Religious Pluralism

6

Religion and Cultural Pluralism ROWENA ROBINSON * & SURYA PRAKASH UPADHYAY

While this chapter must deal particularly with the period 2002–9, it is imperative to locate the trends in terms of what has gone before, in order for us to understand the kinds of shift s that have come about as well as why the literature takes particular turns. Th erefore, I begin by saying a little about notable frameworks in the sociology of religion and how these relate to ideas about cultural pluralism in India.

THE EARLY FRAMEWORKS

It is certainly true that the fi rst decades aft er Indian Independence saw a spurt of interest in the idea of religious and cultural pluralism, which as an ideology was considered essential for national unity. Th e unity in diversity formula signposted this interest. However, though the plural cultures of India—linguistic, religious, and regional—have always been recorded and recognized in literature, the sociology of religion of India has concentrated largely on Hinduism. Th is oft en led both to the reifi cation of Hinduism and the marginalization and neglect of non-Hindu groups and communities.

Th e modern social science discourse on religion in India had links with colonial frameworks. Indology was the father of the colonial scholarly discourses. For anthropology, fi eldwork—deriving from the school of Malinowski and inspired by the work generated in Africa—was the basis of the discipline. Th e ‘text’, that constant of Indological

*I would like to thank A. Neredimalli (at Hyderabad University), who gave me invaluable assistance with checking the Bibliography and making it consistent in style.

340 IDENTITY, COMMUNICATION, AND CULTURE IN INDIAN SOCIETY

knowledge was eschewed in favour of the ‘context’, the fi eld. One can perceive the merging of anthropological and Indological traditions in the early structural-functional approach and the folk–civilization continuum models used in the study of religion. Tribal and village community studies of a very long period (that had their separate and merged, complicated and intricate intellectual trajectories in African village studies, legal, and Indological discourses on India and Marxist writings) linked the empirical fi eld-based data (lists of castes and communities, deriving in turn from census constructions and roots) with the textual tradition, the ‘great’ and the ‘little’ traditions, the ‘civi-lizational’ and the ‘folk’, the ‘universal’, and the ‘parochial’.

Th e attempt was to search for the unity of the ‘East’, the principle by which the entire civilization was structured. Indology provided that principle in the twinning of caste and Hinduism. Caste became the major link bonding the little fi eld studies with the textual models; even the centrality that the village community got in the studies of the 1950s linked the village to the ‘great Sanskritic tradition’, though this does not mean that studies produced on popular Hindu deities, ritu-als, and festivals as a result were not useful (Dube 1955; Fuller 1992; Ghurye 1960; Pillay 1953). Th ey also provided ample evidence of the culturally plural character of the village little traditions.

By and large, however, India was Hindu and Hinduism was a caste (Inden 1990). Th e confl ation of India with Hinduism emerges in the work of a range of scholars, including Karve (1961), Ghurye (1969), and Srinivas (1952, 1969 [1955]). Ahmad (1972) argued that the use of the idea of the Great Tradition and Little Tradition precluded the analysis of Muslim culture and religion. It was diffi cult to understand Christianity or Islam with this model. Where was the great ‘Indian’ tradition to which these could be linked? A separate and parallel trend in the study of religion came from a few Marxist scholars. Notably, Kosambi (1962) and Chandra (1984), both Marxist historians, and Desai (1963), the Marxist sociologist, were the most prominent fi g-ures of this school.

From the fi eldwork- and context-centred tradition established in the 1950s in sociology and anthropology, the major shift came with the work of Dumont (1970) and Pocock (1957). Dumont saw the study of India as lying at the confl uence of Indology and sociology, and returned to the text as the source of indigenous categories of meaning. Th e notion of subjective meanings and of cosmologies had

RELIGION AND CULTURAL PLURALISM 341

entered the fi eld. Veena Das’ Structure and Cognition (1987) and Th e Word and the World (1986), Jain’s Text and Context (1976), Khare’s Th e Hindu Hearth and Home (1976), Madan’s Non-Renunciation (1987), Heesterman’s Th e Inner Confl ict of Tradition (1985), Pocock’s study of religious beliefs and practices in a Gujarat village, Fuller’s work on temple priests in Madurai, Parry’s Death in Banaras (1994), Eck’s work on the Hindu cosmos, Wadley’s work on Shakti (1975), and Ann and Daniel Gold’s works on the Hindu pilgrimage, all chart the course of the fi eld opening up. Fuller’s book Th e Camphor Flame summarizes some of these trends very well. Hindu cosmic thought and structure came to lie at the centre of studies in the sociology and anthropol-ogy of religion. Dumont’s writings had enormous infl uence on Indian scholarship on caste and religion, though several aspects of his work were critiqued (Das and Uberoi 1971; Madan 1971; Béteille 1979).

Th e Dumontian perspective gave centrality to an upper caste, essentialized version of Hinduism and treated it as synonymous with India. His work was highly infl uential and threw open the text/context debate. However, he privileged the text and cognitive mod-els derived from it. Further, the ‘India versus the West’ debate that Dumont launched opposed the two without any possibility of com-parative study. A historicized and grounded approach to the study of religion did not develop because India was the static land of religion, where power and the dynamics of change were immaterial. No sense emerged of the development of religious faith or practice. Hinduism was discussed as a mature, full-blown faith originating in a single (textual/Brahminic) source rather than embedded in social, material, and political contexts.

Th ere was little space in such a model to understand non-Hindu religions such as Christianity or Islam, for instance. Th ere was no great ‘Indian’ tradition to which these could be linked. As a result of established paradigms, when non-Hindu communities were stud-ied they oft en tended to be viewed in the fi rst instance through the categories employed for the study of Hinduism. Th us, in the initial stages of research into Muslim and other communities, one of the fi rst questions to be raised was: Is there caste in non-Hindu com-munities? (Ahmad 1973). Ahmad (1972) pioneered studies into the world of Muslim communities, and stated that greater attention must be paid to non-Hindu communities to build a comprehensive sociology of India.


Despite this initiative, the paradigms of debate did not at fi rst alter radically. Certain forms of ritual, such as life-crisis rituals, came in for a good deal of attention (Ahmad 1978), perhaps because they could be more easily captured by the conceptual category of ‘syncretism’. Th is perspective allowed for the idea that Islam (or Christianity) in India was somehow not quite authentic. It appeared that the most important feature of these religions was their syncretic character, marked in the fi rst instance by the ‘adoption’ of caste.

In fact, the concepts of ‘syncretism’ or the notion of ‘composite culture’ framed many discussions regarding the interaction between Hinduism and other religions and cultures. Syncretism as a concept seems particularly apt for the South Asian context, where everything appears so fl uid and easily transmissible (Daniel 1984; Dumont 1980; Trawick 1990). However, syncretism usually implies the harmonious interaction of diff erent religious traditions untouched by any foul implications of contestation and struggle, power and politics, and, hence, its value in the Indian context is somewhat dubious.

Th e notion of ‘composite culture’ too leaves unaddressed the question of the negotiation of boundaries. Taking their existence for granted, it rarely enquires into the mechanisms of framing diff erence. Th e dichotomy of the ‘great’ and the ‘little’ traditions otherwise con-structed as the ‘doctrinal’ and the ‘folk’, or the ‘text’ and the ‘context’ which, as said earlier, dominated a great deal of anthropological writ-ing on religion tended to view the ‘great’ tradition as a static body of essential doctrine, belief, and practice. Th e idea of the ‘great’ tradition as a systematized set of scripture or doctrine that is standard across times and cultures abstracted it entirely from the domain of history.

Th us, religio-cultural ingredients traceable to local or indigenous infl uences could be assumed to be only remnants, which would soon fade and give way to the universal great tradition. Th is allowed the dichotomy to be permeated with an implicit hierarchy, permitting covert entry of the idea that one set of traditions is enduring, the other somehow fl eeting. Field studies, however, showed no evidence of the dwindling of these presumed remnants. Further, changes in the rela-tionship between Islam, Sikhism, or Christianity and local traditions are not arbitrary, but may be linked to shift ing social and political contexts.

Th e interest in Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs fi rst developed in relation to their importance vis-à-vis the Hindu society, particularly


due to confl ict. Hence, studies of Muslims, especially among histo-rians, fi gured for a long while in the area of politics of separatism, Partition, and the history of Hindu-Muslim communalism (Pandey 1983, 1990; Chandra 1984; Mushirul Hasan 1997). As we have seen, when ethnographic studies began, they emphasized caste using the syncretic model to synthesize Muslims with the Hindu in India and simply ignoring what was specifi cally Islamic about them, because this was non-Indian, universal, and could, anyway, be studied elsewhere. It was not unique to the East and could not constitute the ‘essence’ of India.

Studies on Sikhism emerged prominently in the context of the poli-tics of identity in Punjab. Christianity was viewed through the lens of conversion ( from Hinduism) as Sikhism and Islam were viewed through the lens of communalism or fundamentalism ( in opposition to Hinduism). Th ese trends in the study of religion in India led to problems in the understanding of the interaction between the dif-ferent religious streams and in the developing of concepts to discuss such interaction. Th e terms ‘syncretism’ and ‘composite culture’, which, as has been suggested, were freely employed had their limita-tions and assumptions. Th ey viewed the interaction between diff erent religious traditions as, essentially, without confl ict. In fact, they were also imbued with an essentialist view of religion, and located religion within a notion of culture secure from troubling questions of control or confl ict. By viewing religion as a self-contained corpus of ideas, such concepts were unable to incorporate the connections between religious, social, and material processes and relationships of power and hierarchy.

