Recognizing Sevā: A Case Study of BAPS Sevā and the Legal Recognition of Hindu Religious Work

Abstract

Religious freedom in the United States is based upon not just formal protection, but also upon whether the law can distinguish between the ways religious life is practiced. That is especially difficult for a tradition whose practice is more embodied, service-oriented, materialized and enacted than the legal categories of the secular modern state have been built to distinguish. This thesis investigates this challenge via the BAPS model of sevā, a type of Hindu religious work in which one understands the nature of service as simultaneously productive labor, communal obligation, spiritual discipline and devotion to God, guru, mandir, devotees and society.To establish why such an understanding of sevā creates a legal dilemma, the thesis begins by asking how BAPS views sevā and how such a view has operated among various types of sevā. The thesis will next compare the devotional grammar used by BAPS to classify sevā to those used by U.S. law to evaluate labor, volunteering and religious exercise. The methodology employed by the thesis includes both legal-doctrinal analysis and longitudinal qualitative content analysis of the Swaminarayan Bliss archives collected from 2008-2025 along with relevant doctrinal texts and other related organizational documents. First, the thesis establishes that BAPS views sevā as devotional labor with spiritual significance; second, it demonstrates that such devotional classification applies to sevā across a broad spectrum of activities including manual labor, creation of sacred infrastructure, technical services, digital products, etc., all of which are directed toward the public good under the guidance of gurus. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that there is the greatest legal conflict not where sevā is most obviously religious, but rather where it is simultaneously both most outwardly work-like and most inwardly devotional.Therefore, the thesis concludes that while U.S. legal categories may provide sufficient opportunity to describe many of the outward characteristics of sevā (e.g., its structure, skills required, productivity, potential for coercion or abuse) they generally do not recognize the devotional grammar through which sevā is understood within the BAPS tradition. The implications of this conclusion include neither that religious organizations should be immune from inquiry nor that the use of devotional language should render invalid labor protections. Rather, what is necessary is that a legally pluralistic society must develop greater capacity to recognize bona fide devotional labor while continuing to protect against coercion, dangerous working conditions, hidden remuneration and exploitation. In addition to developing new capacities for identifying bona fide devotional labor, the BAPS case also illustrates that as religious diversity increases in the United States, so too must law learn to perceive religion as it exists.