Ritual, Caste, and Religion in Colonial South India PDF Download

Author: Michael Bergunder
Publisher: Primus Books
ISBN: 9380607210
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195165071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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At the height of British colonialism, conversion to Christianity was a path to upward mobility for Indian low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. Kent examines these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations.

Author: Edmund Ronald Leach
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521096645
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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This book endeavours to test two opposing arguments about the meaning of the term caste.

Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Author: R Champakalakshmi
Publisher: OUP India
ISBN: 9780198070597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This volume discusses the multiple facets, dominant characteristics, and historical trajectories of religious traditions in pre-colonial south India. Examining the linkages between religion and politics, it investigates alternative vernacular traditions, rituals and practices, temple architecture, iconography, and other representational art forms.

Author: Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas
Publisher: London : Asia Publishing House
ISBN:
Category : Coorg (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Author: Keith E. Yandell Keith E. Yandell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136818014
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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The last two centuries have witnessed profound changes in the nature of public consciousness. Nowhere has this been more true than in India, especially in relation to changing cultures of public life and religious tradition in South India. Essays in this collection attempt to explore the intricacies of what is perhaps the single most complex socio-religious environment in the world. The essays consider the evolution of the notion of Hinduism as a distinct and singular separate religion; the relationship between this kind of formulation and various European or western influences in India; and differences which the formation of this idea and its acceptance have made upon wider public consciousness. Each essay also considers certain general issues - such as the passing along of religious authority from one generation to the next, and the rise of disputes over matters both ideological (or doctrinal) and institutional, disputes that are fundamental to the traditions concerned and yet have unmistakable cross-cultural references.

Author: Richard S. Weiss
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520973747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization. Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasize the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, the author considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Weiss narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions, making this text essential for scholarly audiences of South Asian history, religious studies, Hindu studies, and South Asian studies.

Author: Ute Husken
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199812292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Ritual has been long viewed as an undisputed and indisputable part of (especially religious) tradition, performed over and over in the same ways: stable in form, meaningless, preconcieved, and with the aim of creating harmony and enabling a tradition's survival. The authors represented in this collection argue, however, that this view can be seriously challenged and that ritual's embeddedness in negotiation processes is one of its central features.

Author: Priyadarshini Vijaisri
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Devadāsīs
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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