Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan <p><em>Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies</em> is an academic journal that focuses on Indian studies broadly including the Indian / South Asian diaspora. The journal is an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural one that encourages scholarship that offers readers the opportunity to grasp India, its society, culture, religion, philosophy, politics, economics and geography among other aspects.</p> Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing en-US Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 1016-5320 <p>Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:</p> <ol> <li class="show">Authors retain copyright and confer to the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a <a title="Creative Commons Attribution License" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Creative Commons Attribution License </a>that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in Nidān.<br /> </li> <li class="show">Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. publish it on an institutional repository or as an essay in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Nidān.</li> </ol> Front Matter https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27527 Deepra Dandekar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27527 Editor's Preface https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27529 Deepra Dandekar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 1 3 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27529 Introduction https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27530 <p>Leah Elizabeth Comeau</p> Leah Elizabeth Comeau Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 3 5 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27530 Afterword https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27532 Harini Kumar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 6 14 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27532 Obituary https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27533 Pratap Kumar Penumala Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 15 16 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27533 A Material Religion Approach to the Dargah of Sadal Baba in Pune https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27534 <p>This article takes a material religion approach to the dargah of the Sufi Shah Daval or Sadal Baba, located on the Mula-Mutha river at Yerawada in Pune. In this article I explore how Sadal Baba and his dargah are produced through material elements encountered at the shrine that reconstitute the experience of the dargah, its miracles, hagiography, rituals, and legends. I argue that religious power at Sadal Baba dargah are exerted through its material restructuring, with the historical development of the dargah’s sacredness comprising an embroiled process of negotiation that produces it as a pristine and independent cosmos. This negotiated process of becoming, I argue, distinguishes Yerawada as a separate important place that is simultaneously linked to Pune, and Pune’s history of Sufism.</p> Deepra Dandekar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 17 34 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27534 The Puzzle of Basil Brides and Canine Grooms https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27535 <p>This paper begins by looking at the tradition of tulsi vivaha (the wedding for a Basil plant), to ask what happens in rituals where basil plants are cast as brides. The analysis then widens out to compare tulsi vivaha to other types of Hindu folk weddings in which the bride or groom is non-human: a canine or a tree or a fruit or a frog. In each of these cases, the human participants are deploying the ritual idiom of human weddings for what must be entirely different purposes. I argue that the theoretical categories of assemblage and materiality have the capacity to open up new avenues for analysing these kinds of rituals, to better capture the deep and complex humanness of the people who stage them and to invite into the picture the non-human beings being married.</p> Anne T. Mocko Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 35 48 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27535 With and Within Mind https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27536 <p>How does materiality matter and function in the absence of its physical existence? This question guides my textual study of structured devotional visualisation, called manasi (with and within the mind). In Hindu bhakti (devotion), manasi is a highly creative yet structured process of imagining and visualising—of creating with thoughts and beholding in mind—interactions with objects, humans, and deities. It involves engaging with materiality within for effects experienced cognitively and viscerally as wholly real, often to access a metaphysical reality within the mind and therein experience singular cognitive engagement with the divine. Drawing on Hindu discourses on manasi, I argue that materials pulsate with meanings even in their non-material existence, as in the form of a thought, because of the complex devotional-discursive contexts within which devotees, materials, and material engagements are embedded. I propose a conception of matter that emphasises the interplay of materiality and non-materiality of humans and objects as both become inter-relationally meaningful through thoughts structured by theological-practical knowledge. Simultaneously, I propose to consider a network of affects, a bhakti assemblage, to identify the contexts that shape devotional desires for cognitive engagements with matter.</p> Iva Patel Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 49 64 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27536 Material Religion and the Edges of Assemblage at a South Indian Beach Festival https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27537 <p>In this article, I approach the study of South Asian religions, and the Masi Magam festival in particular, in a way that attributes agency and vitality not only to humans but also to material objects and environments. I apply the concept "assemblages," as deployed by political theorist and philosopher Jane Bennett and scholars of contemporary South Asian religions and cultures Jasbir Puar (2007), Joyce Flueckiger (2020), and Kajri Jain (2021) to shift away from human-centred theories of action, and to elevate the responsive, spontaneous flow of assemblages that occur in a religious festival. According to Bennett, such assemblages are ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts that can confound from within…assemblages are open-ended collectives with uneven topographies of power and certainly without a central governing head (2010: 20-25). The literal and conceptual assemblage considered in this article is the series of decorated procession deities at the Masi Magam Festival in Pondicherry, South India, and includes ornamental garments and flowers, which constitute in themselves assemblages of organic, plastic, and fabric materials, domestic animals, water- and fire-based rituals, a street market, and more. I propose and demonstrate that these material assemblages are not only the context for but also contributing agents in the formation of religious aesthetics and experiences.</p> Leah Elizabeth Comeau Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 65 81 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27537 Anarchy or Chaos https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27538 Gautam Pemmaraju Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 82 84 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27538 Nodes of Translation https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27539 Heinz Werner Wessler Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 85 88 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27539 Making the ‘Woman’ https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27540 Sabina Kazmi Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 89 93 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27540 Stories of the Indian Immigrant Communities in Germany https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27541 Deepra Dandekar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 94 97 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27541 Social City https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27542 Mithilesh Kumar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 98 99 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27542 Delhi and Its Environs Before 1857 https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/nidan/article/view/27543 Amol Saghar Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 2025-01-21 2025-01-21 9 2 100 103 10.58125/nidan.2024.2.27543