By Chad Bauman
Early on in my research2 at the Indianapolis Sai Baba Center (SBC), a female devotee who had recently applied for a job said to me: ‘If God wants me to get this job I’ll get it. If He doesn’t, I won’t.’ The phrase could have passed easily over the lips of a Midwestern Evangelical, yet the God was the Indian guru and god-man of international fame, Sathya Sai Baba. Drawing on a year of fieldwork at the Indianapolis SBC, the writings of Sai’s devotees, and literature on Hinduism in the ‘diaspora’, this chapter argues that Sathya Sai Baba represents for his Indianapolis devotees the preservation of a now geographically distant tradition and at the same time a selective distillation of that tradition which makes sense to them in the modern West. Devotion to Sai Baba is, therefore, a particularly well-adapted form of North American Hinduism. This is, I will argue later in the paper, in large part due to Sai’s semiotic flexibility. By this I mean that Sai, as a symbol, means many things to many people (and different things in different contexts) and as such allows immigrant families and their offspring to bridge the gap between India and America and also between Hindus of various kinds and from various regions, thus moulding strikingly disparate kinds of people into a coherent and supportive community.
Sai’s devotees sometimes shy away from the label of ‘Hinduism’. Nevertheless, in my view, Sai Baba’s devotees in Indianapolis have quite unintentionally and unselfconsciously created—or ‘rediscovered’, some might say—a kind of intra- and inter-religiously ecumenical ‘Hinduism’. For while Sai devotion unites Hindus and former Hindus with diverse historical associations, it also prepares them in significant ways to engage with devotees of all deities and even with the agnostic but at least vaguely spiritually inclined.
In 1926, Satyanarayana Raju was born in the village of Puttarparthi, now in the state of Andhra Pradesh. When Satyanarayana was 13, he suffered from a series of powerful seizures. After recovering from them, he proclaimed himself ‘Sai Baba’, a reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba, the Muslim saint from Maharashtra who had died in 1918 (and is discussed in this volume by Karline McLain). Some, including members of Satyanarayana’s own family, doubted the validity of his claims and others recommended institutionalisation. Yet their incredulity waned as Satyanarayana substantiated his declaration with miraculous acts. For example, Sathya Sai Baba, as he had come to be known, regularly materialised vibhuti, sacred ash which devotees imbibed and/or applied to their foreheads.
Slowly, Sathya Sai Baba’s following grew. In 1950, his devotees built an ashram named Prasanthi Nilayam (‘Abode of Eternal Peace’). In 1963, Sai Baba suffered another seizure which left him unconscious and unable to communicate. After several days, he limped from his chambers and appeared before his followers in a hemiplegic state. Announcing that he had taken on the sickness of a devotee in order to save the devotee’s life, he took water into his right hand and sprinkled it on his paralysed left, thereby effecting a cure. Having done so, he announced that he was not merely the avatar of Shirdi Sai Baba but also of the God Shiva and his consort Shakti (Babb, 1986; Bowen, 1988; Palmer, 2005; Srinivas, 2001). Accordingly, Sathya Sai Baba is most frequently associated, iconographically and in the bhajans (devotional songs) of his devotees, with Shiva and Shakti. However, drawing from the widespread Hindu belief that all Gods and Goddesses are but manifestations of one divine principle, Sai and his followers claim that all names and forms are his. And of course in India the line dividing human from divine is a relatively blurry one; Sai’s devotees attest that he frequently says: ‘I am God, but so are you’.
Sai and his followers have created an enormous institutional structure involved in the provision of educational, medical and other basic services (for example, clean water) to the needy. This structure is managed by the Shri Sathya Sai Central Trust, which is active through various branches of the International Sai Organization (ISO). Estimates vary widely and depend at least in part on definitions, but Sai is said to have somewhere between 5 and 50 million followers worldwide, with perhaps one-half to one-third of those followers located in India and the rest elsewhere. The Sathya Sai Baba Central Council of America’s website (www.sathyasai.org) includes information on nearly 200 US Sai Centers in 43 states.
Sathya Sai Baba’s rise to prominence has not been without its critics. Some former devotees have accused him of sexual misconduct, others of financial impropriety, still others of fakery and quackery. Others accept the validity of his miracles and dispute only his claims to divinity. While Sai’s devotees are generally aware of these criticisms, most assume they are merely an unfortunate (and unwarranted) side effect of his public prominence. And despite claims of malfeasance, Sai has never been accused (much less convicted) of wrongdoing in an Indian court of law.
