A Companion to the Anthropology of India

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1
Isabelle Clark-Decès

Part I Caste and Class in Liberal India 23

1 Demography for Anthropologists: Populations, Castes, and Classes 25
Christophe Z. Guilmoto

2 Caste, Class, and Untouchability 45
Robert Deliège

3 Great Expectations: Youth in Contemporary India 62
Craig Jeffrey

4 The Modern Transformation of an Old Elite: The Case of the Tamil Brahmans 80
C. J. Fuller

5 Caste and Collective Memory in South India 98
Zoé E. Headley

Part II Cities, Cosmopolitan Styles, and Urban Critics 115

6 “How to Sit, How to Stand”: Bodily Practice and the New Urban Middle Class 117
Meredith Lindsay McGuire

7 Global Dancing in Kolkata 137
Pallabi Chakravorty

8 Yoga, Modernity, and the Middle Class: Locating the Body in a World of Desire 154
Joseph S. Alter

9 Tourism in India: The Moral Economy of Gender in Banaras 169
Jenny Huberman

10 Crafts, Artisans, and the Nation-State in India 186
Mira Mohsini

11 Crowds, Congestion, Conviviality: The Enduring Life of the Old City 202
Ajay Gandhi

Part III Cultures and Religion in the Making 223

12 Optic-Clash: Modes of Visuality in India 225
Shaila Bhatti and Christopher Pinney

13 Hindu–Muslim Relations and the “War on Terror” 241
Philippa Williams

14 Religious Synthesis at a Muslim Shrine 260
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

15 Christianity: Culture, Identity, and Agency 277
Mathew N. Schmalz

Part IV Communalism, Nationalism, and Terrorism 295

16 The Politics of Communalism and Caste 297
Ornit Shani

17 Violence, Aggression, and Militancy: Reexamining Gender, and Nonliberal Politics 313
Tarini Bedi

18 India Burning: The Maoist Revolution 332
Alpa Shah

Part V Law, Governance, and Civil Society 353

19 Courts of Law and Legal Practice 355
Daniela Berti

20 Law and Order: Police Encounter Killings and Routinized Political Violence 371
Beatrice Jauregui

21 Civil Society and Politics: An Anthropological Perspective 389
John Harriss

22 Discourses of Citizenship and Criminality in Clean, Green Delhi 407
Yaffa Truelove and Emma Mawdsley

23 Toward an Anthropology of Water in Mumbai’s Settlements 426
Nikhil Anand

Part VI From Global India to the Ethnography of Change 443

24 Transnational India: Diaspora and Migration in the Anthropology of South Asia 445
Leo Coleman

25 India Responds to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: Unintended Consequences of Global Health Initiatives 464
Cecilia Van Hollen

26 Cultures of the Psyche, Politics of Illness 482
Sarah Pinto

27 Ways of Aging 500
Sarah Lamb

28 The Decline of Dravidian Kinship in Local Perspectives 517
Isabelle Clark-Decès

Index 536