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS STRIFE

Th e religious and cultural discontent of the 1980s and 1990s brought to the fore the study of religious identities. It was by now clearly acknowledged that ethnic and religious identities rarely disappear with modernity and that secularism may have its limitations. Th ere was an increased interest in the study of religion in this period, par-ticularly the rise of Hindu nationalism (Anderson and Damle 1987; Hansen 1999; Basu et al. 1993; van der Veer 1996; Jaff relot 1993) and the battles over secularism and religious fundamentalism. Studies of Hindu nationalism described the birth of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak


Sangh (RSS) and the ideology of its founders. Th e basis of Hindu nationalism resides on the idea that India belongs to those who consider it both their pitrabhumi and punyabhumi —land of one’s ancestors and of one’s religion or dharma. In particular, Muslims and Christians are rendered ‘other’ by this discourse, which sees them having their religious roots outside of India.

As mentioned above, studies on Sikhism (Oberoi 1994; Pettigrew 1995) emerged prominently in the context of the politics of identity in Punjab. Th e politics of religious identity and religious confl ict took the centre stage in the studies of this period (Das 1990). Th e relationship between the ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ religions and the state began to come into focus from diff erent angles (Z. Hasan 1994; Chandhoke 1999; Rajan 2002; Pfaff -Czarnecka et al . 1999).

It is not surprising that aft er the 1980s, with the rise of Hindu nationalism, the trend of writing on religion was perceptively diff er-ent. India and South Asia, in general, have seen very high levels of ethnic violence in recent decades. In India, collective violence had its greatest impact on the minorities (particularly Sikhs and Muslims) in terms of lives and property lost. Th e curve of communal violence took an upward turn from the close of the 1970s onwards. More areas of the country began to see violence in the 1980s, including those that were earlier unaff ected. Further, each spell of collective violence only confi rmed the greater degree of organization and planning that went into its creation and management. During the 1980s and 1990s, Hindu-Muslim hostility and collective violence began to seriously take the political centre stage. Against the backdrop of the growing forces of Hindu nationalism focused particularly around the Babri Masjid-Ramjanambhoomi issue, attacks on Muslims increased in ferocity and scale of execution. Th e soaring violence of the 1980s and 1990s had particular features. Such violence was characterized by carefully executed attacks against Muslims that took place across diff erent states, and involved increasingly heavier losses to Muslim life and property. Violence was preceded or sustained by vicious propa-ganda communicated through public speeches, audio and videotapes, pamphlets, leafl ets, and graffi ti.

In the context of the rise of religious nationalism and increase in ethnic confl ict across the country, there was a major debate around the concept of secularism, in which several scholars participated. Th ese included Bhargava (1998; cf. Bhargava [ed.] 1998), Bharucha


(1998), K. Basu and Subrahmanyam (1996), Vanaik (1997), Madan (1997; 1998), Sheth and Mahajan (1999), and Nandy (1985; 1990). Madan and Nandy put forward a fervent critique of secularism on the grounds that it does not take religions seriously and is of limited value in South Asia, where religion shapes identities to a great extent. Secularism tries to push religion to the private sphere, but in South Asian societies it is precisely this forcible retreat that has led to the resurgence of religion in a more aggressive form. On the other hand, Bhargava, Bharucha, and Vanaik justify the idea of the secular in their respective publications. Th ey agreed that secularism must remain the foundational principle of the Indian polity.

Bhargava (1998) defi ned what he called political secularism, a minimalist secularism in which the state keeps a principled distance from religious communities in order to ensure minimal standards of living to ordinary citizens and prevent the degradation of life. Ethical secularism is more demanding in that it necessitates not merely liv-ing together in a political association, but living together well. Both ideas of secularism insist upon the separation of religion and politics. Ethical secularism, he argues, is more diffi cult, but worth striving for. In the meantime, political secularism is within our reach. He argued (1995) for a kind of secular religion, bringing the values shared by all religions into the public space to be taken up by all.

Th e rights of minorities and the idea of multiculturalism were also discussed in the literature (see, for instance, Chandoke 1999; Mayaram 1999; Sheth and Mahajan 1999). Th e problem of allowing commu-nity rights in a democratic, secular framework premised on individual rights was discussed. It was pointed out that in the West discussions of minority rights were usually focused on cultural rights, whereas in India the issues of socio-economic rights have also been important from the very beginning. Further, in India minority rights have a longer history, while multiculturalism in the West is a product of more recent engagements, particularly with immigrant cultures. Multiculturalism was also critiqued (Mayaram 1999) for not being suitable for cultures and societies that have long been organized on communitarian prin-ciples. It constructs groups with fi rm boundaries and as though they were internally undiff erentiated. Th us, it negates the very principle it seeks to uphold, which is the defence of plural identities (Deb 2002).

Debates on secularism and discussions about fundamentalism proceeded simultaneously. A good deal of attention focused on


majority fundamentalism (Basu et al . 1993; Pandey 1993; Panikkar 1999; Sarkar and Butalia 1995). As has been discussed earlier, reli-gious or communal violence and its implications for state and politics, for individual survivors and for communities and their relations with each other was of central concern to many scholars (Engineer 1984; Rajgopal 1987; Kakar 1995). An important aspect of recent studies, that arose in part out of the critique of Dumont but was also linked with trying to understand the reworking of Hinduism under the infl uence of fundamentalist ideas, was the interest in looking at the modern ‘representation’ of Hinduism, including of Hindu deities and the idea of caste (for example, Dalmia 1995, 1997; Basu et al . 1993; Kapur 1993).

Th e literature began to raise serious questions regarding the inser-tion and assertion of women in the Hindu Right’s project of cultural nationalism. Th e eff ects of religious fundamentalism on the freedoms of women were also the focus of sustained analysis (Sarkar 2003; Sarkar and Butalia 1995). In the context of the Shah Bano controversy, a lot of the literature looked at the status of women and women’s rights under Islamic law in the 1980s in India (Engineer 1987, 1995; Hasan 1989; Pathak and Rajan 1989). Th is was certainly a critical moment in Hindu-Muslim relations in the post-Independence period. Th ere was violence over the Shah Bano issue and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) raised the question of why the state did not implement the Directive Principle regarding the formulation of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). Th is posed diffi culties for feminists who did not want to be seen to support the Hindu Right but who also promoted the idea of the UCC on grounds of gender justice (Agnes 1994).

During this period, earlier concepts, such as syncretism, began to be critiqued. Ram (1991) argued with respect to Christian communi-ties that though they oft en live in worlds permeated with ‘Hindu’ ideas, it is facile to view the retention of Hindu elements among Christian groups as a sign of the lack of authenticity of their faith or to assume that converts always have a harmonious (syncretic) relationship with all strands of Hinduism. Mayaram’s work (1997) on the Meos problematized several taken-for-granted conceptions about Muslim identity and relationship to the state. Categories of cultural memory, identity, and tradition were now treated in a historical perspective and one that was by no means secure against confl ict and control. Questions of caste and identity remained crucial (Bhatty 1996; Kaur


1986; Jayaram 1992; Th aramangalam 1996), while other concerns also came to the foreground. Th ese included the play of varied textual interpretations, the relationship between text and practice, the cult of saints and the play of gender, belief, and ritual (Visvanathan 1993; Mehta 1997; Fazalbhoy 2000; Pinto 1995; Saiyed 1995; Richman 1991).

At this critical juncture, when the querying of received categories was under way, the Anthropological Survey of India anachronistically launched the People of India (1985–92) project to document ethno-graphically all the ‘communities’ of India. It listed 6,748 communities, and identifi ed, located, and studied 4,635 of them in all Indian states. Th e importance of this project lies less in its anthropological valid-ity than in its administrative employment for policymaking, and as a tool for the politicization of identities. It was variously criticized by anthropologists and other scholars for (a) leading to the further divi-sion and ordering of people; (b) using inconsistent and unsystematic criteria to defi ne and categorize communities; (c) for reinforcing the notion of caste and replicating the practices and ideologies of colonial administrative ethnographers (Jenkins 2003).

Aside of this project, the important trend in the writings of this period was that the very categories of ‘religion’, ‘caste’, and ‘commu-nity’ and the ways in which they had been applied from the colonial period onwards to categorize, enumerate, and analyse the Indian population were being critiqued. Th e use of the term ‘religion’ to understand Hinduism was itself under query (Dirks 1993; Fuller 1992; Inden 1990; Kaviraj 1992). It began to be recognized that the boundaries of caste and community had been ‘fuzzy’ but, from the nineteenth century onwards, it began to take on an increasingly rigid character (Bayly 1989). From then onwards, one had to speak of ‘enu-merated’ communities, and this gave a profoundly political character to all religious conversions, which were viewed as ‘augmenting’ or ‘depleting’ numbers.

Certainly, towards the end of this period, questions of conversion began to come into greater prominence. Viswanathan (1998) explored conversion as a subversion of state power even as she pursued the map-ping of identities by the state on the colonial convert. Uberoi (1996) used the semiological method to weave a narrative linking Sikh and Gandhian philosophy through an understanding of the ways in which these reconcile the oppositions of state and power, and the individual and the collective. Bayly’s study (1989) had queried the ‘foreignness’ of


Christianity in India and shown that converts exercised considerable agency in the adoption of their new faith. Now, studies of Christianity began to look critically at the complex relationship between evangeli-cal discourses and the culture of colonialism, and the ways in which converts challenge and even subvert missionary agendas (Clarke 1998; Copley 1997; Dube 1999; Khan 1997; Mosse 1994; Robinson 1998). Th ese studies and the ones by Ram (1991) and Mayaram (1997) queried the idea that when it came to understanding the relationships across traditions, Hinduism was always the base environment, somehow already there, established and constant. Bayly showed that Christianity may take from Islam for instance, or may get ‘Hindu’ ideas through the grid of Islam, or vice versa. Th e need to historicize when talking about conversion or the interactions between traditions had been established.

