• ISBN13: 9781041006763
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Religion and Philosophy
• Publisher: T&F
• Publisher Imprint: Routledge
• Publication Date: November 12, 2025
• Pages: 476
• Original Price: INR 1995.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 670 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): N/A

This handbook explores the diversity of religious practice in tribal cultures in India. It looks at the interactive spaces where the religious practices of tribes and other communities have changed and adapted through the years in contemporary India. Tribe as a social category emerged in India during the colonial period; this handbook departs from the conventional approaches to studying ?tribal religion? and analyses the intersections of spirituality, rituals, gender and identities within tribal religion through a crosscultural and pan-Indian perspective. Tribes in India follow various religious denominations including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and traditional indigenous faiths. The chapters in this volume provide insights into the cross-cultural religiosity of tribes via ethnographic accounts and the study of animism, life cycle rituals, ancestor worship, shrines and religious institutions, revivalism, religious identities, religious conversion, transcendental religious spaces and the space for gender, identity and politics within religious traditions. It also discusses conflicts, contestations, anxieties within and the politics of religious traditions and identities in India and how tribal communities and the state negotiate with these issues.