A Companion to the Anthropology of India
A Companion to the Anthropology of India offers a broad overview of the rapidly evolving scholarship on Indian society from the earliest area studies to views of India's globalization in the twenty-first century. Contributions by leading experts present up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of key topics that include developments in population and life expectancy, caste and communalism, politics and law, public and religious cultures, youth and consumerism, the new urban middle class, civil society, social-moral relationships, environment and health.
The broad variety of topics on Indian society is balanced with the larger global issues - demographic, economic, social, cultural, political, religious, and others - that have transformed the country since the end of colonization. Illuminating the continuity and diversity of Indian culture, A Companion to the Anthropology of India offers important insights into the myriad ways social scientists describe and analyze Indian society and its unique brand of modernity.

The Editor
Isabelle Clark-Decès is Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Program in South Asian Studies at Princeton University. Her books include The Encounter Never Ends: Return to the Field of Tamil Rituals (2007).

Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Isabelle Clark-Decès
Part I Caste and Class in Liberal India 23
1 Demography for Anthropologists: Populations, Castes, and Classes 25
Christophe Z. Guilmoto
2 Caste, Class, and Untouchability 45
Robert Deliège
3 Great Expectations: Youth in Contemporary India 62
Craig Jeffrey
4 The Modern Transformation of an Old Elite: The Case of the Tamil Brahmans 80
C. J. Fuller
5 Caste and Collective Memory in South India 98
Zoé E. Headley
Part II Cities, Cosmopolitan Styles, and Urban Critics 115
6 "How to Sit, How to Stand": Bodily Practice and the New Urban Middle Class 117
Meredith Lindsay McGuire
7 Global Dancing in Kolkata 137
Pallabi Chakravorty
8 Yoga, Modernity, and the Middle Class: Locating the Body in a World of Desire 154
Joseph S. Alter
9 Tourism in India: The Moral Economy of Gender in Banaras 169
Jenny Huberman
10 Crafts, Artisans, and the Nation-State in India 186
Mira Mohsini
11 Crowds, Congestion, Conviviality: The Enduring Life of the Old City 202
Ajay Gandhi
Part III Cultures and Religion in the Making 223
12 Optic-Clash: Modes of Visuality in India 225
Shaila Bhatti and Christopher Pinney
13 Hindu-Muslim Relations and the "War on Terror" 241
Philippa Williams
14 Religious Synthesis at a Muslim Shrine 260
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
15 Christianity: Culture, Identity, and Agency 277
Mathew N. Schmalz
Part IV Communalism, Nationalism, and Terrorism 295
16 The Politics of Communalism and Caste 297
Ornit Shani
17 Violence, Aggression, and Militancy: Reexamining Gender, and Nonliberal Politics 313
Tarini Bedi
18 India Burning: The Maoist Revolution 332
Alpa Shah
Part V Law, Governance, and Civil Society 353
19 Courts of Law and Legal Practice 355
Daniela Berti
20 Law and Order: Police Encounter Killings and Routinized Political Violence 371
Beatrice Jauregui
21 Civil Society and Politics: An Anthropological Perspective 389
John Harriss
22 Discourses of Citizenship and Criminality in Clean, Green Delhi 407
Yaffa Truelove and Emma Mawdsley
23 Toward an Anthropology of Water in Mumbai's Settlements 426
Nikhil Anand
Part VI From Global India to the Ethnography of Change 443
24 Transnational India: Diaspora and Migration in the Anthropology of South Asia 445
Leo Coleman
25 India Responds to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: Unintended Consequences of Global Health Initiatives 464
Cecilia Van Hollen
26 Cultures of the Psyche, Politics of Illness 482
Sarah Pinto
27 Ways of Aging 500
Sarah Lamb
28 The Decline of Dravidian Kinship in Local Perspectives 517
Isabelle Clark-Decès
Index 536