Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Diana Dimitrova
(University of Montreal)
Tatiana Oranskaia (Universitaet Hamburg)
- Location:
- Room 216
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 4
Short Abstract:
The panel invites contributions that explore the role of different forms of media in shaping, modifying and transmitting religious content in South Asian traditions in the Indian subcontinent and in the South Asian diaspora.
Long Abstract:
The panel aims to explore the role of different forms of media in shaping, modifying and transmitting religious content in South Asian traditions in the Indian subcontinent and in the South Asian diaspora.
The basic concept of this project is rooted in McLuhan's idea that technologies affect communication processes and have, accordingly, an impact on human perception and social life. Being a part of the latter, religion also undergoes transformations resulting from changes in the media.
We invite contributions which study religious narratives, discourses, images, both moving and stationary, and ritual practices presented or enabled through different forms of media.
The main attention will be given to media-induced variations in patterns of representing religious content. Significant points of discussion would be the role that the media play in the construction, legitimation and/or change of a certain religious tradition and/or practice. These questions could also be explored from the point of view of their social and political implications. It is expected that the discussion will contribute to our understanding of interrelations between religions and the media in the Indian subcontinent and in the South Asian diaspora.
The papers should be based on methodological analysis of oral, written, visual or digital texts that have their origin in the subcontinent or the South Asian Diaspora. Papers read in the panel should be original and not presented elsewhere.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Linda Hess (Stanford University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will review the history of media through which Kabir's utterances have passed, showing how media affect text, transmission, and reception. Given the media complexity, it will also ask whether "oral tradition" exists; and it will evaluate the views of prominent twentieth century theorists of orality.
Paper long abstract:
The first medium is the body. Singing and recitation issue from the mouth and are received by ears, eyes, and other sense organs. If we accept Kabir's traditional death-date, 1518, and if we agree that he was an oral poet who did not write his compositions, then we can say that his multimedia history began 50-60 years after his passing. The first verified written collection of Kabir dates from the 1570s, with the Goindval Pothis—precursors to the Adi Granth. Manuscripts proliferate over the next two centuries until the advent of printed editions in 1868. From the first manuscripts until quite recently we can speak simply of oral and written traditions. But around the 1980s the media picture gets much more complicated. Along with oral, handwritten, and printed text, we must track radio, film, and television, then commercial audiocassettes, digital audio and video, and the endless networks of cyberspace mediated by computers and phones. Singers, the transmitters of oral tradition, are exposed to all these other media and often keep their own handwritten collections in notebooks. Amidst this complex and dynamic situation, can we still speak meaningfully of oral tradition? Is there really such a thing as "orality"? What about the idea of "secondary orality," which holds that electronic media function similarly to oral tradition? This paper will trace Kabir's media history, showing how different media affect text, transmission, and reception. It will also consider how well McLuhan and other twentieth-century orality theorists hold up under a twenty-first-century gaze.
Patrizia Granziera (Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the manner in which Catholic friars responded to the popularity of the goddess in India and how medias became an essential tool to present a new constructed image of Mary to the native people.
Paper long abstract:
Christianity in India has a long history, but the major encounter with Catholicism came in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese in Southern India.
After the arrival of Vasco de Gama in India (1498), the task of evangelization was in the hands of the missionary orders, who mostly venerated the "Immaculate Virgin". When they reached India, they found a country which had dedicated a cult to the mother goddess since antiquity, symbolizing the regenerating forces of nature.
The advent of the Roman Catholic faith introduces new images and practices. Catholic missionaries while trying to comprehend Hindu religiosity and devotion to the goddess they also had to work to translate their conception of the female divine into Hindu terms and locate the Catholic faith as at "home" in the Hindu world. They used media known to the native people while variating some patterns of representing religious content.
This paper analyses the process of construction and legitimation of a new religious tradition where medias became an essential tool to draw Hindus to the worship of Mary. The paper will discuss these issues as well as Mary's complicated entanglement in the Indian's attempt to create a national identity over the course of a century that began in 1880s. The myriad ways, in which Mother India has been visualized in painting, print poster art and pictures include an iconography, which refers directly to the Mother of Christ in the Christian tradition.
Tatiana Oranskaia (Universitaet Hamburg)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will attempt to answer the question, in what way the new media impact the image of Lala Hardaul, a local deity worshipped in Bundelkhand, India. The analysis is based on a comparison of the basic folklore version of his legend with its numerous audio and video variants.
