Deceptive Majority - Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion

This is an ethnographic history of religious majoritarianism and its sly subversion by one of India's most oppressed minorities.

List of contents

Part I. Untouchability and Alterity, Now and Then: 1. Introduction: Signs, the Census, and the Sanitation Labor Castes; 2. Lal Beg N¿ma: Dalit Religion before the Hindu Majority; Part II. Making 'Untouchables' Hindu, or, the Great Interpellation: 3. Missionary Majoritarianism: The Arya Samaj and the Struggle with Disgust; 4. Trustee Majoritarianism: Gandhi and the Harijan Sevak Sangh; 5. Hinduization and its Discontents: Valmiki comes to Lucknow; Part III. Semiotics of the Oppressed: 6. Victory to Valmiki: Declamatory Religion and the Wages of Inclusion; 7. Lal Beg Underground: Taqiyya, Ethical Secrecy, and the Pleasure of Dissimulation; Epilogue.

About the author

Joel Lee teaches and conducts research on religion, language, caste and the state in South Asia. In particular his work concerns the ways in which Dalits – those communities historically stigmatized as 'untouchable' – combat structural deprivation, navigate the politics of religious majoritarianism, and contend with the sensory and environmental entailments of sanitation labor in colonial and postcolonial India. His research and teaching interests also include linguistic anthropology, semiotics, popular Hinduism and Islam, and Urdu and Hindi literature.

Summary

An account of contemporary religious life in Lucknow illuminates the embrace and contestation of Hinduization in a Dalit community, it examines the practices by which signs of the community's Hindu affiliation are amplified and tied to a new ethic of publicity. Lee tracks Dalit religion to encompass it within a newly imagined Hindu body politic.

Product details

• Authors: Joel Lee, Joel (Williams College Lee, Lee Joel
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9781108826662
• ISBN: 978-1-108-82666-2
• No. of pages: 354
• Series: South Asia in the Social Sciences
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Social structure research; Anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, India, Social groups, Religion & politics, Social issues & processes, Ethical issues & debates, Religion and Politics, Social and ethical issues, Physical anthropology, Ethical issues and debates, Social groups, communities and identities