Abstract This article explores emerging ascetic orientations towardutility and death in India. It chronicles the activities of an innovative
organization that campaigns for cadaver donations for the purposesof organ retrieval and dissection by trainee doctors. This would entail
dispensing with cremation, a mode of cadaver disposal newly charac-terized as wasteful. In order to counter ‘cremation-lack’, the asceticism
of cadaver donation is accentuated by the organization. The group
thereby reinterprets classical Hinduism according to the demands of ‘medical rationality’. This produces a novel ‘donation theology’ andadditionally serves to demonstrate the ‘asceticism’ by which all volun-tary donors of body material are obliged to abide.
Keywords: asceticism, body donation, cremation, dissection, gift of life,
organ donation, renunciation
The dead are burned at the very spot where Vishnu burned with the fire of the
austerities through which he engendered the cosmos.— Jonathan Parry, Death in Banaras
I would like to pledge all my organs. Anything that is useful after my deathshould be taken.
— Anil Kumble, Indian cricket team, Mid-Day, 27 September 2004
This article explores embryonic innovations in ascetic and donation practicesamong the middle classes in India’s national capital, Delhi. Based on ethno-
graphic research among advocates of body donation (deh-dan) for dissection andorgan transplantation, it is proposed that the Dadhichi Deh Dan Samiti (Dadhi-chi Body Donation Society; henceforth, the Samiti) has, from the early 1990sonwards, devised a novel ‘donation theology’ that centers on a synthesis of piety
and utility. Its advocates, known as sannyasis (renouncers), embrace ‘asceticrevisionism’ in pursuing a form of renunciation that, far from seeking withdrawalfrom society, as is the case for classically defined renouncers, seeks to serve it
from within. It is not society that is renounced here but the body and its crema-tion. Such a strongly ascetic conception of body donation is designed in part toassuage the abandonment of cremation necessitated by this form of donation. Inthis revisionist brand of asceticism, cremation is viewed as profoundly anachro-nistic and wasteful. Conversely, the disavowal of cremation in order to facilitatedissection and optimal post-mortem utility results in a death that is ‘noble’according to the protocols of both medical rationality and reformist brands of Hinduism that valorize utility. Concepts such as the ‘utilitarian imaginary’ andthe ‘bio-spiritual’ are employed to elucidate the complex arguments and implica-
tions of Samiti theorizing. Additionally, the explicitly legalistic and anti-propri-etorial aspects of this variant of asceticism—which corporeally extends MahatmaGandhi’s idiosyncratic definition of trusteeship—will be analyzed.
Anthropologists have long drawn attention to the enduring power of sannyas
(renunciation) categories in India. It has become increasingly clear that thesecategories are subject to constant and considerable reformation and renewal.Alter (1992) and Khare (1984) have depicted significant reorientations of san-
nyas in the sub-continent, demonstrating how techniques of renunciation canwork as powerful social criticism. In the case of the Samiti as well, voluntarily‘renouncing’ one’s body, in the sense of preparing a will to ensure its dona-tion upon death, is a reaction to and critique of India’s ‘organs bazaar’. Storiesabout kidney selling and theft appear almost daily in Indian newspapers.1
I draw in the following from a tripartite engagement with the Samiti duringethnographic research (2003–2005) in Delhi: (1) I conducted numerous inter-views with Samiti founder and chairperson, Alok Kumar, an advocate; (2) Iattended two utsav (festival) celebrations at which donors’ wills were executedand several speeches were made by Hindu religious leaders; and (3) I havestudied a Samiti souvenir publication, handed out to existing and prospectivedonors, which contains scientific, philosophical, and poetic contributions on
the subject of deh-dan from the chairperson, doctors, certain sannyasis, pres-ent donors, past (deceased) donors, and the families of those donors. Thepublication is roughly two-thirds highly Sanskritic Hindi, while the remainingthird is in English. The Samiti leadership has links to Hindutva organizations,but its mainly middle-class, high-caste Hindu members by no means all sharethis affiliation.2 Donors include Congress Party functionaries, communists,Sikhs, and Jains. The Sanskritic Hindi used by the Samiti, replete with copi-ous allusions to Hindu scriptural precedents for donation and ‘renunciation’ of the body, is certainly not designed to appeal to potential Muslim donors, and
I heard of none. The Samiti claims to have so far persuaded more than 700people to pledge their bodies. Though a small group, it contains a significantnumber of prominent personnel with political connections. The combinedforce of the Samiti’s centrality, profile, and potential, taken together with itsdistinctive and striking conceptual, even theological, innovations, singles it outas an organization demanding documentation and analysis.
The dom caste, “despised even by many untouchables” (Arnold 1993: 4), was
employed during colonial times as executioners and is still a caste of funeralattendants (Parry 1994: 25). According to Arnold (1993: 5), it is “indicativeof the deep repugnance Indians of almost every caste and creed had for theWestern practice of dissection that only the lowest and most despised of Hinducastes should be recruited to assist in this polluting and defiling work.” Therepugnant practice of dissection meant that for many Indians, “Western medi-cine was more about cutting up bodies than healing them” (ibid.). When in hisyouth Gandhi was considering a medical career, his father apparently told him:“[W]e Vaishnavas should have nothing to do with dissection of dead bodies”
(Gandhi 1949: 31). Even fairly recently in South India, Brahmins who prac-ticed medicine jeopardized their caste status, becoming “borderline” Brahmins(Gough 1968: 141), though this is emphatically not the case in modern Indianmetropolises. It is easy to see how local attitudes toward dissection could beviewed by colonial commentators as evidence of the superstition that would bedispelled by benevolent colonialism. Thus, when the first dissection by Indianstook place in 1836, it was said that they had finally overcome “the prejudices of their earlier education and thus boldly flung open the gates of modern medicalscience to their countrymen” (cited in Prakash 1999: 123).
However, the practice of cremation—by far the most prevalent means of cadaver disposal in the sub-continent—meant that those who did engage indissection had to be content for many years with the bodies of children whodied before reaching their second birthday, the rest being cremated (Quigley1996: 202). In present times, anatomy departments rely on unclaimed bodies,usually in advanced stages of decomposition, provided by the police.3 Duringethnographic research in Delhi, conducted in medical settings, I found manypeople, including those in ‘modern’ professions, still very suspicious of dis-section—a position usually explained in reference to the ‘disrespect’ showntoward cadavers by medical institutions. At the same time, I encountered sev-
eral strategies through which this “modern knowledge” of dissection could,through the “invocation of the Vedas,” be “authorized” (Prakash 1999: 148).
Dr. Naresh Kumar Bhatia, the director of a Delhi blood bank, recounted tome the history of his medical training. At a public function, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru had told Bhatia, then a child, that the country needed doctorsand engineers. Bhatia duly arrived in 1970 at Amritsar Medical College, whereon his very first day he had an epiphanic lesson in anatomy: “I saw a dead bodyand I knew it was to be cut into little pieces ( ukde). It was a great sensation(sansani). This was the knowledge I had to attain ( prapt karna). I saw this spiri-
tually (adhyatmikta). That very first day I went to the principal and said, Sir, Idon’t know who this man is [the cadaver], but I know he must be someone’sfather, son, brother, that he is someone who was in his mother’s womb for ninemonths. I don’t know his name or house, or the dreams (sapne) of his motherfor him … All I know is that the beautiful face of a person is like god, and thatthe child was the gift of the mother in teaching me today. It is an immense
responsibility on me to take great knowledge ( gyan) from this body, and to passon the correct knowledge to others.” Bhatia went on to compare the cadaver,as a source of instruction, to Lord Krishna, the provider of divine knowledge in
the Bhagavad Gita.4
Trainee doctors are figured as Arjuna, ‘students’ of Krishna-cadavers. The surely startled principal then heard Bhatia pledge his own body asa source of gyan, because for Bhatia, the cadaver had represented “a goodnesswhose inaccessibility act[ed] as a command to the donee” (Derrida 1995: 41). Ina sophisticated way, Bhatia had reattributed a positive value to dissection strictlyin accordance with established trends in religious and nationalist reform, inwhich “the new is turned into something old” (Singer 1972: 399), in order thatthe body “be refigured to serve the nation” (Prakash 1999: 151).