THE LAST DECADE

One of the most important events that enormously aff ected the writ-ing on religion and pluralism during this decade was the violence in Gujarat in 2002. On 27 February 2002, more than 50 people, most, if not all Hindus, were burnt to death aboard a train at Godhra in Gujarat. Suspicion fell on some Muslims in Godhra for their involve-ment in the crime (in 2011, 11 people were condemned to death and others given life imprisonment sentences in the verdict on the case). Th e felony, horrendous as it was, was used to legitimize the killing, rape, and looting of the properties of thousands of Muslims across a large part of the state (George and Kannabiran 2007; Mander 2006, 2007; Ray Choudhury 2007). Th us, this decade saw the growing ghettoization and vulnerability of Muslims everywhere. Concurrent with the increasing scale and intensity of violence, the marginaliza-tion of Muslims, both cultural and material, has become very evident. Th ousands of Muslims were forced to migrate within the same city, to other places, to other states sometimes as a direct result of this vio-lence (Jha 2006; Deepa 2007; Shashikumar 2008).

In other words, the concerns of the previous two decades were only emphasized again in the period between 2002 and 2009. Th e literature took up again, and with increasing urgency, the questions of religious and ethnic confl ict, the role of the state, the relationship between ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ and between ‘globalization’ and ‘religious fundamentalism’, the place of secularism and other related themes.


However, particular distinct areas of research were also carved out. Some of these related to a specifi c focus on Muslims, an increased interest in the developmental profi les of diff erent religious communi-ties, the religion of the ‘middle classes’, and a deeper attention to the micro-level processes of dislocation and disruption that aff ect men and women as a result of religious violence and strife.

Violence and Survivors

Gujarat 2002 turned the spotlight once again on communal violence and minorities (Brass 2003, 2006; Chandra 2008; Chatterji 2009; Engineer 2007; Kaur 2005; Nussbaum 2007; Shukla 2009; Zakaria 2005). In particular, the politics of the Hindu Right and the use of Gujarat as a ‘laboratory’ in which to experiment with the makings of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ were examined in the literature pertaining to that time (Banskota 2004; Dayal 2002; Jha 2006; Lobo and Das 2006; Mander 2007; Prakash 2009; Sarkar 2002; Shani 2005; Varadarajan 2002). Social scientists began to mark and understand the brutal and tragic re-organizations of self, community, the material world, and social and physical space that are the outcome of ‘communal’ riots and other forms of violent group engagements. Mayaram (1997) had already begun to speak of these issues in the context of the Meos. Scholars spoke of the ‘vocabulary’ of violence ritualized in the humili-ating attacks on body, property, place of worship, and even monu-ments. Th e gendered character of violence was emphasized.

Sarkar (2002: 2,875–6) analyses the ‘semiotics of terror’ in 2002 in Gujarat. She shows how there is a morbid manipulation of bodies in the battle to sacrilege every aspect of diff erence are available. In particular, the female body is the site of this sacrilege:

Hindu mobs swooped down upon Muslim women and children … First, to possess and dishonour them and their men, second to taste what is denied to them and what, according to their understanding, explains Muslim virility. Th ird, to physically destroy the vagina and the womb, and, thereby, to symbolically destroy the sources of pleasure, reproduction and nurture for Muslim men, and for Muslim children. Th en, by beatings, to punish the fertile female body. Th en, by physi-cally destroying the children … by cutting up the foetus and burning it, to achieve a symbolic destruction of future generations, of the very future of Muslims themselves.


Th e violence of Gujarat sensitized scholars to the ruthless parody of Muslim sacred symbols, rituals, images, and the terrible violation of their ways of life, experience, and being. As Sarkar and others demonstrated, death—and that too by violent means—was appar-ently not enough. Torture was ritualized; torture was used to parody key symbols of Muslim identity and practice at the very moment of annihilation and severance. Mosques and monuments were treated to the same kinds of symbolic and real violence and that perpetrated on Muslim bodies.

Anand (2007) argued that sexual humiliation was not confi ned to women, but may have also extended to the real and symbolic humili-ation of the male body. Verbal reference was oft en made to Hindu sexual victory over both men and women. As he argues, the Gujarat violence was an exercise in the masculinization of the Hindus. Hindu men in the rioting mobs exposed their penises to show that they were ‘real’ (not circumcized) men and Narendra Modi was praised as an ‘ asli mard ‘ (real man) for protecting the honour of Hindus.

Further, in the literature of this period, we fi nd an increased sen-sitivity to the micro-processes of everyday life in the aft ermath of violence (see Das 1990, for an earlier intervention on these themes). How do survivors reconstruct their everyday lives? How does the experience of violence reshape the organization of relations not just between neighbours and communities, but with the state? How do the memories of violence restructure the organization of events or the use of space? How do they aff ect men and women diff erently : refashioning dress codes, norms of public and interactive behaviour, and mobility? Chatterji and Mehta (2007) interact with a range of residents in Mumbai’s Dharavi area and bring out the ways in which people narrate the violence. Th ey examine these narratives alongside of administrative and public documents highlighting the place of housing and rehabilitation, for instance, in the rebuilding of the lives of those who live with violence. In Mehta and Chatterji (2001), the authors address questions of language and discuss how violent events restructure people’s language and the way in which they speak about places or about others.

However, it is not merely the realm of the discursive that is reshaped by acts of violence. Th e memories of violence impinge themselves also on practice , on the organization of events, on the management of roles and relationships, on the use of space, on dress codes, and on


the mobility of women and men, on enactment as well as thought. Robinson (2005) examines how Muslim victims and survivors recon-struct their modes of being, which have been brutalized by actual and symbolic violence. She asks that when individuals and households have suff ered the trauma of communal violence, sometimes more than once or in more than one generation, how does the process of ‘recovery’ reshape the way in which they look at themselves, their place in their own ‘community’, and their relationships with others.

Elsewhere, the author explores the implications of violence for the dislocation and dismembering of families, and the fracturing of edu-cational and occupational aspirations of family members (Robinson 2008). Th e increasing ghettoization of Muslims confi nes women survivors and their families to certain spaces and specifi c neighbour-hoods. Women need to access state support and fi nd new avenues of livelihood to support their families. At this very juncture, they feel the weight of community norms more sharply. Th e demands of fam-ily and community may be at odds and women have to tread a wary path in the battle to survive and retrieve a life for themselves and their children in the aft ermath of violence.

Focus on Muslims

Th e increasing attention paid to diff erent religious communities, even if it was a result of the concern with ethnic violence has drawn atten-tion to the specifi c disabilities and particular disadvantages of certain communities, especially the Muslims in contemporary India (Hasan and Menon 2004, 2005; Hasan 2005). If religious and cultural plural-ism is to be considered not just with respect to the representation of diff erent religious or linguistic communities and their interrelation-ships but is to be understood further with respect to diff erences within these groups then this trend is certainly signifi cant (Madan 2007). Further, attention is drawn to the socio-economic diff erences, and not just religiously based pluralities, across diff erent communities.

Th e Rajinder Sachar Committee Report (SCR) gave an impetus to studies of this kind. Th e SCR brought together a wealth of data for the whole country that was of immense value for those seriously concerned with questions of the development and marginalization of diff erent socio-religious groups. However, such questions had been raised by scholars earlier in the decade. Shariff (2000) and Razzack


and Gumber (2002) had looked at the socio-economic diff erences across religious communities and made a case for Muslim empower-ment. Robinson (2005) argued that the relationship between Muslim marginality and the dynamics of communal confl ict is complex but Muslims constitute a poor and underprivileged minority, which feeds their vulnerability to the destabilizing conditions of continual con-fl ict. For earlier interest in the questions of Muslim backwardness, particularly with regard to education, one may see Ahmad (1996), Saxena (1983) and Khalidi (1995).

We now have new data relating to these issues (Hasan 2009; Hasan and Menon 2004, 2005; John and Mutatkar 2005; Zainuddin 2003; Islam 2007). Th is data shows that religion alone is not the contributing factor to Muslims’ backwardness in literacy and education: class, caste, and gender are contributing and intervening factors. Hasan and Menon (2005) sampled data from 40 districts spanning 12 states. Th e socio-economic status of Muslim households was compared with a picture of the Hindu population broken down by caste, using a relative develop-ment index. While the data underscored the dismal numbers of women in the workforce, the reasons were seen to be complex. For one, in rural areas, low work participation rates, particularly in agriculture, link up with the low rates of ownership of land by Muslims as a whole. Further, there is considerable diff erence across regions, the rates in the south being higher than in the northern or central states. Th is suggests that there are varying structures of opportunity in place in diff erent regions, which constitute of Muslim participation in the labour market diff er-ently. Th us, Muslim women are disadvantaged not by religion alone but by a complex of forces, including the play of class and gender.

Regional diff erences also emerge when one considers literacy rates. In 10 out of 21 selected states, the literacy rate among Muslims is found to be higher than the state average. Th ese states include Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Karnataka. In Kerala, the diff erence between literacy rates of socio-religious com-munities is minimal. Again it appears that Muslims are doing better in this respect in the south and in the west of the country. Figures for education, employment, asset accumulation, and representation in public offi ce when taken together lead to some realization of the exclusion of Muslims from economic and political advantage.

Also manifested is the troubling relationship between lack of eth-nic diversity in the security forces and the prejudice countenanced


by Muslims, particularly during periods of communal strife. Muslims are very poorly represented in defence- and security-related activities. Th is is a matter of some concern because it is crucially linked to the sense of well-being and of security about life and assets felt by the community. Diversity in the police forces has a place in producing greater impartiality and promoting the trust of citizens. Th e share of Muslims in ‘public order and safety activities’ at the central level is just about 6 per cent, while that of the Hindu upper castes is 42 per cent (Khalidi 2003; Mishra and Singh 2002).

