SAC presents: Joanne Waghorne

Joanne Waghorne, Professor of Religion, Syracuse University

Hindu Gurus Moving Up: New Sites for Spiritual Practices in Singapore

Singapore led Asia in the development of a high-rise world with its largely successful scheme of owner-occupied government-built housing. These high-rises nurture some surprising Hindu-inspired movements in spite of arguments that such an environment supposedly kills the human spirit. All these events are Hindu in flavor but often explicitly above ethnicity and even “religion.” What kind of religiosity flourishes in this soon-to-be dominant spatial régime in Asia? One answer: Hindu gurus, but how and why?

Sponsored by the South Asia Center at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs