A Review of Michael Stausberg (ed.), Religions, Mumbai Style: Events — Media — Spaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 302 p.

Abstract

The volume Religions, Mumbai Style: Events — Media — Spaces, edited by Michael Stausberg, is devoted to religious minorities in the complex urban context of Mumbai, a city known for its cosmopolitanism and acute interreligious conflicts. Its chapters guide readers through various neighborhoods, significant sites, and contexts of interreligious interaction — large religious festivals, roadside shrines, taxi rides, Muslim ghettos in the north, and Dalit slums at the city’s heart. The contributors focus primarily on different Muslim groups (Ismailis, Twelver Shi‘as, the middle class, residents of Mumbra’s ghettos) and Hindus (Dalits in Dharavi, Krishna devotees), emphasising their everyday religious practices. Through rich ethnography, the authors demonstrate the city’s heterogeneity and the diversity of its inhabitants, showing how cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and intergroup solidarity coexist with acts of violence and segregation. Against the backdrop of nationalist currents in contemporary Indian politics and the escalating conflict with Pakistan, the volume’s in-depth focus on Muslim-Hindu relations proves particularly pertinent today.