The Question of Faith

The Question of Faith examines the cultural resources underlying manifestations of 'faith' in the larger context of communalism and fundamentalism. Countering the economistic and political interpretations of these phenomena, the author focuses instead on the possibilities of resilience contained in the life-sustaining aspects of religious experience and symbology. Exploring different 'languages' outside of the social sciences, the monograph travels through the enigmas of the Kumbha Mela and the Ram Lila, the fiction of U.R. Anantha Murthy, the cultural writings of Rammanohar Lohia, and Mahatma Gandhi's politics of 'faith' to offer alternative modes of resisting the violence of our times through a deeper respect for cultural difference and the ambivalences of 'faith’.