Hinglaj Devi

About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi in the desert of Baluchistan Pakistan sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the temple's ancient Hindu and Muslim history an annual festival at Hinglaj has only been established within the last three decades in part because of the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway which connects the distant rural shrine with urban Pakistan. Now an increasingly confident minority Hindu community has claimed Hinglaj as their main religious center a site for undisturbed religious performance and expression. <p/>In <em>Hinglaj Devi</em> J�rgen Schaflechner studies literary sources in Hindi Sanskrit Sindhi and Urdu alongside extensive ethnographical research at the shrine examining the political and cultural influences at work at the temple and tracking the remote desert shrine's rapid ascent to its current status as the most influential Hindu pilgrimage site in Pakistan. Schaflechner introduces the unique character of this place of pilgrimage and shows its modern importance not only for Hindus but also for Muslims and Sindhi nationalists. Ultimately this is an investigation of the Pakistani Hindu community's beliefs and practices at their largest place of worship in the Islamic Republic today--a topic of increasing importance to Pakistan's contemporary society.<br>