Overview

Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging focuses on the Heraka movement and its impact on the Zeme, a 'Naga tribe', in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. The Heraka is a religious reform movement derived from the traditional practice known as Paupaise. It began as an anti-British and anti-Christian movement. It was organised from disparate groups of the early 1930s into a centralised and effective movement in 1974. This book will examine the formation of the movement through to its present state. The processes by which the movement has evolved, exhibiting the contextualisation of an indigenous identity, grounded in custom and tradition, are also outlined. By examining ideas of reform and identity, the book also analyses concepts such as millenarianism, ethnicity, nationalism, boundaries, pilgrimages, agrarian reforms, oral history, and the use of religious texts and the sacralisation of space to determine the efficacy of community formation. A critical examination is made regarding important concepts such as 'religion' within the corpus of the study, which offers better insights into the concept by rejecting universalist ideas embedded in the 'world religion' paradigm, while privileging local expressions. Moreover, an important theme emerges from the latter observation. Due to various exigencies, small religious communities such as the Heraka are also finding the 'world religion' paradigm a helpful tool to project themselves as pure, systematised, and believing communities - partly for the purpose of increasing their political profile or partly to accentuate the accepted paradigms of 'religion' as a form of survival for their own religious practice, at the same time invoking a discourse of indigeneity. This groundbreaking new series offers original reflections on theory and method in the study of religions, and demonstrates new approaches to the way religious traditions are studied and presented. Studies published under its auspices look to clarify the role and place of Religious Studies in the academy, but not in a purely theoretical manner. Each study will demonstrate its theoretical aspects by applying them to the actual study of religions, often in the form of frontier research.

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9781441186447

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Dr Arkotong Longkumer is Lecturer at the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK.

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