Religion and the City in India

Description

This book offers fresh theoretical, methodological and empirical analyses of the relation between religion and the city in the South Asian context. Uniting the historical with the contemporary by looking at the medieval and early modern links between religious faith and urban settlement, the book brings together a series of focused studies of the mixed and multiple practices and spatial negotiations of religion in the South Asian city. It looks at the various ways in which contemporary religious practice affects urban everyday life, commerce, craft, infrastructure, cultural forms, art, music and architecture. Chapters draw upon original empirical study and research to analyze the foundational, structural, material and cultural connections between religious practice and urban formations or flows. The book argues that Indian cities are not ‘postsecular’ in the sense that the term is currently used in the modern West, but that there has been, rather, a deep, even foundational link between religion and urbanism, producing different versions of urban modernity. Questions of caste, gender, community, intersectional entanglements, physical proximity, private or public ritual, processions and prayer, economic and political factors, material objects, and changes in the built environment, are all taken into consideration, and the book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of different historical periods, different cities, and different types of religious practice. Filling a gap in the literature by discussing a diversity of settings and faiths, the book will be of interest to scholars to South Asian history, sociology, literary analysis, urban studies and cultural studies. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Religion and the city in India Note on Transliteration References Chapter 1: The making of a city: Religion and society in the Caṇḍī-maṅgala of early modern Bengal Introduction The Caṇḍī-maṅgala The making of a city From forest to city Urban orders in Kālaketu’s city The city and history Conclusion: Religion and urbanism Notes References Chapter 2: Temple, urban landscape, and production of space: Śrirangam in the early modern Tamil region I: Śrirangam: The town and its description II: Religious conflicts and urban conformations: The town of Śrirangam from the thirteenth to seventeenth century CE Hindu-Muslim conflict and urban syncretism? Śrivaiṣṇava community and urban configurations Śrivaiṣṇava sectarian conflicts: Śrirangam and urban homogeneity Notes References Chapter 3: Hazrat-i-Dehli: Chishti Sufism and the making of the cosmopolitan character of the city of Delhi Acknowledgements References Chapter 4: The East India Company, English Protestants, and the wider Christian community in seventeenth-century Surat, Bombay, and Madras Notes References Chapter 5: Reconfiguring a lost trace: The Buddhist ‘revival’ movement in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta and the Bengal Buddhist Association I. The Calcutta chapter: The new passion for things Buddhist among Bengali intellectuals II. Spilling over onto the visual register: New meanings and old structures III. Practising Buddhists and the colonial city: Interrogating the role of the Bengal Buddhist Association and Kripasaran Barua Notes References Chapter 6: From Faridpur to Calcutta: The journey of the Matua faith The past and the present Coming closer to the city Increased mainstreaming Religious or secular? Conclusion Notes References Chapter 7: On residues and reuse: A festival and its afterlife in an Indian metropolis Where resides the ‘religious’? The ephemeral and the transient From worshipped image to idol refuse The sale and travel of pandals An ‘art’ that eludes preservation Notes References Chapter 8: The leftover untouch: Sensing caste in the modern urban lives of a devotional instrument Urbanity, sacrality, caste, and the senses The life and touch of the sound player The life and touch of the sound maker Ucchishta asparśa Notes References Chapter 9: Mourning in the city: Imambaras as sites of urban contestation in Kolkata History, citizenship, identity Sham-e Azadi: An evening of freedom Migration and monumentalization: Shia Muslim religious sites in Kolkata The community and its ghettos: Marginality, sectarian identity, and contestation Contestation and affirmation: safety, security, and the citizen subject Sibtainabad Imambara: The rediscovery of royal Muslim heritage Bibi Anaro Imambara: Trans-territorial expansion of architecture Haji Kerbalai Imambara: Sacred property on Internet Conclusion Notes References Chapter 10: Performing processions: Claiming the city 1 City spaces Procession and pilgrimage: The case of Tarakeshwar The Jain Sawari: An urban ritual procession Other processions: Minority faith and state patronage Notes References Chapter 11: Memory and space: Street shrines and popular devotion in Amritsar A city in a nationalist historiography Contextualizing lived spaces Demography, history, memory Spatializing Khwaja Khizr (Jhule Lal) Memorializing Sakhi Sarwar, Baba Farid, and Sabir Pak Conclusion Notes References Chapter 12: Convivial spaces: The art of being together and separate in the multi-religious city of Ahmedabad Introduction Locating the field: togetherness and separation in the Kot Convivial spaces: Between transgression and compliance Conclusion: Keeping the border to live with differences Notes References Chapter 13: Religion, heritage, and identity: The contested heritage-scape of Varanasi 1 Section I: Religion, history, heritage, and identity Section II: Mapping Varanasi’s multilayered heritage-scape ‘Timeless’ Hindu heritage: Kashi-Shiva-Ganga Brahmanical and subaltern heritage Built heritage: The riverfront Performative and experiential heritage Islamic heritage: Mosques, mazars, and mohallas Syncretic heritage Cultural heritage: Leisure, fashion, music, and food Ganga: Death of a living heritage Part III Hindu nationalism and Varanasi’s heritage Conclusion Note References Index