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The Brahmin and the fakir: Suburbanreligiosity in the cult of Shirdi Sai babaSmriti Srinivas aa Center on Population, Gender and Social Inequality, SociologyDepartment, 3114 Art‐Sociology Building , University ofMaryland , College Park, MD, 20742–1315, USAPublished online: 25 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Smriti Srinivas (1999) The Brahmin and the fakir: Suburban religiosityin the cult of Shirdi Sai baba, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 14:2, 245-261, DOI:10.1080/13537909908580865

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Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1999 245

The Brahmin and the Fakir: Suburban Religiosityin the Cult of Shirdi Sai Baba

SMRITI SRINIVAS

ABSTRACT Shirdi Sai Baba (7-1918), whose cult in Bangalore city, India, is the casestudy of this paper, was a Maharashtrian saint closely identified with both thePandharpur tradition of Vaisnavite devotion and Sufi genealogies in the region. Mythesis is that in the cult of Shirdi Sai Baba, the holy mendicant/saint (fakir/sant)paradigm was associated historically with non-urban locations; the paradigm of thespiritual guide (guru,) and, in later years, the incarnation (avatar), is to be foundassociated with suburban and urban sites. The religious imagination of a cult is abehavioural, communicational and spatial model that creates particular kinds of topolog-ical domains in different historical and social milieus. It achieves its coherence withinthese contexts through certain 'root paradigms', cultural codes in the minds of carriersof traditions that shape relationships, practices, and life-stances of individuals. While itis common to identify an urban location by certain social science variables, such as thesize of a settlement, industrialisation or a sophisticated communication system, 1 willinstead view the urban topos of Bangalore through the root paradigms of a religious cult.

Introduction

My argument in this paper is that the religious imagination of a cult is a complexpalimpsest with several interacting frames. This imagination is a behavioural,communicational and spatial model that creates particular kinds of topologicaldomains in different historical and social milieus. It achieves its coherencewithin these contexts through certain 'root paradigms', cultural codes in theminds of carriers of traditions that shape relationships, practices, and life-stancesof individuals (Turner, 1979). The paradigms assume the nature of a structurethat guides and produces the behaviour of those who bear them so that commoncultural goals ensue. Root paradigms produce a particular skein of time andspace for various social groups, a world they inhabit that is at once architectural,stylistic and interpersonal. While it is common to identify an urban location bycertain social science variables such as the size of a settlement, industrialisation,a sophisticated communication system, or functional specialisation, I will abjuresuch an approach and instead view the urban topos through the ideationalprism of a religious cult.

Shirdi Sai Baba (7-1918), whose cult in Bangalore city, India, is the case studyof this paper, was a Maharashtrian saint closely identified with both thePandharpur tradition of devotion to the deity, Vittala, and Sufi genealogies inthe region, especially the Chisti and the Qadirriya. My thesis is that in the cultof Shirdi Sai Baba, the holy mendicant/saint (fakir/sant) paradigm was associ-ated historically with non-urban locations. The paradigm of the spiritual guide

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(guru) and, in later years, the incarnation (avatar), are to be found associated withsuburban and urban sites.1 While civilizational continuities may be emphasisedin the use of such paradigms, it is equally central to ask which aspect of thesereceived more emphasis in a particular historical period and which wereforgotten. Who transmitted the tradition? Does the cult locate itself in a traditionof social protest and heterodoxy or social accommodation? To whom is ittransmitted and by what means? In what way was the paradigm transformedwhen received by a particular audience? I will explore these questions not byresorting to scriptural or hermeneutical exegeses about the respectivesignifications associated with the terms fakir or guru, but instead by snowinghow these paradigms were developed and localised by carriers of the traditionin Bangalore.

The Life of Shirdi Sai Baba: From Fakir to Nascent Guru

First-hand accounts of those who lived with and met Shirdi Sai Baba are few.Most of these accounts are hagiographies, but they provide significant cluesabout the cultural associations made about this saint during his life-time and theshifts in the construction of his persona after that period. The earliest accountsare those of Ganpatrao Dattatreya Sahasrabuddhe, popularly known to ShirdiBaba's devotees as "Das Ganu". He hailed from a Brahmin family in Akolnervillage in Maharashtra and was employed in the police service. He went to seeBaba in 1890 and after several mishaps resigned from his job in 1903. He settledin Nanded in Maharashtra and spent his time performing religious discoursesaccompanied with devotional songs (kirtans) throughout the region. Das Ganuseemed to see Baba as the Krishna he worshipped in the Maharashtrian bhaktitradition, Pandharpur being an important focus of this devotion for the poet-saints from Jnandev (1271-1296) onwards. The word 'master' or 'lord' (malik)that he uses to describe Baba in many of his couplets also points to anotheraspect of Baba's personality—his links with Sufi Islam. According to Das Ganu,Sai Baba was born in Selu, a village in the dominions of the Nizam, a Muslimruler of Hyderabad. He spent his early years in the area of Aurangabad in thatstate. His Muslim parents were poor; when his father died, his mother took upa mendicant's life, her young son accompanying her. When he was five yearsold, they arrived in Shelwadi village which was under the control of a Brahminby the name of Gopalrao Deshmukh; the latter assumed guardianship of the boywhen he was twelve years old. Sai Baba is said to have remarked that after hisfakir's death, his widow left him with "Venkusa" (who some believe to beDeshmukh). Baba trained with Deshmukh and his education gave him afamiliarity with Hindu (and Vaishnavite) traditions in addition to the Sufi onethat he knew (Shepherd, 1985: 6-10).2

Baba never used his own name, he was referred to by others as "Sai Baba".The appellation springs from the words uttered by Mhalasapati, a goldsmithwho was also the priest of the Khandoba temple on the outskirts of Shirdivillage. Shirdi, at the time of Baba's arrival in the middle of the 19th century,was a little village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra with a cluster ofhouses surrounded by agricultural fields. Sources calculate that it had about 200houses, with a village population of not more than 1,000 persons (Rigopoulos,1993). The nearest village was Rahata which had a permanent market. Shirdi

