ABSTRACT
This chapter centres around spirituality and praxis of religion, both as a syncretic praxis, and as an expression of religious identity. It introduces four religious praxis in the neighbourhood: annual procession at the mysterious Sufi sage shrine Gebanshah Pir, annual Muharram procession in Old Bhuj, annual prayer ceremony at a Shiva temple and bird tower built in a memory of a lost daughter in an in-law abuse violence, and worship at a temple of Goddess Jōgaṇī, called as Bhuj high court Jōgaṇī dhām. The chapter argues such a diversity of religious praxis mirrors the diversity of the neighbourhoods residents, and the social and economic tensions that have risen in the wider context of gendered politicisation of religion and religious praxis in India. We suggest such praxis are examples of managed co-existence and emerging peace, transforming normative caste, gender, and religiosity boundaries. Thus, offering spaces for care and healing for the devotees, but also articulations of unanswered injustices in the aftermath of the earthquake. However, as these practices are always embedded in their political economic settings, new economic hierarchies are formed between the ones who hold the assets and donations, compared with those of mere devotees or disciples. Feminist peace, thus, emerges in these negotiations and spaces of care and comfort they offer, but at the same time, it gets entangled in gendered, classed, and caste-based communal dynamics, economic and social injustice.
