Introduction

This chapter will discuss aspects of management and marketing within the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU), an Indian globalized new religious movement (NRM) established in 1936 in pre-Partition Hyderabad (now in the Sindh province of Pakistan). The founder, Lekhraj Kripalani, a middle-aged, pious and wealthy jewellery merchant received dramatic yet contrasting visions of the supreme beauty of paradise and the destruction of the present world. He subsequently sold his half of the lucrative business and created a meditative community, initially called Om Mandli. He handed over his wealth and management of the community to a small group of young women followers, thus initiating a revolutionary spiritual path for women in the context of Hindu society (Ramsay 2017).

Students of the community call themselves BKs (Brahma Kumaris1) and, as part of their lifestyle of brahmacharya [seeking God realization through a virtuous life], practise celibacy and consume a ‘sattvic’ [‘pure’] lacto-vegetarian diet. These disciplines mirror Hindu Brahmin tradition, embodying a revolution in social identity within the dominant Hindu culture, as members are termed ‘Brahmins’ regardless of their caste origins. Despite its close adherence to the most ascetic forms of Indian religious practice, in the early 1970s the movement spread to Europe and Asia.