News21 Project

Defusing Religious Tensions on the Streets of Mumbai

A Shirt Maker in India’s Largest Slum Promotes Unity Between Faiths

By James Angelos, June 19, 2007

Waqar Khan, a shirt maker in Mumbai spreads a message of religious tolerance in a slum known for past outbreaks of violence between Hindus and Muslims.

MUMBAI, INDIA–Waqar Khan’s shirt shop is nestled among the narrow, trash-strewn lanes of Dharavi in Mumbai, the nearly square mile sea of shanties that comprise Asia’s largest slum. A motley array of collared, button-up shirts lay wrapped in clear plastic bags on shelves that line the walls inside the shop. The store, curiously named “Campus Shirts,” is the center of a local campaign to foster peaceful relations between the slum’s Hindus and Muslims. Khan, a devout Muslim, has dedicated much of his life to spreading a message of religious tolerance in Dharavi.

As the 40-year-old Khan sat at his desk near the shop’s front window, smoking cigarettes in a white shirt and neatly trimmed mustache, his daughter, 16-year-old Shagufta, sat by his side, translating his story into English.

Tacked on the wall behind them was a poster of four boys against a backdrop of the Indian flag, each dressed as a member of a different religion: a Christian with a silver cross dangling around his neck, a Sikh wearing a beige turban, a Muslim wearing a dark brown skullcap and a Hindu with a U-shaped tilaka on his forehead. “We are all one,” the poster read in Hindi.

In real life, all four boys photographed are Muslims, including Khan’s son, the one dressed as a Hindu. Khan himself came up with the idea for the poster and distributed placards of the image throughout Dharavi. The image became ubiquitous when law enforcement officials posted the signs at police stations and traffic stops across Mumbai. For Khan, creating the poster was one of his many efforts in recent years to foster peace in the slum.

Dharavi’s cheap rents draw poor migrants from all over India, those who come to Mumbai in search of work and a livable wage. There are anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million people living in Dharavi’s shanties, according to published estimates (the city government has never done an official count). With a teeming population of residents of all faiths living in the slum’s cramped quarters, it’s a potential tinderbox. A spark of religious violence in Dharavi could have potentially catastrophic results.

It’s not a merely hypothetical scenario. In 1992, riots erupted across India when Hindu fundamentalists destroyed the 16th-century Babri Mosque in Uttar Pradesh, believing the mosque was built on the site where the Ram Temple once stood. During the tumult that gripped the nation, Dharavi was a focal point of clashes between Hindus and Muslims. In Mumbai alone, 900 people were killed during nearly two months of rioting, according to a city report.

Khan witnessed the mayhem firsthand. “I saw people who knew each other for years [suddenly start] hitting and cutting one another,” he said. He watched helplessly as homes and businesses, which people had struggled for years to build, were destroyed in minutes.

It took Khan a lifetime of work to build the shop from which he witnessed the riots. His parents were poor farmers from Uttar Pradesh who migrated to Mumbai seeking a better life. “It was the city of film stars,” thought Khan when he was a boy on the train headed to Mumbai. But his image of an opulent city inhabited by Bollywood film stars was shattered by the poverty and filth he found in Dharavi.

Though the slum was not the Mumbai of his dreams, Khan was able to make a life for himself there. First he peddled bananas on the street. Then he sold shirts made of recycled cloth. When he had saved enough money, he bought a sewing machine and eventually began manufacturing new shirts. With more savings, he was able to open the retail shop he now runs.

Peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Hindus allowed him and others to prosper in the slums, said Khan. So when order was jeopardized by the 1992 riots, Khan set his mind to healing the deepening rift that had formed in the wake of the violence.

Khan joined Dharavi’s Mohalla Committee, one of several such committees established throughout the city by Mumbai Police after the 1992 riots in an effort to bring together Muslim and Hindu community leaders. Today, committee members of both faiths stay in contact with each other at monthly meetings and maintain lines of communication that didn’t exist prior to the riots. They mediate disputes between Hindus and Muslims before arguments spread into large-scale violence and organize community events like cricket matches to bring young people of both faiths together.

“Before the riots, I had only Muslim friends,” said Khan. But since joining the Mohalla committee, he’s met many Hindus. “If anything happens, I can call them and talk to them. That’s the difference now.”

In 2002, when clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat resulted in the deaths of several hundred people, mostly Muslims, the violence failed to spread to the streets of Dharavi as it had in 1992. At the time, an editorial in the Indian Express newspaper credited Mohalla Committees and grassroots efforts of people like Khan for the peace that endured in the slums. But others have their doubts.

“The core issue is not religious misunderstanding,” said Jaideep Gupta, a doctoral candidate at Oxford University who studies communal violence in Mumbai’s slums. Gupta claims that economic and environmental “vulnerabilities” particular to the slums like pollution and high unemployment make them more susceptible to outbreaks of violence. “If vulnerability was not so rampant in the city, it would be very difficult to recruit people into violence,” said Gupta. Nongovernmental organizations that work on environmental initiatives or vocational training in the slums do more to address the root problems, he said.

Khan, however, is cynical about the role such organizations play.

“They come for their own benefit,” he said of outside organizations. “They come for the photos and the stories. This is why we don’t call ourselves an NGO or a political party. This is why people trust us.”

At the outset of the Gujarat riots, Khan decided to use India’s most potent medium to further spread his message of unity: film.

Along with actors and a cameraman from Dharavi, Khan filmed a one-minute video promoting communal harmony. “Today people are being used as pawns in political games,” says the video’s narrator. “We all know that the Ram Temple and the Babri Mosque are not the real issues. People have no drinking water, yet that doesn’t become an issue!” The video, which features reenactments of Hindus and Muslims saving each other from the rubble of a devastating earthquake that struck Gujarat in 2001, was broadcast on Indian state television.

Khan then set his mind toward using an even more potent form of film: Bollywood movies. He began splicing together segments from Bollywood classics, creating a dizzying, feature-length medley which advocates national unity. When Dr. Ram Puniyani, a Hindu and teacher at the Indian Institute of Technology, donated 50,000 rupees (about $1200), Khan was able to purchase a projector and screen his film throughout Dharavi.

One scene in Khan’s work is culled from the 1994 movie Krantiveer:

The threat of communal riots looms over the village of Laxminagar. Hindus and Muslims are at each other’s throats. But a beautiful woman named Megha, played by Dimple Kapadia, rises up and urges the residents to live in peace.

“The people who set fire in our neighborhood were not Hindu or Muslim,” says Megha to a crowd. “They were hired by the politicians. Every politician hopes that we grow hatred within ourselves in the name of religion, that we cut each other, hit each other and kill each other. They sit back and watch the spectacle. We won’t let that happen.”

Like Kapadia’s character, Khan is quick to voice his cynicism about politicians who ferment enmity for political gain. The riots in 1992 were incited by politicians, he claimed. “It was not a Hindu versus Muslim problem,” said Khan. “It was a political problem.”

His daughter Shagufta, dressed in a black, flowing dress that covered her from neck to ankle, added some of her own thoughts, explaining why neighbors can suddenly attack one another in the name of religion.

“They respect religion more than their lives,” she said. “So if something happens opposing their religion, they get emotional.”

“Man should not kill in the name of religion, she added. “Man has made religion, not God.”

When asked if she was proud of her father’s work, Shagufta said: “He’s doing such a good thing. I should be like him.”

Christianity in India

An Unsafe Practice

By John Soltes, Peter Cox, June 20, 2007

With the surge in Hindu fundamentalism and the adopting of anti-conversion laws, India’s Christians are finding it more difficult to practice their faith.

VARANASI, INDIA–David Treasure’s church, the Church of North India based in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, organized a rally five years ago. Four to five thousand Christian faithful attended during the first few days of the event. On the fourth day the Hindu extremists showed up.

“They came and stormed the event,” Treasure said. “(The extremists) beat people, tore up the stage and they assaulted the leaders.”

