Religions, Mumbai Style: Events-Media-Spaces

Description

Mumbai is generally recognized as an environment of extraordinary religious diversity. The city is known at one and the same time for a habitual cosmopolitanism and a series of violent religion-related conflicts and clashes. While there is much academic scholarship on various aspects of urban history and realities, this volume is the first international academic publication focusing on religion(s) in Mumbai. An extended introductory essay provides a scenario of the religious history of the city from the earliest colonial periods to the present; it also discusses such topics as public celebration and landmark religious places. By taking a thematic approach, the contributions highlight the dynamics of religious life in the city. Chapters discuss spatial settings such as so-called slums (Dharavi) and ghettos (Mumbra), but also roadside shrines and taxis. Other chapters focus on class and civil society organizations. Contributions discuss the crossing of religious boundaries, e.g., in dealing with intermarriage and conversion, and challenges faced by religious groups as to how to reconcile the religious diversity of the city with their own desire for recognition. Lines of tension and conflict often run within, and not so much between, communities.The two final chapters of the volume address the reflection of religion in fiction set in Mumbai and in the work of the Bombay poet Arun Kolatkar.

About the author:

Michael Stausberg earned his Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of Bonn (1995). He worked at universities in Sweden (Uppsala), Germany (Heidelberg, Tübingen), and Switzerland (Bern) before joining the University of Bergen (Norway) in 2014. Stausberg lectured at the Collège de France (Paris) and the Getty Center (Los Angeles). He was a Fellow at the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies (Erfurt). Additionally, he chaired a group at the Center for Advanced Studies, Norwegian Academy of Sciences (Oslo), and was also a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College (Cambridge).

Table of contents

Preface by Michael Stausberg

Chapter 1   Religion in Bombay/Mumbai: A scenario by Michael Stausberg

Chapter 2   Beyond Diversity: Precarious Belonging and Religious Conjunctions - Dalits in Dharavi by Martin Fuchs

Chapter 3   Does Violence Beget the Ghetto? Evidence from Ethnography in Mumbra by Sumanya Anand Velamur

Chapter 4   Encountering Religious Difference in the City: Some Reflections on the Participation of Ismaili Muslims in Islamic Revivalism by David J. Strohl

Chapter 5   Twelver Shi'i Muslims' Right to the City: Public Performance, Media Practices, and Urban Atmospheres by Patrick Eisenlohr

Chapter 6   Middle-Class Muslims: Forms and Engagement with Islam by Tanvi Patel-Banerjee

Chapter 7   'God is with the Patient People': Festival, Class and Interreligious Engagement by Raminder Kaur and Faisal Syed Mohammed

Chapter 8   Transgressive Spaces: Women's Organizations and Intentional Interventions in Politics of Inter-religious Marriage by Gopika Solanki

Chapter 9   Strategic Roadside Shrines in High-risk Zones: Baba for Peace by Anna Charlotta Osterberg

Chapter 10   Taxis as Public Micro-spaces of Religion: Practices, Symbols, and Communication by Michael Stausberg

Chapter 11   Movement and Place-making: Multiple Crossings in the Lives of Mumbai's ISKCON Members by Claire C. Robison

Chapter 12   Towards the Apocalyptic: Myth, Metaphor, and the Dystopic in Contemporary Mumbai Literature by Heinz Werner Wessler

Chapter 13   A Hole in the Wall: Religion in the Poetry of Arun Kolatkar by William Elison