{"title":"Secularizing Renunciation?","authors":"Catherine Clémentin-Ojha","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on Swami Shraddhananda (1857–1926), the chapter discusses the turn towards an ideal of political samnyasi-hood in the early twentieth century. With Gandhi, Shraddhananda shared the conviction that the regeneration of India could only be achieved through a personal disciplinary regime. Paying particular attention to the speech Shraddhananda gave at the session of the Indian National Congress in Amritsar in 1919, the chapter demonstrates his understanding of the public function of a modern samnayasi. Shraddhananda had ordained himself samnayasi in 2017. While traditionally a samnyasi renounced his social role, Shraddhananda conceived of a samnyasi in his days as one who uses his independence to become a responsible actor in social and political matters, doing seva, service, for the whole world, and working for the liberation of the nation. The author embeds her analysis in a specific understanding of secularization following which values and forms of institutionalization can be transferred from the religious to the secular sphere.","PeriodicalId":277707,"journal":{"name":"Religious Interactions in Modern India","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132904249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Configuring Community in Colonial and Precolonial Imaginaries","authors":"A. Murphy","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Addressing the question of the formation of a religious community by way of discussion of religious property regimes, the chapter follows the Sikh case over consecutive stages, concluding with the Gurdwara Reform Act of 1925, which recognized a central representative body of Sikhs, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, as possessing the rightful interest in Sikh religious sites. The author shows that colonial governance drew on pre-existing cultural, economic, and political forms, even as they transformed them. She discusses cases of earlier religious grants, documented especially by the Khalsa Darbar dharmarth records of the kingdom of Lahore. The tensions between individual and corporate control over gurdwaras and the lands associated with them were finally resolved in favour of the community with the Gurdwara Reform. In this new model, not only a community was tied to property, but also the idea of a singular Sikh community, and thus a new political form of community was instituted.","PeriodicalId":277707,"journal":{"name":"Religious Interactions in Modern India","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122581570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dhamma and the Common Good","authors":"M. Fuchs","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198081685.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter discusses Bhimrao Ambedkar’s approach to religion. Attacking the religious base of a society in which ‘graded inequality’ was engrained, his project was one of a new universalism of solidarity, grounded in his assumptions about human nature. The chapter explores the socio-analytical frame and the socio-philosophical principles through which Ambedkar approached human sociality, which led him to conclude that religion was a necessity for society, not least under conditions of modernity. True religion for Ambedkar was to promote a universalist idea(l) of humaneness and fellow feeling. For him it was the moral standard that is sacred and that replaces God— a post-religious religion. This found the most adequate expression in the teachings of the Buddha. Unable to convince wider society, Ambedkar pursued the project of conversion to Buddhism of Dalits only. Still, with his magnum opus, The Buddha and His Dhamma, Ambedkar attempted to lay the ground for a moral order that embraces all humans.","PeriodicalId":277707,"journal":{"name":"Religious Interactions in Modern India","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128287580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}