In recent posts we’ve seen the intellectual and cultural impact of various Swamis in America. Spiritual figures like Swami Ram and Swami Abhedananda traveled and lectured extensively, drawing adherents and pushing back on distortions propagated about India and the “Hindoo”
But as we have also seen, the figure of the Swami also became something of a villain in American culture, a trickster magician out to cheat innocent Americans (women in particular) of their money. Enter Swami Kohlrabi!
Published in the San Francisco Call in 1913, the comic strip below features one “Swami Kohlrabi,” an unscrupulous American professor who dresses up like a “Swami” to trick clients out of their money:
Here is the comic in sequence:

#HindooHistory #SwamiKohlrabi
“Can the chub music and get busy— you ain’t even started to black up yet!”
“Cut out there English, Pete. You’re supposed to jabber nothing but Hindoo”
“For myself I dare not for gold, but those would know must learn to sacrifice. Five thousand dollars please.”
Swami Kohlrabi is caught by Hawkshaw the Detective: “you’ve been swindling women with this fake Swami game long enough!”

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More from @HindooHistory

24 Feb
THREAD

Excerpts from an abridged version of Mabel Potter Daggett’s essay titled “The Heathen Invasion of America” published in 1911 in the Hampton-Colombian Magazine: 1/

#HindooHistory Image
“Yoga, that Eastern philosophy, the emblem of which is the coiled serpent, is being disseminated in America. Literally yoga means ‘path’ that leads to wisdom. Actually, it is pricing the way that leads to domestic infelicity and insanity and death” 2/ Image
“It was the Congress of Religions, at the Chicago World’s fair, in 1893... they arrived silken clad and sandal shod, to prove an attraction that outshone the plain American variety of minister in a frock coat and white tie.” 3/ ImageImage
Read 14 tweets
23 Feb
The Sun, 1900

Following Swami Abhedananda’s column (which was reprinted widely), The Sun received the following response from a reader:

“The assertions made by ‘a teacher from India’ specifically contradicted”

#HindooHistory
“if this teacher had ever gone up from Calcutta to Meerut, some nine hundred miles, in a boat and made use of his eyes, I think he would have observed hundreds of these amphibious creatures... I could tell you cases myself where European men have lost their lives by swimming”
“The teacher talks of the people of this country being familiar with the horrible story of the Juggernaut, which he also never heard of until he heard it here, though at the same time he says he saw one of those cars being drawn by men and women...”
Read 7 tweets
22 Feb
The Times, 1900

“SOME MISSIONARY MYTHS”

“Swami denies the stories of Suttee and infant sacrifices”

“He says no crocodiles could live in the swift-flowing waters of the Ganges, and offers explanations of what he calls American mistakes”

#HindooHistory
“‘My work in this country is not a missionary movement’ said Swami Abhedananda, when seen with the class of young children which he has recently begun to instruct in the elements of the Hindu religion. ‘Nor have we any desire to proselyte nor found a sect..’”
“But the great mistake made by Americans concerning the condition of the Indian woman. I never heard until I came to this country that Hindu mothers throw their babies into the Ganges to be eaten by crocodiles.”
Read 4 tweets
22 Feb
San Francisco Call, 1902

“HINDOO PRIEST DELIVERS ADDRESS UPON THE RELIGION OF INSPIRATION”

#HindooHistory #SwamiRam
“If the interesting Hindoo monk, Swami Ram, could talk to an audience with the ease of convincing grasp of ideas that characterize him while talking to individuals he would soon have an army of enthusiastic followers”
“Under the spell of that caressing voice and the visions conjured up by the wand of his Mahatmic wisdom nothing seemed impossible, nothing unattainable. The tricks of the hypnotist and the faker were child’s play to him”
Read 4 tweets
9 Jan
Vivekananda and his fellow Ramakrishna disciples were not the only ones who come to America in the aftermath of the Parliament. Published in the St Louis Republic in 1902, the clip below is first hand account written by journalist turned Vaishnava missionary Baba Bharati
As a journalist Bharati apparently knew Kipling, and sources suggest that he was the inspiration for the holy man in Kipling’s novel, Kim! #HindooHistory
Bharati distinguished himself through his missionary approach. Not only did he push back on the distortions of Claudius Buchanan and his ilk— he argued that Hindu thought was in fact preferable to Christianity! Needless to say, this was a source of controversy. #HindooHistory
Read 8 tweets

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