Table Of ContentSpiritual Empires
in Europe and
India
Cosmopolitan Religious Movements
from 1875 to the Interwar Era
Perry Myers
Spiritual Empires in Europe and India
Perry Myers
Spiritual Empires in
Europe and India
Cosmopolitan Religious Movements from 1875
to the Interwar Era
Perry Myers
Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Albion College
Albion, MI, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-81002-3 ISBN 978-3-030-81003-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81003-0
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Faire de la politique et la nommer mystique, prendre de la mystique et en
faire de la politique, c’est un détournement inexpiable.
Tout commence en mystique et finit en politique.
Charles Péguy, Notre Jeunesse
Every full-fledged ideology has been created, continued and improved as a
political weapon and not as a theoretical doctrine.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
To my father
A
cknowledgments
I finished writing this book in Paris during the 2020/2021 academic year,
and as this work comes to a close in Summer 2021, there is a formidable
list of people, institutions, and libraries that have helped me in various and
important ways throughout the past eight years. Books are usually cred-
ited to a single author, as is this one. Yet in reality a book is authored de
facto by a team. While my name appears on the cover of this book, this
would not have been possible without familial support, a scholarly cohort,
and granting agencies. During this pandemic-fraught year, I have little to
complain about and much to be grateful for.
I begin by expressing my abundant appreciation to the Institut d’Études
avancées de Paris (IEA), located in the beautiful Hôtel de Lauzun on
Paris’ Île Saint-Louis, which granted me a research fellowship during the
academic year 2020/2021, financed by the French State, programme
“Investissements d’avenir,” and managed by the Agence Nationale de la
Recherche. This grant allowed me the time and calm to finish writing the
book, but also to hone and improve the manuscript, especially those sec-
tions that deal with France. The Paris Institute is a rare gem in its focus on
interdisciplinarity and the humanities, and despite the formidable Covid
restrictions, the year proved invigorating and motivating. I found myself
among a cohort of phenomenal scholars, who I could interact with, pres-
ent my work, and learn from their feedback. Their insight and the IEA
have supported me tremendously in the development and completion of
my scholarship for this book, but also in the germination of new ideas for
the next project. With the generous financial support of the Institute, I
was also able to improve my spoken French through intensive language
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
courses, and in addition, the IEA provided funding to complete the index
for this book. I would especially like to thank the Institute’s director
Saadhi Lahlou and its scientific director Simon Luck, both of whom
enthusiastically organized and maintained a rewarding scholarly exchange,
despite the challenging circumstances of this pandemic-s tricken year. All
of the staff of the IEA deserve mention: Cécile Durand, Claire Jeandel,
Solène de Bonis, Lisette Winkler, Christopher Boulhares, Nadège
Bourgeois, and Bertrand Pouvesle made this year go well. A special thanks
to Geneviève Marmin, the Institute’s librarian, who provided help with
sources and valuable information throughout the year. To the research
fellows at the Institute, I will always remember the friendly questions,
insightful criticisms, and rich discussions at our weekly seminars, over
lunch, or in the courtyard that made this year so productive. A couple of
you I only met by zoom, but nevertheless special thanks go to Murat
Akan, Arturo Alvarado, Sofia Bonicalzi, Federico Brusadelli, Jens Damm,
Robert Desjarlais, Leslie-Ann Duvic-Paoli, Shannon Fogg, Cécile
Fromont, Markham Geller, Patrick Haggard, Jessica Imbach, Johannes
Jaeger, Theodora Jim, Kai Koddenbrock, Victoria Lee, Pierre Mérel, Julia
Mylnikova, Dilip Ninan, Kristina Orfali, Catherine Perret, Claudine
Provencher, Elizabeth Spelke, Tatjana Thelen, Dong Wang, Don Weenink,
and Leor Zmigrod. A special thanks to my IEA colleague Colin Jones,
who possesses an unmatched depth of historical knowledge on France and
who read and critiqued a chapter of the manuscript and helped me correct
some flaws in my approach that undoubtedly made my analysis better. At
my seminar presentation at the IEA, Jean-Pierre Brach of the École
Pratique des Hautes Études provided a noteworthy and perspicacious
commentary. Jean-Pierre, a master of the history of esoteric religions,
shared his time both before and after the seminar to help me better formu-
late my ideas and improve my analysis.
