“Nani, aap mata rani ki aarti TV mai dekhte hue aise kyun baithe ho jaise mandir mein hi ho?”

I never knew this question of mine would ever lead to academic intrigue.

During my childhood summer holidays when I used to visit my ‘nani ka ghar’, she used to watch Vaishno Devi Aarti being telecast on television. During this time, she used to take her slippers off outside the room where the TV was kept. She would sit with her hands joined, eyes closed and head covered with a dupatta. She asked me and all my cousins to do the same.  She still follows the same ritual every day.

Growing up, I became an adherent admirer of Sai Baba and a regular temple-goer to attend Baba’s evening aarti. But due to my hectic schedule of attending college classes, managing extracurriculars and submitting college assignments, I used to miss Baba’s aarti sometimes. This led to me typing ‘Sai Baba Aarti’ on YouTube and finding the YouTube channel of the same mandir that I attend aarti in. Now, when I am unable to attend the aarti offline, I go online and attend the aarti through the temple’s live streaming on YouTube.

These experiences extended to extensive research around digital religion and how believers’ experiences differ in the two mediums.

The Offline Temple

Amongst the maze of streets filled with residences, street markets, and other profane, mundane elements of the everyday common, a sacred place is hidden. Shirdi Sai Baba Temple, Sector-7, Rohini, Delhi, India, is known for its miracles.

The offline space of the Sai Mandir looks like this- a temple entrance amid shops selling flowers, prasadam, chadawa for the deity, a room for bhakt darbar, and a big idol of Sai Baba, sitting on a silver throne, in the front of the darbar, adorned with flowers, clothes, and lights. The usual day at the mandir consists of pandits performing aarti four times a day, and a surge of devotees visiting the temple throughout the day. The most crowded periods at the mandir are before, during and after the aarti. In addition to the mandir’s YouTube channel, the mandir administration has also arranged for a TV at the entrance of the mandir that telecasts Baba’s murti during the whole duration that the mandir is open. Thus, one can easily spot bhakts passing by the temple, to stop and do a naman to the screen telecasting Sai Baba.

Thursday is the most crowded day of the week at the mandir. To understand the significance behind such an inclination of the devotees for a particular day in the week, two justifications can be given. First, Thursday in Hindi translates to Guruwar, meaning the day of the guru. As the devotees regard Baba ji as their guru, Thursdays become important. Moreover, a phrase in Sai Baba’s aarti says, “Atha Divsa Guruwari, Bhakta Kariti Wari…Prabhupad Pahawaya, Bhavbhaya Niwari…” [On Thursdays, the devotees take a trip to visit Sai Baba, to have a glimpse of his feet and to be free of their fears].

Figure 1: Mandir decoration on a Thursday

On Thursdays, Sai Baba’s palki is also taken out around the block with dhol and nagadas along with Sai bhakts dancing, singing, chanting, and clapping. In bhakts trying to touch the palki, sloganeering Jai Sai Ram, and getting a glimpse of Baba ji, one becomes a part of the collective ‘effervescence’ so intense that one can sight devotees tearing up, spiritually lost at the sight of their deity, performing dandvat pranam on the road, and calling out to Baba ji in a unique collective rhythm.

In the offline, one experiences the aarti through her senses – the sight of the deity or darshan, the smell of the dhoop and diyas, the sound of the claps, singing, dancing and bowing down, touch of the deity’s feet, and the taste of the prasadam at the end of the aarti. At the same time, a devotee embodies the aarti through her mind. The devotee feels lost, calm and happy, senses the deity around, and forgets her pains and fears. The instance of visiting the temple and attending the aarti, therefore involves the whole of one’s being. It demands and expects the participation of mind and body alike and simultaneously. In totality, this creates a unique immersive energy and experience, that according to the devotees is exclusive to the offline.

