My name is Imma Ramos and I’m the curator of the medieval to modern South Asia collections
here at the museum…and this is my corner. At the moment I’m working on an exhibition,
Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, which opens this April. I'm often asked, what exactly
is Tantra? I have to start by saying what it's not, it's not a hedonistic cult of ecstasy,
which is a common misconception. Tantra is a philosophy that emerged in India around
the 6th century. It presented a new worldview which saw all material reality as animated
by Shakti, which translates as divine feminine power.
This power could be accessed through the body and mind and through rituals such as visualisations
and yoga, and the ultimate aim was the attainment of spiritual enlightenment. This appealed
to people across India from all social backgrounds, from kings and queens and monks and nuns,
to householders and ritual specialists. The exhibition presents a history of Tantra
as a fundamentally countercultural movement. One of the recurring themes explores how Tantra's
emphasis on feminine power informed the rise of goddess worship in India and how this in
turn affected the lives of women. So today I wanted to highlight a few objects that help
us tell that story.
The goddesses that Tantra inspired challenged traditional models of womanhood as passive
and docile by expressing both destructive and maternal power. The goddess Kali illustrates
this tension perfectly. Throughout history Kali has been both a protective mother and
a revolutionary icon for her devotees. This figure dates to the late 19th century and
was made in Bengal, which was an early centre of Tantra.
Clay sculptures of the goddess like this are made every year for the Kali festival, which
takes place in the autumn and is one of the biggest festivals in Bengal. They're housed
in temporary shrines which are set up on street corners and devotees visit each one, providing
the goddess with offerings. It's believed that images of Kali become enlivened when
ritually venerated in this way. A garland of severed heads hangs from her
neck, corpses from her ears and hands from her girdle. In her upper left hand she would
have carried a sword, now lost. The lower left hand carries a severed head. Her mouth
is smeared with blood and she sticks out her tongue as though thirsting for more. Tantric
texts describe her as having a gaping mouth with which she devours negative and demonic
forces. Her home is a cremation ground, where she surrounds herself with ghosts and jackals.
Although she appears fierce, she conveys compassion and a desire to assist followers on their
path to enlightenment. She's approached as a mother-figure. The severed heads represent
the fragile human ego which Kali helps devotees to transcend. Her top right hand displays
a gesture of fearlessness, to reassure and protect devotees.
She is shown standing on her husband, the god Shiva. According to Tantric belief, existence
itself results from the erotic union between Shakti as creative force (embodied here by
Kali) and Shiva as pure consciousness. The symbolism of Kali striding over Shiva reflects
her superiority, as without her he would remain inert and the universe would perish. Without
Shakti, Shiva is literally a shava or corpse, emphasized here by his deathly pallor.
Kali’s popularity became a focus for revolutionary politics during the time when this sculpture
was made. The figure entered the museum in 1894; records don’t reveal who the donor
was but it was probably a colonial official or missionary based in Bengal. At the time
Bengal was not only a Tantric centre but also the nucleus of British rule. Kali gripped
the British psyche as an icon of horror and irrationality – colonial officials completely
misunderstood her symbolism and assumed she was demonic.
Indian revolutionaries in Bengal effectively exploited British fears and misconceptions
of the goddess as a bloodthirsty ‘demon mother’ and harnessed her as an anti-colonial
symbol. We can see this through this particular print, produced around 1895 by a studio in
Calcutta, the capital of Bengal. Kali’s sacrificial heads assumed an alternative meaning
here. A colonial administrator anxiously described this image as featuring what appeared to be
British-looking heads, a prediction of the fall of the British Empire, which led to its
censorship. Perhaps he was right to be concerned – by
this time Kali was regarded by many as a symbol of Mother India, rising up against her colonizers.
In 1905 a writer for a seditious Bengali newspaper proclaimed: ‘Rise up, O sons of India…
the Foreign Empire draws to an end, for behold! Kali rises in the East.’ I think it’s
this synthesis of modern politics and religious myth that make these two images of Kali so
fascinating.
Tantra's affirmation of the divine feminine was radical for its time, but how did this
inform the lives of real women? Earlier Hindu and Buddhist traditions taught
that the female body was an impediment to achieving enlightenment, and that women should
remain submissive and dependent on men. Tantra, on the other hand, taught that women
could achieve rapid enlightenment because they were natural embodiments of Shakti.
Many Tantric texts even say that for this reason women should be venerated as goddesses
in their own right.
The ultimate aim of Tantric practice is to become a deity like Kali – to fully internalise
their power. Tantric images re-envisioned women as independent practitioners who were
capable of achieving self-deification.
We see this through the historical figure of Karaikkal Ammaiyar, who lived in Tamil
Nadu in South India in the 6th century. According to popular accounts of her life,
she was a very beautiful, very dutiful wife. But she was harbouring a desire to pursue
her own radical spiritual quest. She eventually abandoned her role as an obedient wife to
become a follower of the god Shiva. She asked Shiva to replace her beauty with a fearsome
appearance which echoed Kali’s. This is a modern representation of her that
we have in the collection, for the exhibition we’re lucky enough to be including a medieval
sculpture of her from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Here you can see she has assumed
that fierce appearance, she's skeletal and has bulbous eyes and fangs. She’s shown
reciting one of her visionary poems, accompanying herself with a pair of cymbals.
In one of her poems she describes her time spent meditating in a cremation-ground, Kali’s
favourite haunt, where she confronts and conquers her own ego and fear of mortality:
“In the cremation-ground where you hear crackling noises
and the white pearls fall out of the tall bamboo,
The ghouls with frizzy hair and drooping bodies, Shouting with wide-open mouths,
Come together and feast on the corpses.” In rejecting her social role and assuming
a transgressive Tantric one, she achieved an enlightened state. Today she's regarded
as both a devotional and Tantric icon and is venerated as a saint across Tamil Nadu.
Women played important roles not only as independent masters but also as Tantric gurus or teachers
who initiated disciples and shared otherwise secret teachings with them, including rituals
for achieving union with a deity and access to a range of powers, including the promise
of immortality and even the ability to fly. This painting from around 1750 shows a noblewoman
who has travelled a great distance to visit two female Tantric masters who are seated
on the left. She appears to be seeking counsel or initiation from the elder woman, whose
age is expressively suggested with sensitive attention to detail.
Many Tantric texts describe women as superior teachers in their embodiment of Shakti. One
example says that, ‘There are no rules for women; all are said to be gurus.’
The two female Tantric masters on the left have long dreadlocks, one is wearing them
piled on top of her head. They’re both wearing small horns around their necks which identifies
them as members of the Nath order, a Tantric community founded around the 12th century.
The Nath order famously popularised Tantric yoga which involved awakening an individual's
source of Shakti at the base of the spine through breath control. This awakening was
believed to trigger instant enlightenment and offer a range of other powers, from long
life to invulnerability. Rulers across India were attracted to Tantric
masters as agents of power who could strengthen and lend authority to their political positions.
This included the Mughal dynasty who arrived from Central Asia in the 16th century. They
commissioned some of the earliest detailed representations of women as gurus, such as
this one. The images that we have seen represent goddesses
and women that transcend conventional representations of femininity and womanhood, whether as wife,
mother or lover, by inhabiting a role beyond the parameters of societal expectations. From
its beginnings to the present day, Tantra has challenged not only gender norms but also
religious, cultural and political establishments. The exhibition charts Tantra’s potential
for opening up new ways of seeing and changing the world.
Thank you for watching…if you’d like to learn more about Tantra, come and see our
exhibition opening on April 23rd – to find out more, see the details below.