Publisher's Synopsis
Perhaps no two images are more associated with rural India than the peasant who labors in an oppressive, inflexible social structure and the ascetic monk who denounces worldly concerns. Pinch argues that, contrary to these stereotypes, North India's monks and peasants have not been passive observers of history; they have often been engaged with questions of identity, status, and hierarchy-particularly during the British period. Pinch's work is especially concerned with the ways each group manipulated the rhetoric of religious devotion and caste to further its own agenda for social reform. Although their aims may have been quite different-Ramanandi monastics worked for social equity, while peasants agitated for higher social status-the strategies employed by these two communities shaped the popular political culture of Gangetic north India during and after the struggle for independence from the British.