A few years before this incident, another group of extremists attacked the pastor at Treasure’s church and nearly beat him to death. He was attacked for having attempted to convert Hindus to Christianity, reports said.

While Treasure hasn’t toned down his personal faith – he proudly wears an “I Love Jesus” cap on Varanasi’s busy streets – his church has become subtler in its outreach efforts. It no longer has large-scale revival meetings. Instead, it settles for smaller “cottage” meetings, with dozens to about 200 people attending. It’s just not a good idea to have meetings that are going to bring attention, said Treasure, a retired police chief.

Since the 1960s, seven of India’s 28 states have passed laws prohibiting religious conversion through coercion, money or gifts. In practice, Hindu fundamentalists have used the law as means to forcibly prevent conversion of Hindus to the Christian faith. In response to these advances, the Christian churches have changed the way they practice their faith.

Most of the states that have adopted these laws are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist political party. But recently Himachal Pradesh, an area in northern India run by the mainstream Congress Party, also passed the law.

For evangelical Christians, for whom proselytizing is an essential tenet of practice, this creates a paradox – do they risk their safety to spread their belief?

At the Colaba Baptist Church in southern Mumbai, churchgoers have also tempered their approach to evangelizing. The church tells its members to pray with people in the street, but not to go door to door pushing their faith.

“We are spreading our faith,” said Max Fernand, 39, a parishioner. “But not in a way that is threatening to the people. We have to be sensible. [The fear] keeps us walking on egg shells.”

V.J. Joseph, assistant pastor at the church, says Colaba Baptist does missionary work around the country, but stays away from some areas because they are too dangerous. He says it is hard not to extend the reach of his faith, but that the danger is too great. However, his church is trying to broaden its approach and reach more people, despite the danger. This year, the congregation’s focus is on doing more missionary work throughout the country, and in rural areas, where Hindu nationalists are said to have their largest strongholds.

The anti-Christian sentiment, these evangelicals say, has been bolstered by the anti-conversion laws pushed by the BJP. But the BJP’s followers say they don’t support attacks against missionaries, they just want missionaries to stop pressuring people to convert.

“As a party, the BJP is against violence,” said Sidharth Nath Singh, the party’s national spokesman.

Singh charged that Christian missionaries and NGOs are making promises of jobs, education and benefits to those who convert, and taking advantage of people who don’t know any better. The party is supportive of the RSS, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a nationalist cultural organization, which has made re-conversions to Hinduism a consistent practice in tribal villages where missionaries have made conversions.

“It’s not that our party is against conversion. If the person wants to convert, that’s fine,” he said. “But because people are putting pressure on people to convert, and these people are lured by gifts and promises, not by faith, we think that is wrong. That is the principal stance of the BJP.”

But church leaders say that the BJP’s anxiety over mass conversions is misguided, because the level of Christians in India has been steady, if not slightly dwindling, for years. The most recent census shows Christians making up 2 percent of India’s population, in comparison to the 80 percent Hindu majority.

Singh believes that Western governments are funding many of the missionaries working in India, though he did not say for what purpose. Still, he says the focus of the BJP is on the safety of Indians. “We’d like everyone to exist peacefully,” he said. However, leaders in the BJP have espoused different opinions in the past. During a ceremony in April 2005, during which Hindus converted hundreds of Christians, BJP leader Dilip Singh Judeo furthered the anti-conversion stance, saying, “If Christian missionaries don’t stop converting people we will take up arms.”

And Judeo’s sentiments have had their effect in the subcontinent. Sat Pal Bhatti, a Hindu who converted to Christianity, has been conducting “crusades” in the rural areas of the Punjab for the last few years. Each time he has held public mass in an open area his operations have been shut down, he said.

“Why is there so much restriction on Christian freedom?” he asked. “They want the whole of the country for Hindus.”

Bhatti and his wife recently started their third crusade, with the goal of converting more Hindu youth to carry the ministry into the future. They were expecting it to be broken up once again.