The Online Temple

In contrast to the offline space of the temple, the online space is void of any crowd of devotees at the temple. One just needs to have access to a gadget- laptop/tablet/phone capable of surfing YouTube, and type ‘Shirdi Sai Baba Mandir Sec-07, Rohini’ that will pop up on the temple’s YouTube Channel. Throughout the day, the mandir live streams Sai Baba. One can see the elevated platform where Sai Baba rests. Unlike the ancient establishment of the physical temple and the uncountable devotees that visit the temple every day, the YouTube channel was created in 2022. The channel is the medium through which the temple live-streams Sai Baba’s darshan. The channel has 2.28k subscribers, 1k videos, and 436,574 views (on 31st May 2024) which has increased to 2.89k subscribers, 1.4k videos and 665,042 views (on 30th November 2024). One can observe a rising trend in the user insights of the mandir’s YouTube channel indicating an increasing use of the medium by more devotees.

Figure 2: The YouTube Channel Homepage

Apart from the offline space of an online devotee, one must also note that there is an offline space for the ‘virtual’ site. There are two cameras installed in front of the Sai Baba murti for the live-stream, one of them is faced towards Babaji and the other is faced towards the Sai darbar. A small desktop computer set up is also placed at one corner of the Sai Darbar from where the Pandit and other temple officials can control and access the live stream.

A usual day of live-streaming Sai Baba consists of two continuous twelve-hour recordings for a day. The live stream apart from constantly showing Sai Baba’s murti for darshan, also live-streams the four daily aartis. The live watching during the time of daily aartis seems to increase in comparison to other times of the day, many of them constantly typing ‘’Om Sai Ram’ and ‘Jai Sai Ram’ on the live chat. An online devotee says,

“Usually hum aarti ke samay par koshish karte hai ki Baba ke darshan karle. Ab kaam par hote hai toh poora samay aarti mai bethna nahi ho paata, par apni haazri laga dete hai. Har Sunday, main poori aarti dekhne ke liye bethta hu. Meri preference hamesha shaam ki dhoop aarti attend karne ki hoti hai, par kyunki Sunday ko generally kahi family ke saath bahar jaane ka plan ban jaata hai toh din ki aarti dekh paata hu.” [Usually, we try to take Baba’s darshan during aarti. Because I am at work I am unable to sit for the whole aarti, but I do attend it for a while. Every Sunday I attend the whole aarti. My preference has always been to attend the evening aarti (dhoop aarti) but because of family plans, I am able to attend the morning aarti only].

Figure 3: Live Chats by devotees during Live-stream

A notable observation in the case is that the events are taking place exactly at the same time as they are happening offline. For instance, around twenty minutes before every aarti, a curtain is drawn between Sai Baba and the darbar. This pausing of Baba’s darshan is done because of the tradition of changing Baba’s clothes before every aarti. While pandits are getting Baba ready for aarti along with the other requirements, no one is allowed to take his darshan. This offline practice also translates into the online, as the placing of the camera is such that it also gets covered with the curtain and an online devotee is also not able to take Baba’s darshan. In a general presumption, one would assume that the live-watching, unlike the crowd of offline devotees, would go down as one cannot see Baba. But one is intrigued when the live-watching keeps on increasing during such time in anticipation of Baba’s darshan.

Apart from the aspect of darshan and embodiment, one also needs to look at the economics of operating online. While the temple has maintained a constant presence on YouTube since it first started, the journey has not been without challenges. The inability of the devotees to visit the temple during COVID-19 led to an extensive request to initiate an online presence for the temple. The pandits also elaborated on how the set-up for the YouTube channel (cameras, desktop, technological know-how) was donated and handled by the devotees. The pandits also told how they learnt to operate YouTube and are now generating some revenue through the same.

Thus, one can assertively conclude that the online comes from the offline, as to be online, requires efforts in the offline. The practice of religion online, aarti in this case, also involves an added economic and technological factor. Moreover, the notion of darshan remains almost similar offline and online while the aspect of embodiment undergoes a restriction. The sensorial experience of the religion is more elaborate in the offline realm than in its online counterpart. But that does not infer the disembodiment of online aarti.

