Religious traditions in modern South Asia: London and New York: Routledge, 2011. xvi + 348 pages

Abstract

© c o p One way of summarizing the contents of this book would be to say that it identifies a paradox involved in claiming that south Asia, as a region, contains distinct religions on the one hand, and also claiming, on the other, that it is “a region of great religious diversity” (1), for religion diversity could compromise the claim to religious distinctness on the part of its various religions. After identifying this paradox, the book explores it in detail with a wealth of historical and anthropological evidence. Yet another way of summarizing the contents of this book would be to say that it examines the religious traditions of south Asia phenomenologically in part one of the book and historically in part two. Part one of the book investigates themes which cut across various religious traditions, such as those of deity, texts and their authority, myth, ritual, teachers and their traditions, and caste (instead of focusing on the various religious traditions individually) while part two focuses on how these individual religious traditions have been shaped by the historical processes set in motion by their encounter with the modern West. Yet another way of describing the contents of this book would be to say that it questions the application of the World Religions model of studying religion, in which the various religions found in south Asia, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha’i “are treated separately in different chapters” (xii; also see 251), by interrogating these categories critically. Yet another way of summarizing the contents of this book would be to say it presents the various religious traditions of south Asia at the points of intersection between tradition and modernity. Yet another way of summarizing the contents of this book would be to say that it highlights the problems of applying the Western word “religion”, with its underlying assumption of exclusive religious identity, to the religious reality of south Asia, where dual or multiple religious identity is not an unusual phenomenon. That the contents of a book could be summarized in so many ways with equal plausibility–this fungibility as it were–testifies to its richness of content. It is the best book I know which does not merely assert the porousness of the boundaries of the various religions of south Asia, but also investigates this phenomenon with a variety of methods known to the study of religion, such as the historical, the phenomenological, and the anthropological. It also possesses a further merit. Such porousness has been usually acknowledged in relation to the religious traditions which originated in south Asia, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, which are often collectively