Ascetic Revisionism
In line with the technique of Vedic invocation, the Samiti draws on the story of thesage Dadhichi as a Sanskritic figurehead for body donation (as recounted in the Brahmana Purana and in the hymns of the Rig Veda). Being dissected—extractedfrom ‘for society’ (samaj ke liye)—if juxtaposed with Dadhichi as the ‘first bodydonor’, can be a method for restoring the body to its “original Hindu-nationalcondition” (Prakash 1999: 151). The Samiti, writes chairperson Alok Kumar,exists to “prepare the minds of relatives and friends so that the resolution of the[body] donor can be fulfilled. It works as a bridge in getting the body to the Mau-lana Azad Medical College” (a government-run medical training center located incentral Delhi). In addition, the story of Dadhichi is a way of ‘preparing’ the mindsof prospective donors, as well as their families, once donors are resolved.
Briefly, the story of Dadhichi, the ‘first body donor’ of Indian tradition, is asfollows.6 The gods (devtas) were fighting against demons (asuras). Dadhichiwas a saintly human, renowned for his penances and austerities (tapas). As agreat ascetic (tapasvi), he had transformed his body into that which was pure( pavitra), supreme (shresth), and glorious ( ejisvi). Vritrasur, the demon king,
was so frightful that Indra, king of the gods, found all weapons available to himto be weak. The gods decided that if Dadhichi, “who was always engrossed incontinual penance,” would sacrifice his bones, then such a weapon could beconstructed from them that “Vrit would never be able to escape its blow.” “Theyplaced their wish before him. What objection could Dadhichi have? He was notperforming the penance for any personal end. The aim of such penance is thewelfare of the world itself … And nothing could be of greater pleasure to ascet-ics, great souls and virtuous people than if each and every part of their bodiescan be used in the destruction of the demons, that is, in the welfare of the world,
that is, for the happiness of humankind (manavta).” Dadhichi sat in a medita-tive posture (samadhi), and Vishwakarma, god of labor, created a weapon fromhis bones called a vajra, which Indra used to slay the demon king.7
Note the conceptual chain reaction deployed here by Dr. Bali, from whosewritings the final part of the foregoing account is derived: penance is not forpersonal ends but for the annihilation of demons, that is to say, for ‘welfare’
purposes, that is to say, for humankind. This is a significant instance of whatI am calling ‘ascetic revisionism’. Conventional understandings of sannyas inIndia stress that ascetic neophytes die a social death, pre-emptively performing
their own death rites (shraddh). Weber’s (1958: 323) comment that “Indianreligiosity is the cradle of those religious ethics which have abnegated theworld, theoretically, practically, and to the greatest extent” is reflected in numer-ous other more recent interpretations of renunciation. Uberoi (1991: 324), forexample, states that the sannyasi “severs all connection with the world”; this isin order to pursue an individualistic quest for liberation (moksha).8 The asceti-cism of Dadhichi, on the other hand, is ‘centrifuged’,9 directed outwards fromthe person engaged in austerities; it is asceticism for the benefit of society. Thisview that asceticism is engaged with or shows a deep concern for ‘society’ is not
entirely novel. Van der Veer (1988) presents compelling evidence of Ramanandirenouncers’ various entanglement with ‘society’, and Laidlaw (2005) notes thatausterities undertaken by Jain renouncers, full of volitional complexity, thoughnot directed toward purposes outside of the self, can and do have “radiatingeffects,” possibly removing the sins and faults of those around them. As Parry(1994: 252) explains: “Properly oriented towards an escape from the world,renunciation generates a power that can be put to use inside it.” The point is notthat penances have never previously ‘benefited society’, but that Samiti donorsand writers define this as being the only purpose of austerities.10
Alok Kumar declared to me with certitude that having undertaken a vowof sannyas, “renouncers dedicate themselves entirely to the cause of society(samaj).” In Laidlaw’s (2005) account of the ideal Jain austerity of samadhi-
maran (fasting till death; literally, ‘death while in meditation’), the positiveeffects experienced by those who gather around the renouncer, far from beingthe austerity’s primary purpose, are its epiphenomenon. A contributor to theSamiti publication declares: “In ancient times there were ascetics, yogis andmonks who were devoted throughout their lives to the welfare and good of oth-ers.” At an tsav for the execution of donors’ wills, I was told that “Dadhichiwas a scientist doing research on mankind’s welfare. He said we can donate
our bodies and help the future generations.” Another donor pointed to thesaffron scarves worn by donors, declaring that saffron is the color of seva (ser-vice).11 Saffron is more commonly understood as the color of fire and heat, of the tapas generated by ascetics through austerities pursued in order to achievefreedom from rebirth (mukti). These examples of ascetic revisionism take whatis ambiguously present within understandings of renunciation (that is, itssocially centrifugal aspects) and make these its sole principle.
Having established the Samiti, Kumar went on a pilgrimage to the Dadhichiashram in Mishrikh in the state of Uttar Pradesh: “I paid my homage (shrad-
dhanjali) to this noble soul ( punyatma) who donated his skeleton for theprotection (raksha) of heavenly powers (daivi shaktiyan). The idol depicted isanointed with curd and salt, and a cow is shown licking it [in preparation forthe bones’ extraction]. With a calm expression, Dadhichi is giving a spiritualmessage (adhyatmik sandesh) for humankind. Wherefore a love for the body(sharir )? This is clay (mitti). This clay can be put to use (upyog ).”
Dadhichi—the ‘socially oriented’ ascetic—is thus conceptualized as the ‘first
body donor’. In reference to a comparable move in Sri Lanka by medical authori-ties to install the Buddha (as he appeared in a previous birth) as an eye donor,and thus to mobilize Buddhists in the region to act as their master had done,Simpson (2004: 840) remarks that “stepping into a biogenetic future rich intechnological possibility also involves an engagement with the past.” Dadhichi,according to ascetic revisionism, advocated helping future generations, as do allascetics. British colonial commentators expressed the view that “non-Europeansapplied excessive discounts to future prosperity” (Reisz 2004). Explanations wereproffered “suggesting that Indian ‘profligacy’ was essentially a childlike disregard
for the future. In the rubber forests of Assam, Indian franchisees and their tap-pers secured the latex ‘without any regard … for future supplies, which was of most disastrous consequence’” (cited in ibid.). Local populations “were thoughtlikely to overdiscount future gains, concentrating on a material present ratherthan a hypothetical future” (ibid.). Such criticism of the ‘Indian mentality’ hasbeen taken on board by Hindu reform groups. One guru in Mumbai, for example,chastises Indians’ inability to engage in forward planning. His teachings revolvearound proper planning for the future, which, he tells his devotees, will solve alltheir problems.12 The Samiti has found its own exemplar of a ‘future-oriented’disposition through Vedic invocation. In the foreword of a Samiti souvenir publi-cation, Dr. S. C. L. Gupta, president of the Delhi Medical Association, commendsthe manner in which the Samiti is “maintaining the highest level of charity andIndian Traditions through self negation and sacrifice for the future generation.”13
Self-abnegation, or engagement in austerities, certainly indicates a care for thefuture—but for whose? The ingenuity of this doctor and of the Samiti as a wholelies in referencing the undoubted preoccupation that renouncers have with theirown future spiritual circumstances and then opportunistically ‘centrifuging’ it toinclude everybody else’s future circumstances.
