Noise and Other Frequencies of Life: A Study of Online Religious Congregations in India

The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a notable increase in online religious gatherings spanning various faiths worldwide. Against this backdrop, a modern religious community in India named Satsang, situated in the city of Deoghar, Jharkhand, has embraced the practice of what they call e-satsang or online satsang whereby the disciples participate in the collective rituals of sound and listening through online live streaming applications. Focusing on the case of e-satsang in Deoghar, the paper investigates how disciples of the Satsang community experience technical disturbances or jaantrik golojog in online meetings. Through an in-depth study of technical disturbance and noise in online satsang, the paper develops the concept of Noisification, which contends that noise is not a preexisting entity in the spiritual world of Satsang. Instead, noise is produced through practices of techno-spiritual disciplining, whereby disciples learn to discipline their environments by silencing the unwanted frequencies of life.

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