94. Religious Identity, Space, and Community in the Himalaya

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel explores patterns of shifting national, political, and ethnic identities in Himalayan religions, particularly in spaces of local/translocal tension. For religious specialists, saints, deities, and devotees across the Himalaya, the ability to shift location and alter one’s religious, political, and national affiliations allow for strategic malleabilities at times of social instability. At the same time, changing one’s loyalties too often and asserting different identities too quickly can elicit criticism and doubt from one’s community, resulting in loss of allegiance from one’s supporters and devotees. Identity shifts and affiliations can also occur over longer periods in more subtle ways to generate or renew meaning within one’s community. When a community’s religious and national identities are deemed incompatible, religious ritual may play a role in mitigating or exacerbating these incompatibilities.

The papers in this panel will focus on three discrete religious phenomena in three Himalayan contexts: (1) spatial imaginaries surrounding an Islamic shrine containing a bodily relic of the Prophet in the politically contested state of Kashmir, (2) competition and challenges to authenticity among Buddhists who have returned from death (delogs) in Nepal and eastern Tibet, and (3) the sectarian tensions that ultimately give rise to a popular ecumenical goddess tradition in Nepal. Together, these examples examine the functions of and strategies at work in claims of religious, political, national, and ethnic affiliation.

Area of Study

• South Asia

Session Organizer

• Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Chair

• Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• Body, Place, and Belonging: Spatial Imaginaries of the Hazratbal Shrine of Kashmir - Megan Adamson Sijapati, Gettysburg College

• Hari-Hara, Devi, and the Making of Hindu Religious Identity in Nepal - Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Authenticity and Social Hierarchies among Himalayan Buddhists - Alyson Prude, Georgia Southern University

Discussant

• Luke Whitmore, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point