The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520262805)

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.

Author: Carla Bellamy
ISBN-10: 0520262808
ISBN-13: 9780520262805
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 08/05/2011
Pages: 312
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 09/09/2011 pg. 16