Can a Woman be a True Guru? Female Hindu Gurus’ Grassroots Religious Gender Activism in India, and the Performativity of Saintliness at the <i>Kumbh Mela</i>

Abstract

This article represents a departure from existing scholarship on women’s political activism in Indian Hinduism. Women’s gender activism in Hindu nationalism encompasses a range of approaches, from hard-line to emancipatory, and is motivated by different concerns, from religious xenophobia to religious power. Thus, female religious leaders (gurus) advocating Hindutva Hinduism exercise more than one style of leadership in the public sphere. Based on ethnographic research conducted at the <i>Kumbh Mela</i>, the article illuminates another style of activism, which is termed ‘grassroots religious feminist-leaning activism.’ Analysing the teachings and practices of two female gurus, it argues that one guru believes in a separate but equal approach (men and women have different skills and rights), and the other follows the approach that both genders should have the same rights and abilities to make choices because of their common humanity. Both gurus are unlocking opportunities for women’s greater freedom within the male-dominated religious hierarchies of the Hindu ascetic orders <i>akhāṛās</i>) at the <i>Kumbh Mela</i>. This article argues that, through performance of the ‘rhetoric of saintliness,’ the gurus heighten or reverse sex-role stereotypes embedded in mainstream representations of ‘good’ gurus in order to mobilise gender reform in patriarchal <i>akhāṛā</i> culture.