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itself had a few shops managed by Gujurati, Marwari and Kutchi merchants. Inkeeping with accounts of Western Maharashtra at this point of time, one maycategorise most of the villagers as belonging to the peasant/cultivating stratum(kunbi), with few Maratha or élite families, if any; the former group was certainlynot homogeneous and contained a variety of castes (O'Hanlon, 1985; Omvedt,1976). The Muslims, who comprised about 10% of the population, workedmainly as artisans or agricultural labourers. There were three temples in thevillage—one dedicated to Maruti, one to Khandoba, and the other to Vittala—besides the mosque which was in a poor condition. Baba appeared there first asa young man along with a marriage party and Mhalasapati is said to haveaddressed him with the words 'Ya Sai' (welcome saint). This was probably dueto the clothes he wore, a long white robe (kafni) with a white cloth covering hisforehead, a dress often associated with Muslim ascetics. The term 'Sai' is ofPersian origin and means 'holy one'; the word 'Baba' is probably of Hindustaniorigin and indicates a senior or older man (Rigopolous, 1993). Baba oftenreferred to himself (and God) as the fakir. The relationship of Baba to certain Sufiorders in Maharashtra and Bijapur (in Karnataka), especially the Chisti, has beensuggested (Shepherd, 1985). Certainly, a number of Sufi brotherhoods existed inthat region and Baba's dress and some practices, for example, the constantremembrance of the name of God (dhikr), allows this possibility.

Having no details about Baba's life or birth prior to his Shirdi stay, anothercommentator, Hemadpant, resorts to a hagiographical connection between thesaints, Namdev and Kabir, who mysteriously appeared on earth, and Baba, whoserendipitously arrived at Shirdi and took up his seat under a neem tree.3 Hewas then a tall fair boy of 16 and seemed absorbed in penance. He stayed forthree years in Shirdi from his first appearance in 1854 and disappeared to returnlater with the marriage-party of a Muslim gentleman, Chand Patil, in 1858.

Baba began to reside in the dilapidated mosque. There he spent his time in thecompany of other saints. By day, he sat beneath a neem tree and inthe afternoon, he would wander around in the vicinity of Shirdi. At night heslept in the mosque. Later, every alternate night, he would stay in a set of roomsnear the mosque (chavadi) while one female devotee, Radha-Krishna Mai, wouldclean the mosque. Baba's own belongings at this time consisted of a pipe(chillim), tobacco, a tin pot, the robe that he wore, and a staff (satka). The clothon his head was not washed for weeks. He wore nothing on his feet, sat on asack-cloth in front of a sacred fire (dhuni) to ward off the cold, and would utterthe words "Allah Malik". Baba would say often: "Fakiri (mendicancy) was thereal Lordship as it was everlasting, and the so-called Lordship (riches)was evanescent" (Shri Sai Satcharita, 1972: 48).

At the time when Baba came to reside in Shirdi, few people came to him: ithas been documented that he visited the houses of a few in the village—Bayajibai Kote Patil, Patil Gondkar, Nadaram Savairam, Appaji Kote, andNarayan Teli (Kamath & Kher, 1991: 7). Sometimes he went to Nimgaon wherehe met a few others. Villagers would come to him for medicines which he usedto make. Practically unknown to most of them, he typically sat rapt in devotion,singing songs of Kabir or couplets in Persian and Arabic. The incident whichbrought a change to his presence there was a miracle in which he convertedwater to oil and overnight he turned from an eccentric mendicant to a holy saint.His miracles (chamatkars) were certainly what prompted his early sanctification.

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Worship was at first individual, with sandal paste and flowers, although attimes Baba strenuously resisted it. The Muslims, who regarded Sai as theirsaint (pir), appeared to have objected to this kind of worship inside a mosque.There is certainly evidence that there were frequent altercations at this time,and although the Muslims were a small percentage of the population of Shirdi,they were the majority of the worshippers. Around 1897, the practice ofholding a festival commemorating the death of a Muslim saint (urs) was begunat Shirdi by Gopalrao Gund, an inspector who had been blessed by Baba witha son. Later, about 1908, the transformation from individual to congregationalworship began. K. G. Bhishma, a worshipper of Vittala at Pandharpur, drewup a ritual for the worship of Baba that followed the lines of the worship atPandharpur; Megha, a Brahmin worshipper of the deity Shiva, was appointedto be the priest who should carry on the congregational worship. RamakrishnaAyi, the widow devotee of Baba, carried out her plan of fitting out Baba andhis mosque as if Baba were a real God-King. Thus worship with silver whisks,maces, and candelabras became a common feature and a palanquin, a horseand other regal paraphernalia were added at her insistence to make the ritualssimilar to the devotion of Vittala. From 1909 large crowds would gather toworship Baba at the chavadi and the practice began of taking Baba in aprocession to the chavadi from the mosque. Around this time, Baba gave up hisbegging and the food brought by his devotees would be distributed after beingblessed by him. In 1912, some devotees decided to hold a Rama Navamifestival (to celebrate the birth of the deity Rama) along with the urs since thetwo coincided and, with Baba's permission, this became an annual feature atShirdi.

Baba had various ways of instruction. To some, he recommended the readingof scriptures, such as the Jnaneshwar, Adyatma Ramayana, the Gita, or simplychanting the names of Rama, Vishnu or Allah. Others he sent to various templeswith gifts to other saints or he explained the meaning of certain sacred formulaepersonally or in dreams. Towards the last decade of the 19th century, Bababegan the practice of collecting sacrificial fees (dakshina) from the hundreds whobegan to flock to Shirdi. By 1878, it appears that Mhalsapati, Appa Kulkarni,Jagle, and Nanasaheb Dengle had accepted Baba as their guru (Kamath & Kher,1991: 7). The last devotee, Dengle, apparently knew a number of governmentofficials and contributed to the spread of the devotion beyond Shirdi. Around1890, Nanasaheb Chandorkar, a Deputy Collector, visited Baba and became aclose devotee. There were other officials of the taluk and the district and manybusinessmen who began to visit Shirdi after this period. Many of these appearto have come from urban centres, such as Nasik, Thana, Bombay or Nagpur inMaharashtra. The amount that Baba asked from these devotees eventuallytotalled the Provincial Governor's income and the authorities intended to levyan income tax. However, by the evening of each day, Baba had distributed themoney to the devotees and was once again a poor fakir. He stated that he onlytook from those who were formerly indebted to his fakir. Hemadpant suggeststhat Baba used these fees to advance non-attachment. The complement of thesefees was the ash (udi) that Baba distributed from burning logs in the sacred fire.This ash, states Hemadpant, taught not only the transience of the world, but alsocured the mental and physical afflictions of his devotees. Ash was used in allmanner of cures: to remove a scorpion's poison, to cure a woman of the plague,

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to cure someone of fits, to increase the food served to guests, and so on(Shri Sai Satcharita, 1972: 181-197).

