Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia

235 Pages·2021·2.831 MB·English

by  István Keul

Spaces of Religion in Urban
South Asia
This book explores religion in various spatial constellations in South Asian cities,
including religious centres such as Varanasi, Madurai and Nanded, and cities not
readily associated with religion, such as Mumbai and Delhi.
Contributors from different disciplines discuss a large variety of urban spaces:
physical and imagined, institutional and residential, built and landscaped, virtual
and mediatised, historical and contemporary. In doing so, the book addresses a
wide range of issues concerning the role of religion in the dynamic interplay of
factors which characterise complex urban social spaces. Chapters incorporate
varying degrees and forms of the religious/spiritual, ranging from invisible and
incorporeal to material and explicit, embedded in and expressed as spatial politics,
works of fiction, mission, pilgrimage, festivals and everyday life. Topics examined
include conflictual situations involving places of worship in Delhi, inclusive
religious practices in Kanpur, American Protestant mission in Madurai, the
celebration of the Prophet’s birthday in Lahore, gardens as imaginative spaces, the
politics of religion in Varanasi and many others.
Illustrating and analysing ways and forms in which religion persists in South
Asian urban contexts, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in
the fields of cultural studies, the study of religions, urban studies and South Asian
studies.
István Keul is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen,
Norway. His areas of research include various aspects of the history and sociology
of South Asian religions. He is the author of a monograph on the Hindu deity
Hanuman and has edited volumes on tantra, Yoginis, Banaras and consecration
rituals.
Routledge South Asian Religion Series
9 Women, Religion and the Body in South Asia
Living with Bengali Bauls
Kristin Hanssen
10 Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka
Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
Elizabeth J. Harris
11 Religion and Technology in India
Spaces, Practices and Authorities
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold
12 The Baghdadi Jews in India
Maintaining Communities, Negotiating Identities, and Creating
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Edited by Shalva Weil
13 Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia
Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers
Edited by Gil Ben-Herut, Jon Keune, and Anne Monius
14 Ritual Journeys in South Asia
Constellations and Contestations of Mobility and Space
Edited by Jürgen Schaflechner and Christoph Bergmann
15 Muslim Communities and Cultures of the Himalayas
Conceptualizing the Global Ummah
Edited by Jacqueline H. Fewkes and Megan Adamson Sijapati
16 Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia
Edited by István Keul
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com
Spaces of Religion in Urban
South Asia
Edited by István Keul
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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© 2021 selection and editorial matter, István Keul; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of István Keul to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
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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
Names: Keul, István, editor.
Title: Spaces of religion in urban South Asia / edited by István Keul.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020040804 | ISBN 9780367561505 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003106067 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sociology, Urban—South Asia—Religious aspects. |
Religion and sociology—South Asia. | Cultural landscapes—South Asia.
Classification: LCC HT147.S64 S63 2021 | DDC 306.60954/091732—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040804
ISBN: 978-0-367-56150-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10606-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vii
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: spaces of religion in urban South Asia 1
ISTVÁN KEUL
2 Defining the postcolonial sacred: contested places of worship
and urban planning in Delhi after Partition, 1947–1951 9
CLEMENS SIX
3 Inclusivism and its contingencies: following temple-goers
in Kanpur 24
KATHINKA FRØYSTAD
4 Conversionary Christian place-making in 19th-century
Madurai 39
MARY HANCOCK
5 Sikh pilgrimage sites in the city of Nanded in Maharashtra 56
KNUT A. JACOBSEN
6 The production of Muslim space: Mohalla life and Milad
celebrations in Lahore 72
AMEN JAFFER AND HAJRA CHEEMA
7 The boundary within: demolitions, dream projects
and the negotiation of Hinduness in Banaras 87
VERA LAZZARETTI
vi Contents
8 Mantras of the metropole: Chetan Bhagat’s millennial
Hinduism 100
MANISHA BASU
9 Kālī and the queen: religion and the production
of Calcutta’s pasts and presents 115
DEONNIE MOODIE
10 Timelines and lifelines: landscape practices and religious
refabulations from South Asia 128
SMRITI SRINIVAS
11 Land-grabbing deities: the politics of public space
in a multireligious neighbourhood 144
MOUMITA SEN
12 Making the “smart heritage city”: banal Hinduism,
beautification and belonging in “New India” 160
PHILIPPA WILLIAMS
13 Hindutva 2.0 as information ecology 176
ANUSTUP BASU
14 Purpose built: Islamabad, the Cold War, and non-Muslim
minorities in Pakistan 191
CARA CILANO
15 “We stand, but we do not pray”: religious plurality in a
Mumbai chawl 206
ISTVÁN KEUL
Index 219
Figures
