Frictions, entanglements and reconfigurations: Religion and heritage in global South Asia

Abstract

This article introduces the thematic section Heritage and Religion in South Asia and its Diasporas and proposes a new framework for analysing the relationship between religion and heritage. While previous scholarship has often approached this nexus in terms of similarities or conflicts, the article argues that global South Asia offers a productive ground for rethinking the complex ways in which religion and heritage interact and shape each other both discursively and materially. Drawing on contributions from across the thematic section, it moves beyond the established distinction between the 'heritagisation of the sacred' and the 'sacralisation of heritage'. Instead, it proposes a new analytical framework centred on friction, entanglement and reconfiguration—three distinct but overlapping modalities through which religion and heritage interact on the ground. Through examples from South Asia and its diasporas, the article shows how heritage discourses are appropriated, contested and reworked by diverse actors, from state institutions to local religious communities and migrants. By foregrounding uneven power relations and transnational circulations of beliefs, memories and objects, it positions South Asia as a generative site for theorising the dynamic cross-fertilisation of religion and heritage in contemporary societies.