Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna is a book on the Indian mystic Ramakrishna by Hindu studies scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal, published in 1995 by the University of Chicago press.Jeffrey J. Kripal (1995), Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. First edition. University of Chicago Press. It argues for a homoerotic strain in Ramakrishna's life, rituals, and teachings.
The book won the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995. It has been criticised by Ramakrishna's followers and several scholars, and became the object of an intense controversy among both Western and Indian audiences. Critics have argued that the book's conclusions were arrived at through mistranslation of Bengali, misunderstanding of tantra, and misuse of psychoanalysis. Two attempts have been made to have the book banned in India, in 1996 and 2001, but did not pass in the Parliament. Kripal published a second edition in 1998Jeffrey J. Kripal (1998), Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. Second edition. University of Chicago Press. Jeffrey J. Kripal (January 1998), Pale Plausibilities: A Preface for the Second Edition [of Kali's Child]. University of Chicago Press. Online version available at Kripal's Rice University website, accessed on 2010-01-13. and several essays and rebuttals, to which critics have also responded.
The book was developed from Kripal's Ph.D. dissertation on Ramakrishna at the University of Chicago, advised by Wendy Doniger. According to Kripal, he adopted a Freudian approach to uncover the connections between tantric and psychoanalytic hermeneutical traditions. In the preface, Kripal writes that he was fascinated and interested in the relation between "human sexuality and mystical experience".Kali's Child, Preface, p.xiv He also mentions that Kali's Child was influenced by Wendy Doniger whose, "voluminous work, both in its rhetoric style and its erotic content provided me with a scholarly context, a genre if you will, in which I could write and defend my own ideas."Kali's Child, Preface, p.xvi
The primary thesis of Kali's Child is that a Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were generated by the lingering results of childhood traumas, and sublimated homoerotic and pedophiliac passions; and that "Ramakrishna's mystical experiences...were in actual fact profoundly, provocatively, scandalously erotic." Kripal has argued that the same view was expressed 12 years earlier by Malcolm McLean, in his English translation of the Kathamrita. Malcolm McLean (1983), A Translation of Sri-Sri-Ramakrsna-Kathamrta with Explanatory Notes and Critical Introduction. Ph.D.dissertation, Otago University.
Kripal examines a series of remarks made by Ramakrishna to some of his intimate disciples regarding his mystical experiences and visions which, following Ramakrishna, he calls "secret talks" (guhya katha). Kripal argues that Ramakrishna's attitudes and orientations were well known to some of his contemporaries (though not to Ramakrishna himself) and were hidden and suppressed, initially by his own disciples and later by members of the Ramakrishna Order. He argues a systematic whitewashing of details and a general cover-up carried out by the biographers and translators of Ramakrishna.
Reviews and reaction
Scholarly reviews, 1995–1997
The book won the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995. In the following years, the book was reviewed in several Western academic journals of religion and South Asian culture. In 1999, the Bengali scholar Brian Hatcher wrote that while several reviewers expressed some misgivings, their overall evaluation of Kali's Child was positive, and at times highly laudatory, Haberman (1997). Cited by Brian A. Hatcher (1999). Parsons (1997). Cited by Brian A. Hatcher (1999). Radice (1998). Cited by Brian A. Hatcher (1999). Vaidyanathan (1997). Cited by Brian A. Hatcher (1999). Hugh B. Urban (1998), Journal of Religion, Vol. 78, No. 2., pp. 318–320. . John Stratton Hawley (1998), History of Religions, Vol. 37, No. 4. pp. 401–404. Online version at Jstor.org. including one in 1997 by Malcolm McLean, a scholar of Bengali literature who has translated the Sri-Sri-Ramakrishna-Kathamrta and the poetry of Ramprasad. Malcolm McLean (1997) Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 117, No. 3., pp. 571–572. Online version at Jstor.org. "This analysis will be controversial particularly among the followers of Ramakrishna, who have sought over the years to deny, or at least to downplay, the Tantric elements. But Kripal's treatment of it is very thorough, his case is very well documented, and I find his argument convincing." Hatcher cited a sample Bengali text from the Kathāmṛta in his own article, arguing that Kripal accurately translated the passage in a way that Swami Nikhilananda's translation did not.
