Everyday Eschatology
Subtitle: Centering and Healing in Two Hindu Sects
By: Nick Tackes
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2022
Place of publication: [New York, N.Y.?]
Language: eng
Description: “Everyday Eschatology: Centering and Healing in Two Hindu Sects,” examines the two most prominent eschatological groups in North India: the Gayatri Pariwar and the Brahma Kumaris. Both organizations envision and pursue an imminent transition into a new Golden Age through self-care regimens that connect Hindu rituals to the authority of modern medical science. Rather than prepare for the end of the world by retreating from society, these groups attempt to act as custodians of societal welfare by way of goods and services meant to cleanse at once the mind, body, and environment. Drawn from ethnographic and archival fieldwork conducted at the headquarters and local-level cells of both institutions, this project demonstrates how members of both groups position everyday religious practices as the means of saving a world under-stood to be on the brink of collapse.
Notes: Department: Religion.

Thesis advisor: John Stratton Hawley.

Thesis advisor: Rachel Fell McDermott.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2022.