Th e community feels continually threatened by police bias and political hostility. Police raids, selective surveillance, and curfew mechanisms leave the community troubled and uneasy. In many places one sees the growing ghettoization of Muslims (Bunsha 2006). A degree of discrimination appears to operate in ensuring that such areas remain generally poorly serviced by civic bodies. Muslims, even in big cities, oft en fi nd that their names and their religion become liabilities in their search for housing in good localities. Th us, this sec-tion points to the diff erential access to resources, modes of livelihood, opportunities, and expectations available to the Muslims among the diff erent religious communities. It points to the fact that the life chances as well as the experiences of an entire community with respect to agencies of the state may be starkly diff erent from those of groups more comfortably stationed. Th e material certainly engages with the issue of the majority and the minority.

Minorities and the Discourse of Development

Th ere are several works on minorities (Bhuimali 2008; Jawid, Jehangir and Bose 2008; Mahajan and Jodhka 2010; Vempeny 2003). While the earlier perspectives of looking at minorities, in terms of constitutional rights and protections, remains in the literature, there is a greater injection of issues of social, educational and economic disparity, and discrimination. Th e issue of reservation has also been raised. Sheth and Mahajan (1999) had already recognized that in postcolonial soci-eties like India the main domain of discrimination against minori-ties may not be in the realm of culture but that of unequal access to resources and opportunities. However, for a long period in contem-porary Indian history, it was impossible to talk about the pervasive, but also complicated, links between religion and regional, social and


economic inequalities. Th e language of religion or ethnicity was not available to discuss issues of socio-economic or developmental con-cern. For the most part, the question of positive discrimination in the form of reservation—in legislature, educational institutions, and state employment—was framed in the language of caste. One could speak of and address the questions of the marginalization and socio-economic disparity of scheduled castes (Dalits or the former ‘untouchables’) and scheduled tribes; one could not do so with respect to any other kind of community—particularly one defi ned by religion.

It is only in the last decade that the idea of development with respect to India’s plural communities has begun to capture academic atten-tion in a sustained way. Mahajan (2010) points out that India gained Independence in an atmosphere of religious animosity and with the violent process of Partition, during which thousands of Muslims and Hindus were killed, injured, and rendered homeless. Th e framers of the Indian Constitution were, thus, particularly sensitive to the issue of religious identities and, specifi cally, to religious minorities. Unlike the US, India did not adopt a policy of strict separation of religion from politics. Th e Constitution acknowledged the importance of religion in India, its capacity for framing ways of life and systems of values. Th ere was also an acute awareness of the capacity for confl ict between groups mobilized on the basis of religion (Mahajan 2010: 9).

She argues that as a result of this thinking, explicit protections were provided in the Constitution for religious communities, especially minorities. With respect to Christians, a major concession was Article 25, which not only gave every citizen the right to freely profess and practise religion, but also to ‘propagate’ it. Despite strong opposition from, particularly but not only Hindu, members of the Constituent Assembly and concerns about ‘forced conversions’, the right to propagate religion was ratifi ed by the assembly on the grounds that it was a fundamental part of the religious tenets of Christians (Kim 2003). All religions were given the freedom to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes and, in particular, minorities were given the right to administer their own educational institutions. It is also declared that the state will not discriminate against such institutions in regard to the grant of aid.

According to her, what becomes clear is that despite the acknowl-edgement and protection of the welfare-related functions of religious communities—such as the running of schools or charities—the state


did not view these communities as central to the concerns of national development and social change (Mahajan 2010: 11). Indeed, with their potential for mobilization and assertion, they could even be impedi-ments to change. Th is was a major concern with respect to religious communities and personal laws. Th e Indian nation state managed to push through legislation reforming and, rendering more gender-just, Hindu personal laws with respect to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession but, for a long while, held back from any intervention in the personal laws of other communities. Th e preference was that communi-ties themselves should come forward with a blueprint for change.

Th us, while in India, religion was acknowledged to have a public presence of a sort and religious institutions were guaranteed protec-tion and autonomy, the language of religion or ethnicity was not avail-able to discuss issues of socio-economic or developmental concern. Th e current government, however, has, since its fi rst term onwards, made it clear that it wanted to start a new relationship with minori-ties, particularly with Muslims. It won elections aft er a fi ve-year term of the Hindu right-wing party, the BJP, during whose political rule violence against minorities—Muslims and Christians—had reached unprecedented levels. Whether for this reason or for others, it is cru-cial to recognize the new legitimacy given under the current political regime to communitarian identities, encoded more in the language of majority and minority than in the more benign language of religious or cultural pluralism per se, in contemporary India (Mahajan 2010: 15; and for a diff erent view, also see Vijapur 2003).

Religious Conversion

As the 2000s got underway, the literature on religious conversion increased considerably (Bauman 2008; Froerer 2007; Kent 2004; Kim 2003; Madan 2003; Nadkarni 2003; Pandey 2006; Robinson and Clarke 2003). Continuing discussions begun by scholars in the previ-ous decade, the literature by this period accepted that conversion is rarely a transformation in the realm of ideas and beliefs alone. Other areas of social and cultural life usually change. New faiths and creeds throughout Indian history have negotiated and sometimes clashed with prevailing patterns of kinship, marriage, and inheritance. Food conventions, sartorial codes, and occupational arrangements have manifested mutation.


At the same time, the degree of transformation that results from conversion works itself out through multiple social and cultural processes. Th e dynamics emerges out the relationship of a potential convert group, with the society and culture in which it is embedded, and its relationship with and expectations—social, cultural, spiritual, and material—of those who carry the new creed. We may also need to think about the world view of the converters, their relationship with the dominant ideas of their period, with the state and its power, and with the people and traditions they encounter. In other words, processes of both continuity and discontinuity are not automatic; they are constructed out of the convergence of several diff erent elements.

Th e scholarship once again reiterates that the debate on conver-sion has been misdirected. One of the main problems is the view that identities are determined, most importantly and to the exclusion of other possibilities, by religion . It is for this reason that those who believe that India is essentially Hindu conceive of conversion as an act of treason. However, religion is always only one element in a person’s or a community’s identity. Moreover, it is a mistake to view religions as discrete entities hermetically sealed one from another; it is clear from the available sociological and anthropological evidence that this is simply not the case. All religions are, at all times, social and cultural amalgamations. If this is so, then the notion that Christianization, for instance, entails denationalization (and, therefore, constitutes a threat to Hinduism or the Indian nation) becomes untenable (Bauman 2008; Bayly 1989; Robinson and Clarke 2003).

As Clarke (1998) and others had earlier shown, scholars in this period further demonstrate that change does not come about only through material inducement. Th is assumption is made particularly in the context of Dalit or tribal conversion. As Bauman (2008) indicates, while self-interest is very much involved in religious conversion, a defi nition of self-interest, which involves only material considerations, is inadequate. Th e desire for dignity and respect, and the need to make sense of the world and one’s place in it are all interests, interests that cannot be easily disentangled from ‘purely’ material concerns.

For the most part, though, conversion was usually thought of in the context of Islam or Christianity (Kent 2004, Kim 2003, Ishaq 2005). In a signifi cant work, Robinson and Clarke (2003) brought together multiple contexts on the same terrain—ancient Jain and Buddhist conversions, conversion to varied varieties of Islam or Christianity,


mutations of caste and sect, and even Sikhism. Th e juxtaposition within the pages of one book of conversions that took place at diff erent points of time and through diff ering modes and motivations, as well as tribal conversions and transformations of sect and caste was not a yoking of a series of incompatibles. It showed that an understanding of conversion that steers clear both of an inevitable association of the term with specifi c traditions (such as Islam or Christianity) as well as of unconditional renunciation of the possibilities of its use in other contexts off ered much more analytical fl exibility. Critically, such an understanding of conversion was informed by an appreciation of the politics of conversion and the power dynamics of shift ing religious identities.

Another interesting aspect of conversion pursued in the literature relates to the adoption of Islamic or Christian mission models by Hindutva ideologues. In one of the studies reviewed here, Froerer (2007) speaks of the infl uence of Christian mission on the religious, cultural, and social practices of a group with a majoritarian ideology, which begins to mimic the former. She begins with an overview of the history of Christian mission among Adivasis in central India, and a brief introduction of the contemporary Church mission in Mohanpur. Th is is followed by an examination of the notion of ‘civilizing mission’ and a discussion of the historical relationship between the British colonial project and Christian mission, on the one hand, and the con-temporary Church, on the other.

In the book and other publications based on her fi eldwork, she considers the increasing attention directed toward Adivasi com-munities by the RSS and other Hindu nationalist organizations. She demarcates the specifi c strategies that have recently been employed by the local priests to transform their ‘backward’ fl ock into ‘proper’ Christians. During the course of this examination, she considers the broader mimetic relationship between the RSS and the church. Her main argument is that the Christian church, since the colonial period onwards, has contributed to the rise of Hindu nationalism locally. It has been the model of Christianization—through the several fold interventions of schooling, medical, and social assistance—that has been followed by the RSS with considerable success.

Diff erent authors (for instance, Bauman 2008; Ishaq 2005; Robinson and Clarke 2003) would like us to remind us to once again turn our interests to analysing the plural, contextually located cultures within


which the motives and means of conversion of diff erent groups may vary. On the other hand, the semitization of Hinduism had already been pointed out in the literature of the 1990s (Hansen 1999; Jaff relot 1996; van der Veer 1996). Th e Hinduism of the RSS selectively bor-rows from its ‘enemy’ religions—Islam and Christianity—those ele-ments that it believes had contributed to making them powerful on the stage of world history. Now, Froerer’s ethnography (2007) brings out in ominous detail the ways in which religious and cultural plural-ity at the local level is being undercut by the mimetic reproduction of a particular model of conversion.

