earnings of the disciples within his particulardistrict. The spiritual-
economic principle behind this practice is the ideology of "corporeal
taxation"or "bodily revenue" (daihik khajand)-the belief that the Karta
"possesses" the body of each of his disciples. Each initiate therefore
must pay a fixed "rent"for the privilege of occupying his body with his
soul, just as he pays a fixed annual tax on his home: "Since the Kartais
113 John
Kelly, A Politics of Virtue: Hinduism, Sexuality and Countercolonial Discourse
in Fiji (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. xiv.
114 As Simmel
suggests, secret societies, with their process of gradual initiation, are an
especially clear example of the "principle of hierarchy or graduateddifferentiationof the
elements in a society. Secret societies above all others, carry through the division of labor
and the gradationof their members with great finesse and thoroughness"([n. 10 above], pp.
356-57). As Elizabeth Brandtcomments in her study of secrecy and social hierarchyin the
Taos Pueblo community, "Knowledge is power in both a spiritual and secular sense and the
use of power must be controlled.... Certain kinds of information are declared secret ...
and there is a high degree of concern over the 'secret.'A major consequence of internal se-
crecy is the establishmentof status hierarchiesbased on access to knowledge" ("On Secrecy
and the Control of Knowledge: Taos Pueblo," in Tefft, ed. [n. 9 above], pp. 126-27, 130).
the Proprietor [Malik] of each disciple's body, you have to pay a rent for
the fact that you are living."115
In fact, a variety of observers have noted that this system of "corporeal
taxation" bears a close resemblance to the traditional system of land rev-
enue under the old semifeudal Zamindari (landlord) system of agrarian
Bengal: just as the wealthy Zamindar collects an annual revenue from the
tenants working his land, so too the Kartd collects an annual revenue
from each of the disciples under his rule; "This recalls the feudal system
of Bengal," one recent observer remarks, "This is so even if they spoke
of 'the highly liberal and democratic character of our sect'.... In the
hierarchy of the all-powerful Kartas, the influence of the feudal system
is much greater than that of democracy." 16Even contemporary devotees
and defenders of the Kartabhaja tradition, as we see in the following
account by Advaita Candra Das, admit that this system of "corporeal tax-
ation" does have clear similarities to the Zamindar's collection of revenue
from his tenants: "Bodily Revenue. Out of reverence for the Guru, the
disciple surrenders his body... nothing remains of his own power. His
life is spent at the command of the Guru .... The living soul dwells within
its house. It is for the sake of dwelling in this house that they surrender
to the Guru. This tax is called a 'bodily revenue'.... The revenue remains
as capital [jama] at the residence of the Zamindar of the devotees."117
Rather ironically, this elaborate hierarchy and system of taxation al-
lowed the Gurus of this "Poor Company" to become perhaps the wealth-
iest and most powerful sectarian leaders of nineteenth-century Bengal,
with a large and prosperous estate in the Nadia district. In contrast to
many recent postcolonial theorists, then, I think it would be a mistake to
romanticize the Kartabhajas simply as another example of "native resis-
tance" or the triumph of the oppressed over their colonial oppressors. In-
deed, these lower-class peasants and urban workers appear to have been
reinscribed into a new and, in some ways, equally exploitative hierarchy,
in which the primary benefits were received by the Kartas and upper-
level Gurus. As J. C. Marshman wrote, describing his visit to the resi-
dence of the most famous and most powerful Karta, Dulalcanid, in 1802,
"Dulal's handsome and stately house, exceeding that of many Rajas, and
115Manik Sarkar, "GhospararMela o tar Pranbhomra,"in Kartabhaja Dharmamata o

Itihasa, p. 59. This point has been made by many others; cf. Banerjee, "From Aulchand
to Sati Ma," (n. 44 above), p. 36; Sudhir Cakravarti,Sahebdhani Sampradaya (Calcutta.
1985), p. 48. As J. N. Bahattacharyacynically remarkedin 1896, "To be ready with a pre-
text for exacting money from his followers, he declared that he was the proprietorof every
humanbody and that he was entitled to claim rent from every humanbeing for allowing his
soul to occupy his body .... The Kartaappoints the chief men ... as his bailiffs and agents
for collecting his revenue" (Hindu Castes and Sects [Calcutta:Firma KLM, 1896], p. 383).
116 Sarkar,pp. 6-7. "The economic disparity between the Kartaand the baratis is anal-
ogous to that between the Zamindarand the tenant (raytaddr)"(ibid.).
117 Advaita CandraDas, Ghospirar KartabhajaSampraday(Calcutta:Kali, 1983), p. 56.
his garners filled with grain, all the gifts of his deluded followers, con-
vinced us of the profitabilityof his trade."118In sum, the practice of se-
crecy is a highly malleable and double-edged kind of strategy: it is a
tactic that may be used as a source both of freedom or empowerment and
of domination or exploitation, and it may be used to accumulate both the
symbolic goods of status, prestige, or social capital, and the more mate-
rial goods of money, land, and real economic capital.
CONCLUSIONS AND COMPARATIVECOMMENTS: "UNINITIATED

