4. introduction
worshippers up toward the main sanctuary as if they were visitors to the Statue of
Liberty or Walt Disney World; and a long series of displays, eateries, and gift shops
awaits them on the descent, after they’ve seen the golden deities. These eager, well-
dressed pilgrims are a collage of Bangalore today: students in the nearby science col-
leges, middle-class families with children, and a few representatives of the older gen-
eration. All come to orient themselves to the year ahead with vows, petitions, and
thanksgivings expressed before the city’s newest, most impressive gods. Hindu prac-
tice already incorporates several New Years, and many Hindus calculate the fiscal
year on those days, with festivals to mark the passage. January 1 has been added only
in the last decade, a New Year calibrated to the calendar of international business and
global society. For Hinduism, the meaning of “tradition” is cumulative, not un-
changing. (See figure B at the Web site http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/vasu/loh.))
Other events in the first week of 2004 filled out this picture. A full-page color ad
on the back page of the New Year’s Day Bangalore edition of theEconomic Times,
for instance, urged readers to contribute to projects launched by the Tirumala Tiru-
pati Devasthanams (TTD). TTD is the organization that manages India’s wealth-
iest and most influential temple complex (devasthanam),the home of Vishnu as
Venkatesvara at Tirupati on “the holy mountain” (tirumalai)in Andhra Pradesh. Its
current projects feature a hospital offering free medical care to the poor, a fund for
the protection of cows (“The very existence of mankind depends on cow’s milk,”
said theEconomic Times), and a religious theme park to be installed on Tirupati’s
mountain with the purpose of educating pilgrims “through modern Imax technics.”
The ad explaining all this had been donated by Amarjothi Spinning Mills, Ltd., and
it contained multiple images of Venkatesvara himself, displaying a vision (darsana,
darsan, darshan)of Venkatesvara to the public at large on this auspicious day of be-
ginnings. Halfway around the world, in the Venkatesvara temple that TTD helped
establish just outside Pittsburgh, pilgrims from all over North America gathered for
a similar darshan. Lord Venkatesvara graces both continents, and many who come
to see him in Pittsburgh have relatives in or near Bangalore.
TheEconomic Times also reported that Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the leader of
the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, was in Bangalore to officiate at the installation of
new images in the Swaminarayan temple in Rajajinagar Industrial Town.^2 Like
ISKCON and Tirupati, Swaminarayan is a religious organization with a densely
multinational identity. Based in Gujarat and working with a distinctly Gujarati core
of devotees, it nonetheless strives to create a form of high-minded Hindu con-
sciousness with global appeal. Bangalore is necessarily an important node in Swami-
narayan’s emerging network. A major feature of Swaminarayan faith is its adher-