Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India

India is the second largest country in the world with regard to population, the world’s largest democracy and by far the largest country in South Asia, and one of the most diverse and pluralistic nations in the world in terms of official languages, cultures, religions and social identities. Indians have for centuries exchanged ideas with other cultures globally and some traditions have been transformed in those transnational and transcultural encounters and become successful innovations with an extraordinary global popularity. India is an emerging global power in terms of economy, but in spite of India’s impressive economic growth over the last decades, some of the most serious problems of Indian society such as poverty, repression of women, inequality both in terms of living conditions and of opportunities such as access to education, employment, and the economic resources of the state persist and do not seem to go away.

This Handbook contains chapters by the field’s foremost scholars dealing with fundamental issues in India’s current cultural and social transformation and concentrates on India as it emerged after the economic reforms and the new economic policy of the 1980s and 1990s and as it develops in the 21st century.

Following an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into five parts:

Part I: Foundation

Part II: India and the World

Part III: Society, Class, Caste and Gender

Part IV: Religion and Diversity

Part V: Cultural Change and Innovations

Exploring the cultural changes and innovations relating a number of contexts in contemporary India, this handbook is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Indian and South Asian culture, politics and society.

Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the History of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has published widely on religions of South Asia and his latest book published on Routledge was the monographPilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (2013). He is the editor ofSouth Asian Religions on Display (2008), Objects of Worship in South Asian Religions (2015) and the four volume setModern Indian Culture and Society (2009) also published by Routledge.