The Radhasoami Tradition: A Critical History of Guru Successorship

David Christopher Lane is a sociologist who has published extensively and critically on Sant Mat and Radhasoami successor movements, including a separate study of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar (14691) already live in this atlas. This 1992 monograph, published in the Garland Reference Library of Social Science's Sects and Cults in America series, is his fullest treatment of the wider Radhasoami tradition itself: a critical history of the schisms in guru succession that followed Shiv Dayal Singh's death, tracing the separate lineages that formed at Agra, Beas, Tarn Taran, Hoshiarpur and Delhi. Lane writes as a scholar with direct research access to Radhasoami communities rather than as an adherent, and later academic work on the tradition, including Mark Juergensmeyer's Radhasoami Reality, treats his account of the succession disputes as a standard reference. Its detailed organizational history predates any single lineage's most recent decades, so current membership and leadership should be checked against newer sources where the atlas holds any.