Roman Catholics in India are also feeling the pressure of the anti-conversion laws. But because conversion is not built into Catholicism as it is with evangelical Christianity, the laws pose only a looming danger.

Archbishop Oswald Gracias of the Mumbai Archdiocese believes the laws are being used as a political move to rouse Hindu sentiments. And even though they haven’t posed a direct threat to Catholics, he said, they are feeding a fissure between India’s faiths. The laws are “creating a divide between two groups that could contribute so much to the country,” said Gracias, whose archdiocese, with more than 500,000 Catholics, is the largest in India.

Catholicism has been present in India for hundreds of years. Most Indian Catholics that practice today are not the product of recent conversions, but, instead, inherited the faith from their parents. But there is still a general fear among Hindu fundamentalists that through the church’s humanitarian efforts, like helping the poor in Mumbai’s slums, conversion is taking place.

Gracias added that the technical wording of the laws make them sound agreeable for every religion, but when put into practice, the BJP and Congress parties are restricting personal rights. “The law on paper says it is against forced conversion and conversion by fraud. You can’t argue against that,” he said. “That’s what the church says also.”

The problem for Gracias, as well as Pope Benedict XVI, who recently spoke out against the laws, is that when situations occur – like when party officials attend Catholic baptisms to watch for coerced conversion – Catholics are having their rights taken away. “There will be subtle pressures on people who want to genuinely convert,” Gracias said. “It takes it to a certain realm, which is so personal. It gets the state interfering with your conscience.”

Monsignor Nereus Rodrigues, pastor of Mount St. Mary Church in Mumbai, alluded to the fact that evangelical churches in India are the reason for anti-conversion laws. He cautioned his Christian counterparts to watch their actions, so all faiths aren’t hurt in the future. “We belong to the Catholic Church, so we are very careful about not pushing the conversion a little bit too much,” Rodrigues said. “If it becomes that way, people suspect that people are not being convinced.”

For Gracias, there is no mistaking that India belongs as much to Catholics and Christians as it does to the Hindu majority.

“The constitution of the country and the founding fathers of the country had it in mind to be a secular country, a free country,” Gracias added. “And now you bring these laws, you’re going against the very ethos of the country.”

Under the Bodhi Tree

By Karla Bruning, June 20, 2007

Tree shrines are commonplace at many of India’s religious sites. But tree reverence has roots in many religions around the world, including in the United States.

MUMBAI, INDIA–In India, a tree is not always just a tree. Take the pipal tree growing near the Arabian Sea just off Desai Marg in Colaba. The tree is a temple to Hanuman, the monkey god who in Hindu legend unswervingly served the Lord Rama. A makeshift shrine circling the tree attracts a number of devotees passing along the road. They pause to bow next to the raised platform built around the tree, which is decorated with candles, pictures and statues of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, his son Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, and of course, Hanuman himself, the ultimate embodiment of devotion, who Hindus believe is an incarnation of Shiva. At night, bright lights illuminate the tree, the trunk of which is painted white, and the odd worshiper sits in prayer under a canopy tied to one side of the tree.

“In India, we worship trees,” said Sharad Kumar, a businessman who works nearby. “This is a form of God. It is a sacred tree. All the gods have their souls in it.”

Trees are the natural embodiment of the divine, explained his coworker, Mithlesh Kumar. “They represent God in a sacred manner,” he said. “They have the spirit of God in them.”

Religious pilgrims and tourists trekking across India might notice a theme common to many a temple, shrine and church. In New Delhi, trees hold places of honor at a Sufi shrine and a Catholic church. In the Punjabi city of Amritsar, tree shrines grace the complex surrounding the Sikh Golden Temple. Tree shrines figure prominently at a Hindu temple in Varanasi and at a Buddhist site in Sarnath. Not just Hindus, but nearly every Indian tradition, it seems, has a profound respect for trees.

Perhaps the most famous is the Bodhi Tree, a pipal under which Buddhists say Siddhartha Gautama, founder of the tradition, attained enlightenment and became a Buddha. In Sarnath, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where the Buddha first preached his teachings after reaching nirvana, stands a Bodhi Tree that the faithful believe was grown from the original Tree of Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. The symbol of the tree is central to the legend of the Buddha’s awakening or “bodhi.”

