Vernacular Catholicism, vernacular saints : Selva J. Raj on "Being Catholic the Tamil way"

A collection of Raj’s groundbreaking ethnographic studies of “vernacular” Catholic traditions in Tamil Nadu, India.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Selva J. Raj (1952–2008) was one of the most important scholars of popular Indian Christianity and South Asian religion in North America. Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints gathers together, for the first time in a single volume, a series of his groundbreaking studies on the distinctively “vernacular” Catholic traditions of Tamil Nadu in southeast India. This collection, which focuses on four rural shrines, highlights ritual variety and ritual transgression in Tamil Catholic practice and offers clues to the ritual exchange, religious hybridity, and dialogue occurring at the grassroots level between Tamil Catholics and their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. Raj also advances a new and alternative paradigm for interreligious dialogue that radically differs from models advocated by theologians, clergy, and other religious elite. In addition, essays by other leading scholars of Indian Christianity and South Asian religions—Michael Amaladoss, Purushottama Bilimoria, Corinne G. Dempsey, Eliza F. Kent, and Vasudha Narayanan—are included that amplify and creatively extend Raj’s work.

“…a fine volume about the interaction between Hinduism and Christianity in South India.” — from the Afterword by Wendy Doniger

“No doubt, Raj’s scholarship and ethnographic studies will deeply impact the study of everyday expressions of Christianity in India and the religiosity of ordinary people, and this volume is an important contribution toward this end.” — Reading Religion