Faith, Fluidity and Famine: Mahima Movement and the Subversive Subaltern Politics
Faith, Fluidity and Famine: Mahima Movement and the Subversive Subaltern Politics

Summary/Abstract: This paper argues for an understanding of religion as contested ‘terrain of the political’, where dominance and subversion enter a game of transcendence. While the hegemonic religions attempt to manufacture consent, the fluid faiths of the marginalized emerge as a discursive critique and subversive politics. “Mahima Alekh Dharma”, one of the most fascinating and intriguing religious movements of contemporary eastern India, emerged in the late nineteenth century from the womb of a devastating famine. The rebellious religious movement decried idol-worship and discarded the position of Brahmins as the mediators between Gods and human. Through the prism of the Mahima Movement, this paper explores the dialectical nature of subordination and subversion in the religious terrain of the political and attempts explain how these contestations sculpt the present emancipatory politics of the Dalits and Adivasis.

• Details
• Contents