The Odyssey of the Ananda Marga: A Comparative Study

Introduction

The Ananda Marga (Path of Bliss), constituting at once a minor sect outside of mainline Hindu beliefs and practices and a social movement dedicated to the moral uplifting of the people, has had a checkered history. Yet the sect survived its multiple trials and tribulations to become a global movement. The odyssey of the Ananda Marga suggests tantalizing parallels with that of the Anabaptists (originally the Swiss Brethren) of 16th century Europe. ¹ As apostates from the established and powerful Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, the Anabaptists suffered persecution from the very inception of their movement. The Ananda Marga followers endured periodic brutal attacks by the Communist Party activists during 1967–1990. Both movements reacted with violence temporarily, though achieved success at the end.

As typical religious sects, the Ananda Marga and the Anabaptists possess such features as voluntariness, expulsion, exclusivity, self-identification, elite status, merit, conscience, and legitimation (Wilson, 1970: 28–35). Both may also be characterized as ‘revitalization’ and ‘apostolic’ movements (Bromley, 1998: 20–21) as well as chiliastic/messianic movements (Barkun, 1974). Such movements arise in a disequilibrated society suffering from loss of authority in order to save it from inevitable disintegration. They tend to restore or resort to what they consider the pristine glory of authentic religious/spiritual tradition. In formulating their ideal world, both movements also represent a social regenerative piety rather than the traditional faith, ritualistic brahmnaical or liturgical and institutional Episcopalian. They appear to be what may be considered ‘introversionist’ sects who dissociate from their contemporary society and depend increasingly on their community and seek to retain a strong sense of their own sanctity. Their community life emphasizes spiritual exercises that confer a ‘transcendent holiness’ upon them (Wilson, 1970: 118–119). In other words, theirs is what Paul Heelas (2009) calls ‘spirituality of life’ – a practical spirituality for the enhancement of the qualities of life while living in the present.

This comparatist exercise argues for an interesting point in respect to religious millennial movements. Ananda Marga, starting as a religious sect, never had a coherent or cogent and strictly scripturally based and rigorously argued theology, unlike the highly scholarly, albeit dogmatic, writings of Anabaptist scholars and activists such as Conrad Grebel (1498–1526), Michael Sattler (1490–1527), Felix Mantz (1498–1527), Hans Denck (1493–1527), Ludwig Hätzer (1500–1559) and many others. And it is precisely for this lack of theological rigor that the Ananda Marga could successfully expand itself to such a modernist, secular, socio-economic project while still maintaining its activities under the rubric of its founder’s spiritual enterprise. Interestingly, even this diversion of the sect’s original spiritual goal is not quite original with the Ananda Marga, it being an imitation of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, a pioneering spiritual-secular multinational organization founded by the 19th-century religious leader Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s (1836–1886) distinguished disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902; Sil, 1993, 1997). ²

Anabaptism, the socio-religious movement of the Swiss Brethren, claiming to be a restoration of authentic Apostolic Christianity, arose in a period of religious turmoil (the European Reformations) and political instability (rise of nation states in defiance of the authority of the Holy Roman Empire; see Bowsma, 1980: 215–246). The Swiss Brethren earned their nickname Anabaptist (or Wiedertäufer, meaning ‘re-baptizers’), outlawed by the Codex Justinianus (529), because they thought infant baptism no sacrament at all and that only the adult, capable of discretion and accountability, qualified for the ceremony as a symbol of regeneration. ³ They, in fact, ‘preferred the name of Brüder (Brethren), in German-speaking areas, and Doopsgezinde (baptism-minded) in the Low Countries’ (Weaver, 1987: 19). They denied the authority of the church as an institution; theirs was a community of believers, a ‘gathered church.’ Believing themselves to be saints on earth forming a Gemeinschaft der heilligen (community of the godly), and thus assured of their salvation, the Anabaptists refused to conform to secular government, the government for the ‘sinners.’ Hence they refused to bear arms, swear oaths in the court of law, or participate in government. At the same time they believed that they should resist the forces of secular power not by a show of violence but by forbearing all tribulations with fortitude and courage.

