Religion and Performing Arts in Contemporary India

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on Religion and Performing Arts in Contemporary India offers a relevant and significant contribution to the evolving scholarship on the interplay between diverse religious practices and artistic expressions in today’s South Asia. This link has long been a distinguishing characteristic, with so-called classical forms like Kathak, Odissi, and Bharatanatyam becoming essential components of temple worship and religious rites. By placing them within larger frameworks of cosmology, religion, and esthetic philosophy, seminal works like Ananda Coomaraswamy’s The Dance of Shiva and Kapila Vatsyayan’s The Square and the Circle of Indian Arts have highlighted the spiritual nature of these art forms. Much of this earlier scholarship has focused on “classical” traditions and their historical roles, often emphasizing their idealized spiritual dimensions while overlooking the socio-political transformations that have shaped these practices over time. Later interventions, such as Saskia Kersenboom’s Nityasumaṅgalī: Devadasi Tradition in South India and Davesh Soneji’s Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India, have brought critical attention to the ways colonial and postcolonial forces redefined the relationship between religion and performance. These and other works highlight how artistic traditions were recontextualized, often shifting from sacred to secular domains, and how issues of caste, gender, religion, and cultural nationalism intersected with these changes.

This issue also addresses underexplored aspects of religious performing arts, particularly in the domains of popular and “folk” practices. While “classical” forms have received considerable scholarly attention, the vibrant and diverse performances associated with local festivals, grassroots rituals, and devotional music in regional languages often remain peripheral in academic discourse. Susan Seizer’s Stigmas of the Tamil Stage offers a glimpse into the complexities of such practices, particularly in marginalized communities, but there is a clear need for further investigation into how these forms negotiate identity, faith, and social change in modern India. Katyal, for example, explores in Sacred to Profane: Writings on Worship and Performance the intricate connections between the world of the ‘spirit’ and the world of the audience, considering how a public act of worship simultaneously can be an act of socio-historical practice.

Thus, this Special Issue will add to the existing studies by providing rich and multifaceted examples of the ways in which contemporary performing arts in India continue to reflect, challenge, and engage with religious traditions, contributing to a broader understanding of religion as a dynamic and evolving socio-cultural force. It will explore how the historical interplay between religion and performing arts informs and transforms contemporary practices, how “sacred” performances are reinterpreted in secular spaces, and how contemporary artists navigate the tensions between authenticity, innovation, and commercialization in their portrayals of religious themes. In today’s India, traditional forms like Ramlila, Kathakali, and Yakshagana continue to serve as powerful mediums of religious expression, yet they must also contend with modernity, urbanization, and the influence of globalized esthetics. Works such as Diana Dimitrova’s Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia and Richard Schechner’s explorations of performance theory provide initial frameworks for understanding these shifts, but there remains a need for deeper engagement with the ways contemporary artists and practitioners navigate the tensions between tradition and innovation.

The influence of Indian religious thought and artistic traditions has long since extended beyond the subcontinent, particularly through the global dissemination of dance and theater, making it an important subject for cross- and transcultural studies like Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor by Priya Srinivasan. New technologies, mainly the World Wide Web with its social media platforms and YouTube, reshape the ways (religious) performances are created, consumed, and shared. The pandemic, in particular, has accelerated the migration of performances from physical to virtual spaces, raising questions about authenticity, accessibility, (sensual) experience, and the evolving meanings of “sacred” art.

By situating contemporary religious performances within their historical trajectories and engaging critically with the transformations brought about by modernity, globalization, and technology, this Special Issue will complement and expand the existing literature. It will open new avenues for research into the dynamic interplay of religion, performance, and society in contemporary India. Through this approach, the issue promises to enrich our understanding of how the sacred and the artistic continue to intersect in innovative and meaningful ways in a rapidly changing world.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, Prof. Dr. Heike Oberlin ([email protected]) and CC the Assistant Editor, Margaret Liu ([email protected]) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Tentative timeline:

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 28 February 2025
Deadline for Full Manuscript Submission: 1 August 2025

Prof. Dr. Heike Oberlin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• performing arts
• dance
• theater
• music
• India
• South Asia
• religion
• ritual
• sacred
• profane
• secular