• Of spiritual churning and identity umbrellas

  • May 9 2025
  • Length: 50 mins
  • Podcast

Of spiritual churning and identity umbrellas

Listen for free

View show details

  • Summary

  • "Any place where a guru goes and spends time becomes a dera; it gets a sacred connotation. Deras are reflective of our larger tradition of argumentation, philosophy and contestation. In India, there is nothing singular about our world; everything is very plural. So, any sort of broad brushing or monolithic thinking about deras is unhelpful. All deras are not Dalit. But I was surprised to see Gail Omvedt's Seeking Begumpura at one. Some are doing very much for Ambedkarite thought. They have a lot of Ambedkar in their libraries and their sanctum sanctorums too have big portraits of Ambedkar alongside their religious iconography. Ravidassias constantly tell me that Sant Ravidas is their spiritual guru but Ambedkar is their political one. All this made me take deras very seriously. " - Santosh K Singh, author, The Deras; Culture, Diversity and Politics talks to Manjula Narayan about the varied character and caste and class affiliations of the deras of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal, the Ad-Dharmis, the Ravidassia deras of Punjab and the grand Ravidas temple in Banaras, the connections between the local and the global, and also the great need for sociologists to get their ideas out into the wider world beyond the Academy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Show More Show Less
Show More Show Less
activate_mytile_page_redirect_t1

What listeners say about Of spiritual churning and identity umbrellas

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com.au reviews

Amazon Reviews
No Reviews are Available
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.