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Wandering with Sadhus: Ascetics in the Hindu Himalayas
In this moving ethnographic portrait of Hindu renouncers― sadhus or ascetics―in northern India and Nepal, Sondra L. Hausner considers a paradox that shapes their while ostensibly defined by their solitary spiritual practice, the stripping away of social commitments, and their break with family and community, renouncers in fact regularly interact with "householder" society. They form a distinctive, alternative community with its own internal structure, but one that is not located in any single place. Highly mobile and dispersed across the subcontinent, its members are regularly brought together through pilgrimage circuits on festival cycles. Drawing on many years of fieldwork, Hausner presents intimate portraits of individual sadhus as she examines the shared views of space, time, and the body that create the ground for everyday experience. Written with an extraordinary blend of empathy, compassion, and anthropological insight, this study will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers alike.
247 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 27, 2025
Renouncers had no homes and therefore no accountability, I was told: who knew where they had been, what they had seen, or what kinds of magical powers might be accrued from such an unrooted lifestyle?
March 23, 2017
What an excellent book on renouncers. Sondra created a Great piece of knowledge by deeply studying and understanding many different aspects of the lives of Sadhus of India. Her views are very balanced -- excellent composition.
March 16, 2012
Sondra L. Hausner’s Wandering with Sadhus: Ascetics in the Hindu Himalayas (Indiana University Press, 2007, 250pp) is an intimate ethnographic account of the lives of Hindu renouncers in northern India and Nepal. Throughout Wandering, Hausner highlights seemingly opposed tensions and how these are reconciled in the daily lives of her informants; for example between the ideal of renouncers as solitary individuals versus sadhu life as a parallel form of community; between the emphasis on the illusory nature of space, time versus the importance of sacred time, space and place, and the issues of religious practice; between the body as illusion and hindrance and the body as the ground of experience.
Wandering with Sadhus opens with the perspective that there is a fundamental split in renouncer lives which is at once both practical (splitting away from householder society) and metaphorical (the split of the soul away from the body). Hausner relates how this split is mirrored across all aspects of a renouncer’s life and that this reflects a wider Hindu concern with transcendence from the material world. She points out that all of her informants strongly emphasised how their religious practices or lifestyles were different to householder society, and goes on to discuss how much renouncer society offers a “place of refuge” from mainstream Indian society – particularly for women. She also points out that for householders “the sadhu community symbolizes the fearsome power of a world outside structural norms, from which there is no return. I heard a number of lay families, even as they outwardly expressed respect for renouncers, tease their children with the threat of giving them away to a wandering sadhu if they misbehaved” (p45). She presents a useful review of Hindu ideas of the body, and argues that the “split” between renouncers and householders does reflect, to a degree, the work of Louis Dumont – particularly his work on renouncers as forming an “other-worldly challenge” to the social web of householder life. She refutes the contemporary idea that the mind-body split is not present in Indian religious or medical body traditions, and argues that the interpretation of Cartesian dualism is not actually a seperation of mind from body, but between body-mind and soul – pointing to the similarities between Descartes and the Indian Samkhya philosophy. She suggests (pace Jonathan Parry) that “the collective refusal to think of South Asian embodiment as a dualistic enterprise might be Orientalism at work” (p56). This discussion is carried on in the book’s appendix, which provides a useful review of anthropological work on Hindu renunciation and embodiment. Pretty much all of the heavy “theory” in this book is done in chapter one and the appendix, which certainly makes the book more accessible.
Hausner shows how, despite textual ideals and popular representations of sadhus as isolated individual practitioners, renouncer life is highly social – mantained through family lineages, administrative orders (akharas), and the guru-disciple relationship – allowing the widely geographically dispersed sadhu communities to remain vital, ensuring the transmission of religious values and the maintenance of communal identities, and also how the akharas both support and discipline their initiates. She also examines how the act of wandering is related to the representation of sadhus as having broken free of the constraints of householder life – and how renouncers’ spatial experience of community is related to networks of pilgrimage circuits. Wandering, she points out “teaches detachment and observation, but also gathers the blessings from dispersed holy places into the body of the wanderer.” She describes pilgrimage sites as “spatial nodes” where members of the dispersed sadhu community may periodically meet each other and examines how visiting pilgrimage sites can act as social and economic supports for itinerant renouncers Hausner also highlights the tensions – and material problems – of wandering versus the benefits settling down in a particular place in terms of the dictates of practice. Hausner also makes some interesting contrasts between “places of solitude” such as caves, jungle, and forests, and the social demands of ashrams.