In 1918, Baba had an attack of fever. On the 17th day, on Vijayadashami(the tenth day of the autumn "nine-night" [navaratri] festival), he passed away.A dispute arose as to where he should be buried: the Muslims wished that theirsaint be buried in an open piece of land in Shirdi, while the Hindus wished himto be buried in a building built by a devotee where a Krishna idol was to beplaced. The dispute grew so contentious that a revenue officer was called tosettle the matter: he decided that a plebiscite should be held and the matter wassettled in favour of the Hindus' wishes. When Baba passed away, he had onlyRs.16 in his hand and no property, while all the paraphernalia of worship cameto be vested in the Sai Sanstan, a trust formed by the order of the AhmednagarDistrict Court in 1922.

The shift from Baba's role as a fakir in Shirdi to his congregational worship asa guru was paralleled by a shift in the economy of the Godavari region in whichShirdi lies. Until the first decade of this century, the region of Ahmednagardistrict was known as the Famine belt, stricken by frequent droughts andepidemics of cholera and the plague. With the construction of the Godavari andthe Pravara canals, and the government's active promotion of cane cultivation,this region was transformed into the prosperous Sugar Belt (Rigopoulos, 1993).In this period, the city of Bombay began to shift its economic activity as a mereexport centre in colonial India to a manufacturing magnet which drew labourfrom a vast hinterland (Markovits, 1995). Between 1901-1951, the share ofagriculture in Maharashtra declined and the shares of manufacturing andservices increased.

As far as the sub-continent was concerned, factory-employment increasedpartly at the expense of non-factory sectors; many occupations associated withmodernisation under colonial rule expanded, especially administrative, medicaland legal services (Krishnamurthy, 1982). Except for a setback reported by the1911 Census, the number of towns and the proportion of the urban populationsteadily increased between 1891-1941 (Visaria & Visaria, 1982). The devoteeswho began to flock to Baba in increasing numbers belonged to these classes—government officials, lawyers, Congress members, rich Parsi merchants, andwell-to-do Muslims from Hyderabad. Interviews with devotees between 1936-1938 document their social origin (Narasimha Swami, 1989). Most of thesebureaucratic and business strata were urban and many of the Hindus seemed tobelong to Brahmin, Kayasta and Bania communities. They had some knowledgeof English, were in contact with centres in other parts of the country through thepress and the railway, were exposed to the benefits of 'modern' education, andused occupational opportunities opened up by the presence of the British Raj.Around 1921, the Congress was made up of such groups, a newly emergingclass which numbered about 2.4 millions out of a total of 305 millions, accordingto the Census. The growth of institutions, such as the Indian National Congress,the Brahmo Samaj, and the Ramakrishna Mission in this new climate has beenamply documented.

In the case of the devotion centred on Shirdi Sai Baba, as in some of theseother institutions, various cultural pathways were formed for legitimising thenew social order. After the passing away of Baba in 1918, there appear to be atleast five strands in the devotion in a pan-Indian perspective.

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The first was the development of Shirdi as a pilgrimage centre, the cultus ofwhich I shall describe below.

The second strand is associated with Upasani Maharaj: Baba did not explicitlydesignate any heirs and no initiation (diksha) was given; many devotees, how-ever, thought that Upasani Maharaj would succeed Baba. Upasani Maharaj cameto Shirdi at the age of 41. At first, he was not interested in a man who appearedto be a Muslim, but later came to stay at Shirdi and was instructed and guidedby Baba. In 1913, Baba inaugurated his worship as a guru. Upasani Maharaj leftShirdi in 1917 and set up his own centre at Sakori, a small hamlet south ofShirdi.

The third is associated with Mervan Sheriar Irani who came to Sakori fromPune. Meher Baba, as this disciple came to be known, subsequently became acult figure in his own right. Meher Baba requires mention here, becausealthough his is a non-dominant strand within the cult of Shirdi Sai Baba, it is inhis cult, rather than that of Upasani Maharaj which became Vedic in its form,that Baba's Sufi character is preserved.4

The fourth strand is based on Shirdi Baba's reassurances that even after hispassing away, he would continue to help his devotees. This has led to the beliefamong some devotees that he would be reincarnated again. While a number ofpersons have claimed to be Baba reborn, the most famous claim of reincarnationis that of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. Born in 1926, hedeclared at the age of 13 to be the saint of Shirdi. In the cult of Sathya Sai Baba,Shirdi Baba is regarded as the first of a series of three incarnations of Shiva andShakti.5

The fifth stream within the development of the cult after 1918 was the creationof a number of centres dedicated to Shirdi Baba in South India.

While the sacralization of Baba as a guru was incipient at Shirdi in the last twodecades of Baba's life, Shirdi still continues to contain within its sacred topogra-phy reminders of Baba's varied heritage. Shirdi today is an important pilgrimagecentre in Maharashtra paralleled only by Pandharpur in the same region. TheShirdi Sai Sanstan is a vast organisational network, run by a Board of Trustees,with hotels, rest-houses, a magazine called the Sai Leela, and other publicationsunder its control. Shirdi is almost completely dependent on the economy ofpilgrimage; worship at Shirdi continues on the lines developed during Baba'slifetime, including the Rama Navami-wrs celebrations. Every evening, the ShriSai Satcharita written by Hemadpant is read and three festival days—Guru-poornima (dedicated to the guru), Rama Navami and Vijayadashami—are cele-brated. On Thursdays, as on festival days, a palanquin is taken out carryingBaba's picture and other belongings in a procession. Both Muslims and Hindusof all denominations, as well as Christians from major cities visit Shirdiannually.

