Mā Ānandamayī (1896–1982), known simply as Mā, was a unique guru. She never had any religious training, she did not receive any formal initiation (dikśa), she was married, she was a householder, and above all, she was a woman. Among the male-dominated Hindu authorities, Mā Ānandamayī is one of the earlier rare examples of female gurus who established a large network of ashrams, attracting thousands of devotees in India and beyond. In When a Goddess Dies, Orianne Aymard carefully traces what she calls as the ‘postcharismatic fate’ of the cult while skilfully situating her detailed ethnography of Mā's followers and their religious practices within the wide-ranging literature on gurus both in English and French. Her book is a welcome contribution to the growing but still limited field of studies on female gurus. It will also become an important reference work for those who wish to study the posthumous cult of recently deceased gurus, such as Sathya Sai Baba.

The book follows the development of the cult of Mā Ānandamayī after her death. Commonly considered the most important female Hindu saint of the twentieth century, she attracted huge numbers of followers during her lifetime, as a guru and as an incarnation of God on earth. Using her cult as a case study the book examines what happens after a saint dies; how the cult changes and redefines itself. It explores this from both an ‘institutional’ and an ‘experiential’ perspective. Central to the study are Mā's position as a female saint and the strength of her posthumous cult in a society where female gurus often remained unacknowledged and death was strongly associated with pollution.

The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter provides a comprehensive description of the posthumous cult, including what it is comprised of, its organization and how it functions. This detailed assessment covers pilgrimage, rituality and the ashrams of renouncer-followers (who are called swamis). One of such was Swami Vijayananda, a French doctor who became a follower of Mā and her de facto spiritual successor until his own death. An exploration of the cult of relics in Hinduism follows. The author suggests where the veneration of relics may have begun and specifically looks at the role of the feminine and sacred function of relics attached to Mā Ānandamayī. Sites of veneration, from the tomb of Mā to the inscription where she is commemorated in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, receive attention. That her tomb has become a place of veneration is posed as all the more notable as tombs of holy women are extremely rare. The physical death of the guru and the potential for afterlife is explored, in order to understand her devotees' continuing posthumous devotion and its evolution. A review of sacred Hindu texts, such as the Bhagavadgita and Katha Upanisad, as well as the words of Mā and other ‘mahatmas’ are used. The fourth chapter focuses on the ‘experiential face’ of the posthumous cult, considering devotees' experience of the cult and the relevance of Mā's physical presence to their beliefs. The author uses extensive fieldwork comprised of interviews with Mā's devotees, including both those that followed Mā during her lifetime and those who have only venerated her since her death. The final chapter seeks to evaluate the sustainability of the cult, primarily through an appraisal of its institutional aspects. How the charismatic religious leadership is kept alive after the saint's death and how this ‘institutionalization’ inherently changes the nature of the saint's charisma is contemplated. The author employs sociological theories, such as Max Weber's on routinization and institutionalization of charisma, to explore how the cult is being, and will continue to be, maintained. The latter section does not ignore variation within the cult, for example comparing the Bengali orthodox community's custodianship of the site of Mā's tomb in Kankhal with the cult embodied by the spiritual lineage (sampradāya) of one of Mā's disciples, Swami Kedarnath, who also set up a school that centres round Mā's teaching.

The conclusions that the author draws from the data she has collated are broad. She posits that a diminishing can be seen in the cult of Mā Ānandamayī since her death, and links this to a Hindu preference for a living guru and the necessity of personal charisma. Although, her interviews with devotees led her to note that experiences of the ‘presence’ of Ma appear to have outlived her mahasamādhi (or final absorption). The centrality of relics to the continuation of the cult is emphasized and Aymard draws a direct correlation between the decline in devotion and the decrease in activities of the cult institutions, such as the Shree Anandamayee Sangha, which she refers to as a ‘marketing agency’. She finishes with a discussion of the expansion of the cult into the ‘West’ and the effect of globalization on the continuation of posthumous veneration. The impression remains that the cult of Mā Ānandamayī may have undergone change and reduction since her death, but it still symbolizes a change in Hindu conceptions of veneration as a woman is worshipped at her tomb.

Throughout the book, the author mentions the internal hierarchy of Mā's main institution where foreigners (and I presume low-caste Hindus and non-Hindu Indians as well) are treated as polluting agents. The imposition of Brahminical rules could be harsh and one of her devotees described it as ‘inhumane’. The cult of Mā is dominated by Bengali Brahmins – a group to which Mā Ānandamayī herself belonged – and this certainly contributed to the decline of the cult after her death and the emergence of a new lineage that is more open and tolerant of the diverse backgrounds of her devotees. In the concluding chapter, the author argues that openness, inclusiveness and moving away from narrowly defined caste rules is the key to cult survival following the death of the guru. It is indeed true of many globalized guru cults, but the guru-led movements amongst lower castes and Dalits for centuries remained strong because their gurus – dead or alive – speak for their caste communities. This caste tension cannot be translated into a simple contrast of India vs. the West or Hindu Orthodoxy vs. Western liberalism. The caste dimension within the guru cult is a crucial issue, despite being difficult to address. Aymard certainly touches upon it but could have developed this further. This, however, might be an unreasonable expectation within an already moving and highly detailed description of the postcharismatic fate of a goddess of modern India.