Hidden Truths and Cultures of Secrecy: Reflections on Gender and Ethnicity in the Study of Religion.
Sociology of Religion › Vol. 61 Nbr. 4, December 2000
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Hidden Truths and Cultures of Secrecy: Reflections on Gender and Ethnicity in the Study of Religion.
Janet Liebman Jacobs [*]
THE "FIRST WAVE" OF FEMINISM AND MY EMERGENCE AS A GENDER SCHOLAR My research narrative begins in India in 1972. In the winter of that year I visited an ashram that had recently been established in a high rise apartment building in a wealthy section of Bombay known as Beach Candy. I had gone to the ashram expressly to meet the spiritual teacher, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose Sunnyasin movement had just begun to attract followers from the West. Among the small cadre of devotees who lived in his burgeoning spiritual community was a close cousin who had recently come to India to study with Bhagwan. [1] My cousin now called herself by a Hindu name, she wore only orange clothing, and her speech was punctuated with phrases of adoration for the Oxford educated guru. The day I visited the ashram, Bhagwan was giving a talk to a number of academics from the United States, and although I was merely a 70s traveler, making my way from West to East, he agreed to let me join the group of Western intellectuals. I remember clearly how excited my cousin was as she prepared the room for Bhag wan's entry. Her own small room in the ashram bore a plaster cast of his feet, but, as she explained, this religious icon paled in comparison with the actual feet of the spiritual master whose body contained the essence of spiritual enlightenment. I...See the full content of this document
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