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Bb Jai Gurudev in the Qasb: The Ruralization of a Modern Religion
Daniel Gold
Although broad-based, guru-centered movements have attracted large followings among the urban Indian middle classes,1 not many have penetrated deeply into rural areas. The Mathura-based Bb Jai Gurudev movement, however, has had devotees throughout the cities, towns, and villages of many North Indian regionsincluding south-central Rajasthan, where I first encountered it. Although Bb Jai Gurudev died in May 2012, the movement has remained vital as it necessarily reshapes itself in response to the loss of its longtime spiritual and institutional pivot. In this paper I will examine some ways in which the guru brought a quintessentially modern, urban tradition to people in the countryside, discuss some of its social and personal ramifications for rural devotees, and relate how the Jai Gurudev movement fared in the months after the gurus passing. I begin my story, though, with my experience of the rural movement while the guru was still alive.
In August of 2010, Ann Grodzins Gold and I were settling into Jahazpur, a small sub-district headquarters of about twenty thousand people in Bhilwara district, south-central Rajasthan. Ann was to start new research there, and I planned to write up earlier work done elsewhere while investigating anything else that caught my interest in the town. Jahazpur is a qasb, as long-established places sharing qualities of both villages and cities are called, a market town and administrative center serving the local rural area. With an old walled settlement rising partway up a hill (itself topped by a deserted fort) and a population about 35 percent Muslim, it
International Journal of Hindu Studies 17, 2: 127152 2013 Springer
DOI 10.1007/s11407-013-9138-2
128 / Daniel Gold
was a surprisingly interesting and pleasant place to live.
One day not long after our arrival, I was walking in a lane off the old market when I noticed an impressive new house with a religious slogan cast boldly on its faade: jai gurudev nm prabhu k, Jai Gurudev is the name of the Lord. That house certainly caught my attention. The earlier research I was writing up concerned popular religion in the city of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, and I had already done quite a bit of work on the Jai...