Schedule panel 8.
DAY 1: 20 September (Tuesday)
Slot 1 Time: 14.30 – 16.30
Venue: Sångsalen
Chair: Henrik Chetan Aspengren
Public Spheres and Private Lives
30 min./paper including discussion.
Mohammad Tareq Hasan, University of Bergen:
“Becoming Garment Workers: Social Reproduction in Neoliberal Labour Regime of Bangladesh”
Arunima Ghoshal, Delhi School of Economics:
“The Anomaly of Boi Para, College Street”
BREAK 10 min
Sreetama Bhattacharya, IIT Bombay:
“Ethnic wear in Contemporary India: A Case Study of Fabindia”
DAY 2: 21 September (Wednesday)
Slot 2 Time: 10.00-12.00
Venue: Sångsalen
Chair: Henrik Chetan Aspengren, J.R. Jishnu
Layered Identities: Gender, Ethnicity and Religion
30 min./paper including discussion.
Anisur Rahman, Jamia Millia Isalmia:
“Issues of Identity and Integration of South Asian Immigrants in Europe”
Ankita Banerjee, Kings College:
“The Politics of Gendered Identities: Analysing Rabindranath Tagore’s Bimala”
BREAK 10 min
Debadrita Chakraborty, Cardiff University:
"Beyond Religion: Indigenous Modernity in Colonial India" (Changed title)
Slot 3 Time: 15.30–17.30
Venue: Sångsalen
Chair: J.R. Jishnu
Part I. Comparative and Transitional Modernities
20 min./paper. Joint discussion.
Henrik Chetan Aspengren, Linnaeus University:
”Thinking Through Modernity: The Anticipatory Commentary of BS Jambhekar”
Shahnawaz Ali Raihan, University of Oxford:
"From Loyalism To Anti-Colonial Islamic Current: Muslim Modernity in Nineteenth Century Bengal" (Changed title from: “Regionalization and Secular Modernity”)
BREAK 10 min
Part II. Borders and Conflicts
20 min./paper. Joint discussion.
Rishav Kumar Thakur, Graduate Institute:
“Reconstituting Everyday Life and Imagining a Common Future, Assam”
Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, University of Peshawar:
“Counter Insurgency in Afghanistan: A Modern Pak-Afghan Border Perspective”
BREAK 10 min
Bipasa Rosy Lakra, Jawaharlal Nehru University:
“Modern Rebellions of the Primitive: Examining Tribal Narratives of Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal, 1967-72”
DAY 3: 22 September (Thursday)
Slot 4 Time: 9-11
Venue: Sångsalen
Chair: Henrik Chetan Aspengren
Narrated Modernity: Media and Literature
30 min./paper including discussion.
Prakruti Ramesh, Aarhus University:
“The Image of Goa in Media”
Sarunas Paunksnis, Kaunas University:
“Cinema and Neoliberal India”
BREAK 10 min
J.R. Jishnu, Kerala University/Lund University:
“Media Modernity and its Influence on Religiously Divergent Nations”
Abstracts
– Mohammad Tareq Hasan, University of Bergen:
“Becoming Garment Workers: Social Reproduction in Neoliberal Labour Regime of Bangladesh”
The garment industry in Bangladesh has created massive employment and more than 3.2 million people are employed in about 5000 garment factories (national and multinational). Since mid-1980s, Bangladesh has been trying to develop ‘a good business climate’ to foster step towards modernity. Therefore, government policies informed by notions of ‘neoliberalism’, ‘globalization’, ‘modernity’ (shaped by World Bank and IMF) has been influential for the significant growth of export-oriented garment industries during the past decades. The success and rapid growth of the Ready-made Garment (RMG) sector is exemplified from the fact that apparel was 4 percent of the total merchandise exported in 1983-84 whereas it was almost 80 percent in 2013-14. The growth of the (export oriented) garment industry in Bangladesh has been extensive and has led to a shift in labor regime in the country (from subsistence to wages). Therefore, in this paper, based on ethnographic data, I explore the role of garment industries to the development of wage labor and reveal the social reproduction process of the garment workers. I also highlight the socio-economic effects that ‘modern industry work’ has had on the workers. Besides, I have investigated the process that sustains the cheap labor flow in the industries and hence, system of capitalist accumulation persists. Thus, on the basis of ethnographic information, I hold that the process of accumulation, working class formation and proletarianization have created an ‘inside-outside’ dialectic in the existing form of neoliberal capitalism in Bangladesh. Further, I argue that the process of ‘becoming garment workers’ in the neoliberal labor regime of Bangladesh entails a mix of coercions and appropriations of pre-capitalist skills, social relations, kinship structures, familial and household arrangements, consumption practices, gender roles and authority relations.