In New Delhi, a large tree stands inside the Dargah of Hazrat Inayat, the tomb of Pir Inayat Khan who was responsible for introducing Islam’s mystical strand of Sufism to the West. An opening in the roof allows the tree to grow unencumbered. Inayat Kahn taught that the soul was like a tree and every leaf akin to divine revelation. Such tree symbolism is common in Sufism and more mainstream Islam as well.

Elsewhere in New Delhi, outside the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, stands a stunning Pieta, a work of art depicting Mary cradling the lifeless body of Jesus, carved out of a single tree trunk. The sculpture occupies a prominent place on the steps of the Roman Catholic church. Christian tradition certainly has its own tree iconography from the Tree of Knowledge, which Christians believe bore the fruit of Original Sin to the crucifix upon which Jesus died.

Further west in Amritsar, the marble promenade that surrounds the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion, is home to three shrines centered around jujube trees. Dating over 400 years to before the temple was built, the trees are said to be the oldest inhabitants of the complex, witnesses to the temple’s living history. The main tree shrine, the Dukh Bhanjani Ber, marks the spot where the pool surrounding the temple is said to have curative powers. Another shrine known as the Ber Baba Buddha marks the spot where the temple’s first head priest sat as he supervised its construction. Pilgrims stop at these shrines before visiting the Golden Temple itself.

In Varanasi, the holiest city of the Hindus, two large banyan trees grace the courtyard entrance to the Sankat Mochan Temple. A shrine to Hanuman, red-faced monkeys roam the grounds and play among the banyans’ thick, curling branches. One tree in particular is decorated with flowers, shreds of cloth and streaks of electric vermillion and orange and pink gulal powders. Worshipers leave offerings in hope that Hanuman, the remover of problems, might grant them a wish. Each tattered cloth tied to the banyan’s sprawling limbs represents one person’s hope. Some leave pink, orange, gold or green string and others place garlands of flowers from around their necks. Also called “kalpavriksha” or “wish-fulfilling trees,” banyans are sacred in Hindu lore representing eternal life because of their expansive branches.

But the idea of a wishing tree is not unique to Indian culture. In the New Territories just north of Hong Kong, at the Tin Hou Temple in Lam Tsuen, pilgrims and tourists alike visit two banyan “wishing trees” where they write requests on red paper tied to oranges and then throw the wishes as high as they can into the trees. Some believe that the higher the branch one’s wish lands on, the sooner the wish will come true.

Certainly, too, Western tradition has its share of tree lore and reverence. Christmas trees, rooted in ancient German fertility worship, are a form of wishing tree. Even today, children make wish lists for Santa Claus at Christmas time, and if they are good, find their wishes granted in the form of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. Indeed, a version of the fairy tale “Cinderella,” as recorded by the Brothers Grimm in Germany in 1812, includes a wishing tree: planted on her mother’s grave from a hazel twig, Cinderella watered the plant with her tears until it grew into a beautiful tree. There she would sit and pray, crying “Shake and wobble, little tree! Let gold and silver fall over me,” and a little white bird would throw whatever her heart desired, including an elegant gown and, of course, slippers for the ball.

Furthermore, the notion of trees representing eternal life or immortality is common around the world from Nordic mythology to Egyptian cosmology, ancient Mayan lore to Japanese Shinto tradition. In ancient Babylon, the Mesopotamian Tree of Life gave birth to the Tree of Paradise found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the biblical Garden of Eden, the fruit from the Tree of Life promised immortality and the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge promised the dual wisdom of God—knowledge of both good and evil. These are universal notions: trees as a bridge between heaven and earth, a symbol of sustenance and enlightenment.

But what makes trees so evocative, so emblematic of some other reality? As living entities they represent longevity and prosperity, providing food and shelter in countless ways. They are at once stoic and immobile, but at the same time bend with the breeze and change with the seasons. Simply, trees are strong, supple, and seemingly, ever-lasting. They bridge the gap between three contiguous realms—colloquially, heaven, hell and earth in between.