Hindu Nationalism

Th ere are several works on Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in this period as well (Adeney and Baez 2005; Berglund 2004; Bhambhri 2006; Brosius 2005; Bruce 2008; Jaff relot 2007; McGuire and Copland 2006; Menon 2009; Shani 2007; Sharma 2003; Zavos et al. 2004). Th ese works look at the origins of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Bruce 2008) and the BJP (Berglund 2004), the coalitional politics of the National Democratic Alliance and other related issues. Th e emergence of Hindu nationalism and the diff erent strategies and political idioms that it has deployed over the decades are examined.

Th e anthropologist Mathur (2008) brings another dimension to the analysis of Hindutva by looking not at macro processes, but at how the cultural logic and institutional power are instated in everyday life. She argues that scholarship generally excludes questions of agency and accountability when dealing with the violence unleashed by Hindutva organizations. Ordinary people become capable of extraordinary violence and this can only be explained if one examines the ordi-nary spaces—the schools, homes and communities—within which Hindutva as a cultural phenomenon (and not only an economic or political one) is established and sustained.

Th e Gujarat violence and the politics of the BJP in Gujarat are a crucial part of the concerns of scholars (Shani 2007). Indeed, in the context of the violence against Muslims in Gujarat in which Dalits and Adivasis also took part, scholars have spoken about the social engineering of the Hindu brigade, which is making space for and co-opting castes and communities not earlier attracted by its upper-caste


leadership. One of the important reasons pointed out for this—the closure of the textile mills in Ahmedabad—not only led to enormous job losses but also the collapse of social institutions and cultural tra-ditions. Th e pauperization and demobilization of the working class permitted the emergence of a group of lumpen castes and classes, eas-ily recruited to look, kill, and set on fi re (Bidwai 2002; Breman 2002).

Various Hindu cults, organizations, and movements in Gujarat have helped construct an idea of Hindu unity and enabled Dalits and other backward classes (OBCs) to achieve a measure of sanskritization and, thus, enhanced the appeal of Hindutva for them. Th e collapse of the Dalit Panthers and the luring of Adivasi and Dalit leaders by pecuniary inducements and alcohol have been recorded (Bidwai 2002). Th ere is some agreement, though, that the Hindu Right only uses these subal-tern groups and cannot go beyond its core upper-caste values and social base (Bidwai 2002; Mayaram 2004). Th e inability of the organizations of the Hindu Right to accept the diverse cultural practices of diff erent castes and communities is recorded by these authors. Th us, the unity of the Hindu Rashtra is fragile and only partially achieved.

On the other hand, the activities of various Hindu organizations do have important implications for reducing religious and cultural diversity on the ground. Th e social and cultural activism of Hindutva organizations and its eff ects had been documented by Panikkar (1999: xxiv). He showed that:

Hindu communalism has worked through a large number of social and cultural organizations carefully nurtured during the last many years. Th e number and strength of these organizations with branches all over the country are diffi cult to ascertain, but they cover almost every fi eld of intellectual and cultural activity—be it education, history, archaeol-ogy, music or media … About twenty thousand schools under diff erent denominations, scores of publishing outfi ts in almost every language, committees to write the history of each district, literary associations and drama clubs, environmental groups, women’s organizations, tem-ple renovation committees and so on are part of this network.

In the period under study, this connection continued to be docu-mented (Bidwai 2002; Mayaram 2004). Sikand (2003: 15) writes about how Hindu revivalist groups streamline and bifurcate shared religious traditions through their interventions in places of religious worship at the local level:


‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ revivalist groups thunder against what they see as violations of communal boundaries by communities and religious traditions that do not obey their tyrannical logic. In many parts of India, Sufi dargahs, where ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ would earlier wor-ship together, have been converted into Hindu temples through force or fraud, or because local Muslims have abandoned them.

Local and regional traditions of cultural and religious pluralism are being relentlessly homogenized; modes of Hindu religiosity spread at the expense of diverse and luminal cults. Brosius (2005) examines the spectacular public and political rallies, speeches, and pilgrimages that are employed to bring together diverse groups under the umbrella of a unifi ed Hindu identity. Th e relationship between growing Hindu religiosity and Hindu nationalism, however, has not been seen as quite so straightforward by other writers (Yadav et al. 1999). Säävälä (2002: 317) takes into account this argument while discussing reli-gious strategies for middle-class identifi cation among urban Dalits. She concludes that ‘Religion, especially devotional religion, is a major way of accumulating feelings of self-worth in the city, as well as being utterly political, even if not directly Hindu nationalistic’.

In an interesting comparative piece with specifi c references to India, Spohn (2003) argues that the global rise of nationalism and reli-gion has to be seen as a reaction to the previous authoritarian imposi-tion of the Western European model of state secularism—either in its Western liberal or Eastern socialist variety—in diff ering civilizations with predominantly religious and oft en multiethnic societies. He asserts that the rise of religious and ethnic nationalism should nei-ther be seen as transition phase to the Western model of civic and secular national identity formation nor as a general defensive reaction of non-Western societies to the forces of Western-dominated forms of economic, political, and secular-cultural globalization. Rather, the contemporary rise of religious and ethnic nationalism should be seen as a part of multiple modernization processes in diff erent world regions, multiple constellations of nation state formation and democ-ratization as well as religious change and secularization in diff erent civilizations in the present global era.

Spohn indicates that even the most secularized Western European types of national identity are generally based on Christian founda-tions and shaped by the specifi c nationally predominating form(s) of Christianity. He further says that religious and ethnic nationalism


have to be seen as specifi c combinations of religious as well as secular components rather than as variations of a general secular model of nationalism and national identity. He says that it would be misleading to interpret the global rise of religious and ethnic nationalism as an anti-global, anti-Western defence of threatened traditional societies with their religious and ethnic identities. He has tried to demonstrate that it should be seen as a phase-specifi c result of the democratic, liberalizing, and oft en populist contestation of authoritarian-secular regimes in the context of processes of state-formation and nation-building in non-European societies, and their own multiple forms of modernity and paths of modernization.

Secularism and Secularization

Th e debate on secularism also continues (see, among others, Hasan 2006; Heredia 2007; Jacobsohn 2005; Kalpagam 2006; Nanda 2006, 2007; Needham and Sunder Rajan 2007; Srinivasan 2007; Tejani 2008). Th e crisis of secularism and its limits in the Indian context are highlighted. Th ere is an understanding of the increasing marginaliza-tion of minorities, but there is also the question about whether the state can actually resolve existing confl icts or is itself a part of the crisis. Talking about the secularization of politics, Sheth (2009) sees it as deeply problematic that diff erent communities have moved to the centre of Indian political and public life. Claims for rights and for equality are being made in communitarian terms. Now the commu-nity rather than the individual citizen can be the legitimate bearer of rights or can view itself as the ‘collective victim’ of state injustice. Th e hierarchy of socio-religious communities neutralizes any discussion of diff erences and inequalities within these groups.

Th e politics of caste and region does not necessarily destabilize the process of secularization because it largely enables the entrance of diverse communities at the lower end of the social, political, and eco-nomic scale into political visibility, but the politics of majoritarianism and minoritarianism produced two eff ects. First, caste politics began to be absorbed by the politics of religious community and, second, the ethnic identity of large regionally based caste groups could be fused with the culture of religious communities. Th e latter were, thereby, transformed into ethno-religious communities. Examples of this can be seen in the power of the OBCs in the organization of events


associated with or sponsored by the Sangh Parivar or the fusion of Gujarati asmita with Hindutva pride. According to Sheth (2009), the ethno-caste model of communitarian politics can be absorbed into the institutional structures of competitive politics, but the ethno-religious model may create ideological and emotional unities that may threaten secular democracy.

Th e context of violence in Gujarat becomes the site for reanalysing the state’s engagement with secularism. Sud (2008) looks at secular-ism and the Gujarat state. Th e author explores the politics of identity construction and the increasing power of the Hindutva ideology in the society and the state. Th e article adopts the idea of secularism in its normative-theoretical conceptualization as a state benignly disposed towards, but equidistant from, all religions. She shows that in Gujarat in 2002 the state machinery openly supported the violence. However, she enlarges this idea and asserts that such systematic violence has been a part of Gujarat since the time it became a state. Th is particular article, quite similar to Shani’s work (2005), gives an account of various events that shaped Gujarat as a Hindu Rashtra and studies the state’s behaviour in episodes of communal violence. She does not consider the 2002 violence as paradigmatic. Th e socio-historical perspective in her article shows that the state has not changed from secularism to communalism in the state apparatus, as many accounts suggest. Instead, it would appear to have shift ed from a fuzzy, contested secu-lar state to an increasingly unquestioned assertive Hindu Rashtra.

Th e model of secularism in India is increasingly compared with other models prevalent elsewhere. Ethno-religious confl icts and ter-rorism threatened secularism across the world. Th e comparative per-spective in studies on secularism is a healthy trend, breaking through earlier notions that focused too exclusively on Hinduism’s inability to come to terms with the idea of the secular. In this context, Jacobsohn (2005) contrasts Israel’s ‘visionary’ secularism, associated with a par-ticular religion, with America’s ‘assimilative’ secularism and India’s ‘ameliorative’ secularism. His study of India’s model of secularism is focused precisely around the question about how ‘secularism’ can be preserved in countries in which everyday life is constituted around religion. In a country such as India, even social reform involves the state becoming actively interventionist in the religious domain. Th us, India’s lawmakers sought to remove caste and other discriminatory practices grounded in religion. However, the author argues, through


analysis of Supreme Court judgements, that in a later period not only the pronouncements of the Hindu Right but also court decisions show that there has been a movement away from the ameliorative tradition towards a more illiberal agenda.

Tejani (2008), through an analysis of six historical moments begin-ning in the late nineteenth century, shows that an ideology of secular-ism had already emerged in India; it was not connected merely with religion, but with caste and ideas of democracy and what it meant to call oneself ‘Indian’. Secularism as it existed by the 1950s got its meanings from conceptual underpinnings situated in earlier histories. Th ere were understandings of the ideas of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’, a transregional notion of the Hindu community as well as notions of patriotism and citizenship (2008: 15). Th e value of this historical analysis for us today is to emphasize the fl exibility of the concept of secularism and the fact that the term was not some abstract universal category imposed from above but was being given meaning within a specifi c historical context. Both the comparative and historical perspectives underscore the particularity of secularism in diff erent countries and contexts.

Th e ideas of secularism and secularization appear further in the analysis of the religious inclinations of the middle class. Th e questions addressed are: Is the middle-class, under the infl uence of globalization, diversifying and allowing a signifi cant degree of cultural and religious pluralism to fl ourish? Are the religious activities of the middle class based more on individual choice or on community expectation or aspi-ration? In Warrier (2005) we fi nd reference to a transnational middle-class. It is a class that is defi ned largely by patterns of consumption. Of course, other elements also enter, such as education. Th e transnational middle-class person is considered an educated, well-to-do urbanite. Th e members of this class are in white-collar employment and many are in the newer and more prestigious occupations involving high levels of skill and accomplishment. Th e middle class is transnational because it occupies a world that is constituted by the rapid-paced fl ows of capital, technology, people, and information across the globe. Th is class includes, therefore, government offi cials, lawyers, doctors, teach-ers, college lecturers, journalists, managers, computer soft ware profes-sionals, engineers, and scientists (ibid.: 7–8).

Warrier is concerned with examining the spread of the guru cult in this class with special reference to Mata Amritanandamayi. She argues


that belief in the Mata is an individual and personal aff air. Relationship to the guru does not create a group. Belief in the Mata is an aspect of personal freedom. Th ere is an internalization of faith rather than any affi rmation of shared community orientations or identity. She argues against the idea that urbanites seek out religious gurus due to the need to fi ll their rootless, alienated, anomic lives with some meaning or sense of community belonging. Th e middle class is well-connected with kin, friends, caste members, colleagues, and neighbours. If the religious group comes in, it only adds to these but does not replace them. She would not like to see a relationship between the expansion of the middle class and the rise of Hindu nationalist forces during the same period. In her opinion, this form of religious assertion is part of a process of secularization.

It is true that the middle class has been a good ground for the incursion of new religious cults and spiritual groups (Robinson 2004). Going to gurus, sants, and cultic spots, attending spiritual and value workshops that teach stress management and the attainment of an inner calm—these are all activities that numerous people engage in today. Popular Hinduism feeds on, and is fed by, Hindutva ideology and may not be totally separated from it. Th e expansion and diversifi -cation of the realm is something that one can trace to the entrance of the Hindu Right on the political and public stage with the launching of the Ayodhya movement. Th e cultural organizations of the Hindu Right fed popular spirituality directly by the organization of collec-tive, neighbourhood rituals, and festive celebrations and pujas. Th e increased presence of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its paral-lel organizations at sites of popular pilgrimage, and the streamlining and standardization of rituals performed at such sites and in these collective rituals, are again processes that have a more recent history. As Mathur (2008), Pannikar (1999), Sikand (2003), and others, have indicated that the ‘cultural’ aspects of the ideology make it acceptable to an increasing number of people.

Th us, on the one hand, there is a sense that modern Hinduism allows the privatization of beliefs and increases the secular space by allowing diff erent gurus and sects to compete for individual believers. Th ere is a greater plurality and diversity of religious experiences available. On the other hand, as Upadhyay (2011) argues in a study of Asaram Bapu, the choices made by individuals are structured by the range of teachings off ered by the gurus. Leading one’s life by the teachings of a


guru and acquiring a guru are both enthusiastically encouraged by the gurus themselves. Prayer now follows a regimen directed by the guru. Th e texts become accessible through the guru, and lives, practices, and decisions are then moulded by the guru-interpreted texts. While persons may change gurus, and there is a certain degree of individual freedom, it does appear that gurus are leading one closer towards the ideas and philosophy of the great tradition.

In fact, there may be a form of ‘Sanskritization’ taking place, in which religion and culture fuse. Th e concept of Sanskritization has largely been associated with caste mobility, but Srinivas in his later days mentions that ‘Sanskritization is a profound and many-sided cultural process, only a part of which has structural relevance’ (Srinivas: 2002: 222; Upadhyay 2011). Spiritual currents fl owing in contemporary Hinduism, with diff erent gurus, have an association with Sanskritization, is understood here as a cultural process whereby people irrespective of their caste, region, language, and religion strive to accommodate the ideals and ethos of the great tradition and scrip-tural Hinduism in their everyday life. Th e agents of such a process are the older sects, modern godmen, temples, pilgrim sites, religious books, journals, newsletters, newspapers, and religious fi lms and seri-als aired on television. Middle class ‘lower castes’ share in this process, as they seek to create a ‘middle-class Hinduism’ apparently devoid of caste (purity and pollution) but partaking of the cultural conceptions of the wider Hinduism (Säävälä 2002). Looked at in this perspective, this trend contributes to less tolerance for plurality and, perhaps, a greater systematization of beliefs even as they spread globally.

In her article on Hindu and Islamic transnational religious move-ments, which looks at the global operations and spread of religious movements, Mayaram (2004) is also unable to view the Tablighi Jamaat and the VHP as bearers of a cosmopolitan project. Rather, as she documents, these organizations and movements enable the global creation of religious enclaves of correct belief and behaviour. Th e Tablighi Jamaat does not engage in dialogue with other Muslims or non-Muslims and is far too insular to be seen as furthering cosmopol-itanism. Th e VHP and RSS, despite proclaiming themselves tolerant, are unable to accept the cultural practices and identities of a whole host of castes, including Rajputs, Jats, Ahirs, Adivasis, and Dalits. As she argues, when these global organizations enter local contexts, they capture local associations and reduce cultural diversity even as


they may open up possibilities of the enhancement of capabilities and mobility for their participants.

Others, however, view the relationship between religion, glo-balization, and modernity diff erently. Lindberg (2009) avoids the dichotomies of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’ and ‘private’ and ‘public’ as she examines local practices among the Mappilla—a matrilineal commu-nity—of northern Kerala and changes that come in with the migration of a large numbers of men to the Gulf. Th e interesting point for her is to look at what she calls ‘selective Islamisation’. By this she does not mean a fi xed ideology but a changing perception that strengthens religious and cultural values among people who consider themselves Muslims. F. Osella and C. Osella (2008), in a study of the radical reform move-ment called the Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen (KNM), argue that if, on the one hand, Islamic reformism in Kerala as elsewhere has a clear universalistic orientation, seeking to detach religious practices from cultural specifi cities, and on the other, it remains infl ected by—or embedded in—the historically specifi c social and political contexts of its emergence, which eventually defi ne orientations and debates. Th e authors have tried to show how reformist rhetoric has pushed—and continues to push—the entire Muslim community not towards broad ‘reform’ but specifi cally towards craft ing a vision of and programmes for a modern Muslim moral community that is deeply local.

Ibrahim (2008) suggests that the dichotomies of modernity/tra-dition or liberal/non-liberal are productively disrupted when one examines how these discourses become entangled with one another to produce subjectivities. She concludes that we tend to inherit this dichotomy with the classical secular-liberal model, where the public sphere is seen to be concerned with politics while the ethical realm of virtues and morality is relegated to the private sphere. In her own example of the Jatts of Kachchh and how they manage the challenges of citizenship and identity in an Islamic idiom, she argues that the conjuncture of various kinds of discourses enable the fabrication of new ways of being that are basically incommensurate—rather than being simply the obverse of—the secular-liberal mode of being, which, therefore, cannot be regarded as modular.

Srinivas (2008), in her study of the Sai Baba movement in three diff erent global locales (Nairobi, Atlanta, and Bangalore), also mani-fests a diff erent take on this debate. Th e three varied cities are sites for the performance of citizenship but also provide the sacred spaces, the


recruits, and devotees for the movement, and enable the formation of religious networks and embodied notions of devotional identity. For the largely urban-based middle-class devotees of this movement, global and local communities are intertwined through service, which connects the global believers with their guru. Acts of service are akin to devotion. Th is alternative modernity does not rupture along pre-dictable lines of fundamentalism or revivalism, but enables the weav-ing of sacrality, service, and community diff erently through the varied cityscapes. Th e global and the local, the private and the public, the sacred and the secular intersect here as transnational urban centres are sacralized spatially, and through devotion, congregational rituals, and service (Srinivas 2010).

Diversity and Multiculturalism

Th ere are several works bringing out the diversities of diff erent reli-gious traditions, the permeability across boundaries and diff ering beliefs, practices and modes of identity construction. Th e earlier dominance of Hinduism in the literature is contested to some extent by this diversifi cation (Fluckiger 2008; Jairath 2011; Madan 2007; Raj and Dempsey 2002); and we also see separate sectarian trends or cults within the broad ‘Hindu’ umbrella being taken up for study (Srinivas 2008; Warrier 2005). Th e distinct religious and cultural beliefs and practices of Adivasis and Dalits are now being brought out by scholars (Clarke; Robinson and Kujur 2010; Schmalz). Of course, we are also cautioned about the hegemonic eff orts of Hindu groups to main-stream and, thereby, homogenize diverse religio-cultural traditions (as in Sikand).

At a broader level, Gottlob (2007) argues that the debate about cul-tural diversity in India is a debate about the representation of India’s past. ‘Secularists’ view India’s long tradition of tolerance and base their plea for a multicultural nation on this. ‘Communalists’ point to the evidence of much religious strife and see this as reason for ter-ritorial separation. Th e singular perspective of ‘secularists’ should be replaced by one which takes into account the many factors that pro-duce the unity of the nation state. Th ese particular social and cultural forms, as well as the unity of the state, should be reinserted in history and change. Th ey are then able to resist the determinism of which they have been accused. Th e confrontation of historical perspectives


between ‘secularists’ and ‘communalists’ is avoided, and the ‘fi xity’ of the future gives way to a more open perspective in which ‘unity’ as well as ‘diversity’ are not predetermined but are understood to be the products of continuous negotiation and renegotiation.

