Oxford University Press, USA
Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954
Key Metrics
- Kama MacLean
- Oxford University Press, USA
- Hardcover
- 9780195338942
- 9.3 X 6.1 X 1.1 inches
- 1.4 pounds
- Religion > Hinduism - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Resistance to foreign interference with the mela has roots that go back 200 years. The British colonial state and the colonized had different ideas about what the Kumbh Mela represented: for the former, it was a potentially dangerous gathering that demanded tight regulation and control, but for the latter it was a sacred sphere in which foreign domination and interference were intolerable. In this book Kama Maclean examines this tension and the manner in which it was negotiated by each side. She asks why and how the colonial state tried to manipulate the mela and, more important, how the mela changed as Indians responded to the colonial power. In recent years many scholars have emphasized the extent to which the Kumbh Mela has been monopolized by the Hindu nationalist movement. Maclean seeks to situate the history of the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad within a much broader context. She explores the role of a pilgrimage fair like the Kumbh Mela in disseminating ideas, particularly political ones like nationalism and ideas about social reform.
Kama Maclean tells the mesmerizing and important story of the Kumbh Mela with exciting detail as well as careful scholarly attention, illuminating for the reader the full scope of the event's historical and socio-political context.
Author Bio
Dr Kama Maclean is Associate Professor of South Asian and World History in the School of Humanities (FASS) and editor of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, published by the South Asian Studies Association of Australia.
Kama's first book, Pilgrimage and Power: the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, was published in New York by Oxford University Press in 2008, and was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Kentish Anand Coomaraswamy Prize, by the Association of Asian Studies in the USA.
In 2009, Kama took up a one year appointment as Professorial Research Fellow at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, where she began to research and write about anticolonial activism in interwar India, a project which focuses largely on the ways in which the actions of what the British called 'the violence movement' impacted on the broader nationalist movement. She has written several articles on this topic and her book, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text was published by Hurst & Co (London) and Oxford University Press (New York), 2015 and Penguin (New Delhi, 2016).
In 2012, Kama was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant to complete a project on the extent and impact of social and political relationships between Indians and Australians in the early twentieth century.
Source: University of New South Wales
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