For what would the legend of the Buddha be without the Bodhi Tree? Without some concept of the other, the divine, some alternate reality that exists both above and below, both constant and changing, both unyielding and bending, religion might not be religion at all. Trees let us believe that if we climb their limbs, eat their fruit, or take refuge in their shade we too might be privy to the secrets of the other, the unknown reality of existence.

At the heart of tree reverence, too, is the symbolism of a tree’s very structure. Roots for grounding, a solid trunk for stability, and an endless web of branches that flower and prosper with each passing season, each passing year. Perhaps, each person represents a leaf, born green with the spring, fading and dying with the autumn, to be replaced anew after winter’s end. The various branches might be the many religious traditions in which we, as humans, divide ourselves. And perhaps the trunk is the ultimate reality from which all religions, in all their variants, spring.

As such, our reverence for trees only continues to blossom—in India and at home.

On Tour with the Hugging Saint

By Karla Bruning, June 19, 2007

Thousands of followers the world over wait hours in line for a hug from Amma, an Indian spiritual leader who spreads the message of love through physical embrace.

MUMBAI, INDIA–As you wait in a line, a chorus of vocalists accompanied by keyboards, drums, and hand cymbals sing devotional songs, amplified over a loud speaker. The line slowly inches forward. A din of chatter fills the air. A devotee dressed in white wipes your face with a tissue, and then a sea of hands pushes you forward into Amma’s waiting arms. Large and round, she wears a white sheath, her graying hair pulled back from her face. She clasps you to her breast, kisses your cheek and whispers in your ear, “My darling, my darling, my darling, my dear.” In about three seconds, the sea of hands grabs you, pulling you away from Amma like a rolling wave.

Dubbed the hugging saint, Amma, which means “mother,” is the head of the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, a spiritual and humanitarian organization based in the south Indian state of Kerala. Her followers estimate she has hugged more than 26 million people over the last 36 years. Her embrace, called “darshan,” is the centerpiece of a worldwide movement based on what she calls the religion of love, the unity of existence and service to humanity.

“Amma is hugging everybody like that because she says that she’s seeing herself in everyone and she’s seeing divinity in everyone,” said Brian Harvey, who goes by the name Gautam, an American devotee who has lived at Amma’s Kerala ashram since 1999. “At the same time, it’s the simplest gesture there is in society. Every culture, every society understands what a hug is. It’s a universal expression of love.”

Her followers practice devotion to her as a guru and, for some, the living embodiment of God.

Mayuri Anchin, 17, an Indian follower of Amma, has been a devotee for six years. This year, she has brought 23-year-old Priti Masavkr from a town an hour away to meet Amma for the first time. “She is a god,” Anchin said. “She is everything.”

But not everyone is won over by Amma’s embrace. Meena Menon, a journalist in Mumbai and self-described atheist whose mother is a devotee of Amma, said she doesn’t see Amma’s charisma nor does she “buy” into the idea of a hug as a salve for the soul.

“You’re constantly looking for external factors to bolster your confidence and people like this cash in on that weakness, you know, which we as human beings have,” Menon said. “I don’t want to be nasty and say she’s taking advantage, but definitely she is benefiting in many ways. I can think of few people in this country who can command such a large crowd, get so much money.”

Some Indians have been highly critical of Amma and other so-called “McGurus” whose new brand of assembly line Hinduism leaves some feeling skeptical. In 2002, Sreeni Pattathanam published his book, “Matha Amritanandamayi: Sacred Stories and Realities,” in which he alleges cover-ups of suspicious deaths at Amma’s ashram, where a community of 3,000 devotees live. The book, published in Kerala, caused an uproar and a politicized legal battle between the author and some of Amma’s followers.

The criticism has followed Amma overseas. In the U.S., Jody Radzik, 47, writes a blog called Guruphiliac. A 25-year practitioner of Vedanta—a Hindu movement that teaches the divinity of the soul and the oneness of God—Radzik aims to debunk many gurus’ divine claims.