The Anabaptists were keen on ‘imitating’ Christ in their everyday life. ⁴ Simply put, their outlook on their Christian identity was uncomplicated and unencumbered by the abstract theological ideas of those of whom Menno Simons (1496–1561) called the ‘learned ones.’ A true Christian must seek to realize his truth not in doctrine or exegesis but through praxis, through the experience of taking up the cross of Christ and following him all through life to death. Within the Anabaptist ‘church,’ a strict sort of democracy and equality applied. Omnia sunt communia – ‘all things are common’ – was the motto of these people who believed in a strict communality of goods (Gütergemeinschaft) described in the second chapter of the Act of Apostles. For the Anabaptists ‘it is not “faith alone” which matters . . . but it is brotherhood . . . as the way to God’s kingdom’ (Friedman, 1944: 121). Each believer was both priest to his fellow believer and missionary to the unbelievers.

The great majority of the Anabaptists were poor and uneducated, but nearly everybody was convinced that the end of the world was at hand, that God was about to usher in the millennium or thousand-year rule of the saints predicted in the Book of Revelation, and that, unlike the Catholics, Calvinists, or Lutherans, they were God’s chosen people, the instruments of his inscrutable will. The Nuremberg printer and itinerant bookseller Hans Hergot (d. 1527) had prophesized before his execution in 1527 ‘the coming of the third age of the world, the rule of the Holy Spirit which would eliminate all nobility, destroy the wealth of the monasteries, and inaugurate the age of the common man’ (cited in Spitz, 1985: 173). The Anabaptists courted martyrdom and developed a theology of suffering with the conviction that ‘suffering is the way, the door and the means to God.’ As one of them put it, ‘a Christian without suffering is like an untrained doctor’ (cited in Littell, 2001: 132). The Dutch Anabaptist martyr Janneken van Munstdorp wrote to her little daughter, also named Janneken, on 10 August 1573 from her confinement in Antwerp, Belgium, prior to her execution at the stake on 6 October: ‘Be not ashamed of us; it is . . . the narrow way which leads into eternal life, for there shall no other way be found by which to be saved’ (Janz, 2008: 231).

Basing itself on the fundamental tenets of ancient Hindu tantrism, the Ananda Marga Pracharaka Samgha (The Organization to Propagate the Path of Bliss) was founded by Prabhatranjan Sarkar alias Shri Shri Anandamurti (1921–1990), an erstwhile clerk of the Indian Railways at Jamalpur, Bihar on 7 November 1955. The postwar and postindependence era of the Indian Republic was marked by an atmosphere of anxiety, insecurity, and a sense of dislocation following industrialization and the consequent breakdown of tradition and custom. ⁵ This is what a follower of Ananda Marga described as a ‘psycho-social crisis’ (Sunday, 1982; see also Sarkar, 1968b; Avadhuta, 1985: 41–43).

The Ananda Marga questions the spiritual base of traditional Hindu religion and practices. Rituals, prayers, pilgrimages and the like, which have a pervasive influence on the average Indian, are regarded by Sarkar as aspects of what he calls ‘geo-religion’ (earthy religion) or ‘pseudo- religion’ (upadharma; Sarkar, 1982: 24–25; see also Anandamurti, 1985: 170–171). He is likewise opposed to the various Hindu gods and goddesses whom he regards as ‘wholly created by human beings, maintained by human beings’ (Sarkar, 1985: 27). While recognizing that ‘dharma is the main current of human life,’ he seeks to offer a

comprehensive ideology which provides definite, clear-cut and bold directions for all aspects of human life – from one’s personal daily routine, to one’s social activities and collective motivation, to the spiritual inspiration which brings one closer and closer to God. (Anandamurti, 1985: 165–166)

This ideology – that is, theology – is predicated upon a belief in the existence of a Supreme Consciousness or the Parama Purusa – the demiurge of the universe – to whom all human beings must strive to return. Sadhana is thus ‘the process of returning home.’ And ‘it is a simple task. It requires no scholarship, no knowledge, no intellectual faculty, no long and tedious lecturing’ (Sarkar, 1985: 17). All one needs is devotion, feeling of oneness with the people of the world, a strictly moral life, and above all, a genuine master – sadguru. Sarkar admonished his adherents: ‘We should not forget even for a moment that this whole animate world is a large family in which nature has not assigned any property to any particular individual’ (Sarkar, 1985: 130). In fact his theory of society envisions a global family in which no hoarding but the accumulation of spiritual wealth is encouraged (p. 132). The leader of the Ananda Marga exhorted his flock:

