Sammendrag
India is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-affiliate melting pot. When it
comes to identity and affiliations, whether they be political, economic, religious,
or cultural, India is home to several tensions and contestations. At present, the
plight of marginal communities is complicated by the dynamics of majoritarian
state-run homogenized politics.
My paper will be a contextual study on the Karbi people of Assam, a major
indigenous group in the North east India. The Colonial administrative policies
and majoritarian classification biases have a history of misrepresenting and
appropriating the Karbi people. Social exclusion, marginalization, and other
forms of historical oppressions continue to subject Karbi identity. The Karbi
people revere spiritual protector deities, worship ancestors, live close to
nature, and practice religious ideals of reciprocity in the traditional sense.
Recent trends in the Karbi landscape project a drastic boom in the
development of New religious reformation movements. These religious reform
movements arose in response to mainstream conversion and assimilation
politics. However, the baggage of this ongoing re-negotiation of identity and
agency stems from the aftermath of Colonial policies on territorial designs. Using
the theoretical framework of religious-economic theory, I will concentrate on
Lokhimon and Sottism, two well-known divergent religious movements among the Karbi, to better understand the phenomena of the growing complexity
of reformation movements. In contrast to the institutionalized majoritarian
religions, namely Hindu and Christian. I inquire as to how conflicting interests
are moderated when various parties are engaged. The two rival strains in this
vortex contend with stresses both from without and from within. The fringes
have dispersed attitudes while the majoritarians have political and economic
clout. Who is determining the New Karbi’s politico-religious identity? If so, in
whose image?
Vis fullstendig beskrivelse