On the other hand, in 1995 Cambridge scholar Jean Openshaw criticized Kripal's book for what she saw as "sleight of hand by which strained or confessedly speculative arguments are subsequently transformed into a firm base for further such arguments". She also faulted the book for "slippage between an entirely appropriate scepticism towards the sources, and an unthinking acceptance of them when it suits the argument". In her opinion, Ramakrishna could not be regarded as a misogynist. She found Kripal's familiarity with a variety of Bengali texts "impressive", but noted several translation slips. For example, Kripal wrote that the faith of an associate of Ramakrishna had "homoerotic dimensions" on the grounds that he "liked to look at pictures of men, for they aroused in him feelings of 'tenderness' and 'love'". Openshaw wrote that the word manus which Kripal had translated as "men" actually means "human being" without gender specificity. She also noted that Kripal had taken "body" (ga- or an+ga) and "lap" (kol) to mean "genitals" and "a normally defiled sexual space", whereas in Bengali culture the lap has a strong maternal association. In her view, Kripal had fallen "into a reductionist trap by sexualising his language in a way quite inappropriate to the material." She wrote that Kripal's disclaimer "certainly many of my conclusions are speculative", but did not agree with his statement that "taken together their combined weight adds up to a convincing argument". Jean Openshaw (15 December 1995), The mystic and the rustic. Times Higher Education, UK.
Rajat Kanta Ray, a Bengali scholar in his 1997 review wrote that the historical evidence Kripal offers in favour of Ramakrishna's homosexuality is "shaky" and some of Kripal's own evidence "seems to contradict it, and opens up the possibility of an alternative interpretation. A number of his translations from the primary text-Ramakrishna Kathamrita-are wrong; his psychoanalytical proceedings with the text, without the verifications psychoanalysts derive from patients under the ’free-association method’, fills me with doubt, especially as regards his identifications of some Tantrik symbols." Ray writes that "here and there" in the Kathamrita, he comes across "evidence which does not fit", and which ought to have made Kripal "rethink his formulations."
In his 1997 review, Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay of Goldsmiths, University of London begins by describing Kali's Child's as an "invigorating read" and an "iconoclastic thesis ... supported by solid textual scholarship". Despite this initial impression, Mukhopadhyay found Kirpals's method of 'reading' Ramakrishna's life to be problematic. Mukhopadhyay criticizes Kripal's method of "sexualisation" of Ramakrishna's body and writes that Kripal does not take culture into consideration. Mukhopadhyay writes, "I demand that Ramakrishna's visions be taken at their face value and not interpreted as some kind of a confused expression of his sexuality." Criticizing the "obvious glee in Kripal's tone which sometimes verges on flippancy", Mukhopadhyay continues, "Ramakrishna is a very serious matter and real theoretical sophistication is needed to deal with this enigmatic character. With his pop psychoanalysis, bop prose and a crude sense of humour, Kripal is nowhere near those serious scholars...". Towards the end, he writes that the book has "enough nuisance value to perturb those who are at the helm of affairs at Ramakrishna Mission."
In 1997, Gerald Larson of Indiana University wrote that Kripal's book lacked balance and proper contextualization, and considered that it fell into the trap of monocausal reductionism. In his opinion, the book would have been much more balanced if Kripal had sought a review outside the context of his teachers and colleagues, including the Swamis of the Ramakrishna Mission (but not allow them to censor) and professionals within the psychoanalytic community. Larson attributed the problem of reductionism to the attitude pervading the American Academy of Religion on the relation between modern secular intellectuals and believing communities. He wrote that psychoanalytic interpretations are "exceedingly problematic even with the extensive and current evidence of daily psychoanalytic therapy" and that psychoanalysts would be very cautious about asserting relationships between sexual fantasies and mystical or religious experience. On the whole, Larson argued that Kripal's thesis, of "Ramakrishna's homosexual tendencies" having determined the manner in which he created his self-defined states, was "thoroughly implausible" and that a psychoanalyst would be unlikely to say that Ramakrishna's "homoerotic energies" were his mysticism. Larson wrote that the evidence presented in the book did not support "a cause-effect relation between the erotic and the mystical (or the religious), much less an identity".
In a 1997 review, Pravrajika Vrajaprana discussed Kripal reliance on unreliable sources, such as a report of "a particularly bizarre method Ramakrishna supposedly used to control lust", which Kripal at one point "doubt[ed] seriously" the incident ever occurred, but which he later used to confirm his conclusion. Pravrajika Vrajaprana (1997), Review of Kali's Child, by Jeffrey Kripal. Hindu-Christian studies bulletin, volume 10, pages 59–60.
William Radice wrote in early 1998 that "[Ramakrishna's] homosexual leanings and his horror of women as lovers should not be the issue: there was plenty of evidence before the exposure of the guhya katha ["secret talk"]. Radice compared the book to a majar kuti ("mansion of fun"), wrote that "occasionally one stops to ask if one has not been hoodwinked by the charm of [Kripal's] arguments", and wondered whether the book could be a game "no more playful than Ramakrishna's own earthy banter".
Reviewer Hugh Urban criticized Kripal for ignoring the social and historical context of late nineteenth-century Bengal. Partha Chatterjee on Ramakrishna and his relation to the middle-class society of colonial Calcutta. Cited by Urban (1998). Urban also criticized Kripal for what he saw as a "tendency toward sensationalism and at times an almost journalistic delight in playing on the "sexy," "seedy," "scandalous," and shocking nature of his material".
Sil's 1997 review