Research directions
Explorations in "Connected Religion": Religious Encounters Within the Basel Mission in South India, 1900-1948
The project analyzes the missionary institution as a kind of "metamorphic zone", in which conceptions and practices have been subjected to constant renegotiations. We are particularly interested in debates about religion and in the creation of idiosyncratic religious views and practices through encounters between Indian and European (mostly German and Swiss) actors in the early 20th century. The project deals with three main aspects:
(1) First, we explore the questions of « inter-religious » encounters between missionaries of the Basel Mission and the elite members of other religious communities, in particular Lingayats / Virashaivas (in the North), Vaishnavas, Jains, Catholics and members of the Brahmo Samaj, in the first part of the 20th century.
(2) The second topic concerns the circulation of objects and images from India to Switzerland in the framework of missionary activity, with relation to the collections of the Basel Mission that are now in the Museum der Kulturen in Basel. The project focuses on a few objects from the collection and recontextualize them within their original context, to understand how and why they were selected, by whom they were collected and how they were used. This will be done with a comparison of the objects from the missionary collection with similar objects in "local" collections in India.
(3) The third domain concerns the physical culture propagated through the mission and its hybridizing with local physical cultures. There is a famous example in the person of Keeleri Kunhikannan in Kerala (a great figure of kalaripayattu who was also a teacher of physical education at the Basel Mission High School in Thalassery). After clarifying the conceptions missionaries brought with them from Switzerland, we will be investigating about cases in Karnataka: what kind of physical education took place in the schools in the early 20th century? How specific to Christian schools (or not) was it?
Alpine Orientalisms: Indian References in the building of Alternative Models of Religion and Society in mid-20th century Switzerland (1920-1970)
While the history of Buddhism in Switzerland has been in the center of several studies, very few works have dealt with the importation and dissemination of "Indian references" as sources of inspiration for alternative models of religion and society.
In the wake of Tagore's well-attended lectures in Geneva and Zurich in 1921 and 1930, and Gandhi's visit in 1931 on the invitation of the Romain Rolland (1866-1944), some Swiss individuals developed a real and strong enthusiasm for India. This enthusiasm was felt in the formulation of new pacificist utopias and in the domain of education. Thus, the Swiss writer Edmond Privat (1889-1962), a pioneer of organized pacifism in Switzerland, was an admirer of Gandhi with whom he travelled to India, and the Geneva resident and educationalist Emma Pieczynska-Reichenbach (1854-1927) reflected on the pedagogical experiments of R. Tagore. Both figures have left publications and, in the case of Privat, a rich archive, which deserves a thorough examination.
In the same period, several key texts of and about Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Aurobindo have been translated and published by enthusiastic sympathizers. Two of such figures are Alwine von Keller (1878-1965) and Emma Hélène von Pelet-Narbonne (1892-1967) who both moved from Germany to Switzerland during the Second World War, became close friends of Carl Gustav Jung and translated texts for the Rascher Verlag in Zurich in German.
In parallel, but with a different perspective, Werner Zimmermann (1893-1982) found in his references to a real or imaginary Orient (India and Japan) the source of a radically alternative model of society. As a major figure of the Lebensreform movement in Switzerland, Zimmermann disseminated his views through the periodical he edited, TAO or Tau (1924-1937) and numerous booklets including a biography of Gandhi.
Comparison in the study of religions
Theoretical on comparison in the study of religions: history of approaches, importance, stakes, difficulties and applicability in different contexts. Focus on the comparison of religious discourses, analyzed within their own historical contexts.
Rituals and practices of hospitality in Antiquity (ancient Jewish and Indian worlds)
Study of rituals and practices of hospitality, as mirroring both a specific conception of a social order, and of a metaphysical, cosmological order. Analysis of texts of Rabbinical judaism and Brahmanism under this perspective.