– Arunima Ghoshal, Delhi School of Economics:
“The Anomaly of Boi Para, College Street”
The aura of Boi Para (neighborhood of books) situated in the heart of Kolkata (West Bengali, India) goes back a century to the colonial times. Home to eminent public institutions such as Presidency University, Calcutta University, Medical College and the largest second hand book market in the world, it is the legendary space from where ‘modernity’ and the Bengal Renaissance emanated to the rest India, consequently earning it a Heritage tag in recent times. The intervention of time has resulted in a curious blend of the old and the new in Boi Para, leading to an incongruous relationship between traditional spaces and urban modernity. This paper delves into the struggle of the space in negotiating with its mighty modern past, a transitional present and a hopeful future. An ethnographic methodology that includes participant observation, interviews, narrative analysis, and archival data tries to situate the ideas of alternative modernity (Ashcroft, 2009) in South Asian spaces. Studying the numerous everyday subcultures that have created the public sphere of Boi para, the paper argues the unnecessary antipodal bond between traditional and modern urban public spaces in India. The argument unsettles the dominant theoretical notions of binary relationships between modernity and tradition and their roles in affecting the transformation of South Asian spaces.
– Sreetama Bhattacharya, IIT Bombay:
“Ethnic wear in Contemporary India: A Case Study of Fabindia”
The ethnic wear industry in India has registered a huge boom in the past decade or so, fuelled decisively by the demand from women’s section in particular. ‘Ethnic wear’, however, has become a standardising name for apparels as varied as sarees, kurtis, lehengas, salwar kameez, etc and handwork techniques as diverse as Batik, Rajasthani prints, Kashmiri or Kutch stitches and mirror work. Even as Western wear keeps making inroads into the Indian fashion arena, lots of fashion retail stores and designers are going for contemporary and modified takes on traditional Indian outfits to make them desirable to the modern Indian women. Fabindia is one of India’s largest private platforms for traditional clothing that goes by the tagline ‘celebrate India’. In studying the case specific growth of this company, I want to look into the two constituting parts of the present market trends – the rise in the popularity of women’s wear and ethnic wear. The rise of Fabindia in particular and women’s ethnic wear in general, as I will suggest in my paper through a study of Fabindia’s advertising strategies, product range, and pricing system, are related to different aspects of Indian social changes. Firstly, it showcases an important role of women in generating demand for one particular category of clothing. Secondly, it typifies the adherence of Indian elite to a conscious style form which feeds into the notions of ‘ethnicity’ and a particular form of ‘modernity’, shaped by the popular idea of ‘nationalism’. Thirdly, it also serves as an example of the shifting yet enduring appeal of the ethnic wear, adapting itself to the growing needs of the time, both in contemporary India and for the non resident Indians.
