Afterword

Thus, it is necessary to highlight two things about this book. The rst point is the diversity of Hindu practice re ected through oral narratives. It is important to recognize that this diversity is not simply based on exploring different textual traditions, but rather different regional and vernacular traditions that are based on oral narratives. The roles oral narratives play in the shaping of diverse Hindu practices have been generally underestimated. I believe that it has to do with the rise of Vednta based middle-class Hinduism that overestimated the role of texts in Hindu practice. What has complicated the situation in the academic study of Hinduism is that it was rst presented to the West as an alternative spiritual practice exempli ed in Vednta through the erudition of Swamis such as Vivekananda. In that sense, Vednta might have offered an alternative spirituality to the West. But studying Hinduism is and ought to be more than textual presentations of what might have been considered par excellence. Therefore, the second point that we need to emphasize is that the oral nature of the multiple narratives of Hinduism affords us an opportunity to describe Hinduism through ordinary people who practice their traditions rather than solely depend on the elite and the experts. Certainly, experts matter. However, over-reliance on their authoritative words not only takes us away from the ordinary folks that we come across on a daily basis, but also deprives us of the enormous diversity that exists in Hindu practice. In this volume, therefore, we focused on multiple regional narratives of Hindus that are deeply rooted in their oral transmission and in their lived context. The transmitters of these narratives are not necessarily experts or elite spokespersons of the various traditions, but rather ordinary folk who practice their traditions as passed down to them from their previous generations, be that in the diaspora context or in the south Asian context.