The structure of worship at Shirdi coalesces two figures into the paradigm ofthe Sank the saint in a Sufi order or in the Nathpanthi tradition overlapping withthe figure of Kabir; and that of the poet-saints of the Maharashtrian devotionaltradition. Pilgrimages are located within structures of available beliefs aboutsaints which continue to have significance and efficacy in the place of theirresidence or death.6 Like all pilgrimage sites, Shirdi is believed to be a placewhere miracles once happened and still happen. Many believe that Babacontinues to 'speak from his tomb'; immediacy of contact with that sacred site,

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especially through touch or sight, is considered a source of blessing. The mainsites of 'vision' (darshan) at Shirdi include Baba's tomb (samadhi-mandir) which isbuilt in white marble and a set of other objects associated with his life. Near theformer a brick is kept that was his constant companion; behind it is a statue ofBaba in Italian marble with his right leg kept over the left one and the left handdraped over the former. This icon is the one that is reproduced today in mostpopular renditions of Baba in calendars, statues in other temples, and photo-graphs. (Prior to 1954, a photograph of Shirdi Baba was kept for the purpose ofworship.) Devotees may buy pictures of this statue containing the promise: "Ifyou look to Me, I will look after you". Above the tomb is a room where thereare pictures depicting scenes from Baba's life. In the assembly hall is a showcasewhere Baba's clothes, pipe, staff, utensils, grinding stone and other personalbelongings are kept. After coming out of the entrance of the tomb, there is a roadon the right side. At the left turn of this road is Baba's mosque, called'Dwarakamai'.

As pilgrims visit the places and objects associated with Baba's life, events areremembered and a direct connection between devotees and the saint is estab-lished as they participate in a living tradition. But in the strands that developedoutside Shirdi, the trajectory of belief and practice is altered, once removed fromthe presence of the saint.

The Shirdi Baba Temples in Bangalore

Between 1918-1950, small gatherings of devotees who had visited Shirdi, usuallythrough their connections with the Maharashtrian region as businessmen orthrough their employment in the army or bureaucracy, were found in manyurban centres of South India. After 1950 or so, many of these groups, usuallydevotional song (bhajan) and prayer communities in people's homes, grew intotemples and associations affiliated to the All-India Sai Samaj, of which there areover a thousand today. A typical case is Bangalore. At the time of carrying outfieldwork for this paper (1994-1995), there were four temples dedicated to Babain the city—in N. R. Colony, in Malleswaram, in J. P. Nagar, and in CambridgeLayout. All these areas are new residential suburbs of Bangalore owing theirgreatest growth to post-independence developments.

Bangalore was founded by Kempe Gowda, a local chieftain, in the mid-sixteenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the city had exceededthe limits of Kempe Gowda's fort-mart centre in two directions. At one end,leading towards the erstwhile kingdom of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan, and laterthe Wodeyars at Mysore, was the older city. In the other direction, leadingtowards the Madras Presidency, was a British cantonment that came into beingafter the fall of Mysore in 1799. Radially originating from these two portions ofthe city were a number of roads which, after 1940, became central to theexpansion of the city, both in terms of its economy and new settlements—the Mysore road, the Bellary road, the Hosur road, the Madras Road, and so on.Around these roads several industrial and scientific establishments and residen-tial suburbs sprung up which swallowed up villages on the periphery of the oldcity and the cantonment, such as J. P. Nagar, Indiranagar (which adjoinsCambridge Layout), and N. R. Colony.

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Most of these new areas were increasingly inhabited by families whoselivelihoods were linked to the expanding metropolis—particularly in adminis-trative, industrial, professional and business sectors. In 1991, the population ofBangalore Urban Agglomeration stood at 4,086,548 persons in contrast to 163,091persons in 1901. The largest religious group in the Bangalore Urban Agglomer-ation is Hindu; the number of households classified as Hindu, according to thereligion of the head of the household, was 417,712, out of a total of 522,369households, according to the 1981 Census. There are four distinguishing featuresof Bangalore and particularly of its suburbs. Firstly, the presence of a highpercentage of migrants in the population of the city (about one-third); secondly,the presence of linguistic diversity in the population: Tamil-speakers compriseabout 30% of the population, followed by Kannada-speakers (about 23%),Telugu-speakers (about 18%) and Hindustani-speakers (16%); thirdly, thegrowth of scientific and large-scale industrial establishments (both public andprivate sector) and computer/software companies on the outskirts of the city;and fourthly, a mixed community residential pattern in the newer suburbs of thecity, replacing the caste-based wards of the old city (Gist, 1957; Heitzman, 1997;Holmstrom, 1994; Rowe, 1973).

The temple in Cambridge Layout is situated in a middle-class suburb. Thetemple evolved from the efforts of a group of six persons, most of themTamil-speakers, all from the Defence Accounts head office in Pune. After theirretirement, they settled in Bangalore and held a prayer session in Ibrahim St.(in the cantonment area) every Thursday as they used to in Pune. In 1980, theyjoined forces with a group of three businessmen—a Tamilian, a Sindhi and aMarwari. Their joint efforts led to the construction of a temple in 1985.