Paper long abstract:
Lala Hardaul ((?)1608 - (?)1631) is a deified Bundela prince of Orchha. His legend falls into two parts. The first part narrates about his short earthly life and focuses on its unnatural end: Hardaul was poisoned by his bhābhī at the order of his elder brother, the Raja of Orchha. The second part is the story about how Hardaul, after his demise, perfectly fulfilled his duty of māmā and gave his niece, the daughter of his sister, a magnificent dowry. The latter plot is clearly connected to Hardaul's cult and his function as the patron deity of brides and unmarried girls.
The core content is identical in all versions of the legend. Unlike the posthumous part that does not allow for a strong content variation, Hardaul's life story undergoes (re)interpretations time and again leading to multiplication of versions, some of which are politically relevant. Owing to the opportunities of content creation provided by electronic technologies they have been circulated on information carriers since 1970es.
The paper will attempt to show the major trends in this process and relate them to the general media scene in India with regard to the content and formal features. On the other hand, it aims at revealing specific features of the medial representations of the story that are conditioned by local views, aspirations and technical opportunities.
Rajshree Dhali (SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi.)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the impact and role of print and electronic media on the traditional image of Ramdev, a Folk deity in western Rajasthan. It explores how media created his new image, modified and unsettled some existing religious traditions and impacted the social composition of his followers.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation examines how print material and audio visual techniques caused a shift in the traditional image of Ramdev, a folk god of western Rajasthan, India. I would be exploring two broad areas related to this changing religious process in relation to the interaction of media in contemporary Rajasthan.
The study of oral traditions and personal correspondence with cross section of devotees suggests that Ramdev appeared as a non-brahmanical god in the pre modern traditions. Twentieth century sources on the other hand depict him as a Hindu god. The media was instrumental in shaping new rituals and modifying existing traditions. How were the new religious traditions invented and attributed to Ramdev, and what was the role played by different forms of the media in disseminating them will be the subject of investigation. The new image of Ramdev was meant to fulfil the ideological needs of the upper castes in changing political conditions, where they were losing their social hegemony over the subaltern groups.
Secondly, the presentation deliberates on the marginalisation of the subaltern section from the religious space around the cult of Ramdev, of which they were the repository. This needs to be studied in relation to the upper caste control of the media. Did the traditional lower caste followers allow themselves to be hegemonized? Or, did they stick to idea of accepting the traditional image of Ramdev and attempt to propagate the same by using media techniques? These are some of the issues the presentation would be examining.
John Leavitt (Université de Montréal)
Paper short abstract:
Across the Central Himalayas, performers of oral genres have traditionally used a formulaic language register distinct from those of everyday speech. More recently, the stories carried in this tradition have been re-presented in new media: popular music, novels and plays, and Bollywood-style films.
Paper long abstract:
The Central Himalayan region (the Indian state of Uttarakhand and far western Nepal) has long been recognized as a distinctive culture area. One important aspect of its distinctiveness is the great elaboration of semi-professional bardic performance, which includes the recitation of epics, participation in seasonal agricultural activities, and interaction with the gods. In this range of traditional forms, Central Himalayan performers use an archaic or archaizing language register quite different from those of everyday speech, a diction that is largely formulaic and shared across the region. This paper explores shared themes, linguistic usages, and formulas by comparing texts collected from oral performances in different parts of the region by the author and other scholars. It considers recent transformations the themes of this tradition have gone through as they are re-presented in novels, plays, popular music and Bollywood-style videos.
Diana Dimitrova (University of Montreal)
Paper short abstract:
This paper studies the mediating of the tradition in transnational space. It focuses upon the use of new media and examines the new developments pertaining to ritual and sacred space in the Radhasoami movement in the USA.
Paper long abstract:
The Radhasoami is a reform movement that originates in India at the end of the nineteenth-century. It challenges and transcends orthodox Hinduism by rejecting the caste system and endorsing women's education. This paper studies the mediating of the tradition in transnational space, specifically in the USA. It focuses upon the use of new media and examines the new developments pertaining to ritual and sacred space in the Radhasoami movement in the USA. In my discussion, I consider several aspects of the globalization of the Radhasoami movement in North America and its complex links with South Asian religion. I inquire whether the new ritual space and practice provide an alternate "modernity" to that shaped by the West and whether this contributes to the building of new structures and spaces of thinking, being and believing. I first discuss the major teachings of Radhasoami and then proceed to discuss modifications of the ritual practice in North America. My methodology pertains to both textual analysis of religious texts in Hindi and qualitative approach based on participant research and unstructured interviews with members of the community.
Gita V. Pai (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Paper short abstract:
By examining a few case studies in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and India, this paper explores appropriations of Hindu imagery in the media, and it studies certain religious groups' responses to what they define as the misappropriation of their sacred iconography.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, Hindu religious organizations in India and abroad assert that the appearance of their gods to decorate commodities, to market merchandise, and to further secular ideas in advertising media (print and the Internet) and in print media (newspapers and magazines) denigrates Hinduism. Furthermore, they resort to digital media (websites and email) and social media (Twitter and Facebook) to lodge their complaints against companies, generate mass interest in their cause, and mobilize members of the Hindu faith. This paper examines a few case studies since 2000 in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and India to explore implementations of Hindu imagery beyond prescribed spaces and to study certain religious groups' responses to what they define as the misappropriation of their sacred iconography. In doing so, this paper argues that religion becomes reified rather than dynamic and those who protest against the imagery use outside lived religious practices reveal more about their proclaimed rights rather than concerns over the actual preservation of religious purity.
Umar Nizarudeen (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Paper short abstract:
A religious-cult called Dinkoism, popular in social-media and online-groups uses a Soviet-era children's comic book super-hero-figure called `Dinkan' as parody of mainstream religious deities of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity in the Southern-Indian state of Kerala.
Paper long abstract:
Dinkan, the comic superhero mouse was created by an artist named Baby in the now defunct children's magazine called Balamangalam in 1983. Rationalists in Kerala, India have appropriated the mythical aura and entire tropical eco-system surrounding Dinkan to critique and parody mainstream religion in Kerala by creating the quasi-religious cult of Dinkan. Legend says that Dinkan resides in tropical Pankila-forest, in Kerala. As an undisciplined infant, Dinkan was kidnapped by aliens from unspecified planet. They performed tests and imparted divine powers upon him. Dinkan then returned to Pankila-forest to use his strength to save the weak. Hindu vedic chantings and verses of Koran are mimicked by adding Dinkoist elements. `Dinkan, the only God,' `The only religion acceptable in Dinkan is Dinkoism,`Dinkan died for our sins,'`Om !Aham Dinkasmi' are staple memes for Dinkoist provocateurs. In the communally fraught and touchy media space of India and particularly Kerala, the Dinkoists have to perform a tightrope walk to avoid hurting religious sentiments and thus provoking scandal. They mainly use online groups like the `International Chalu Union' and `Troll Malayalam,' each of which has over a million members. Expatriate Keralites and youngsters form the major chunk of content generators. A balance is striven to be struck between all the three mainstream religions. Dinkan is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears a superhero costume, which is subverted to situate the image in Hindu, Muslim and Christian contexts.
Natalie Lang (University of Göttingen)
Paper short abstract:
Hindus in the French overseas department La Réunion have established Facebook as important site for religious negotiations. The acquisition of religious knowledge and the establishment of contacts with Hindus worldwide via Facebook seem reflective of aspirations for social distinction.
Paper long abstract:
Hindus in the French overseas department La Réunion have established Facebook as an important site for religious negotiations. With regards to this panel's proposition, this paper suggests a shift in focus from merely looking at how media impact religion, to also considering the religiously, culturally and socially informed ways in which people use social media. Reunionese of Indian descent acquire religious knowledge and establish contacts with Hindus in India and numerous places in the diaspora via Facebook, which needs to be seen in the context of a recent reorientation towards India after a long phase of sparse contact. Access to religious knowledge and contact with Hindus in India and worldwide can serve as a means for social distinction and for the creation of a diasporic consciousness. The use of Facebook by Reunionese Hindus seems reflective of aspirations for social distinction in the offline world, and activities in online and offline contexts need to be regarded as continuous spheres of interaction. At the same time, Facebook can provide an alternative space for the negotiation of religious content and authority. The paper argues that Facebook is not only used for religious mediation, but actions on religious Facebook pages are used for mediation between the aspired to and the achieved in terms of knowledge, gender roles and social status. The paper is based on participant observation conducted during 12 months' anthropological field work in La Réunion (2014-2015) in the context of a PhD research project.