Boundaries of Religion

Description

Religion is deeply intertwined with modern Indian society and polity. Boundaries of Religion is a collection of essays that brings together critical writings by Rowena Robinson spanning the past two decades that map the course of community interactions and ethnic and religious conflict in India. The author looks at Hindu–Muslim ethnic violence; the ideology of Hindutva; the survival strategies of victims of violence under the shadow of majority–minority politics; popular Christianity and the varying forms of intercultural engagement emerging out of conversion; the sharing of traditions across boundaries; and the battles over religion, conversion, and secularism in contemporary India. Focusing on the study of non-Hindu communities, this book, at first, looks at Christians, and their field of interaction with Hindus, bringing to the fore the various manifestations of religion in ritual and practice specifically, and, on a larger scale, its relation to politics and the state. It goes on to analyze the ways in which periodic violence reshapes the Muslims’ understanding of themselves and their relations to other communities and the state. The memory of violence imprints itself on the awareness of time, the use of space, dress codes, and the mobility of both men and women. Analysis is made of how violence disfigures relations of kin and family, distorts social and economic trajectories of individuals and households, and deforms the everyday. The book brings out the gendered consequences of ethnic violence and strategies of survival.