THE SWAMINARAYAN MOVEMENT1

RACHEL DWYER

Abstract

The Swaminarayan movement, founded in in the nineteenth century, was one of the first Hindu groups to establish close connec- tions between and the Gujarati diaspora in East Africa. Since the formation of a substantial (c.400,000) Gujarati-speaking commu- nity in the UK, as a result of earlier migration from Gujarat, aug- mented by the arrival of an East African diaspora during the 1960s and early 1970s, the Swaminarayan movement has come to establish itself firmly in the UK. The Swaminarayan Hindu Mission marked its status as the dominant form of British with the building of one of the largest Hindu temples outside India in Northwest London, which has become a focus of British Hinduism, both within the Hin- du communities and in the eyes of wider British society.

One of the last sects to arise from North India’s sixteenth-century Vaishnava renaissance was the Swaminarayan movement.2 Founded by Sahajanand Swami (1781-1830), also known as Swaminarayan, this sect has also been extremely influential: it is currently estimated that some five million Gujaratis are affiliated to the movement. While its membership is almost exclusively Gujarati, this sect has come to be regarded as the dominant form of British Hinduism. In the UK, the Swaminarayan movement claims the allegiance of a large proportion of a total population of Gujaratis estimated at around half a million, most of whom are Hindu.3 Although those who are not members of the sect may attend its most famous temple in Neasden, London, for religious festivals and other reasons, the temples’ regular congrega- tions are initiated members of the sect. Swaminarayan leaders have

1 Thanks to J.M. Davé for his comments on this paper. 2 Williams 1984 remains the foundational study of the Swaminarayan movement. I am indebted to this book throughout the paper. 3 There are no accurate figures for the numbers of persons of Gujarati origin in the UK as these questions have not been included in censuses. All figures are approx- imate.    181 come to represent British Hindus at Hindu festivals and functions in the UK. No other Hindu sect has such a substantial base in the UK, the only other large sect being ISKCON, whose Bhaktivedanta tem- ple in Watford constitutes a major centre of devotion. How- ever, few British Hindus are actually initiates as ISKCON’s roots lie in Bengali rather than the Vallabhite variant dominant in Gujarat. In this article, I trace the historical background to the sect, its theology, its organisation and its wider practices, showing how it became the dominant form of transnational Gujarati Hinduism.

The Swaminarayan movement sits on the cusp of several religious traditions. In modern Gujarat it is seen by some of its followers, and its detractors, as a hostile reformist reaction to the practices of the . This seems to be an anachronistic reading of the history of these sects, given that the alleged malpractices of the Pushtimarg became a topic of discussion by social reformers only at a later date, notably in the Libel Case of 1868.4 The writings of the sect5 show that Swaminarayan had a far from hostile attitude to the Pushti- marg, and indeed adopted many of the practices, as did most forms of Gujarati Vaishnavism.6 It is far more interesting, however, to note that the Swaminarayan movement has a number of distinctive features which make it unique. These are found not so much in its theology and ritual, which are similar to that of other Vaishnava sects, but in its sharp division of ascetics and householders, in the centrality of congregational worship, in its emphasis on social reform and social action, the strictness of its rules on sex segregation and in its widespread use of the Gujarati lan- guage. These new features of the Swaminarayan sect are striking because some of them seem to anticipate many of the ‘Hindu reform’ movements of the nineteenth century, such as Raja Rammohan Roy’s Brahmo Samaj and later the ,7 whose origins lay in part in the cultural climate of intellectual interaction of Indian and Western thought. The similarities, which include the emphasis on the congregational and social aspects of the religion, issues of uplift,

4 See Mulji 1865 and Mehta 1976. 5 Cf. Shiksapatri, 81-2. 6 For example, the temple at Dakor, although not Pushtimargi, has adopted the Pushtimargi liturgy. See Mallison 1991. 7 The founder of this sect, Swami Dayananda, a Gujarati by birth, wrote a scathing attack on the Swaminarayans. See Jordens 1997:150-1.