Smriti Sriniva
Biographic Data
| ID | 162046 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Smriti Sriniva |
| GIVEN NAMES | Smriti |
| FAMILY NAME | Sriniva |
| SIGNATURE | SRINIVA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1420-1925 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba's Presence
Fan
Politics in the Age of YouTube: Degraded Images and Small-Screen Revolutions
Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds
Ordinary Cities and Milieus of Innovation
This introduces a roundtable on the articulations of religious practices and imaginaries with the creation and remaking of urban landscapes in Bangalore (India), Vinh City (Vietnam), and Houston and New Orleans (United States). While recognizing that urban expressions of religion are articulated with political and economic forces, this collection shifts the focus to the spatial, material, and sensory media with which the religious and the spiritu…
Highways for Healing: Contemporaneous ‘Temples’ and Religious Movements in an Indian City
Grounded spatially in Bangalore city, India, I analyze “the sacrality of urban sprawl,” that is, how cities and their expanding boundaries are important arenas for the recruitment of devotees, the construction of habitats to house the religious, new spiritual maps, and ideas of selfhood. The strata who inhabit these spaces are largely the old and new middle class. I argue that in addition to consumption patterns and lifestyles, new norms of relig…
Rajnikant in Japan: Indian “superstardom” and low value markets
This paper draws attention to some questions thrown up by the increased circulation of mass-produced cultural commodities sourced from Asia in the relatively new markets of the region. Juxtaposing the short-lived success of the Indian star Rajnikant in Japan in the late 1990s and the unsuccessful attempt to promote Korean films in the Indian theatrical circuits a decade later, the paper argues that in spite of their considerable differences both …
An introduction
An introduction." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 14(4), pp. 577–578 Additional informationS.V. Srinivas is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research interests include cultural and creative industries and comparative studies in popular culture. He has published papers on Indian and Hong Kong cinemas and is th…
In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement
The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has "roots" in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religiou…
Cardboard monuments: City, language and ‘nation’ in contemporary Telugu cinema
This paper looks at how the city of Hyderabad, the capital of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and production centre of the Telugu film industry, has been represented in recent popular cinema. It outlines the history of a new mode of representing the city in Telugu cinema and argues that its significance lies in the tendency to delocalize the city. Criminalization of the city's older inhabitants, who are marked by either religion (Islam) …
Chapter Three. The Sense Of The Presence
This chapter explores the sensory and interactive modes for approaching the presence of Sathya Sai Baba in the devotional world centered on him. Devotees long to touch his feet, receive his words or a mantra such as the Gayatri, or ash from his hands. Seeing him at darshan time is like receiving an electric charge. This sensorium or perceptual apparatus for approaching the guru or the divine is cultural, historical, social and political in nature…
Chapter Two. The Arrival Of The Avatar
This chapter traces important aspects of the public persona of Sathya Sai Baba based on secondary accounts and biographies. It examines his early life and the declaration of his identity with Shirdi Sai Baba that constructed a discrete mnemonic pathway for the recollection of the saint by his old devotees and attracted new audiences in South Asia and overseas. The chapter also alludes to several institutions created by him that gave an organizati…
Spaces of Modernity: Religion and the Urban in Asia and Africa
This article introduces a symposium on religion and the formation of modern urban space in Asia and Africa. Both the spread of new religious movements and the articulations between religion, globalization and neoliberalism have prompted new analyses of the shifting geographic and social boundaries between 'religious' and 'secular' institutions, practices and discourses, and about the meaning of 'religion' itself. We reinscribe work on urban relig…
The Bond
Kung Fu Hustle: A note on the local
The success of Kung Fu Hustle within and beyond Hong Kong provides a convenient starting point for a discussion of actor‐director Stephen Chow's films and the manner in which they present themselves as belonging to a particular ‘local’ context. The production of the local is a critical issue in south Indian cinemas, where the local has been named as the linguistic‐cultural identity and became available for political mobilization. Chow's work has …
Hong Kong action film in the Indian B circuit
As with the rest of India and perhaps many other parts of the world, the success of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), released across the state between 1976 and the early 1980s, is where the story begins. Within a few years a new generation of male Telugu film stars began to perform their own stunts in action sequences which were clearly modelled on Hong Kong films. Notable among these are Chiranjeevi, Suman and Arjun. Indeed, e…
Researching Indian Audiences
The Brahmin and the fakir: Suburban religiosity in the cult of Shirdi Sai baba
Shirdi Sai Baba (?‐1918), whose cult in Bangalore city, India, is the case study of this paper, was a Maharashtrian saint closely identified with both the Pandharpur tradition of Vaisnavite devotion and Sufi genealogies in the region. My thesis is that in the cult of Shirdi Sai Baba, the holy mendicant/saint (fakir/sant) paradigm was associated historically with non‐urban locations; the paradigm of the spiritual guide (guru,) and, in later years,…
