Religion and the City in India

245 Pages·2021·17.973 MB·English

by  Supriya Chaudhuri

Religion and the City in India
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 founda-
tional 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 of South Asian history, sociology,
literary analysis, urban studies, and cultural studies.
Supriya Chaudhuri is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at
Jadavpur University, India.
Routledge South Asian Religion Series
Women, Religion and the Body in South Asia
Living with Bengali Bauls
Kristin Hanssen
Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka
Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
Elizabeth J. Harris
Religion and Technology in India
Spaces, Practices and Authorities
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold
The Baghdadi Jews in India
Maintaining Communities, Negotiating Identities, and Creating Super-Diversity
Edited by Shalva Weil
Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia
Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers
Edited by Gil Ben-Herut, Jon Keune, and Anne Monius
Ritual Journeys in South Asia
Constellations and Contestations of Mobility and Space
Edited by Jürgen Schaflechner and Christoph Bergmann
Muslim Communities and Cultures of the Himalayas
Conceptualizing the Global Ummah
Edited by Jacqueline H. Fewkes and Megan Adamson Sijapati
Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia
Edited by István Keul
Religion and the City in India
Edited by Supriya Chaudhuri
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/asianstudies/series/RSARS
Religion and the City in India
Edited by Supriya Chaudhuri
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Supriya Chaudhuri; individual
chapters, the contributors
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British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 90144- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 032- 05958- 7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 02914- 4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Straive, India
Contents
List of figures vii
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI
1 The making of a city: Religion and
society in the Caṇḍī- maṅgala of early modern Bengal 13
SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI
2 Temple, urban landscape, and production
of space: Śrirangam in the early modern Tamil region 30
RANJEETA DUTTA
3 Hazrat- i-D ehli: Chishti Sufism and the making
of the cosmopolitan character of the city of Delhi 48
RAZIUDDIN AQUIL
4 The East India Company, English Protestants,
and the wider Christian community in
seventeenth- century Surat, Bombay, and Madras 62
HAIG Z. SMITH
5 Reconfiguring a lost trace: The Buddhist
‘revival’ movement in late nineteenth- century
Calcutta and the Bengal Buddhist Association 76
PARJANYA SEN
6 From Faridpur to Calcutta:
The journey of the Matua faith 93
SIPRA MUKHERJEE
vi Contents
7 On residues and reuse: A festival and
its afterlife in an Indian metropolis 109
TAPATI GUHA- THAKURTA
8 The leftover untouch: Sensing caste in the
modern urban lives of a devotional instrument 130
SUKANYA SARBADHIKARY
9 Mourning in the city: Imambaras as sites
of urban contestation in Kolkata 146
EPSITA HALDER
10 Performing processions: Claiming the city 162
NILANJANA GUPTA
11 Memory and space: Street shrines and
popular devotion in Amritsar 177
YOGESH SNEHI
12 Convivial spaces: The art of being together
and separate in the multi-r eligious city of Ahmedabad 197
APARAJITA DE
13 Religion, heritage, and identity: The contested
heritage- scape of Varanasi 210
PRALAY KANUNGO
Index 227
Figures
5.1 The Dharmarajika Mahavihara, headquarters
of the Maha Bodhi Society in Calcutta 84
5.2 Marble statue of Kripasaran placed adjacent to
Buddha at the Dharmankur Sabha/Bengal
Buddhist Association 90
7.1 Touring crowds at a Puja pavilion designed
like a Tibetan Buddhist pagoda, Durga Puja
of Mudiali Club, Kolkata, 2013 110
7.2 A tribal art complex with wooden sculptures,
designed by Gopal Poddar at the Durga Puja
of Barisha Club, Behala, Kolkata, 2011 111
7.3 Entrance pavilion with the buffalo symbolizing
Mahishasura and the ten arms of goddess
Durga, designed by Bhabatosh Sutar, Durga
Puja of Rajdanga Naba Uday Sangha, Kolkata, 2010 111
7.4 Clay idols of goddess Shitala, left by the
waterside, on the Eastern Metropolitan
Bypass, Kolkata, 2013 114
7.5 Idol corpses and refuse on the water
bank, Babughat, Kolkata, 2011 115
7.6 Remnants of a fibreglass giant eye that was
part of pandal decor, Abasar Club Durga Puja,
Bhowanipur, Kolkata, 2010 116
7.7 Women praying to the goddess on the
riverbank before the immersion of her image,
Champatala Ghat, Kolkata, 2013 117
viii Figures
7.8 Immersing the goddess in the river,
Champatala Ghat, Kolkata, 2017 117
7.9 Bidding farewell to the goddess and her
family on Bijoya Dashami at a household Puja
in south Kolkata, 2009 118
7.10 Labourers dismantling a remake of a
Chattisgarh village complex at Hindusthan
Park, Kolkata, 2008 120
7.11 Gouranga Kuinla’s team packing cardboard
folding puppets of Durga Puja pavilion for
transportation to a suburban Kali Puja, Lake
Town Adhibasibrinda Puja, 2010 123
7.12 Goddesses on display at the Warehouse
Gallery, Rabindra Sarovar, Kolkata, November 2012 125
7.13 Pavilion and walkway designed with
Pakistani truck art on enamel boards, Hatibagan
Nabin Pally Durga Puja, Kolkata, 2013 126
7.14 Howrah Bridge replica and Durga
Puja immersion tableau at the lakeside at
Baishnabghata Patuli, 2017 127
11.1 Khwaja Khizr at a shrine in Katra Sher
Singh, Amritsar 186
11.2 The shrine of Khwaja Khizr at Katra
Sher Singh, Amritsar 187
11.3 Inscription at the Khwaja Khizr (Jhule Lal)
shrine in Chowk Passian regarding its maintenance
by people of the locality 188
11.4 A poster in Amritsar, 2014, announcing the
14th urs celebrations of Sakhi Sarwar
(Baba Lakhdata) 190
Contributors
Raziuddin Aquil teaches medieval and early modern history at the University
of Delhi. His research interests intersect themes in religious traditions,
historical practices, and political cultures in the Delhi Sultanate in par-
ticular and in medieval and early modern India in general. His books
include The Muslim Question: Understanding Islam and Indian History
(2017) and Days in the Life of a Sufi: 101 Enchanting Stories of Wisdom
(2020).
Supriya Chaudhuri is Professor of English (Emerita) at Jadavpur University,
India. Her research interests include English and European Renaissance
literature, Indian cultural history, urban studies, travel writing, and mod-
ernism. Among her recent publications are Commodities and Culture in the
Colonial World (co- edited, 2018) and chapters contributed to The
Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore (2020), Asian Interventions
in Global Shakespeare (2021), Desiring India (2020), The Cambridge
History of Travel Writing (2019), and Eastern Resonances in Early Modern
England (2019).
Aparajita De is Assistant Professor of Geography, Delhi School of Economics,
University of Delhi. She researches in the field of urban and media studies
and has written on geographical imaginations and constructions of space
in everyday lives. Her publications focus on the spatialization of Hindu
and Muslim selves against the backdrop of communal violence in Gujarat,
digital practices of religion, and the making of diasporic Hindu- Bengali
identities. Her current project examines digital mapping, reimagining, and
storytelling of colonial Calcutta in new media.
Ranjeeta Dutta teaches at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University. Her research interests are religion and religious identities,
regions, space and historical geography in medieval and early modern
South Asia, public history, and heritage. Her publications include From
Hagiographies to Biographies: Ramanuja in Tradition and History (2014)
and the co-e dited Negotiating Religion: Perspectives from Indian History
(2012).