Every religious movement is, to some degree, a social movement. Some such movements might exhibit the social, economic, and political components in a dominant manner. In other movements such worldly aims may be less evident. In this important volume, David Lorenzen addresses a range of debates regarding religious movements in the medieval and early modern periods and presents the views of several scholars on each debate. Eleven key essays debate how the religious and worldly aims of different movements are linked, and how their ideologies, social bases, and organizational structures have both continued and changed over the course of time. The essays in this volume, the fifth in the debates in Indian History and Society series, are divided into five parts: Alvars and Nayanars, conversion to Islam, Rama and the Muslims, Kabir and the Sants, and historical overviews. Each part includes essays which present opposing views on important issues such as the relationship between caste and sect, the idea of renunciation, the role of the Sufis in the conversion to Islam in medieval India, and the ways in which many of the South Asian popular movements emerged and gathered force. In an insightful introductory essay, David Lorenzen discusses the historical and theoretical background of each of these debates as well as the influence of Dumont, Engels, and Weber on our understanding of the nature of religious movements in and beyond the South Asian context. A valuable supplementary text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book will also be a useful companion for historians of medieval and early modern India, students and scholars of religious studies, comparative religion, sociology and anthropology, as well as the informed general reader interested in the religious traditions of South Asia.
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