The Mother’s children: The making of memory and intimacy at the Gurus’ Samadhi

Abstract

Tombs of gurus and religious leaders are central to the consolidation of religious communities through memorialisation and the public performance of rituals. In Hindu and neo-Hindu religious movements, the guru’s samadhi is one such important sacred space. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article focuses on one Ashram in India and the importance of the Samadhi shrine in the life of its members. The article argues that the Samadhi constitutes the spatial heart of an otherwise spatially dispersed Ashram. It is at the Samadhi that the devotees become present to the gurus and one another, creating a community of devotees through both a linear ‘chain of memory’ and lateral ‘intimacy grids’. At the same time, the creation of such a community grapples with the wider locational specificities of the Ashram and the politics of making it a home.