People who don't fit in South Asia -- there are plenty of them on the ground -- Sufi pirs, especially some of the more antinomian kinds. In the Punjab, in northwestern India and eastern Pakistan today -- there are itinerant figures called malangs. In eastern India and in parts of Bangladesh, there are the bauls.
You can Google for all of these terms.
These are figures incorporated / comprehended through the prism of "folk" culture; if they are present in the canonical "Great Tradition", then they are only present as that which must be conquered / domesticated.
Which seems to be a somewhat different dynamic from what Wai-Yee Li described in China -- where such figures seem to emerge every now and then as objects of great sympathy in the canonical tradition.
You can Google for all of these terms.
These are figures incorporated / comprehended through the prism of "folk" culture; if they are present in the canonical "Great Tradition", then they are only present as that which must be conquered / domesticated.
Which seems to be a somewhat different dynamic from what Wai-Yee Li described in China -- where such figures seem to emerge every now and then as objects of great sympathy in the canonical tradition.
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