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This book focuses on the role of religion and its role in the construction and deconstruction of caste and power in India.
List of contents
- Introduction;
- 1.: The Bhakti Radicals and Untouchability by Gail Omvedt;
- 2.: Humanism, Religion, and the Nation: Sant Namdev as a M?navat?v?din by Christian Lee Novetzke;
- 3.: Propagating the Gospel of Animal Kindness: Sacred Cows, Christians, and American Animal Welfare Activism with Reference to India at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Janet M. Davis;
- 4.: Blindness and Sight: Moral Vision in Rajasthani Narratives by Ann Grodzins Gold;
- 5.: The Upwardly Mobile Monkey-God: Village and Urban M?rut?s in Maharashtra by Jeffrey M. Brackett;
- 6.: Negotiating Hierarchy and Identity: Cultural Performances on the Meaning of the Demon King Bali in Rural Maharashtra by Michael Youngblood;
- 7.': How Can a Wife Screech and Wail?' Respectability and Bengali Women Singers' Lives by Donna M. Wulff;
- 8.: Other Voices, Other Rooms: The View from the Zenana by Gail Minault;
- 9.: Dalit Transformation, Narrative, and Verbal Art in the Tamil Novels of Bama by Paula Richman;
- 10.: Women's Empowerment through Religious Conversion: Voices of Buddhists in Nagpur, India by Laura Dudley Jenkins;
- 11.: The Buddha and the Barbers: Status, Discipline, and Dissension in early Buddhism by Guy Welbon;
- 12.: Art and Identity: The Rise of a New Buddhist Imagery by Gary Michael Tartakov;
- 13.: Understanding Multiple Images of B. R. Ambedkar by Gopal Guru;
- 14.: Contemplating the Divine by Syed Akbar Hyder; Appendix; Contributors.
About the author
Manu Bhagavan is Associate Professor, Department of History, Hunter College-CUNY.
Anne Feldhaus is Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Summary
Together with its companion, Claiming Power from Below, this volume explores various issues such as hierarchy and reform, the role of religion, the idea of resistance, the functionality of the continued use of the term, 'Dalit', and the scope of current and future Dalit literature. This volume focuses on the role of religion- encompassing beliefs, ethics, ritual, devotional literature, folk culture, popular narratives, and artistic expression-and its role in the construction and deconstruction of caste and power in India. In this context it also examines the hierarchy of gender.