Today I extend my earnest request to all reasonably virtuous and moral fighters that they form a good, well-disciplined sadbipra [perfect adept] society without further delay….These sadbipras will work for the good of all countries, for the all-round emancipation of all humanity. (Sarkar, 1985: 162)

Yet neither the Ananda Marga nor the Anabaptists eschewed, albeit to an extent appeared to subvert, the mainline scriptures of their respective faiths. In other words, the former belonged to Hindu religion and the latter to Christianity, though both were seen as apostate or heretic by the mainstream Hindus and Christians (Catholic as well as Protestant) and subjected to discrimination and persecution (Wright, 1998: 95–114). But they considered themselves as the upholders of authentic creed of their respective religions. As a distinguished Mennonite scholar maintains, the central theme of Anabaptism – the church as a disciplined community of adult believers and followers of Christ – ‘depicts an outlook running through the entire history of Christianity’ (Weaver, 1987: 113). In fact, the cardinal creed of Anabaptism, adult or believer’s baptism is predicated squarely on the New Testament Matthew 5: 19, Matthew 28, Mark 16, James 2 (Hübmaier, 1526, in Janz, 1982: 147–156). An erstwhile Benedictine monk turned Anabaptist and the formulator of the Anabaptist creed at Schleitheim, Michael Sattler, stated at his trial following his arrest in May 1527:

Send for the most learned men and for the sacred books of the Bible in whatsoever language they may be and let them confer with us in the Word of God. If they prove to us with the Holy Scripture that we err and are in the wrong, we will gladly desist and recent. (Cited in Williams and Mergel, 1957: 141–142)

Nevertheless, the Anabaptists’ insistence on the right of interpretation of God’s Word tended to isolate them. One scholar viewed Anabaptists’ emphasis on ‘the inspiration and authority of Scripture, personal commitment to Christ, correct belief, separation of church and state, and high personal and corporate morality’ as a variety of fundamentalism (Williams and Mergel, 1957: 115; Weaver’s summary of the views of a leading Mennonite historian, John Horsch, 1951: 29–36).

In the Indian context, the Ananda Marga movement may be an echo of the 19th-century meassianic movements of the primitive tribes such as the Mundas and the Santals of Chotanagpur in north-eastern Madhya Pradesh (central provinces of India), the Oraons and the Gonds of Nagpur in eastern Madhya Pradesh (central provinces), and the Lusheis and the Kacha Nagas of Assam and the northeast frontier provinces (Fuchs, 1965). More importantly, the tradition of Hindu revivalism of the late 19th century provided a direct inspiration and template for Sarkar’s sect. Hindu revivalists such as Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Balgangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), Bipinchandra Pal (1858–1932), or Sahajananda Swami (Swaminarayan, 1781–1830) had attempted ‘to blend religious with socio-economic values to foster a revived sense of community and ultimately to espouse nationalism.’ The revivalists insisted on what they considered the correct principles of dharma (religion) to regulate the individual’s social, political, and economic responsibilities and the principles of karma (philosophy of activism) to enhance his willed actions. Their larger concern was ‘to create a life-affirming orientation.’ At the same time, ‘like millennial movements in Europe, the political character of Indian revivalism derived much from the importance of preparing for salvation’ (Anderson and Damle, 1987: 13–14; see also Williams, 1984). It will not be out of place to note that the ochre (the color of gerua, the traditional outfit of a monk or an ascetic) robe clad activists of the Ananda Marga harked back to the Sannyasi Rebellion (revolt of the monks) in the 1770s.

