Anindita Chakrabarti

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.

Religion and Secularities brings together a collection of essays focusing on the reconfiguration of Islam in the world’s largest democracy, India. Investigating the relationship between religion, civil society and the state, this volume explores the nation’s long history with Islam as well as the categorisation of Muslims as a minority community.

Based on ethnographic studies conducted in different regions of the country—from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal to Karnataka and Kerala—this volume addresses the diverse issues of religious piety that include community activism and civic participation; disputes and debates around visitation to historic-religious sites; the changing contours of matrilineal practices in a Muslim community; and how Muslim women negotiate personal/Islamic law in a plural judicial landscape.