In the Presence of Sai Baba
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In the Presence of Sai Baba SRINIVAS_Prelims_i-iv.indd i 12/20/2007 4:11:01 PM Numen Book Series Studies in the History of Religions Series Editors Steven Engler (Mount Royal College, Canada) Richard King (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A.) Kocku von Stuckard (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) VOLUME 118 SRINIVAS_Prelims_i-iv.indd ii 1/8/2008 1:24:13 PM In the Presence of Sai Baba Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement By Smriti Srinivas LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 SRINIVAS_Prelims_i-iv.indd iii 12/20/2007 4:11:04 PM This book is printed on acid-free paper. Despite our efforts we have not been able to trace all rights holders to some copyrighted material. The publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permissions matters. A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISSN 0169–8834 ISBN 978 90 04 16543 4 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands SRINIVAS_Prelims_i-iv.indd iv 1/8/2008 1:24:26 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgements ..................................................................... vii Note on Translation .................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations .................................................................. xiii List of Figures, Maps, Tables, and Diagrams ........................... xv Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter One: The Mendicant of Shirdi ................................... 23 Chapter Two: The Arrival of the Avatar .................................. 49 Chapter Three: The Sense of the Presence .............................. 76 Chapter Four: Healing, Service, and Character ........................ 111 Chapter Five: The Ideal Polis .................................................... 162 Chapter Six: Producing Space in Bangalore ............................. 216 Chapter Seven: Somatic Regimes of Citizenship in Nairobi .... 254 Chapter Eight: Sites of Sociality in Atlanta .............................. 292 Conclusion .................................................................................. 333 Appendix: Overseas Sai Centers and Groups ........................... 347 Bibliography ................................................................................ 353 Index ........................................................................................... 373 SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd v 1/4/2008 6:53:48 PM SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd vi 1/4/2008 6:53:49 PM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book, a project that has involved me for about a decade, evolved through the support of many institutions and persons. The Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bangalore provided me with a research grant (1994–95) that funded my fi rst exploration into Shirdi Sai Baba devotion in southern India. My transnational fi eldwork on the Sai Baba movement in India, Kenya, and the United States was funded by a research grant from the Mershon Center at Ohio State University (2000–01), a Ohio State University Seed Grant (2001–02), an American Academy of Religion Individual Research Grant (2001–02), a New Faculty Research Grant from the University of California, Davis (2002–03), and Small Grants in Aid of Research from the University of California, Davis (2005–06, 2006–07). I would not have been able to complete the writing of this manuscript without the time made available by a Faculty Development Award at the Uni- versity of California, Davis (2005–06) and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (2005–06). Members of the Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organization, the Sathya Sai Central Trust, and Sai devotees in several countries contributed generously to this project and shared their understandings of Shirdi and Sathya Sai Baba, the Sai tradition, or their devotion with me. In particular, I owe a debt of gratitude to devotees at Sai Darshan in Bangalore, the Atlanta Sai Center, and the Sai Center in Nairobi. I would also like to thank Brigadier S.C. Bali, Mr. K. Chakravarti, Mr. Nagesh Dhakappa, Dr. Anil Gokak, Ms. Prashanti Goswami, Mr. Hejmadi Sr., Col. S.B. Jogarao, Mr. A.S. Krishnamurthy, Mr. Kekie Mistry, Prof. V.N. Pandit, Mr. K.S. Rajan, Mr. Ravi Kumar, Dr. Partha Sarathi, Mr. C. Sreenivas, and Mr. A. Srivathsan. All interpretations of the Sai movement in this book, however, are my own. I was invited by various individuals and groups to present academic papers on the Sai Baba tradition that fed into the conceptualization and writing of this book. Vasudha Dalmia and Srilata Raman invited me to present my early thoughts on the Sai Baba movement at the University of Tübingen in 1995 and 1997. In 1996, I presented a paper that focused on root paradigms in the history of the Sai tradi- tion at a seminar on “Knowledge and Language” organized by Dr. SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd vii 1/4/2008 6:53:49 PM viii acknowledgements E. Annamalai, Dr. Hans Raj Dua, and Dr. Ranjit Singh Rangila at the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. Catherine Clementin- Ojha and Gilles Tarabout invited me to share my work on urban religi- osity and Shirdi Sai Baba at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Unité Associété CNRS, Paris, in 1996. In 1999, Leslie Orr organized a stimulating meeting on my Sai Baba research in the Department of Religion at Concordia University, Montreal, through the Indo-Cana- dian Shastri Foundation. Thomas Bender invited me to a terrifi c and convivial conference on “Locating the City” at Antalya, Turkey, in 2001 that allowed me to pull together ideas on space and religion in Bangalore city. I was invited to give a public lecture on transnational networks and the global imagining of faith in the Sai Baba movement at the French Institute for Research in Africa, Nairobi, in 2001. My understandings of darshan, sacred presence, and the senses were refi ned and stimulated by a lecture invitation at the Ohio University in 2002; a wonderful symposium on “Global Saints, Local Lives” at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles organized by Al Roberts and Polly Roberts in 2003; a meeting at the Center for South Asia, University of Washington, Seattle in 2005; Christoph Emmrich’s kind invitation to participate in a lecture series on “Ritual in South Asia” at the University of Heidelberg in 2005; and an invited talk at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, in 2006. Patrick Legales was instrumental in my presentation on Sai devotion in Nairobi at the plenary session of the International Socio- logical Conference, RC 21, in Paris in 2005. I would like to express my thanks to all these scholars for their support and the audiences at my talks for their comments and input. I would also like to thank the many scholars who have read parts of this work in various forms, answered my questions or requests for information as this work progressed, raised critical issues, and sup- ported me in other ways during this process: Elisabeth Arweck, Tom Bender, Xiaomei Chen, Lawrence Cohen, Vasudha Dalmia, Veena Das, Jim Drobnick, John Eade, Dick Eaton, Jennifer Fischer, Daniel Gold, Paul Greenough, Mark Halperin, John Hawley, Alf Hiltebeitel, Lindsay Jones, Alexandra Kent, Phil Lutgendorf, Alamin Mazrui, Chris Mele, Catherine Clementin-Ojha, Leslie Orr, Al Roberts, Anuradha Shah, Michael Shapiro, Fred Smith, Mike Spurr, Jennifer Terry, Shiv Visvanathan, Joanne Waghorne, and Phillip Wagoner. V. Geetha, May Joseph, Srilata Raman, and Shubha Ramnath have been intellectual comrades and friends over the past two decades. Smita SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd viii 1/4/2008 6:53:50 PM acknowledgements ix Srinivas and Dashiell D. Dog have been loving buddies. As always, my parents, S.N.S. Murthy and Nirmala Murthy, have inspired and sustained me spiritually and intellectually. Without the unselfi sh labor, demanding critique, and insightful comments of James Heitzman, my companion in all things and in my fi eldwork for this book, I would not have been able to complete this project. Finally, I can only voice here the beautiful sentiments of Purandaradasa: Na munde, Ranga, Ni enna hinde (“I am in front, Ranga, You are behind me”). SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd ix 1/4/2008 6:53:50 PM SRINIVAS_F1_v-xx.indd x 1/4/2008 6:53:50 PM NOTE ON TRANSLATION Although this book has a research core located in South Asia, it is also based on work conducted in other world areas. In the interests of its readership, therefore, I have not used a scholarly system of translitera- tion or diacritical marks for Hindi/Hindustani, Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Urdu, or other South Asian language words that appear in this work, but the most common and recognizable English forms. I italicise those words derived