The activities of Sai Centers fall into three main categories: devotion, education and service. At the SBC of Indianapolis, on which this chapter focuses, devotion to Sai is expressed primarily through a centre-sponsored Sunday morning bhajan service as well as a Thursday night bhajan service which takes place in the home of one of the devotees. Around a dozen families participate regularly in the Thursday evening bhajan services, all of them Indian-American. (Though the group was established and dominated in its early years by Euro- and African-Americans, its demographics shifted significantly in the 1990s.) The service takes place in a middle-class housing development located in Carmel, one of Indianapolis’s most wealthy suburbs.
At the bhajan services, devotees enter and take off their shoes. They then make their way to a room devoid of furniture, save for a pedestal on which a large statue of Ganesh is located and a chair over which is draped a saffron robe once worn by Sai and donated by the guru to a former Indianapolis Sai devotee. The chair and robe are treated with respect, though not inordinately. If the person who brings the robe arrives late for the service, he quietly and unceremoniously places it gently on the chair before sitting down. Framed pictures of Sai and Shirdi Sai Baba hang on the walls of the room. At the front, on the sill of a bay window with its curtains drawn, are some more framed pictures of Sai, a bell, lotus-shaped glass votive candle holders, a small oil lamp, another statue of Ganesh, a Byzantine-style icon of Jesus’ face, an ornate brass container for vibhuti and a hanging painted plaster sign which says ‘Welcome’ and features a humming bird drinking nectar from lavender flowers.
Women, most of them dressed in traditional Indian clothes, sit on the floor on the left. Men, wearing western style outfits, sit on the right. A brightly coloured silk cloth separates them and represents the path that Sai treads as he walks among the devoted. Devotees respectfully and assiduously refrain from touching the cloth during the service and carefully straighten it out if it is rumpled by wandering children or late-arriving devotees.
The service begins with the incantation of ‘Om’ exactly at 6:15, according to a digital clock located on the altar. For the next 45 minutes, devotees sing devotional songs, generally beginning with one praising Lord Ganesh. Some of the bhajans refer explicitly to Sai, others only implicitly (since all names and forms are his). The songs are drawn from a massive song book containing bhajans from all regions of India and from Hinduism, Christianity, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam. After the songs, devotees perform arati before the altar and distribute vibhuti while singing accompanying songs. There is then a short meditation, followed by chanting of the gayatri mantra, reading from Sai’s writings and announcements. The service concludes when the person making the announcements says ‘Jai Sai Ram’.
Members of the Indianapolis SBC perform their educational mission primarily by organising bal vikas (childhood development) classes. The instruction given to the children varies according to their intellectual abilities. In general it focuses on the development of certain basic values (non-violence, compassion, truthfulness, moral courage, moderation, modesty, and so on) with reference to scriptures and stories from all the world’s major religions. Service to humanity remains an important element of Sai devotion. Devotees offer a monthly soup kitchen for homeless people at an Indianapolis church and volunteer regularly to work with the elderly at a local retirement community. Those who participate speak ardently of how meaningful they consider the work as well as the fine lessons such service teaches their children. Many of the children abhor missing the service project events, and the soup kitchen preparations, which involve making hundreds of grilled cheese sandwiches and a huge vat of chilli, take on a festive atmosphere.
Regular participants in events organised by the Indianapolis SBC today are nearly entirely Indian-American. Most of the adults were born in India; most of their children were born in the United States. While this is not typical of American Sai Centers, many of which involve non-Indian-American families, it does simplify matters to some extent, for it allows us to analyse devotion at the Indianapolis Sai Baba Center as an expression of immigrant religion. And this leads us back, then, to the central thesis of this chapter, which is that devotion to Sai Baba is particularly well suited to the creation and sustenance of an ecumenical Hinduism (or quasi-Hinduism) in North America because of what I will call Sai’s semiotic flexibility. Sai’s impressive symbolic flexibility derives in part not only from the fact of his guru-hood but also, as I will argue below, from the nature of his message and mission.
If one asks diasporic Indian devotees why they follow Sai, or how they came to follow Sai, one receives a great variety of responses. Generally speaking, however, the responses can be grouped into two categories: those having to do with preserving a connection to India and/or to Hinduism, and those having to do with preparing the devotee for life abroad. I will discuss each of these categories under headings stolen artlessly from the title of Roger Ballard’s excellent edited volume on South Asians in Britain, Desh Pardesh (1996a), which can be roughly translated as Home (or At Home) Abroad.
When asked why they participate in the functions of the Sai Baba Center, Sai devotees in Indianapolis, as elsewhere, frequently respond by saying that such participation teaches them and (perhaps more importantly) their children certain fundamental human values. Those who respond more specifically often refer to Sai’s five central values: truth (sathya), right conduct (dharma), non-violence (ahimsa), love for God and God’s creatures (prema) and peace (shantih). Education in these and other human values is central to the mission of Sai Baba Centers, and indeed to the guru’s entire organisation, which has established schools around the globe for their perpetuation, as well as a curriculum in human values for use in bal vikas classes.
This emphasis on human values is significant because it enables Indian-American devotees and their children to remain connected to Hindu traditions in a way that makes sense in the modern West. It has been noted by multiple scholars (for example, Singer, 1963; Taylor, 1987: 127) that bhajan services themselves represent one popular connection to the Hindu tradition among middle-class Indians and Indian migrant communities. While SBC bhajan services often include songs from traditions other than Hinduism—‘Amazing Grace’ is sung at nearly every Thursday evening bhajan service in Indianapolis, and Muslim devotional tunes are sometimes incorporated—the great majority of the songs are of Hindu origin. Frequently popular Hindu bhajans are sung with little alteration, though occasionally Sai’s name is inserted instead of that of another deity. Clearly, bhajan services perform a cultural function for Indian-American devotees that they would not for others, and in fact, though there was disagreement on this point, some informants suggested that the emphasis on bhajans in the Indianapolis SBC is both a reflection and possible cause of the shift in membership towards Indian-Americans.
As indicated earlier, Hindu-American communities of all kinds have established regular bhajan services. So there is nothing particularly unique about SBC bhajans. Nor are the SBC bal vikas classes unusual. Hindu-American communities of all stripes have established courses in temples and community centres designed to teach their children about Hinduism and about India more generally (Kurien, 1998: 41). What distinguishes the SBC bal vikas programme from such bala vihars, bala gokulums and other childhood educational programmes, however, is its emphasis on human values rather than on preserving ‘traditional’ Hindu beliefs and practices.
It should of course be kept in mind that even the preservation of tradition in new times and places involves a good deal of transformative creativity and is never merely a matter of reproduction. Yet Indian-American Sai devotees in Indianapolis seem more consciously than many others to have used the SBC as a space to preserve the kinds of connections to the Hindu tradition which make sense to them in their new cultural context. Sai’s emphasis on human values, therefore, represents for many devotees a kind of selective distillation of the Hindu faith which they feel comfortable maintaining in their own lives and wish to pass on to their children.
The bal vikas curriculum is generally presented as a course in universal human values. According to devotees, they are not Hindu values. They are not even religious values. They are simply human values. As one informant put it, ‘It’s just human values, for anybody. See, bal vikas is not just for Hindus’. When asked to describe these values, another informant said:
There are some values that transcend any artificial religious classifications. They are beyond religion. And religion sometimes can be very confining. Those are universal precepts of treating [people] fairly, equality, egalitarianism, love, sacrifice, and those sorts of things … [which have] come through in many religious cultures and secular ethical concepts as well.
Bal vikas promotes a core of universal values that, according to SBC members, everybody the world over respects as the ideal, and everybody wants their children to assimilate.
Indianapolis Sai devotees went to great lengths to distinguish Sai Baba devotion from popular Hinduism. They did so, first, by asserting that devotion to Sai was far more informal, and far less ritualistic, than popular Hinduism. When asked why he had said devotion to Sai was not Hinduism, one informant responded:
… [B]ecause [Sai] never stresses religion as a way of life. He more stresses on the principles of Hinduism, he doesn’t stress that you have to do this ritual, you have to do this yoga. He stresses more on principles. And principles are universal. You know, you have the same principles in Christianity, in Islam, etc.
The second way that informants distinguished Sai devotion from Hinduism was by asserting that SBCs institutionalised moral education in a way that Hindu religious centres generally did not, or at least not to the same extent. As one informant put it, ‘[Here in America] you have a church which teaches moral education to the students. But in India, somehow, the temple never played that role’. Even in the United States, many Sai devotees suggested—though here again there was some disagreement—that childhood education offered at Hindu temples focused more on Hindu scriptures and rituals than classes at the SBC did, and relatively less on morality.
Some devotees originally became involved in the SBC community, in fact, for the very purpose of providing their children with a moral education. For example, one rather agnostic member of the community who did not accept Sai’s claims of divinity nevertheless wanted his children involved, telling them: ‘The reason we’re [involved in the SBC community] is not that we think [Sai is] God. But these are the things [discipline, moral standards, etc.] I think [my children] are getting out of it, and … these are things I cannot give [them] in the temple.’
While informants consistently asserted that Sai Baba devotion was ‘not Hinduism’, it is clear in this context that many (if not most) Indian-American devotees of Sai consider Sai’s message to be universal because it is the heart of Hinduism, that is, sanatana dharma and therefore the heart of all positive religious and secular traditions. Sai’s message is, according to this view, the pure and essential message of Hinduism recovered from beneath centuries of (unfortunate) ritual, social and cultural accretion. While American devotees of Sai with no ethnic connection to India are often drawn to the values he promotes, therefore, there is clearly an added dimension of attractiveness for Hindu-American devotees. And informants frequently indicated, in a variety of ways, that they saw the bal vikas programme as a way of introducing their children not only to human values, but also to the basics of Hindu belief.
While participation in the life of the Indianapolis SBC allows devotees to maintain a connection to their Hindu heritage, it also, I would argue, prepares them in a variety of ways for life in the United States. The reason for this is the simplicity and perceived respectability of Sai’s message.
Many devotees consider Sai a skilled teacher and describe his message as simple and direct. There may be other expressions of the truth, they argue, but none so easily grasped as Sai’s. One informant said, ‘It’s so simple to follow Swami’s words … He speaks [just like] your mom and dad’.
This fact is particularly important to Sai’s Indianapolis devotees, many of whom feel the frenetic pace of American life prevents them from following more traditional (but also more complicated) Hindu paths to enlightenment, paths which do not have the institutional support abroad that they do in India. And what is true of the parents is also true of the children. One father indicated that bal vikas classes allowed his daughter to learn about ‘Hinduism in a nutshell’ in between piano lessons, homework and other obligations. Moreover, he argued, the discipline she was learning from her involvement with the SBC community was preparing her to meet the challenges of a busy modern life. ‘I think for a kid who needs religious and spiritual experience, which … is essential’, he said, ‘this system is compact, simplified, and you don’t really have to spend much time practicing it’. Then, intentionally exaggerating his Indian accent for humorous effect, he said, ‘It is very practical!’
When devotees speak in this way of their inability (due to ignorance or lack of time) to grasp complicated truths, one cannot help but think of the popular Hindu belief, accepted also by Sai, that we live in the kali yuga, that is, the dark age at the end of a cycle of cosmic creation and destruction, during which humans are incapable of religious achievement requiring strenuous effort. In such a time, only the simplest and easiest of spiritual paths can be of any utility. Bhakti (devotional) Hinduism is considered by many to be one of those paths, because it does not require detailed knowledge of Sanskrit or rigorous asceticism. Nor does it involve complicated rituals requiring the presence of professional religious specialists who are rather hard to come by outside of India (Williams, 1988: 50). Bhakti yoga, therefore, long considered an appropriate path for the kali yuga, now proves itself particularly suited to Hindu life in the modern West. Clearly the Sai Baba movement, oriented as it is around bhajans and a simple but sincere devotion to Sai Baba and his message, fits within this general pattern.
The very fact that leadership of the Sai Baba movement comes from a guru, Sai himself, is also a factor in its growth in the United States. Various scholars (Coward, 2000; Jackson and Nesbitt, 1993: 114, 78–79; Williams, 1988: 283) have suggested that guru-oriented religious movements are particularly well adapted to the life of Hindus abroad. I will discuss the matter further in the conclusion, but suffice it to say here that guru-oriented rituals are generally simpler than those involved in temple Hinduism. In such movements, chanting the name of the guru, or singing songs in his or her name, takes the place of elaborate pujas. Such rituals are not only more flexible—they can be performed nearly anytime and any place—but are also far easier to transmit from one generation to another than the more diffuse and elaborate ritual practices involved in many other forms of Hinduism (Williams, 1992: 253).
One of the recurrent themes in my conversations with Sai devotees, particularly those in their teens or with children in their teens, was that faith in Sai was a kind of faith in which young Americans could take pride. Such an assertion would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago, given the strength of the anti-cult movement in the United States and Britain at that time, accusations of impropriety at Prasanthi Nilayam and the association of Sai himself with wonder-working.
But since that time, a number of things have changed. One is that the anti-cult movement no longer has the energy and support it once had. Another is that a significant amount of time has passed since the accusations of impropriety in Puttaparthi. A third is that Sai’s following has grown substantially, including, particularly in India, prominent and well-respected artists, intellectuals, scientists and politicians. A fourth is that Sai devotees, following the lead of Sai himself, tend nowadays to downplay the significance of his miracles.
There are of course certain elements of Sai devotion which would strike many adherents of America’s dominant religion, Christianity, as at least mildly unusual. Those distinctive elements do occasionally cause Sai devotees a certain degree of embarrassment. One young Sai devotee whose family maintains a shrine to Sai Baba in the house said:
Well, this is really sad, but all through high school I never really told my friends what I thought about Swami or even that I was a Sai devotee. I just said that my family spends a lot of time focusing on our spirituality and we practice our spirituality at home. I defined it in very vague terms for them. And then they would come over and see the altar and be like, ‘O, that’s creepy—you’ve got someone’s clothes in your basement.’
Clearly, then, certain aspects of Sai devotion are unusual in the American context. And to some degree, certain of Sai’s central values are likewise uncommon. Non-violence, for example, is not a value for which Americans are well known.
Yet many devotees assert that their devotion to Sai actually helps them better relate to other Americans. For example, immediately after telling the story above, this young devotee said: ‘But even though I didn’t explain [my devotion to Sai] in detail to [my friends], it was enough for me. I could relate to them. I was ready to hear what they had to say about Catholicism and Judaism and Islam’.
Sai devotees frequently criticise the selfish individuality, crass materialism and obscenely sensualised nature of American culture, and do so from the vantage point of Sai’s ‘universal human values’. Emphasising non-Christian values in the American Midwest is, in one sense, profoundly subversive. Yet at the same time, retreating for protection to a religious enclave as a bulwark against what is deemed to be an immoral society is a time-honoured tradition among American Christians, particularly among the conservative and evangelical kind that dominate the Midwest. Such criticism, therefore, does not set Indianapolis Sai devotees apart from their neighbours so much as it brings them into conversation with them, and thereby opens them up to an ecumenical encounter.
Sai devotees frequently speak of the universality of Sai’s message, and it is this putative universality, I would argue, which gives them the confidence to engage with people of other faiths in multicultural (and multi-religious) America. There are two basic components of this universality. The first is the assertion that Sai himself is the ultimate end of every religious path. Sai (1976b: 24) has said: ‘Continue your worship of your chosen God along the lines already familiar to you. Then you will find that you are coming nearer and nearer to Me; for all names are Mine and all forms are Mine’. In addition, Sai asserts in one of his most famous sayings that his message is available to people of all religions:
There is only one religion, remember, and that is the religion of love; there is only one caste, and that is the Caste of Humanity. You must be careful not to encourage or entertain the slightest trace of difference [on] the basis of religion, caste, creed or colour, in the Bal Vikas classes … Select stories from the scriptures of all faiths to interest children in the values of good life. Speak to them of the moral heroes of all lands, the Saints of all faiths. For they are all of the same stamp. (Sai Baba, 1976a: 169)
The fact that Sai is the end of all religions, and that all religions therefore lead to him, suggests to Sai devotees that they have much in common with people of other faiths. Their religion does not set them apart from other religious people in America. It suggests that all religious people, as Sai put it, are of ‘one stamp’.
A number of Indianapolis Sai devotees explicitly contrasted the message of Sai Baba’s bal vikas classes with that of classes offered at Hindu temples. Whereas the latter, they asserted, were geared towards Hinduism alone, the former taught children Hindu values while at the same time preparing them to converse and communicate intelligibly with people of other faiths. And because they could do so, informants suggested, bal vikas children tended to be proud not only of their Sai devotion, but also, more so than other children, of their Hindu faith. The result of a bal vikas education, one mother said, was that her children ‘have become comfortable with themselves. They’ve become comfortable as Hindus’.
Confirming their impression, a college-age Sai devotee said:
… what really struck me [about] my education at bal vikas when I was younger was that my parents never said that other religions weren’t as good. Because my friends would come up to me and say ‘You’re Hindu? That’s kind of weird’. You know what I mean? Like nobody had ever heard of Hinduism. And I would say, ‘You’re Christian, you’re Jewish, tell me about it! I want to know more!’ You know, so I felt connected to people regardless of what faith they were a part of or where they were from. I felt like I could know them. It didn’t matter.
On the one hand, cultural and religious majorities need not accommodate themselves to minority viewpoints and need not, for survival, even know anything in particular about them. That is, for good or ill, a privilege of dominance (Ballard, 1996b: 32). It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that few Christian Sunday School classes in America would emphasise ‘universal’ human values. Minorities, on the other hand, often report feeling a certain pressure to accommodate themselves to the dominant norms. Though Sai devotees rarely articulated the matter in these specific terms, and nearly all seemed perfectly comfortable in their environs, their comments often seemed to suggest that they believed bal vikas classes promoted a religious posture more suited to the exigencies of life as a member of a religious minority than the classes at Hindu temples, oriented as they are relatively more explicitly towards Hinduism. Education in Christianity alone might be adequate for Christians in America, some Sai devotees implied. But for Hindus, it is not. That said, the distinction being made here is one of degree, since Hinduism is also often understood by its modern devotees as an inclusive and universal tradition. Moreover, I am not suggesting that religious accommodation is pursued consciously by Sai’s Indian-American devotees. At least some of Sai’s devotees in Indianapolis would in fact reject the notion that accommodation is a desirable goal, or that they pursue it intentionally.
A variety of scholars (for example, Barth, 1969: 9–38; Hinnells, 2000: 2; Kurien, 1998: 43, 2007: 6; Warner, 1993: 1058) have noted that because of the centrality of religion in American life, immigrant communities have been expected to have distinctive religious beliefs and practices, and have not been expected to give them up as part of the assimilation process. Immigrants have generally, therefore, been able to maintain their faith while integrating themselves into American life. Many immigrants in fact report that they become more religious after coming to America, though this probably has as much to do with the act of immigration itself—what one scholar has called a ‘theologising process’ (Smith, 1978: 1174–75)—as it does with the nature of American culture. This has certainly been true of Sai devotees and of Hinduism more generally. Sai devotees have not only been able to maintain their faith, but their faith has prepared them, in many ways, to survive and thrive as citizens of a multicultural America. Indianapolis Sai devotees are largely comfortable in their environment and confident that what they believe and teach is intelligible to the greater American public.
The emphasis on Sai’s universality also allows Sai’s devotees to claim common ground with the growing number of Americans who would identify themselves as ‘spiritual, not religious’. One long-time member of the Indianapolis SBC said: ‘I didn’t come to the Sai organisation because of thinking in a Hindu perspective. Or from a religious perspective. It was more from a spiritual perspective.’ And another, younger member said, ‘I wouldn’t consider myself a devout Hindu…I would consider myself a spiritual person.’
While Sai devotees consider their guru the ultimate end of all religions, therefore, they also understand their devotion, somewhat paradoxically, to be something other than religious. This understanding seems to square nicely with the often unacknowledged but common contemporary American assumption that ‘religion’ is about rituals and institutions whereas ‘spirituality’ (and, in this case, Sai devotion), while it may include rituals and institutions, focuses more on transcendent principles and values. It is because of this unacknowledged modern distinction, perhaps, that many Indian-American Sai devotees claim either that they are not Hindu, or that they are not Hindu in the way that more ritually oriented Hindus are. But it is also because of this distinction that Sai devotees claim the spiritual mindedness of all religions, and even thoughtful atheists and agnostics, as kindred spirits.
Since the Enlightenment, Western, Protestant Christians have tended to conceive of religion primarily in terms of beliefs and ethical prescriptions, and to cast aspersion on religions more oriented around rituals and institutions. For example, though the sentiment was surely stronger in the past than now, many Midwestern Evangelicals still criticise Catholics for being overly concerned with liturgy. Because of its relatively stronger focus on values (as opposed to rituals), Sai Baba devotion commends itself to outsiders who hold such a view, and it is therefore, to others in the overwhelmingly Protestant United States, significantly more palatable and intelligible than ritually oriented religions (a category into which at least some Sai devotees themselves would place Hinduism, or at least the kind of Hinduism from which they seek to differentiate themselves).
I have suggested at various points in this essay that Sai is, as a symbol, curiously flexible. And I have hinted that this fact partly explains his appeal, both in India and abroad (but especially the latter). One of the most important elements of this semiotic flexibility is the charismatic nature of Sai’s authority. Unlike the authority of their priestly counterparts (which rests on ritual and scriptural knowledge), the authority of sadhus and gurus is charismatic. They do not so much perpetuate tradition as embody it. For ascetic gurus and their followers, as Hutchinson has argued, the guru is the message (1992: 117). If that is true, however, it makes little sense that there should be multiple interpretations of a single guru’s message. If in guru-oriented cults the guru is the message, than how is it that Sai’s significance could be so variously construed?
To answer that question, we must look both at Sai and at his devotees. To some degree, Sathya Sai Baba’s charisma derives from his physical appearance. He is known far and wide for his famous ‘afro’ (a somewhat inappropriate term in the Indian context), and his devotees see in his placid visage the very face of the divine. Yet Sai’s physicality is not nearly as significant as his relationality, his ability to engage his devotees with gazes and gestures, whether in person or as a picture on a wall (White, 1972: 874). As noted above, even Sai’s miraculous production of objects such as vibhuti includes an important relational element. Gazes and gestures, while eminently meaningful for devotees, are of course semantically underdetermined, and this is one reason for Sai’s semiotic fluidity.
Another is the fact that his words, whether spoken or written, tend towards abstraction. On the one hand, he draws upon the non-dualistic philosophies of advaita vedanta to argue that social distinctions—male/female, high caste/low caste, Hindu/non-Hindu, rich/poor and so on— make no sense and have no ultimate relevance. On the other hand, he has not proven to be a consistent champion of radical social causes. He has presented himself, at times, as a proponent of stri dharma (wifely duty), traditionally understood. And though he claims that caste distinctions are ultimately insignificant, he has not forcefully sought the abolition of the varna-jati hierarchy. In addition, while his message is openly syncretic, and he encourages bal vikas teachers to employ edifying stories from all the world’s religions, his basic theological and philosophical grounding is undeniably Hindu. Moreover, on economic issues he encourages his devotees to work hard and prosper and to serve the misfortunate; but he has spoken out, for example, against workers’ strikes (Babb, 1986). His approach to social justice is therefore ameliorative (that is, sought through the provision of social services to the needy) and incremental (that is, achieved through the slow but steady positive education of young people). The advantage of this approach, his devotees sometimes say, is that he is able to work for justice without involving himself (or his devotees) in polarising political debates.
For these reasons, both those who desire to rid the world of oppressive social structures and those who merely wish to help those thereby oppressed can find room within Sai’s expansive embrace. He is many things to many people. Feuerbach’s theory, articulated in his Essence of Christianity (published first in German, 1841), that religious people project their highest ideals onto the symbol of God seems to some extent relevant here. Yet, to reduce Sai devotion to a psychological projection is to ignore the fact that devotees themselves claim to have been personally transformed by their encounters with the God-man. Sai is many things to many people, Sai’s devotees would claim, because Sai is all things to all people.
Such expansiveness is particularly important among Sai’s diasporic devotees. As indicated earlier, gurus now claim a particularly prominent place in the religious life of Hindus abroad, as well as among Hindus of the Indian urban middle class. What newly urbanised and migrant Indians have in common is a recent experience of social and religious dislocation (Jackson and Nesbitt, 1993; Swallow, 1982), by which I mean that their beliefs and practices have been removed from the sociocultural environment which sustained them. In such a situation, religious change is inevitable, and guru cults are particularly well suited to effect that change.
Whereas brahmans who wish to effect religious change must be willing to engage in controversy with other brahmans who disagree with them, the guru can change by fiat, with a single utterance.3 Moreover, those who derive their authority from their knowledge of scriptural traditions must appeal to those very same traditions when addressing contemporary predicaments. Given the historical distance between those who wrote ancient scriptures and those who seek guidance from them in today’s world, such appeals can sometimes appear strained and artificial. Living gurus, on the other hand, can speak directly to their devotees’ dilemmas. They can address specific situations. They can even change their minds. That makes them in many ways a more suitable resource for changing times.
One of the impressive features of devotion to Sai Baba is the fact that it transcends Indian regional boundaries. The reason why it does is not immediately apparent. Sai is, after all, Telugu, and he generally speaks in Telugu, addressing many of his devotees through translators. Yet he has developed an all-India and international following, and this, surely, is related to his semiotic elasticity. The advantage of his broad appeal for migrant Indians is clear. Whereas in India, where most social networks tend to be organised along regional and linguistic lines, in all but the most cosmopolitan American cities, such groupings would be necessarily and unappealingly small. Generally speaking, therefore, Indian-Americans tend to forge communal bonds with a broader range of Indians than they would in India. For this community to extend to the religious level, however, Indian-Americans must develop what Williams has called a transcendent basis of identity, one which goes beyond loyalty to unique regional, cultural or religious peculiarities. An ecumenical Hinduism is developing in the US which serves, for some communities, as this transcendent basis of identity (Williams, 1988: 41, 1992: 239).
But guru-oriented movements that have spread beyond their local origins bring unity to diverse groups of people by focusing them on the charisma of a single man or woman. And regional differences are not the only problem. In fact, in some parts of North America, loyalty to a guru is replacing regional, linguistic or caste-based loyalties (Williams, 1988: 178–79). No doubt one of the reasons is that it is easier for loyalty to a religious leader to be transmitted to children of the second generation than it is to transmit, as Williams has put it, ‘all the rudiments of ethnic affiliation’ (1992: 253). Sai Baba’s Indianapolis devotees focus very little on chanting mantras or Sai’s name, but their weekly bhajan and bal vikas services involve, in addition to the singing of devotional songs, the bare minimum of traditional Hindu ritual acts, stripped down to their most basic forms. The simplicity of the SBC bhajan services serves to concentrate all attention on Sai himself. And as I have already indicated, Sai is, like his gazes and gestures, semantically underdetermined.
Devotees in the diaspora can exploit that lack of semantic rigidity in productive ways. Sai Baba’s Indian-American devotees, like immigrants generally, have (at least) two audiences. On the one hand, they must convince themselves and their fellow Indian-Americans that they appreciate and attend to their cultural and religious roots and that they subscribe to and uphold ‘Indian values’ (assuming, of course, that they do indeed desire to do so). On the other hand, they must also, if they wish to integrate themselves into American life, articulate and express their religious views in a way that is both intelligible and palatable to their non–Indian-American neighbours. Sai’s semiotic flexibility allows them to do that. Sai speaks both the language of sanatana dharma and the language of the vague ethical monotheism that lies at the core of America’s civil religion. Sai’s Indian-American devotees do as well.
Members of the Indianapolis SBC resolve the tension between ‘American values’ and ‘Indian values’ by espousing a selective distillation of beliefs from the range we call Hindu which in the end turn out to resemble in significant ways the kind of American civil and religious values that Indians admire. This in turn allows for the practice of a Hinduism which is ecumenical both in the sense of going beyond the regional and sectarian differences prominent in Indian Hinduism, and in the sense seeking beyond all the world’s religions a universal spiritual core. And what this ecumenism means is that a diverse group of Indian-American followers of Sai can come together and be at one and the same time good devotees and good citizens.
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1 As this volume was going to press, Sathya Sai Baba gave up his bodily form. After being hospitalised for several weeks, he died on 24 April 2011 at a hospital he himself had established near his ashram. His devotees in Indianapolis marked his passing with rituals used to memorialise a family member, meeting nightly from 25 April till 6 May (the 13th day after his death) for an hour of prayer and bhajans. Though devotees expressed their sense that Sai was still with them spiritually, they also could not help but feel some sadness, as one devotee put it, that ‘the Friend who has walked with me so many years is not where I can see Him and ask His advice and see Him smile’.
2 Special thanks to research assistants Nick Bohannan, Caitlin Drouin and Joshua Kaminski for help transcribing interviews. Research for this chapter was supported by a Summer Faculty Fellowship from Butler University’s Institute for Research and Scholarship.
3 It must be kept in mind, of course, that we are dealing here with ideal types.