ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the lives of two female gurus—Śrī Rājmātā (1934–1999) and Śrī Rājeśvarī Devā (born in 1960). Each founded a hyperlocal guru-bhakti community in one of Delhi’s peripheries comprising several hundred marginalized devotees. Delhi and other major Indian cities have many such communities, but relevant academic scholarship tends to focus on famous, pan-Indian, wealthy hyper-gurus and their middle- and upper-class followers. This chapter, as part of a larger project, fills this scholarly gap by focusing on female gurus, who often found and lead such small-scale marginalized urban communities. In this chapter, I examine how Rājmātā and Rājeśvarī Devā, two lower-class housewives who were not destined, raised, or mentored to become religious leaders, acquired authority and founded vibrant and successful devotional communities, even if small. I present and analyze their life-stories, which I gathered from various sources during two years of ethnographic research in their communities, to explain this surprising turn in their lives. The chapter describes how the two housewives went from “passive housewives” with little control over their lives to powerful religious leaders who profoundly impacted others. Agency does not mean resisting social, religious, and gender norms. I argue a model of self-made religious agency and authority grounded in the guru’s ability to establish herself as the focal axis of a network of exceptional earthly and divine associations that transcend gender.