Sarkar’s writings (especially 1985, 1986, and 1990) are replete with multiple injunctions and instructions with a view to teaching the familiar tantric principles (see Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan, 1979; Urban, 2000, 2003). His definition of Practical Tantra as the way to harmonize spirituality with worldly concerns echoes Swami Vivekananda’s concept of Practical Vedanta or Neo-Vedanta that makes God-consciousness a useful tool for the material and moral upliftment of the people at large (see the articles by Swami Gambhirananda, 129–142, Brahmachari Medhachaitanya, 169–183, and Rabindrakumar Dasgupta, 184–197 in Lokeshwarananda, 1385 BE). Similarly, Sarkar’s idea of the sadbipra, Marga’s dedicated activists, was derived from Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s (1838–1894) imaginary militant-patriots, the santans (sons of Mother India) in his famous novel Anandamath (The Abbey of Bliss, 1880–1882) or Vivekananda’s sannyasi social activists (ascetic warriors; Sil, 2003: 22). Most importantly, the Ananda Marga adepts employed the Bhagavadgita (the chapter on the philosophy of karma in the epic Mahabharata used by numerous religious preachers and leaders as well as politicians and patriots of India before Sarkar) to legitimize their reformulations, just as the Anabaptists relied on the Word of God, the Bible.

There is a marked disparity between the nature and intellectual contents of the theological foundations of the two movements. Unlike the founders of Anabaptism, who were well-educated classical humanists, the founder of the Ananda Marga hailed from a humble background and was a college dropout, whose writings and preachings are products of his personal education and enlightenment. Hence his theological writings contain an amazing amalgam of some scriptural insights and much dubious hermeneutics, and even fanciful accounts passing for history. Reportedly an initiated tantrika since 1939, Sarkar would like to invoke the efficacy of Tantra which he defines, following the traditional tantric lingo, as ‘the fundamental spiritual science’ facilitating ‘the process of transforming animality or latent divinity into the Supreme Divinity’ (Sarkar, 1985: 25–26; see also Avadhuta, 1985: 30).

But his tantrism seems to comprehend both Vaisnava Tantra with its emphasis on Krishna and kirtana and the Shaiva Tantra with its Shiva, yoga, tandava, and sadhana. Like all tantrikas, he believes in the existence of Supreme Consciousness or a Parama Purusa who could be realized through sadhana. This heterodox tantrism is a bit of a muddle in that it absorbs the practices (achara) of two traditionally rival varieties of tantrikas. Then the Parama Purusa, the Supreme Noumenon, is reduced, unwittingly, to an actual human being who is god-like. Sarkar makes Shiva and Krishna historical as well as metaphysical entities – Shiva being devatmanam devata (God of gods) and the ‘embodiment of Supreme Consciousness’ (Anandamurti, 1985: 37, 205), Krishna having descended ‘from the universal body of the Supreme Entity’ (Anandamurti, 1981: 225). The inevitable conclusion is that some superhuman beings are incarnations of God and this conclusion is predicated upon the argument that people create gods out of those men on whom they depend in all respects (Anandamurti, 1985: 41).

Sarkar’s preference for Tantra appears to be inspired by his belief that its scriptures not only ‘describe [the] qualities of an ideal guru’ who is ‘self-controlled . . . modest; soberly dressed; of exemplary conduct; well-established in society; pure in body and mind; adept in both spiritual theory and spiritual practice; superbly intelligent,’ but also endowed with ‘the qualities of an ideal disciple: tranquil; modest and humble; of pure soul; having reverence; capable of receiving ideas clearly; competent and ever ready to carry out the guru’s command’ (Sarkar, 1986: 79–80). This emphasis on the qualities of a guru is typically tantric (Hoens, 1979: 74–80). Sarkar’s emphasis on the rational and secular qualities of a spiritual mentor ultimately points to a distinct nexus between guru and god. Having proclaimed ‘Brahma Himself is the Guru. There cannot be any special Guru’ (Sarkar, 1986: 78), he then goes to the extent of claiming that ‘it is [God] . . . who is teaching you sadhana in the guise of Guru’ (Sarkar, 1985: 75).

