Religion as Practice, Religion as Identity: Sufi<i>Dargah</i>s in Contemporary Gujarat

Heitmeyer, Carolyn

doi:10.1080/00856401.2011.620557

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…One is the widespread reputation of dargahs as sites of wish-fulfilment, especially in cases of childlessness and unemployment. As noted by Heitmeyer (2011), both deceased and living saints (pirs) are believed to have substantial power to intervene in such matters, perhaps-as suggested by Gold (2013)-because their closeness to this world makes them better positioned to interfere in human affairs than the increasingly abstract pan-Indian Hindu deities. Another is the shared belief in jinns, which given their Muslim origin must be pacified by Islamic experts if they trouble humans by possessing them or otherwise (Gottschalk 2000), though there are also Hindu exorcists who claim to know the Islamic incantations required to make them leave humans alone (Frøystad 2021).…”

Section: The Logic Of Inexpensive Efficacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet they still have certain cosmopolitan effects. True, sharing religious sites and practices has not succeeded in curbing polarization (see Ghassem-Fachandi 2011;Heitmeyer 2011). Moreover, several shared religious spaces are contested and have thus provoked considerable interreligious friction in their own right (Hayden 2002;Sila-Khan 2004;Sikand 2004;Hayden 2016).…”

Section: The Logic Of Inexpensive Efficacymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Through the Looking Glass:

Frøystad¹

2022

PORTAL

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In spite of Modi’s promise of good days (acche din) in 2014, many Indians still struggle with unemployment, low income, poor health and other difficulties. Though some problems eventually find solutions and middle-class metropolitans increasingly seek help from gurus and psychologists, long-term misfortune and disturbances are still frequently attributed to black magic or possession. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Kanpur and Bareilly, this article examines the unintended cosmopolitan effects of such practices, which occasionally unfold in ways that traverse and unsettle official religious boundaries, even in polarized times. Heuristically contrasting Modi to Alice in Wonderland, the article spells out the double bind of many low-income Hindus who seek supernatural assistance in times of crisis: should they follow the logic of inexpensive efficacy, even if necessitating engagement with unfamiliar ritual worlds in heterotopic spaces associated with the religious other? Or should they rather follow the emergent Hindu nationalist logic of Hindu exclusivism, according to which ritual remedies beyond a Hindu ritual repertoire would be inappropriate? The persisting prevalence of the former logic under Modi is illustrated with three cases, two of which are interrelated. Firstly, we meet a female professional seeking help against suspected black magic from a rustic Sufi-Muslim healer. Secondly, we meet a Kali devotee seeking help against spirits that disturbed his career and marriage in a renowned Sufi-Muslim dargah. The final case shows how familial neglect, economic hardship and an interreligious marriage conducted two generations earlier came together in a case of possession. The cosmopolitan effects of such instances, the article argues, lie in their tendency to form an anti-structural, heterotopic counterweight to aggressive Hindu nationalism. counterweight to aggressive Hindu nationalism.

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Section: The Logic Of Inexpensive Efficacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Logic Of Inexpensive Efficacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Through the Looking Glass:

Frøystad¹

2022

PORTAL

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“…Despite the growing crystallization and politicization of religious identities since the nineteenth century, not least during the Hindu nationalist wave in the early 1990s (Hansen 1999), contemporary dargahs still have profound mediating qualities. Carolyn Heitmeyer (2011), for instance, describes a dargah in the Gujarati town of Mahemdabad that, alongside a portrait of its founding pir and his successors displays a portrait of the mainly Hindu saint Sai Baba of Shirdi besides being decorated with the Hindu mantra 'Om' alongside the crescent moon and holy words from the Quran. Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi (2011) describes another dargah in Gujarat whose trustees always encourage its visitors to enter the Hindu Ram temple across the courtyard before they leave the village.…”

Section: Historical and Analytical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divine Intersections: Hindu Ritual and the Incorporation of Religious Others

Frøystad

2012

CCS Journal

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This article throws the study of multireligious sociality in Western contexts into sharp relief by examining the case of India. Much of the current scholarship of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism tends to assume that religious beliefs, practices and spaces make the respective religious communities close entirely in upon themselves. While this assumption may hold true for most of the Western settings we study, it does not necessarily give an accurate description of the conditions for multireligious sociality in other parts of the world. In India, for instance, religious boundaries still display signs of malleability despite the religious politicization and occasional interreligious violence of the past decades. Drawing on recent anthropological research, this article shows that people of different religious denominations still visit Sufi shrines, that Hindus still incorporate ritual elements and divine beings from the religious traditions of their Others and that they exercise a wide personal choice in terms of spiritual activities, thus enabling spiritual paths that cross in and out of Hinduism. In a Hindu context rituals do not necessarily have an insulating effect; they may also provide points of intersection that open up toward the Other, thus fostering familiarity and recognition. Similar arguments have been made for Buddhist settings. The question is thus whether the current scholarship of cosmopolitanism may entail a certain monotheistic bias that needs to accounted for, something that is of particular importance when theorizing in ways that make universal claims.

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