Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India

Knut A. Jacobsen is a Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. His most recent book published by Routledge is Yoga in Modern Hinduism (2018) and the co-edited book Religion and Technology in India (2018), and he is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (2020).

• Chapter 1. Contemporary India: Foundation, relations, diversity, religions and change Part I: Foundation Chapter 2. Partitioning India: Dreams, Memories and Legacies; Chapter 3. Symbiosis and Resilience: The Dynamics of Social Change and Transition to Democracy in India; Chapter 4. Foundations for a Sustainable Growth: India’s Constitution and its Supreme Court; Chapter 5. Economic Foundation of India; Chapter 6. Equity, Quantity and Quality: The Precarious Balancing act in India’s Schools; Chapter 7. Agriculture and the Development Burden; Chapter 8. From Composite Nationalism to Hindu Majoritarianism: India’s Transition Part II India and the World Chapter 9. Politics, Security and Foreign Policy; Chapter 10. Is India a South Asian or an Asian Power? Chapter 11. India's Role as a Global Development Partner; Chapter 12. Dispersals, Migrations, the Notion of an Indian Diaspora and the Diversity of Communities; Chapter 13. Matters That Matter: Material Religion in Contemporary Hinduism; Chapter 14. International networks supporting Hindutva; Chapter 15. Yoga and Physical Culture: Transnational History and Blurred Discursive Contexts Part III Society, Class, Caste and Gender Chapter 16. The Politics of Economic Reforms in India; Chapter 17. Divided We Stand: The Indian City after Economic Liberalisation; Chapter 18. India’s Middle Classes in Contemporary India; Chapter 19. Caste: Why Does It Still Matter? Chapter 20. Hindutva and hygiene: Swachh Bharat Mission as an urban spatial purification project; Chapter 21. Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Modern India: History. Patronage, and the Moral Politics of Anti-colonialism; Chapter 22. Regional Perspective: Gujarat and the Contradictory Co-existence of Economic Enterprise and Political Illiberalism; Chapter 23. Intimate Spaces of Struggle: Rethinking Family and Marriage in Contemporary India; Chapter 24. Adivasis and Contemporary India: Engagements with the state, non-state actors and the capitalist economy Part IV Religion and Diversity Chapter 25. Myth as History and History as Myth: The Instructive Case of India; Chapter 26. Hindu Pilgrimage Sites and Travel: Infrastructure, Economy, Identity and Conflicts; Chapter 27. Death of the Sacred: Cow, Caste and Hindu Nationalism; Chapter 28. Hindutva Becoming in the Northeast of India; Chapter 29. Ambedkar's Life and His Navayana Buddhism; Chapter 30. Religion, Identity and Empowerment: The Making of Ravidassia Dharm (Dalit Religion) in Contemporary Punjab; Chapter 31. Muslims in Contemporary India: Socio-religious Diversity and the Questions of Citizenship; Chapter 32. India’s Muslim Minority: Religious Violence and Why India’s Crime Statistics Cannot be Trusted; Chapter 33. Christians in India: Living on the Margins with a Diverse and Controversial Past Part V Cultural Change and Innovations Chapter 34. ‘We Too Have the Sun’: Literatures from the Adivasi and Dalit communities of East India; Chapter 35. Combative Constructions of Femininity in the Late Twentieth Century Narratives of India; Chapter 36. Masculinity and Muscularity in a Changing India: Socioeconomic Mobility among New (‘Lower’) Middle Class Mens; Chapter 37. Changing Food Habits in Contemporary India: Discourses and practices among the middle classes; Chapter 38. Coping with the Diseases of Modernity: The use of siddha medical knowledge and practices to treat patients with diabetes; Index

Jacobsen […] who edited the authoritative Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (2020) and coedited Religion and Technology in India (2020), here offers a very useful addition to Routledge's series of handbooks on a huge variety of subjects. [...] this handbook, which updates the first edition, is thematic and divided into five main categories, each containing didactic essays by 39 different contributors: "Foundation"; "India and the World"; "Society, Class, Caste and Gender"; "Religion and Diversity"; and "Cultural Change and Innovations." Almost all of the contributors are young scholars who offer a postmodern take on traditional subjects, with the major exception being the late Eleanor Zelliot, who was a specialist on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and the Dalits. This volume reflects the postmodern move from writing political history, even when writing historical accounts, to developing sociological narratives and themes. On that account it is an excellent addition to university libraries.”R. D. Long, Eastern Michigan University, USA