I want to express special appreciation to Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn,
who invited me as guest professor to the École normale supérieur in Paris
in 2019 to participate in the LabexTransferS (initiated and directed by
Michel Espagne), where I presented my research at three different semi-
nars, all of which provided valuable feedback. In addition, Pascale has
written support letters and has been an invaluable partner in our frequent
intellectual discussions. Her broad knowledge of India, Germany, and
France and her willingness to share her time and expertise have provided
me with a remarkable sounding board for ideas and reflections.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
I would also like to thank my home institution, Albion College, for
granting me scholarly leave and for financial support throughout this
entire project in the form of various travel grants to do research in libraries
and present my work at conferences. Special thanks go to my colleagues in
the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, who create an atmo-
sphere where it is enjoyable to go to work. They include Dianne Guenin-
Lelle, Emmanuel Yewah, Kalen Oswald, Elizabeth Barrios, Marcie Noble,
Linda Clawson, and Andrea Schmidt, who held down the German fort in
my absence. Also, I want to thank my friend of German at Albion, Patrick
McLean, Director of the Ford Institute for Leadership in Public Policy
and Service, now sadly departed for greener career pastures, for many
fruitful conversations, as well as Albion alumnus, Jim Taup, whose gener-
osity has helped many German students at Albion and made the German
program better. I also want to express my appreciation to my students at
Albion College who have made the scholar-student experience what it
should be. In particular, special mention goes to several recent students,
with whom I have worked particularly closely on honor’s theses: Alivia
Benedict, Elaina Braunschweig, Jessie Butchley, and Troy MacCallumMhor.
Sort of a home away from home at the University of Michigan, the
Center for South Asian Studies (CSAS) has allowed me to explore an intel-
lectual world far outside my field of expertise, which has helped me to
think about research questions in new and varied ways. The faculty and
staff of the Center have welcomed me and that includes Farina Mir,
Mrinalini Sinha, Christi Merrill, Jeff Martin, Matthew Hull, and Clemente
Beghi; Thomas Trautmann became a coffee shop buddy of mine in Ann
Arbor and has always offered incomparable insight in our frequent discus-
sions. His knowledge and expertise across a broad expanse of fields, and
generosity to share, is remarkable. Through my interactions at the CSAS I
also met Varuni Bhatia, with whom I organized a panel along with
J. Barton Scott at the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison,
WI. There I was able to present my work to a South Asian specialist audi-
ence, which was commented with keen perception by Gauri Viswanathan.
This interaction with such sagacious specialists outside of my field of
German studies has benefited my research significantly.
A whole host of other scholars with whom I have had brief or extended
conversations at conferences, coffee shops, or libraries has contributed in
some way to this book. One of the first began over lunch with Dipesh
Chakrabarty in Chicago just after the completion of my previous book,
German Visions of India. He encouraged me to pursue the very
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
undeveloped ideas I had at the time on Theosophy in India as a compara-
tive project. That exploratory work was funded by two generous Greater
Lakes College Association New Initiatives Grants. Others who have been
generous with their time and intellectual energy in their interactions with
me are Claudia Kinkela, Suzanne Marchand, Hans Martin Krämer,
Caterina Zanfi, Geneviève Zubrzycki, Nina Berman, Eric Kurlander, Peter
Staudenmaier, Corinna Treitel, Hiram Maxim, Joanne Miyang Cho,
Douglas McGetchin, Nicholas Vazsonyi, and Jörg Esleben. Special thanks
to Michael Bergunder and John Warne Monroe, who provided important
feedback either over dinner or in written form. Julian Strube read sections
that covered France and provided important insight and improvements to
my analytical approach, for which I am very grateful.
What now seems long ago, Katie Arens at the University of Texas at
Austin, along with Janet Swaffar, embraced me in what must have seemed
to them like a particularly challenging project and got my academic career
off the ground. Their support and that of friends and colleagues at UT
Austin are still much appreciated. Thanks to the staff at Palgrave
Macmillan for bringing this book to press: Christine Pardue, Sam Stocker,
Vinoth Kuppan, Sarulatha Krishnamurthy, and Meagan Simpson. The
perceptive criticism of two anonymous readers made this a better book.
And thanks to Lisa Kleinholz for the indexing, a task that certainly saved
me much time and effort.
Over the past eight years I have done research at numerous libraries.
This includes the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the British
Library in London, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Unibibliothek in
Frankfurt, and the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor. In that
context, many librarians, whose names I frequently did not know, helped
me find materials and guided me in other ways through my research.
Maike Strobel at the Unibibliothek in Frankfurt deserves special thanks.
The library staff at Albion College has always generously helped me at
every research inquiry or request.
Most importantly, support begins and ends for me with my family, with
which I have been blessed and am extremely grateful for. My family in
Germany, especially Karl and Renate Abel, allowed us to camp at their
house during the summers, making longer access to libraries possible. I am
so grateful for my two daughters, Larissa and Marina, who were young
teens when this project started and have now matured into kind and warm
young women. They provide Susanne and me with delight and gratitude
as they both find their way. Susanne, my spouse, has supported me, most