Th ough the theme of multiculturalism does not emerge strongly in the literature, it is analysed by some authors (Judge 2003; Oommen 2007). Upadhya (2002: 179) continues the sociological and anthropo-logical critique of multiculturalism that had been initiated earlier. She views the notion of ‘culture’ in multiculturalism debates as being ‘theo-retically backward’ and also potentially dangerous when used for iden-tity politics. As she argues, culturally constituted groups are regarded as somehow more authentic than other kinds of groupings. Th us, a reifi ed understanding of culture can become critical for employment in battles to claim rights to autonomy, land, political recognition, and so on. Th e ‘politicized and essentialized’ usage is, according to her, ‘ironic’ when current views have turned towards a more ‘theoretically sophisticated conceptualization’ of culture (2002: 174).

Other authors who discuss multiculturalism include Jaff relot (2004), who argues on the basis of an analysis of Constituent Assembly debates that the Indian national identity combines elements of mul-ticulturalism and the French Jacobin model. Th e Jacobin model and the Hindu traditionalist one have squeezed the multicultural model represented by Gandhi, but not overpowered it completely. He refers to the Indian model as one of circumscribed multiculturalism, with the specifi c variety of secularism based on the equidistance of the state vis-à-vis all religions. Th is is very diff erent from the French idea of laïcitè . He also contends that Hindu nationalism confl ates the apparently antithetical approaches of universalism and ethnicism by demanding, on the one hand, that a Human Rights Commission replace the Minority Commission and, on the other, that a uniform civil code be promulgated. Th ese measures would remove communi-ties from the political sphere in the name of universalistic values but leave the space open for the cultural and political hegemony of the majority Hindus.

Toff olo (2003) gives an overview of the three dominant models of looking at cultural pluralism: the primordialist, the instrumental-ist, and the constructivist. Th e chapters of the book largely follow a constructivist approach and argue that identity politics may well be treated as ‘normal’ rather than as a disease of modern state politics.


Th e question is not of how to create a homogenous politics, but of how to manage the coexistence of a plurality of cultural groups without the domination of one or the other. Symbolic manipulation is not only a part of reactionary politics, but is crucial to all identity construc-tion. Th e struggle against the reactionary and exclusivist politics of Hindutva must include ways of symbolically constructing a liberating form of cultural pluralism.

***

Th e period under study (broadly 2003–9) has many books of note on diff erent aspects of religion (largely religious violence), and a large number of chapters and journal articles. I have, by no means, tried to summarize or cover every single available piece of work, but have attempted to give broad trends and indicate major trajectories. Th emes do not appear according to strict chronological demarcations, but clusters do develop, partly in relation to shift s in socio-political context as well as in relation to wider disciplinary trends. Most of the articles appear in the Economic and Political Weekly , Modern Asian Studies , and even in Seminar . Despite the intrusive presence of reli-gious confl ict in society and its eff ects on the state, journals such as Contributions to Indian Sociology carried few articles on this theme during this period.

Hindu nationalism and the theme of secularism was noted, though the writings were oft en by persons who had written earlier on the same themes and so, by and large, did not refl ect signifi cantly new leanings. What is distinctive for this period, as noted earlier, is the idea of conversion that appears in several volumes and articles, as well as the particular focus on Muslims in modern India and the relating of religion to issues of socio-economic development. Th ese issues have direct and indirect linkages with the theme of religion and cultural pluralism as I have attempted to show in this chapter. On the other hand, the specifi c concept of ‘multiculturalism’, barring the few exceptions, does not appear to be pursued to any signifi cant extent in the literature during this period.

It appears that violence against Muslims (particularly in 2002, in Gujarat) contributed to raising new debates about Muslim socio-economic backwardness. Violence against Christians in several parts of the country, because it was oft en perpetrated in the name of a


battle against conversion, raised questions in scholarly circles about the issue of religious conversion itself. I would surmise that the 2000s should be considered the decade of the minorities in social science literature on religion and cultural pluralism in India, and the period under survey certainly demonstrates that focal interest. To conclude, ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ are not, for the most part, distinguished when questions of pluralism are being discussed, that is, the idea of ‘cultural pluralism’ is used to include the idea of ‘religious pluralism’. However, particularly when specifi c instances are being spoken of (Toff olo 2003; Sheth 2009; Bauman 2008; Robinson 2003), the literature is careful to make a distinction between religious identities and linguistic, caste, class, or regional ones.

Th ere is still enormous scope for widening the ambit of studies on religion and cultural pluralism. I just mention a few possibilities here. Th ere continues to be the need to capture, contextually and in a historical perspective, the immense diversity of religious and cultural cults, movements; we also need more studies of living textual traditions (including the play of intertextuality), the reception, interpretation, and the ‘practice’ of the text within the family, the guru cult or the wider community. Th e Internet or the DVD are the new ‘texts’ of religious cults and movements, and one may then have to enquire if the meta-phor of the text needs to be abandoned for a diff erent understanding of modern religious communication. Caste and religion were old

Th ere is space for thinking about the culture of the state itself, and the ways in which the educational system and the curriculum, the tourist industry (how do tourist ‘guides’ tell the history of a particular religious or cultural site?), or even the advertising world incorporate and disseminate images of India’s religions or cultural plurality. Is there a culture of the secular? Is there, in fact, a culture of religious or cultural pluralism? How are these terms institutionally—in the school, in the workplace, in the public organization—understood, symbolized or enacted? Th e discussions on these issues have most oft en centred around the study of political, constitutional, or even philosophical debates or, then, around the analysis of particular religious cults or sites. Th e new literature on urban cults is beginning to see urban space as mnemonic for an alternative modernity and more research in this area is looked forward to.

Th e growing literature on transnational religious movements shows us that religion and religious boundaries in India have considerable


resonance with religious divides in other parts of the world. Th is contributes immensely to the power of religious ideology to fabricate again and ever anew the boundaries between imagined groups. More than any other group marker in India—such as caste or language—religion alone has the capacity to battle it out on the global cultural market. On the other hand, one might ask if we need to abandon the term ‘religion’ in favour of ‘faith communities’ now? If people are opt-ing in and out of communities, acquiring cults, or changing gurus, can we understand ‘community’ in a very diff erent way from the past? What implications, however, does the notion of the socio-economic ‘rights’ of religious groups have for this understanding? Scholars will have to engage with these questions.

Th e engagement with history, now well established, and the slow trend towards comparative studies need to be encouraged. Analysts of secularism and the role of the state in relation to religion in India have tended to compare the experience of this country directly with that of the ‘West’, largely ignoring the ways in which other complex, traditional cultures in Asia have mediated the political realities of multireligious societies in the modern period. A comparison of the experiences and struggles with secularism of India with other plural, developing countries will hold valuable lessons at the level of theory and policy. Indeed, an analysis of the trajectories of development (social, economic, and political) with respect to the increasing ethnic and regional discontent in the countries in the south Asian region may yield much through analysis in a comparative framework.

REFERENCES

Ahmad, I. (ed.). 1973. Caste and Social Stratifi cation among the Muslims . Delhi: Manohar Book Service.

———. (ed.). 1978. Religion and Ritual among the Muslims in India . Delhi: Manohar Book Service.

Bauman, C. 2008. Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947 . Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishers.

Bayly, S. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berglund, H. 2004. ‘Religion and Nationalism’, Economic and Political Weekly , 39(10): 1,064–70.

Bhambhri, C.P. 2003. Hindutva: A challenge to Multi-Cultural Democracy . New Delhi: Shipra Publications.


Brass, P.R. 2003. Th e Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India . Seattle: University of Washington Press.

———. 2006. Forms of Collective Violence: Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide in Modern India . Gurgaon: Th ree Essays Collective.

Chandoke, N. 1999. Beyond Secularism: Th e Rights of Religious Minorities . New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Daniel, E.V. 1984. Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Das, V. (ed.). 1986. Th e Word and the World: Fantasy, Symbol and Record . New Delhi: Sage Publications.

———. (1987). Structure and Cognition . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dayal, J. (ed.). 2002. Gujarat 2002: Untold and Re-told Stories of the Hindutva Lab .

New Delhi: Media House. Deb, K. (ed.). 2002. Mapping Multiculturalism . New Delhi: Rawat Publications. Deepa, A. 2007. ‘In a Small, Dark Corner of Gujarat’, Himal Southasian , (October). Dube, S. 1999. ‘Cultures of Christianity and Colonialism in Chhattisgarh’, Studies

in Humanities and Social Sciences , 6(1): 61–78. Dumont, L. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: Th e Caste System and its Implications .

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eaton, R. 1984. ‘Conversion to Christianity among the Nagas, 1876–1971’. Indian

Economic and Social History Review , 21(1): 1–44. ———. 1995. Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras .

Delhi: Penguin Books India. Ebaugh, R.H. 2004. ‘Religion across Borders: Transnational Religious Ties’. Asian

Journal of Social Sciences , 32(2): 216–31. Froerer, P. 2007a. Religious Division and Social Confl ict: the Emergence of Hindu

Nationalism in Rural India . Delhi: Social Science Press. ———. 2007b. ‘Disciplining the Saff ron way: Moral Education and the Hindu

Rashtra’, Modern Asian Studies , 41(5): 1,033–71. Fuller, C.J. 1992. Th e Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India .

