Papers presented at the European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies, held at Edinburgh in September 2000.

Beginning With The Premise That Any Pursuit Of An Indian Identity In The `Narrow` Terms Of Hinduness Is A Radical Distortion, Hinduism In Public And Private Surveys The Phenomenon Of Religious Reform Movements Within The Larger Paradigm Of Modernization, And In Tandem With The Ideas Of Nationalism And Hindutva. The Essays Analyse The Reasons Behind The Possible Need For A New Kind Of Social Integration Within The Hindu Community In India.

Hinduism is one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions. In captivating prose, Shashi Tharoor untangles its origins, its key philosophical concepts and texts. He explores everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste, and touchingly reflects on his personal beliefs and relationship with the religion. Not one to shy from controversy, Tharoor is unsparing in his criticism of 'Hindutva', an extremist, nationalist Hinduism endorsed by India's current government. He argues urgently and persuasively that it is precisely because of Hinduism's rich diversity that India has survived and thrived as a plural, secular nation. If narrow fundamentalism wins out, Indian democracy itself is in peril.

Accompanies the exhibition presented at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, April 17-July 31, 2016.

"That religion is still of central importance in today's world can hardly be doubted as we see in political contestation and violent conflict throughout the world. In South Asia religion is at the center of controversy and ideological battles and questions about what it is to be a Hindu in the twenty-first century are vibrant. Questions concerning the relation of Hinduism to state and global politics, to the individual, and to the politics of identity are of great relevance to Hindus everywhere. On the one hand we have seen the world shrink through globalization along with the late modern erosion of tradition, while on the other we have seen the reinvigoration of some traditions and the reanimation of traditional forms of knowledge (such as Ayurveda and Yoga). Secularists in India would wish to see the complete erosion of religion in the public sphere of governance and its relegation to the private realm, while many religious nationalists would wish to see even more growth in the influence of religion in the political and public arena. These debates are enacted through media and public discourse from academic to popular realms. It is in the context of such vital issues that scholars in this book examine Hinduism in its widest sense, looking not only at questions of contemporary identity politics but also at historical questions and presenting historical accounts of particular texts and traditions. We certainly understand the present through the past, but we also wish to understand the past for the sake of increasing human knowledge. There is therefore great diversity in the following pages that seek both to account for the contemporary situation and to explain the historical trajectories that have led to the modern, global religion we call 'Hinduism.' From ancient Tamil texts to contemporary politics, all the essays gathered here bear a relation to that nebulous abstraction and raise many questions. Are we dealing with a single religion, an essence manifested in different forms? Or is Hinduism a diversity of distinct traditions sharing certain common features with no single feature being shared by them all? Or are we dealing with a fragmented, cultural reality of widely diverse beliefs and practices, inappropriately classified as a single religion? All of these positions have been adopted in understanding Hinduism. The answers to these questions will depend upon the historical period in question and the methods employed in their study. Closely connected to the scope of the field are questions about how to study Hinduism, whether anthropology, philology, history of religions, theology, literary studies, archaeology, or art history are appropriate methods, and questions about the different theoretical assumptions and implications of their use. The purpose of this introduction is therefore both to problematize 'Hinduism' and to provide a context for the essays that follow"--

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Hindu Pluralism, Elaine M. Fisher complicates the traditional scholarly narrative of the unification of Hinduism. By calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term “sectarianism,” Fisher’s work excavates the pluralistic textures of precolonial Hinduism in the centuries prior to British intervention. Drawing on previously unpublished sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, Fisher argues that the performance of plural religious identities in public space in Indian early modernity paved the way for the emergence of a distinctively non-Western form of religious pluralism. This work provides a critical resource for understanding how Hinduism developed in the early modern period, a crucial era that set the tenor for religion's role in public life in India through the present day.

As India s economy has liberalized, so too has it become Hinduized. Middle-class Indians are becoming actively religious as they are becoming prosperous. The lastdecade has seen the proliferation of powerful new god-men, a massive rise in temple rituals, thecreation of new gods, and the increased demand for priests. Hinduism has entered public life aswell with politicians regularly using pujas and yajnas in their campaigning. The state is enabling this Hinduization with the help of the private sector. From actively promotingreligious tourism, to handing over higher education to private sector institutions, some of whomuse religious trusts to run these institutions and impart value-based education, to giving awayland at highly subsidized rates to gurus and god-men, many of the privatization measures of thegovernment are linked with the promotion of Hinduism. Why has this happened? What does it mean? And does this spell the death of Indian secularism? Inthis eye-opening book, Meera Nanda looks at the rise of popular Hinduism and uncovers, for thefirst time, the nexus between the state, temple and corporate India, and the ugly truth behind India sleap into globalization and economic reforms. She argues that india is creating its own, insidiousform of fundamentalism, one that can lead the country into grave danger. Hard-hitting and controversial, full of fascinating facts, The God Market is essential reading for allcitizens.