This book explores the ways in which modern Hindu identities were constructed in the early nineteenth century. It draws parallels between sixteenth and eventeenth Cecntury Protestantism and the rise of modernity in the West, and the Hindu reformation in the nineteenth century which contributed to the rise of Vedantic Hindu modernity discourse in India. The nineteenth century Hindu modernity, it is argued, sought both individual flourishing and collective emancipation from Western domination. For the first time Hinduism began to be constructed as a religion of sacred texts. In particular, texts belonging to what could be loosely called Vedanta: Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In this way, the main protagonists of this Vedantist modernity were imitating Western Protestantism, but at the same time also inventing totally novel interpretations of what it meant to be Hindu. The book traces the major ideological paths taken in this cultural-religious reformation from its originator Rammohun Roy up to its last major influence, Rabindranath Tagore. Bringing these two versions of modernity into conversation brings a unique view on the formation of modern Hindu identities. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of religious, Hindu and South Asian studies, as well as religious istory and interreligious dialogue.

In 1839 a diverse group of Hindu leaders began gathering in Calcutta to share and propagate their faith in a non-idolatrous form of worship. The group, known as the Tattvabodhini Sabha, met weekly to worship and hear discourses from members on the virtues of a rational and morally responsible mode of worship. They called upon ancient sources of Hindu spirituality to guide them in developing a form of modern theism they referred to as "Vedanta." In this book, Brian Hatcher translates these hitherto unknown discourses and situates them against the backdrop of religious and social change in early colonial Calcutta. Apart from bringing to light the theology and moral vision of an association that was to have a profound influence on religious and intellectual life in nineteenth-century Bengal, Hatcher's analysis promotes reflection on a variety of topics central to understanding the development of modern forms of Hindu belief and practice.

Hinduism in the Modern World presents a new and unprecedented attempt to survey the nature, range, and significance of modern and contemporary Hinduism in South Asia and the global diaspora. Organized to reflect the direction of recent scholarly research, this volume breaks with earlier texts on this subject by seeking to overcome a misleading dichotomy between an elite, intellectualist "modern" Hinduism and the rest of what has so often been misleadingly termed "traditional" or "popular" Hinduism. Without neglecting the significance of modern reformist visions of Hinduism, this book reconceptualizes the meaning of "modern Hinduism" both by expanding its content and by situating its expression within a larger framework of history, ethnography, and contemporary critical theory. This volume equips undergraduate readers with the tools necessary to appreciate the richness and diversity of Hinduism as it has developed during the past two centuries.

Reviving Sati's corpse: Mother India tours and Hindutva in the twenty-first century -- Bibliography -- Index

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.

This book is a thematic study of the poet-thinker Rabindranath Tagore’s conceptual project of harmonizing the one and its many. Tagore’s writings, in Bengali and in English, on religious and social themes are held together by the leitmotif of a “harmony” which operates across several existential, religious, and social polarities – the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, and the individual and the universal. Tagore creatively appropriated materials from diverse sources such as the classical Hindu Vedāntic systems, the folk piety of Bengal, and others, to configure a dialectic which shapes his writings on both religious and social themes. On the one hand, each individual is irreducibly distinct from everyone else, and, on the other hand, each individual gains their spiritual depth precisely by being placed within the dynamic matrices of an interrelated whole. Thus, we find Tagore rejecting certain monastic forms of Hindu world-renunciation and also certain ecstatic dimensions of devotional worship – the former because they efface individuality and the latter because they can generate self-absorbed styles of living. Again, Tagore is as sharply opposed to Bengali imitativeness of English modes of being in the world as he is to Bengali forms of insularity – the former because it dilutes the concrete richness of indigenous lifeforms and the latter because it confines individuals to parochial enclosures. Tagore’s life-long endeavor was to configure a “third way” by rejecting both the blank homogeneity of an undifferentiated one and the particularistic insularities of a multitude without a deeper center of coherence.