Bengal's Sacred and Social Tapestry

This book explores Tantrism in Bengal as a lived cultural and social tradition rather than a marginal or esoteric religious practice. Situating Tantra within everyday devotion, poetry, ritual, and historical experience, it highlights its continuing relevance for understanding religion, society, and power in South Asia. The book offers an interdisciplinary examination of how Tantric ideas, symbols, and practices shaped Bengal’s intellectual and social worlds across precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts. Drawing on historical sources, vernacular literature, mythology, and cultural analysis, it traces the movement of Tantra from ritual secrecy to public expression through songs, devotional practices, and embodied forms of spirituality. It brings together perspectives from religious studies, history, sociology, and political thought to examine how Tantric idioms informed social imagination, ethical reflection, and cultural creativity in Bengal. The book opens new ways of thinking about the relationship between spirituality, culture, and social experience, inviting readers to reconsider the place of Tantrism within the broader landscape of South Asian intellectual and cultural history.