The women featured in this book Children of the Goddess: Devotion and Female Priesthood in Bengal live on the frontier between the tribal and the low-caste society in Bengal, and turn to religion in order to forge a new identity. Often rejected by their own community, and having lived through long and difficult personal crises some of them turn to religion to accultured identity. Some may succeed in becoming female priests, presiding over a Goddess shrine, having given up their femininity by ceasing to menstruate. As Parvati, the central personality of the book, puts it: 'Now I no longer need a child. I am the child of the Goddess', even as she innovates on the boundaries of Hinduism. The book provides a window to a little-known world where social marginality, subaltern assertion, the politics of gender, and the contestation between tribal religion and Hinduism merge to produce a unique perspective on popular Hinduism.

Edited by Marine Carrin (Editor-in-Chief) and Michel Boivin, Marine Carrin, Paul Hockings, Raphaël Rousseleau, Tanka Subha, Harald Tambs-Lyche, Gérard Toffin (Associate editors)
Brill's Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia Online strives to reflect the diversity of indigenous cultures of South Asia with its many language groups and religious traditions. Religion is taken in a broad sense and includes aspects of morality, symbolism, identity formation, environmental concerns, and art. The approach is contemporary and not a reconstruction of an anterior state, though this does not exclude talking about historical processes.

In India as elsewhere, peripheries have frequently been viewed through the eyes of the centre. This book aims at reversing the gaze, presenting the perspectives of low castes, tribes, or other subalterns in a way that amplifies their ability to voice their own concerns.

This volume takes a multidimensional perspective, citing political, economic and cultural factors as expressions of the autonomous assertions of these groups. Questioning the exclusive definitions of the Brahmanical, folk and tribal elements, the articles bring together the empowering possibilities enabled by three recent theoretical developments: of anthropologies questioning the fringes of mainstream society in India; critically engaged histories from below, which problematize subaltern identities; and a conceptual emphasis on everyday ethnography as an arena for negotiations and transactions which contest wider networks of power and hegemony.

This book will be useful to those in sociology, anthropology, politics, history, study of religions, minority studies, cultural studies and those interested in social development, and issues of marginality, tribes and subaltern identity.

In India as elsewhere, peripheries have frequently been viewed through the eyes of the centre. This book aims at reversing the gaze, presenting the perspectives of low castes, tribes, or other subalterns in a way that amplifies their ability to voice their own concerns.

This volume takes a multidimensional perspective, citing political, economic and cultural factors as expressions of the autonomous assertions of these groups. Questioning the exclusive definitions of the Brahmanical, folk and tribal elements, the articles bring together the empowering possibilities enabled by three recent theoretical developments: of anthropologies questioning the fringes of mainstream society in India; critically engaged histories from below, which problematize subaltern identities; and a conceptual emphasis on everyday ethnography as an arena for negotiations and transactions which contest wider networks of power and hegemony.

This book will be useful to those in sociology, anthropology, politics, history, study of religions, minority studies, cultural studies and those interested in social development, and issues of marginality, tribes and subaltern identity.