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Full-Text Articles in Religion
Purifying The Sacred: How Hindu Nationalism Reshapes Environmentalism In Contemporary India, Owen Dunton Ellerkamp
Purifying The Sacred: How Hindu Nationalism Reshapes Environmentalism In Contemporary India, Owen Dunton Ellerkamp
Honors Papers
The transposition of the cultural, religious, and sacred onto physical geographies is practiced by humans everywhere as landscapes are canvases for meaning making and integral placeholders of histories. In the Indian context, this practice is distinct for several reasons. Scholars of Hindu traditions recognize that the place-oriented disposition and centrality of land to Hindu traditions and cultures is unprecedented and integral to identity formation in modern India. As India faces increasing environmental degradation, the preservation of “sacred geographies” is especially crucial to the identity of Hindu traditions. The rise of Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) political parties (e.g., the Bharatiya Janata Party …
Renegotiating A Beheading: Literary Opposition To Varna Hierarchy In Shambuka's Story, Thomas Ahlers Nunan
Renegotiating A Beheading: Literary Opposition To Varna Hierarchy In Shambuka's Story, Thomas Ahlers Nunan
Honors Papers
The Ramayana's Shambuka story is a controversial incident that has served as a site for the renegotiation of social power structures in India for thousands of years. Because the episode is fundamentally about India's system of caste hierarchy, or varna, any retelling will by its very nature engage in a formulation of social relation between different caste identities. Close readings of these retellings reveal the ways in which the adaptations and appropriations of each version create new literary meanings that provide insight into varna hierarchy as a normative body of social control. Despite the Shambuka incident's hegemonic history, transgressive participation …