ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to historically contextualize the formation of “new” collective institutional initiatives by educated Bengali Vaiṣṇavas to transmit their religious tradition in the era of colonial modernity. This chapter attempts to disaggregate and lay bare the specific ways in which some of these temporally “modern” forms of religious institutions began to communicate, propagate, and organize Vaiṣṇava devotion in colonial times. It explores how these societies transformed the pre-colonial Vaiṣṇava institutional basis and yet continued to have links with them. By analysing the aims, activities, and social basis of these institutions this chapter tries to provide a framework for understanding the process of religious transformation among Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas in the colonial period.
