Sunday Feature: Renouncing India

Jatinder Verma examines the growing tension in India between the ingrained religious way of life and the powerful modernised society around it, as he explores the role of the ascetic in modern Indian life and culture. Jatinder describes the lives of ascetics - those who renounce all worldly posessions - in India including the more extreme younger religious dropouts. He contrasts religious culture in one of the most globalised cities in India, Delhi, with life in one of India's most religious cities, Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges. What does such a spectacularly radical tradition, where men and women give up their homes and families to undergo severe penance, say about the nature of Indian modernity?