ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of certain devotional connotations of blood donation as it is practiced and experienced in North India. After giving a sense of the diversity of locations in the region in which people are mobilized to donate their blood, the chapter considers how gurus have become increasingly important within the movement to obtain voluntarily donated blood. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of the blood donation situation in India is the success of blood bank medics in “appropriating” gurus’ devotees as a kind of shortcut method of filling large gaps in supply. Blood donation has thus become a devotional act and a key component of devotees’ religious lives. However, though in many ways a success, the collaboration raises some difficult questions to do with risk and wastage, which will be detailed in the second part of the chapter.