UNDERSTANDING"
But you can'tget ridof secrets,Chief!Withoutsecrets,we'dlose our
AGENTMAXWELL
cushy jobs! (SECRET SMART,Get Smart)
What I have suggested in this article is not intended to be the only or

necessarily the best solution to the double bind of secrecy. Rather, it is
offered as an alternative strategy, a new and, I hope, more fruitful ap-
proach, which takes as its focus, not the ever-elusive substance, but rather
the more visible forms and tactics of secrecy. This is not to say, of course,
that the study of the content of secrecy is a futile quest for some non-
existent entity (after all, there are some secrets that are very real and very
important, such as the numbers of the Swiss bank accounts or the Pen-
tagon's military files). It is simply to say that in many, if not most cases,
it is more profitableto shift our gaze and examine secrecy in terms of its
forms and tactics, as a specific discursive strategy and a mechanism for
the production of symbolic value.
What this means, however, is that we must also be far more modest in
our claims regarding esoteric traditions and far more ready to admit that
there is an awful lot we do not know and cannot say much about. We
must, in short, accept the extreme indeterminacyinherent in the very na-
ture of something that is supposed to be secret. But again, this is only the
most extreme and acute example of the limitations and problems inherent
in all attempts to study other cultures; limitations and problems that, re-
cently, many anthropologistsand ethnographershave begun to recognize.
As Clifford comments in his study of Griaule, we can no longer presume
to have some kind of initiatory access to another culture, to penetrate
its innermost secrets and to represent them with perfect accuracy in our
scholarship. Rather, we must acknowledge that both we and the other
culture are inextricably bound to history, materialcircumstance, political
and social interests, which place profound limitations on our ability to
understandone another:"[I]nitiatoryclaims to speak as a knowledgeable
insider revealing essential cultural truths are no longer credible. Field
118 Extracts from Marshman's

journal, p. 266, as cited in Oddie (n. 50 above), p. 15.
work ... must rather be seen as a historically contingent and unruly di-
alogical encounter involving ... both conflict and collaboration.... Eth-
nography seems condemned to strive for the encounter while recognizing
the political, ethical and personal cross-purposes that undermine any trans-
mission of intercultural knowledge."119
Finally, it is also my hope that this approach and this modified version
of Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital might have some broader com-
parative implications for the study of secrecy in other cultures. Whereas
most early historians of religions, like Eliade, had sought to compare es-
oteric traditions on the basis of the substance, building up phenomeno-
logical typologies of common symbolic forms, I would suggest that a
more fruitful comparison would focus instead on the common discursive
strategies employed in various secret organizations. As I have argued
here, secrecy is a tactic that may be deployed for a wide range of inter-
ests: like all discourse, it may be used both to support and reinforce or to
subvert and undermine a given social or political arrangement; it may, for
example, be used by dominant elite factions, who wish to reinforce their
own power and status within the social hierarchy (e.g., French Freema-
sonry; Sufi orders, such as the Chishtiya; the hierarchy of elders among
the Australian Aborigines),120 and it may equally be used by marginal-
ized, disgruntled, deviant, or revolutionary groups (e.g., Haitian Voodoo,
the Mau Mau in Kenya, the White Lotus or Triad societies in China,
etc.).121 The content of the secrecy involved in all of these various eso-
teric traditions is obviously radically different and very much determined
by its historical and cultural context; however, my suspicion is that the
forms and strategies through which secrecy operates-the tactics of met-
aphoric disguise, hierarchical access to information, deliberate obfus-
cation, and so forth-may well turn out to be strikingly similar across
cultures and throughout historical periods.
Chicago, Illinois
19Clifford, The Predicament, p. 90. "Ethnography... is not a vain attempt at literal

translation, in which we take over the mantle of an-other'sbeing.... It is a historically sit-
uated mode of understandinghistorically situated contexts" (Comaroffand Comaroff [n. 3
above], pp. 9-10).
120 See
my article, "Elitism and Esotericism: Strategies of Secrecy and Power in French
Freemasonryand South Indian Tantra"(n. 41 above). For good studies of the "elitist" char-
acter of Freemasonryin America and Europe, see Lynn Dumenil, Freemasonry and Amer-
ican Culture: 1880-1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Margaret
Jacob, Living the Enlightenment:Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). On the use of secrecy to reinforce male elder
power in Aboriginal society, see Keen (n. 98 above).
121 On the use of
secrecy by poor lower classes in the Voodoo tradition,see, e.g., Brown
(n. 22 above): Davis (n. 41 above). On the Mau Mau and White Lotus groups, see Carl
Rosberg and John Nottingham, The Mythof the Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966); Susan Naquin, Millenarian Rebellion in China
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976).

