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Religions in South Asia have tended to be studied in blocks, whether in the various monolithic traditions in which they are now regarded—Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Christian—or indeed in temporal blocks—ancient, medieval, and modern. Analysing Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Islamic, and Christian traditions, this volume seeks to look at relationships both within and between religions focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries.

The chapters explore not only the diversity and the multiplicity within each block, but also the specific forms of their coexistence with each other, whether in accord or in antagonism. The volume also views the interaction between ‘reformed’ and non-reformed branches within each of these purported monoliths. In going beyond existing debates on religious reform movements, the authors highlight the new forms acquired by religions and the ways in which they relate to each other, society, and politics.

Contents: Introduction. 1. Between Complicit Entanglement and Creative Dissonance: William Wilberforce, Rammohun Roy, and Public Sphere Debates in the Early Nineteenth-Century Nexus between India and Britain/Gita Dharampal-Frick and Milinda Banerjee. 2. On the Cusp of Colonial Modernity: Administration, Women, and Islam in Princely Bhopal/Barbara D. Metcalf. 3. The Evasive Guru and the Errant Wife: Anti-hagiography, aivism, and Anxiety in Colonial South India/Srilata Raman. 4. Jain Identity and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century India/John E. Cort. 5. Whither Pluralities and Differences? ‘Arya Dharma’ and Hinduism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century/Vasudha Dalmia. 6. Configuring Community in Colonial and Precolonial Imaginaries: Insights from the Khalsa Darbar Records/Anne Murphy. 7. Educating the Monkhood: Ddpanth Reforms in the Twentieth Century/Monika Horstmann. 8. Secularizing Renunciation? Swami Shraddhananda’s Welcome Address at the Congress Session of Amritsar in 1919/Catherine Clémentin-Ojha. 9. The Logics of Multiple Belonging: Gandhi, His Precursors, and Contemporaries/Kumkum Sangari. 10. The Crucible of Peace: Pluralism and Community in Muslim Punjab/Anna Bigelow. 11. Voting, Religion, and the People’s Sovereignty in Late Colonial India/David Gilmartin. 12. Dalit Liberative Identity as Amalgam: Kerala’s Pulaya Christians and Communist Movement in the Mid-Twentieth Century/George Oommen. 13.Dhamma and the Common Good: Religion as Problem and Answer—Ambedkar’s Critical Theory of Social Relationality/Martin Fuchs. Index.