PIRO AND THE GULABDASIS
Gender, Sect, and Society in Punjab
Price: 995.00 INR
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ISBN:
9780199468188
Publication date:
03/01/2017
Hardback
408 pages
Price: 995.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780199468188
Publication date:
03/01/2017
Hardback
408 pages
Anshu Malhotra
This book studies Piro’s poetry and autobiographical verses, analyzing her bhakti’s imaginary that constructed her autonomous subjectivity. The Gulabdasi sect is examined through her and her guru’s writings, commenting on their advaita-inspired heterodox practice that allowed Piro’s blossoming. The Gulabdasi presence in Punjab is traced from the nineteenth century to the present. The book looks at the vibrancy of apparently marginal religiosities of gurus and deras, commenting on their remarkable place in people’s piety.
Rights: World Rights
Anshu Malhotra
Description
The middle decades of the nineteenth century in Punjab were a time of the disintegrating Sikh empire and an emerging colonial one. Situating her study in this turbulent time, Anshu Malhotra delves into the tumultuous life of a hitherto unknown woman, Piro, and her little-known sect, the Gulabdasis. Piro’s forceful autobiographical narrative knits a fanciful tale of abduction and redemption, while also claiming agency over her life. Piro’s is the extraordinary voice of a low-caste Muslim and a former prostitute, who reinvents her life as an acolyte in a heterodox sect.
Malhotra argues for the relevance of such a voice for our cultural anchoring and empowering politics. Piro’s remarkable poetry deploys bhakti imaginary in exceptional ways, demonstrating how it enriched the lives of women and low castes. Malhotra’s work is also a pioneering study of the afterlife of Piro and the Gulabdasis, highlighting the cultural scripts that inform the stories that we tell and the templates that renew the tales we fabricate.
About the Author
Anshu Malhotra teaches at the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi, India. She has written extensively on gender issues over the past two decades. She is also the author of Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab (2002). Her other previous publications include the edited volumes Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia (2015) with Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice (2012) with Farina Mir.
Anshu Malhotra
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration and Diacritical Marks
Acknowledgements
Self, Sect, and Society: An Introduction
Part I
1. Guru Gulabdas: A Savant Monist or a Deviant Maverick?
Part II
2. A ‘Life-Story’ in an Autobiographical Fragment
3. Agonistic Religiosity, Gendered Self, and a Conversion Narrative
4. A Low-Caste Muslim Prostitute and Bhakti Religiosity: Cultural Imaginary and the Ability to Imagine Otherwise
5. Miracles and Women Bhaktas: Understanding Piro’s Agency
Part III
6. Caste in the Colonial Public Sphere: The Conundrum of Sant Ditta Ram/Giani Ditt Singh
7. Theatre of the Past: Re-presenting the Past in Different Genres
8. Fantasticating Fables, Sacralizing Spaces, and Remaking Rituals: The Gulabdasis at a Contemporary Moment
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Anshu Malhotra
Anshu Malhotra
Description
The middle decades of the nineteenth century in Punjab were a time of the disintegrating Sikh empire and an emerging colonial one. Situating her study in this turbulent time, Anshu Malhotra delves into the tumultuous life of a hitherto unknown woman, Piro, and her little-known sect, the Gulabdasis. Piro’s forceful autobiographical narrative knits a fanciful tale of abduction and redemption, while also claiming agency over her life. Piro’s is the extraordinary voice of a low-caste Muslim and a former prostitute, who reinvents her life as an acolyte in a heterodox sect.
Malhotra argues for the relevance of such a voice for our cultural anchoring and empowering politics. Piro’s remarkable poetry deploys bhakti imaginary in exceptional ways, demonstrating how it enriched the lives of women and low castes. Malhotra’s work is also a pioneering study of the afterlife of Piro and the Gulabdasis, highlighting the cultural scripts that inform the stories that we tell and the templates that renew the tales we fabricate.
About the Author
Anshu Malhotra teaches at the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi, India. She has written extensively on gender issues over the past two decades. She is also the author of Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab (2002). Her other previous publications include the edited volumes Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia (2015) with Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice (2012) with Farina Mir.
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration and Diacritical Marks
Acknowledgements
Self, Sect, and Society: An Introduction
Part I
1. Guru Gulabdas: A Savant Monist or a Deviant Maverick?
Part II
2. A ‘Life-Story’ in an Autobiographical Fragment
3. Agonistic Religiosity, Gendered Self, and a Conversion Narrative
4. A Low-Caste Muslim Prostitute and Bhakti Religiosity: Cultural Imaginary and the Ability to Imagine Otherwise
5. Miracles and Women Bhaktas: Understanding Piro’s Agency
Part III
6. Caste in the Colonial Public Sphere: The Conundrum of Sant Ditta Ram/Giani Ditt Singh
7. Theatre of the Past: Re-presenting the Past in Different Genres
8. Fantasticating Fables, Sacralizing Spaces, and Remaking Rituals: The Gulabdasis at a Contemporary Moment
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