The Samiti claims responsibility for the future as a value that it both repre-
sents and endeavors to instill. The donations it facilitates are donations ‘to thefuture’ in several ways. A media report on one of the first donations to be prop-erly effected declares: “Chowdhury has willed himself to science. His body willbe the cadaver that will help train tomorrow s doctors” (emphasis added).14 Theavoidance of cremation (dah sanskar ) that donation necessitates is expressedin an idiom of environmentalist concern for the future of ‘fragile’ resources (cf.Reisz 2004): “There are queues on the cremation grounds. Each body requiresabout 40 seers (equivalent to about 37kg) of wood for burning. For this, thou-sands of tonnes of wood are cut and brought from the jungles every year, thus
not only destroying the forests, but also causing a serious environmental prob-lem ( paryavaran ki samasya).”15 The cremated body therefore epitomizes wast-age, trees and bodies both being incinerations of ‘usefulness’. Clearly, a deathof maximum utility has as its key stipulation the prevention of wastage. Kumarhas meticulously planned for a death of pious utility: “I executed my will pledg-ing the donation of my body. But if I die at a place where body donation is not
possible, then I shall be burned in an electric crematorium. And if an electriccrematorium is not available in that place, then I shall be disposed of using cowdung ( gobar ). Those cakes that are made with cow dung, mixed with mud and
dried—they make very good fire, and seven quintals of wood will not be wasted(nasht ).” No more “a childlike disregard for the future.”
In revealing to Kumar that “this clay can be put to use,” Dadhichi was alsorevealing to the advocate the essential compatibility between reformed Hindu-ism and modern medical rationality. However, the ‘cremation-lack’ entailed bydonation remains an impediment to donation of the highest order for ordinaryHindus. Kumar and the Samiti employ several techniques of theological per-suasion in order to convert this lack into a noble disavowal. The first consistsof a classic Arya Samaj–influenced critique of cremation as a ‘vacuous’ ritual
(rudhi).16
The second is the depiction of donors as sannyasis renouncers of the body, renouncers of cremation), a potentially astute tactic given the gener-ally high status of renouncers in the sub-continent. It is tempting here to referto this ascetic portrayal of donors as the instrumentalist utilization of certain‘tropes of renunciation’ in pursuit of staunchly secular ends, but I hope toshow why this interpretation would be misguided—for quite apart from theascetic trope of donors donning saffron scarves17 and the appeal to Dadhichias the exemplar of centrifugal austerities, the Samiti holds together a conjunc-tion of compelling ascetic ideas and practices, some of which it does not makeat all explicit.
Why is cremation-lack such a problem for the Samiti? Anthropology is repletewith characterizations of cremation as indispensable for the majority of Hindus.Laidlaw (2005: 188) refers to the “weighty duty” of a Hindu man to be presentat his parents’ cremation: “Once the fire is well under way, he takes a log andsmashes the deceased’s skull, releasing the soul so that it can begin the journeyto the next birth.” Immersing the bones left over from cremation in the GangesRiver is important to ensure peace for the dead person’s soul and its “deliver-ance” (Gold 1991: 132). For Kashmiri Pandits, a person’s moral maturation isonly complete “when the body is cremated: in fact, cremation offers the oppor-
tunity for transmigration if one has reached a state of perfection—a most rarehappening. The cremation, like all fire offerings, is intended to carry upwards(to the gods) that which is entrusted to Agni, the fire god” (Madan 1987: 136).In many ways, then, cremation is religiously necessary. The Samiti souvenirpublication is full of examples of non-compliant families seeking to inhibittheir relatives’ deh-dan: “[T]he family of Raj Kumar Gupta put their foot downagainst the body donation [of his wife]. They threatened that they will neverhave any connection with Mr. Gupta if the body was donated to a medical col-lege and not cremated.”18 The point of these stories, of course, is to depict the
noble resolve of deh-dan converts in resisting the superstitions of their irrationalfamily members. Thus, “Mr. Gupta did not deter from his resolve to complywith the last wish of his wife. He resisted all opposition and donated the body.”The story of effecting the first Samiti donation is likewise one of overcomingfamilial resistance; it is also one of high farce. The husband, anxious to carryout his wife’s deh-dan, felt unable to take her corpse back to his home, despite
his difficulty in finding outside storage for it in a morgue, because the relativeswere waiting there, eager “to carry out some rituals (rasmen) on it.” He there-fore spent the night with Alok Kumar and Kumar’s wife, Manju, driving around
Delhi in a Maruti van with his wife’s dead body on his lap.19
One of the most notable features of reformist Hinduism is its determinationto undermine ‘superstitious ritual’. Since its inception in 1875, the Arya Samajhas been at the forefront of Hindu reformist activity, pursuing campaigns againstidolatry, caste, and popular ritual traditions (Hansen 1999: 71). The influenceof the Arya Samaj on the Samiti’s theological exposition and membership ismarked. A significant minority of the donors are members of the organization,and the Samiti publication contains a piece by Swami Dikshanand Saraswati, anArya Samaj sannyasi. The Arya Samaj proposes a ‘return’ to the authority of the
scriptures, which would necessitate the elimination of various corrupting ritualaccretions. Dr. J. M. Kaul, who teaches at the medical college that benefits fromthe Samiti’s supply of cadavers, and who is also a member of the Samiti, citesthe first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita—“for the soul there is never birth anddeath, nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be.” If so, writes Kaul, “thenthe body of any individual has the purpose of carrying the eternal energy andlight only till the God deems so and thereafter has no function left.” That is, ritessurrounding cremation falsely assign a function—releasing the spirit or soul forpeace or for transmigration—to a functionless entity (the cadaver). Kaul there-fore asks, “Are we going to change the mind-set by accepting without reserva-tions what the Gita says, or are we going to be bogged down by rituals?” Anothercontributor to the Samiti publication compares overcoming the desire for crema-tion to “bringing the evil of sati to an end” (sati is the practice of a living wifejoining her deceased husband on the funeral pyre). Sati was and continues to bea major target of ‘reformist’ activism. For a mechanic with only two daughters,deh-dan represents a solution to the ritual difficulty of having no son to set alighthis pyre: “When [Taneja] came to know about body donation, he did not let goof this golden opportunity. He will not only rid himself of religious rites, but hisbody and its parts too will be used for human welfare.”
The correspondence between ‘reformist’ Hindus’ promulgation of piousutility and productivity and medical rationality’s aversion to waste should nowbe clear. An ethnographic account from the United States highlights how physi-cians allocate kidneys according to a criterion of likely wastage by ‘non-com-pliant’ recipients. Doctors experience “fear of waste” (Gordon 2000: 365), andpatients who ‘waste’ a kidney via non-compliance commit a moral transgres-sion for not taking the doctors’ scarcity dilemma seriously enough (ibid.: 367).Wastage as taboo possesses a similar stature of transgression within Indianmedical rationality. Blood bank directors in Delhi appear often to prioritize an
aesthetic attitude toward ‘ideal’ stock levels over the gritty, everyday businessof provision and helping patients. If ideal stock levels would be compromisedby a particular withdrawal, the request is likely to be refused. Conversely, highstock levels reveal the conflicted nature of this attitude, for in this situationthe directors become quite desperate to dispense blood in order to avoid the‘medisin of wastage due to expiration and regain ideal stock levels.
Wastage can be understood as a form of opportunity cost. According to Gell’s(1992: 219) schema, opportunity costs are very often of a “confirmed magnitude.”In the present context, this is particularly so. Gell asserts that “activities which
have high opportunity costs are ones which have highly advantageous, highly fea-sible alternatives in terms of the map of the field of possible worlds imposed by agiven culturally standardized construction of reality” (ibid.: 217). ‘Utility’ could besubstituted for ‘reality’ for the purposes of the current discussion. The stipulatedusefulness of post-mortem bodies, for both harvesting of usable material and formedical training purposes, is obviously what accusations of wastage rest upon.The magnitude of this corporeal opportunity cost is calculable according to thenumber of doctors and patients that could have benefited from an uncrematedcadaver. For Gell, the concept is an effective means to bridge the ‘fatefulness’
of subjective time and the objective qualities of time as a dimension (becauseopportunity cost is both subjective, and, to a certain extent, computable). Thebridging function of the concept holds for the present case since donors’ imagi-nary renderings of their body parts being used by others—a facet of what I call the‘utilitarian imaginary’—involve remarkable projective calculations of their hoped-for post-mortem usefulness for others. An examination of the enumerations of theutilitarian imaginary is taken up in the following section.
