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ABSTRACT
In this introduction, we first outline the background to this collection of papers and recall some of the conversations that were its genesis, before introducing the questions we wish to address through it. We then situate the collection within scholarship on Hindu majoritarianism and suggest that a nuanced understanding needs to take into account both its institutional and everyday dimensions. To do so, we focus on both jurisprudence and geography which, we argue, are crucial sites for the making of contemporary Hinduism but have not previously been brought together analytically. Through the work of six scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds (Law, Anthropology, Indology and Religious Studies) the special issue theorises the spatial and legal dimensions of contemporary Hinduism as cross-fertilising, and as crucial sites for the formation and functioning of Hindu majoritarianism.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The judgement is known as M Siddiq (D) Thr Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors.
2 In the Introduction and the articles of this issue we use diacritics in words from South Asian languages such as concepts and names of gods, but not in modern place names. So it is rāṣṭra and Rāma, but Ayodhya and Varanasi.
3 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ram-temple-in-ayodhya-will-be-inaugurated-in-third-week-of-january/article67158914.ece. [Accessed 18 September 2023].
4 See below and Lazzaretti 2023 in this special issue.
6 See for instance: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/validity-of-places-of-worship-act-sc-gives-centre-time-to-clarify-stand-adjourns-case-to-october-31/article67066721.ece; and https://www.outlookindia.com/national/-sc-to-hear-pleas-challenging-validity-of-1991-law-on-religious-places-news-273605. A reading of the Act that seems to be aligned with its opposers is found here: https://www.barandbench.com/columns/is-the-places-of-worship-special-provisions-act-1991-constitutional.
8 Govindrajan, Joshi, and Rizvi (Citation2021).
10 Vera Lazzaretti would like to thank Kathinka Frøystad for having directed her to the work of Kapferer on events as generative moments.
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Notes on contributors
Vera Lazzaretti
Vera Lazzaretti is Researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) in Lisbon, currently working on inter-religious relationships and the politics of heritage and security in urban South Asia. Vera studied Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology in Italy and holds a Ph.D. in Indian and Tibetan Studies from the University of Turin (2013). Before joining CRIA, she worked at the University of Milan, the University of Oslo and the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University. Vera’s main field site is urban north India, and her research interests include the anthropology of space and place; religion and politics; contested heritage; securitisation and policing; inter-religious violence; religious offence; pilgrimage; Hindu nationalism; and ethnography.
Knut A. Jacobsen
Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. His main fields of research include Hindu sacred geography and pilgrimage, transnational Hinduism, Sāṃkhya and Yoga theory and practice, and religion and public space in South Asia and the diasporas. Among his publications are the monographs Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge 2013) and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge 2018), and the edited volumes Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill 2020), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (Routledge 2021) and Hindu Diasporas (Oxford University Press 2023).