The Torment of Secracy

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The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of Esoteric

If we cannotagreeaboutthe natureof the secret,we areneverthe-

1 Frank Kermode, The Genesis

? 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

an uninitiatedaudience of outsiders?In short, if one "knows,"one cannot

3 George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experi-

the analysis of esoteric discourse, largely as it appearsin historical texts;

I. ENTANGLED IN THE DOUBLE BIND: APPROACHES TO SECRECY IN

He who publicizes these things, I know, is lost and will certainly go

The past several years have witnessed a remarkableproliferationof in-

dia, or novels, such as Foucault's Pendulum (and even on the Internet),

schemes based on the content of secrecy and the resultantforms of secret

But, of course, native cultures do not always react passively to the

living oral form.22 In her work on women in Tantric Buddhism, for

Baktaman secret traditions: "Publishing this monograph raises a vexing

SECRECY AND SYMBOLIC POWER

28 Simmel (n. 10 above),

of "power" as an oppressive, substantial force, imposed from the "top

qualifications), and symbolic capital (the other forms of capital when

34 Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital,"pp. 252 ff.

"a commodity, somethingthatcan be bought and sold."38What is most im-

THE BLACK MARKET OF SYMBOLIC CAPITAL

However, in distinction to most of the forms of capital that Bourdieu dis-

reinforce a particular social arrangement or hierarchy of power, or to

In response to anticipated objections from my readers, I should note that

II. THE SECRET MARKETPLACE: SECRECY IN THE KARTABHAJA

Brother,I'm afraidto speakof such things, lest, hearingit, you are

44 Sudipta Sen, "Passages of Authority:Rulers, Tradersand Marketplacesin Bengal and

something is 'forbidden' also means that there is always an urge to trans-

THE "POOR COMPANY"

The Kartabhajas, however, represent a fascinating transformation of the

geographical location-the area in and around Calcutta, the "Imperial

Look: the wonders of my Poor Company are truly delightful!

According to Kartabhajarereading (or perhaps strong misreading) of

In essence, Kartabhaja philosophy and practice is rooted in the older

Sahaja is of the Human caste.

Hear this law: "Man is supreme."59

THE LANGUAGE OF THE MINT (Tyaksdli Bol)

it must be deeply concealed behind the layers of secrecy, transmitted

60 Ibid., p. 414, Question 3.

3. The nameof Manis a "Farce"or a "Jest"[Tamasd];the nameof his work

III. EXTREME INDETERMINACY: INTERPRETINGTHE KARTABHAJA

is a secret key to understandingthem. Revealing that key to anyone who

the most difficultTantricritualof sexual intercourse-but must do so with-

78 CompareAksaykumarSen, Srisriramakrsna-punthi(Calcutta,1976): "Takinga woman

83 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneuticsand the Human Sciences (Toronto:University of Toronto

"never speak of this openly to anyone!"89And yet, ratherironically, the

toxicating madness and ecstasy of Sahaja.93 The hierarchy thus looks

93 This hierarchy is summarized in Misra's

be Kartabhajas."As one of the two living Kartds, Ranjit KumarPal, ex-

edge. As Lindstromsuggests, nonsense plays a very powerful role in the

99 Lindstrom (n. 18 above), pp. 121-22.

is aimed not at facilitating communication or improving the efficacy of

101Ricoeur, A Ricoeur Reader (n. 83 above), 32.

BLACK MARKET SYMBOLIC CAPITAL: "COINAGE FOR THE POOR"

The net result of these various discursive strategies-these tactics of re-

123. TheseMintSayingsareneitherfor theMarketplace

preme (paramarthik)identity, transcendingnormal social restrictionsand

"distinction."By ascending this alternative,esoteric hierarchy,by increas-

Ten,twenty,thirtyPoormen gathertogetherin one Company!

He who sits with a brokenbeggingbowl in his arms,

None of them has ever seen real "poverty."112

CORPOREAL TAXATION (daihik khajana): SECRECY AS A STRATEGY OF