This book focuses on genealogies of religious authority in South Asia, examining the figure of the guru in narrative texts, polemical tracts, hagiographies, histories, in contemporary devotional communities, New Age spiritual movements and global guru organizations..

1 Introduction: Contextualizing gurus in South Asia 2 How the guru lost his power: Public anxieties of tantric knowledge in the Sanskrit vetala tales 3 The guru function in the emergence of Marathi literature in thirteenth-century India 4 Guru Dadu in the perception of his direct disciples 5 Canonization of bhakti gurus: A missing link between Jai Singh II and Hariscandra 6 The emergence of the social in the service of the Guru 7 Between sagacity and scandal: Celibacy, sexuality, and a guru in nineteenth-century Punjab 8 The occluded guru, or the guru as gardener: C. Jinarajadasa's theosophical universe 9 Inversions of Kim: The Victorian childhood of J. Krishnamurti 10 The Vaidika's limits: Candrasekharendra Sarasvati Svami (1894-1994) and Tamil brahmin guruship 11 The fiction of ecumenical universalism: Where gurus do not matter 12 Between the letter and the spirit: Gandhi's orbit 13 Guru sex: Charisma, proxemic desire, and the haptic logics of the guru-disciple relationship 14 Manufacturing charisma in the metropolis 15 Narrating the spiritualized life 16 The gurus of a post-colonial education: An autobiographical note 17 Selected publications by Vasudha Dalmia