ABSTRACT
Focusing on a sixteenth century Odiya text, Lakshmi Purana by Balaram Das, this chapter shows how neglected genres like the puranas can yield insights about radical social and cultural values, values that scholars have not always expected to find in medieval India. Das’s narrative develops the notion of a self-critical individuality that is distinct from – rather than merely embedded in – the dominant social structure and its patriarchal and caste-based value system. Together with studies of the Bhakti movement that have reinvigorated the study of the role of religion in producing progressive social change, this chapter contributes to the emerging discussion of ‘indigenous’ and ‘alternative’ modernities, one that de-centers the European version of modernity without retreating into cultural or historical relativism. It also suggests ways of doing comparative historical and cultural studies of what we call ‘modernity’ by expanding the range of texts we traditionally examine. It indicates how literary analysis, especially of traditional South Asian texts, can contribute to a multidisciplinary collaborative project of historical retrieval, leading to a reinterpretation of what we often condescendingly call the ‘pre-modern’.
