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‘The ultimate sacred text in India,’ writes Pico Iyer in his introduction to Living Faith, ‘is nothing but its daily life: Religion is not something tucked away from the world; it suffuses the greetings, the conversations and (notoriously) the animosities of the place. Dinesh Khanna has travelled around his native land for years now trying to catch this quality of privacy in India: not just the spectacles and extravagant rites and famous sadhus by which every photographer or tourist is fascinated, but something deeper, and less obvious.’
The stunning photographs in Living Faith are the result of over a decade of travel and quiet observation. From the cities, small towns and villages of India, a country where every major religion of the world has found a home, Dinesh Khanna brings us images of faith as it endures in everyday life. Priests light up the night on the ghats of Varanasi in honour of Shiva; Sufis sing ecstatic love songs to Allah at the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya; young boys in Ladakh prepare for the austere life of a Buddhist Lama; and devotees offer wax models of what they desire to Mary at her church in Mumbai. Meanwhile, on the country’s highways and by-lanes, taxi and truck drivers carry little shrines to their gods on the dashboard, Jain nuns walk barefoot for miles on an eternal pilgrimage, and people stop to offer prayers at modest temples and tombs along busy roads.
Dinesh Khanna’s intimate and revealing photographs capture the timeless aspect of the sacred in India, where private worship and a natural amity survive and ultimately defeat the clamour and discord of the mob.
ISBN - 0670049816
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Pages : 208
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