Twisting the wrist: Using different ways of looking to analyse

South Asian religious practices

A workshop session with

Jacqueline Suthren Hirst and John Zavos

Kaleidoscopic ways of looking

• ‘a constantly changing pattern of …reflections as the observer looks into the tube and rotates it’ (SOED 1993: 1470)

• Twisting the kaleidoscope = a multi-perspectival approach towards South Asian religions

Panth, kismet, dharm te qaum

• Ballard (1996)• Punjabi terms used to

conceptualise dynamics of religious practice

• eg shrine of Baba Hasan Das– Participation on basis of

kismetic and panthic resonance, even if dharmic practices and qaumic identification is divergent

Analysing social space

• The location of ritual and other practices in social space– Analysing understandings of

public and private space (eg purdah)

– Association and dissociation in shared space

• Negotiation and re-negotiation of social space (dynamic not fixed)

Teacher pupil traditions

• A model of transmission

• Emphasis on: – Shared discourse– Historical context– Linkages and ruptures across

‘religions’

• Modern gurus and others transcending religion?

Gender, politics, religion

• Consistent deployment = nuanced, developing analysis

– Exploring gender-based power/challenging western understandings of feminism

– Exploring dynamics of power relations

– Religion…

…The World Religions model

• Suthren Hirst and Zavos (2005), ‘Teaching Across South Asian Religious Traditions’, Contemporary South Asia 14 (1)

• Exploring the interactions between ‘religion’ and other significant discourses (other ways of looking)

• ‘Decentring religion’

Kaleidoscopic ways of looking• Panth kismet dharm te qaum

• Analysing social space

• Teacher pupil traditions

• Gender

• Politics

• Religion (the World Religions model)