“When you pull aside the curtain, there’s a human being back there,” said Radzik, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M. “Everyone is a human being. Any good guru is not going to make believe they are anything else.”

Though Amma makes no claims herself, he said, “These gurus do everything they can do to play up their supposed divine status. Amma is the prime example. She’s silently cultivating her divine status through her organization. But if you ask her she’ll say, ‘We’re all God.’”

Nonetheless, Radzik and Menon conceded that Amma’s charitable work is impressive. “That kind of generosity, simplicity you see in very few people, very few leaders in this country,” Menon said.

Radzik agreed. “I think she is the best of the big time gurus,” he said. “She’s certainly not a crook, not a child-molester. She’s donated millions to the tsunami relief effort.”

The money the organization receives, officials of her ashram say, funds its charities. In recent years, the organization pledged $46 million for Indian farmers, $23 million in tsunami relief, $1 million to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, and additional aid for victims of the Kashmir and Gujarat earthquakes. The Mission Trust also runs hospitals, schools, a university, free housing programs, children’s camps, an orphanage, and soup kitchens that feed more than 2 million people a year. The organization also has more commercial endeavors like Amrita Television, a 24-hour satellite channel available throughout South Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and on the Internet. Programming includes news, game shows, reality shows, soap operas, movies, and devotional programs.

“It’s a brand,” said Maheshi Loaiza, 45, a Colombian-born follower of 18 years and former Catholic nun who now works as a graphic designer in Connecticut. “It’s like putting the ocean in a glass. You cannot say with words what Amma is.”

With an entourage of 200 devotees from 20 countries, each year Amma tours India and elsewhere abroad where she maintains centers, including the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. In Mumbai alone, an estimated 15,000 people turned out for a public program in Shivaji Park on March 15 and another 5,000 came to Amma’s Mumbai temple two days later. When Amma tours the U.S. in June and July this year, her organization expects 30,000 participants in 12 cities, with 10,000 people in New York alone.

Amma spends 12 to 18 hours a day dispensing hugs. While on tour, her days off are used to travel. At her ashram in Kerala, where she lives, Amma gives hugs four days a week. The rest of her time is spent meeting with disciples and managing her empire.

“She’s really like the CEO of this whole organization,” Gautam said. “Nothing escapes her.”

At the Mumbai temple, which sits atop a hill in the Nerul section of Navi Mumbai, a religious bazaar awaits visitors. Volunteers man booths selling books by and about Amma, CDs, subscriptions to a monthly magazine, and artifacts, such as the garlands devotees place around Amma’s neck (100 rupees each).

Unlike traditional Hindu temples, Amma’s temple has only one idol: a four-sided stone, carved with the faces of four Hindu gods, one to a side, underscoring Amma’s message of unity. Next to the shrine, priests prepare “puja,” or devotional worship, before a photo of Amma. Devotees pay to have puja performed, but darshan is free.

Manik Rognath More, a resident of Nerul, has seen Amma three times. “It’s like God has come down from the heavens and has come to meet me,” he said.

In the main hall of the Mumbai temple, hundreds of devotees sit on the floor, watching Amma give darshan on a raised platform. The band sits behind Amma with a group of her closest disciples. The platform is decorated with garlands of orange marigolds and bouquets of red hibiscus, white and yellow daisies, and purple dendrobium orchids. Metallic streamers in gold, red, green, blue and silver hang from the ceiling. The air is smoky from burning incense. For those who can’t see, flat-screen televisions broadcast the darshan. Followers queue up early in the day to receive numbered tokens. The screens call token holders to line up for the embrace—A-1, A-2, A-3, etc.—women in a line to the left, men to the right.

Pradeep Kumar Gupta, a devotee of 12 years originally from Delhi, waited six hours in the 90-plus degree heat to hug Amma. “I’m going to get blessing,” he said moments before. Gupta turned to Amma after he suffered a series of mishaps such as a house fire and car accident. “I requested, ‘God, please come in front of me. I will talk to you,’” he said. “Then I found Amma. Now I am very relieved. Now, no problems with me.”