Sai Baba: The Double Utilization of Written and Oral Traditions in a Modern South Asian Religious Movement
The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Pu…
Hot Bodies and Cooling Substances: Rituals of Sport in a Science City
In the city of Bangalore, India, the main annual festival of the Karaga draws its ritual personnel from a network of wrestling houses, where concepts of the conservation and channeling of bodily fluids underlie training. These concepts are, in turn, linked to an older model of urban planning in which artificial water bodies and gardening were integral components of the built environment. As the city's population has grown and its economy shifted …
Kindred and Political Patriliny: Two Styles in Extra-Local Integration in Nubra Valley, Ladakh
Au 18 e et 19 e siecle le Ladakh fut l'objet d'une competition entre la Russie, la Chine et la Grande-Bretagne. Aujourd'hui le Ladakh est dependant de l'Etat-Nation Indien. Les nombreux clivages et alliances qui caracterisent l'actuel Ladakh sont dus a l'emplacement des frontieres. Le clivage le plus serieux est lie aux relations entre musulmans lakadhi, notamment les Sunnis, et bouddhistes. Un mouvement revendiquant une autonomie regionale, le s…
Spaces of Modernity: Religion and the Urban in Asia and Africa
This article introduces a symposium on religion and the formation of modern urban space in Asia and Africa. Both the spread of new religious movements and the articulations between religion, globalization and neoliberalism have prompted new analyses of the shifting geographic and social boundaries between 'religious' and 'secular' institutions, practices and discourses, and about the meaning of 'religion' itself. We reinscribe work on urban relig…
Hong Kong action film in the Indian B circuit
As with the rest of India and perhaps many other parts of the world, the success of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), released across the state between 1976 and the early 1980s, is where the story begins. Within a few years a new generation of male Telugu film stars began to perform their own stunts in action sequences which were clearly modelled on Hong Kong films. Notable among these are Chiranjeevi, Suman and Arjun. Indeed, e…
The Brahmin and the fakir: Suburban religiosity in the cult of Shirdi Sai baba
Shirdi Sai Baba (?‐1918), whose cult in Bangalore city, India, is the case study of this paper, was a Maharashtrian saint closely identified with both the Pandharpur tradition of Vaisnavite devotion and Sufi genealogies in the region. My thesis is that in the cult of Shirdi Sai Baba, the holy mendicant/saint (fakir/sant) paradigm was associated historically with non‐urban locations; the paradigm of the spiritual guide (guru,) and, in later years,…
Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds
Rajnikant in Japan: Indian “superstardom” and low value markets
This paper draws attention to some questions thrown up by the increased circulation of mass-produced cultural commodities sourced from Asia in the relatively new markets of the region. Juxtaposing the short-lived success of the Indian star Rajnikant in Japan in the late 1990s and the unsuccessful attempt to promote Korean films in the Indian theatrical circuits a decade later, the paper argues that in spite of their considerable differences both …
Hot Bodies and Cooling Substances: Rituals of Sport in a Science City
In the city of Bangalore, India, the main annual festival of the Karaga draws its ritual personnel from a network of wrestling houses, where concepts of the conservation and channeling of bodily fluids underlie training. These concepts are, in turn, linked to an older model of urban planning in which artificial water bodies and gardening were integral components of the built environment. As the city's population has grown and its economy shifted …
Ordinary Cities and Milieus of Innovation
This introduces a roundtable on the articulations of religious practices and imaginaries with the creation and remaking of urban landscapes in Bangalore (India), Vinh City (Vietnam), and Houston and New Orleans (United States). While recognizing that urban expressions of religion are articulated with political and economic forces, this collection shifts the focus to the spatial, material, and sensory media with which the religious and the spiritu…
Highways for Healing: Contemporaneous ‘Temples’ and Religious Movements in an Indian City
Grounded spatially in Bangalore city, India, I analyze “the sacrality of urban sprawl,” that is, how cities and their expanding boundaries are important arenas for the recruitment of devotees, the construction of habitats to house the religious, new spiritual maps, and ideas of selfhood. The strata who inhabit these spaces are largely the old and new middle class. I argue that in addition to consumption patterns and lifestyles, new norms of relig…
Sai Baba: The Double Utilization of Written and Oral Traditions in a Modern South Asian Religious Movement
The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Pu…
Kindred and Political Patriliny: Two Styles in Extra-Local Integration in Nubra Valley, Ladakh
Au 18 e et 19 e siecle le Ladakh fut l'objet d'une competition entre la Russie, la Chine et la Grande-Bretagne. Aujourd'hui le Ladakh est dependant de l'Etat-Nation Indien. Les nombreux clivages et alliances qui caracterisent l'actuel Ladakh sont dus a l'emplacement des frontieres. Le clivage le plus serieux est lie aux relations entre musulmans lakadhi, notamment les Sunnis, et bouddhistes. Un mouvement revendiquant une autonomie regionale, le s…
The Brahmin and the fakir: Suburban religiosity in the cult of Shirdi Sai baba
Shirdi Sai Baba (?‐1918), whose cult in Bangalore city, India, is the case study of this paper, was a Maharashtrian saint closely identified with both the Pandharpur tradition of Vaisnavite devotion and Sufi genealogies in the region. My thesis is that in the cult of Shirdi Sai Baba, the holy mendicant/saint (fakir/sant) paradigm was associated historically with non‐urban locations; the paradigm of the spiritual guide (guru,) and, in later years,…
Sai Baba: The Double Utilization of Written and Oral Traditions in a Modern South Asian Religious Movement
