Legitimation and the Re-Discovery of Ritual: Intercommunal and Class Relationships in a Bangladeshi Village

Despite the great poverty in the village of Doria, (Dhaka, Bangladesh) it is religious conflicts, and not class conflict, which has become important. The poor in each religious group are made pawns in the competition between wealthy families of different religious groups. In this paper I use the example of a thief-searching ritual, as an element of interconnected ‘social situations’, to illustrate the conflict and cooperation characterising inter- and intra-group relationships in Doria. It shows how a ritual is ‘rediscovered’ and used by religious leaders to achieve instrumental and expressive/ normative ends.