Sarkar’s other weakness lies in his idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of ancient Bengal and Hindu gods. He believes that Rahd, corresponding to the area of present West Bengal, had existed eons before the birth of the Himalayas and was the cradle of human civilization (sabhyatar adivindu). The historians of ancient Bengal, who never posited the existence of a pre-Vedic developed culture in the area, would be horrified by Sarkar’s claim for the primacy and centrality of Bengali culture in the history of human civilization. At most, experts hold a cautious and modest opinion that the Homo Alpinus that ‘forms the main element in the composition of the present Bengalis . . . possessed a higher degree of civilization’ (Majumdar, 1974: 22; Sarkar, 1982; see also Ghosh, 1948; Roy, 1966).

Sarkar also provides a thunderous account of Shiva. Oblivious of the concept of the Vedic Rudra who became identified with the post-Vedic Shiva representing the abstract noumenon in the concrete world of transitory phenomena, he writes that Shiva was actually a human being called Sadashiva (an appellation of Shiva favored by the Agama tantrikas of southern and eastern India and a popular masculine name in Bengal, albeit spelt as ‘Sadashib’) who was born some 7,000 years ago. He was also ‘the first person to marry.’ With a view to ‘removing the distinctions among the members of society,’ he took three wives: ‘Parvatii, a fiar-complexioned Aryan girl; and Kalii, a dark-complexioned non-Aryan girl; and Gaunga, yellow-complexioned Mongolian girl.’ Shiva and Parvati begat a son called Bhairava (actually another name of Shiva) who was an ‘ardent spiritualist, a Tantric sadhaka’ (Anandamurti, 1985: 7–8, 47, 233, orthography as in original). ⁶ Shiva apparently visited Sarkar’s imagined paradise of Rahd to spread Shaiva dharma (Sarkar, 1962a: 6). The validity or legitimacy of this account cannot be ascertained by any other means than sheer faith. Further, Sarkar combines the two of the three principal divisions of tantrism – Vaisnava and Shaiva – the former in its typical Bengali Vaisnava-Sahajiya variety with its erotic mysticism and the latter with its esoteric spiritual exercises with a generous dose of the tantric metaphysical concept of a cosmic entity in order to concoct the elixir of his Amritavani (Nectar of Speech).

Sarkar is silent on the most popular variety of Tantra – the Shakta Tantra. He has little to say about the tantric dualism of Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles. In fact his ethnic home Bengal (though he was born and brought as an adolescent in the state of Bihar) has traditionally been considered as an important center of the Shakta tantrikas, practicers of the Shakti cult (cult of the Mother Goddess). His innovative tantrism without due reference and deference to Shakti and yet his publicly proclaimed concerns for women’s liberation from social repression and for elevating their status in society reveal his attempt to reconcile his contradictory project to detach his new spirituality from traditional tantrism while aligning with the traditional tantric emphasis on gender equality (Sarkar, 1985: 195; Prout Writers Group, 1986: 29–30). While his personal bias for the history and culture of Bengal and his theology rooted in Tantra lead him to exalt the position of women, his ambition to propagate a new religion prompts him to devalue the status of the Mother Goddess in favor of the male gods, Shiva and Krishna. Thus he does not appear to share the tantrikas’ ‘genuine awe for the female as the seat of reproduction, the source of all life.’ On the contrary, he posits a new thesis that ‘the role of Purusa is foremost in all spheres’ and that ‘Prakriti only acts whatever extent the Purusa has authorized or authorizes her to act’ (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan, 1979: 34 [also 33, 154ff]; Sarkar, 1984a: 3).

Although Sarkar’s sermons are generally conducted in Bengali and Hindi, he often uses English to render them intelligible to non-Bengalis as well as to foreigners. For example, the following furnishes a sample in this regard; it is how God is defined:

The supreme Entity, the Parama Purusa created everything. He is the generator: the first letter of generator is G. He is the operator of everything: the first letter operator is O . . . He destroys, the first letter is D. G-O-D. The word is God. (Sarkar, 1986: 28)

He also uses an idiosyncratic vocabulary. Thus the term atman (usually translated and understood as individual soul) is rendered as ‘that which is omnitelepathic.’ Likewise, phrases such as ‘proto-spiritualistic systaltic movement,’ ‘maximities,’ ‘laterite’ (meaning ‘derived from books’), ‘circumrotarian universe,’ ‘subjective approach objective adjustment,’ ‘geosentiment,’ ‘geo-religion’ (meaning ‘narrow parochial sentiment and religion’), ‘spiritual pabula,’ or ‘macro-psychic conation’ are frequently and frivolously used in a number of treatises and speechs of the Anandamurti (Sarkar, 1982, 1984a, 1985). ⁷ It is not easy to stomach Sarkar’s ‘neo-humanist philosophy’ with its concern for ‘a direct link with the cosmological hub, a direct link with the existential nucleus of the cosmological order’ (Sarkar, 1982: 109–110).

Though among the Anabaptists there were spiritualists and evangelical rationalists such as Hans Denck, Ludwig Hätzer, Pilgrim Marpeck (d. 1556), Sebastian Franck (1499–1543), Kasper Schwenckfeld (1490–1561), or Miguel Serveto (1511–1553), who arrived at their theological ideas by the study of the sources and the patristic writers, there were also a great many of them who were enthusiasts (Schwärmer), who held mystical and millenarian vision, men such as the Swabian furrier Melchior Hoffman (1495–1543), the Haarlem baker Jan Matthys (d. 1534), the Leiden tailor cum stage actor Jan Beukels or Bockelson (1509–1536), or the Moravian hatmaker Jakob Hutter, among others. However, both the spiritualist-rationalists and the spiritualist-enthusiasts among the Anabaptists emphasized the efficacy of ‘inner spirit’ rather than God’s Word. According to them, revelation came neither from the Bible nor from such external rituals as water baptism or the sacraments but from the illumination given to each man by God directly, speaking to him personally and privately (Dipple, 2011: 257–298). All of them – mystics and militants alike – held an apocalyptic vision of a new world built on the annihilation of the existing one of unbelievers and sinners.

Claiming that ‘the highest treasure of human beings . . . is their intellectual superiority,’ Sarker distinguishes between right intellect and one that ‘is not moving on the right path.’ His ‘right intellect’ amounts to recognizing the efficacy of devotion with a view to pleasing the Supreme Consciousness. He thus exhorts his disciples that ‘learning or knowledge or any other asset is not necessary except only two things – implicit faith and sincerity’ (Sarkar 1985: 68, 72–73). The instruments to inspire devotion are sadhana and kirtana (congregational prayer through ecstatic choral singing of divine glory accompanied by drums and cymbals and synchronized with rhythmic bodily movements), which help to concentrate physical and psychic powers with a view to ‘getting inspiration from Parama Purusa’ (Sarkar, 1986: 155). Sarkar’s preachings in this respect strongly resemble those of Sahajiya tantrikas of Bengal who believe that ‘the truth . . . can never be known by the scholars for, what comes within the scope of our mind, can never be the absolute truth’ (Dasgupta, 1962: 53, punctuations modified). Like some Anabaptists who emphasized inner revelation, the Ananda Marga believe in sadhana, teaching the devotees how to ‘dive into this wave of the Supreme’ (Sarkar, 1985: 31).

Since their inception, the Swiss Brethren were hounded by the Protestant reformers, not to mention the Catholics. They were primarily harmless folk and their following constituted a tiny minority of very educated and conscientious pastors and scholars, while the vast majority of their followers came from humbler stock. Especially during 1527–1533, nearly a thousand of them perished in the Habsburg lands. The magisterial reformers as well as the Roman Catholics held the Brethren in utter contempt for their beliefs in adult baptism and the Eucharist as well as their lifestyle. The established churches, Catholic as well as Protestant, had always upheld the traditional social order sustained by royal and hierarchical power and thus the individual autonomy and voluntarism supported by the Anabaptists were galling to the establishment monarchical as well as clerical (see Pearce, 1993). Nicholas Lesse (fl. 1548–1550), a distinguished translator of Augustine’s (354–430) A worke of the predestination of saintes (1550), declared: ‘[These] anabaptysts and frewyl masters are so mych more daungerouse, as ther myschefe is cloked with a dobl face of holiness ten tymes more religious . . . than were [th]e superstitious & arrogant papystes’ (cited in Euler, 2006: 212).

