Gendered contours of contemporary South Asian religious practices in the context of migration: second-generation Jain women and men in Britain and the US

ABSTRACT

Viewing religion through the social constructionist lens and adopting the methodological approach of ‘lived religion’, this article draws attention to the gendered contours of contemporary Jain practice. Although Jain dharma is a non-theistic, non-institutionalised religion, gender differences are embedded within lay practice in India. In contrast, analysis of qualitative data (interviews conducted with 50 second-generation, middle- and upper middle-class Jain women and men in Britain and the US) reveals a gender convergence in patterns of everyday religious practice and performance. I argue that the social turn in late modern societies, together with the dominance of a neo-orthodox approach among diasporic Jains, facilitates this convergence. Further, shifting patterns of religious practices suggest that religion is an important site for the negotiation of gender identities in the context of migration. The construction of Jain religious selves enables young Jains—both women and men—to navigate multiple and contradictory femininities and masculinities and to display more affective, relational, and compassionate selves in late modern societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Second-generation Jains
• Jain dharma
• everyday religious practice
• gender
• femininities
• masculinities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Heidemarie Winkel and the two anonymous referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I do not argue that similar numbers of young Jain men and women are religious but refer to gender patterns of religious practice.

2. Together with the changes brought about by the adoption of a neoliberal model of development, there are regional, rural–urban, caste, and class differences in gender norms and expectations experienced by women in contemporary India.

3. Depending on the Jain sect, the festival lasts eight or ten days and is called paryushan or das lakshana parva.

4. All respondents’ names referred to in this article are pseudonyms.

5. Despite the importance of observing vegetarian diets among all participants, the place that diet holds in the construction of Jain identity and practice among young Jains in the UK and the US differs (Shah 2011, 111–112).

6. Several nuns from the Terāpanthī sect are resident in London and in Houston, but only two respondents in the UK mentioned that they had sought spiritual guidance from them.

7. In addition to neo-orthodoxy, Banks (1991, 244–257) identified two other ‘tendencies’ or categories of beliefs and practices among first-generation Jain immigrants in the UK, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, but argued that neo-orthodoxy was dominant.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on a research project, “Ethnicity, Religion & Citizenship among the Children of Immigrants in the UK and USA”, funded by the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) (RES-063-27-0131).

Notes on contributors

Bindi V. Shah

Bindi V. Shah is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Southampton, UK. She is a specialist in migration and religion and her research has addressed the ways in which ethnicity, religion, class, and gender construct identity, belonging, and citizenship among Asian immigrants and their children in the UK and US. She has published on second-generation Jains and on diasporic faith spaces in London suburbs. Currently, she is examining diasporic Jain philanthropy in India and social media conversations on Eastern European migration to the UK. CORRESPONDENCE: Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.