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Sai Baba: The Double Utilization of Written and Oral Traditions in a Modern South Asian Religious Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Smriti Srinivas
Smriti Srinivas*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus
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The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Puttaparthi town in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh. While most of the available literature is hagiographical in nature, some aspects of the movement have been studied - the figures of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba, the middle-class constituency of the Sathya Sai Baba movement, role of miracles, and the pedagogical role of movement, for instance. These studies are part of a growing interest in new religious and reformist movements in South Asia in the past century, their impacts on civil society and its institutions, and their relationships to the nation-state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 47 , Issue 187 , September 1999 , pp. 88 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 1999

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