The temple is a modern structure with two portions: the portion above theroad has a giant statue of Shirdi Baba in marble from Rajasthan; in 1995, itacquired a silver throne depicting the mendicant as king. Saivite priests performdaily worship for this image. The rituals, however, include Saivite elements(for example, a statue of Ganesha and symbols of Shiva) and Vaishnaviteportions (for instance, recitation of the thousand names of Vishnu, vishnu-sahas-ranama). The thousand names (sahasranama) of Baba are also recited, the first lineof which states that he is the form of Shiva, Rama, Maruti and Krishna.Thursday is considered particularly sacred and hundreds of devotees can beseen visiting the temple, touching the imprints of the feet (padukas) of Babaplaced at the foot of the statue and taking consecrated food (prasada). There areno particular rules of purity or pollution—devotees touch the statue freely, norare there any particular rules of precedence with regard to any honours. Fourimportant festivals are celebrated—Sivaratri, Rama Navami, Gurupoornima andVijayadashami. Of these, Gurupoornima (on which day, all gurus from Vyasa toShirdi Baba are revered) and Vijayadashami (the day of Baba's passing) arecentral to the cult. The celebration of Rama Navami has become increasinglyelaborate over the years and the management of this temple sees it as the'birthday' of Sai Baba. The casting of Baba, therefore, into the role of anincarnation may acquire greater importance for the cult in the future, but for thevast majority or devotees, he is a guru to be revered along with other householddeities.

Below the sanctum lies another portion of the temple that is regarded as apseudo-Dwarakamai, for it shows a picture of Baba seated in the mosque. Mrs.

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Vimala Rai, who resides for a major portion of her time at a room in the temple,is said to have acquired this picture from a priest at Shirdi. At the time that thelower portion was being constructed, she made a pilgrimage to Shirdi wherethe priest told her that he had been instructed in a dream to give the picture tothe Bangalore temple. A small flame burns in the lower portion in imitation ofBaba's fire at Shirdi that has been burning since the time of Baba's residence. Thetemple is engaged in work, such as running a charitable dispensary, vishnu-sa-hasranama classes for children, and a library containing literature on Baba (inEnglish, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu). Funds have been gathered to start a largehospital providing free care; the hospital was inaugurated in October 1995.

The trust of the Cambridge Layout temple has about 400^450 life membersand about 600 ordinary members. The number of devotees at any time iscertainly far greater than this number; on Thursdays, for instance, flower-sellerssell over five to six thousand rupees worth of flowers outside the temple. Thepopularity of this cult can also be seen among non-middle class devotees,although they rarely visit the temple. Most visible in this group are auto-rickshaw drivers who carry in their vehicles small stickers with Baba's pictureon it. Many of them, when questioned, remarked that their devotion was a resultof their association with passengers whom they transported to the temple ratherthan due to a pilgrimage to Shirdi.

The neighbourhood of the Cambridge Layout temple contains a heteroge-neous population in terms of language, region, and sectarian origin and does notinclude a significant percentage of Muslims or lower caste Hindus. Thesedifferences apart, there is a convergence in terms of class, for most of thehouseholds are engaged in occupations in the government, in industry,the professions, or private enterprise. The devotees at the temple, however, arenot necessarily only from the neighbourhood, although they share with thesehouseholds a middle-level managerial, commercial and bureaucratic classbackground. They belong to other suburbs of Bangalore and are mostly Tamil-speakers or Sindhi and Gujarathi businessmen. The latter have close links withShirdi and with family members in Maharashtra and Gujurat. The men in theformer group are employed largely in government-run establishments—Hindus-tan Aeronautics, Bharat Earth Movers Ltd., Indian Telephone Industries, thearmy, and administrative offices (Public Works Department or Telegraphs). TheSaivite and Vaishnavite rites certainly mobilise both these groups. While thisexplains in some ways their participation in the worship of Sai, it does notexplain, firstly, what is the structure within which different communities partici-pate together in the Sai cult, and secondly, how it is that the mad mendicantwith his multiple heritage has come to be imagined in the Bangalore temple ina way that resembles a Hindu guru, even a Hindu deity, the other elementsbeing pushed underground, if present at all.

The worship which has developed in the larger urban areas of South India,which are removed from the presence of the saint—historically, geographically,culturally, and in class/strata terms differs from the worship at Shirdi. Theformer strand, much like the architecture of the Cambridge Layout temple—hexagonal in design with smooth geometric surfaces—is an architectonicparadigm. Rather than the presence of sacra that act as a mnemonic of Baba's lifeand need active involvement on the part of the pilgrim, there is a giant whitemarble statue in styled repose that is the object of contemplation. The persona

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of Baba himself is split into a number of facets of which the aspect of Baba asguru-God is the most significant. A picture of Baba at the mosque hangs belowthe main ritual area of the temple; unlike the frontal and direct gaze of thestatue, this picture shows Baba sitting on the floor resting at an angle against awall.

The devotee who visits the temple periodically within his daily grind is not apilgrim whose journey has removed him, at least briefly, from the co-ordinatesof a mundane world. The private world of belief and the public/professionalworld of the devotee can be separated as one enters or leaves the temple, butboth the site and the devotee's world are contained within the larger structureof the metropolis. The temple codes allow different suburban 'Hindu' communi-ties to come together in common worship through an adoption of both Saiviteand Vaishnavite rituals. All these differentials and domains—of language, sect,occupation, residential area, regional origin, etc.—that cannot be collapsedspatially or culturally within the city achieve magical resolution in the figure ofthe guru. Devotees believe that the time and space of city life and their ownexistential immersion in it mask another kind of time and space from which theyare guided and protected by the concealed, but ever present figure of Baba:

When the construction of the temple was going on, I used to go to thearchitect, to the bank and to collect cement for building purposes. Oneday, when I was going on my two-wheeler to the Cement Controller'soffice, my vision became blurred and I fell down from my vehicle. I donot remember what happened. As I lay unconscious on the road,someone picked me up and carried me to a doctor's clinic nearby whereI recovered consciousness. The doctor said that my blood sugar contenthad fallen; I am a diabetic. I asked: "Who brought me here?" "Some oldgentleman brought you", said the doctor. What do you say to that?Who was that old man? I feel it was Baba.7

What is the cultural pathway that has created this translation of the cult? Thistrajectory owes itself to the efforts of B. V. Narasimha Iyer (later known asNarasimha Swami) who was regarded by hundreds as the 'apostle' of Sai Baba,just as Vivekananda was of the saint Ramakrishna.

