The cultural context for Smriti Srinivas’s book is Bangalore, the new “Silicon Valley” of India, which since the 1980s has attracted much attention from academics, developmentalists, and the popular media for its success as a high-tech center of research and software enterpreneurship. Srinivas concerns herself not so much with Bangalore’s high-tech boom as with its traditional religious performative complex. At the heart of the book is the Karaga jatre, a ritual dedicated to the goddess Draupadi, which is performed annually in the city by Vahnikula Kshatriyas, members of a caste group belonging to the region’s “backward classes” who identify themselves as descendants of Draupadi.

Srinivas demonstrates how Vahnikula Kshatriyas seek to promote their collective interests as a caste group and to optimize the opportunities available to them through the performance of the jatre. This ritual performance serves as a vital resource whereby they can reclaim their past and negotiate their present by creating a new “landscape of urban memory” through ritual, movement, and narrative. By their engagement with the jatre’s performative complex, they come to assert their group solidarity, forge new alliances with other caste groups and subgroups, mobilize politically, compete for the cultural and economic resources of the city, and assert their ritual importance at the very heart of Bangalore’s mythological history.

Srinivas brings together material from diverse sources to produce this extremely well-researched piece of work. She moves systematically from one theme to the next, carefully locating each within its particular historical and social context. In the first chapter she discusses the theoretical premise of her work. Performance and memory are the key analytical concepts she uses to explore the Karaga jatre ritual complex. She explains “performance” in both Western academic and indigenous Indian categories, demonstrating how performance comes to serve as a means for constructing collective memory. For the purposes of her book she defines “memory” as “an active mode whereby cultural material (events, persons, or places) are ‘re-collected’ or gathered up into a configuration” (p. 29).

In the second chapter Srinivas provides a detailed discussion of changes in Bangalore’s spatial configuration since its foundation in the middle of the 16th century. Much of the recent literature on Bangalore has focused on its development as a high-tech city, particularly on its sizeable software industry. Srinivas’s book provides a refreshing change from these works. By drawing attention to lesser-known aspects of Bangalore’s development, she explores how groups marginalized by mainstream developmental processes are affected by, and in turn negotiate, their collective experience of modernization and change.

In chapter 3 Srinivas discusses Bangalore’s urban performative complex. Her discussion here is not limited to the jatre but deals with shrines, cults, and festivals belonging to the diverse religious and ritual traditions that dot Bangalore’s sacred landscape. This discussion sets the context of the Karaga jatre and establishes linkages and connections between the jatre and elements of the larger ritual complex of which it is a part. The following chapter takes up the theme of the social identity and history of the Vahnikula Kshatriyas, who have experienced an erosion of their traditional occupational bases as a result of the changes in Bangalore’s economic, political, social, and physical environment. Srinivas deftly outlines the efforts of the Vahnikula Kshatriyas to mobilize as a caste over the years and their campaign to secure ever greater economic and political advantages in Bangalore.

After setting the context for her thesis in chapters 1 to 4, Srinivas goes on to describe the jatre in detail in chapters 5 and 6. She explains in sequence how, through ritual physical movement (across selected urban spaces of Bangalore) and oral narrative, the performance of the jatre facilitates the creation of urban landscapes of memory that accord with the Vahnikula Kshatriyas’ mythologized representations of themselves both in the past and in the shifting realities of the present.

Srinivas’s greatest strength lies in her systematic presentation of a vast amount of historical detail and factual information. What is perhaps lacking in the text, however, is a lively and engaging account of the experience of the jatre by participants and performers. We hear very little of the voices of the actors themselves; instead we encounter Srinivas’s painstaking description and analysis, made with systematic rigor and precision, but clinically detached from the humdrum and richness of real life experience. In several sections of the book--for example, those dealing with the mythology surrounding the Karaga jatre--Srinivas follows a mode of analysis that often appears arbitrary and lacks conviction. The problem is compounded by her excessive use of academic jargon, which adds to the sense of this work being strangely unconnected with the real world of the actors concerned.

Srinivas’ book straddles several academic disciplines. The themes she addresses pertain to research areas as wide-ranging as urban sociology, human geography, the ethnography of performance, religious studies, and South Asian history. This book would be highly useful for anyone interested in learning more about Bangalore’s ritual complex and about the cult of Draupadi, a subject underresearched in the academic literature. Srinivas also provides rich source material for scholars seeking information about Bangalore’s urban history and planning. Most importantly, the book is a valuable contribution to scholarship on processes of modernization and change in contemporary urban contexts, effectively demonstrating how ritual performance enables disadvantaged groups to reclaim their city for themselves by reconfiguring its spatial, temporal, and narrative history to their advantage.