Reconstructing Sevā: Devotion and Service in 19th-21st Century Gujarat Restricted; Files & ToC

Abstract

This dissertation examines the development of systems and practices of social service in India between the 19^th and 21^st centuries to consider their relation to, and impact on, the prolific growth of philanthropy in India today. Prior scholarship has attributed the idea of philanthropy and social service in India to primarily colonial influence, and its further development to the growth of religious nationalism beginning in the twentieth century. I argue that this genealogy elides the longevity of indigenous service traditions developed through influence from local and regional sectarian and secular thinkers and leaders throughout the subcontinent. Focusing on the Swaminarayan Sampraday, a Hindu devotional movement founded in 1800, I trace the conceptual and praxis histories of sevā, an Indic term referring to familial, ritual, and societal forms of service, through a methodologically-variated approach involving 19^th-century primary religious and secular textual sources and 21^st-century oral histories in Gujarat.

I begin this process by using sevā as an analytical tool to critically investigate intellectual, social, and institutional development in 19^th-century Gujarat. Specifically, I analyze how the Swaminarayan Sampraday used its theological treatises, devotional hymns, and hagiographical texts to expand the category of sevā to include not just service to the religious community or deity, but also service to society. Subsequently, between 1840 and 1900, Gujarati literati grappled with this newly expansive category of sevā in their written works. social service as integral to the formation of a “modern”, and potentially independent, region. The second half of my project focuses on how voices normally marginalized in the archives—those of women, Dalits, and Muslims—understand and engage with the practice of sevā in 21^st-century Gujarat. Drawing from six months of fieldwork, I center the oral histories of survivors and relief work volunteers of the 2001 earthquake in the Kutch district of Gujarat to illuminate some shared understandings of sevā as a widely applicable category meaning social service across caste, religious, and class differences. I then focus on how women lifelong volunteers (ājīvan sevaks) within the BAPS denomination of the Swaminarayan Sampraday utilize sevā to establish spiritual progress, spatial freedom, and social agency. 

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About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Religion
Subfield / Discipline	West and South Asian Religions
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Religion, History of South Asian Studies Ethics
Mot-clé	Postcolonialism Religious Nationalism Religious Practice Social Service
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Joyce Flueckiger, Emory University
Committee Members	Ellen Gough, Emory University Brian Hatcher, Tufts University Scott Kugle, Emory University

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