COVID-19 First Responders: The Gayatri Pariwar and the Immune Ritual Body

Abstract

The following article investigates one North Indian new religious movement’s initial reactions to the onset of COVID-19. The Gayatri Pariwar is an organization popular in Uttar Pradesh, India, and its members believe it is their duty to save the world through a regime of virtuous lifestyle practices, beginning with the reformation of the self. Between mid-March and May 2020, the Gayatri Pariwar responded to the pandemic in three distinctive ways: it folded COVID-19 into the organization’s longstanding eschatological project, pursued ritual practices understood to provide immunity against moral and viral contagion, and insisted upon an ethic of caregiving meant to include society at large in their redemptive mission. This article analyzes the Gayatri Pariwar’s COVID-19–related YouTube video alongside ethnographic data to demonstrate how the Gayatri Pariwar used the viral pandemic as an occasion to reiterate and pursue its identity as a global moral custodian.