Gurus, Priestesses, Saints, Mediums and Yoginis: Holy Women as Influencers in Hindu Culture

Dear Colleagues,

Holy women in India and abroad have touched and transformed lives through their spiritual power and leadership for millennia. There are many sources for their authority. Some of these women, such as the nineteenth-century saint Sarada Devi, have been ritually empowered by male saints, and others, such as the contemporary guru Swami Childvilasananda, have been empowered by male gurus. The well-known saint Anandamayi Ma claimed to be enlightened from birth, while the ‘hugging guru’ Ammachi gained status through visionary experience and possession by deities. As these examples illustrate, holy women’s leadership may be derived from different sources of power. Nevertheless, the relationship of the sources of power to the types of influence that holy women exercise in Hindu culture remains largely understudied. This volume fills a gap in the scholarship to contribute new analyses and explanatory models for future research on women’s religious leadership.

Applying the “influencer” concept to the study of religion, this Special Issue explores the varieties of strategies that holy women in diverse roles use for gaining and expressing power. The volume examines different concepts of holiness and leadership for men and women, the role of charisma, and the arenas of activity and accomplishment for holy women in India and abroad.

Questions the volume explores include: What sources of power engender and facilitate holy women’s authority and leadership in Hinduism? How do they bring others to their ways of thinking? How do they use their power to advance new revelations, organize new traditions, and build institutions? How do holy women relate their power to the broader Hindu patriarchal structures?

Scholarship on religious power features varied approaches, from history of religions and textual analysis to anthropology, sociology, and psychology.  It has generally prioritized male religious leaders’ lives and experiences of holiness, assuming the masculine perspective to be universal and normative.  This approach is then used to theorize how power and religious authority work, and how they shape individual and social understandings of religion.

Against this backdrop, this volume examines the influence of experience, power, culture, and gender on holy women’s authority in the Hindu tradition. Thus, the volume explores the depths and nuances of holy women’s power within and outside of the mainstream in Hindu culture.

Dr. Antoinette DeNapoli
Prof. Dr. June McDaniel
Guest Editors

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