The sect also incurred the wrath of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r. 1519–1555). Persecuted from all sides, the Anabaptists turned defensive and eschatological. Two Anabaptist leaders launched vigorous eschatological movements. Jakob Hutter, the ‘Hercules of the Anabaptists,’ succeeded in gathering a large following in Moravia and, though he was executed by the Austrian authorities, the Hutterites emerged for a time to be a powerful radical reformist sect to reckon with. Another much more violent chiliastic organizer, Jan Beukels of Leiden, set up a New Jerusalem in the nearby north German city of Münster. He proclaimed himself king in the fashion of King David of Israel but was ultimately overpowered in June 1535 by the combined army of the Catholic prince-bishop of the city Franz von Waldeck (1491–1553) and the imperial force. ⁸ King Jan met with a violent death, thus maligning the reputation of the Anabaptists until they recovered from their beleaguered situation under the sober and sedulous leadership of another Dutchman Menno Simons.

A follower of Hoffman, Menno emerged as the recognized leader of the Dutch Anabaptists following the end of Jan Beukels’s Münster madness of 1536. He had begun as an ordained priest of the Church Universal at his hometown of Witmarsum since 1524 and begun to be concerned about the efficacy of two major Catholic sacraments – infant baptism and Eucharist based on the theology of transubstantiation – for which he found no scriptural imprimatur. However, ‘it was not Menno’s doubts, but events related to Münster which finally compelled him to renounce the Roman church’ (Weaver, 1987: 97). He quit his job and left the town in 1536, published an influential tract The Foundation of the Christian Doctrine in 1539, got married, and relocated to Oldersum, became quite prominent among the Melchiorite faction of the Anabaptists in the 1540s, and established himself permanently at Wüstenfeld, between Lübeck and Hamburg in 1554, dying on 30 January 1561. His numerous tracts, especially The Foundation, ‘became one of his chief tools in the gathering of the Melchiorites into a more unified and stable Anabaptist movement’ (Weaver, 1987: 98). In fact, Menno’s name became synonymous with the newly organized and invigorated Anabaptist movement in south Germany, Switzerland, and subsequently in the New World.

The Mennonite reforming sect, the Amish, led by the Swiss Mennonite Jacob Amman (c. 1656–c. 1730), settled in Switzerland and the southern Rhine River region and subsequently migrated to North America in the 18th century, settling in Pennsylvania. They remain a successful, peaceful, and productive community retaining much of their traditional lifestyle, albeit adjusting to the technological and industrial society of their adopted country. However, another sect, the Baptists, an off-shoot of the continental Reformation but founded by an English Separatist John Smyth (1570–1612) in Amsterdam, grew to be a vast global congregation with over 41 million members in 150,000 congregations all over the world.

There may be several reasons why the Ananda Marga zealots did not quite succeed in enlisting the support of the middle and upper classes of Indian society, especially West Bengal, until the last decades of the past century. Their reputation in the 1970s and 1980s for preaching ‘power through violence . . . mingled with ritual murder and mutilation’ (Naipaul, 1977: 62) ⁹ kept them away from the general rung of middle and upper-middle classes and failed to elicit government protection for the sect. Especially Marga’s ideology is poised against both communism and capitalism, the former deemed as too repressive and oppressive and the latter too libertarian and anarchic (see Kumar, 1987: 15–16). No prominent political party of India in the 1970s and 1980s – Congress (I; Indira Congress) or CPI (M; Communist Party of India, Marxist), or even BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) – was disposed to put up with another ideology that threatens to become a mass movement, particularly in view of the social activities of the Marga in the rural areas. In fact, the government of Mrs Indira Gandhi banned the sect during the Emergency Government (1975–1977) and incarcerated Sarkar, but his conviction was overturned on 4 July 1978. Subsequently the ban was lifted by the Supreme Court of India in 1996 and the sect was also recognized as a legitimate religious group in the same year. Since the globalization and liberalization trend of India’s economy and the consequent relaxation of political and cultural constraints, the Andna Marga has reaped the benefits accruing from these developments to be shaped as a multinational organization.

