Dumont’s denial of individuality to Hindus, with the exception of renouncers of the world, has provoked a fascinating, but in many ways confusing debate on the subject of the individual and the self. The present article uses oral historical information and writings by Rāj Khyāpā, a Bengali ‘Bāul’ guru, and his followers, to highlight one of many indigenous debates about the self and the individual. Rāj and other Bāuls use the high ‘Hindu’ (or unorthodox ‘Islamic’) notions of identity between individual selves and supreme being to legitimize a radical agenda, whereby the authority of alleged superiors (divine or human) is denied in favour of the affirmation of each person’s agency and autonomy. The discussion is framed in terms of the indigenous South Asian distinction between inner versus outer perspectives or realities. This, it is argued, avoids some pitfalls of the Dumontian approaches, such as the exaggeration of discontinuities between householder and renouncer, Hindu and Muslim, as well as traditional and modern South Asian culture.
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