In her conclusion, Hausner discusses how social and bodily practices are understood by sadhus within terms of their religious worldview: “Renouncers insist on the split between soul and body because it is a powerful metaphor for the split they enact from householder society” (p183). She ably articulates how for renouncers, religious transcendence translates into social power – that because sadhus are not tied to one particular place – they inhabit a circuit of holy places, and function on divine, rather than everyday time, they are considered able to manipulate the world at will. Their peripheral and mobile status contributes to their reputation for being religiously powerful. As one of Hausner’s informants put it: “The individual thinks the individual body is his body; the knower of brahman knows the whole universe is his body. Others see his body as his body, but from his point of view his body is the whole universe” (p185). She also presents some useful observations on the nature – from a renouncer’s perspective – of bodily experience, and in particular, how renouncer’s religious discipline serve to enable them to distinguish between “experience that clarifies and experience that obscures.”
Wandering with Sadhus opens with the perspective that there is a fundamental split in renouncer lives which is at once both practical (splitting away from householder society) and metaphorical (the split of the soul away from the body). Hausner relates how this split is mirrored across all aspects of a renouncer’s life and that this reflects a wider Hindu concern with transcendence from the material world. She points out that all of her informants strongly emphasised how their religious practices or lifestyles were different to householder society, and goes on to discuss how much renouncer society offers a “place of refuge” from mainstream Indian society – particularly for women. She also points out that for householders “the sadhu community symbolizes the fearsome power of a world outside structural norms, from which there is no return. I heard a number of lay families, even as they outwardly expressed respect for renouncers, tease their children with the threat of giving them away to a wandering sadhu if they misbehaved” (p45). She presents a useful review of Hindu ideas of the body, and argues that the “split” between renouncers and householders does reflect, to a degree, the work of Louis Dumont – particularly his work on renouncers as forming an “other-worldly challenge” to the social web of householder life. She refutes the contemporary idea that the mind-body split is not present in Indian religious or medical body traditions, and argues that the interpretation of Cartesian dualism is not actually a seperation of mind from body, but between body-mind and soul – pointing to the similarities between Descartes and the Indian Samkhya philosophy. She suggests (pace Jonathan Parry) that “the collective refusal to think of South Asian embodiment as a dualistic enterprise might be Orientalism at work” (p56). This discussion is carried on in the book’s appendix, which provides a useful review of anthropological work on Hindu renunciation and embodiment. Pretty much all of the heavy “theory” in this book is done in chapter one and the appendix, which certainly makes the book more accessible.
Hausner shows how, despite textual ideals and popular representations of sadhus as isolated individual practitioners, renouncer life is highly social – mantained through family lineages, administrative orders (akharas), and the guru-disciple relationship – allowing the widely geographically dispersed sadhu communities to remain vital, ensuring the transmission of religious values and the maintenance of communal identities, and also how the akharas both support and discipline their initiates. She also examines how the act of wandering is related to the representation of sadhus as having broken free of the constraints of householder life – and how renouncers’ spatial experience of community is related to networks of pilgrimage circuits. Wandering, she points out “teaches detachment and observation, but also gathers the blessings from dispersed holy places into the body of the wanderer.” She describes pilgrimage sites as “spatial nodes” where members of the dispersed sadhu community may periodically meet each other and examines how visiting pilgrimage sites can act as social and economic supports for itinerant renouncers Hausner also highlights the tensions – and material problems – of wandering versus the benefits settling down in a particular place in terms of the dictates of practice. Hausner also makes some interesting contrasts between “places of solitude” such as caves, jungle, and forests, and the social demands of ashrams.
In her conclusion, Hausner discusses how social and bodily practices are understood by sadhus within terms of their religious worldview: “Renouncers insist on the split between soul and body because it is a powerful metaphor for the split they enact from householder society” (p183). She ably articulates how for renouncers, religious transcendence translates into social power – that because sadhus are not tied to one particular place – they inhabit a circuit of holy places, and function on divine, rather than everyday time, they are considered able to manipulate the world at will. Their peripheral and mobile status contributes to their reputation for being religiously powerful. As one of Hausner’s informants put it: “The individual thinks the individual body is his body; the knower of brahman knows the whole universe is his body. Others see his body as his body, but from his point of view his body is the whole universe” (p185). She also presents some useful observations on the nature – from a renouncer’s perspective – of bodily experience, and in particular, how renouncer’s religious discipline serve to enable them to distinguish between “experience that clarifies and experience that obscures.”
January 24, 2009
Kumbh Mela 2012!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews