In the Presence of Sai Baba
Subtitle: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement (Numen Book Series)
Publisher: Brill
Published: January 15, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 460
ISBN-13: 9789004165434
Subjects: History of religion; Religious groups; Religion; Religion - Commentaries / Reference; History; Sociology of Religion; 1926-; HInduism; Sathya Sai Baba,; Social aspects
Description: "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."--Jacket.