Hinduism: Belief and Practices Within the Family

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions to the Special Issue “Hinduism: Belief and Practices within the Family”. The family has long served as a central site for religious formation in Hindu traditions, yet many of its everyday practices remain understudied. This Special Issue highlights the importance of domestic rituals, intimate devotional acts, and intergenerational habits of religious learning, emphasizing how belief is lived, embodied, and transmitted through daily life. By foregrounding household contexts, we aim to deepen scholarly understanding of Hinduism as practiced beyond formal institutions.

This Special Issue aims to explore family-centered religious practices in Hinduism—examining how ritual, memory, moral values, and devotional habits are cultivated within domestic spaces. We seek contributions that illuminate the interplay between belief, practice, and social life inside the Hindu household, including both classical traditions and contemporary innovations.

The topic aligns with the scope of Religions, particularly its focus on lived religion, ritual studies, material and embodied practices, and the anthropology and sociology of religion. The issue is interdisciplinary in approach, yet cohesive in its emphasis on lived religious experience within family units.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and review essays are welcome. Research areas may include, but are not limited to:

• Food rituals, shared meals, and the shaping of moral and affective community.
• Religious reading practices such as pārāyaṇa, domestic recitation, and ritualized text engagement.
• Agricultural-, seasonal-, or ecology-related observances that tie family life to land and cycles of time.
• Intergenerational transmission of belief, memory, and practice.
• Gendered dimensions of domestic religiosity.
• Comparative or historical studies on Hindu family ritual traditions.
• Material religion and sacred space within the home.

Other topics related to Hindu domestic ritual life are encouraged.

This Special Issue aims to broaden understandings of Hindu religious life by centering the family as a locus of devotion, continuity, and meaning-making. By showcasing the everyday gestures that sustain belief and community, we hope to stimulate new research, expand theoretical frameworks for lived Hinduism, and foster interdisciplinary dialogue across anthropology, religious studies, South Asian studies, and related fields.

Interested authors are requested to submit a proposed title and a 200–300-word abstract prior to the full manuscript. Abstracts should be sent to the Guest Editor (myeolekar@fullerton.edu) or Assistant Editor of Religions (zena.zeng@mdpi.com) for initial review and to ensure fit with the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Mugdha Yeolekar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.