In the presence of Sai Baba : body, city, and memory in a global religious movement / by Smriti Srinivas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Srinivas, Smriti.

Series:

Studies in the history of religions

Numen book series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sathya Sai Baba, 1926-2011.

Sathya Sai Baba.

Hinduism--Social aspects.

Hinduism.

Physical Description:

xix, 403 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2008.

Summary:

The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional traditions. The movement, thus, has "roots" in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas.

This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities - themselves a product of modernity- and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.

Contents:

The mendicant of Shirdi

The arrival of the Avatar

The sense of the presence

Healing, service, and character

The ideal polis

Producing space in Bangalore

Somatic regimes of citizenship in Nairobi

Sites of sociality in Atlanta.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [353]-371) and index.

ISBN:

9004165436

9789004165434

OCLC:

173808150