True to its subtitle, Tulasi Srinivas' Winged Faith contributes valuably to the study of globalization and religious pluralism through the ethnographic study of a global religious movement. The central focus of the narrative questions whether a “South Asian understanding of plurality” rooted in “an idea of social inclusivity,” which informs the “basis for the Sai alternate understanding of cosmopolitanism” directs us toward a new praxis of “engaged cosmopolitanism” (p. 329). Srinivas argues that the Sai movement's complacency with and even promotion of cultural ambiguity institutes “a grammar of diversity,” which enables the movement to cohere despite its internal diversity. Devotees engage “a matrix of possible meanings in which interpretation constitutes agency” (p. 329). Theoretically intense, intellectually stimulating, and ethnographically delightful, Winged Faith artfully integrates theoretical momentum with detailed ethnographic research, crafting a project that is ultimately (to employ Geertz's famous depiction) both a model of and a model for dynamic theoretically engaged multi-cited ethnographic research.
Chapter 1 introduces readers to the charismatic figure of Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), a contemporary self-coined guru-avatar, who syncretically blends Indic religiosities. Sathya Baba presents himself as a divine incarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba (1838–1918) and the confluence of Siva and Sakti, but he creates a “nomadic charisma,” which enables him to disembed from the religiocultural milieu of Hindu religiosity and travel across the global network. (p. 91) In Chapter 2, innovatively constructed around narratives of exile and prodigality, Srinivas demonstrates her architectural training through an engaged analysis of the spatial mapping of Puttaparthi, the international headquarters and destination pilgrimage location for Sai Baba devotees. In her analysis of devotional ritual practices in the movement (Chapter 3), she innovatively contributes the effective analytical term of “proxemic desire,” which signifies not only devotees' desire to be close to Sai Baba, but also their desire to be acknowledged as a “good” devotee (p. 167).
Chapter 4 engages bodily discipline and relates it to the overarching thematic of asceticism, through which devotees “search for self-transformation” (p. 209). Srinivas argues that “the Sai movement has tapped into a truly transnational yearning to be a ‘better’ self” and in doing so, it harmonizes the often construed as paradoxical impulses of ascetic bodily discipline and globalization (p. 203). She also contributes vitally through her discussion of mimesis between the bodily praxis of devotees and that of Sai Baba. In Chapter 6, Srinivas adeptly analyzes Sai Baba's signature practice of materializing objects for devotees through the lens of icon, sacra, and simulacra, concluding that the transmission of objects ironically forms “a sublimation of material essences” (p. 321).
Srinivas boldly incorporates the accounts of the anti-Sai network and former Sai devotees along with those of current devotees (Chapter 5), an astute and appropriate methodological decision which, nevertheless, has incurred scorn and critique from Sai devotees. As a result, her conclusions with regard to the culture of secrecy and the controversies in the movement demonstrate the contestation and oppositional narratives among subgroups, making it a more realistic model of the ideal of cultural translation and its potential incommensurability.
As a whole, the text is a significant contribution to scholarship and even an important augmentation of the level of theoretical scholarship in the subfield of the study of modern guru movements. However, the seemingly intentional complex literary style of the text largely precludes its use in the undergraduate classroom. Specialists willing to spend time with the text will find it to be an invaluable resource that tackles the relationship between globalization and global religions with verve and intentionality.
Somewhat surprisingly, the text tends to diminish the importance of the category “Hindu,” using instead the term “Indic” to refer to explicitly Hindu philosophies, practices, and cosmologies. Perhaps this categorical dissonance stems from the difficult negotiation between the movement's Hindu roots and its modern ecumenicalism, a topic that warrants further consideration. The author occasionally encounters difficulties in relation to the contextualization of Hindu religious ideas and texts and Chapter 2 is unfortunately marred by editorial complications, but in the midst of such detailed and careful scholarship, these critical notes are largely exceptions.
Srinivas argues that the Sai movement presents us with an innovative “postulation of non-Euro-American pluralism and its ideological ally, cosmopolitanism, a cosmopolitanism from the margins of the global network” (p. 326). In order to enact the praxis of engaged cosmopolitanism, Srinivas argues that we “need a common language to be able to discuss the possibilities and problems of equity and diversity in multireligious and multicultural societies” (p. 327). But, I wonder whether devotion to Sai Baba is, in fact, the “common language” through which devotees are able to subordinate differences, ambiguity, and oppositions. Therefore, their interactional modality may not actually translate effectively as a cultural model, that is, until the rest of the world develops a parallel “common language” with which to subordinate cultural difference in favor of cultural translation.
