Paper short abstract:

Lifetime devotees, or ajivan sevaks, dedicate their lives and resources to the BAPS-Swaminarayan Sanstha. Tracing the life histories of these devotees highlights the individual as well as the historical and structural factors contributing to a successful transnational Hindu community.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the transnational Hindu community known as BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, there is a core of approximately fifty-five thousand devotees, drawn from one million followers, who regularly volunteer their time for BAPS events and activities. Within this group, there is a much smaller cohort of women and men who have chosen to dedicate their lives, full-time, in voluntary service to BAPS. These devotees are known as "lifetime" devotees or ajivan sevaks. Coming from different caste, class, economic, and national backgrounds, lifetime devotees bring their occupational and other skills as well as the valuable resource of time; furthermore, since these devotees must also be self-supporting, they are not dependent on BAPS but rather they are valuable sources of specialised knowledge and abilities and are highly admired and respected. This paper shares the life histories of several ajivan sevaks and traces the paths leading to the decision to be neither a sadhu (for men only) nor a householder in the usual understanding of this category. Who are these devotees and what points of convergence and difference are reflected in their life histories? How do the devotees' lives implicate and embody the personal along with the histories and political-economies of India and elsewhere? Contextualising the life-course of ajivan sevaks highlights the particularities of personal worlds as well as their connections to larger societal realities. This paper also argues that the ethnographic life history methodology promotes an empirically-grounded and humanising understanding of religious subjectivity that goes beyond the psychological and material.