Includes bibliographical references and index.

Hiding behind the lens : fieldwork and friendship with Selva J. Raj / by Amanda Randhawa -- Being Catholic the Tamil way / by Selva J. Raj -- Vernacular Catholicism in context -- The story of Christianity in Tamil Nadu / by Michael Amaladoss, S.J -- Two models of indigenization in South Asian Catholicism : a critique / by Selva J. Raj -- The Ganges, the Jordan, and the mountain : the three strands of Santal popular Catholicism / by Selva J. Raj -- Health, healing, and fertility -- Shared vows, shared space, and shared deities : vow rituals among Tamil Catholics in South India / by Selva J. Raj -- Transgressing boundaries, transcending turner : the pilgrimage tradition at the Shrine of St. John de Britto / by Selva J. Raj -- An ethnographic encounter with the wondrous in a South Indian Catholic shrine by / Selva J. Raj -- Status and humor, competition, and communion -- Public display, communal devotion : procession at a South Indian Catholic festival / by Selva J. Raj -- Serious levity at the Shrine of St. Anne in South India / by Selva J. Raj -- Dialogue on the ground the complicated identities and the complex negotiations of Catholics and Hindus in South India / by Selva J. Raj -- Being Catholic the Tamil way : responses and reflections -- Comparative transgressions : vernacular Catholicisms in Tamil Nadu and Kerala / by Corinne G. Dempsey -- Vernacular Christianities : Tamil Catholics and Tamil Protestants / by Eliza F. Kent -- Extending Selva J. Raj's scholarship to Hindu American temples : accommodation, assimilation, and a dialogue of action / by Vasudha Narayanan -- Re-inventing classical Indian dance with or without indigenous spirituality in three contemporary secular continents / by Purushottama Bilimoria -- Afterword / by Wendy Doniger -- Postscript: the tie that binds / by Selva J. Raj.

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T the turn of the twenty-first century, Selva J. Raj (1952?2008) was one of the most important scholars of popular Indian Christianity and South Asian religion in North America. Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints gathers together, for the first time in a single volume, a series of his groundbreaking studies on the distinctively?vernacular? Catholic traditions of Tamil Nadu in southeast India. This collection, which focuses on four rural shrines, highlights ritual variety and ritual transgression in Tamil Catholic practice and offers clues to the ritual exchange, religious hybridity, and dialogue occurring at the grassroots level between Tamil Catholics and their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. Raj also advances a new and alternative paradigm for interreligious dialogue that radically differs from models advocated by theologians, clergy, and other religious elite. In addition, essays by other leading scholars of Indian Christianity and South Asian religions - Michael Amaladoss, Purushottama Bilimoria, Corinne G. Dempsey, Eliza F. Kent, and Vasudha Narayanan - are included that amplify and creatively extend Raj?s work.