The Making of a Modern Temple and a Hindu City: Kalighat and Kolkata by Deonnie Moodie is a study of the Kalighat temple in Kolkata, India, that is based on her travels to and research into this temple. Moodie studies the modernization of the temple and its administration. The book contains an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters deal with Hindu reforms in Kolkata, the publicization of Kalighat temple, the conversion of the temple into a public space, and resistance to modernization by the middle class. She examines the concept of modernity and its effect on the Indian middle-class, and explains that the Indian middle-class is “deeply embedded in colonial and postcolonial discourses of modernity” (22). Moodie explains in detail the birth of the Indian middle class. She juxtaposes Kali worship with other Indian traditions of worship or devotion and argues that Kali worship has been sanitized to suit the sensibilities of the modern English-educated Indian, to “a globalized elite” (30).
Moodie connects the worship of Kali in Kalighat to Bengal, particularly to Kolkata, and argues that the Kalighat temple’s modernization is “uniquely Bengali” (32). However, she argues that “the trends to modernize—and the forms that modernization take today, in post-1990s India—is much more pan-Indic” (33). Moodie traces the modernization of the Kalighat temple to Bengali Hindus’ efforts to reclaim the Hindu past of Kolkata from overenthusiastic British historians and write Kolkata’s history “as a story of sacred soil with Kālī at the center” (41). Moodie does an impressive job of unearthing early 20th-century writings from difficult-to-access literary sources.
Let us now examine some aspects of this book in detail. The arguments Moodie uses to establish the modernization of the Kalighat temple sometimes read too much into what are in reality efforts to preserve a cultural heritage site. The centrality that Moodie attributes to temples in Hinduism could be challenged because Hindus see divinity in everything in this universe and historically temples have not been an essential part of Hinduism. Moodie stretches her interpretation too far when she argues that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was negating or belittling Hindu temples when he said that that “dams and power plants would become the temples of modern India” (1).
Moodie weaves anecdotes and interviews into the book, which makes it more engaging. The reader can easily perceive that much research has gone into even short sections of the book. That is why it is not clear why Moodie repeatedly insists throughout the book that Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), an Indian monk and philosopher who preached that individuals are divine and that spirituality is universal, did not like Kali worship or the Kalighat temple. It is surprising that Moodie does not refer to Vivekananda’s large corpus of writings and bases her conclusions on secondary sources alone. The nine-volume Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata. 2016) has numerous references to Vivekananda glorifying Kali. It was Vivekananda who arranged a lecture of his disciple, Sister Nivedita, at the Kalighat temple. Moodie quotes this lecture but does not mention the role of Vivekananda or that Vivekananda initiated Nivedita into Kali worship. Vivekananda was a regular visitor to this temple since his childhood according to many biographies. Also, Vivekananda did not reframe “his guru’s legacy as one of non-dualist spirituality,” (42), as he explains in detail his guru’s devotional dualist philosophy in his discourses on devotion published as Bhakti Yoga. Moreover, Vivekananda never “rejected temple worship,” (42), and in fact he wrote volumes on the significance of devotion and temples. It is
A striking feature of this book is its analysis of court cases related to the Kalighat temple. Moodie offers a careful study of court judgments about the Kalighat temple to portray its modernization. Notably, she shows how “Indian judges worked to modernize” the temple’s management (67). It is an indication that Moodie relies on all available sources of history, including oral traditions. The various judgments relating to the management of the Kalighat temple effectively converted it into a public institution.
In a section titled “Temple Logics,” Moodie describes in detail the method by which temples function and explains that temples “are homes to divine beings who are physically embodied” in images (74). She delineates how the management of Indian temples have been systematically westernized by the judiciary. Moodie analyzes the word “public” and how it has quite different connotations in the West and India.
Moodie details various historical accounts of Kolkata, both by Indian and non-Indian writers. She argues that Kolkata had a rich history before the British arrived and gives numerous references to support this argument. This book is a good research work for historians, religious scholars, and scholars of Indian studies.
Swami Narasimhananda is the secretary of Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Kozhikode, India.
Swami Narasimhananda
Date Of Review:
January 27, 2023