Locating Revelations Within a Broad Conceptual Framework
Revelation in essence is a type of mystical experience. The element of revelation in some tribal movements differentiates them from other mass movements in tribal societies that are derived from an insight or inspiration of a leader.
A salient feature in revelation is the concept of a sentient supernatural being ‘capable of wishes and intentions’ (Stark 2001), making it different from the so-called tribes’ ‘magico-religious’ beliefs and practices (Goody 1961), where supernatural beings are manipulated to do the bidding of people (Malinowski 1948).The claim of divine revelation has kindled some of the most successful revitalisation movements among the tribal people in the history of modern India. In a comprehensive work Rebellious Prophets, Stephen Fuchs listed some 50 religious movements that had occurred mostly in British India. He classed them ‘messianic’ based on 15 characteristic features common to all these religious movements (Fuchs 1965); however, a theory of revelation was conspicuously left out from the discourse. As I see it, an enquiry into revelation has been left out in the study of tribal movements. In the West, the theory of revelation occupies an important place in the sociology of religion, since the dominant faiths in the West like Christianity, Judaism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormonism rest on the revealed nature of the Holy Scriptures. Importantly, the conventional view is that religious figures like Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Joseph Smith, Jr., who are widely-accepted revelators, have been treated as psychotics or frauds. This model of analysing revelations known as psychopathology model is an overwhelming favourite in Western scholarship (Stark 1999).
Interestingly, the scholarly writings on the founders of popular revitalisation movements in tribal societies have spared the ignominy of psychopathological interpretations that consider them as charlatans, psychotics, or both. The socio-political and cultural underpinnings usually receive huge attention in the study of revivalistic movements in tribal societies, but not revelation which is a subjective phenomenon involving the ‘self’, and the agency of an individual has not received its due attention; for instance, K.S.
Singh in a well-known work on Birsa Munda attributed the rise of revitalisation movement to the simmering challenges of ‘agrarian breakdown and culture change’ (Singh 1983:30). Most scholars give a social interpretation of millenarian movements in tribal societies, but, as has been argued, not on the revelations of the leaders of the movements.Drawing their attention to religious innovations, Bainbridge and Stark (1979) had proposed three models of revelation: a) the psychopathology model, b) the entrepreneur model, and c) the sub-culture evolution model. “While, the psychopathology and entrepreneur models stress the role of the individual innovator, the subculture-evolution model emphasises group interaction process” (Bainbridge & Stark 1979:291). Hitherto, there are no studies dealing with the founders of tribal movements subscribing to these theoretical models, nor has any model been developed to explain the Indian social reality. But within the sub-field of psychological anthropology and medical anthropology (ethnopsychiatry), researchers have used the psychopathology model to explain how individuals’ psychopathology finds successful social expression (mass movements). The psychopathology model does not assume whether the ideas of the revelator are false or nonsensical, but the writings on tribal religious beliefs and practices allude to a traditional psychoanalytic view that the ‘magico-religious’ beliefs of tribes are mere projections of neurotic wish-fulfilment or psychotic delusions (Roheim 1955 and Freud 1964).
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