Shared devotion, shared food: equality and the Bhakti-Caste question in western India
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
New York
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: | Year: 2021 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Maharashtra
/ Bhakti
/ Caste
/ Kommensurabilität
B Marathi / Religious literature / Bhakti B Vārakarī |
| Further subjects: | B
Caste (India)
History
B Bhakti B Devotional literature, Marathi B Dinners and dining ; Religious aspects ; Hinduism B Equality ; Religious aspects B Equality ; India B Bhakti ; Social aspects ; History |
| Online Access: |
Table of Contents |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Production Credits: | "This book is about the deceptively simple question: when Hindu devotional or bhakti traditions welcomed marginalized people-women, low castes, and Dalits-were they promoting social equality? This the modern formulation of the bhakti-caste question. It is what Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar had in mind when he concluded that the saints promoted spiritual equality but did not transform society. While taking Ambedkar's judgment seriously, when viewed in the context of intellectual history and social practice, the bhakti-caste question is more complex. This book dives deeply in Marathi sources to explore how one tradition in western India worked out the relationship between bhakti and caste on its own terms. Food and eating together were central to this. As stories about saints and food changed while moving across manuscripts, theatrical plays, and films, the bhakti-caste relationship went from being a strategically ambiguous riddle to a question that expected-and received-answers. Shared Devotion, Shared Food demonstrates the value of critical commensality to understand how people carefully negotiate their ethical ideals with social practices. Food's capacity to symbolize many things made it made an ideal site for debating bhakti's implications about caste differences. In the Vārkarītradition, strategically deployed ambiguity and the resonating of stories across media over time developed an ideology of inclusive difference-not social equality in the modern sense, but an alternative holistic view of society"-- Provided by publisher. Shared Devotion, Shared Food explores how people in western India wrestled for centuries with two competing values: a theological vision that God welcomes all people, and the social hierarchy of the caste system. Jon Keune examines the ways in which food and stories about food were important sites where this debate played out, particularly when people of high and low social status ate together. By studying Marathi manuscripts, nineteenth-century publications, plays, and films, Shared Devotion, Shared Food reveals how the question of caste, inclusivity, and equality was formulated in different. |
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| ISBN: | 0197574831 |