Religion as Social Vision: The Movement against Untouchability in 20th-Century Punjab (Volume 34)

by Mark Juergensmeyer

Genres: India

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 25, 1982

About the author

Mark Juergensmeyer is a professor of sociology and global studies, affiliate professor of religious studies, and the Kundan Kaur Kapany professor of global and Sikh Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the founding director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, and is a pioneer in the field of global studies, focusing on global religion, religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics. He has published more than three hundred articles and twenty books, including the revised and expanded fourth edition of Terror in the Mind of God (University of California Press, 2017).

Reviews

[Rakesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1920s, the Ad Dharm movement asserted that "Untouchables" had a religious tradition of their own that was separate from Hinduism. Ad Dharm was the name given to this religious tradition. Having up until then been lumped into the category of Hindu by the British Government, the leaders of the Ad Dharm movement requested that the government list Ad Dharm as a separate religion in the 1931 Census.

"We are not Hindus. We strongly request the government not to list us as such in the census. Our faith is not Hindu, but Ad Dharm. We are not a part of Hinduism, and Hindus are not part of us."

The government agreed. 418,789 people in Punjab identified themselves as Ad Dharm members in the 1931 Census. Ad Dharm had begun organizing only 6 years before the census, in 1925.

This is a fascinating book on how a community asserted its own identity and strove to be equal to the Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian communities.