New Jersey: Princeton University Press. George, S. and Kannabiran, K. 2007. ‘What is Justice for Survivors of Gujarat

2002?’, Economic and Political Weekly , 42(11): 923–5. Ghurye, G.S. 1969. Caste and Race in India . Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Gottlob, M. 2007. ‘India’s Unity in Diversity as a Question of Historical

Perspective’, Economic and Political Weekly , 42(9): 779–88. Hasan, Z. 2005. ‘Reservation for Muslims’, Seminar , 549 (May). ———. 2009. ‘Muslim Deprivation and the Debate on Equality’, Seminar , 602

(October). Hasan, Z. and Menon, R. (eds). 2005. In a Minority . New Delhi: Oxford University

Press. Heesterman, J.C. 1985. Th e Inner Confl ict of Tradition . Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. Hegde, S. 2007. ‘Th e Dialogue of Cultures’, Economic and Political Weekly , 42(21):

1,982–9.


Ibrahim, F. 2008. ‘Islamic “reforms”, the Nation-state and the Liberal Subject: the Cultural Politics of Identity in Kachchh, Gujarat’, Contributions to Indian Sociology , 42(2): 191–217.

Inden, R. 1990. Imagining India . Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Islam, M. 2007. ‘Th e Plight of Indian Muslims: Some Missing Links in Sachar

Committee Report and a Possible Alternative Model of Affi rmative Action’, Social Action , 57(3): 244–59.

Jaff relot, C. 2004. ‘Composite Culture is not Multiculturalism: a Study of the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates’, in A Varshney (ed.), India and the Politics of Developing Countries: Essays in Memory of Myron Weiner . New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 126–49.

Jain, R.K. 1976. Text and Context . ISHI: London: ASA Publication. Jairath, V. (ed.). 2011. Frontiers of Embedded Muslim Communities . New Delhi:

Routledge India. Jha, P. 2006. ‘Gujarat as Another Country: the Making and Reality of a Fascist

Realm’. Himal Southasian , (October). Judge, P. 2003. ‘Social Construction of Identity in a Multicultural State: Sikhs in

Canada’, Economic and Political Weekly , 38(17): 1,725–31. Kalpagam, U. 2006. ‘Secularism, Religiousity and Popular Culture: Chennai’s

Roadside Temples’, Economic and Political Weekly . 41(43–4): 4,595–600. Karve, I. 1961. Hindu Society: An Interpretation . Pune: Sangam Press. Kaur, R. 2005. Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia . New

Delhi: Sage Publications. Khare, R.S. 1976. Th e Hindu Hearth and Home . Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Lindberg, A. 2009. ‘Islamisation, Modernisation or Globalisation? Changed

Gender Relations among South Indian Muslims’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies , 32(1): 86–109.

Madan, T.N. 1987. Non-renunciation . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003. ‘Freedom of Religion’, Economic and Political Weekly , 38(11): 15–21. ———. 2007. ‘One from Many: Explorations in the Anthropology of Islam’,

Eastern Anthropologist . 60(1): 1–26. Mander, H. 2006. ‘Inside Gujarat’s Relief Colonies’, Economic and Political Weekly ,

41(51): 5,235–9. ———. 2007. ‘Living in Times of Fear and Hate’, Economic and Political Weekly ,

42(10): 847–53. Mayaram, S. 1997. Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim

Identity . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. ‘Recognizing Whom? Multiculturalism, Muslim Minority Identity and

the Mers’, in R. Bhargava, A.K. Bagchi, and N. Sudershan (eds), Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy . New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 381–99.

———. 2004. ‘Hindu and Islamic Transnational Religious Movements’, Economic and Political Weekly , 39(1): 80–8.

Mosse, D. 1994a. ‘Idioms of Subordination and Styles of Protest among Christian and Hindu Harijan Castes in Tamil Nadu’, Contributions to Indian Sociology , 28(1): 67–106.


Mosse, D. 1994b. ‘Th e Politics of Religious Synthesis: Roman Catholicism and Hindu Village Society in Tamil Nadu, India’, in C. Stewart and R. Shaw (eds), Syncretism/Anti-syncretism: Th e Politics of Religious Synthesis . New York: Routledge, pp. 85–107.)

———. 1994c. ‘Catholic Saints and the Hindu Village Pantheon in Rural Tamil Nadu, India’, Man (n.s.), 29(2): 301–32.

Nadkarni, M.V. 2003. ‘Ethics and Relevance of Conversions’, Economic and Political Weekly , 38(2): 227–34.

Nanda, M. 2006. ‘How Modern are We?’, Economic and Political Weekly , 41(6): 11–17.

———. 2007. ‘Secularism without secularisation: Refl ections on God and Politics in US and India’, Economic and Political Weekly , 42(1): 39–46.

Oberoi, H. 1994. Th e Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition . New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Oommen, T.K. 2007. ‘Multiculturalism in Twentieth-century India: Ambiguity and Ambivalence’, in B. Chandra and S. Mahajan (eds), Composite Culture in a Multicultural Society. Delhi: National Book Trust, pp. 219–38.)

Osella, F. and Osella, C. 2008. ‘Islamism and Social Reform in Kerala, South India’, Modern Asian Studies , 42(2–3): 317–46.

———. 1993. ‘Which of Us are Hindus?’, in G. Pandey (ed.), Hindus and Others: Th e Question of Identity in India Today . New Delhi: Viking Penguin India, pp. 238–72.

———. 2006. ‘Th e Time of the Dalit Conversion’, Economic and Political Weekly , 41(18): 1,779–88.

———. 1994. Death in Banaras . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettigrew, J. 1995. Th e Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of State and Guerilla

Violence . London: Zed Books. Prakash, C. 2009. ‘Gujarat: Rule of the Majority’, Social Action , 59(2): 135–42. Ram, K. 1991. Mukkuvar Women: Gender, Hegemony and Capitalist Transfor-

mation in a South Indian Fishing Community . London and New Jersey: Zed Books.

Ray Choudhury, A.B. 2007. ‘Sabarmati: Creating a New Divide?’, Economic and Political Weekly , 42(8): 97–703.

Robinson, R. 1998. Conversion, Continuity and Change: Lived Christianity in Southern Goa . New Delhi: Sage Publications.

———. 2003. Christians of India . New Delhi: Sage Publications. ———. 2004. ‘Virtual Warfare: Th e Internet as the New Site for Global Religious

Confl icts’, Asian Journal of Social Sciences , 32(2): 198–215. Robinson, R. and S. Clarke (eds). 2003. Religious Conversion in India: Modes,

Motivations and Meanings . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sarkar, S. 2003. ‘Th e Limits of Nationalism’, Seminar , 522(February). Sarkar, T. and U. Butalia (eds). 1995. Women and the Hindu Right . New Delhi:

Kali for Women. Schmalz, M.N. 1999. ‘Images of the Body in the Life and Death of a North Indian

Catholic Catechist’, History of Religions , 39(2): 177–201.


Shani, O. 2005. ‘Th e Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India: Th e Case Study of Ahmadabad in the 1980s’, Modern Asian Studies , 39(4): 861–96.

Sharma, J. 2003. Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Nationalism . New Delhi: Viking. Shashikumar, V.K. 2008. ‘Counting Muslim Votes in Modi’s Gujarat’, Himal

Southasian , (January). Sheth, D.L. 2009a. ‘Minority Politics: Th e Shift ing Terms of Policy Discourse’,

Seminar , 602(October). ———. 2009b. ‘Political Communalization of Religions and the Crisis of

Secularism’, Economic and Political Weekly . 44(39): 71–9. Sheth, D.L. and G. Mahajan (eds). 1999. Minority Identities and the Nation-state .

New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sikand, Y. 2004. ‘Sikh-Muslim Harmony: Contributions of Khwaja Hasan’,

Economic and Political Weekly , 39(11): 1,113–16. Spohn, W. 2003. ‘Multiple Modernity, Nationalism and Religion: A Global

Perspective’, Current Sociology , 51(3–4): 265–86. Srinivas, M.N. 1952. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India . Oxford:

Clarendon Press. ———. 2002. Collected Essays . New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Srinivas, S. 2008. In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global

Religious Movement . Leiden: Brill. Srinivas, T. 2010. Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism

through the Sathya Sai Movement . New York: Columbia University Press. Sud, N. 2008. ‘Secularism and the Gujarat State: 1960–2005’. Modern Asian

Studies , 42(6): 1,251–81. Tejani, S. 2008. Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History 1890–1950 .

Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Th aramangalam, J. 1996. ‘Caste among Christians in India’, in M.N. Srinivas

(ed.), Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar . New Delhi: Viking Penguin India, pp. 263–91.

Toff olo, C.E. (ed.). 2003. Emancipating Cultural Pluralism . Albany: State University of New York Press.

Trawick, M. 1990. Notes on Love in a Tamil Family . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Upadhya, C. 2002. ‘Culture Wars: Th e Anthropological Debate on Multiculturalism’, in K. Deb (ed.), Mapping Multiculturalism , New Delhi: Rawat Publications, pp. 172–94.

Upadhyay, S.P. 2011. ‘A Popular Spiritual Guru in Contemporary Hinduism: A Sociological Study of Asaram Bapu (unpublished PhD dissertation), Mumbai: Indian Institute of Technology.

Varadarajan, S. (ed.). 2002. Gujarat: Th e Making of a Tragedy . New Delhi: Penguin. Vijapur, A. 2003. ‘Withering Minority Rights in India? Domestic Implementation

of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’, Social Action , 53(4): 378–99.

Visvanathan, S. 1993a. Th e Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual among the Yakoba . Chennai: Oxford University Press.


Visvanathan, S. 1993b. Missionary Styles and the Problem of Dialogue . Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. (Occasional Paper 6.)

Wadley, S. 1975. Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Warrier, M. 2003. ‘Processes of Secularization in Contemporary India: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission’, Modern Asian Studies , 37(1): 213–53.

Zainuddin, S. 2003. ‘Islam, Social Stratifi cation and Empowerment of Muslim OBCs’, Economic and Political Weekly , 38(46): 4,905–7.

Religious Pluralism

Documents

Transcript of Religious Pluralism