%0 Book
%A Imankalyan Lahiri
%D 2026
%C Oxford, United Kingdom
%I Peter Lang Verlag
%@ 9781805841159
%T Bengal's Sacred and Social Tapestry
%B Tantrism and Socio-Political Insights from Ramprasad Sen to Bhaba Pagla
%R 10.3726/b23194
%U https://www.peterlang.com/document/1597230
%X This book explores Tantrism in Bengal as a lived cultural and social tradition rather than a marginal or esoteric religious practice. Situating Tantra within everyday devotion, poetry, ritual, and historical experience, it highlights its continuing relevance for understanding religion, society, and power in South Asia.  The book offers an interdisciplinary examination of how Tantric ideas, symbols, and practices shaped Bengal’s intellectual and social worlds across precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts. Drawing on historical sources, vernacular literature, mythology, and cultural analysis, it traces the movement of Tantra from ritual secrecy to public expression through songs, devotional practices, and embodied forms of spirituality. It brings together perspectives from religious studies, history, sociology, and political thought to examine how Tantric idioms informed social imagination, ethical reflection, and cultural creativity in Bengal. The book opens new ways of thinking about the relationship between spirituality, culture, and social experience, inviting readers to reconsider the place of Tantrism within the broader landscape of South Asian intellectual and cultural history.
%K Tantrism in Bengal, Śākta traditions, Kali worship, sacred feminine, Shakti philosophy, mysticism and society, religion and politics, mythology and history of South Asia, Bengal religious culture, embodied spirituality, ritual and devotion, vernacular religion, folk traditions, poets and saints of Bengal, Ramprasad Sen, Kamalaknata Bhattacharya, Lalon Shah, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Bamakhyapa, Bhaba Pagla, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Baul-Tantric traditions, body and spirituality, non-dual philosophy, colonial and postcolonial religion, cultural resistance, devotion and dissent, social reform and mysticism, caste and community, gender and spirituality, popular religion, intellectual history of Bengal, sacred songs and poetry, ritual performance, living traditions of Tantra, Hindu mysticism, intersections of religion, culture and politics, South and Southeast Asian religious history, alternative epistemologies, counter-traditions, experiential spirituality, everyday religiosity, sacred and social imagination, vernacular modernity, cultural memory, ethics and embodiment, spirituality and social critique, religious pluralism, civilizational thought, historical anthropology of religion, political philosophy and religion, society, symbolism, and power, ritual life and social meaning, mysticism as social practice
%G English