Popular Literature and Pre-modern Societies in South Asia

Popular Literature and Pre-modern Societies in South Asia PDF Author: Surinder Singh
Publisher: Pearson Education India
ISBN: 9788131713587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Papers presented at a seminar held at Chandigarh during 1-2 February 2005.

Popular Literature and Pre-modern Societies in South Asia

Popular Literature and Pre-modern Societies in South Asia PDF Author: Surinder Singh
Publisher: Pearson Education India
ISBN: 9788131713587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Papers presented at a seminar held at Chandigarh during 1-2 February 2005.

Sufism in Punjab

Sufism in Punjab PDF Author: Surinder Singh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003834140
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
This anthology is a collective endeavor of scholars from India and Pakistan devoted to Sufi mystics, literature and shrines with a detailed introduction. The essays explore the methods adopted by the Punjab Sufis to popularize the mystic ideology and praxis in the medieval socio-cultural milieu. These writings also delve into the different genres of Sufi literature, both in the elite and vernacular languages, intending to appreciate the nuances of Punjab Sufism. Apart from the architectural features of the Sufi shrines, the anthology attempts to illumine the organic linkages between these institutions and the Punjabis and, thus, underscore the Sufi non-communitarian devotion as a primary ingredient of the Punjabi cultural fusion. This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab

Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab PDF Author: Yogesh Snehi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429515634
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book explores the organic lives of popular Sufi shrines in contemporary Northwest India. It traverses the worldview of shrine spaces, rituals and their complex narratives, and provides an insight into their urban and rural landscapes in the post-Partition (Indian) Punjab. What happened to these shrines when attempts were made to dissuade Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus from their veneration of popular saints in the early twentieth century? What was the fate of popular shrines that persisted even when the Muslim population was virtually wiped off as a result of migration during Partition? How did these shrines manifest in the context of the threat posed by militants in the 1980s? How did such popular practices reconfigure themselves when some important centres of Sufism were left behind in the West Punjab (now Pakistan)? This book examines several of these questions and utilizes a combination of analytical tools, new theoretical tropes and an ethnographic approach to understand and situate popular Sufi shrines so that they are both historicized and spatialized. As such, it lays out some crucial contours of the method and practice of understanding popular sacred spaces (within India and elsewhere), bridging the everyday and the metanarratives of power structures and state formation. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers and those engaged in interdisciplinary work in history, social anthropology, historical sociology, cultural studies, historical geography, religion and art history, as wel as those interested in Sufism and its shrines in South Asia.

Medieval Panjab in Transition

Medieval Panjab in Transition PDF Author: Surinder Singh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000609448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
This book reconstructs the historical transition in the undivided Panjab during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It shows that the assertion of Mughal and Afghan suzerainty faced sustained resistance from local elements, particularly the autonomous tribes and hill chiefdoms. In central plains, Dulla Bhatti mobilized the toilers of his ancestral domain and, leading a relentless fight against the Mughal oppression, became an abiding symbol of resistance in the collective memory. The multicultural legacy of Panjab evolved through diverse strands of spirituality. The jogis, wedded to monastic discipline, supernatural abilities and land grants, gained acceptance through their exertions for social betterment. The Sabiri and Qadiri silsilas channelized mystical urges towards the technique of prime recitation. The popular verses of Shah Husain, Baba Lal and Sultan Bahu proposed a loving relation with God. The legendary lovers, perishing in the struggles against patriarchal forces, promoted a merger of dissent with spirituality. In the city of Lahore, the material pursuits and cultural life were visible in a mosaic of descriptions, including episodes of social tension. The book understands the upliftment of depressed castes as a defining feature of Sikhism. It places egalitarian concern of the Sikh Gurus alongside the anti-caste protests of Namdev, Kabir and Ravidas. Owing to scriptural authority and congregational equality, the members of depressed castes attained a numerical majority in the Sikh warrior bands that shook the foundations of the Mughal state. The work relies on evidence from the Persian chronicles, Mughal newsletters, Sufi writings, Sikh literature and Punjabi folklore. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Himalayan Histories

Himalayan Histories PDF Author: Chetan Singh
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438475217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A rare look at the history of Himalayan peasant society and the relationship between culture and environment in the Himalayas. Himalayan Histories, by one of India’s most reputed historians of the Himalaya, is essential for a more complete understanding of Indian history. Because Indian historians have mainly studied riverine belts and life in the plains, sophisticated mountain histories are relatively rare. In this book, Chetan Singh identifies essential aspects of the material, mental, and spiritual world of western Himalayan peasant society. Human enterprise and mountainous terrain long existed in a precarious balance, occasionally disrupted by natural adversity, in this large and difficult region. Small peasant communities lived in scattered environmental niches and tenaciously extracted from their harsh surroundings a rudimentary but sustainable livelihood. These communities were integral constituents of larger political economies that asserted themselves through institutions of hegemonic control, the state being one such institution. This laboriously created life-world was enlivened by myth, folklore, legend, and religious tradition. When colonial rule was established in the region during the nineteenth century, it transformed the peasants’ relationship with their natural surroundings. While old political allegiances were weakened, resilient customary hierarchies retained their influence through religio-cultural practices.