Krishna Mendan of Mumbai also hoped to receive Amma’s blessing. “I believe in Amma,” he said. “A very good guru and a very good gentle lady.”

Amma, whose origianl name is Sudhamani, was born in a poor fishing village in Kerala in 1953. She received minimal education, never married and never had children. As a female from a low caste, Amma’s rise as a religious leader has been controversial in a Hindu society where typically only men of the highest Brahmin caste can become priests. And in a break from Hindu custom, Amma ordains women as priests as well.

Through her hugs, Amma has revolutionized Hindu thought and appealed to people outside of Indian tradition, according to Dr. Selva J. Raj, professor of religious studies and department chair at Albion College in Michigan, who teaches Hinduism and has written articles about Amma for a number of books and encyclopedias. As a specialist in Hindu-Christian relations, he followed one of Amma’s U.S. tours as a scholar, not a devotee.

“In the Hindu tradition, contact of any kind often produces pollution,” he said. “You touch the guru’s feet as a sign of respect, but you don’t get a hug. That is not traditionally appropriate.”

But Amma transgresses customary Indian gender roles and social status through physical touch, Dr. Raj said.

“It’s the centerpiece of Amma’s teaching in a way,” he said. “Teaching love in a physical, tactile way. That’s what appeals to people I think. Her teaching of love comes alive in the physical contact of the embrace. And she appeals to an audience that is non-Hindu.”

For Western audiences, accustomed to the hug-and-a-kiss hello, Amma’s embrace is a physical reminder of God in their daily lives.

“Not God is up there and untouchable,” said Loaiza, who travels with Amma as a translator in Spanish speaking countries. “With mother it’s different. You have God within you.”

Thus her appeal centers on the immediacy of relating to an actual person, rather than a remote deity.

“It’s tangible,” Dr. Raj said. “You can feel, touch. You can listen. Human beings always look for someone who transcends themselves. If that person is touchable and experience-able, it gives a flavor to their quest. Sometimes the ordinary people need something to touch. The hug goes a long way.”

As each person reaches Amma’s arms, one of her senior disciples, dressed in orange, tells her in what language to whisper.

“She said, ‘my baby, my child.’” Masavkr said, of Amma speaking in Hindi. “It feel like my mother is hugging me.”

During Amma’s embrace, a few other disciples place hands on the person being cradled, such that it resembles a huddle or group hug.

Devapriya, a 23-year old American devotee from Portland, Ore., first met Amma when she was 12. “It feels, like, totally safe and like a loving experience,” said Devapriya, who moved to Amma’s ashram when she was 17. “Like any memories I have with my own mother, but much more expansive.”

Some followers throw garlands around Amma’s neck, and Amma in turn gives selected devotees “prasad,” a blessed offering of fruit from a plate sitting to her right. More than a few devotees break into tears as they are pulled from her arms.

Behind the scenes, members of Amma’s team of volunteers keep the tour running smoothly, performing “seva,” or service. They do everything from unloading sound equipment to chopping vegetables in the kitchen.

Ardash, a middle-aged disciple who lives in Majorca, Spain, refills the fruit plate for Amma’s prasad near the darshan line. Helping him is Sanjeev, a 23-year-old follower from Finland. Now in Mumbai, they have come to India to work on Amma’s tour.

Borrowing a metaphor from the fruit he is handling, Sanjeev likened Amma’s darshan to a seed. “Amma plants a seed into your heart,” said Sanjeev, a disciple for seven years. “It might not nourish right now. It can, like, blossom in many years afterward.”

Other devotees agreed. Dante Sawyer, who goes by the name Sachin, an American follower from South Deerfield, Mass., has been living with Amma since 2000.

“That first hug is the doorway,” said Sachin, 34. “In today’s world, Amma has to give some way for people to start interacting with her. So this hug is that way. It’s the beginning. It’s the spark.”