Twentieth-century expectations for the increasing secularization of public space and the retreat of religion to the private sphere have been contradicted by the myriad ways in which religion has emerged afresh in politics, legal systems, and everyday life. Religious communities have harnessed new technologies and notions of belonging enabled by the conditions of urban growth and transnational connectivity. The two monographs considered in this review essay examine the abiding centrality of religion in India's modern cities, situated in two particular metropolitan areas, Bangalore and Kolkata.1 They consider a range of individuals who have transformed the ways that Hindu temples and religious rituals engage with their modern surroundings—as Deonnie Moodie notes, “Indianizing modernity rather than simply modernizing India.”
Both Tulasi Srinivas and Moodie center their studies on the urban Indian middle classes who have catalyzed the refashioning of temple spaces and temple-based rituals, and, from different angles, both depict ways...
