Religion, Law and Power

Religion, Law and Power

Tales of Time in Eastern India, 1860-2000

By Ishita Banerjee-Dube

Anthem South Asian Studies

Examines the interplay of distinct yet overlapping facets of history, Hinduism, the state and the nation in Eastern India.

PDF, Pages

ISBN:9781843313472

January 2009

£20.00, $32.00

  • About This Book
  • Reviews
  • Author Information
  • Series
  • Table of Contents
  • Links
  • Podcasts

About This Book

This book constructs an anthropological history of a subaltern religious formation, Mahima Dharma of Orissa, a large province in eastern India. Tracking the contingent making of a critical community over a hundred and forty year period, Religion, Law and Power explores the interplay of distinct expressions of time and history, innovative reformulations of caste and Hinduism and distinct engagements with state and nation. This serves to unravel the wider entanglements of religion, history, law, modernity and power. Ishita Banerjee-Dube provides a situated and critical analysis of the different trajectories of Mahima Dharma, bringing to the fore a clutch of empirical and theoretical issues. Understandings of the articulation and institutionalization of a subaltern religious order are not marked off from, but reveal the techniques and textures of, the modern state and dominant Hinduism. Such moves foreground subaltern and ascetic expressions and negotiations of modernity in institutional and everyday arenas, and further question widespread propositions of a singular Hinduism, especially in India today. ‘Religion, Law and Power’ should be of interest to historians, anthropologists and religious studies scholars as well as general readers interested in religion, politics, community and state. It will be of particular interest to students of South Asia concerned with Hinduism and religious sects, history and law, and power and resistance.

Reviews

'This is a lucid and richly documented account of the mutual penetration of religion and politics; it should be read both by historians of religion and by historians of South Asia.' —Richard M. Eaton, Professor of History, University of Arizona

Author Information

Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Professor of History at the Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de México. Her several authored and edited books include ‘Divine Affairs’ (2001), ‘Unbecoming Modern’ (2006), ‘Caste in History’ (2008), ‘Ancient to Modern’ (2009), and ‘Understanding Modern India’ (forthcoming).

Series

Anthem South Asian Studies

Table of Contents

Preface; Maps; Introduction: Tales of Time; Formations of Faith; Poets and Texts; Ascetics, Histories and the Law; Contemporary Contours; Epilogue; Bibliography; Appendix; Glossary; Index

Links

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