Tradition/Reform As Ethnicity: Vernacularization of Secularism in Contemporary South Asia
Language: English
The session proposes to invite research papers that address how the reformist and traditionalist currents within religious faiths negotiate with vernacularization of secularism in contemporary South Asia. In particular, we are interested in exploring how these currents increasingly entail competing claims to ethnicity as evident in their articulation of secularism that moves beyond a mere formal separation of religion and politics. Such claims, as it were, often involves a spatio-temporal reimagination of religious identity that often transcends the boundaries of the secular modern nation-state. How do we understand such reimaginations vis-à-vis emerging notions of secularity in postcolonial contexts? How do we understand this in the context of the rise of ethno-nationalist politics in contemporary South Asia? We are specifically interested in research papers that address these questions and simultaneously reflect upon the methodological tensions between the analytical frames of everyday and discursive tradition in anthropology of religion.