Description
India's embrace of global markets, a process that began in the early 1990's, ushered in seismic shifts in its economy as well as pervasive environmental pollution. Concomitant with these changes has been a rise in the popularity of Shani, the Hindu planetary deity traditionally associated with misfortune. The first book-length study of this important god, As We Love and Fear a Father: Shani, Devotional Religion, and Neoliberalism in Urban North India tells the story of a new understanding of Shani: no longer malevolent or inauspicious, he is now recognized as a friend, a father, and a god of justice. These beliefs, together with innovative rituals practiced in Delhi's expansive network of recently constructed Shani temples, exist alongside older beliefs and practices predicated on Shani's fearsome nature. The contemporary culture of Shani veneration thus offers a window into Indians' ongoing negotiations with neoliberalism, climate change, and degradation of the natural world. Drawing on epic, scriptural, astrological, folk, and devotional texts, ethnographic observation, and film and television dramas, this book explores the ways in which these negotiations are both existential and political: that is, individual acts of self-fashioning and survival that are reshaping understandings of class, caste, work, fate, and morality.