Bhakti, Caste and Subalternity in India's Northeast

This book challenges Eurocentric foundations of the sociological category of “sect,” demonstrating why it is inadequate to understand Hindu sectarian formations. It argues that caste is central—not peripheral—to how sectarian orders within Hinduism emerge, persist, and transform. By foregrounding Assamese Vaishnavism—a Bhakti tradition that emerged in the 15th century and has now become emblematic of the region—the book places Assam, often marginalised in accounts of Indian religious traditions, at the centre of analysis. It offers a critical account of Bhakti by tracing its entanglements with local caste hierarchies and broader historical processes, thereby reframing Vaishnavism through the social and political specificities of postcolonial Assam. Moving beyond dominant framings of India’s Northeast that primarily emphasise tribes, ethnic conflict, migration, folk culture, and heritage, the book advances a sociological enquiry into institutionalised religion, the enduring vitality of caste, and the state’s role in mediating identity and belonging in the region through an ethnographic lens. It further contributes to the debates on subalternity by exploring how untouchability and exclusion within Assamese Vaishnava discourse shape diverse expressions of subaltern agency. Debunking the egalitarian thesis of Bhakti, religion appears here not only as a matter of faith or an epiphenomenon of culture but as a contested field persistently shaped by caste, the state, and discourses of power. The book also assesses subaltern religiosity as a mode of resistance within the Vaishnava context, foregrounding the various grammars of resistance enacted by the marginalised communities against hegemonic structures. This book speaks to scholars and students of sociology of religion, anthropology of Hinduism, Religious studies, Subaltern studies, Dalit studies, and South Asian studies.