Why, Salmond asks, would nineteenth-century Hindus who come from an iconic religious tradition voice a kind of invective one might expect from Hebrew prophets, Muslim iconoclasts, or Calvinists? Rammohun was a wealthy Bengali, intimately associated with the British Raj and familiar with European languages, religion, and currents of thought. Dayananda was an itinerant Gujarati ascetic who did not speak English and was not integrated into the culture of the colonizers. Salmond’s examination of Dayananda after Rammohun complicates the easy assumption that nineteenth-century Hindu iconoclasm is simply a case of borrowing an attitude from Muslim or Protestant traditions. Salmond examines the origins of these reformers’ ideas by considering the process of diffusion and independent invention—that is, whether ideas are borrowed from other cultures, or arise spontaneously and without influence from external sources. Examining their writings from multiple perspectives, Salmond suggests that Hindu iconoclasm was a complex movement whose attitudes may have arisen from independent invention and were then reinforced by diffusion. Although idolatry became the symbolic marker of their reformist programs, Rammohun’s and Dayananda’s agendas were broader than the elimination of image-worship. These Hindu reformers perceived a link between image-rejection in religion and the unification and modernization of society, part of a process that Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world.” Focusing on idolatry in nineteenth-century India, Hindu Iconoclasts investigates the encounter of civilizations, an encounter that continues to resonate today.

John Cort explores the narratives by which the Jains have explained the presence of icons of Jinas (their enlightened and liberated teachers) that are worshiped and venerated in the hundreds of thousands of Jain temples throughout India. Most of these narratives portray icons favorably, and so justify their existence; but there are also narratives originating among iconoclastic Jain communities that see the existence of temple icons as a sign of decay and corruption. The veneration of Jina icons is one of the most widespread of all Jain ritual practices. Nearly every Jain community in India has one or more elaborate temples, and as the Jains become a global community there are now dozens of temples in North America, Europe, Africa, and East Asia. The cult of temples and icons goes back at least two thousand years, and indeed the largest of the four main subdivisions of the Jains are called Murtipujakas, or "Icon Worshipers." A careful reading of narratives ranging over the past 15 centuries, says Cort, reveals a level of anxiety and defensiveness concerning icons, although overt criticism of the icons only became explicit in the last 500 years. He provides detailed studies of the most important pro- and anti-icon narratives. Some are in the form of histories of the origins and spread of icons. Others take the form of cosmological descriptions, depicting a vast universe filled with eternal Jain icons. Finally, Cort looks at more psychological explanations of the presence of icons, in which icons are defended as necessary spiritual corollaries to the very fact of human embodiedness.

This work explores the life and work of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874-1937), a guru of the Chaitanya (1486-1534) school of Vaishnavism who, at a time when various interpretations of nondualistic Hindu thought were most prominent, managed to establish a pan-Indian movement for the modern revival of personalist bhakti - a movement that today encompasses both Indian and non-Indian populations throughout the world.

Global Icons considers how highly visible public figures such as Mother Theresa become global icons capable of galvanizing intense affect and sometimes even catalyzing social change.

Hindu Christian Faqir compares two colonial Indian holy men: the Hindu Rama Tirtha and the Christian Sundar Singh. Challenging ideas about modern Hinduism, indigenous Christianity, and sainthood, the study focuses on the vernacular, ascetic idioms that both men creatively drew upon to appeal to transnational audiences and pursue religious perfection.

"Middle-class Hindus have worked to modernize Kālīghāṭ - the most famous Hindu temple in Kolkata - over the past long century. Rather than being rejected with the onslaught of European modernity, the temple became a facet through which Hindus could produce and publicize their modernity, as well as their cities' and their nation's"--

This book focuses on Hindu images and their worship with special reference to Vaiṣṇavism, a major strand of Hinduism. Concentrating largely, but not exclusively, on Sanskritic source material, the author shows in the course of the book that Hindu image-worship may be understood via three levels of interpretation: the metaphysical/theological, the narratival or mythic, and the performative or ritual.