What it is interesting to notice, comparing the information given by Sinha and Saraswati, is that the number of schools supported by Rāmānandīs has increased. Sinha and Saraswati claim that of 41 centres, there were only ’three Sanskrit pāṭhśālās [Sanskit schools for children] run by Rāmānandis and they are besides not very active’ (1978: 130). Among the 21 places I visited, however, nine had Sanskrit schools, and brahmacārīs were indeed their main occupants.
This probably resulted from an important change the sampraday went through in the early twentieth century: the officialization of the Rāmānandīs’ independence from Rāmānujīs. Before 1926, the Rāmānandī sampraday was recognized as part of the catuḥ sampradāys,26 and specifically of the Rāmānūjīsampraday.
It is said that Rāmānujīs used to treat Rāmānandis as inferiors because they did not follow commensality rules and they had no specific rules for the recruitment of sadhus, initiating even low-caste people.
Pandit Ramcaritrācārya writes that many Rāmānandis were not educated, which served as another reason why Rāmānujīs considered them inferior.
Before independence [from the Rāmānūjīsampradāy], Rāmānandis were considered as sādhāraṇ (simple or rough) Vaiṣṇavas, to such an extent that Rāmānujīs could employ them as gulāmīs (slaves) during the Kumbh Mela, where Rāmānandīs used to carry their palanquins. Moreover, the same Rāmānandīs considered Rāmānujīs to be their ācāryas, so that they had to show them respect. (Ramcaritrācārya 1971: 110, my translation)
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Svāmī Bhagavadācārya led a movement to declare the total independence of Rāmānandīs from the Rāmānūjī sampraday, which actually happened in 1926-27. This led to the creation of the title and office of Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya, which was given for the first time to Bhagavadācārya in 1977. The title of Jagadguru denotes the high value of a particular guru, as a world (agad) teacher, value that is based on a strong Brahmanical education. It seems that the number of ācāryas in the …