Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice PDF
Preview Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice
Religion and Violence in South Asia September 11, the war in Iraq, bombing in cities from Bali and Madrid to London; there has perhaps never before been a time when the study of religion and violence have been so relevant to global society. It is a topic at once sensitive, complex, potentially offensive and of major importance. In today’s increasingly polarised world, religion has been represented by some as a primary cause of social division, conflict and war, whilst others have argued that this is a distortion of the ‘true’ significance of religion, which when properly followed promotes peace, harmony, goodwill and social cohesion. This collection looks beyond the stereotypical images and idealized portrayals of the peaceful South Asian religious traditions, which can occlude their own violent histories, in order to analyze the diverse attitudes towards and manifestations of violence within the major religious traditions of South Asia. An international team of distinguished contributors, led by John Hinnells and Richard King, engages with issues relating to both religion and violence in their classical and contemporary South Asian formations. The book combines case studies with theoretical discussion, relating an up-to-date overview of current issues surrounding religious violence in South Asia to new ideas and their social, critical and cultural ramifications. Part One explores violence and the classical traditions of South Asia (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic), while Part Two investigates religious violence in contemporary South Asia. The book concludes with three major chapters discussing the impact of globalization and the key theoretical issues informing contemporary discussions of the relationship between religion and violence. Contributors: Balbinder Bhogal, Paul Dundas, Rupert Gethin, Robert Gleave, Peter Gottschalk, Christophe Jaffrelot, Richard King, Laurie Patton, Peter Schalk, Arvind-pal Singh Mandair, Ian Talbot. Editors: John R.Hinnells is Professor of Comparative Study of Religions at Liverpool Hope University, UK. His specialist research area is Zoroastrianism and the Parsis, on which he has written, among others, The Zoroastrian Diaspora (2005). He is also the editor of various works, including The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (2005). Richard King is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the co-author (with Jeremy Carrette) of Selling Spirituality (Routledge 2005) and author of Orientalism and Religion (Routledge 1999), and Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (1999). Religion and Violence in South Asia Theory and Practice Edited by John R.Hinnells and Richard King LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.ebo okstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 John R.Hinnells and Richard King for selection and editorial material; individual contributors for their contributions 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. 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 for this title has been requested ISBN 0-203-08869-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-37290-9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-37291-7 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-08869-7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-37290-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-37291-6 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-08869-2 (ebk) Contents Notes on contributors vii Introduction 1 JOHN R.HINNELLS AND RICHARD KING 8 PART I Classical approaches to violence in South Asian traditions 1 Telling stories about harm: an overview of early Indian narratives 10 LAURIE L.PATTON (EMORY UNIVERSITY, USA) 2 The non-violence of violence: Jain perspectives on warfare, asceticism and 39 worship PAUL DUNDAS (EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, UK) 3 Buddhist monks, Buddhist kings, Buddhist violence: on the early Buddhist 59 attitudes to violence RUPERT GETHIN (BRISTOL UNIVERSITY, UK) 4 Crimes against God and violent punishment in al-Fat(cid:407)w(cid:407) al-‘Älamg(cid:431)riyya 79 ROBERT GLEAVE (EXETER UNIVERSITY, UK) 5 Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 101 BALBINDER SINGH BHOGAL (YORK UNIVERSITY, CANADA) 131 PART 2 Religion and violence in contemporary South Asia 6 Operationalizing Buddhism for political ends in a martial context in Lanka: 133 the case of Simhalatva PETER SCHALK (UPPSALA UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN) 7 Religion and violence: the historical context for conflict in Pakistan 147 IAN TALBOT (COVENTRY UNIVERSITY, UK) 8 The 2002 pogrom in Gujarat: the post-9/11 face of Hindu nationalist anti- 164 Muslim violence CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT (CERI, FRANCE) 183 PART 3 Theory: framing the ‘religion and violence’ debate 9 A categorical difference: communal identity in British epistemologies 185 PETER GOTTSCHALK (WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, USA) 10 The global fiduciary: mediating the violence of ‘religion’ 200 ARVIND MANDAIR (UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, USA) 11 The association of ‘religion’ with violence: reflections on a modern trope 214 RICHARD KING (VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, USA) Index 243 Contributors Balbinder Singh Bhogal is Assistant Professor in South Asian Religions and Cultures, and co-ordinator of the South Asian Studies Program at York University in Toronto, Canada. His research focuses on South Asian religions and cultures in general, but with a specialist interest in Sikh Studies, especially the teachings and interpretation of the Guru Granth Sahib. Recent publications include ‘Questioning Hermeneutics with Freud: How to Interpret Dreams and Mute-Speech in Sikh Scripture?’ in Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory 1(1):93–125. He is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Nonduality and Skilful Means in the Hymns of Guru Nanak: Hermeneutics of the Word. Paul Dundas is Reader in Sanskrit in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in the field of Jain history and sectarianism. His History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect is forthcoming with Routledge. Rupert Gethin completed his Ph.D. at University of Manchester. Since 1987 he has taught at the University of Bristol where he is currently Reader in Buddhist Studies. Since 2003 he has been President of the Pali Text Society. His principal research interests are in the theories of early Buddhist meditation and Abhidhamma. Peter Gottschalk is Associate Professor at Wesleyan University. He is author of Beyond Hindu and Muslim (Oxford University Press, 2000) and is co-designer of ‘A Virtual Village’ with Mathew Schmalz (http://virtualvillage.wesleyan.edu/). Currently he is researching British information projects in India. Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. He specializes in Islamic law, Muslim hermeneutics and Shi’i Muslim thought. John R.Hinnells is Research Professor in the Comparative Study of Religions at Liverpool Hope University; he was formerly at SOAS and Manchester University. His research area is Zoroastrianism, specifically the Parsis. His major works include Zoroastrians in Britain (Oxford University Press 1996) and The Zoroastrian Diaspora (Oxford University Press 2005) and a selection of his articles was published by Ashgate in 2000. He has edited the New Penguin Dictionary of Religions and the New Penguin Handbook of Living Religions (1996 and 1997) as well as several books for Routledge including Islamic Mysticism in the West with Professor Jamal Malik (2006) and The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religions (2005). Christophe Jaffrelot is Director of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales (CERI), Sciences Po (Paris) and Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He is an expert on South Asian politics and is the author/editor of a number of books including: India’s Silent Revolution. The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (2003), and The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics (1996), both published by Columbia University Press. Richard King is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University, USA. His main research interests include Hindu and Buddhist philosophical traditions, post- structuralist and postcolonial approaches to the study of religions, and the comparative study of mysticism and spirituality. He is the author of four previous books including Early Advaita Ved(cid:407)nta and Buddhism (State University of New York Press 1995), Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’ (Routledge 1999), Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Edinburgh University Press 1999/2000) and Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, co-authored with Dr Jeremy Carrette (Routledge 2005). Arvind Mandair teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he holds the SBSC Endowed Chair in Sikh Studies. His recent publications include: Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity, co-ed. (Curzon Press 2001), Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections From the Scriptures, co-ed. (Routledge 2005), and a monograph entitled Religion and the Politics of Translation. He is founding co-editor of the new journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory published by Routledge. Laurie L.Patton is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of Religion at Emory University, USA. She is the author or editor of seven books: Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation, ed. (State University of New York Press 1994); Myth as Argument: The as Canonical Commentary, author (Walter de Gruyter 1996); Myth and Method, ed. with Wendy Doniger (University Press of Virginia 1996); Jewels of Authority: Women and Text in the Hindu Tradition, ed. (Oxford University Press 2002); Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice, author (University of California Press 2004) and The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, ed. with Edwin Bryant (Routledge 2005). Her book of poetry, Fire’s Goal: Poems from a Hindu Year, was published by White Clouds Press in 2003, and her translation of the Bhagavad G(cid:431)t(cid:407) is forthcoming from Penguin Press Classics Series. She has recently returned from India where she worked as a Fulbright scholar, completing research for her forthcoming book, Grandmother Language: Women and Sanskrit in Maharashtra and Beyond. Peter Schalk is Professor in the Department of the History of Religions at Uppsala University in Sweden. Dr Schalk’s main fields of research are ritual transmission of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, the religions of Fu Nan as state ideologies, the history of Buddhism among Tamils in Tamilakam and Ilam, Hinduism in Western exile, and the religious expressions of social-economical conflicts in present South Asia. His recent publications include ‘Robert Caldwell’s Derivation A Critical Assessment’, in South-Indian Horizons: Felicitation Volume for François Gros (Institut Français De Pondichery, 2004); ‘ An Assessment of an Argument’ in Historia Religionum 25(2004); ‘God as Remover of Obstacles. A Study of Caiva Soteriology among Ilam Tamil Refugees’ in Historia Religionum 23(2004). Ian Talbot is Professor in British History at the University of Southampton where he is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Britain and Its Empire. His recent publications include Pakistan: A Modern History (Hurst revised edn 2005) and ‘Pakistan in 2003: Political Deadlock and Continuing Uncertainties’ in Asian Survey XLIV(1) January/February 2004.
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