The Life, Teachings, and Global Religious Following of Indian Mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931-1990)

FAIN: FA-57168-13

Hugh Bayard Urban
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

I am requesting an NEH Fellowship in order to complete a book manuscript on the life, teachings and religious following of the controversial Indian guru known in his youth as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and in his later years simply as "Osho" (1931-1990). During the fellowship period, I will be engaged in ethnographic research at the Osho International Foundation in Pune and archival research at library collections in Pune, Mumbai, and New Delhi in India and in Antelope, Oregon, in the U.S. Arguably the first truly global guru of the twentieth century, Bhagwan Shree Ranjneesh, began his movement in India in the 1960s, then created an enormously wealthy and controversial spiritual center in Oregon in the 1980s, and then finally returned to India to establish a new, explicitly global spiritual resort in Pune that still thrives today. As such, the Osho movement offers unique insights into the broader transformations of religious ideas in the context of globalization and late capitalism.

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