The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Pu…
Hot Bodies and Cooling Substances: Rituals of Sport in a Science City
In the city of Bangalore, India, the main annual festival of the Karaga draws its ritual personnel from a network of wrestling houses, where concepts of the conservation and channeling of bodily fluids underlie training. These concepts are, in turn, linked to an older model of urban planning in which artificial water bodies and gardening were integral components of the built environment. As the city's population has grown and its economy shifted …
Researching Indian Audiences
Hong Kong action film in the Indian B circuit
As with the rest of India and perhaps many other parts of the world, the success of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973), released across the state between 1976 and the early 1980s, is where the story begins. Within a few years a new generation of male Telugu film stars began to perform their own stunts in action sequences which were clearly modelled on Hong Kong films. Notable among these are Chiranjeevi, Suman and Arjun. Indeed, e…
Kung Fu Hustle: A note on the local
The success of Kung Fu Hustle within and beyond Hong Kong provides a convenient starting point for a discussion of actor‐director Stephen Chow's films and the manner in which they present themselves as belonging to a particular ‘local’ context. The production of the local is a critical issue in south Indian cinemas, where the local has been named as the linguistic‐cultural identity and became available for political mobilization. Chow's work has …
The Bond
In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement
The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has "roots" in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religiou…
Cardboard monuments: City, language and ‘nation’ in contemporary Telugu cinema
This paper looks at how the city of Hyderabad, the capital of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and production centre of the Telugu film industry, has been represented in recent popular cinema. It outlines the history of a new mode of representing the city in Telugu cinema and argues that its significance lies in the tendency to delocalize the city. Criminalization of the city's older inhabitants, who are marked by either religion (Islam) …
Chapter Three. The Sense Of The Presence
This chapter explores the sensory and interactive modes for approaching the presence of Sathya Sai Baba in the devotional world centered on him. Devotees long to touch his feet, receive his words or a mantra such as the Gayatri, or ash from his hands. Seeing him at darshan time is like receiving an electric charge. This sensorium or perceptual apparatus for approaching the guru or the divine is cultural, historical, social and political in nature…
Chapter Two. The Arrival Of The Avatar
This chapter traces important aspects of the public persona of Sathya Sai Baba based on secondary accounts and biographies. It examines his early life and the declaration of his identity with Shirdi Sai Baba that constructed a discrete mnemonic pathway for the recollection of the saint by his old devotees and attracted new audiences in South Asia and overseas. The chapter also alludes to several institutions created by him that gave an organizati…
Spaces of Modernity: Religion and the Urban in Asia and Africa
This article introduces a symposium on religion and the formation of modern urban space in Asia and Africa. Both the spread of new religious movements and the articulations between religion, globalization and neoliberalism have prompted new analyses of the shifting geographic and social boundaries between 'religious' and 'secular' institutions, practices and discourses, and about the meaning of 'religion' itself. We reinscribe work on urban relig…
Rajnikant in Japan: Indian “superstardom” and low value markets
This paper draws attention to some questions thrown up by the increased circulation of mass-produced cultural commodities sourced from Asia in the relatively new markets of the region. Juxtaposing the short-lived success of the Indian star Rajnikant in Japan in the late 1990s and the unsuccessful attempt to promote Korean films in the Indian theatrical circuits a decade later, the paper argues that in spite of their considerable differences both …
An introduction
An introduction." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 14(4), pp. 577–578 Additional informationS.V. Srinivas is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research interests include cultural and creative industries and comparative studies in popular culture. He has published papers on Indian and Hong Kong cinemas and is th…
Ordinary Cities and Milieus of Innovation
This introduces a roundtable on the articulations of religious practices and imaginaries with the creation and remaking of urban landscapes in Bangalore (India), Vinh City (Vietnam), and Houston and New Orleans (United States). While recognizing that urban expressions of religion are articulated with political and economic forces, this collection shifts the focus to the spatial, material, and sensory media with which the religious and the spiritu…
Highways for Healing: Contemporaneous ‘Temples’ and Religious Movements in an Indian City
Grounded spatially in Bangalore city, India, I analyze “the sacrality of urban sprawl,” that is, how cities and their expanding boundaries are important arenas for the recruitment of devotees, the construction of habitats to house the religious, new spiritual maps, and ideas of selfhood. The strata who inhabit these spaces are largely the old and new middle class. I argue that in addition to consumption patterns and lifestyles, new norms of relig…
Politics in the Age of YouTube: Degraded Images and Small-Screen Revolutions
Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds
Fan
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba's Presence
Sociology (14 works) · Art (12 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · History (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Religious Tourism and Spaces (6 works) · South Asian Cinema and Culture (6 works)