Charpentier Marie-Thérèse. Indian Female Gurus in Contemporary Hinduism

ÅBO, 2010. — 395 p.In this book, Marie-Thérèse Charpentier explores the phenomenon of Indian female guru-hood in contemporary Hinduism by investigating the spiritual careers of an impressive sample consisting of seventy gurus, with a particular focus on four of them. As a point of departure, she makes use of the key question: ‘How does one become a (female) guru?’ That question gives rise to further questions concerning the socio-religious context of emerging female guruhood (including upbringing, calling and public recognition) and specific traits of female asceti-cism. Furthermore, Charpentier works on the assumption that goddess worship has helped pave the way for the contemporary female gurus’ existence. The present study is her doctoral thesis and was accepted by the Åbo Akademi Uni-versity, Finland. It took her ten years to identify and localize seventy female spiritual masters in contemporary India. Apart from this vast number of persons involved, the long period of research is partly explained by the experience that the process of identifying and locating looked like ‘a job for a detective’ (p. 43). Charpentier’s research work initially was inspired by the contact with two Indian female gurus sharply contrasting the prevailing stereotypes about female subordination in Hindu traditions. The main thesis of the present study is that the phenomenon of contemporary female guruhood contradicts the usual social expectations of female subordination in Hindu traditions and promotes a renewed awareness of age-old perceptions of God as the divine feminine. Female Hindu gurus, rather than working directly for social or political change, Religion and Gender progressively infuse transformation at a personal level, which is believed to act as a powerful motor to social transformation in the long run.