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The Greater India Experiment
The assertion that even institutions often viewed as abhorrent should be dispassionately understood motivates Arkotong Longkumer's pathbreaking ethnography of the Sangh Parivar, a family of organizations comprising the Hindu right. The Greater India Experiment counters the urge to explain away their ideas and actions as inconsequential by demonstrating their efforts to influence local politics and culture in Northeast India. Longkumer constructs a comprehensive understanding of Hindutva, an idea central to the establishment of a Hindu nation-state, by focusing on the Sangh Parivar's engagement with indigenous peoples in a region that has long resisted the "idea of India." Contextualizing their activities as a Hindutva "experiment" within the broader Indian political and cultural landscape, he ultimately paints a unique picture of the country today.
Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging
Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging focuses on the Heraka, a religious reform movement, and its impact on the Zeme, a Naga tribe, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. Drawing upon critical studies of 'religion', cultural/ethnic identity, and nationalism, archival research in both India and Britain, and fieldwork in Assam, the book initiates new grounds for understanding the evolving notions of 'reform' and 'identity' in the emergence of a Heraka 'religion'. Arkotong Longkumer argues that 'reform' and 'identity' are dynamically inter-related and linked to the revitalisation and negotiation of both 'tradition' legitimising indigeneity, and 'change' legitimising reform. The results have deepened, yet challenged, not only prevailing views of the Western construction of the category 'religion' but also understandings of how marginalised communities use collective historical imagination to inspire self-identification through the discourse of religion. In conclusion, this book argues for a re-evaluation of the way in which multi-religious traditions interact to reshape identities and belongings.
Neo-Hindutva
Neo-Hindutva explores the recent proliferation and evolution of Hindu nationalism – the assertive majoritarian, right-wing ideology that is transforming contemporary India. This volume develops and expands on the idea of ‘neo-Hindutva’ –– Hindu nationalist ideology which is evolving and shifting in new, surprising, and significant ways, requiring a reassessment and reframing of prevailing understandings. The contributors identify and explain the ways in which Hindu nationalism increasingly permeates into new spaces: organisational, territorial, conceptual, rhetorical. The scope of the chapters reflect the diversity of contemporary Hindutva – both in India and beyond – which app...
Indigenous Religion(s)
What counts as 'indigenous religion' in today ́s world? Who claims this category? What are the processes through which local entities become recognisable as 'religious' and 'indigenous'? How is all of this connected to struggles for power, rights and sovereignty? This book sheds light on the contemporary lives of indigenous religion(s), through case studies from Sápmi, Nagaland, Talamanca, Hawai`i, and Gujarat, and through a shared focus on translations, performances, mediation and sovereignty. It builds on long term case-studies and on the collaborative comparison of a long-term project, including shared fieldwork. At the center of its concerns are translations between a globalising discourse (indigenous religion in the singular) and distinct local traditions (indigenous religions in the plural). With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book is a must read for students and researchers in indigenous religions, including those in related fields such as religious studies and social anthropology.
Landscape, Culture and Belonging
This volume is an important contribution to the new literature on frontier studies and the historiography of Northeast India.
Saffron Republic
Approaches contemporary Hindutva as an example of a democratic authoritarianism or an authoritarian populism.
The New BJP
This book examines how the BJP became the world’s largest political party. It goes beyond the usual narrative of the party’s Hindutva politics to explain how, under Narendra Modi, the party reshaped the Indian polity using its own brand of social engineering. According to the findings of this book, this reconstruction was cleverly powered by new caste coalitions, the claim of a new welfare state that focused on marginalised social groups and the making of a women-voter base. Based on data from three unique indices—the Mehta–Singh Social Index, which studies the caste composition of Indian political parties; the Narad Index, which calculates communication patterns across topics and au...
The Resilience of Indigenous Religion
This book is a sociological study of the resilience of Tingkao Ragwang Chapriak – one of the indigenous religions of the Rongmei people of Manipur. It examines the underlying factors contributing towards the ability of the adherents of Tingkao Ragwang Chapriak to continue with their religion despite stigmatisation, conversion and persecution by sections of Christians. This book reflects the contemporary relevance of the legacies of the religious movements under Jadonang Malangmei and Rani Gaidinliu. Thus, the book also examines the continuity between the past and the present religious movements with complex underlying factors contributing to the resilience of an indigenous religion. The Ro...
Asian Migrants and Religious Experience
Typically, scholars approach migrants' religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious experiences of migrants as a transformative force capable of refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. These essays explore migrants' motivations in support of an argument that to travel inspires a search for new meaning in religion.
Wonder in South Asia
The experience of wonder—encompassing awe, bewilderment, curiosity, excitement, fear, dread, mystery, perplexity, reverence, surprise, and supplication—and the ineffable quality of that which is wondrous have been entwined in religion and human experience. Yet strangely, wonder in non-western societies, including South Asia, has rarely been acknowledged or understood. This groundbreaking volume brings together historians and ethnographers of South Asia, including leading and emerging scholars, to consider the place and meaning of wonder in such varied joyful, tense, and creative sites and moments as Sufi music performances in Gujarat, Tamil graveyard processions, trans women's charitable practices, Kipling's Orientalist tales, village Kuchipudi dance performances, and Rajasthani healing shrines. Offering a synthetic and scholarly reading of wonder that speaks to the political, aesthetic, and ethical worlds of South Asia, these essays redefine the nature and meaning of wonder and its worlds. Taken together, they provide an invaluable research tool for those in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context, and South Asian religions in particular.
