Podcasts about shared devotion

Just how much does Islam vary in different places around the world? And how have local forms of Islam evolved in rural regions where Muslims have lived side-by-side with Hindus for centuries? In this episode, we tackle these questions by looking at local religious practices in the south Indian village called Gugudu. Turning away from theoretical abstractions, we see how religion is practiced on the ground through sacred spaces and rituals that are shared by Hindu and Muslim devotees of a local Sufi saint called Pir Kullyapa. We also learn how the people of Gugudu use the Telugu language to conceptualize their religious practices— and how they creatively adapt and combine religious terms from Arabic and Sanskrit to formulate their own ‘village theology.' But in the twenty-first century, Indian villages have become increasingly connected to the outside world, not least through cellphones and the internet. So, we'll also ask how reformist global Islam is affecting the local Islam of Gugudu. Nile Green talks to Afsar Mohammad, author of The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013). 

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) 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. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Messages from FBC Rolling Hills

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices