CHRISTIAN LEE NOVETZKE
The Quotidian Revolution
Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India
In thirteenth-century western India,
venture spiritualists—entrepreneurial religious figures—challenged the
linguistic and cultural hegemony of Sanskrit, a language restricted to
high-caste men. They did this by formulating new texts and social orders
oriented around the use of the regional languages that reduced the
barriers to access that Sanskrit had imposed.
In so doing, these venture spiritualists created an early form of the public sphere in which the social ethics of caste and gender inequity were debated. This debate drew from, and reconfigured, the sense and scope of “everyday life” permeated by social distinction.
The configuration of a new public sphere in medieval India that
engaged with questions of social equality in the context of expanding
the scope of everyday life is the process called “vernacularization.”
The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment in Indian history and argues that the medieval public sphere endures as a key strand of the unique genealogy of Indian democracy and modernity.
Christian Lee Novetzke is professor of religious studies, South Asia studies, and global studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (2008) and coauthor of Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (2016).
Hardback, Rs 895
The Quotidian Revolution
Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India
In so doing, these venture spiritualists created an early form of the public sphere in which the social ethics of caste and gender inequity were debated. This debate drew from, and reconfigured, the sense and scope of “everyday life” permeated by social distinction.
The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment in Indian history and argues that the medieval public sphere endures as a key strand of the unique genealogy of Indian democracy and modernity.
Christian Lee Novetzke is professor of religious studies, South Asia studies, and global studies at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (2008) and coauthor of Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (2016).
Hardback, Rs 895
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