Class Base of Swaminarayan Sect

David Hardiman This study of the class base of the Swaminarayan sect shows the sect to be an ideological voice of an emerging class of commercial farmers and capitalist entrepreneurs. It manages to attract the support of large numbers of more humble people who aspire to climb into this class and who swallow the sect 's view of the world uncritically. The class which the sect represents is moreover one in which power is in the hands of patriarchs and in which female family members are both exploited and kept in a condition of daily humiliation.