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Religion and the City in India PDF

245 Pages·2021·17.973 MB·English
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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 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Supriya Chaudhuri; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Supriya Chaudhuri to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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).

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