Book description
In 2018 India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated the world's tallest statue: a 597-foot figure of nationalist leader Sardar Patel. Twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, it is but one of many massive statues built following India's economic reforms of the 1990s. In Gods in the Time of…
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Why read it?
1 author picked Gods in the Time of Democracy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
In contrast to stories of statue toppling that we encounter in the West in recent years, India has witnessed a frenzy of statue building of political and religious figures over several decades.
This book is the most theoretically sophisticated account of this phenomenon. It situates statue-building in India in its historical and political context, developing an account of "iconopraxis" – the use of icons to assert and consolidate community identity and presence in the public sphere.
I love Jain’s attention to the material lives of statues, which she elucidates through ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with sculptors, patrons, and visitors. The…
From Rahul's list on the politics of controversial statues.
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