Women’s ‘Popular’ Practices as Critique: Vernacular Religion in Indian and Pakistani Punjab

This article highlights women's popular spiritual practices in Punjab and examines how spiritual rituals and events performed, largely by women are either conveniently overlooked by religious authorities or seen as contentious by more rigid perspectives on religious belonging. By focusing upon women's participation and worship at spiritual sites and functions, attention is drawn to the continuum of practices that run between life-course rituals and acts of spiritual embodiment and worship, making it difficult to maintain such firm distinctions between cultural and religious practices. By focusing upon examples in Punjab, across India and Pakistan, the article suggests that there is an underlying vernacular spiritual culture in the region within which a cosmology of spiritual acts of belief occupies a central space. The article will draw upon secondary ethnographic studies as well as upon fieldwork conducted by the authors in developing a picture of women's ?popular? practices.