Interreligious Biography of Bettina Bäumer, Austrian scholar of Religion

The project aims at researching the biography of the Austro-Indian scholar of religion and Indologist Bettina Bäumer (*1940) utilizing recent methodology from religious studies, history, history of religion, comparative religion and theology, cultural theory, and gender studies. Special attention will be given to the interplay of micro- and macro-historical perspectives. Thus, the biographical account of Bettina Bäumer will provide a view on the history of interreligious and intercultural encounter between India and the West from 1940 until today, and will attempt a perspectival analysis of the historical period and its overall and specific issues and discourses. Part of the project will be the sighting and safeguarding of historical sources such as diaries, correspondence, manuscripts etc. With Bettina Bäumer, the project studies for the first time a still living prominent figure of the movement of Hindu-Christian spiritual dialogue. This presents the unique opportunity for an in-depth inquiry into biographical interreligious processes, not only through written material, but also through biographical interviews with the person. Aim is to present the results to the academic and interested wider public, to make these processes comprehensible and open for wider discourse and scrutiny. A special focus will be placed upon the relation between personal motives of spiritual quest, the orientation towards religious and spiritual traditions and the intellectual discourse taking place in the space between religious and cultural boundaries. What can be learnt from the experiences at places on the threshold? Which kind of skills develop there - skills of language, of bridge-building, of translation and transformation? What kind of effect do these have in turn on the religious and cultural traditions encountering each other through concrete human beings? What is the significance of Bettina Bäumer as a highly respected interfaith person in the contemporary context of emerging religious fundamentalism in India and elsewhere? Governing methods will be the study of sources and expert interviews mainly with Bettina Bäumer at important locations of her life, but with other persons also, and their analysis with regard to recent research issues in the relevant academic subjects. The project is designed for three years; it encompasses the principal investigator (Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winkler), a full-time post-doc position (Dr. Christian Hackbarth-Johnson) and a postgraduate position (Shivam Srivastava, M.P.A.). It aims at the publication of a comprehensive academically written biography on Bettina Bäumer in German and English, abridged versions for the wider public, as well as a doctoral thesis on the contribution of B. Bäumer towards interreligious understanding in India.

The main goal of the project was to research and write a scholarly biography of the Austrian scholar of Religion and Indologist Bettina Bäumer (from now on BB) as a second generation protagonist of the interreligious movement after World War II, and by that also a perspectival history of this movement. The guiding concept was that an interreligious and intercultural research team conducts biographical interviews with BB at important places of her life as well as with a wide range of people such as relatives, friends, colleagues, students, and other protagonists in the various fields of her activities, as well as study primary and secondary sources and gather biographical and scholarly material for building-up an archive at the BB- Library in the Center for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religion (CITSR) at the University of Salzburg. These objectives have been amply pursued by the investigat ors, the theologian Dr. Christian Hackbarth-Johnson, Shivam Srivastava (2016-2018) and Geetinder Garewal (2018-2019) and in good part accomplished. The writing of the biographies, one in German by Dr. Hackbarth-Johnson, one in English by G. Garewal, is still going, but a summary essay on the research results was published in Salzburger Theologische Zeitschrift: Christian Hackbarth-Johnson, Die biographische Verortung interreligiöser Prozesse. Ein ForschungsprojektzuinterreligiösenBiographie derösterreichisch-indischen Religionswissenschaftlerin Bettina Sharada Bäumer (*1940), SaThZ, Heft 1, 2020, S. 39 -61. Macro-historically, BB is part of the interreligious movement in Christianity after 1945, which to a great extent was a reaction to World War II and its political effects. The pioneers of interreligious dialogue provided the experiential background for a religious answer to the catastrophe of war and hate, of racism and colonialism, which was institutionally formulated by the II. Vatican Council in Nostra Aetate in 1965. Micro-historically, her meeting with R. Panikkar in 1961 led her to immerse herself in Indian spirituality and an interreligious existence. She established herself in various networks of spiritual and scholarly relationships in India, Eu rope and America, in Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and interreligious circles. She went beyond her teachers when she became a proponent of the Indian religious tradition of non -dual Shaivism of Kashmir. The spiritual motive has always been central for her and was lived not in a monastery or ashram or other religious institutions, but as a scholar. Hers is the life model of the practitioner - scholar teacher, who is widely accepted in India as well as the West - as a scholar who is also a spiritual practitioner, and as a spiritual teacher who is also a scholar, whose spiritual teaching focuses on studying texts, and whose academic teaching points to the spiritual message of the texts. As such she acts as a bridge between religions and cultures.