Editorial Note, May-Jun, 2017

The lead article by K.M. Shrimali in the current issue of Social Scientist traces the development of religious identities in India over a long span of nearly four millennia. It explores the material conditions underlying this development, such as for instance the growth of money economy being associated with the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, and the spread of agriculture within a feudal milieu being accompanied by a burgeoning cult of mother-goddesses that permeated all the existing religions. It looks at how these different identities both intermingled with and also contended with one another at different times and among different classes; but what is striking is the absence for a very long period of any overarching characterisation of these different identities by a portmanteau term like ‘Hindu’.