Gods for the Modern Era: The Rise of Miracle Shrines in Northwestern India.

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the development of religious shrines offering miracles in northwestern India has been substantially facilitated by neoliberal reforms and concomitant social change over the past twenty years. The study focuses on Balaji, a local manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, at two sites in Rajasthan respectively known as Salasar and Mehndipur. This dissertation intersects with scholarship across disciplines on new religious movements, the popularization of faith and miracles as instruments of personal advancement, and the construction of local histories from oral accounts.

Structured as a collective oral history, the research shifts between analyses of present-day devotion at shrines of miracles, the religious practices of devotees in their home locales, case studies of priests and faith healers, and anecdotes about how Hindu devotion has changed in recent history. In these accounts, respondents interpret modern socioeconomic change as cosmically preordained history resulting in societal corruption. Faith in Balaji is understood as a path for restoring an idealized moral society in which miracles are normal.

The historical backdrop of this study starts in 1990, when affluent merchants acclaimed Salasar Balaji and certain nearby deities as their hereditary guarantors of prosperity. These merchants also started urban devotional organizations based on their prior social and economic relationships. In the years of neoliberal reform, their prosperity and pious donations to Salasar's rulers, the Brahmins, spurred stories about miracles. This led to a new tradition of long pilgrimages on foot among farmers and townspeople from the region surrounding Salasar who were eager for a fast track to the good life.

Meanwhile, having a more decentralized form of local authority, Mehndipur became a magnet for faith healers attracted by the influx of pilgrims seeking relief from afflictions. From around 1996 on, this rising culture of pilgrimage spurred the establishment of many new faith healing shrines in Rajasthan. This study observes that healers have been pragmatically elevating their minor household spirits into miracle-granting gods to serve these new shrines. In the aftermath, this study documents the popular reification of Rajasthan as a reservoir of charismatic gurus and miracle shrines juxtaposed against a modernizing but decaying society.