Green Fields and Dry Homes: Ethical Subjectivation of the Sankari Swaminarayan Community

Presenter:

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Abstract

Living in a bucolic landscape of green fields, the Dubla community of the Sankari village in Gujarat, India, mostly follows the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, a transnational Hindu organization. As BAPS propagates its key theological doctrine that God is omniagent and omnipotent in subaltern, low-caste communities in rural areas, a paradoxical question is often raised: if God is both all-doer and ever-compassionate, why, despite my sincere efforts and prayers, does he not solve my perennial problems?

Drawing on my ethnographic research conducted in Sankari, this paper examines the tensions and complexities of theologically engaged anthropology of hope by asking two questions. What sort of secular meaning-making frameworks does BAPS create from its theological doctrines and use them for what Foucault calls ethical subjectivation? How do BAPS practitioners negotiate these frameworks to create and act upon their everyday ethics? By placing the voices of ordinary people at the center of theology, this paper shows how everyday decisions and actions potentially resist, revise, and rejuvenate both historical expectations and theological expositions. It argues that acquiring devotional practices can have utility for those hoping to participate in aspirational discursive contexts where lower caste markers are de-emphasized in favor of qualities perceived as necessary for mobility. Such cases of lived religion and practical theology transcend the disciplinary boundaries in the study of religion by showing how meanings that emerge out of theological signification become vectors for understanding, establishing, and sometimes undermining agency and autonomy of faith-based communities.