The Body against Wastage
There is a perception among some anthropologists that death is always con-sidered impure and inauspicious in India (see Coward 1989: 19; Raheja 1988:147). Conversely, Madan (1987: 11) stresses that death can be auspicious incertain circumstances. A ‘good death’ is attained when the dying person playsan active role in it. Among the Kashmiri Pandits, “good deaths, and the lastwords spoken by those who attain it, are remembered and talked about foredification for years” (ibid.: 124). There is a section in the Samiti publicationentitled “Honor Roll: An Introduction of the Noble Souls whose Bodies have
been delivered to the Maulana Azad Medical College.” Eight donations have sofar been effected, and each death receives four or five paragraphs. Their retell-ing constructs the death of pious utility as a good death.
Shail Rani Jain “belonged to a family dedicated to religion and social service.Shri Subhash Jain, her husband had been associated with the social serviceprojects of Mahavira International … Smt. Shail Rani unfortunately expired on20th February 2001. Shri Subhash Jain donated her body to MAMC. As a tributeto the salutary donation, her daughter-in-law Abha Rani Jain and other familyfriends also pledged to donate their bodies after death. Shri Subhash Jain said
that nothing could be a greater celebration of the 2600th year birth celebrationsof the advent of Lord Mahavira [founder of Jainism].” Kumari Uma Mahesh-wari “was against superstitions and empty rituals. Once she told her motherthat after her death the body should be consigned in an electric crematoriumto avoid air pollution and to save woods … she told the family that after she isgone, there should be no ritual or ceremony. She forbade them from observing
uthala, choutha or tehervi [standard Hindu death ceremonies] … The moststringent condition she wanted was that nobody should cry or be sorry on herdeath … The body was delivered to Maulana Azad Medical College.”
These remembrances of the departures of ‘noble souls’ recall Madan’saccount of a good death being attained through active participation and theconsolidation of this status through subsequently being “talked about for edi-fication.” Another technique involves projection forward in instantiations of the utilitarian imaginary. Arya Samaj sannyasi Swami Dikshanand Saraswatihypothesizes—perhaps not fully understanding Samiti procedures, given hisreference to cremation20—the funeral of a donor, in which mourners proclaim,“Oh! Departing person ( jane wale), we feel like applauding every bit of you.May God also give us the strength (shakti). May we also attain such a death
(aisi mrityu prapt karen). May people at the time of the burning of our corpsesalso be able to applaud ( prashansa karna) at the donation (dan) of someorgan (ang ) of our bodies.” This is helpful to Kumar as a religiously authorita-tive contribution to his project of defining the good death as that which fore-grounds usefulness.
Simpson (2004: 841) is correct that body commoditization debates arelargely cast as a struggle “between intrinsic value and utility.” Samiti donors,however, posit utility as an intrinsic value, and their commitment to this valueis striking. Kumar related to me a post-mortem utility-drama concerning Dr.Inderjit Singh, whose body was delivered to the Samiti with a Communisthammer-and-sickle banner draped over it: “[Singh’s] wife telephoned to say,‘Alok Ji, he is dead.’ From what she told me, I understood that her husbandhad suffered gangrene, and one of his legs had been amputated. I informedher that such a body could not be used. Calmly, she said, ‘It is God’s wish,but he very much wanted it.’ Half an hour later she called again and put thefamily doctor on the line. He explained that it had been diabetic gangrene. Shecame back on the phone and said, ‘Son, do you still think you cannot use thisbody?’ We donated the body.” Now consider the case of registered body donorDr. Harshwardhan. Having been operated on for appendicitis, says Kumar, his
first thought was that future medical students would not be able to study theappendix removed from his body. Harshwardhan’s utilitarian piety is such thathe evidently feels somewhat guilty for his inability to present a complete bodyafter his death. He considers his absent appendix as the presence of a highlyspecific and calculable opportunity cost. It appears that for those with a com-mitment to ‘total usage’, it would be almost preferable to die healthily (andhence early) rather than in a wasted, unusable state.21
Total usage is at the center of the utilitarian imaginary. These words fromKumar neatly underscore the status in Samiti donation theology of piety and
(maximized) utility as dependent corollaries: “There are some verses from thescriptures which say that when a cow dies, all the parts of its body can be used,are used. The skin, the tail, everything. When the human being dies, none of its body is used. So I feel that we are now ahead of our scriptures. It’s not onlya cow that can be used, it’s a human being.” Both drawing on and surpassingscriptural precedent, the Samiti is a vanguard organization. Following this logic
upon the founding of the Samiti, Kumar asked: “Why only organ donation?Why not the entire body (sari deh)?” The intoxication of utility, revealed throughdeliberative, projective enumeration of hypothetical usefulness, is apparent
in a contribution to the Samiti souvenir publication by Dr. Venu Gopal.22
Heintroduces his poem, “Please Remember Me,” with the reflection that when oneis lying on a white sheet in a hospital (dead, that is) and “the flow of the suc-cession of life and death is on,” we should not consider this our deathbed, butour “life-bed” ( jivan-shyya). He imagines his bodily distributive legacy: “Frommy body remove my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve to give to ahandicapped child who is being trained to walk. / Conduct a detailed inves-tigation into every part of my brain. / If possible, obtain my cells and allowthem to develop / So that one day some dumb child / Is enabled to scream on
hearing the thundering clouds / And some deaf child can listen to the sound of rain through her window. / Burn away the leftover remains of my body / Andsprinkle the ashes in the breeze so that they help flowers to grow.”
T. C. Goyal contributes the poem “My Will”:23 “Do not burn ( jalaiye) or bury(dafnaiye) / My lifeless body / Now I will fulfill the humane duty (manav-dharm)… / Give my eyes to such a one / Who has never seen the sun rise … / Give myheart to such a one / Who is not without a heart / But who has been given/ Nothing but pain / By his own heart … / Transplant my kidney / Into theabdomen of such a youth / Who is surviving with the help of artificial kidneys/ And who is the support / Of his young wife and small children. / Extract myliver, my lungs, each and every one of my bones, my ribs / That each and everyfiber / Each and every atom of my body is used. / That alone is my will (vasiyat )… / I am indestructible (anashvar ) … / I am the eternal spirit (brahma) /Dadhichi is alive even today.”24
In imagining that his kidneys save one upon whom others are depen-dent (one “who is the support of his young wife and small children”), Goyalengages in a prevalent donation fantasy—the calculation of saving many fromone, a maximally efficient donation. This kind of donation efficiency formulais captured in the common blood donation slogan, “Ap ke rakt ka ek ansh
bacha sakta hai kissi ka vansh,” that is, “A part (ansh) of your blood can savesomebody’s generation (vansh).” It is a highly gendered expression, for one’svansh can be passed on only through the male line. If your blood saves a maleat a certain point of time, the assumption is that his whole family will be saved,not only in the present but for generations as well. According to the slogan,donated blood acts as a kind of progenitor. Saving such a person is maximallyefficient: the ‘experiential time’ that is ‘saved’ is simultaneously maximized inthe hypothetical current scenario (the ‘dependents’ that will be ‘saved’ result-ing from their ‘protector’ having been saved) and in inter-generational future
scenarios (each descendent of that man relying for their individual lifetimes onthe original and originating gift of blood).25
The strikingly numeric character of the utilitarian imaginary was under-scored by a donor I met at an utsav: “One body is one hundred people’s benefit( abh), because MBBS [doctoral] students will do research on my body, andmy organs, kidneys, heart will be transplanted to needy persons.” Dr. Palitha
Abeykoon, writing in the souvenir publication, is rather more circumspect,refraining from elaborating a fantasy of total dissemination. However, the willto enumerate is just as salient: “It is known that from a single cadaveric donor,
up to forty-five patients could benefit by receiving an organ or tissue. Thisis an unsurpassed advantage in such donations.” In “A Note on [Derrida’s]‘Faith and Knowledge,’” Anidjar (2002: 40) writes: “Religion counts, again; itaccumulates returns and thus returns.” There is a likely connection here withkarmic quantification.26 In general situations during ethnographic research,many informants stressed the calculations of karma. In a this-worldly vein,one lady told me that “simran [remembering God] is like a bank (kosh). Youare storing something. You store your good deeds and your simran, and youcan cash it any time. When you need money, you go to the bank, so when you
are suffering too much, you say to God, ‘Oh help me,’ and He will say, ‘Thisperson never forgot me, so how can I let him down now?’” The emphasis inthe utilitarian imaginary on quantification suggests the possibility at least thatthe post-mortem divisibility of the body serves the bio-spiritual27 purpose of multiplying benefits to donors. Deh-dan is perhaps an arena of collaborationbetween Hinduism’s model of karma in its most calculating aspects and medi-cal rationality’s own concern with maximizing utility.
