| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

William R. Pinch. Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires. (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society 12.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 280. $90.00.

This book deals with the important phenomenon of warrior ascetics in North Indian history. It begins with a description of warrior ascetics in the time of Akbar and ends, effectively, with the suppression of the phenomenon by the British in the early nineteenth century. There also is a rather unsatisfactory chapter that, almost as an afterthought, briefly examines the relation between Mohandas K. Gandhi and Hindu ascetics. William R. Pinch describes in convincing detail the transformation of warrior ascetics into ascetic soldiers, and much of his narrative focuses on the illustrious career of Himmat Bahadur, also known as Anupgiri Gosain, India's most successful military entrepreneur in the 1800s. With great care, Pinch shows a world in which Nath Yogis, Saiva Sanyasis, and Vaishnava Bairagis, as well as Muslim Fakirs, all engaged each other and the powers that be. Mughal rulers were deeply interested in these itinerant groups of warrior ascetics for military reasons, as well as for their magical powers. It is a world that cannot usefully be described in terms of Hindu-Muslim antagonism, although nationalist historiography has tended to do so. Many other binary distinctions such as secular and religious, renouncing and worldly, spiritual and material also do not apply. That is not to say that there is no internal debate about this phenomenon. Some Muslim authors condemned Akbar's interest in warrior ascetics on Islamic grounds. Some Hindu authors criticized the ascetics using theological arguments. None of the contemporary sources, however, was at a loss when it came to understanding this form of asceticism as an integral part of its society.

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