Unforgetting Chaitanya

Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-068624-6
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 625 g

What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of Vaishnavism--a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition emanating from the Krishna devotee Chaitnaya (1486-1533)--in Bengal. Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both Vaishnava modernizers and secular voices among the educated middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to efforts to recover a "pure" Bengali culture and history at a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment.

In the late nineteenth century, debates around questions of authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere. These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of established scholars. Underlying them was the question of "true" Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of Bengali culture and society. Who was an authentic Vaishnava? Many authors excluded those groups and communities whose practices they found unacceptable according to their definition of Vaishnava authenticity. At stake in these discourses, argues Bhatia, was the nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity inscribed through what she calls the politics of authenticity. It allowed an influential section of Hindu Bengalis to excavate their own explicitly Hindu past in order to find a people's history, a religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic religion.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bhatia, Varuni

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Hinduismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments

- Note on Transliteration, Spelling, and Diacritics

- Introduction

- Chapter 1: Religion in Decline in an Age of Progress

- Chapter 2: Untidy Realms

- Chapter 3: A Swadeshi Chaitanya

- Chapter 4: Recovering Bishnupriya's Loss

- Chapter 5: Utopia and a Birthplace

- Epilogue

- Glossary

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Varuni Bhatia is Assistant Professor of Hindu and South Asian Studies at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.