The Transformation of a Tradition

In later years, B. V. Narasimha Iyer (henceforth Narasimha Swami) acquired allthe marks of a modern sage—a long flowing beard, a simple dress and a clothbag with packets of ash and pictures of Baba in card size which he distributedto devotees.

Narasimha Swami was born on the 21st August, 1874, at Bhavani in Coimbat-ore district. When he was a young boy, his father, Venkatagiri Iyer, moved withhis wife Angachiammal and family to Salem to take up a job as a second gradecourt pleader. After passing his B.A. Examination from Madras ChristianCollege, Narasimha Swami got his law degree from Madras Law College. Hejoined the Bar and in 1895, he began to practise as a civil lawyer in Salem.He was apparently quite active in public life: he served the Salem Municipalityand the Salem Cooperative Bank as Chairman. In politics, he was an admirerof Bal Gangadhar Tilak and his activities in public life elected him to the

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Legislative Council in 1914, a position he occupied until 1920. He was alsoinvolved with the Home Rule movement of Annie Besant and was one of thethree-member team sent to Britain in 1917 to place before the British peopleIndia's case for Home Rule. Although he was re-elected to the LegislativeCouncil in 1920, he refused the position, as he had joined the Non-Cooperationmovement by this time.

In 1925, a terrible tragedy struck Narasimha Swami. He lost two of his infants(who died by falling into a well) and he decided to give up his career and lookfor a supreme teacher (sadguru). Narasimha Swami had been brought up in theorthodox tradition of his caste and the logical step for him at that point was toseek out, as a Smartha Brahmin, the Shankaracharya of Sringeri. The pontiff,however, directed him to Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvanamalai. But the practicesof Ramana did not satisfy him fully and he left to wander in spiritual wilderness,from one holy site to another, one saint to another—including Narayan Maharaj,Upasani Baba and Meher Baba. The cult network already created by thesefigures directed him to Shirdi in 1936. There he is said to have had a vision ofShirdi Baba.

While at Shirdi, he composed 'the 108 names of Sai' (Sai-ashtotram), which wasincorporated into the daily worship at Shirdi, and determined to take themessage of Sai far beyond the bounds of Shirdi. From 1936-1938, he occupiedhimself with meeting devotees of Shirdi Baba, who knew him when he was stillalive, and publishing articles on Baba in the Sunday Times. In 1939, he returnedto Madras and opened the All-India Sai Samaj.

The Sai Baba temple in Mylapore, Madras, the first such temple associatedwith the All-India Sai Samaj, is located near the Buckingham Canal next to aScheduled Caste housing colony rather than the older Brahmin enclave. Thetemple was established in 1952-1953; at first, there was only a hall where, onGurupoornima day, a picture of Baba was worshipped. In 1953, ritual conse-cration of the temple occurred and in the 1970s, a statue of Baba was installedinside. It appears that there was a certain amount of resistance by the moreorthodox Brahmins to the worship of this fakir, gradually the temple came to bepatronised by Chettiars who were merchants, some Brahmins, Marwari busi-nessmen in the city, and a few Scheduled Caste persons. Although the Samaj'scommittee members have included Muslims, they are a very marginal set ofdevotees. Today, there is an idol in the temple, but it also contains a sacred firelit by a log that was brought from the fire at Shirdi. Facing this hangs a pictureshowing Baba in conversation with Tajuddin Baba, a Sufi saint. Around the mainshrine are Baba's sayings etched on the walls of the temple and inside arepaintings depicting events from his life; one such picture shows the gift ofmoney to Narasimha Swami by a Chettiar merchant for the purposes ofspreading the cult of Baba. It appears that he was given the sum of Rs.l 1,455 anddirected to engage in propaganda {prachar). Narasimha Swami saw this activityas his own particular spiritual discipline (sadhana).

Narasimha Swami cast himself into the role of an educator (on Sai Baba) andthe manner in which he did this was by evolving certain methods of 'masscontact'. His style seems to have been to tour incessantly different parts of thecountry, lecture and speak about Baba wherever he was called—in schools,devotional groups, parks, houses, even political gatherings, such as Congressplatforms. In 1940, he started a journal, Sai Sudha, and a number of pictures,

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lockets, rings, and calendars were produced for distribution. He even built up aband of volunteers, who were offered travelling concessions for their work, andin many places, lantern lectures were organized at temples. All these activitiesled to his constituency expanding far beyond the circle of the legal system fromwhich he came, as he assumed the role of defining for the Indian public,especially through his writings, the basic culture of India.

C. R. Rajagopalachari, one of the premier members of the Indian NationalCongress in Tamil Nadu and a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, is said tohave once remarked at a speech in Salem that

Sri Narasimha Swamiji and I are boyhood friends. When we grew upwe both of us took up the legal profession. Strangely enough when weboth of us bade goodbye to Salem, each of us left Salem in response toa different set of circumstances and each of us took a different path.While I went to what might be called the political Ashram at Tiruchen-godu, Sri Narasimha Swamiji went to the spiritual Ashram of BhagwanRamana at Tiruvanamalai. (Saipadananda, no date: 41)

Although the parallels between their lives appear to have been noticed byRajagopalachari, this separation between the political and the spiritual ashramappears to be a simplification. Both men were concerned with defining theframework of a new social order for India that did not make a separationbetween the civic, the political, and the spiritual. Rajagopalachari combined twodifferent discourses—that of national progress and individual duty (dharma)—whereby a citizen's moral actions were linked to the progress of the state. Justas he saw in Gandhi a messenger for the new state, Narasimha Swami saw inBaba a universal guru.