I hasten to add that I did not broach this subject directly during ethno-graphic research, for to have done so would have been to display unhelpfullywhat Simpson (2004: 855) calls “cynical reflections on the real motives behindthe gift.” At this stage, I merely propose a possible correspondence betweentwo methods of calculation in reference to the pious renderings of utilitar-ian aspirations that I have relayed. The imaginary defeat of opportunity costthrough maximally disseminated bodies perhaps represents a double victoryfor two optimizing and mutually facilitating calculative apparatuses.28
Legalistic Asceticism
While in Delhi, I conducted research simultaneously on blood and body dona-tion. When I asked blood-banking professionals about deh-dan, they wouldoften point to its exceptional, singular nature, ascribing it ‘event’ or one-timestatus. Health-care workers disparaged it as a peculiar form of dan requiringlittle more than a signature—paper-dan, one could call it.29 It was contrastedunfavorably with voluntary blood donation, which, as a repeatable action(the virtuous donor will give every three months), was thought of by thesepeople as a form of life-style.30 Like Kierkegaardian repetition, committed blooddonors repeat forward in time “by a creative act of sustaining a commitment
from day to day. The ‘re-’ of Kierkegaardian repetition means to keep comingback in the future to the self which one sets out to be … It is an ethicoreligiousact of faithfulness, of constituting and creating a moral self” (Caputo 1987: 58).While I have no doubt that this sheds light on voluntary blood donation as anethical practice, I hope to show that it also applies to body donors—that thecharacterization of body donation as, in a sense, lacking in ethical commitment
because it is not repeatable is an unfair one, at least from the vantage point of the Samiti’s idiosyncratic donation theology.
Samiti founder Alok Kumar grew up a swayamsevak (national volunteer) of
the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [Association of National Volunteers],co-ordinating body of the Hindu Right in India).31 He corresponded with fellowvolunteer and close friend Dr. Harshwardhan, currently president of the BJP(Bharatiya Janata Party [Indian People’s Party]) in Delhi,32 while the latter wasin Kanpur undertaking medical training. They agreed that instead of consider-ing cadavers useless, they “can be used for a very noble purpose.” Both pres-ent-day stalwarts of Hindutva groups, in youth they connected their religiousnationalist ideals with the ‘noble’, sacrificial cause of deh-dan, imagining thatthey would die a ‘noble death’ for the “same cause on the same day, and our
bodies will be received in the medical college on adjoining tables.” Kumargathered a group of friends after the Transplantation of Human Organs Acthad been passed in 1994, and, as mentioned above, asked: “Why only organdonation? Why not the entire body?” The group went to the registrar’s officeto draw up their wills (vasiyad). When Kumar’s name was called out, “I musthave taken seven or eight steps to reach the registrar, but within that durationI saw many scenes. I had an encounter (batchit ) with death. I saw my deadbody. My eyes had been taken out. I saw two men viewing the world enabledby my eyes. I saw my relatives gathering. I saw the vehicle on which my bodywas carried. This was a rare spiritual encounter (adhyatmic batchit ). I wasnot a body but a witness. I am pure (shuddhoaham), I am enlightened (bud-
dhoaham), I am eternal (nityoaham).” This religious vision at the registrar’soffice—also an instance of the utilitarian imaginary, with Kumar attainingvision of others’ vision through his eyes—confirmed for him the logic of deh-
dan as being congruent with the Gita as cited above. He explained to me, “Irealized that what had gone in that vehicle was my body. It was not me. It issomething I possessed,33 but not me.”34
In a different rendering of the same experience at an utsav event, Kumardeclared that what he had seen was nothing less than “a pious, adorned, lib-
erated penance.” In an explicit reference to practices pursued by sannyasis,Kumar compares this experience to going to the brahm kapal (splitting of theskull on the pyre to release the soul of the deceased) and doing his own shraddh
(funeral rites). Van der Veer (1988) properly warns us that renouncers do notall that often actually perform their own death rites, but in the popular Hinduimagination, renouncers do indeed perform their own shraddh in order to marktheir death in terms of social connection. When the renouncer dies his natu-ral death, he might be “buried in a sitting posture without further ceremony”(Uberoi 1991: 324; cf. Roberts 2005) or thrown into a river weighted down
by stones (van der Veer 1988: 115). It is surely of significance that classicalrenouncers, like Samiti donors, forego cremation. Though Kumar refers to per-forming his own shraddh, he refrains from explicitly drawing the attention of potential donors to renouncers’ concomitant disavowal of cremation. I am con-fident, however, that Kumar’s declaration of sannyas makes clear to donors thatcremation is not the only mode of disposal in Hindu tradition. Cremation itself
is a kind of “last-ditch renunciation,” substituting for householders’ (usual)failure to adhere to the Brahmanic theory of the four stages of life, which assertsthat as men near the end of their lives, they should renounce conventional
social life and become wandering ascetics (Bloch and Parry 1982a: 27). Theascetic is not cremated because “[h]e has already accomplished what cremationbelatedly achieves for the householder,” that is, repudiation of the ‘gross’ body(ibid.). As renouncers, then, body donors have no need of cremation, havingalready achieved the detachment that cremation seeks to imitate. Thus, both theimplicit and explicit content of sannyas is constitutive of the Samiti’s strategy of assuaging cremation-lack among donors and their families.
When they were leaving the registrar’s office, a companion told Kumarof his duty to look after his body with additional care, now that it had been
donated. Soon afterwards, Delhi suffered serious flooding, and Kumar was putin charge of Yamuna relief operations by the RSS. He had an eye infection, butthese were trying circumstances, and he carried on working. Kumar related thefollowing incident: “One day my father called me, asked me to sit, and said,‘Have you donated your body?’ I said, ‘Yes, father.’ I had no idea what he wasabout to say. He said, ‘Have you also donated your eyes?’ ‘Yes, eyes too,’ I said.‘You have resolved that these two eyes of yours will provide sight to two peopleafter your death. This is the resolve (nishchay) you have made.’ I said, ‘Yes.’‘Then, when you are making use of the thing which has been donated, why didyou not take care of it? These are unwell, this is not proper. While making useof a thing donated, you cannot spoil it. Keep your eyes healthy by getting themtreated. As a trustee, it is your responsibility to ensure that they remain healthy(swasth) so that they can be used by two blind persons, that the ear drumsremain healthy so they can be used by two deaf persons. All of your body.’”
