Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Rituals, particularly religious rituals, may play a significant role in times of crises. Often, these rituals undergo revision to adapt to the changing needs of the time. This article investigates recent unofficially revised Hindu religious rituals as performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The mult...

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Autores principales: Kapoor, Vikram, Belk, Russell, Goulding, Christina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9001062/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/07439156221081485
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author Kapoor, Vikram
Belk, Russell
Goulding, Christina
author_facet Kapoor, Vikram
Belk, Russell
Goulding, Christina
author_sort Kapoor, Vikram
collection PubMed
description Rituals, particularly religious rituals, may play a significant role in times of crises. Often, these rituals undergo revision to adapt to the changing needs of the time. This article investigates recent unofficially revised Hindu religious rituals as performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The multifarious creative interplay between Hindu tradition and change is illustrated through four cases: the religious festival of Durga Puja, the devotional songs or bhajans, the ritual of lighting lamps or diyas, and the fire rituals or havans. The authors offer a systematic discourse analysis of online news articles and YouTube posts that illuminate several aspects of ritual revision during unsettled times. They focus on the changes that were made to ritual elements: who controlled these alterations, how these modifications were made, and what potential benefits these revisions offered to the community of ritual participants. The authors highlight public policy implications regarding the involvement of diverse social actors, the creation of faith in science, the creation of feelings of unity and agency, and the amplification of local ritual modifications on a national scale.
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spelling pubmed-90010622022-07-01 Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic Kapoor, Vikram Belk, Russell Goulding, Christina J Public Policy Mark Research Articles Rituals, particularly religious rituals, may play a significant role in times of crises. Often, these rituals undergo revision to adapt to the changing needs of the time. This article investigates recent unofficially revised Hindu religious rituals as performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The multifarious creative interplay between Hindu tradition and change is illustrated through four cases: the religious festival of Durga Puja, the devotional songs or bhajans, the ritual of lighting lamps or diyas, and the fire rituals or havans. The authors offer a systematic discourse analysis of online news articles and YouTube posts that illuminate several aspects of ritual revision during unsettled times. They focus on the changes that were made to ritual elements: who controlled these alterations, how these modifications were made, and what potential benefits these revisions offered to the community of ritual participants. The authors highlight public policy implications regarding the involvement of diverse social actors, the creation of faith in science, the creation of feelings of unity and agency, and the amplification of local ritual modifications on a national scale. SAGE Publications 2022-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9001062/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/07439156221081485 Text en © American Marketing Association 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Research Articles
Kapoor, Vikram
Belk, Russell
Goulding, Christina
Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Ritual Revision During a Crisis: The Case of Indian Religious Rituals During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort ritual revision during a crisis: the case of indian religious rituals during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9001062/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/07439156221081485
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