Narasimha Swami points out that although Baba never discussed politics—Shirdi was far away from any political arena, he was the living emblem ofHindu-Muslim unity. This mission of unification was intrinsically related to theattempt to purify Hinduism itself of its divisive tendencies and the separationbetween different communities of worshippers. This Baba did in four ways—inhis body, in his life, in his mosque, and lastly, in his teachings. According toNarasimha Swami, Baba showed himself to be a spiritual guide to all providingthem with material and spiritual benefits; whether they used the name 'saint'(avalia) or 'personal god' (ishta devata) did not matter. The most important aspectof Sai worship was guru worship. He was an adept of all the paths (marga),"though his chief marga was Bhakti marga, the special form of it that is describedas Guru marga in the Guru Gita ..." (Narasimha Swami, Vol. 1, 1994: 75). Thisideal was embodied in Baba's own devotion to the guru, the idea that theguru/fakir was Love, the universal religion. Narasimha Swami also makes atransition from the individual to the social by stating that for Baba, the commonprinciple was that all religions are true and that each person should follow aguru's tradition or lineage (sampradaya), the exoteric worship leading esotericallyto the unification of various religions and sects. About the significance ofGurupoornima, he says that

All Full Moon Days (Poornima) are sacred and kept apart for theworship of the Guru. Among these, Ashada Poornima is speciallyconsidered sacred and is termed Vyasapoornima or Guru Poornima.Vyasa, the author or compiler of the Vedas, the puranas, the Mahab-

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harata including the Bhagawad Gita, is looked upon as the Guru of allthe Gurus, the primary Guru... Every Sai devotee is expected to be incontact with Sai and other gurus, if any, from that day onwards for aperiod of two or four months. Sai must be recognised as the Dharmamarga guru or moksha guru. He helps in building up the devotee's soulinto fitness for the higher life. (Narasimha Swami, 1965a: 2)

What is specifically 'urban' about this conceptualisation? The casting of Babaas guru is a multi-layered construction. At the primary level are Baba's lifecircumstances and practices at Shirdi. Secondly, the regimen of worship, es-pecially joint worship for different communities, forms an important part of themessage. But Narasimha Swami privileges this feature in a specific way. Hestates that while it is true that at Shirdi, the main mass of worshippers are Hinduand practise a Pandharpur style of worship and others practise their devotion intheir own ways, what is important for Sai worship in different areas is that beliefhas to be strengthened through regular and customary forms of worship:"Especially the nine modes mentioned in the Bhagvata and stressed by Sri SaiBaba often have to be attended to and followed" (Narasimha Swami, Vol 1,1994:47).8 Narasimha Swami thus casts the form of worship in scriptural and evenAdvaitic terms, with frequent references being made to the Gita, Adi Shankara,the Vedas and the Great Tradition. In practice, then, while there is joint worshipby Vaishnavite and Saivites believers in the urban temples in South India,non-Hindu devotees at the temple are an exception and the construct of religiousbelief is cast in pan-Hindu, non-local terms. Writing on the significance ofBaba's passing away on Vijayadashami day, the effect of spatial and temporaldisplacements for a new body of worship is alluded to by Narasimha Swami:

The Mahasamadhi is an event of unique importance. While it tookaway the physical body so well known and dear to the thousands thathad flocked to His Feet, it was the means of refining and sublimatingtheir love to Him, and at the same time starting a new era in Sai Bhaktiand providing a special ethereal entity or Body that the entire people ofIndia if not the world can be drawn to. When He was in the flesh, somewere repelled by the limitations and peculiarities of His physical bodyand surroundings. But now happily, there is no physical body. Its placebeing taken by an ethereal body or better still, a perfect spiritual phenomenonthat may be treated as a body or not a body according to the ideology,convenience and pleasure of the devotee, it has furnished a basis for ahighly refined religious or spiritual group to gather and work under His Name.(Narasimha Swami, 1965b: 21, my emphasis)

Locality is thus stripped of its specificities allowing a new concept of 'place'to appear. The 'ethereal body' of Baba after his passing away is conceptualisedas partaking of a larger body of 'Hinduism' and given authority by reference tocertain canons—chiefly the Vedic corpus and the Gita—which have become asource of collective identity. Baba's Islamic heritage has passed into a zone ofcultural amnesia in the suburban topos of believers.9 This split of Baba's identitywas prefigured in the tradition of transmission of which Narasimha Swamipartook, Upasani Maharaj's Vedic ashram at Sakori and Meher Baba's preser-vation and transformation of Baba's Sufi features. But it also acquired a particu-lar force within the biography of Narasimha Swami: while his imaginative world

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was largely specific to colonial and urban Tamil Nadu, this world achieved itsobjective form in the All-India Sai Samaj after the 1950s. As conceived byNarasimha Swami and made concrete in the Sai temples in Bangalore, thisparadigm is not given to the social radicalism that was part of his own milieu,but stresses devotion (bhakti), regular forms of worship and service to society(samaj seva). The shift from the paradigm of fakir to guru in the case of the SouthIndian temples suggests what the composition of this new society might be. Ifthe devotion had, until the death of Baba, partaken of regional patterns of beliefand history, after 1918, the chief point of reference in the cult came to be nationalsociety.

Conclusion

This paper is a study of the protean form of a modern metropolis and the natureof its community. Typical methodological approaches are to describe it in termsof settlement patterns, the nature of the work-force and industrial profile or interms of its ethno-linguistic groups. The image of 'community' for a citizen of aBangalore suburb, however, seems not to reside in any one of these templates,but rather in the super-imposition of many classificatory grids to produce aspatial and temporal map that is complex. The result is a social body much likethe ethereal body described by Narasimha Swami. The isomorphs of metropoli-tan suburban community lie in organisations like the All-India Sai Samaj, a'society' which acts as the locus of numerous domains and differentials, butwhich is not defined by any of these features. With the stripping away of Baba'sconcrete qualities, a bourgeois incarnation of Baba appears unlimited by histori-cal facticity. This unmasking of the 'real' Baba (who is a guru-God) beneath thehistorical allows him to be concealed within the everyday life of the citizen-devotee, omnipresent once removed from the locale of Shirdi. The vast spacescreated by bureaucracy, media, technology, and democracy require a transform-ation in the cult figures of groups who now stand for larger spatial and culturaldomains. In this sense, the universal guru or the avatar of the new age has anelective affinity with the constructs of the metropolis and its citizens.

Acknowledgement

The fieldwork for this paper was carried out with a grant from the Institute forSocial and Economic Change, Bangalore, between 1994-1995. I am grateful toV. Geetha, James Heitzman, and Srilata Raman for their comments on this paper.Previous versions of this paper were presented at the University of Tübingen in1995 and at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, CNRS, Paris,in 1996.

Smriti Srinivas received her PhD in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics,Delhi University in 1995 and worked as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Socialand Economic Change, Bangalore. Between 1997-1998, she was a Rockefeller Fellow atNew York University. Her research interests are the study of the city and the frontier.She is the author of Mouths of People, The Voice of God: Buddhists and Muslimsin a Frontier Community of Ladakh (Oxford University Press, 1998). She is

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currently working on the issue of civic memory. Correspondence: Center onPopulation, Gender and Social Inequality, Sociology Department, 3114 Art-SociologyBuilding, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-1315, USA.

NOTES

1. This, of course, is not true of all paradigms of the sant; the revival of the sant tradition in theRadhasaomi Satsang has been associated with urban groups in North India. See Srinivas (1997)for a discussion of the paradigm of the avatar in the cult of Sai Baba.

2. Shepherd also reports that Meher Baba suggests that Sai Baba meditated in a cave at Khulabad,a small town north-west of Aurangabad and that his master was Hazrat Zarzaribaksha, amedieval Sufi of the Deccan (Shepherd, 1985:11-12). Whatever his lineage might be, it is certainthat Baba was also very much a Sufi who forsook Islamic orthodoxy in favour of an ascetic andnon-ritualistic life.

3. Hemadpant was born to a poor Adya Gowd family in Thana district and while in governmentservice came into contact with Baba. After Baba's death, he managed the Shirdi Sai Sanstan until1929. He was given permission to write a book on Baba by Baba himself: the Shri Sai Satcharitawas published first in Marathi and translated into English in 1944.

4. Important works on Meher Baba include Abdulla (1953), Natu (1982), and Purdom (1937).Shepherd (1985) states that it was Meher Baba who awarded Sai Baba an explicitly specific statususing Sufi terminology, e.g. 'the head of an invisible hierarchy of saints' (qutub-e-irshad), or sawBaba as a mixture of the traits of benevolence or amiability (jamali) and authority or chastise-ment (jalali). Meher Baba himself had met Sai Baba and one of his closest disciples, GustadjiHansolia, had also been a disciple of Sai Baba in his later years and had maintained closeconnections with the population of Muslim ascetics in Shirdi. Upasani Maharaj was a child ofa Brahmin couple in Nasik district. He received his Vedantic training under his grandfather,married four times, and also worked as an Ayurvedic practitioner. He arrived in Shirdi in 1911,left the site many times and finally departed in 1917 to set up an ashram at Sakori, a smallvillage a few miles south of Shirdi. He was to work largely with Hindus, a majority of themBrahmins attracted by his Vedantic discourses. A large temple was constructed later at Sakori,and on important festival days in the Hindu calendar, rituals were held. He also stronglyadvocated a program of social reform for depressed classes and condemned the caste system;in this sense, many of his ideas preceded Gandhi's (the two had met). He also allowed womento join his ashram as novices. After his death in 1941, a woman, Godavari Mai, became hissuccessor. Important accounts of Upasani Maharaj are provided in Shepherd (1985), Purdom(1937), and Rigopoulos (1993).

5. This theme is treated in another paper, 'Traditions in the Transmission of the Cult of Sai Babaof Shirdi" (Srinivas, 1999). The authoritative biography of Salhya Sai Baba is Kasturi (1968). Theliterature on Sathya Sai Baba is enormous, but important interpretative essays are to be foundin Gokak (1983).

6. Among such beliefs to be found in the region are those that surround Sufi saints overlappingwith the Nath Maharashtrian devotional tradition. The figure, polysémie in its associations, is aless dominant strain. At one level, it conveys the idea of an ascetic with wild and eccentric ways,wearing soiled garments, with long hair and only the wind as his garb. While such ascetics arereferred to in the Vedas and the Aranyakas, it is from the end of the eleventh century that theNathpanthi order came to be especially associated with such ascetics, of which Gorakhnath isthe most well-known. This order seems to have been closely connected with Islamic asceticismand the saint (known as the pir) of the Nathpanthi order intervened on behalf of his clientsbecause of his special powers; a common feature of the establishment was the perpetual fire. Atanother level, the idea of the saint (sant) or holy man draws from developments in both northernVaishnava and Saiva Siddhanta traditions where certain persons were seen to have an uncom-monly close relationship with the divine. In Tantric traditions, there was, of course, the yogiwho displayed various powers (siddhis) which were a matter of astonishment for the populace.From the twelfth century onwards, Muslim saints were likewise credited with spiritual power(baraka) and could intercede on behalf of supplicants with God (White, 1976). Most of thesepersons were considered exponents of devotion to a supreme god who was beyond allqualifications (nirguna bhakti) and were usually critical of Brahmanical and scriptural authority

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(even in the case of many Muslim saints); Kabir represents the archetype of this group (Schomer& Mcleod, 1987). In the case of the Maharashtrian tradition, worship was more rooted in theBhagavata or non-sectarian Vaishnava devotion, especially of Vittala, the form of Vishnu-Krishna who, driven by a tender love for his devotees, remained forever standing on a brick forthem (Vaudeville, 1987). In terms of origin, all these saints belonged to the lower strata of Hinduor Muslim society and most of them were unlettered.

7. Interview with Mr. Srinivasan, President of the Cambridge Temple Trust, 10.12.94.8. These include listening to accounts of the deeds of God and saints (sravana), reciting the name

of God (kirtanä), recalling these names (smarana), falling at the feet of God and saints (padasevam),formal worship with flowers, water, etc. (archana), prostration (vadana), service (dasya), remain-ing in the company of God or saints (sakhya), and surrender of the self to God (nivedana).

9. The universalisation of the cult of a saint with a dual heritage need not, of course, occur onlyin the pathway created by 'Hindu' traditions; there are examples of saints from medieval times,for instance, Ghazi Miyan, Shah Madar, and Guga Pir, whose cults were preserved amongMuslim rather than Hindu populations, but this appears to be less common in modern times.(I am indebted to Marc Gaborieau for this observation.)

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