Civil Society in Malerkotla, Punjab: Fostering Resilience through Religion by Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa explores the direct role that religion plays in conflict and peace that has often been difficult to isolate. This study extends previous work on peace and conflict resolution by looking at a town which has witnessed many outbreaks of violence in the past but still holds peace as the norm. The former princely state of Malerkotla, Punjab is a place where riots did not occur during Partition. In this unique Muslim majority town, there are four distinct religious groups that live in close proximity to each other. Yet, the overall pattern of peaceful plurality in the town has resulted in the transcendence of violence even when the threat looms close by. The unique case of Malerkotla, Punjab provides an opportunity to look more closely and critically at Sikhs and their relationship with Muslims in India. As a case study, this work captures the overall pattern of Sikh-Muslim interaction in a town that can transcend conflict and make peace the norm. Randhawa uncovers how religious associations, expressions and activities have helped to build social capital and stabilize peace. This book also emphasizes interreligious understanding, cross-cultural awareness, and conflict transformation, and discusses how interfaith communities can work together to bridge understanding in order to prevent violence.

This book explores the organic lives of popular Sufi shrines in contemporary Northwest India. It traverses the worldview of shrine spaces, rituals and their complex narratives, and provides an insight into their urban and rural landscapes in the post-Partition (Indian) Punjab. What happened to these shrines when attempts were made to dissuade Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus from their veneration of popular saints in the early twentieth century? What was the fate of popular shrines that persisted even when the Muslim population was virtually wiped off as a result of migration during Partition? How did these shrines manifest in the context of the threat posed by militants in the 1980s? How did such popular practices reconfigure themselves when some important centres of Sufism were left behind in the West Punjab (now Pakistan)? This book examines several of these questions and utilizes a combination of analytical tools, new theoretical tropes and an ethnographic approach to understand and situate popular Sufi shrines so that they are both historicized and spatialized. As such, it lays out some crucial contours of the method and practice of understanding popular sacred spaces (within India and elsewhere), bridging the everyday and the metanarratives of power structures and state formation. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers and those engaged in interdisciplinary work in history, social anthropology, historical sociology, cultural studies, historical geography, religion and art history, as well as those interested in Sufism and its shrines in South Asia.

Since the1950s the world has witnessed a period of extraordinary religious revival in which religious political parties and non-governmental organizations have gained power around the globe. At the same time, the international community has come to focus on the challenge of promoting global human security. This groundbreaking book explores how these trends are interacting. In theoretical essays and case studies from Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, the Americas, Africa and Europe, the contributors address such crucial questions as: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors advance or harm human welfare? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups? The book concludes by providing important suggestions to policymakers about how to factor the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.

Civil Society in Malerkotla, Pubjab: Fostering Resilience through Religion by Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa explores the direct role that religion plays in conflict and peace that has often been difficult to isolate. Randhawa extends previous work on peace and conflict resolution by looking at the town of Malerkotla, Punjab which has witnessed many outbreaks of violence in the past but still holds peace as the norm. As a case study, this book uncovers how religious associations, expressions and activities have helped to build social capital and stabilize peace.

Religion, civil society and the state form the three dimensions of this semiological study of Sikhism. The author argues for a recognition of the figure of the martyr - whose victory is over the "self" - rather than the figure of the hero, whose victory is over the victim.