Convictions religieuses et engagement en Asie du Sud depuis 1850

This collection of essays examines the careers of seven South Asian figures of the last hundred and sixty years who justified their public actions in the name of their religious convictions. Five of them were marked by the great social transformations of the colonial period: BhudevMukherji (1827-1894), ZakaUllah (1832-1910), Swami Shraddhananda (1857-1926), Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) and AbulAlaMaududi (1903-1979). After Indian independence, the notion of religion as the driving force of engagement in public life led in new directions, as can be seen from the paths taken by the Hindu founder of the AnandaMarga sect, ShriShriAnandamurti (1921-1990), and by the former Jain monk ShriChitrabhanu (born 1922). Collected together these studies give symmetrical presentations of different modes of religious commitment which, since some fall within Hinduism and others within Islam or Jainism, are rarely examined side by side in a single volume. In order to understand the ways of thinking and attitudes of the personalities involved, these essays all accord considerable space to biography.