Rana Behal

Here you will find Rana Behal's CV, including his publications.

Currently Working on a book on the Social History and Religion, Orality and Ethnography: Walled City of Amritsar (Punjab, India) Post-Partition Era under the Project on 
Religion and Urbanity: Mutual Formations, Max Weber Research Centre (KFG), Erfurt University.  

This research project emphasizes the centrality of oral history, listening and recording collective memory, photographic and ethnographic field surveys in the Walled city. The religious, residential and commercial spaces are spread over a maze of very narrow bazars, lanes, galis, alleys, mohallas, koochas, dhabs, katras and market places in the walled city. Fieldwork involves walking, participant observation, and conducting ethnographic surveys of the markets, katras, koochas, galis and bazars. It also involves audio recordings of conversations with men and women of religion, preachers, administrators of religious institutions, merchants, traders, artisans, artisans, and diverse labour communities, etc. Listening, asking questions and carrying conversations with old and young men and women helps to recover the histories of everyday lives of work, leisure and religious practices of the people in the city which otherwise have practically no written records. Orality and ethnography is further supplemented with official, non-government and religious institutions organization records, newspapers, academic and journalistic works on the Walled City, pamphlets, photographs, published secondary sources including literary works like short stories and novels. 

I started working on a wider project in Amritsar city from October 2015 aiming at a monograph on the socio-religious history of the walled city of Amritsar after Independence. The monograph seeks to bring out several aspects of urban life in the Walled City of Amritsar, which have, so far, remained unnoticed by the world of academia or even popular writings. The monograph aims to produce a history of everyday lives and work experiences of people inhabiting the city of Amritsar. These experiences are recovered from the voices of the people themselves through recording conversations, memories, and interviews with city communities of merchant, traders, petty retailers and shopkeepers, artisanal groups, street and roadside food sellers, craftsmen, owners of eateries, migrant labourers and religious preachers, members of religious institutions. The subjects of oral conversation and interviews include:  religious festivals and traditions, practices and institutions (temples, gurdwaras, mosques and Sufi Dargahs), business practices and commercial systems, crafts, traditional food, family life, neighbourhood, specialties of arts, and forms of entertainments, popular music and sports and environment and ecological experiences, etc.