Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, ...this is hardly the case in today's India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this "State-Temple-Corporate Complex," she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. According to this new logic, India's rapid economic growth is attributable to a special "Hindu mind," and it is what separates the nation's Hindu population from Muslims and others deemed to be "anti-modern." As a result, Hindu institutions are replacing public ones, and the Hindu "revival" itself has become big business, a major source of capital accumulation. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world's second-most populous country.
El presente artículo tiene por objetivo estudiar las adaptaciones y representaciones desde las cuales cuatro familias inmigrantes, provenientes de diversas regiones de India y establecidas en Tijuana ...(México), recrean su práctica religiosa. Luego de pertenecer a un contexto donde el hinduismo es mayoritario, al migrar a México su práctica religiosa se vuelve minoritaria. Tal circunstancia permite identificar las negociaciones entre la materialidad y su relación con la espiritualidad por parte del propio creyente, pues, sin la intervención de una autoridad religiosa y ante la falta de templos tradicionales en el lugar de llegada, las familias recrean los rituales en casa. Siguiendo la orientación metodológica de la religiosidad vivida, se partió del análisis de la materialidad presente en sus altares domésticos y, así, fue posible estudiar los procesos de adaptación (cambios y permanencias) que tienen lugar al trasladar su vida cotidiana desde India a México, específicamente a la frontera entre Tijuana y San Diego. Además, se pudieron encontrar las emociones y significados que los individuos asocian a los elementos locales, con los cuales continúan su práctica religiosa en un país extranjero. Como resultado, las recreaciones mediante altares domésticos permiten identificar los elementos que cada individuo valora para su propia práctica religiosa. Así, el presente artículo reflexiona sobre la práctica del hinduismo en Tijuana, desde una perspectiva centrada en los propios creyentes, en un contexto de autonomía religiosa como consecuencia de la migración.
Behind the euphoric narrative of India as an emerging world power lies a complex and evolving relationship between science and religion. Evoking the rich mythology of comingled worlds where humans, ...animals, and gods transform each other and ancient history, Banu Subramaniam demonstrates how Hindu nationalism sutures an ideal past to technologies of the present to make bold claims about the Vedic Sciences and the scientific Vedas. Moving beyond a critique of India's emerging bionationalism, this book explores the generative possibility of myth and story, interweaving compelling new stories into a rich analysis that animates alternative imaginaries and "other" worlds of possibilities.
How did ‘Vedic man’ think about the destiny of man after death and related ethical issues? That heaven was the abode of the gods was undisputed, but was it also accessible to man in his pursuit of ...immortality? Was there a realm of the deceased or a hell? What terms were used to indicate these ‘yonder worlds’? What is their location in the cosmos and which cosmographic classifications are at the root of these concepts? The articles by Henk Bodewitz collected in this volume, published over a period of 45 years, between 1969 and 2013, deal with these issues on the basis of a systematic philological study of early Vedic texts, from the Ṛgveda to various Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇykas and Upaniṣads.
Noted for their haunting melodies and enigmatic lyrics, Bauls have been portrayed as spiritually enlightened troubadours traveling around the countryside in West Bengal in India and in Bangladesh.
As ...emblems of Bengali culture, Bauls have long been a subject of scholarly debates which center on their esoteric practices, and middle class imaginaries of the category Baul. Adding to this literature, the intimate ethnography presented in this book recounts the life stories of members from a single family, shining light on their past and present tribulations bound up with being poor and of a lowly caste. It shows that taking up the Baul path is a means of softening the stigma of their lower caste identity in that religious practice, where women play a key role, renders the body pure. The path is also a source of monetary income in that begging is considered part of their vocation. For women, the Baul path has the added implication of lessening constraints of gender. While the book describes a family of singers, it also portrays the wider society in which they live, showing how their lives connect and interlace with other villagers, a theme not previously explored in literature on Bauls.
A novel approach to the study of women, the body and religion, this book will be of interest to undergraduates and graduates in the field of the anthropology. In addition, it will appeal to students of everyday religious lives as experienced by the poor, through case studies in South Asia. The book provides further evidence that renunciation in South Asia is not a uniform path, despite claims to the contrary. There is also a special interest in Bauls among those familiar with the Bengali speaking region. While this book speaks to that interest, its wider appeal lies in the light it sheds on religion, the body, life histories, and poverty.
Sustaining a Hindu universe at an everyday life level requires an extraordinary range of religious specialists and ritual paraphernalia. At the level of practice, devotional Hinduism is an embodied ...religion and grounded in a materiality, that makes the presence of specific physical objects (which when used in worship also carry immense ritual and symbolic load) an indispensable part of its religious practices.
Traditionally, both services and objects required for worship were provided and produced by occupational communities. The almost sacred connection between caste groups and occupation/profession has been clearly severed in many diasporic locations, but importantly in India itself. As such, skills and expertise required for producing an array of physical objects in order to support Hindu worship have been taken over by clusters of individuals with no traditional, historical connection with caste-related knowledge. Both the transference and disconnect just noted have been crucial for the ultimate commodification of objects used in the act of Hindu worship, and the emergence of an analogous commercial industry as a result. These developments condense highly complex processes that need careful conceptual explication, a task that is exciting and carries enormous potential for theoretical reflections in key fields of study.
Using the lens of ‘visuality’ and ‘materiality,’ Sinha offers insights into the everyday material religious lives of Hindus as they strive to sustain theistic, devotional Hinduism in diasporic locations--particularly Singapore, Malaysia, and Tamilnadu--where religious objects have become commodified.
Vineeta Sinha is Associate Professor and teaches at the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. She obtained her M.A and Ph.D in Anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of A New God in the Diaspora? Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore, (Singapore University Press & Nordic Institute of Asian Studeis 2005).
1. Setting the Scene: The Scope of Research 2. Mapping Spaces and Objects: Disapora Hinduism and Prayer Items 3. Visualising Divinity: Statues, Paintings & Photographs 4. Homes for Gods: Prayer Altars for Family Shrines 5. Flowers for Sale: Flowers for Worship 6. Sustaining Festival Hinduism: Deepavali and Tai Pucam 7. Spirituality and Commerce: Theorising the Complex Ties
During the height of Muslim power in South Asia, Muslim nobles of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) patronized the translation of a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language, including ...the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and numerous other works. In Translating Wisdom, Shankar Nair reconstructs the intellectual processes that underlay these translations, traversing an exceptional linguistic scope including Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian materials. Using the 1597 Persian rendition of the Sanskrit Yoga Vāsiṣṭha as a case study, Nair traces the intellectual exchanges by which teams of Muslim and Hindu translators, working collaboratively and drawing upon their respective religio-philosophical traditions, crafted a novel lexicon with which to express Hindu philosophical wisdom in an Islamic Persian idiom. How did these translators find a vocabulary through which to convey Hindu, Sanskrit articulations of God, conceptions of salvation and the afterlife, Hindu ritual notions, etc., in Islamic Persian terms? How did these two communities of scholars devise a shared language with which to communicate and to render one another’s religious and philosophical views mutually comprehensible? Translating Wisdom illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars found the words and the means to put their traditions into conversation with one another, achieving a nuanced inter-religious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past, but also its present.
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