Review: The Science of Satyug: Class, Charisma, and Vedic Revivalism in the All World Gayatri Pariwar, by Daniel Heifetz

Abstract

Scholarship on transnational Hindu movements has embraced a more ethnographic methodology the past fifteen years, and this volume fits well in this genre. The Science of Satyug seeks to both describe and interpret the significance of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Hindu movement with roots in the proto-Hindu nationalist Arya Samaj, Gandhian nation-building projects. The book also analyzes the rising cultural authority of science in modern India.Although the Gayatri Pariwar has attracted a sizable contingent of less formally educated rural Indians, author Daniel Heifetz chooses to focus instead on the residents of Shantikunj and Divine Culture University, the former the ashram and global headquarters of the community (in Haridwar, Uttarakhand) and the latter the group’s university located nearby. This is significant because this choice limits the study to the long-term residents of these communities, who are largely middle- and upper-middle-class Indians, most of whom have bachelor’s and master’s degrees.Heifetz’ rationale for this focus is that it was logistically necessary to limit the scope of his study to this population and that it allowed him to concentrate on the movement’s scientific rhetoric and how this rhetoric relates to the larger moral crisis of middle-class STEM professionals disillusioned with India’s new political economy. He makes a convincing argument that the Gayatri Pariwar offers these STEM professionals both the epistemological certainties of modern science as well as the moral inspiration of a Hindu-based spiritual movement that aspires to transform humanity and prepare it for a new golden age, the satyug of Indian cosmology. This resolves these members’ moral crisis by giving spiritual meaning to their group’s scientific research into traditional Hindu practices. It also provides a response to the consumerist materialism and western moral dissolution that India’s middle class encounters when they participate in their nation’s new globalized economy. They can now feel that their professional efforts are helping to build a better India, a moral vision that their parents’ generation shared with their Nehruvian-influenced peers.One innovative turn in this study is to not only describe the theological or discursive aspects of the movement’s engagements with science, but also to account for the nondiscursive spillover of these engagements by using affect theory, which Heifetz argues “offers an alternative to the discursive obsessions of humanities in the postmodern era” (12). By using affect theory the author focuses on members’ bodies and the way they feel and thus opens an analytical perspective on how power—in this case scientific and religious authority—moves in ways “not exclusively tied to language and cognition” (13). This use of affect theory gives the study a more nuanced interpretation of what elicits commitment and devotion in a community that places a high value on scientific method and progress. The author does a good job of analyzing the charisma of science in the modern period and suggesting how, for many middle-class STEM Indians, science fosters a kind of re-enchantment of the world that is in line with the Gayatri Pariwar’s Hindu spiritual practices, particularly the recitation of the Gayatri mantra and the daily performance of yajnas, sacred fire rituals. Members of this quasi-millenarian group believe that these practices and rituals—because they are verified by scientific research—will bring about moral perfection in the individual and ultimately in the larger world.Heifetz also extends accepted notions of charisma as applied to religious leaders and hierarchies by emphasizing the intensely affective qualities of charisma and its ability to empower leaders, followers, and institutions to transcend normative conventions and innovate new ways of being in the world. For the author, charismatic leaders often become “harbingers of innovation and change solely on the basis of the emotional impact they have on followers” (78). His study skillfully argues that the founder of the Gayatri Pariwar, Sriram Sharma (1911–1991) and his successor, Pranav Pandya (a.k.a. “Doctor-sahib”) and their wives were able to draw upon the charisma of both science and traditional Vedic practices to create a worldwide community characterized by intense emotional bonding and commitment. In the case of Sharma (a.k.a. “Gurudev”) this was done more through embodying the Hindu guru tradition, making him an exemplary spiritual figure to emulate. In the case of Pandya, this is done by portraying him as an embodiment of the charisma of science through his educational and research achievements. He thus becomes not so much a figure to emulate, but as someone qualified to present authoritative scientific information. The wives of both leaders are portrayed as key figures in the creation of an intense feeling of “family” and community in the movement.My main criticism of the study is that it does not give a substantive treatment of the group’s global outreach nor of its rural and less-educated members in India. A closer look at the rural followers, for example, might at least bring another layer of complexity to the author’s thesis concerning the movement’s appeal to middle-class STEM Indians. Surely less-educated rural members are not as identified with the authority of science and scientific method as are middle-class STEM followers. What explains the popularity of the movement in rural populations then? Surely the founder’s championing of Vedic traditions and practices is part of the answer. But what else appeals to rural members? To his credit, Heifetz acknowledges these shortcomings and envisions future research that would address these dimensions of the group.The author’s extensive fieldwork, mostly as a participating resident of the group’s ashram in Haridwar, gives this work descriptive and affective depth. His use of appropriate theories from the social sciences gives the study original insights that will be of use to other ethnographers. This book has potential utility in courses on new religious movements, transnational South Asian spiritual movements, ethnographic methods/theories, and science and religion.