ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some continuing dynamics of change, accommodation, and understanding in the case of succession to a regional guru based in central India. During British times, the Scindias' Gwalior was an important princely state dominated by a Marathi-speaking elite but readily incorporating local Rajputs into its military establishment. The first of the gurus, Thakur Mansingh Kushwah, known to his disciples as Malik Sahib, was a self-conscious scion of one of these Rajput military families. The internal subtle-physical emphasis in the practice Malik Sahib now offered was no longer oriented predominantly toward the centers in the head; the well-known bodily chakras of later Hindu yogas also came seriously into play. The broader scope of the ashram in a growing Indian economy has eased the straitened material circumstances at the ashram often seen in Malik Sahib's day. What is crucial for most devotees is that they have recognized a particular spiritual force in Maharajji and responded to it.
