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Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia
The Muslim shrine is at the crossroad of many processes involving society and culture. It is the place where a saint – often a Sufi - is buried, and it works as a main social factor, with the power of integrating or rejecting people and groups, and as a mirror reflecting the intricacies of a society. The book discusses the role of popular Islam in structuring individual and collective identities in contemporary South Asia. It identifies similarities and differences between the worship of saints and the pattern of religious attendance to tombs and mausoleums in South Asian Sufism and Shi`ism. Inspired by new advances in the field of ritual and pilgrimage studies, the book demonstrates that ...
Sufi Women of South Asia
In Sufi Women of South Asia. Veiled Friends of God, the first biographical compendium of hundred and forty-one women, from the eleventh to the twentieth century, Tahera Aftab fills a serious gap in the existing scholarship regarding the historical presence of women in Islam and brings women to the centre of the expanding literature on Sufism. The book’s translated excerpts from the original Farsi and Urdu sources that were never put together create a much-needed English-language source base on Sufism and Muslim women. The book questions the spurious religious and cultural traditions that patronise gender inequalities in Muslim societies and convincingly proves that these pious women were exemplars of Islamic piety who as true spiritual masters avoided its public display.
The Pakistan Paradox
The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.
New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies
Although there has been a massive increase in the volume of pilgrimage research and publications, traditional Anglophone scholarship has been dominated by research in Western Europe and North America. In their previous edited volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (Routledge, 2015), Albera and Eade sought to expand the theoretical, disciplinary and geographical perspectives of Anglophone pilgrimage studies. This new collection of essays builds on this earlier work by moving away from Eurasia and focusing on areas of the world where non-Christian pilgrimages abound. Individual chapters examine the practice of ziyarat in the Maghreb and South Asia, Hindu pilgrimage in India a...
India Secularism in Decline a Narrative
The title of the book is slightly deceptive in that for once it does not depict the Hindu as an arch villain in the attempts to destroy the Universal Panacea for the Indians that is Secularism. In fact the book's objective is to present what the Hindu perceives as injustice meted out to himself and his co-religionists in the skewed application of Secularism which involves the idea of New Poulism or Appeasement of the minorities. The objective again is to target the younger generation, the student audience and to present to them the other side of the story a variation of political history from the Hindu perspective as also Hindu grievances. The intent is certainly not to indoctrinate this seg...
Durga's Mosque
Stephen Headley's new book explores contemporary religious change in the Surakarta region of Central Java. In his analysis of the Durga ritual complex, the author sheds light on one of the most unusual court traditions to have survived in an era of deepening Islamisation.
Ethics in Governance in India
Governance and ethics are intertwined. A government functions within certain broad moral and ethical parameters, integrally linked with the sociological foundation of the polity in which it is articulated. The importance of ethics in governance has acquired a significant place in contemporary theoretical discussion. This book situates ethics in governance in India in the national frame and incorporates the context of globalization, allowing for the increasing importance of non-state global actors in national decision making. The author argues that a lack of ethics quickly turns into corruption and leads to governmental efforts to deal with it. He proposes that ethics are a set of standards that a society places on itself to articulate its responses to societal needs, and discusses the efforts of the Indian government at eradicating corruption and its failure. A theoretical approach to the issues of ethics in governance and corruption, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of Asian Politics, in particular Indian politics, and political philosophy.
Colonial and Post-Colonial Identity Politics in South Asia
Colonial and Post-Colonial Identity Politics in South Asia analyses the colonial and post-colonial documentation and caste classification among Muslims in India, demonstrating that religion negotiated with regional social customs and local social practices while at the same time fostering a shared religious belief. The central question addressed in this book is how different castes assert their identity for classification and how castes encountered colonial documentation. Identifying the colonial context of the documentation of castes among Muslims, and relying on colonial documentation in various census reports, gazetteers, government or police records, ethnographic studies, and travelogues...
Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East
In Sainthood in Fragile States, a wide range of social scientists explore the contested role of sainthood in the contemporary Middle East. By expanding the notion of sainthood to cover both the religious and secular ways of dealing with extraordinary events, people and things, the volume offers new insights into the way sainthood is embedded in various levels of everyday life, as well as national and international politics. The case studies highlight how fragility as a central aspect of sainthood is a productive force that often consolidates tales of the extraordinary, and is also the source of contesting social identities. Contributors include: Andreas Bandak, Mikkel Bille, Jürgen Frembgen, Sune Haugbolle, Angie Heo, Daniella Kuzmanovic, Edith Szanto, and Pnina Werbner.
Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya
Religion has long been a powerful cultural, social, and political force in the Himalaya. Increased economic and cultural flows, growth in tourism, and new forms of governance and media, however, have brought significant changes to the religious traditions of the region in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book presents detailed case studies of lived religion in the Himalaya in this context of rapid change to offer intra-regional perspectives on the ways in which lived religions are being re-configured or re-imagined. Based on original fieldwork, this book documents understudied forms of religion in the region and presents unique perspectives on the phenomenon and experience of religion, discussing why, when, and where practices, discourses, and the category of religion itself, are engaged by varying communities in the region. It yields fruitful insights into both the religious traditions and lived human experiences of Himalayan peoples in the modern era. Presenting new research and perspectives on the Himalayan region, this book should be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, and Modernity.
