Indian gurus expand audience with TV

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"Spirituality was always part of the Indian psyche, but now it has just
found a new vehicle: 24-hour television," said Madhav Kant Mishra, executive
director of the 7-month-old Sadhna religious channel. "Indians had started
disbelieving their own traditional knowledge systems. The TV channels aim to
re-establish that system with modern analysis and in a modern context." The
audience for such programs cuts across social classes in India, where cable
television costs as little as $1.50 a month, and cable and satellite
services reach an estimated 42 million of 191 million households nationwide.
By all accounts, however, some of the most ardent viewers are educated
middle-class and wealthy Indians, who tend to live in larger towns and
cities and rely on their daily dose of Hindu folk wisdom, prayers and
counseling as a powerful antidote to urban angst. "Indian religions are very
locality-specific," said Ashis Nandy, one of India's leading social
scientists. "You have family priests, family gurus, personal gods, village
gods and goddesses - this is what living Hinduism is - and that is truly in
decline in urban areas. Therefore you begin to search for substitutes."
Source:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001816123_tvgurus16.html