Religion Mysticism And Transcultural Entanglements In Modern South Asia

"This book offers a fresh approach to the study of religion in modern South Asia. It uses a series of case studies to explore the development of religious ideas and practices, giving students an understanding of the social, political and historical context. It looks at some familiar themes in the study of religion, such as deity, authoritative texts, myth, worship, teacher traditions and caste, and some of the key ways in which Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism in South Asia have been shaped in the modern period. The book points to the diversity of ways of looking at religious traditions and considers the impact of gender, politics, and the way religion itself is variously understood."--Publisher's description

This collection brings together case studies that cover a wide spectrum: from Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina traditions through reformist ventures such as the Brahmos, to issues in modern Islam and Judaism. The first part of the book explores idioms of self-fashioning in global platforms and religious congresses. The second part explicates the nature of movements of such ideas. Cumulatively, they offer fresh and invaluable insights into their histories in modern South Asia against the backdrop of, and in relation to, wider transcultural global flows. Contributors: Soumen Mukherjee, Toshio Akai, Jeffery D. Long, Arpita Mitra, Philip Goldberg, Ankur Barua, Oyndrila Sarkar, Madhuparna Roychowdhury, Navras J. Aafreedi, and Faridah Zaman.

"This is an incisive analysis of religious conflict in South Asia, which, the author contends, arises out of the weakness of political and state structures rather than the clash of civilizations"--

Sufism East and West, edited by Jamal Malik and Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh, investigates the redirection and dynamics of Sufism in the modern era, specifically from the perspective of cross-cultural exchange in the resonance spaces of “East” and “West.”

Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences. Moving away from canonical texts, established authorities, and received historiography, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological perspectives including philosophy, history, hermeneutics, migration and diaspora studies, ethnography, performance studies, lived religion approaches, and aesthetics. Reflecting a balance of theory and substantive content, the papers in this volume call into question key critical terms, challenge established frames of reference, and offer innovative and alternative interpretations of South Asian ways of knowing and being.

Focusing on boundaries, appropriations, and resistances involved in Western engagements with South Asian religions, this edited volume considers both the pre- and postcolonial period in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It pays particular attention to contemporary controversies surrounding the study of South Asian religions, including several scholars' reflection on the contentious reaction to their own work. Other chapters consider such issues as British colonial epistemologies, the relevance of Hegel for the study of South Asia, the canonization of Francis Xavier, feminist interpretations of the mother of the Buddha, and theological dispute among Muslims in Bangladesh and Pakistan. By using the themes of boundaries, appropriations and resistances, this work offers insight into the dynamics and diversity of Western approaches to South Asian religions, and the indigenous responses to them, that avoids simple active/passive binaries.

This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the chapters call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mystical bodily practices. This book goes further and considers the social engagements and entanglements of these spiritual leaders, not just on their own (narrowly denominational) terms, but in terms of their diverse, complex, rapidly evolving engagements with ‘society’ broadly conceived. The book explores and illuminates the significance of female gurus, gurus from the perspective of Islam, imbrications of guru-ship and slavery in pre-modern India, connections between gurus and power, governance and economic liberalization in modern and contemporary India, vexed questions of sexuality and guru-ship, gurus’ charitable endeavours, the cosmopolitanism of gurus in contexts of spiritual tourism, and the mediation of gurus via technologies of electronic communication. Bringing together internationally renowned scholars from religious studies, political science, history, sociology and anthropology, The Guru in South Asia provides exciting and original new insights into South Asian guru-ship. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.