A vast and diversified religious movement originating from Sai Baba of Shirdi, is often referred to as "the Sai Baba movement." Through the chronological presentation of Sai Baba's life, light is shed on the various ways in which the important guru figures in this movement came to be linked to the saint of Shirdi.

This is a research-based book on the divine life, teachings, spirit messages, and contributions of Sri Shirdi Sai Baba (18381918), the renowned Sufi saint of India. It highlights his importance as the 'Jagat Guru (Universal Master) whose teachings and messages elevate all people spiritually and morally and unite them. His main teachings are Allah (God) is one who is the sole master of all; the same 'atma'(soul) is in every creature; everyone is linked to others according to ones past actions and Rinanubandh (bond of give and take), and so one must be kind, compassionate, and helpful to all those who come in this life. He is now the supreme ascended master. He appears before people who earnestly remember him, in their dreams or in any other person's form to guide, inspire, save, and help them to solve their problems instantly. His Dwarka Mai masjid (mosque) and samadhi Mandir temple in Shirdi are well-known to billons of people of all regligions and cultures and are visited by thousands of people daily and by even more than hundred thousand pilgrims from all lovers of the world to seek his grace. This book was written by the devotee author as desired by the spirit of Sri Shirdi Sai Baba communicated to Sri Lakshman Swami, founder, Adi Sankarachrya and Dattratreya Adhyatmic Bhakti Mandli, Bangalore in 1992 and was blessed by Shivamma Thyayee of Roopen Agraha, Bangalore, who was then the only surviving 102-year-old contemporary devotee of Sri Shirdi Sai Baba and by Sri Shivnesh Swami of Shirdi. It has been one of the most popular books on Sri Shirdi Sai Baba since then. This revised and updated new edition provides valuable information on prominent Shirdi Sai temples, organizations, journals, and websites in the world. It will enlighten and spiritually uplift the readers belonging to all religions, cultures, and nations.

An illustrated A to Z reference containing more than 700 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Hinduism.

The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has “roots” in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas. This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities ---themselves a product of modernity---and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.

Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint’s influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation transcends routine scholarly discussions about sainthood, cultures of worship, religious objects, Hinduism and Islam. Shirdi Sai Baba’s presence conveys inspiration and healing energies and he accepted the entreaties of people of all castes and creeds, offering an alternative to communal ideologies of his time – and the present. Considerations of Shirdi Sai Baba’s milieux of devotional praxis situate and localize debates about the meaning of nation and religion, past and present, urbanization, and class identity in transitions from colonial to postcolonial/global South Asia. The book expands the boundaries of the study of Shirdi Sai Baba and makes important contributions to South Asia Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Global Studies, Urban Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Inter-Asian Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Cultural Geography.

With rare exceptions, serious intentional, reflective and sustained interfaith encounter is a novel and recent enterprise. This book looks in detail at one such encounter--the intentional recent Hindu-Christian dialog in India--and asks why and how the practice of dialog came to replace previous attitudes of confrontation and monologue (especially on the part of Christians). Part I sets the encounter in its global context. Part II offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the actual encounter. Part III draws on aspects of the Christian tradition as it critically examines the ways in which the dialog has been justified in Christological categories. A final chapter discusses the future of the encounter. Unlike many other works in the area of interfaith studies, this work combines both descriptive detail of the actual encounter and critical theological analysis of the strengths and weakness of the dialog model.

This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India. In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign ‘West’. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, desī, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt. Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India. This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.

Ma Anandamayi is generally regarded as the most important Hindu woman saint of the twentieth century. Venerated alternately as a guru and as an incarnation of God on earth, Ma had hundreds of thousands of devotees. Through the creation of a religious movement and a vast network of ashrams-unprecedented for a woman-Ma presented herself as an authority figure in a society where female gurus were not often recognized. Because of her widespread influence, Ma is one of the rare Hindu saints whose cult has outlived her. Today, her tomb is a place of veneration for those who knew her as well as new generations of her followers. By performing extensive fieldwork among Ma's current devotees, Orianne Aymard examines what happens to a cult after the death of its leader. Does it decline, stagnate, or grow? Or is it rather transformed into something else entirely? Aymard's work sheds new light not only on Hindu sainthood-and particularly female Hindu sainthood-but on the nature of charismatic religious leadership and devotion.

This book examines Sai Baba of Shirdi from the standpoint of Islamic mysticism - the Deccani Sufism of 19th century Maharashtra - in order to resolve the mystery surrounding the saint. Two new pieces of work are used in this book. First, Dr Warren elucidates the English translation of part of the works of some 17th and 18th century Maharashtrian Sufi poet-saints. Secondly, she includes the English translation of the previously untranslated Urdu notebook, jotted down by Abdul - Sai Baba's faqiri pupil - from teachings based on the Qur'an given to him by his pir Sai Baba. Both of these contributions allow us to look into a world hitherto closed, and expand our awareness of the famous miracle-worker of Shirdi.