Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults

by Basu,Helene; Basu,Helene

• ISBN13: 9780415151009
• ISBN10: 0415151007
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1998-06-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The continued vitality of Sufism as a living embodied postcolonial reality challenges the argument that Sufism has "died" in recent times. Throughout India and Bangladesh, Sufi shrines exist in both the rural and urban areas, from the remotest wilderness to the modern Asian city, lying opposite banks and skyscrapers. This book illuminates the remarkable resilience of South Asian Sufi saints and their cults in the face of radical economic and political dislocations and breaks new ground in current research. It addresses the most recent debates on the encounter between Islam and modernity and presents important new comparative ethnographic material.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Introduction	p. 1
The embodiment of charisma	p. 3
Embodying locality
The hardware of sanctity: anthropomorphic objects in Bangladeshi Sufism	p. 31
A 'festival of flags': Hindu-Muslim devotion and the sacralising of localism at the shrine of Nagore-e-Sharif in Tamil Nadu	p. 55
'The saint who disappeared': saints of the wilderness in Pakistani village shrines	p. 77
The performance of emotion
Langar: pilgrimage, sacred exchange and perpetual sacrifice in a Sufi saint's lodge	p. 95
Hierarchy and emotion: love, joy and sorrow in a cult of black saints in Gujarat, India	p. 117
The majzub Mama Ji Sarkar: 'a friend of God moves from one house to another'	p. 140
A majzub and his mother: the place of sainthood in a family's emotional memory	p. 160
Charisma and modernity
The literary critique of Islamic popular religion in the guise of traditional mysticism, or the abused woman	p. 187
Prophets and pirs: charismatic Islam in the Middle East and South Asia	p. 209
Name index	p. 234
Subject index	p. 238
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