– Chona Echavez, and Leah Wildreda Pilongo, AREU:
“Traditional Masculinities amidst Modernization Era: The Afghanistan case”
The concept of “masculinities” refers to how people perceive the characteristics associated with being male. The developmental theory explains the sex-role value transformation that transpired in the post-industrial societies upon which lifestyles of men and women alike and cultural attitudes have been modified as an after-effect of modernization of societies. Such theory is anchored on the assumption that the traditional societies sharply differentiate gender roles. Need to look closely on the incongruence on how supposedly a modern man has moved beyond defining himself by the traditional connotations of masculinity that is attached to being a provider, to concepts of equality, power, leadership and domestic violence. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to assess four different regions that manifested degrees of both conservatism and openness regarding gender issues and were satisfactorily secure, namely, Nangarhar, Takhar, Bamyan, and Kabul (rural/urban). The quantitative data generated through survey questionnaires administered to both young and mature male and female respondents and subsequently analysed with appropriate statistical techniques and coding applied to classify thematic issues and create matrices in the qualitative analysis phase. The qualitative data were obtained from in-depth interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Mature and young study participants, both male and female, showed similar views of masculinity vis-à-vis normative principles. The quantitative results revealed that men are considered “NanAvar,” or the ultimate breadwinner. An extensive explanation emerged in the qualitative outcomes delineating the perspective of men as “Nafaqah provider,” which means domestic figureheads whose responsibilities encompass the overall well-being of the family members. Findings also showed that the majority of the respondents agree on the various masculine normative principles as they pertain to equality, control, and power. When it comes to leadership quality and level of education, a belief in men as superior to women within and outside the home is comprehensively apparent. There is no significant variation between young and mature respondents. Significant variation is evident in the data that show that mature respondents are more inclined to agree that “power goes hand in hand with being a man”. The qualitative part validated the findings where the majority of the respondents agreed that gender-based violence, although not right, is justifiable when women resist men’s decisions. Most of the male religious key informants believed that Islamic rules permit beating a wife in case she is a “Nashiza.” The qualitative analysis also showed that religion has a distinct role in the sexual division of labour, and contradictions were found between culture and Islam. Afghan men seem to have difficulty on how to course these uncharted waters. Without a concrete strategy to move beyond static generalisations and work both with and from personal experience, men will continue to be marginalised vis-à-vis discussions of gender and remain “the problem”, and men will continue to dominate women’s lives which impede development and modernization.
– Anisur Rahman, Jamia Millia Isalmia:
“Issues of Identity and Integration of South Asian Immigrants in Europe”
Integration of immigrant population has emerged as one of the problematic areas of concern in most of the countries of the Western Europe. This happens for a variety of reasons but mainly due to varying cultural practices of the immigrants from the mainstream societies. The immigrants have their own distinctive markers of identity and cultural practices that mark them off from the mainstream societies. The gaps that exist on account of cultural variations most often act negatively towards the goal of integration in the countries of their destination. The tension that exists today in most of the Western democracies invites attention of scholars and policy makers alike. The problem remains as to how to integrate the immigrant population in the mainstream societies. This requires in-depth understating of the problem which has to be two way processes- the understanding of the specific problem of the immigrant population in getting integrated in the mainstream society on the one hand and the problems and dilemma faced by the state and society in integrating the population of immigrants on the other hand. In the emerging context of immigration and integration of the immigrant, France is an important case which needs to be discussed. The case of South Asian immigrants invite special attention as their problems may not be identical to immigrants coming from other parts of the world. There are more than 100000 South Asian immigrants in France, but what are the real challenges before the state in order to integrate them? What kind of problems they face in terms of maintaining their identity in the host society including a number of other host issues would be discussed in this paper.
– Ankita Banerjee, Kings College:
“The Politics of Gendered Identities: Analysing Rabindranath Tagore’s Bimala”
The process of identity construction is infused with and mediated by the political predicaments and agendas of socio-cultural transformations. Keeping this inn view the paper focuses on the question as to how fiction emerges as an instrument for explaining politics, facilitating the revelation of the complex struggles that characterize the latter and the way it emerges as an integral part in the process of identity formation. Tagore’s novels and plays provide examples of the complicated and individualized nature of politics and it is a viewing of political events through the eyes of the fictional characters, that Tagore’s personal preferences, ideologies and experiences are revealed. It is through these characters that we learn what political choices are available for advancing the idea of freedom. For the purpose of this paper I analyse the novel The Home and the World (1916), written in the aftermath of the partition of Bengal, an immensely significant political moment in the history of colonial India, raising the core of issues of reckoning with colonial domination and structures of societal power for realizing one’s freedom. Although the paper deals with a piece of work far removed from our times, it argues that the text contains resources that help us in dealing with present day predicaments. The process in which identities are constructed and the way they play out in everyday lives are embedded in the sociopolitical and cultural contingencies. The times have changed and situations altered but the challenges that women face in a highly interconnected, globalised world characterized by unprecedented forms of dominance and violence can be seen as replicating the earlier ones.
– Debadrita Chakraborty, Cardiff University:
"Beyond Religion: Indigenous Modernity in Colonial India" (Changed title)
The twentieth century saw the creation of many nations as the Colonial Empires fragmented. In India regional territories coalesced into a nation state and people had to construct new ways to construct their identities to emerge as a syncretic or secular whole. While post-independence, India has been essentially known as a democratic, secular nation, very less is known about the secular discourse initiated and practised in both pre-colonial and colonial India by two major religious communities in India – the Hindus and the Muslims. It is this secular nationalism that was promoted by the Congress as opposed to the Hindu nationalism endorsed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India.
