Swaminarayan Sampraday - Breakaway Groups and Disputes

Breakaway Groups and Disputes

Decades after Swaminarayan's death, several people claiming differences in philosophy left the original movement and established their own groups. Swaminarayan Gadi is a prominent one.

In 1906, the original movement suffered its greatest schism when a prominent ascetic named Shastri Yagnapurushdas left the Vadtal Gadi to form his own institution, Bochasan Swaminarayan Sanstha, claiming Gunatitanand Swami was the rightful successor to Swaminarayan. He was legally excommunicated from the Vadtal Gadi. The organisation he formed is now known as Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS.

Muktajivandas Swami left the Ahmedabad Gadi to form the Swaminarayan Maninagar Gadi Sansthan in the 1940s, claiming Gopalanand Swami was the spiritual successor to Swaminarayan.

Within the tradition, there have been territorial disputes over the Vadtal temple and other assets since the conflict of 1902. The conflict between the Dev faction, led by ascetics, that maintains that the temple is nobody’s ancestral property and the Acharya faction, led by the former acharya of Vadtal, has seen some tensions in recent years. In May 2001, the conflict escalated when the schismatic faction brought in Acharya Maharajshree Tejendraprasad Pande from Ahmedabad for a diksa ceremony instead of Acharya Maharajshree Ajendraprasad Pande, the then acharya at Vadtal. The Government of India intervened by setting up an arbitration panel in June 2001. A settlement was brokered by a panel between the two factions in June 2002, but the Dev fraction led by Nautam Swami (mahant of the Vadtal temple) refused to cooperate, leading to an intensification of the dispute. A number of sadhus of this fraction were subsequently exposed in a sex scandal only three months after another five sadhus were sentenced to death for murdering their guru in the Vadtal branch.