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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Hinduism
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Unforgetting Chaitanya - Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,184
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Unforgetting Chaitanya - Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal (Hardcover)
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What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation
of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni
Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of
Vaishnavism-a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition
emanating from the Krishna devotee Chaitnaya (1486-1533)-in Bengal.
Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival
material, Bhatia finds that both Vaishnava modernizers and secular
voices among the educated middle-class invoked Chaitanya,
portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer,
and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be
understood in relation to efforts to recover a "pure" Bengali
culture and history at a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment. In
the late nineteenth century, debates around questions of
authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere.
These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable
rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of
established scholars. Underlying them was the question of "true"
Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of
Bengali culture and society. Who was an authentic Vaishnava? Many
authors excluded those groups and communities whose practices they
found unacceptable according to their definition of Vaishnava
authenticity. At stake in these discourses, argues Bhatia, was the
nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity
inscribed through what she calls the politics of authenticity. It
allowed an influential section of Hindu Bengalis to excavate their
own explicitly Hindu past in order to find a people's history, a
religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of
Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic
religion.
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