Middle-class modernities and the reproduction of sectarian identity among Puṣṭimārg Vaiṣṇavas in the Bombay Presidency

Abstract

The rise of Puṣṭimārg Vaiṣṇavism in parts of western India through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be attributed to its patronage by the region’s wealthy Gujarati merchant communities (the Vāṇiyās). Patterns of religious giving became significant mechanisms for the production and preservation of mercantile honour and prestige or ābrū. This article is concerned with how the maintenance of such status as well as the reproduction of sectarian identity among Vāṇiyā members of the Puṣṭimārg community were informed by, participated in, and evolved alongside the modern notion of class in the Bombay Presidency. I discuss the degree to which Puṣṭimārgī lay members engaged with forms of colonial modernity, such as English education, print culture and, especially, social and religious reform. I argue how despite being the focus of reformist critique, members of the Puṣṭimārg community actually became important players in the articulation of middle-class morality in western India. Puṣṭimārg leaders, theologians, as well as lay practitioners sought to amend aspects of Puṣṭimārg theology and liturgy to make the tradition more palatable to emerging middle-class sensibilities. In the process of negotiating modern morality, moreover, the divergent camps of educated middle-class reformers and upper-class Puṣṭimārg Vāṇiyā patrons all seemed to agree with regard to what formed respectable behaviour leading to the acquisition of ābrū, especially with regard to Puṣṭimārg women and their public religious practices.