Moved by these words, Kumar now tells Samiti donors that they haverenounced their bodies; instead of having bodies, they are ‘trustees’ of the bod-ies that were previously theirs. I alluded earlier to the manner in which invoca-tion of sannyas is made explicit in the distribution to donors of saffron scarves.Kumar also grandly declares in his utsav speeches, “Main sannyasi huun” (I
am a renouncer). It is made clear to donors that the signing of the will is likethe formal vow undertaken by initiate renouncers (see Laidlaw 2005; van derVeer 1988: 118–119). Gandhi famously defined ‘trusteeship’ as the proper rela-tion that individuals have toward their property and earnings: wealth shouldbe held in trust for ‘society’ (see Gandhi 1949: 221; 1998). Kumar proposes acorporeal extension of the same idea. It is difficult to know how ‘deep down’this concept goes in Samiti donors; at utsav events, members certainly repeatedKumar’s formula to me with enthusiasm. Trusteeship is by no means a secularcategory in India. The Samiti puts it across in a manner simultaneously reli-
gious and legalistic (Kumar is an advocate, as I have mentioned; Gandhi, too,was legally trained and claimed that his theory of trusteeship had its origins inboth jurisprudence and the Bhagavad Gita).35 Devotees of the Sant Nirankaris,a north Indian devotional movement in the sant mat tradition, focusing ondevotion to the formless, unincarnated god of the Sikh scriptures, say that theyare trustees of their bodies and possessions, which in fact belong to formless
god (nirankar ). In popular fire offering yagyas, a common refrain accompany-ing the offering (usually grain) is, “It was for Indra but it was never mine.”In its legal expression, the question of ownership is raised here by its abnega-
tion. Strathern (1999: 177) comments that ownership forestalls dissemination.The question of ownership in this situation is somewhat ambiguous. Donors’‘renunciation’ of ownership is a simultaneous bestowal;36 they open their bod-ies up to claims not yet made in imagining themselves as multiply owned byhypothetical persons. The body is ‘owned’ by a quantity of persons equivalentto the sum of what is extractable from it upon death. There is also the quan-tity of medical trainees in line to attain knowledge from it. Ownership can beconceived of as a cutting down to singularity (Strathern 1996), and thus as acentripetal movement toward the self. In this corporeal extension of Gandhian
trusteeship, however, in which ownership is disavowed singularly but re-cre-ated (or at least reimagined) multiply—rather like the revisionist asceticismproposed by the Samiti—a centrifugal movement away from the self toward‘m/any’ is entailed.37
The explicit morality of this version of somatic renunciation is that youshould provide extra care for what was previously yours because it is no longeryours. This is something of an ascetic paradox. The bestowal of an intensifiedcare and regard for a body that has been renounced (a responsibility to the bodythat must be both detached and acute) is perhaps a corollary of the Samiti’srevisionist ascetic principles, which propose that sannyas represents an intensi-fied engagement with society. The moral accompaniment of Kumar’s renuncia-tion, with its paradoxical asceticism without withdrawal (renouncers preciselycome ‘closer to society’ rather than withdraw from it), is what makes deh-dan
closer to rakt-dan (blood donation) than was allowed by the blood bank infor-mants cited above. Trusteeship proposes a disposition toward the body (thatof a relation of care) that must be just as consistent as that of the person whoallows him- or herself to be bled every three months. Deh-dan is as ‘structural’as rakt-dan in this sense; they share the same donation ecumene, and there isanother way in which this is so and which also relates to asceticism.
The vows undertaken by sannyasis have been mentioned. These are likelyto relate to celibacy, fasting, or other austerities.38 It is not being suggestedthat Samiti will signing is directly comparable to renouncers’ own bindingvows, but that there exists a structural similarity relating to the question of abstinence. Committed body donors must abstain from certain actions thatmight make their bodies less utilizable upon death, while committed blooddonors must refrain from actions that might lead to the transmission of infec-tion to recipients. Additional bodily care and defense is required because asdonors, their bodies are no longer only their own. Strathern (n.d.) writes that
“there are diverse ways in which [people] might be said to ‘own’ one another.”Donation asceticism reflects one such (previously unacknowledged) way inwhich claims—which are never framed explicitly (donors must not be scaredoff) but are nonetheless subtly present—are made by persons (future recipi-ent ‘owners’, who remain, of course, abstract and hypothetical, with claimsbeing made on their behalf by doctors and, in the present case, by the Samiti
hierarchy) on other persons. As referred to above, after registered body donorDr. Harshwardhan was operated on for appendicitis, his first thought was thatmedical students would not be able to study the appendix removed from his
body. Regardless of whether effective preventive measures could have beentaken, he considers himself a failed trustee. On reaching 18 years, Kumar’s sonpledged to donate blood three times a year until the age of 70. For Kumar, thismeans it became his son’s responsibility ( jimmedari) to live healthily and takeprecautions to avert the causes of hypertension, diabetes, or any other medi-cally disqualifying condition. A contributor to the Samiti publication writes:“The lifeless body can become a prime source of study for students in medicalcolleges. Then why not care for this body in such a way that when life has leftit, it could be used for other purposes?” (emphasis added).
It should be emphasized that the moral responsibility of blood donors toexercise additional bodily care is something of a universal ascetic principle.The two primary functions of the first World Blood Donor Day held on 14 June2004 were to thank donors and to promote healthy lifestyles among them. AFrench voluntary blood donors’ code states, among other protocol: “I declareon my honor … to remain worthy of being a Voluntary Blood Donor, respect-ing the rules of morality, good behavior and solidarity with fellow humanbeings” (Ray 1990: 69). I think it is clear that donors—being in a sense ownedby abstract future recipients—are encouraged to renounce certain dangerousactivities. The very pronounced asceticism of the Indian case serves, I think,to illuminate the ways in which all kinds of donation of body material makeascetic demands on donors. As Alter (1992: 324) sees it, “A key symbol of the[classically defined] sannyasi s world renunciation is his mastery of sensualdesire.” The goal is to attain the ‘centripetal’ purpose of self-perfection andsubsequent freedom from rebirth. But we are dealing here with a revisionistasceticism that accentuates the ‘radiating’ or ‘centrifugal’ effects of asceticpractice. Abstinence, or self-control at least, is a bridge between classic andrevisionist asceticism. The object of piety has changed, but in content andpractice there remain key structural similarities.39
The Samiti’s ingenuity in assimilating a pledge—the signing of a will—torenunciation categories may have been assisted by the Brahmanic principle of dan, which insists that “the very definition of the gift is that it involves the com-plete extinction of the donor’s proprietary rights in favor of the recipient” (Parry1994: 134). Sannyas concepts may thus have been employed in order to helpresolve the paradox of donors continuing to use that which they have donated,the extinction of proprietary rights figured as renunciation. Dan is ‘officially’ asurrogate for asceticism in the Age of Kali (Parry 1994: 190). Here we are pre-sented with an innovative conjunction of the two phenomena. If Brahmanic dan,
as unreciprocated gift, suggests renunciation (being a surrogate for it), then thevoluntary (unreciprocated) giving of corporeal substances such as eyes (netra-
dan), blood (rakt-dan), and bodies (deh-dan) already implies the asceticism thatAlok Kumar seeks to capitalize on in order to assuage cremation-lack.
From one angle, it is clear that the promulgation of signatories’ asceticismis an instrumental exercise in legitimating the unorthodox and unaccustomed.
This is most evident in Kumar’s dealings with suspicious potential members:“We sometimes say [to such people] that if you give the whole body, thenthere is no body for the soul to come back and live in. Then you attain God
straightaway, because the soul has lost its home.” Donation is projected hereas no less than a shortcut to salvation. Kumar’s smile, as he related this to me,signaled his condescension. This was Kumar at his most calculating. Fromanother, equally compelling angle, there is no doubt that Kumar is an agentof renewal, revisiting sacred Hindu texts to find fresh revelations that accordwith modernist aims and targets. The invocation of a ‘centrifugal’ (socialized)asceticism thus cannot be accounted for by way of a purely instrumentalanalysis. Kumar’s corporeal extension of Gandhian trusteeship—in a mannerthat encompasses subtle juxtapositions of piety and utility, detachment and
intensified regard—illuminates the ‘universal asceticism’ required of donors of different types of body material.
