Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission

This book explores devotional Hinduism in a modern context of high consumerism and revolutionized communications. It focuses on a fast-growing and high-profile contemporary Hindu guru faith originating in India and attracting a transnational following. The organization is led by a vastly popular female guru, Mata Amritanandamayi, whom devotees worship as an avatar and a healer of the ills of the contemporary world. By drawing upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork among the mata's primarily urban, educated "middle class" Indian devotees, the author provides crucial insights into new trends in popular Hinduism in a post-colonial and rapidly modernizing Indian setting.

Maya Warrier teaches Indian Religion and the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Wales, Lampeter.