On the other hand, it also becomes imperative to note that since much had been lost in translation and Orientalism has always been a western discourse, the concept of religious syncreticism that initiated discourses of nationalism and instilled young Hindu and Muslim minds with nationalist fervour was seldom mentioned in western texts and find little mention in postcolonial cultural and historical discourses. In this paper, I wish to analyse and represent the Hindu-Muslim syncretism that existed in the pre-colonial and colonial era by studying lesser know short stories by the likes of Saadat Hasan Manto, Amrita Pritam and R.K Narayan. In this context, I will be employing the theoretical frameworks by Spivak and Bhabha to bridge a gap in history and manifest the formation of nationalistic sentiments through religious and cultural secularism. Through the medium of literature I am to show the myriad ways in which modernity had already been ushered in India through the liberal, secular practices by religious communities in colonial India.
– Henrik Chetan Aspengren, Linnaeus University:
”Thinking Through Modernity: The Anticipatory Commentary of BS Jambhekar”
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Indian intellectuals began to reflect on the varied transformations we now call European modernity. This paper approaches the writings of one of those intellectuals, Bal Shastree Jambhekar, and his thoughts on the advancement of practical knowledge, reformed political institutions, the secularisation of political authority and the creation of informed publics. Jambhekar’s commentary lent its themes from emerging socio-political debates in modern Europe, but is intriguingly premature when applied to his own region in India. Because, while it has been well documented that modern social thought formed in Europe in order to understand the profound transformations that continent underwent from early modern times onwards, similar changes to Jambhekar’s Bombay had yet to materialise at the time of his writing. There was no actual experience in which his views could be anchored. How, then, are we to think theoretically about Jambhekar’s anticipatory commentary? I propose that we discuss the formation of modern social thought as one out of several processes emerging from within modernity itself, rather than as a distanced mode of observation of modernity’s inherent categories. After having identified modern thought in this way, the paper discusses variations in sequence in the unfolding of modernity outside of Europe as a way to explore how modern thought was introduced in India before modernity was actually lived. Finally, the paper raises questions concerning the implications of this disconnect between the concepts of modern thought and actually lived experience.
– Shahnawaz Ali Raihan, University of Oxford:
"From Loyalism To Anti-Colonial Islamic Current: Muslim Modernity in Nineteenth Century Bengal" (changed title)
In comparison with the Hindu population, the emergence of modernism amongst the Muslims was a late phenomenon in colonial Bengal. After the failure of the Sepoy mutiny of 1857, a section of rich, upper-class Muslims in parts of northern India gradually developed good relations towards the British rulers. Initially, there had been multiple agitations and movements (Wahabi, Faraizi etc.) carried out by the Muslim peasants against the British rulers. Muslims endeavored to safeguard their own language, culture, religion, literature and education from Western influence. However, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the traditional views of the Muslims started to fade. Amongst the elite Muslim intelligentsia of Bengal, there was a marked attempt to revise the Muslim perception of “progress’’ as well as their relation with British rulers. By positioning themselves as “loyalist”, figures like Sir Abdul Lateef or Sir Syed Amir Ali of Calcutta school of Muslim modernity hoped to construct an allegiance with the British rulers which would gain the Muslim community favorable treatment in the form of economic investment and education programs. But soon criticisms of the same rulers followed—as a result of a shift in the global situation and sudden impact of Jamaluddin al-Afghani on Bengali Muslims. This paper investigates the process of individual initiatives in Calcutta which led the transition to western modernity, at the same time how this elite Muslim attempts to appropriate European idea transformed the loyalist position into anti-colonial Islamic current.
