Abstract
This article uses the case study of Prem Rawat, a teacher of Indian origin who arrived in the West in 1971 and inspired several organisations, including Divine Light Mission, Elan Vital, and The Prem Rawat Foundation for the dissemination of his teachings. Identifying Prem Rawat as a contemporary form of a solitary Sant unconcerned with organisational forms or institutionalised religion and displaying considerable iconoclasm with regard to ritual and doctrinal dimensions, the article offers fresh insights into the debate in the study of religion between those who maintain that religion exists as a sui generis category and those who argue that religion is merely a sub-set of cultural phenomena. In particular the article focuses on the work by Danièle Hervieu-Léger who argues that religion exists when ‘the authority of tradition’ has been invoked ‘in support of the act of believing’.
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