A Donation Theology
As noted at the outset, Samiti donors pledge their bodies partly as a responseto prevalent media stories of organ selling and theft. This analysis has assumedthat body donations are made voluntarily, as a result of techniques of eth-ical persuasion, and further that the Samiti, and Kumar in particular, hasconstructed a novel donation theology of pious utility centered on donors asascetic practitioners.
A key concept developed by Cohen (2004: 169) is “bioavailability,” a con-tingency “organized variously around the loving or charitable gift, the com-moditized sale, or the authoritarian or piratical forced extraction or seizure.”40
The term is applied to populations that are usually rendered ‘bio-available’ byway of their socio-economic status. The archetypal bio-available population isthe exploitable poor, whose body parts flow upward to the wealthy. Accordingto this view, one does not have to be poor to make a “loving or charitable gift,”
but those who do offer gifts without being explicitly compelled by debt, or as aresult of illicit extraction during operations, are depicted as being mystified bya predatory ideology of extraction masquerading as a ‘gift of life’. There doesnot appear much scope for voluntary bio-availability in Cohen’s scheme.
If for Cohen and others, including Lock (2002), persons are made (“inter-pellated”) into certain kinds of bio-available persons (possibly dead kindsof person; see Lock 2002) by the demands of a rapacious, “gift-wrapped”(Ohnuki-Tierney 1994), and ever more biologically intrusive ideology of ‘latecapitalism’, what then of ethical self-fashioning? What of possible “marriage[s]
of responsibility and faith” (Derrida 1995: 6)? What of ‘gifts of life’, which arealso gifts of knowledge (for trainee doctors)? Anthropologists have been activein highlighting that “the body yields gifts that are deeply problematic” (Simp-son 2004: 842), and there is no better example of this than Cohen’s sophisti-cated work. A space must be reserved, however, for the possibility of agentivebio-availability by design. Laidlaw (2002: 324) claims that “by describing the
different technologies of the self, one can tell the story of different ways inwhich people have purposefully made themselves into certain kinds of per-son.” This, as Laidlaw says, would be subject to existing bio-political possibili-
ties and in accordance with various constraining norms and regulations. I hopethis article has been able to recover a space of the bio-spiritual in this contestedrealm of organ circulation and adjoining bio-ethical debates, and to show thatpeople can make themselves into certain kinds of distinct persons throughinnovative responses to rejoinders to give of themselves. It is not enough inthis case to dismiss ‘gift of life’ as ideology or “seductive metaphor” (Lock2002: 207). Indeed, Indian ascetic practices lend themselves to a bio-medical‘gift of life’ interpretation, for “the power to convert death into life is seenas intimately connected with the performance of ascetic austerities” (Parry
1982: 75). In short, I have sought to show that ‘interpellation’ by what somehave portrayed as a mystifying ideology of ‘gift of life’ does not necessarilypreclude the possibilities for ethical self-fashioning as well as theologicaloriginality in these contexts.
Conclusion
Parry (1994: 270) has argued that for salvation religions, “life in this world isplainly devalued, and movements of ascetic withdrawal from it are clearly alogical development.” I would argue that in Indian metropolises—among themiddle and upper classes, at least—“life in this world” is no longer devalued,and, paradoxically, neither is asceticism, which retains real conceptual power.Hence, reorientations of asceticism, such as ‘asceticism without withdrawal’,are possible. The fact that asceticism without withdrawal is designed to pre-serve the lives of others doubly emphasizes that life in this world is no longerdevalued: first, this brand of asceticism doesn’t mean withdrawal from life(hence life is not devalued), and, second, the purpose of this brand of asceti-cism is to save lives (hence, life is precisely valued).
For Dumont (1970: 12), “what one is in the habit of calling Indian thoughtis for the very great part the thought of the sannyasi.” Is asceticism withoutwithdrawal simply ‘renunciation without renunciation’?41 Has the conceptualcentrality of sannyas in Indian thought been reduced to a set of more or lessdeployable tropes? I do not think so. Ascetic paradox and redeployment isnothing new. Van der Veer (1988: 109) notes that for Ramanandi ascetics inAyodhya, the more ‘liberated’ they become from society, the more societywants to go and see them. From this angle, asceticism without withdrawaldoes not appear contradictory. “Worldliness and otherworldliness,” says Parry
(1994: 269), “would seem to be part of the same complex of ideas in thatrenunciation must draw at least part of its ideological force from a propensityto value the world highly.” ‘Asceticism’ is the name for a bundle of powerfulconceptual materials. In certain contexts, it is able to overflow its conventionalframing and buttress high valuations of the world precisely because, in being“somewhat Janus-faced” (Parry 1994: 270), it has already suggested that it
could. And does the utilitarian redeployment of sannyas as ‘pious utility’indicate its secularization or disenchantment? Emphatically not. It is not thatrenunciation is disenchanted by being made practical, but rather that utilitari-
anism is enchanted by being made ascetic.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Alok Kumar for his extensive help and kindness while I was inDelhi. I wish to thank Susan Bayly, Matthew Carey, Sabina Deiringer, and MichaelRoberts for their careful readings of earlier drafts. My thanks also to Prasannanshuand Urvashi Prasannanshu Jain for help with the Sanskrit, and to Marilyn Strath-ern for permission to cite from a draft paper. I am grateful to the United KingdomEconomic and Social Research Council for financial assistance.
Jacob Copeman is a member of the Cambridge University Department of SocialAnthropology. He is currently finishing a study of the religious and kinship aspectsof blood donation in India. Among his publications are “‘Blood will have blood’: AStudy in Indian Political Ritual” (Social Analysis, 2004) and “Veinglory: ExploringProcesses of Blood Transfer between Persons” ( Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, 2005).
Notes
1. Cohen (1999, 2001, 2004) has elegantly documented this subject in a series of articles.
2. Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, is “a label for the politics of exclusive Hindu identity, asexemplified by the BJP, VHP, RSS, and Shiv Sena” (Heehs 1998: 116). These groups of
the Hindu right are collectively known as the Sangh Parivar. On the rise of Hindutvaorganizations in India, see Hansen (1999) and Jaffrelot (1996).3. http://www.in.yahoo.com/030515/58/24b41.html
4. The Bhagavad Gita is a sacred Hindu text, consisting of a discourse between the deityKrishna and his disciple, the warrior-prince Arjuna. It is a small portion of the vast epic,the Mahabharata. Mayer (1981: 169) notes the frequency with which Indians allude to
the text in discussions of eva (service).5. Maulana Azad was Nehru’s first minister of education. A noted ‘secularist’, Azad was a
leading Muslim member of the Indian National Congress and a close colleague of Gandhiin the freedom struggle.
6. A reconstruction from all the sources mentioned in the introduction.
7. Van der Veer (1988: 133) elucidates the tradition of ascetic violence in India. The use of Dadhichi’s body as a weapon is obviously resonant in the contemporary global setting.
Roberts (2005) draws attention to interesting correlations between LTTE cadres fightingfor Ealam in Sri Lanka and annyasis. Lecomte-Tilouine (this volume) describes theMaoist warrior in Nepal as “a type of renouncer” who has “embraced death.” These
revolutionaries are “ascetics … [who] practice daily corporal austerities” and who, likeDadhichi, have made their bodies into iron through penances (tapas). In this view,
annyasis are seen as ideal fighting machines by virtue of the strengthening effects of their tapas. For the militaristic Hindutva take on annyas, see Jaffelot (1996: 40). One
can compare the biomedical conception of ‘living cadavers’—a term superseded bybrain dead’, the population from which organs are removed for transplantation (see
Lock 2002: 1)—with Lecomte-Tilouine’s renouncers who have already embraced death,ho have, in effect, become ‘living corpses’. In an Internet chat-room discussion on the
subject of euthanasia, one contributor opposes its legalization in India precisely because
of the overlap between these two states. Well-trained Indian ascetics can reach “a self-con-trolled reversible coma-like physiological state … and also in amadhi-state it is possibleto stop brain waves but [the] human heart still usually beats or slows down to a very slow
eat” (http://sify.com/connect/dicussion/viewpostsflat.php?f=13330742&pid=24151).This point is substantiated by the historian Upendra Thakur (1963: 111): “[T]here is com-
paratively little distinction between the practice of austerities to a pitch which deprives theascetic of all mental and physical activity, and the actual termination of life; an intermedi-ate stage is furnished by the cataleptic condition which the Yogi seeks to induce.” Thus, a
corporeal condition integral to some forms of Indian asceticism is dangerously similar tothe condition that licenses organ extraction. According to this analysis, the living corpse
renouncer is all too liable to modulate into the living cadaver of Lock’s discussion—a dan-ger that makes inappropriate the legalization of euthanasia in the sub-continent.