– Rishav Kumar Thakur, Graduate Institute:
“Reconstituting Everyday Life and Imagining a Common Future, Assam”
Assam, a state in India, has been argued to be a part of a region where forms of sociality composed of adaptation, negotiations and fluidity has seen an un-making starting with British colonial interventions and continuing in the post-Independence period marked by politics of “ethno-territoriality”. The present, then, is seen a “multichrome mosaic of monochrome” ethnic blocs engaging with each other often through violence. The present paper is based on ethnographic research in Kokrajhar district, Bodoland (Assam), which has seen violence perpetrated along ethnic lines as recently as June-July 2012 and December 2014. Interviews with affected persons self-identified as Adivasi, Bodo and Bengali Muslim, reveal that these spells are thought of as times in which ethnicity becomes the overwhelming interpretive-frame through which experiences are understood. Interviewees distance these spells as the Other of everyday life. By talking in these terms, the paper argues, they are actively eroding the crystallizations bestowing onerous importance on ethnicities which is constitutive of the violent spells. Furthermore, even though neighbours of other ethnicities are recognised as complicit in mob violence during these spells, they are recognised as compelled to act due to a number of identified dynamics at work. The final burden is placed on village-outsiders identified as inciters, militants, conspirators and agents of Politics.5 The paper argues these are means of reconstituting everyday solidarities and a future free from violent spells on the face boundary-making apparatuses of the modern state and political play along ethnic lines. Thus, rather than charting processes of un-making, the paper identifies the work involved in making of everyday solidarities in Assam.
– Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, University of Peshawar:
“Counter Insurgency in Afghanistan: A Modern Pak-Afghan Border Perspective”
Counterinsurgency narratives are gaining momentum, as Afghanistan suffers a protracted conflict. The use of extensive military force to eliminate the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda supporters has not yielded positive military results. Over and above, ISIS is making its in-roads in the already complex situation on the Pak-Afghan border areas. The Taliban insurgency has shown greater resilience over the years, deepening its roots amongst the Afghan populace. The steep rise in the cost of the war has pressed upon the international coalition forces to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy to reduce its losses and achieve a face saving withdrawal from the country. Given the complexity of the conflict, with many actors (including Pakistan which already faces Pakistani Taliban’s terrorist acts vis-à-vis education institutions) involved pursuing varying agendas, the likelihood of reconciliation and negotiation with the Taliban insurgents is being questioned. Skepticism prevails amongst many Afghans about the possibility of incorporating Taliban in a power sharing formula. Will this strategy succeed or falter in the coming years?
– Bipasa Rosy Lakra, University of Delhi:
“Modern Rebellions of the Primitive: Examining Tribal Narratives of Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal, 1967-72”
Naxalbari gets its recognition in history and restores the revolutionary essence of Marxism on the Indian soil which had been distorted, corrupted and destroyed by the revisionist semantics of the CPI(Communist Party of India) and the then nascent CPI (M)-(Communist Party of India-Marxist). Naxalbari, ideologically and practically, provided such a base for revolutionary armed struggle. The mass base of the Naxalbari movement comprised of tribal settlers from the Central Indian tribal belt namely- Oraon, Munda and Santhal tribes. The study reflects their aspirations for the deliverance of active resistance from the exploitation of the zamindars and jotedars in the earlier phase of history, directing towards the Naxalbari movement, which serves as the landmark for the study. It takes into account and draws major similarities with the norms and consciousness evolved by the tribals during the Tebhaga movement1946-1947, and those prior to that such as the Kol Insurrection of 1833 and the rebellion led by Birsa Munda against the British in 1889-1901.
The period 1967, has been taken as a landmark for the study, as the interplay of the volatile situation created by the Naxalbari movement, and the role played by tribal peasants or the adhiars, in the wake of growing discernments against the jotedars post Tebhaga movement in North Bengal. It was after a gap of two decades of the Tebhaga movement, that the tribals irrespective of being peasants or tea plantation labor came forward to co-join the Naxalbari movement. Their egalitarian social organization was very conducive to mass mobilization. Moreover Edward Duyker’s anthropological study ‘Tribal Guerillas: The tribals of West Bengal and the Naxalite movement’, gives a sense of how the Naxalite vanguard created an interface with the tribal group (the Santals, Oraon, Munda) that, according to contemporary reports constituted the main base of the non-urban side of the Naxalbari movement.
Therefore it seeks to fill up the vacuum of scholarship by analyzing existing corpus of popular literature and breaks the silence of the adivasi/tribal narratives and memory on the Naxalbari movement. The study aims to analyze the historiography of tribal resistance from a subaltern perspective and ushering renewed ideas in the academic field. The normative and theoretical gap in the subject is analyzed on the basis of existing literature, both primary and secondary.
