Swaminarayan Piety and its Affective Clues: Where Fieldwork, Anthropologists of Religion, and Interlocutors Meet

Abstract (English)

In the anthropology of religion, where anthropologists and their interlocutors may not share the same ideological or religious commitments, and where the motivation for a critical understanding can prompt allegations of naïve apologist or unethical interference, the stakes concerning knowledge about the other, are high. Fieldwork on religious communities thus offers a productive arena for querying and developing methodologies and interpretive frameworks that advance the study of religiously-motivated individuals and others. Informed by long-term fieldwork with the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu devotional diaspora whose origin is in western India, this paper looks at Swaminarayan devotees’ recollections of important affective junctures that informed their “being Swaminarayan.” This paper considers how tracing affective responses steers one toward finding those anchoring discourses that support the trajectories of becoming Swaminarayan. In other words, understanding the affectively inspired paths that compel the process of building a Swaminarayan identity can yield anthropological insights into the mechanisms by which knowledge about something unknown can emerge and gain shape.

The emphasis on affect as methodology builds on recent and sustained interest in the generative role of affect as integral rather than marginal to knowledge production (J. Bennett, E. Sedgwick, K. Stewart). This paper particularly considers the specie of methodological susceptibility prompted by one’s religiously-motivated interlocutors. If Swaminarayan devotees can make a devotional leap owing to their interpretation of affective moments, is there scope for an ethnographic susceptibility to similarly yield a more critical appreciation of devotional behaviour? Despite seeming and real epistemological and ontological differences between researchers and their interlocutors, an affective lens offers a methodological and interpretive path that does not valorise the “insider” perspective but offers a bridge between the piously critical and critiques of piousness. Recognising that such susceptibilities exist and can be analytically productive underscores the embrace of fieldwork knowledge as collaboratively produced.