Faith and Social Movements
Religious Reform in Contemporary India

This book analyses a Hindu and an Islamic reform movement - Svadhyaya and Tablighi Jamaat - grounded in ethnographic research.

Anindita Chakrabarti (Author)

9781107166622, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 November 2017

242 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.44 kg

How do we understand the multitude of faith movements in our post-secular world? Faith and Social Movements explores this question by analyzing the theology and practice as well as the transformation of two discrepant religious movements in contemporary India. The research opens up a conversation between the sociology of religion and social movements. Using a comparative lens, two different movements - a Hindu and an Islamic reform movement - have been studied in ethnographic detail. The book is divided into two parts. The first part dwells on Svadhyaya, a Hindu reform movement, and the second part on the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic reform movement. Focusing on the internal dynamics of these movements and the 'unintended consequences' of piety, the author argues that it is only by raising new questions vis-à-vis religion, secularity and civil society that their entanglement could be uncovered. This book aims to raise some of these questions.

List of figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: dissent, religion and civil society
Part I. Svadhyaya Ethics and the Spirit of Voluntarism: 1. Theologies of self-reform: what transforms the cross?
2. Praxis of an emergent congregation: metaphysics of reform and rebirth
3. The structure of Lokasamgraha: volunteers, networks and training
4. Succession, routinization of charisma and judicial religion
Part II. The Tablighi Jamaat's Call for Self-reform: 5. Pedagogy of Tablighi reform: the mission and the messenger
6. 'Unintended consequences' of piety and discourses of Islamic reform
Conclusion: religion, movements and secularity
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Religion & politics [HRAM2], Comparative religion [HRAC], Religion: general [HRA]