A collection of Raj’s groundbreaking ethnographic studies of ‘vernacular’ Catholic traditions in Tamil Nadu, India.
Finalist for the 2018 Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies presented by the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies
At the turn of the twenty-first century, Selva J. Raj (1952–2008) was one of the most important scholars of popular Indian Christianity and South Asian religion in North America. Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints gathers together, for the first time in a single volume, a series of his groundbreaking studies on the distinctively ‘vernacular’ Catholic traditions of Tamil Nadu in southeast India. This collection, which focuses on four rural shrines, highlights ritual variety and ritual transgression in Tamil Catholic practice and offers clues to the ritual exchange, religious hybridity, and dialogue occurring at the grassroots level between Tamil Catholics and their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. Raj also advances a new and alternative paradigm for interreligious dialogue that radically differs from models advocated by theologians, clergy, and other religious elite. In addition, essays by other leading scholars of Indian Christianity and South Asian religions-Michael Amaladoss, Purushottama Bilimoria, Corinne G. Dempsey, Eliza F. Kent, and Vasudha Narayanan-are included that amplify and creatively extend Raj’s work.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Bindu Madhok
Editor’s Introduction
Reid B. Locklin
Hiding Behind the Lens: Fieldwork and Friendship with Selva J. Raj
Amanda Randhawa
1. Being Catholic the Tamil Way
Selva J. Raj
Part I: Vernacular Catholicism in Context
2. The Story of Christianity in Tamil Nadu
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
3. Two Models of Indigenization in South Asian Catholicism: A Critique
Selva J. Raj
4. The Ganges, the Jordan, and the Mountain: The Three Strands of Santal Popular Catholicism
Selva J. Raj
Part II: Health, Healing, and Fertility
5. Shared Vows, Shared Space, and Shared Deities: Vow Rituals among Tamil Catholics in South India
Selva J. Raj
6. Transgressing Boundaries, Transcending Turner: The Pilgrimage Tradition at the Shrine of St. John de Britto
Selva J. Raj
7. An Ethnographic Encounter with the Wondrous in a South Indian Catholic Shrine
Selva J. Raj
Part III. Status and Humor, Competition and Communion
8. Public Display, Communal Devotion: Procession at a South Indian Catholic Festival
Selva J. Raj
9. Serious Levity at the Shrine of St. Anne in South India
Selva J. Raj
10. Dialogue ‘On the Ground’: The Complicated Identities and the Complex Negotiations of Catholics and Hindus in South India
Selva J. Raj
Part IV. ‘Being Catholic the Tamil Way’: Responses and Reflections
11. Comparative Transgressions: Vernacular Catholicisms in Tamil Nadu and Kerala
Corinne G. Dempsey
12. Vernacular Christianities: Tamil Catholics and Tamil Protestants
Eliza F. Kent
13. Extending Selva J. Raj’s Scholarship to Hindu American Temples: Accommodation, Assimilation, and a Dialogue of Action
Vasudha Narayanan
14. Reinventing ‘Classical’ Indian Dance with or without Indigenous Spirituality in Three Contemporary ‘Secular’ Continents
Purushottama Bilimoria
Afterword
Wendy Doniger
Postscript: The Tie That Binds
Selva J. Raj
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
About the author
Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity and Culture at the University of Toronto. He has written, edited, and coedited several books, including Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints: Selva J. Raj on ‘Being Catholic the Tamil Way’, also published by SUNY Press.
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