Introduction

This book explores intersections between religion and technology in India, at the present and in the colonial past, and how various forms of techno-religious intersections transform and open up for new religious practices, discourses, communities, and institutions. Starting from a broad definition of technology, technological developments at different times in history include new machines and technologies in a broader sense, such as the invention of writing, printing technology, and new means of transportation and communication, and more lately the Internet which have facilitated new spaces of religion. The techno-religious intersections generate several questions about authority and power, community and place, and how religious agency, information, and experience are mediated, commodified, and adjusted to new demands of societies. With focus on the Indian contexts and religions, this book discusses various empirical and theoretical aspects of how technological innovations create, alter, and negotiate religious spaces, practices, and authorities. The book provides empirical examples of different ways in which technological imaginaries and practices in relation to religion become rich and multifaceted, by linking the concrete techniques, tools, and knowledge with meanings, ideas and practices of religions (Ornella, 2015; Stolow, 2013). Technological developments facilitate new “techno-religious spaces” in which different forms of poetics and politics of identity and community can be played out and alter religious practices and power relations. From this perspective are new technologies being “socialized” and may cause both democratization and struggles for domination and control based on the access and use of technologies (Kong, 2001; Crang et al., 2012).