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Knut A. Jacobsen's edited volume The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Diaspora (Oxford UP, 2023) presents the histories and religious traditions of Hindus with a South Asian ancestral background living outside of South Asia. Hinduism is …
Guest: Knut A. Jacobsen
Date: 2/22/2024
During British colonial rule in India, the treatment of high-caste Hindu widows became the subject of great controversy. Such women were not permitted to remarry and were offered two options: a life of seclusion and rigorous asceticism or …
Guest: David Brick
Date: 1/25/2024
The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Vineeta Sinha's Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia (Berghahn Books, …
Guest: Vineeta Sinha
Date: 12/20/2023
Pankaj Jain's book Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach (Springer, 2023) presents a substantive yet accessible introduction to the modern thought of Jainism. It examines the life and thought of some of the most influential 19th- and …
Guest: Pankaj Jain
Date: 12/14/2023
The story Afsar Mohammad's book Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad (Cambridge UP, 2023) follows begins on August 15, 1947. As the new nation-states of India and Pakistan prepared to negotiate land and power, …
Guest: Afsar Mohammad
Date: 12/6/2023
Keith Cantú's Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami And Śivarājayoga (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the life of a nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Tamil yogin named Sri Sabhapati Swami (Śrī Sabhāpati Svāmī or Capāpati …
Guest: Keith Cantú
Date: 11/16/2023
Against High-Caste Polygamy: An Annotated Translation (Oxford UP, 2023) offers a complete, annotated translation of Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar's 1871 tract arguing against the practice of high-caste Kulin marriage in Bengal. Vidyasagar …
Guest: Brian A. Hatcher
Date: 10/4/2023
Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (U Chicago Press, 2023) invites us to consider how colonial …
Guest: J. Barton Scott
Date: 6/22/2023
How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages, innumerable religious and intellectual movements have proposed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the "subtle body," positing some sort of subtle entity …
Guest: Simon Paul Cox
Date: 6/15/2023
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023) explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a fine-grained study …
Guest: Divya Cherian
Date: 5/18/2023