Re-thinking Divinity in the Modernizing Rural Space in South Asia:

An Eco-theological Reading of the Sacred in Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s Hansuli Banker Upakatha

Abstract

Tradition and modernity as epistemic categories are often seen as complete antitheses, and therefore, the traditional and ethnic rituals attached to “divine sacrality” are often sidelined as irrational by modern instrumental logic. This political undermining and thereby endangering of the “divine sacred,” especially in the semi-secular context of rural South Asia, invariably results in cultural “theocide,” which automatically leads to
extreme sociocultural upheaval. That is precisely what this paper plans to scrutinize by closely reading Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s classic Bengali novel Hansuli Banker Upakatha translated as The Lore of Hansuli Turn. While exploring the sociocultural roots of “theocide,” this paper will specifically focus on the phenomenological dissimilarity between the “Deus absconditus”1 (the hidden God) of the “modernized” West and the enfleshed divine avatars in South Asia, closer not just to embodied human existence but also to non-human existence. Adding to that, the paper will also examine the religious concept of the “sacredscape”2 and its spatial eco-theological connection with divine sacrality by utilizing Mircea Eliade’s idea of ‘hierophany.” Finally, deviating from the hyper-rationalized discourse of “modern enlightenment,” the paper will highlight the “post-secular” notion of inner enlightenment, which seamlessly synchronizes with the South-Asian tradition of spiritual enlightenment(s).