On July 4, 2010, during the inauguration of the BAPS Swaminarayan Research Institute in New Delhi, Pramukh Swami Maharaj expressed his wish to publish a periodic academic journal. He envisioned that it would provide intellectuals studying the teachings of the sampradāya and Indian thought with the opportunity to present their research to a broad scholastic audience. He also added that it would serve as a forum that encourages intellectual and scholarly investigations in a wide range of topics and facilitate quality yet appreciative interdisciplinary, interfaith, and inter-cultural dialogue. Mahant Swami Maharaj, the present guru of BAPS, fulfilled Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s wishes by inspiring the publication of this journal.
By Mahant Swami Maharaj’s blessings, the BAPS Swaminarayan Research Journal positions its values, goals, and directives within the intellectual pursuits of its research institutes. Published from the BAPS Swaminarayan Research Institute at Swaminarayan Akshardham, New Delhi, this journal is a collective venture of all scholarly institutes, endeavors, and interests of BAPS in both in India and abroad.
The journal intends to publish the most insightful, profound, practical, and ground-breaking scholarship concerning a wide variety of discipline-specific learning. In addition to scholarship on the tradition’s own teachings, texts, and history, the journal’s focus of investigation will include everything from music to poetry, creative writing, visual arts, architecture, agriculture, performing arts, philosophy, Sanskrit, Indian vernacular languages, sacred texts, philology, linguistics, Indian darśanas, management, history (including Indian, art, and cultural history), medicine, computer technology, print and electronic publishing, foreign languages, cinematography, and even culinary studies as they pertain to the Svāminārāyaṇa tradition and Indian thought.