Conclusion

In this article, I explored a novel way of ‘doing’ religion, through the use of YouTube. While a lot of devotees do not consider any medium of doing religion ‘bad’, some seem more accepting of one medium of religious performance over the other. At one level of inquiry, one can situate the differences between the online and the offline, but a deeper understanding reveals some similarities between the two as well. The offline and online do not form rigid boundaries. They form a continuum, where one emanates from and impacts the other in some way.

A lot of devotees miss the offline aarti experience. The primary issues related to the practice of religion online are the violations of spatial and mental purity (Karapanagoitis, 2020). Violations related to spatial purity contend that the gadget that acts as the medium to attend the online aarti is not pure as it is also used for other mundane works such as mailing, chatting with friends over social media sites, watching movies, web series and even pornographic literature, and being bombarded with a variety of advertisements. On the other hand, the mandir is a place isolated for the sole purpose of praying. According to Pasulka, in Virtual Religion: Popular Culture and the Digital World, “sacred spaces are physical spaces set apart from ordinary life for religious rituals, ceremonies, or events that are often marked by a hierophany, or an appearance of the sacred.” This profanity of the spatial of the online is also linked to the violation of mental purity. The central element of performing aarti and seeking darshan is the purity of the heart and the intention of the devotee. The devotee must immerse in the religious experience, forgetting about the worldliness around. The distraction inherent to the online space makes the immersive experience challenging. The devotees, thus actively engage in brainstorming innovative methods to negotiate the validity of the online relying on solutions such as performing digital shuddhikaran, cleaning the gadget internally by closing all the tabs and windows, creating a special space for the gadget for the performance of religion or attending the aarti. Feeling Rules (Horschild, 1983), indicates the expected emotional response in particular situations and the way to display the same. The devotees, during an aarti, are expected to be distraction-free in a calm environment, with their hands folded and eyes closed. They should only chant Baba’s name or sing the aarti along. They are expected to feel immersed in devotion. These expectations are inherently present during an aarti offline, but difficult to account for in the online environments.

In the online space, religious identities, ideas, beliefs, and practices are constructed through communities. “Religious communities online effectively function as a networked community, which are groups of fluid social relationships that are influenced by the evolving culture and needs of individuals and groups.” (2022: 139) The enmeshing and merging of online and offline worlds creates novel ways of practising the sacred. As Campbell and Bellar term it, ‘onlife reality’ is a blend of traditional offline and novel online ways of religion. This creates a multisite reality, as the interconnected web of online and offline provides new definitions of genuine and authentic. Through this revolution of religion online, new structures of authority emerge, and traditional authority negotiates to find relevance in the new reality. The traditional authority can either support the new authority or alter itself to become relevant online.  To sum up, online aarti lacks the energetic sensorium of the offline, while offline aarti lacks the quiescent and accessibility of the online.

References

Campbell, H. A. (2013). Introduction: The Rise of the Study of Digital Religion. In H. A. Campbell, Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (pp. 01-22). Routledge.

Campbell, H. A., & Altenhofen, B. (2016). Methodological Challenges, Innovations and Growing Pains in Digital Religion Research. In S. Cheruvallil-Contractor & S. Shakkour, Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion (pp. 1-13). Bloomsbury Academic.

Lazar, Y. (2018). Networked Devotion: Hindu Adoption of Digital Media [Doctoral dissertation, Duke University].

Pasulka, D. W. (2016). Virtual Religion: Popular Culture and the Digital World. In MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks (Ed.).

Rigopoulos, Antonio (1993) The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi. State University of New York Press, Albany.

Scheifinger, H. (2008). Researching Religion on the WWW: Identifying an Object of Study for Hinduism. Methodological Innovations Online. 2(3): 30-49.  

Shajahan, D. B. (2020). Prayer as Performance and Its Rendition Through Online Spaces.

Williams, D. (2012). Shirdi Sai Baba Online: Devotion in Cyberspace. University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Zeiler, X. (2020). Introduction: Digital Hinduism: Studying Hinduism at the Intersections of Digital Media and Culture. In X. Zeiler, Digital Hinduism (pp. 1-10). Routledge.

***

Devanshi Goswami has completed her post-graduation in Sociology from Dr B R Ambedkar University, Delhi.