Religious Reading and Everyday Lives

Abstract

Emilia Bachrach paints a vivid ethnographic picture of vārtā satsaṅgs in present-day Ahmadabad—meetings in which female members of the Vallabha Sampraday read and discuss sections of the Sampraday’s two central hagiographies, the Caurāsī vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā and the Do sau bhāvan vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā. Showing how these women use the stories of the saint’s lives to understand and navigate their own social and religious worlds, Bachrach argues that such religious reading practices are an active and productive process, providing a space for debate, interpretation, and exploration of sectarian identity.