Classics of Modern South Asian Literature

Classics of Modern South Asian Literature PDF Author: Rupert Snell
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447040587
Category : Bengali literature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The Making of Medieval Panjab

The Making of Medieval Panjab PDF Author: Surinder Singh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
This book seeks to reconstruct the past of undivided Panjab during five medieval centuries. It opens with a narrative of the efforts of Turkish warlords to achieve control in the face of tribal resistance, internal dissensions and external invasions. It examines the linkages of the ruling class with Zamindars and Sufis, paving the way for canal irrigation and agrarian expansion, thus strengthening the roots of the state in the region. While focusing on the post-Timur phase, it tries to make sense of the new ways of acquiring political power. This work uncovers the perpetual attempts of Zamindars to achieve local dominance, particularly in the context of declining presence of the state in the countryside. In this ambitious enterprise, they resorted to the support of their clans, adherence to hallowed customs and recurrent use of violence, all applied through a system of collective and participatory decision-making. The volume traces the growth of Sufi lineages built on training disciples, writing books, composing poetry and claiming miraculous powers. Besides delving into the relations of the Sufis with the state and different sections of the society, it offers an account of the rituals at a prominent shrine. Paying equal attention to the southeastern region, it deals with engagement of the Sabiris, among other exemplars, with the Islamic spirituality. Inclusive in approach and lucid in expression, the work relies on a wide range of evidence from Persian chronicles, Sufi literature and folklore, some of which have been used for the first time. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Retelling Time

Retelling Time PDF Author: Shonaleeka Kaul
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000439747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Retelling Time challenges the hegemony of colonial modernity over academic disciplines and over ways in which we think about something as fundamental as time. It reclaims a bouquet of alternative practices of time from premodern South Asia, which stem from worldviews that have been marginalized. These practices relate to a range of classical and vernacular genres including alaṃkāra, theravāda, yoga, rāmakathā, tasawwuf, āyāraṃga, purāṇa, trikā-tantra, navya-nyāya, pratyabhijñā, carita, kūṭīyāṭṭam and maṅgala kāvya. These represent multiple languages such as Sanskrit, Persian, Pali, Prakrit, Awadhi, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali, as well as diverse streams, from Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sufi Islam to logic, yoga, tantra, theatre, and poetics. Retelling Time questions the modern Eurocentric belief in an empty, homogenous, abbreviated, secular and irreversible time. It proposes instead that that premodern South Asia invested time with cultural function and value, which ranged from the contingent to the transcendent, the quotidian to the cosmic, the fleeting to the eternal, and the social to the spiritual. Accordingly, time was reworked --- stretched, melded, collapsed, recursed, rolled over, and even extinguished. Sacred, social, aesthetic, scientific, fictional, historical, and performative South Asian traditions are seen here in conversation with one other, mediated by an ethical paradigm. Their collective challenge is to decolonize our ways of knowing and being. This book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, philosophy of history, anthropology, literature, Sanskrit, post colonial studies, cultural studies, studies of temporality and of the Global South.

Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman

Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman PDF Author: Carola Lorea
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004324712
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In this book, Lorea explores the relationship between Bengali folklore, heterodox religious movements and politics of cultural representation through the contextual study of the eccentric guru Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), his ecstatic songs and their performers.

Rethinking Conflict at the Margins

Rethinking Conflict at the Margins PDF Author: Mohita Bhatia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110888346X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book departs from the conventional academic narration of the conflict situation in Jammu and Kashmir and expands the debate by shifting the focus from Kashmir to Jammu region. Generally, it is the response of Muslim-majority Kashmir region - particularly its contestation of the hegemonic and assimilative temperament of the Indian state - that captures the attention of researchers. The Hindu-majority Jammu region which is affected by the conflict in many ways remains in the shadows. This book seeks to address this crucial academic gap by locating the conflict in Jammu region. Besides explaining the 'Hindu reactionary' and 'ultra-nationalist' responses of some sections of Jammu's society, the book also foregrounds the genuine grievances of its people and their concerns within the dominant 'Kashmir-centric' discourse.