The article attempts to discover elements of the tribal cult of the gourdancestor in the regional Hinduism of Odisha. This cult goes back to the anthropogenic myth of the Deluge and escape inside a giant gourd. Both the myth and the cult of its hero are found among many tribes in the southern parts of Odisha and Chhattisgarh and have many parallels in continental Southeast Asia and southern China. Besides, the name of the hero of the myth in many cultures is derived from the word ‘gourd’. Several Shaivite deities have been found in Hinduism of Odisha, whose names literally mean ‘gourd god’. A detailed analysis of different versions of temple legends associated with these deities has shown that, although the Hindu narrative was created independently of tribal cults, some of its details still point to the substrate influence of the gourd‑ancestor cult.

The article examines the concept of “deep India,” used by an ethnographer Sergey Arutynov, as a general type designating broad social groups united in different communities (castes and tribes), primarily rural population, largely guided in the organization of their everyday life by traditions, values, norms and established ideas. The author analyzes the experience of the Indian‑Soviet anthropological expedition of the 1970s‑1980s seeking to create a general anthropological picture of India, and such modes of “deep India” as the village, urban worlds of subalterns and nomads, the concepts of “folk”, “ordinary”, “interior”, as well as the specific concept of “tribal”. A conservative, stabilizing social strategy is what shapes the phenomenon of “deep India,” while ongoing modernization processes are associated with the creation of new technologies and new social relations. Some essential features of “deep India,” according to the author, are the tendency towards endogamy and social segmentation, the construction of a social hierarchy, local and territorial connection, as well as self‑reproduction through the socialization of children in the norms and traditions of a given community, with a determined circle of possible marriage partners. “Deep India” can be used both as a designation of certain loci and as a set of conservative social practices, understanding the conventionality of this term and taking into account the changes taking place in Indian society.

The article takes a clue from the concept of “deep India” proposed by S. A. Arutyunov and tests it on the material of medieval religious poetry in Marathi in praise of the god Vitthal/Vithoba, and the practice of collective vari (pilgrimage) to his temple in Pandharpur. Towards the end of the 19th century, high caste social and religious reformers and nationalist historians took to treat these factors as the basis for evolution of the Marathi ethnicity, identity and ethos. The poets behind this poetry ranging from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries were eventually valorized as the national treasure, elevated to the rank of sainthood (sants) and made use of as tools of nationalist, political and social indoctrination at various stages during the preand postcolonial periods, especially during the decade of the struggle for a monolingual state of Maharashtra in 1950s. Through the “positive discrimination” strategy under implementation in India since the 1990s and the promotion of the feminist agenda, the role of low‑caste hymn writers has significantly popped up, among whom the maidservant Janabai has emerged as an undisputed leader. Not a single piece of reliable information about her is available, which proved to be an ideal starting point for the formation of multi‑vector narratives around her figure through the course of the last century and a half. The narrative created by the educated élite — abhijan, that had been dominant throughout the last century is gradually coming into conflict with an alternative discourse by the so called bahujan, those whom the elite tried to marginalize.

The use of own sacred books as an alternative to the Guru Granth — the Sikh scripture — is a rare but a very significant phenomenon among the lower castes (Dalits) of Punjab, which reflects the contemporary conflict in PunjabiSikh society. In the 20th‑21st centuries, counter‑texts were launched by the Adi Dharmi and Ravidasi religious & caste communities, which mainly unite the Chamars (tanners) of the Land of Five Rivers. In 2001, the Sikh mazhabis (sweepers) — followers of Piara Singh Bhaniara in the Rupnagar/Ropar district — also announced the launch of their sacred text which later proved to be highly controversial. All such alternative scriptures aim at glorifying respective religious communities through their historical or contemporary founders and at distancing ‘own’ religions from mainstream Sikhism. The article discusses aspects of on the semantic, performative and iconic functions of the Adi Prakash Ratnakar scripture (‘The Treasury of the Primordial Light’) compiled by 1960 and published in the 1980s by the Adi Dharm community. Referring to this text — introduced in the research circulation for the first time — allows us to identify the place of Adi Dharmis within the religious and caste landscape of the Indian Punjab and assess the potential of this Dalit community in its complicated relationship with the ‘true’ followers of Sikhism.

The article analyzes socially engaged Buddhism, one of the most important concepts of the neo‑Buddhist Amedkarite community of India, followers of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), the leader and ideologist of the Dalit movement. Ambedkar considered Hinduism to be one of the forces that support the caste system, and saw his task as ensuring that at least representatives of the “low” castes found some other religious basis for themselves, and ceased to be (or be considered?) Hindus, if they ever were. He believed that only religious conversion would allow the Dalits to get rid of the burden of “untouchability”. Turning to Buddhism as one of the egalitarian religions that originated in India, Ambedkar created a socio‑religious project, which he called Navayana ("new chariot", in relation to the already existing schools of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism). In the modern Dalit‑Ambedkarite community, B. R. Ambedkar has become a cult figure: songs are dedicated to him, statues are erected, and his life is a role model. Based on the study of the biography of B. R. Ambedkar, his works on the theory of the caste system and the interpretation of the position of the Pali Canon, the article analyzes the concept of socially engaged Navayana Buddhism, describes the main stages of the formation of the Dalit movement in modern India.

India is the country with the third largest Muslim population in the world, and most of this Muslim population can be called indigenous. However, the uneven distribution of Muslims in India is not only visible at the regional level (which has a historical explanation), but it is also prominent on the local level: in cities and villages with a significant percentage of the Muslim population, one can see separate clusters and districts where various Muslim communities live. In our article, based on the field observations made in Northern India (in Aligarh, Delhi, Agra, Sikri, Fatehpur Sikri, Lucknow, Dewa Sharif) 2023 and 2024, we will examine the settlement and mobility patterns of local communities of Indian Muslims and focus on religiously conditioned strategies for choosing a suitable place to live and the characteristics of religious locations, which, as we suggest, define, along with socio‑political reasons, the territorial coun daries of the communities.

The focus of the study is on servants, who constitute a noticeable and stable element of a huge number of Indian households and permeate its socio‑cultural landscape. The article examines how this professional community manifested itself in British India. Europeans who arrived on the peninsula were forced to take into account the religious and caste affiliation of servants in the process of establishing everyday life. Adapting to the proposed conditions, the British chose from the local population those who could and agreed to serve their needs and requests. As a result, in the places of stay and residence of the British, a staff of servants was formed, which had not previously been encountered in such a combination. Finding themselves in a situation of double loyalty in the conditions of the imperial household — to their group and to the English patron, servants assumed the role of mediators between the two “cultural castes”, acting as agents of their mutual adaptation, which led to the emergence of a hybrid imperial order and the erosion of familiar social configurations. In this article, the study of the problems of caste, religious, racial boundaries and relations actualized through special labor practices in the intimate space of the colonial bungalows is empirical in nature and is based on the analysis of the texts of British householders.

Books review: Chakravarti, S. (2017) The Bengalis. A Portrait of a Community. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. 457 p.; Barooah Pisharoty, S. (2023) The Assamese: A Portrait of a Community. New Delhi, India, Aleph Book Company. 454 p.; Tripathi, S. (2024) The Gujaratis. A Portrait of a Community. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. 730 p.; Lakshman, N. (2025) The Tamils. A Portrait of a Community. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. 442 p.