Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism

Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism PDF Author: Raminder Kaur
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1843311399
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduismfocuses on one of the major festivals of western India, the Ganapati Utsava, dedicated to the elephant-headed god. Raminder Kaur uses this occasion as the central anthropological and historiographical site within which to examine the dynamic relationship between spectacle, religion and nationalist politics. In contemporary India, this kaleidoscopic event is of interest to various bodies, including political parties such as the Shiv Sena, the BJP and the Congress, media conglomerates which sponsor competitions associated with religious rituals and the police and regulating organizations of the state which strive to keep religious festivity 'clean' of criminality and excessive political manipulation. At the level of community life and everyday bhakti (religious devotion), Kaur shows that the audiovisual aspects of the festival are today crucial to its enduring appeal among large sectors of urban India's populace. Deploying a single major cultural and religious event to study the variety and cultures of contemporary Hinduism and their complex histories, this book is an outstanding work that will interest every serious student of Indian politics, cultural history and anthropology.

Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism

Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism PDF Author: Raminder Kaur
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1843311380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
'Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism' focuses on one of the major festivals of western India, the Ganapati Utsava, dedicated to the elephant-headed god. Raminder Kaur uses this occasion as the central anthropological and historiographical site within which to examine the dynamic relationship between spectacle, religion and nationalist politics.

Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere

Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere PDF Author: Veena Naregal
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1843310554
Category : Bilingualism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The bilingual relationship between the English and the Indian vernaculars has long been crucial to the construction of ideology as well as cultural and political hierarchies. Print was vital for colonial literacy; it was thereby instrumental in initiating a shift in the relation between 'high' and 'low' languages. Here, Dr Naregal examines the relationship between linguistic hierarchies, textual practices and power in colonial western India. Whereas most studies of colonialism focus on India's 'high' literary culture, this book looks at how local intellectuals exploited their 'middling' position through such initiatives as the establishment of newspapers and of influential channels of communication. How were the 'native' intelligentsia able to achieve a position of ideological influence? Dr Naregal shows that, despite their minority position, such people negotiated the arenas of education policy, the press and voluntary associations to advance their social class. In doing this, she sheds light on the process of self-definition among the Indian intelligentsia before anticolonial thinking articulated its hegemonic claims as a nationalistic discourse.

Hindu Pluralism

Hindu Pluralism PDF Author: Elaine M. Fisher
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520966295
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Hindu Pluralism, Elaine M. Fisher complicates the traditional scholarly narrative of the unification of Hinduism. By calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term “sectarianism,” Fisher’s work excavates the pluralistic textures of precolonial Hinduism in the centuries prior to British intervention. Drawing on previously unpublished sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, Fisher argues that the performance of plural religious identities in public space in Indian early modernity paved the way for the emergence of a distinctively non-Western form of religious pluralism. This work provides a critical resource for understanding how Hinduism developed in the early modern period, a crucial era that set the tenor for religion's role in public life in India through the present day.

The Performance of Nationalism

The Performance of Nationalism PDF Author: Jisha Menon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107000106
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Jisha Menon's book explores the mimetic relationships between history and political performance and between India and Pakistan.

Culture and Politics in South Asia

Culture and Politics in South Asia PDF Author: Dev Nath Pathak
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351656139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This volume looks at the politics of communication and culture in contemporary South Asia. It explores languages, signs and symbols reflective of current mythologies that underpin instances of performance in present-day India and its neighbouring countries. From gender performances and stage depictions to protest movements, folk songs to cinematic reconstructions and elections to war-torn regions, the chapters in the book bring the multiple voices embedded within the grand theatre of popular performance and the cultural landscape of the region to the fore. Breaking new ground, this work will prove useful to students and researchers in sociology and social anthropology, art and performance studies, political studies and international relations, communication and media studies and culture studies.

Media and Religion

Media and Religion PDF Author: Stewart M. Hoover
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110497875
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This volume considers the mediation of religion in the context of global relations of power, culture, and communication. It takes a nuanced, historical view of emergent religions and their mediation in various forms. The wide range of chapters provides valuable insight into particular contexts while also offering connections to other cases and contexts. Together, they form a snapshot of religious evolution in the media age.

Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva

Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva PDF Author: Daniela Berti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000083683
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
The book reflects on the discreet influence of Hindutva in situations/places outside or at the margins of its organisational and mobilisational arena, where people denying any commitment to the Sangh Parivar, incidentally, show affinities and parallelisms with its discourse and practice. This study looks at Hindutva’s entrenchment not so much as an orchestration from above but more as an outcome of a process that evolves in relation to specific social and cultural milieus. The contributors analyse Hindutva’s entrenchment, emphasising on the ethnography of the forms of mediation and/or convergence produced in certain contexts. The 11 case studies highlight three different dynamics of Hindutva’s cultural entrenchment. The first section gathers cases where RSS-affiliated organisations have set up specific cultural or artistic programmes at the regional level, involving the meditation of local people whose interest in these programmes does not necessarily mean that they endorse the Hindutva agenda completely. The next deals with convergence and refers to cases where the followers gather around a charismatic personality, whose precepts and practice may bring them towards a closer affinity with the Hindutva programme. The last section deals with the contexts of resistance, where social milieus engaged in opposing Hindutva may, in fact, paradoxically, and even inadvertently, imbibe some of its ideas and practices in order to contest its claims.

Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora

Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora PDF Author: Edward T.G. Anderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197783295
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Hindu nationalism is transforming India, as an increasingly dominant ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with sections of India's vast diaspora drawn to, or actively supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a new dynamic--diasporic Hindutva ('Hindu-ness') has grown over many decades. This book explores how and why the movement became popular among India's diaspora from the second half of the twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology, and its plethora of organisations, have a distinctive resonance and way of operating overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular functions for diaspora communities. With a focus on Britain, Edward T.G. Anderson argues that transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various minoritised communities. To fully understand the Hindutva movement in India and identity politics in Britain, we must look at where the two come together.

India at 70

India at 70 PDF Author: Ruth Maxey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100065205X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
India at 70: Multidisciplinary Approaches examines Indian independence in August 1947 and its multiple afterlives. With nine contributions by a range of international scholars, it interrogates 1947 and its complex, bloody aftermath in historical, political and aesthetic terms. This original collection conceives of Indian independence in bold and innovative ways by moving across national boundaries and disciplinary, geopolitical and linguistic landscapes; and by examining a wealth of under-researched primary material, both recent and historical. India at 70 is a unique and indispensable contribution to Indian history, literary and cultural studies.