8. The Indian ascetic “puts an end to interdependence and inaugurates the individual”
(Dumont 1966: 232).9. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1976) gives “moving or tending to
move away from a centre” as the meaning for the word ‘centrifugal’.10. Forms of asceticism that do not entail withdrawal from society have received fairly
kananda of the strongly reformist Ramakrishna Mission is often credited with initiatinga redefinition of asceticism as the truest template for socially oriented eva. Beckerlegge(2003: 59) notes that “Vivekananda’s use of the sannyasin [renouncer] as a deliverer of
organised service to humanity has frequently been acknowledged as an astute retentionof a powerful Hindu symbol.”
11. eva is a term nowadays associated with this-worldly social activism as well as spiritu-ally meritorious acts.
12. Narendra Maharaj is the guru’s name.
13. In English.14. India Today, 22 May 2000.
15. ouvenir , Devi Lal Bapna.
16. The Arya Samaj, a socio-religious organization, has engaged in Hindu ‘reformist’ activitysince its inception in 1875 by Swami Dayananda. Its teachings “exalt rationality, restraint
and austerity. The movement is radically monotheistic, abhorring priestly authority andelaborate ritual. Its experience of Hinduism is action-centered, soldierlike, and explicitly
masculinized” (Bayly 2004: 130).17. Saffron is unambiguously the color of renunciation. More recently it has become associ-
ated with Hindutva organizations.
18. In English.19. As related to me by Manju Kumar at an utsav.
20. Alok Kumar informed me that once delivered to the medical training college, cadaverscan be used in various ways for up to two years. When the body material is no longer
required, it is disposed of according to the stated wishes of the donor. Families are notpermitted to witness this, nor are they informed of the final disposal.
21. Compare this to the desire, recorded by Simpson (2004: 843), of an elderly Buddhist man
in Sri Lanka to “die quickly and cleanly from a brain haemorrhage so that maximum usecan be made of all my body parts.” I explore in greater detail some Indians’ compellingdesire to die an early death for the purpose of optimizing post-mortem cadaver utility in
23. In Hindi.24. On wills in India, and on one will’s particular usage as an instrument to ensure remem-
rance, see Mines’s (2002) engaging discussion.
25. For a fuller exploration of ‘experiential time’, see Copeman (2004: 130; 2005). On inter-relations between ‘efficiency’ and ‘altruism’, see Copeman (2005).
26. Mathur (1991: 66) describes karma as a form of “divine accountancy.” Laidlaw (2002:320) elucidates both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of karma
27. ‘Bio-spiritual’ describes situations in which there is either reliance on spirit to facilitate bio-
logical aims/goals or reliance on biological facts or techniques to facilitate spiritual goals.28. Projective enumeration of effects is a key feature of the donor’s utilitarian imaginary in India.
This is also true of the solicitation strategies of recruitment professionals. For example, arecent news article promoting cadaver bone banking in Delhi cites Professor Surya Bhan, thehead of the Orthopaedics Department at the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences
in Delhi: “An organ donation [such as a] kidney or liver can help one or two people, but in thecase of bones, 15–20 people can be benefited” ( Hindustan Times, 16 March 2005).
29. Lock (2002: 373) discusses this aspect of organ donation, contrasting the “ease” of sign-ing a donor card with the donor family’s “greater emotional sacrifice.” In our case also,much of the donation’s burden lies with uncomprehending families.
30. It should, however, be noted that voluntary blood donation is in its infancy in India.ccording to official figures, 30 to 40 percent of total blood collection is voluntary,
though it is probably far less. The most prevalent means of collection throughout Southsia is family replacement, whereby a family member or friend replaces the blood that
his or her relative or friend requires for medical treatment. If family members are afraid
of what they consider to be the ill-effects of donation, they might pay ‘professional’
donors to donate in their stead.31. The RSS is a radical, ultra-nationalist organization founded in 1925 by Keshav BaliramHedgewar. Present-day Hindutva political parties look to the RSS for ‘moral guidance’and for mobilizing their support bases.
32. Founded in 1980, the BJP is affiliated with right-wing Hindu groups, principally the RSS.It headed the National Democratic Alliance coalition that was ousted from office in the
004 elections. On the BJP, see Jaffrelot (1996) and Hansen (1999).33. The word ‘possessed’ is in English, as are the words ‘trusteeship’ and ‘ownership’ in the
references that follow.
34. This appears radically Cartesian, and the Bhagavad Gita is often interpreted in a dual-istic manner. However, separation between the person and his or her substance can by
no means stand as the Indian approach to the body. For example, see Marriot (1976)on ‘divisible’ South Asian persons whose biological properties are correlated to theirmoral properties. Both are constantly modified through the exchange of particles in
transactions. Marriot’s monistic interpretation obviously does not correspond to the viewexpressed here by Kumar. Medical rationality’s need for organs depends on variants of
Cartesian dualism (indigenous echoes of which Indian moderns are able to locate in theGita), which allow it to justify ‘brain death’ as the point at which patients’ organs cane harvested (see Lock 2002: 155, 199).
35. “I understood in the light of the Gita teaching the implication of the word ‘trustee’. Myregard for jurisprudence increased, I discovered it in religion. I understood the Gita
teaching of non-possession to mean that those who desired salvation should act like the
trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them ashis own” (Gandhi 1949: 221–222). For obvious reasons, Gandhi’s conception of trustee-
ship is criticized by Indian neo-liberals (see, for instance, G. Das 2000: 24).36. This ‘renunciation’ of ownership is interesting in part because of the very assumption of
prior ownership.
37. ‘M/any’ is a term to describe phenomena that combine anonymity and multiplicity (seeCopeman 2004: 129). The proprietorial movement I describe here can be compared with
the public flotation of companies in which the movement is from a single or small set of owner/s to multiple (and to a large extent anonymous) owners through the holding of
stocks. A comment from Matthew Carey prompted this observation.38. “The taking of vows is a way of disciplining one’s life. The reason for it is to enhance
self-control and to quench desire. Seen in a slightly different way, it is also a positiveactivity that aims not to suppress, but to acquire special religious experiences andthereby to obtain power” (van der Veer 1988: 120).
39. The disposition of care toward the body that both rakt and eh-dan necessitate—under-stood in the present context in terms of trusteeship—invites a comparison with Fou-cault’s late work on the ‘care of the self’. In a discussion of Epictetus’s Discourses and the
modes of self-care described therein, Foucault (1984: 47) uses the terms “privilege-duty”and “gift-obligation.” These terms are meant to draw attention to the inter-relation of
freedom and diligence characteristic of the care of the self. Both terms shed light on theasceticism’ expected of voluntary donors of body material and do justice to the subtletyof the donors’ predicament: that which constitutes their ‘duty’ also makes behavioral
demands on them connotative of ‘privilege’ (remaining ‘worthy’ of being a voluntarylood donor). ‘Gift-obligation’ similarly draws attention to the weighty responsibilities
attendant on the giver.40. Cohen (2004: 166) proposes a set of three connected terms: to be “operable” is to be a
bioavailable” body, extracted from as a kind of counter-gift to the state. “Supplementable”
persons are those able to receive, “from the sovereign state,” parts of others’ bodies.41. This phrase is after Derrida (1995: 49), who discusses “religion without religion.”
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