However, the Ananda Marga movement redeemed itself in the 1980s and 1990s and even began to earn global renown in respect of Sarkar’s theory of social cycles and of Progressive Utilization of Resources (PROUT) popularized in the West, especially by an Indian professor of economics in the United States (US), Dr Ravi Batra. The central theme of Proutism (announced since 1959) is maximum utilization of all resources – physical and psychological – in order to build a new global society that harmonizes technological and spiritual progress of mankind (Batra, 1980; Kumar, 1987). Especially Sarkar’s theory of social cycles (Sarkar, 1968a) that complements Proutism, was utilized by Batra in his sensational blockbuster with its prophetic prognostication of an impending global depression and messianic panacea to combat it (Batra, 1987).

Admittedly, the theory of human society and social cycles has little originality or historical validity, it being a restatement, with some adjustments, of the familiar Hindu cosmogonical calculations and, more recently, in Vivekananda’s theory of social evolution (Sarkar, 1967). ¹⁰ Nevertheless, Batra’s analysis of Sarkar’s theory of Prout reveals some measure of economic and ecological consciousness. In this era of wanton consumerism, the Marga’s emphasis on maximum utilization must be welcomed as the right socio-economic creed, even though some critics, perhaps with some justification, have been skeptical about its validity (Williams, 1983: 157). Indeed, as an Ananda Marga spokesman claims, the Prout movement ‘is established in over 160 countries around the world and runs hundreds of schools, welfare centers and relief project’ (Kumar, 1987: Introduction: 1).

Conclusion

Both the Anabaptists and the Ananda Marga espouse an amalgam of millenary vision and social-economic ameliorative mission. Even though the former appears to be an ‘introversionist’ sect that depends on its community life and spiritual exercises that confer a ‘transcendent holiness’ upon its members (Wilson, 1970: 118–119), it has learnt to cooperate and co-exist with the larger society and as law-abiding citizens of their state. The Ananda Marga, however, has been able to align themselves with the state by their increasing involvement in socio-economic and relief work throughout the world. In a number of treatises and in numerous sermons, Sarkar unfailingly urged his followers to be aware of universal love, spiritual upliftment, and to prepare for a relentless endeavor to provide material comfort to all men and women of the world (Sarkar, 1962b, 1967, 1968b, 1973, 1984b). As he observed, ‘it is unwise to leave the world, to leave service to humanity and to go to the Himalayas to attain the Supreme Consciousness – where will you go by leaving it?’ (Sarkar, 1985: 67; see also Sarkar, 1962, 1973, 1984b). The Ananda Marga began their educational program, the Gurukula, on 7 September 1990 at Ananda Nagar in West Bengal. The Gurukula boasts over a thousand schools all over India and even a few countries abroad. The sect’s other venture, The Ananda Marga Association of Yoga (AMAY), was launched in 2006. To reiterate, the Ananda Marga, much like the Anabaptists, is ‘spirituality of life,’ and indeed a sensible resolution of the problem of hyper-individualistic esoteric sadhana preached by the Hindu and Christian saints and sants by ‘interweaving symbols of social content into the network of interiorized worship’ (Goudriaan, 1979: 3–12; Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan, 1979: 29).

This comparatist study shows a few interesting features. First of all, the history of the Anabaptists and the Ananda Marga defies neat categorization. Admittedly, both sects manifested a few features of what Bromley has labeled New Religious Movement in that they organized themselves ‘as tight-knit communities that distance themselves from a world they conclude[d] is corrupt and moribund’ (Bromley, 1998: 38). Both movements also sought to bring about some cohesion and renewal of the traditional simple moral life and formulated their alternative paradigm of values. But while the successors to the Anabaptists, the modern day Amish and some Baptists, have their distinct dress code like the members of the Ananda Marga and maintain their sectarian lifestyle, they have thrived by their adjustments and restructuring within their respective organizations to cooperate with the state and by pursuing fruitful social and economic projects. Especially the Ananda Marga has succeeded tremendously in recent years as a truly global and multinational association that has earned for their The Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT, 1965) the recognition as an NGO (non-governmental organization) by the United Nations in 1991. Indeed, both Bryan Wilson in 1979 and Chris Kang in 2000 observed with uncanny perspicacity that the Ananda Marga’s ethic and ethos could be transferred to a wider public and that the sect possesses the potential to be incorporated into the larger human collective (Wilson, 1979: 110–111; Kang, 2000: 23).