Old Divine in the New Bottle: ICTD Community also has to Follow Spiritual Gurus!

Religion as a belief system is a crucial part of India's culture. World Values Survey (2010-14) studied religiosity in various countries of the world and reported that religion is ‘very important’ or ‘rather important’ for more than 90% of Indian respondents. In particular, 80% of its population follow Hinduism. Auguste Comte sees religion as a crucial player in stabilizing society. However, in his work, “law of the three stages of the human mind,” he explains how the human mind evolves from interpreting the world through a religious perspective into understanding every phenomenon through a positivist approach. According to Comte, the chances of the human mind rejecting religious ideas increase when it transforms into the positivist stage. But, spiritual organisations, religious organisations in a new veil, have challenged Comte's theory by employing a positivist approach to validate religious ideas. As Hinduism was propagated as a way of life more than as a religion, its principles comfortably penetrated the political, economical and social life of people. The way recent spiritual organisations have expanded is not very different from Hinduism's way of propagation. Once a person gets influenced by a spiritual leader, the agency which the leader exerts on the devotee is very high. Spiritual gurus leverage this opportunity quite well and have their sermons centred not just around spirituality but also on politics, social norms and economic practices. Considering the huge follower base which each of these gurus has online and offline, it is essential to study them holistically to comprehend the influence they have on people's political, economic and social decisions.

For instance, according to Sri Sri, if 10% of the wealth earned by an individual is not spent on social service or spiritual cause, that has to be considered as impure money. He mentions in many of his speeches that, “sadhana (spiritual practice), Seva (social service) and Satsang (singing devotional songs with a group of people) are the way to enlightenment.” Apart from various social welfare programs that create an opportunity for their followers to serve society, the art of living is having a separate wing for resolving armed conflict around the world. Hence, his devotees spend their money and energy on various welfare-oriented projects of the organization. Similarly, Sadhguru participates in international events such as the World Economic Forum and advocates for inclusive economic development. Also, he shares his opinion on key social and political issues on a regular basis through his blogs, posts and videos. His video on Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA) was trending on social media and hashtags both supporting and opposing his views flooded the space. No wonder, the Prime Minister had retweeted Sadhguru’s tweet which supported BJP’s move from a spiritual dimension. Further, after the release of such videos, the followers even changed their display picture in support of CAA to express solidarity.

The Human Computer Interface(HCI) and Information and Communication Technology for Development(ICTD) literature on the techno-spiritual developments and their design, social, and policy implications largely present their arguments and findings from a western context. However, of our various inferences from studying the techno-spiritual practices in the global south, we broadly draw two significant design implications, one for post-colonial computing and the other for ubiquitous computing.

First, spiritual masters don’t restrict themselves to only offering courses on individual development and undertaking welfare projects, they take an active interest in the socio-political issues that affect society. More importantly, they use social media platforms to share their "spiritual" perspectives on such issues. The recognition they receive, through "likes", "favourites", and "retweets", on these online platforms shows a glimpse of the overall support they receive from their followers. They use scientific jargon and articulate in modern parlance that is sufficient to convince a large proportion of contemporary minds of the "scientific-ness" of seemingly unscientific or pseudoscientific practices. To illustrate, one of our respondents mentioned that he is ready to take the leap of believing any new claims of his guru that appears unscientific in the beginning, since his guru has convinced him of the scientific validity of 10 different claims his guru made in diverse situations in the past. He further feels that he should develop the patience to accept his guru's claims that are typically beyond his limited logical mind in the beginning. This persuasive trait of spiritual masters to influence the perspectives of individuals or societies across geographical locations and offer a new worldview serves as an explanation for the rise of a new axial age. Here these masters emerge as "the other" new sources of power who have the potential to challenge existing ideological hegemony through their charisma and the rapport they develop with their adherents. Further, associates of various spiritual organizations have not reduced their activities to the tech use or non-use binary. Based on their spiritual teachings, they have come up with their own ways of using and not using technology, as rightly framed by Derthick in her paper Exploring Meditation and Technology to Problematize the Use or Non-use Binary. For instance, the digital detoxification program offered by various Spirituality Based Organisations (SBOs) encourages their participants to purposefully stay away from technology consciously for a particular period of time. This approach to technology makes spiritual organizations as sites for unique techno-cultural production which could deepen our understanding of the post-colonial designing for diverse users.

Second, technology has diffused into the functions and practices of SBOs which are unique venues for research and deployment of ubiquitous computing. They have an exclusive IT team which is in a constant hunt for new technologies to improve the efficiency of their diverse operations from spiritual classes for knowledge propagation to their day-to-day administration and management tasks. We observed that spiritual organizations are digitizing a wide range of tasks right from the security screening at their entrances to using CCTV for surveillance and are even shifting from in-person to online video spiritual classes. Further, we observed that their adherents are using Alexa, spiritual apps, WhatsApp groups, Twitter feeds, and Facebook posts to constantly get updates from their spiritual masters; printed books have become obsolete with the advent of these ready-to-access information sources. More interestingly, we observed from the web articles and blogs of these spiritual masters that they argued for automating all the repetitive and unproductive human tasks so that humans can direct their energy on evolving human-consciousness. In a similar vein, an event organizer, who spends four months every year in organizing various events for their spiritual organization, reported that there are numerous functions of his team that require automation and wondered why the tech-community has not yet seized this opportunity. 

Exploring this under-researched domain might not just help designers in building faith-based systems but also policymakers for understanding behavioural change from a different perspective!