A History of State and Religion in India

A History of State and Religion in India
Author: Ian Copland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136459502

Offering the first long-duration analysis of the relationship between the state and religion in South Asia, this book looks at the nature and origins of Indian secularism. It interrogates the proposition that communalism in India is wholly a product of colonial policy and modernisation, questions whether the Indian state has generally been a benign, or disruptive, influence on public religious life, and evaluates the claim that the region has spawned a culture of practical toleration. The book is structured around six key arenas of interaction between state and religion: cow worship and sacrifice, control of temples and shrines, religious festivals and processions, proselytising and conversion, communal riots, and religious teaching/doctrine and family law. It offers a challenging argument about the role of the state in religious life in a historical continuum, and identifies points of similarity and contrast between periods and regimes. The book makes a significant contribution to the literature on South Asian History and Religion.

Religion in India

Religion in India
Author: Fred W. Clothey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2007-01-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135948380

Religion in India is an ideal first introduction to India's fascinating and varied religious history. Fred Clothey surveys the religions of India from prehistory and Indo-European migration through to the modern period. Exploring the interactions between different religious movements over time, and engaging with some of the liveliest debates in religious studies, he examines the rituals, mythologies, arts, ethics and social and cultural contexts of religion as lived in the past and present on the subcontinent. Key topics discussed include: Hinduism, its origins and development over time minority religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism and Buddhism the influences of colonialism on Indian religion the spread of Indian religions in the rest of the world the practice of religion in everyday life, including case studies of pilgrimages, festivals, temples and rituals, and the role of women Written by an experienced teacher, this student-friendly textbook is full of clear, lively discussion and vivid examples. Complete with maps and illustrations, and useful pedagogical features, including timelines, a comprehensive glossary, and recommended further reading specific to each chapter, this is an invaluable resource for students beginning their studies of Indian religions.

A History of State and Religion in India

A History of State and Religion in India
Author: Ian Copland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136459499

Offering the first long-duration analysis of the relationship between the state and religion in South Asia, this book looks at the nature and origins of Indian secularism. It interrogates the proposition that communalism in India is wholly a product of colonial policy and modernisation, questions whether the Indian state has generally been a benign, or disruptive, influence on public religious life, and evaluates the claim that the region has spawned a culture of practical toleration. The book is structured around six key arenas of interaction between state and religion: cow worship and sacrifice, control of temples and shrines, religious festivals and processions, proselytising and conversion, communal riots, and religious teaching/doctrine and family law. It offers a challenging argument about the role of the state in religious life in a historical continuum, and identifies points of similarity and contrast between periods and regimes. The book makes a significant contribution to the literature on South Asian History and Religion.

India's Agony Over Religion

India's Agony Over Religion
Author: Gerald James Larson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 1995-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 143841014X

Many of ancient India's religious traditions are alive in modern India, and many of these religious traditions are in conflict with one another regarding the future of India. Even the so-called "secular state" is deeply pervaded by religious sentiments growing out of the Neo-Hindu nationalist movement of Gandhi and Nehru. A careful analysis of the current religious scene when placed in its proper long-term historical perspective raises interesting questions about the nature and future of religion not only in India but elsewhere as well.

Identifying and Regulating Religion in India

Identifying and Regulating Religion in India
Author: Geetanjali Srikantan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108901158

Judicial debates on the regulation of religion in post-colonial India have been characterised by the inability of courts to identify religion as a governable phenomenon. This book investigates the identification and regulation of religion through an intellectual history of law's creation of religion from the colonial to the post-colonial. Moving beyond conventional explanations on the failure of secularism and the secular state, it argues that the impasse in the legal regulation of religion lies in the methodologies and frameworks used by British colonial administrators in identifying and governing religion. Drawing on insights from post-colonial theory and religious studies, it demonstrates the role of secular legal reasoning in the background of Western intellectual history and Christian theology through an illustration of the place of worship. It is a contribution to South Asian legal history and sociolegal studies analysing court archives, colonial narratives and legislative documents.

Religion, State, and Society in Medieval India

Religion, State, and Society in Medieval India
Author: Saiyid Nurul Hasan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

"S. Nurul Hasan played an important role in giving a new direction to history writing in India immediately before and after independence. This book brings together essays spanning a distinguished, often pioneering, career of a leading academician. Reflecting the evolution of his ideas on medieval Indian history, they demonstrate the diversity and versatility of Hasan's works and his multi-disciplinary approach to the study of history." "Scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval Indian history, sociology, and politics as well as general readers will find this book an important resource."--BOOK JACKET.

Religious Journeys in India

Religious Journeys in India
Author: Andrea Marion Pinkney
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 143846603X

Explores how religious travel in India is transforming religious identities and self-constructions. In an increasingly global world where convenient modes of travel have opened the door to international and intraregional tourism and brought together people from different religious and ethnic communities, religious journeying in India has become the site of evolving and often paradoxical forms of self-construction. Through ethnographic reflections, the contributors to this volume explore religious and nonreligious motivations for religious travel in India and show how pilgrimages, missionary travel, the exportation of cultural art forms, and leisure travel among coreligionists are transforming not only religious but also regional, national, transnational, and personal identities. The volume engages with central themes in South Asian studies such as gender, exile, and spirituality; a variety of religions, including Sikhism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity; and understudied regions and emerging places of pilgrimage such as Manipur and Maharashtra. “It’s rare to find such diverse accounts of religious travel collected in a single volume, where scholars’ engagements with individual places of pilgrimage in India and with the journeys surrounding them are truly in conversation with one another. For readers, it makes for a deeply enlightening journey. It also raises an interesting question: Is the reality of India powerful enough that it absorbs divergent expressions of religious tourism, making of them a common fabric? Here, so unusually, readers have the materials to decide.” — John Stratton Hawley, author of A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement