2017/05/01 by S. Patel · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Religion and Society Interactions #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies #Modernity #Historiography #Politics #Colonialism #Institutionalisation #Identity (music) #History #Political science #Sociology #Aesthetics #Political economy #Ancient history #Gender studies #Law #Art
paper · doi:10.1093/jhs/hix005
openalex publication_date 2017/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The historiography of nineteenth-century South Asia has often framed religious production and identity through the lens of liberal reform, rooted in colonial-era constructions of religious modernity. But from within this limited scope other motives and patterns of cultural formation remain omitted. Alternatively, this article investigates the case of the Svāminārāyaṇ community’s development in western India by turning to a source base of previously unused records, alongside a study of the local dynamics during the early nineteenth century. The historical reading demonstrates that the community’s institutionalisation in this era signified an ‘elastic’ model of emergence: it attached with the early modern culture of the Puṣṭimārg community to ease stretching in a different direction, forming a devotional vision in relation to the contemporary political, social, and economic dynamics of Gujarat. The Svāminārāyaṇ community’s founder Sahajānand Svāmī, fundamentally underscored the quality of suppleness as he forged a community to sustain his model of devotion in Gujarat.