The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (South Asia Across the Disciplines) - Softcover

Bellamy, Carla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520262816 ISBN 13: 9780520262812

Publisher: University of California Press, 2011

Synopsis

The violent partitioning of British India along religious lines and ongoing communalist aggression have compelled Indian citizens to contend with the notion that an exclusive, fixed religious identity is fundamental to selfhood. Even so, Muslim saint shrines, known as dargahs attract a religiously diverse range of pilgrims. In this accessible and groundbreaking ethnography, Carla Bellamy traces the long-term healing processes of Muslim and Hindu devotees of a complex of dargahs in northwestern India. Drawing on pilgrims' narratives, ritual and everyday practices, archival documents, and popular publications in Hindi and Urdu, Bellamy considers questions about the nature of religion in general and Indian religion in particular. Grounded in stories from individual lives and experiences, "The Powerful Ephemeral" offers not only a humane, highly readable portrait of dargah culture, but also new insight into notions of selfhood and religious difference in contemporary India.

About this title

Review:

"One of the best books on possession healing to appear, [and] on the construction of local religious culture in India."--Frederick M. Smith, University of Iowa"Religious Studies Review" (06/01/2012)

About the Author:

Carla Bellamy is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religion at Baruch College.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0520262816
• ISBN 13: 9780520262812
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 298