– Prakruti Ramesh, Aarhus University:
“The Image of Goa in Media”
Goa, a state in southwest India known for its tourism, is popularly imagined as an enclave of hedonism and licentiousness in what is seen as a relatively conservative, Hindu-majoritarian national context. I argue that one way in which this image of Goa is perpetuated is through the prominent public display and commemoration of cartoonist Mario Miranda’s work. The public circulation of this particular media form – not just by way of public display but also through the sale and purchase of Mario Miranda memorabilia – has contributed, in the minds of tourists and the local middle- and upper-classes alike, to a sense that Goa is different (if not ‘deviant’) from the rest of India. This paper will offer a reading of some of his visualisations, examining them for the Goa they depict, and the Goa they elide. I contend that Mario Miranda’s cartoons convene an image of a “bygone Goa” – an idyllic, pastoral, Portuguese Goa – that is congruent with a reputation that the Goa State Tourism Department is keen on investing in. However, there is a growing and perceptible distance between the Goa represented in Mario’s cartoons and the Goa that increasingly ‘confronts one’s senses’: a Goa transformed by processes of unplanned urbanisation, mass tourism and mining. What does the state endorsement of these pastoral images signify about its acts of public memory-making? What does it signify about the future and past that it imagines for itself?
– Sarunas Paunksnis, Kaunas University:
“Cinema and Neoliberal India”
This paper explores the reasons behind the emergence of a new film form over the past decade – variously referred to as ‘New Bollywood’, or alternative Hindi cinema. The paper argues that the rise of these new aesthetic forms is one of the results of the neoliberal transformations that have been taking place in India over recent decades and, more importantly, that this new film form is an integral part of the construction of the new urban middle class imaginary by positioning it-Self vis-à-vis the Other – the lower class, either urban or rural who are not (yet) admitted into neoliberal India’s life-worlds. By examining some examples of recent films set both in small-town India as well as the urban periphery, or, in Other India in terms of target audience background, the paper argues that the new film form is a complex map of transforming social and cultural landscape in urban India, that it tries to negotiate the changing social relationships, and most importantly – they are a barometer of the new emergent Self in urban India, which desires the Other. The desire for the Other, expressed as cinematic journeys outside the new middle class’s spaces, help in the construction of a new Self in a rapidly transforming and highly mediated environment. The paper attempts to constructs theoretical framework in order to understanding alternative Hindi cinema, its appeal to urban consumers, and its relationship to the spaces represented in the films.
– J.R. Jishnu, Kerala University/Lund University:
“Media Modernity and its Influence on Religiously Divergent Nations”
Outcomes of the past, contradiction between the present and the past, the call of necessity, contingency of events are the underlying reasons that bring about a change. ‘Change’ as seen as a conceptual incarnation is modernity. Media through various walks in the past has brought itself to a greater change through technological advancements. A pinch of technology alongside man’s unconditional affection to communicate has modernized the traditional media to a whole new avatar; the Social Media.
Social media is an ever-growing and evolving collection of online tools and toys, platforms and applications that enable all of us to interact with each other and share information. Increasingly, social media is both the connective tissue and neural net of the web. Social media is digital, content-based communications based on the interactions enabled by a plethora of web technologies. Social media is a collection of online platforms and tools that people use to share content, profiles, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself, facilitating conversations and interactions online between groups of people.
The different types of social media includes the Collaborative Projects (for social bookmarking, forums, review sites and tagging services), Blogs (for delivering and sharing of information as interactive textual or audio-visual medium ), Social Networking Sites, Content Communities (for uploading and sharing various kinds of media), and Virtual worlds.
Religiously divergent nations refers to a culture community, where the people belong to or believes in different religions. These believers, with the support of the social media websites has taken the concept of religion to a whole new level. A new level backed by either fruitful passion or by threatening obsession. The use of social media by these culture communities had posed positive and negative outcomes.
How social media is used by culture communities with respect to religion?
The use of interactive blogs: the online interactive Secular and religious counselling services
Religion-centric Social networking pages
Religious content sharing content communities
Online believers blogs
The present study analyses how the aforementioned usage of social media affects the religious and secular behavior of a community. The study analyses the dynamic interplay of religion and technology in social media websites and create an awareness with respect to the challenges it poses to the religious individuals and institutions. The research paper explains how religious individuals can employ social media websites in a way that nurture religious communities, and also abuse of social media websites leading to the obliteration of religious communities.