南アジア研究センター・セミナー　Dr. Jon Keune, ‘Hindu Devotionalism and the Question of Social Equality in Western India’

2022年11月6日(日）16:00－18:00

東京大学駒場キャンパス14号館6階605号室（対面形式）

Jon Keune (Associate Professor, Michigan State University), ‘Hindu Devotionalism and the Question of Social Equality in Western India’

For more than a millennium, Hindu bhakti (devotional) traditions have stood out in South Asian social history because of their inclusion of women and people regarded as low-caste and Untouchable, who sometimes became highly revered saints within the traditions. Because of this, some modern scholars and social reformers have said that bhakti traditions promoted social equality. Other people, including the Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar disagreed and argued bhakti traditions promoted only spiritual equality while maintaining the social hierarchy of caste. In his book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford, 2021), Dr. Jon Keune focused on a large and influential tradition in Marathi-speaking western India to explain the origins of this debate and why it is difficult to resolve. Drawing on Marathi manuscripts, popular printed texts, theatrical plays, and films, Keune shows how the relation between bhakti and caste was understood in several different perspectives that changed over centuries, as Indians adapted western political theories for their own use. Ways of managing food and eating together help to reveal these changes in this Indian case but also in cultures around the world and throughout history.

小川道大（東京大学）

英語

東京大学南アジア研究センター（CSAS）、マハーラーシュトラ研究会