The Development of Modern Expression of Religiosity in India and Its Significance

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02055
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Religious studies
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Tomizawa Kana 東京大学, 附属図書館, 特任准教授 (80503862)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 豊山 亜希 近畿大学, 国際学部, 講師 (40511671)
• Research Collaborator: HAZAMA Eijiro 東京大学, 大学院・総合文化研究科 ; HIRANO Kuniko 上智大学, アジア文化研究所, 客員所員
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 宗教概念 / 近代インド / 植民地 / セキュラリズム / スピリチュアリティ / ネオ・ヴェーダーンタ / M. K. ガーンディー / タイル

Outline of Final Research Achievements

“Modern concepts of religion” have long been criticized as modern Western constructs subsequently imposed on the rest of the world. At the same time, however, we need to note that this critique holds the risk of neglecting the agency the non-Western world exerted in shaping modernity. This research project examines the agency of the non-Western world in constructing modern concepts of religion, with particular focus on the discourses on the religious and the secular by Neo-Vedanta and M. K. Gandhi, and figurative expressions in modern India, such as tile decoration, paintings, and tombstones of British cemeteries. The important findings were that their religious/secular discourses were neither a simple consumption nor rejection of Western concepts, but were quite uniquely, yet globally, developed, and that new religious figurative expressions came about due to global economic changes, beyond the East/West and tradition/modernity dichotomies.

Free Research Field

宗教学