radhasoami. 193
on the mystical path. (A cynic, pointing to the fact that Maharajji himself is a rich
landowner who is allied by kinship and marriage ties to some of the wealthiest fam-
ilies in northern India, might observe the curious coincidence that the will of God
and the “eternal law of nature” seem to be identical to the economic and political
interest of a feudal elite and the convenience of a patriarchal order. This, however,
would be doing Maharajji an injustice, since his position on the law of karma and its
individual and social consequences is not idiosyncratic but is shared by a vast ma-
jority of his compatriots and lies unexceptionably within the mainstream of Indian
religiosity.)
After the satsang,I took a leisurely walk through the Dera township. People
streamed past me in groups—small contingents ofsatsangisfrom different villages,
large families with women and children placed protectively in the middle while the
men walked at the periphery, guarding them like sheepdogs. Many of them were on
their way to the huge tents erected near the Satsang Ghar; each of which could ac-
commodate up to a thousand people in its cavernous insides. Others strolled
through the freshly swept streets, the clawlike marks made by the twig brooms still
visible in the earth, their festive mood proving to be more than a match for the whip-
ping cold wind. The afterglow of the Satsang was still reflected on their friendly
faces and in their smiles, which seemed to affirm joyously each other’s existence and
value. I remember that my own greetings of “Radhasoami!” in response to those di-
rected at me by total strangers were without a trace of the earlier self-consciousness
and embarrassment I had felt at being (in a sense) an imposter among true believ-
ers. For a short while, I was prepared to believe that social relations need not nec-
essarily be organized according to either of the two fundamental categories that so-
ciologists since Ferdinand Tönnies have prescribed. The satsangiswere neither a
community, with the community’s uncritical acceptance of roles and relationships,
where the individual tends to merge into others, nor did they constitute a society,
with its rational-contractual bonds and its calculating coolness, where the individ-
ual is at a distance from others with whom he is also in competition. The sect mem-
bers seemed to be living, however temporarily, in a third kind of association, which
Eugen Schmalenbach has called “communion” and which only a few social scien-
tists have explored as being either desirable or possible. Here a more or less freely
chosen, nonbinding brotherhood dominates; the individual is enhanced (unlike in a
community), and yet the emotional bonds go deep (unlike in a society). I could
therefore understand how the Radhasoami Satsang (and perhaps most mystical
sects) can become a haven for so many Indians who are in flight from the oppres-