Wandering with Sadhus: ascetics in the hindu Himalayas

In this moving ethnographic portrait of Hindu renouncers sadhus or ascetics in northern India and Nepal, Sondra L. Hausner considers a paradox that shapes their lives: while ostensibly defined by their solitary spiritual practice, the stripping away of social commitments, and their break with family and community, renouncers in fact regularly interact with each other and with householder society. They form a distinctive, alternative community with its own internal structure, one that is not located in any single space. Highly mobile and dispersed across the subcontinent, its members are regulalrly brought together through pilgrimage circuits on festival cycles. Drawing on many years of fieldwork, Hausner presents intimate portraits of individual sadhus as she examines the shared views of space, time, and the body that create the ground of everyday experience. Written with an extraordinary blend of empathy, compassion, and anthropological insight, this study will appeal to scholars, students and general readers alike. (http://www.cambridgeindia.org/showbookdetails.asp?ISBN=9788175968929)