James Heitzman, Network City: Planning the Information Society in Bangalore
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
The letters BAPS stand for the following words, in their standard Swaminarayan
transliteration: Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Sanstha. The first of these indicates
that this branch of the Swaminarayan religion is closely associated with the town of Bo-
chasan, Gujarat, where a major temple was erected in the first decade of the twentieth
century. It was the first of many impressive edifices constructed by the Akshar Pu-
rushottam Sanstha branch of Swaminarayan—the “organization [dedicated to] the im-
mutable highest person.” That person is the Deity, but the Deity is visible in a full
earthly manifestation as Sahajanand Swami, the founder of the Swaminarayan religious
community. Akshar, “the immutable,” is his eternally coexistent abode, and this role too
can be glimpsed in earthly form—as Sahajanand ’s pradigmatic devotees, the leaders of
the ascetic lineage that established itself in Bochasan in 1906. Pramukh Swami is the cur-
rent representative of that lineage.
The Laine/Bhandarkar controversy is a complex one. Readers interested in further
detail are referred particularly to Christian Lee Novetzke, “The Laine Controversy and
the Study of Hinduism,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 8:1–3 (2005), 183–201.
For further information on the melaat Bunkal ki Devi, see D. R. Purohit, “Fairs
and Festivals: Place, Occasion, and Events,” in Garhwal Himalaya: Nature, Culture, and
Society, ed. O. P. Kandari and O. P. Gusain (Srinagar, Garhwal: Transmedia, 2001), 370;
cf. Stephen Alter, Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga(New
Delhi: Penguin, 2001), 255–57. At the other end of India a ban against animal sacrifice
was enacted by the Tamil Nadu state legislature in 2003 but was repealed early in 2004.
Some observers wonder whether the repeal may have been motivated by the ruling
party’s fear of alienating members of the populous lower echelons of society as the
April 2004 elections approached, since these are largely the people who practice animal
sacrifice (Rupa Viswanath and Nate Roberts, private conversations, Chennai, March
12–13, 2004). Repeals can have other causes, too. In the year that a ban was enacted on
the sacrifice of chickens to the local goddess of Kaup, a town located on India’s main
west-coast highway in Karnataka, an alarming increase in road accidents was reported.
Rather than continuing to court the goddess’s anger, the sacrifices were resumed.
The general design and some of the specific wording for this and the following
section were first worked out in John Hawley’s entry “Hinduism” in the Encyclopedia of
World Religions(Springfield, MA: Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster,
1999), 434–36. Earlier usages of the term Hinduism can be traced back as far as the cor-
respondence of Charles Grant in 1787. See Henry Morris, The Life of Charles Grant
(London: J. Murray, 1904), 105, 110, as cited by Geoffrey A. Oddie, “Constructing ‘Hin-