5.1 Śrī Hazūr Sāhib in Nanded 61
5.2 The road from the Gurdwārā Śrī Hazūr Sāhib to the Godavari
River 62
5.3 The fast run with pointed swords which symbolises a military
charge 68
11.1 The neighbourhood, drawing by the author 148
11.2 The Shani mandir, photographed by the author, Kolkata 2017 152
11.3 A remembered shrine, drawing by the author 153
11.4 The rebuilt mazar with the name Saiyadpur written in iron
letters on the gate 156
Contributors
Anustup Basu is Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, Film and Media
Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research has been
lately focused on media politics and techno-religiosity in the South Asian con-
text. His most recent work, Hindutva as Political Monotheism, was published
by Duke University Press in 2020.
Manisha Basu is Associate Professor of English, African Studies, and Criticism
and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her
research interests are in postcolonial studies, South Asian studies, literary the-
ory and African literature, and she teaches both undergraduate and graduate
courses in these areas. She has recently become interested in global Anglo-
phone fiction and hopes to publish her second book on that subject soon.
Hajra Cheema is an architect and visual artist based in Lahore. Her art and
research focus on the social geography of everyday life and its links to the
politics of space. She is currently preparing an exhibition on religious gather-
ings in Lahore. Formerly, she was a lecturer in architecture, urban design and
theory at COMSATS University, Islamabad.
Cara Cilano is Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Letters and Professor
of English at Michigan State University. Most of her scholarly work focuses
on Pakistani English-language literature. She is the author of three books on
Pakistani literature and has edited a collection of essays on literary representa-
tions of September 11, 2001, from outside the United States.
Kathinka Frøystad is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the Univer-
sity of Oslo. She is a social anthropologist interested in practices assumed to
promote cohesion in multireligious societies. Her interests also include ritual
participation across religious boundaries and the legal regulation of religious
offence. She has conducted research on New Age–inspired religious move-
ments and on everyday Hindu nationalist rhetoric and its articulation with
social inequalities.
Mary Hancock is Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and History
at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an anthropologist of South
Contributors ix
Asia, with particular interests in urban South India. Her research and teach-
ing specialties include spatial studies, cultural memory, gender, statecraft and
religion. Her current research concerns the history of transcultural religious
networks between India and the U.S.
Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Ber-
gen, Norway. His main fields of research are Hindu studies, classical and con-
temporary Samkhya and Yoga, South Asian pilgrimage traditions, ideas and
rituals of space and time, and the globalisation of South Asian religions. He
is the author or editor of around 40 books and the founding editor-in-chief of
Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (six volumes, 2009–2015) and Brill’s Ency-
clopedia of Hinduism Online.
Amen Jaffer is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Lahore University of Man-
agement Sciences (LUMS). His current research focuses on the sociality of
urban life in Pakistan by examining the social relations of religious institu-
tions, the politics around infrastructure in mixed-use neighbourhoods and the
social economy of waste and recycling in Lahore.
István Keul is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen,
Norway. He has worked on various aspects of South Asian religions, such as
the history and sociology of Hanuman worship, new religious movements,
ritual as technology and the polysemy of the Yogini. His current research inter-
ests include religion in urban contexts and situated cosmopolitanism.
Vera Lazzaretti received her PhD in Indian and Tibetan studies (University of
Turin, 2013) and is currently a researcher at the South Asia Institute in Hei-
delberg, where she is working on the entanglements of security and heritage in
urban South Asia. Her fields of research include the anthropology of space and
place, religion and politics in South Asia, contested heritage, inter-religious
spaces, religious offence, pilgrimage, temple politics, Hindu nationalism and
South Asian cartography.
Deonnie Moodie is Associate Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies
Department at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches about the inter-
section of religion, politics and economics in South Asia. Her research centres
on the production of novel Hindu forms in urban centres, especially Kolkata
(formerly Calcutta) from the late 19th century until today. She is currently
writing a book about the recent emergence of Hindu ideologies in Indian busi-
ness schools and corporations.
Moumita Sen is Associate Professor of Culture Studies at MF, Norwegian School
of Theology, Religion, and Society in Oslo. She has worked on the intersec-
tion of aesthetic discourse, popular religiosity and organised politics in the
Mahishasur movement. Her larger research interest is in the field of Indian
visual culture. Her doctoral dissertation (2016) studied the practices of clay-
modelling in West Bengal, which weave together the worlds of art, religion
and politics.