Hugh B. Urban's "The Path of Desire"

Hugh B. Urban is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the Ohio State University. He is the author of numerous books including Secrecy: Silence, Power and Religion and Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Path of Desire: Living Tantra in Northeast India, and reported the following:

Page 99 describes the practice of animal sacrifice at Kāmākhyā temple in Assam, northeast India. One of the oldest and most important Hindu Tantric sites in South Asia, this temple is believed to be the locus of the goddess’ yoni or sexual organ. Each morning, the goddess Kāmākhyā is honored with a goat sacrifice, though on various occasions, she may also be offered sacrifices of buffaloes, sheep, fish, pigeons, and ducks. The larger chapter in which page 99 occurs is entitled “The Politics of Sacrifice” and explores the complex religious, cultural, and legal debates surrounding animal sacrifice in modern India. Sacrifice has a very long history in India, as both a ritual practice and a symbolic trope, and it is a central part of many Tantric traditions, particularly the Śākta (goddess-centered) traditions of Assam and Bengal. Yet it has also become intensely politicized in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with the rise of Hindu nationalism and the BJP, which generally regard blood sacrifice as a corrupt, barbaric, and fundamentally “non-Hindu” practice.

Readers opening to page 99 will get a fairly good insight into the main arguments of the book. The Path of Desire is a study of living Tantric traditions in contemporary India, exploring the ways in which Tantra has survived and yet also adapted to the shifting dynamics of nationalism, globalization, tourism, and neoliberalism. Debates over animal sacrifice have been a critical part of the complex transformations of Tantra in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There have been various efforts to ban animal sacrifice in many Indian states, while in others, temples have been forced to conceal animal sacrifice behind screens to keep it from public view. In Assam, animal sacrifice remains a thriving practice, but it has also come under intense criticism from religious groups, animal rights activists, and Hindu nationalist politicians.

The debate over sacrifice is just one of many examples of the complex status of Tantra in modern India that I explore in the book. I also discuss the ambivalent role of sexual practices in left-hand Tantra; the role of magic and witchcraft in popular or “folk” forms of Tantra; the role of spirit possession in public festivals; and the representation of Tantra in film. Overall, The Path of Desire hopes to illuminate the dynamic role of Tantra as a vibrant, living tradition that is also entangled in complex ways with the messy realities of nationalism, capitalism, tourism, and globalization.

Learn more about The Path of Desire at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Zorba the Buddha.

--Marshal Zeringue