University of Heidelberg

Dr. Mukesh Kumar

Dr. Mukesh Kumar Dr. Mukesh Kumar
Post-doctoral Researcher

Position

  • Humboldt post-doctoral Researcher

Contact Information

E-Mail: mukesh.kumar@sai.uni-heidelberg.de

Short Biography

Dr Kumar is a Humboldt post-doctoral fellow at the SAI. He has B.A., M.A., and M.Phil. degrees from Delhi University, and a PhD degree (2019) from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His research interests lie at the intersection of history and anthropology; he employs and combines methods of ethnographic fieldwork and archival work to examine the changing forms of religious culture, and the issue of Hindu-Muslim cultural encounter in north India from a longue durée perspective. Some of his works have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, and Economic and Political Weekly. One of his research articles was awarded the best PhD paper at the ANU Religion Conference, 2018.


Humboldt Project

Dr Kumar's Humboldt project analyses efforts for a new identity construction among a group called the Shuddhi Jogis (literally ‘purified Jogis’) in the Mewat region of north India. Historically, Jogis, a vernacular term for yogis, existed across religious divisions. There are various types of Jogis such as the Hindu Jogis, the Muslim Jogis, and a low caste Jogi community of snake charmers in north India and elsewhere. All of them historically drew religious inspirations from the Hindu ascetic god, Shiva, and his follower and the founder of the Jogi ascetic sect (also popularly known as the Nath sect), Guru Gorakhnath. In the middle of the twentieth century around the Partition and Independence of India, the ongoing efforts of a Hindu reform movement, the Arya Samaj, and its conversion campaign known as shuddhi (literally purification) led to the conversion, sometimes forceful, of some Muslim Jogis to Hinduism. The formation of the Shuddhi Jogi community in Mewat was, thus, the result of the religious conversion of Muslim Jogis. On the other hand, the Hindu Jogis refused to accept the newly converted Jogis as members of their Hindu Jogi caste community. The refusal, in turn, led to the creation of a new type of the Jogi community generally referred to as 'purified' (shuddhi) Jogis after their converted status. This project will pay particular attention to the efforts of Shuddhi Jogis for building strong ties with the established Hindu Jogi community and the Hindu identity within the framework of historical transformations in the Jogi community and the sect. How religious identities are invented, challenged, and sustained, and its relationship with history and religion is the primary concern of this project.

Publications

Curriculum Vitae (on Demand)

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Centre for
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Ethnology in Heidelberg
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Conferences, Publications and external lectures

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Recent Publications
Article

Moral Challenges at the Intersection of Religion, Politics, and COVID-19 in Pakistan.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Article

Second publication in the FID4SA of Universität Heidelberg:

Andaman Loves: Marriage Practies, Secularism, and Alternative Modernities in the Age of Globalization.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Can migrants be indigenous?
Affirmative action, space and belonging in the Andaman Islands.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Article

Bringing Subalterns into Speech?
Investigating Anarchic Resistance to Hegemonic Modernity

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Book Chapter

The Routledge Handbook of Refugees in India

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Book Chapter

Energies Beyond the State:
Anarchist Political Ecology and the Liberation of Nature

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Book

The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia

(Ed.) Prof. Dr. William Sax with Claudia Lang

Website

Book

Unani Medicine in the Making:
Practices and Respresentations in 21st-century

Dr. Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth

Website

Book Chapter

Patriots in Kala Pani:
Writing Subaltern Resistance into the National Memory

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Artikel

2018. Reviving “A forgotten Sunna:” Hijamah (cupping therapy), prophetic medicine, and the re-Islamization of Unani medicine in contemporary India

Dr. Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth

Zum Artikel

Kapitel

2018. "We are like the river water, always flowing" : some urban nomads of Delhi. In: Soziale Ästhetik, Atmosphäre, Medialität

Prof. Dr. William Sax

Zur UB Heidelberg