This article examines responses to internal and destabilizing conflicts centred on questions of succession, leadership, and authority by taking the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission as an example of a prominent transnational, guru-inspired Hindu organization. Created or having taken their present form since the early 19th century, these transnational Hindu organizations have been shaped during a period when new legal requirements and expanding educational provision have affected understandings of the kind of organization needed to function effectively in India and beyond, including the roles of guru and swami that had already been augmented progressively by trusts and managing committees. These developments and the implications of some of the surrounding controversies point to significant changes in the nature, scope, authority, and, possibly, even the future contours of long-established roles such as those of guru and swami and of their relationships with devotees.
Gwilym Beckerlegge (Mon,) studied this question.