Religion and Identity in the Indian Ocean World

Mark Fielding, Joshua Esler

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9798765166000
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History

This is a ground-breaking volume on the role of religion as a major force of cohesion across the Indian Ocean region.

A diverse range of experts present a case for conceptualizing religion as an enabler of not only shared religious identities throughout the Indian Ocean world, but multiple shared identities mediated through religion, particularly as religion intersects with other manifestations of human society in this part of the world. This theme is explored through six major religious traditions, many of which originated in the Indian Ocean region, and all of which have played major roles throughout its history and to the present day. These traditions include Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. With this breadth and coverage of these traditions and their role in unifying communities from East Africa to Western Australia (including those belonging to nations north of that expanse of ocean), this book is a pioneering work on the multi-religious identities of the region.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Introduction: Songlines from Across the Seas: Religious Communities and Emergent Identities in the Indian Ocean World
• Part I: Jewish Diaspora and the Homeland
• Chapter 1: Fighting off in the Distance: Dispute Resolution among the Jews of the Twelfth-Century India Trade
• Chapter 2: Exploring the Presence and Culture of Ethiopian Jews
• Chapter 3: Keeping the Faith: The Jews of India
• Part II: Christian Missionaries, Settlers, and Migrants
• Chapter 4: To Convert and Civilize?: An Italian Missionary Learns Painful Lessons in Early Western Australia
• Chapter 5: “Warriors of Christ”: The Portuguese Empire in the Indian Ocean Region from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
• Chapter 6: What Makes for “a Civilized Life”?: Leisure, Liberal Values, and Australian Aboriginal Approaches to Work and Technology
• Chapter 7: The Gospel from the Indian Ocean: A Brief History of Tibetan Christianity
• Chapter 8: The Depok Estate, the Depokkers, and Christianity 1697–1950
• Chapter 9: Migration and Churches: Exploring the Role of Chinese Churches in Migrants’ Adaptation Process in Perth, Australia
• Part III: Islam: Historic and Contemporary Fragmentation and Cohesion
• Chapter 10: The Mosques of the Maldives and Buddhist Indian Ocean Worlds
• Chapter 11: The State and the Swahili Peoples of the Contemporary East African Coast
• Part IV: Hinduism in an Island Paradise
• Chapter 12: The Cross-Border Interplay of Religion, Trade, and Tourism: The Case of Hindu Bali and Australian Visitors
• Part V: Jainism: Monsoon Traders and the Diaspora
• Chapter 13: The Currents of Culture: Jains and Jainism in the Indian Ocean
• Part VI: Buddhism in Transition: Migration, Transnationalism, and the Buddhist Imaginary
• Chapter 14: When Was Buddhism First Established in Australia?: Methodological Issues from a Hazy Past
• Chapter 15: “Landlocked Tibet” and the Indian Ocean: Exploring the Tibetan Imaginary of the Maritime Through the Biography of Atīśa, the Jātaka Stories, and Religious Art
• Chapter 16: Materializing Tibetan Buddhism in the West: The Co-Emergence of Tradition and Conversion
• Chapter 17: Remolding Religion: How Vietnamese Buddhism Navigated Change, Withstood War, and Migrated Abroad
• Index
• About the Contributors