Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Traditions and religion have been passed on to generation after generation with or without textual representations in India. But the divisive institution of caste in India still persists and it has adopted a new form with the help of religion and spirituality. The increasing modernity renders freedom to individuals to choose any religion or no religion, but there is a religious movement that counters this objectivity and individual freedom through new textual representations and oral interpretations of the Hindu mythology. Through the case study of Swadhyay, a contemporary religious movement in India and spread across several countries, this paper argues that contemporary religious movements spiritualize, reinterpret, redefine, and revive the Indian caste system of Hindu religion in modern society through its text and spiritual discourse. It also controls the free-flowing spirituality through nuanced interpretations and glorification of caste identities in its spiritual discourse on the Hindu religious sacred text Geeta. This study unravels how the sacred Hindu religious text is reinterpreted in the spiritual discourse by the religious movements in modern times to maintain the structure of social inequality based on caste. It contributes to the study of religion, spirituality, religious movement, and its implications on society. This study follows an ethnographic approach to get an in-depth understanding through participant and not-participant observation of the devotee’s practices in the universe of Swadhyay and textual analysis. It consists of more than 60 interviews with participants in Western Indian cities.