New Books in Indian Religions

The Kural (Beacon Press, 2022), is a new translation of the Tamil classical masterpiece Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma, who is an author, poet, performer, and teacher. The interview is an overview of the incomparable translation. Thomas tells us about the book’s inception, the commentary of notes, social conditions of the time Tirukkural was written, multiple ways the book could be read, and how The Kural is inexplicably important in the apocalyptic times we are living in. The interview ends with a wonderful recitation of a verse from The Kural, in both Tamil and English.Shruti Dixit is a PhD Divinity Candidate at CSRP, University of St Andrews, researching the Hindu-Christian Dialogue in Apocalyptic Prophecies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment (Routledge, 2021) provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity.’ By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories.Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Julian Strube's book Global Tantra (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the global exchanges that shaped a subject often associated with sexuality, social liberation, and bodily wellbeing but that also offers insights into political and religious developments in colonial India, involving race, education, and national identity. The study elides boundaries in disciplinary, historical, and regional contexts, tackles issues such as revivalism and reformism, and provides an integrative approach that suggests ideas to advance the debate about (post)colonialism and cultural appropriation.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Scholars have long noticed a discrepancy in how non-Western and Western peoples conceptualize the scientific and religious worlds. Non-Western traditions and communities, such as India, are better positioned to provide an alternative to the Western dualistic thinking of separating science and religion. Dr. Anil Joshi founded the Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (HESCO) in the 1970s as a new movement looking at the economic and development needs of rural villages in the Indian Himalayas and encouraging them to use local resources in order to open up new avenues to self-reliance.Pankaj Jain's book Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India (Routledge, 2018) argues that the concept of dharma, the law that supports the regulatory order of the universe in Indian culture, can be applied as an overarching term for HESCO’s socio-economic work. This book presents the social-environmental work in contemporary India by Dr. Anil Joshi in the Himalayas and by Baba Seechewal in Punjab, combining the ideas of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge systems. Based on these two examples, the book presents the holistic model transcending the dichotomies of nature vs. culture and science vs. religion, especially as practiced and utilized in non-Western societies such as India.Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Raj Balkaran interviews Hanuman Dass, Chairman and Founder of Go Dharmic, about his far-reaching humanitarian work and universal vision if Hindu values. We also touch on his co-authored works with Dr. Nick Sutton of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Rita D. Sherma's book Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics (Lexington Books, 2021) re-assesses the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda from the vantage point of socially-engaged religion in a time of global dislocations and inequities. Due to the complexity of Vivekananda as a historical figure on the cusp of a new era, few works offer a nuanced, academic examination of his liberative vision and legacy.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Raj Balkaran speaks with Laurie Patton, Professor of Religions and President at Middlebury College, about her scholarly journey, educational administration, poetry, trends in scholarship, the significance of Indian myth, and more.Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Today we are joined by Alistair Shearer, a freelance scholar of South Asian religion and culture, and teacher of yoga and the psychology of yoga. He is also the author of The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West (Hurst and Co, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of yoga, the differences between mind and body yoga practices, and the fascinating individuals responsible for the transmission and reception of yoga practices around the world.The Story of Yoga is a comprehensive account of yoga practices from the Vedic period. It defines and focuses on the differences between mind yoga and body yoga. The former was and is a spiritual and older body of practice that was discussed in religious texts including the Bhagavad Gita. Its practitioners used yoga to search for transcendental experiences, magical powers, and union with the universe. By contrast, body yoga centred around asanas (postures) developed later but now dominates a $20 billion-dollar global yoga industry.Shearer’s book is roughly divided into two sections: the first deals with yoga’s always tumultuous and often humorous history. He shows how mind yoga spiritual practices spread from the movement of forest sages, tantric yogis, and rebellious brahmin. Shearer’s discussions of the original religious texts, such as Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, include linguistic analysis and close readings of the text. He carefully explains the meanings of different words, including yoga, which means union, to help to explain how the two dual and at times duelling approaches to yoga, namely mind and body yoga developed at different times, in different places, and for different purposes.From their origins in the subcontinent, both mind and body yoga spread around the world. Yoga’s internationalisation happened especially quickly during times of conflict, notably during the Islamic invasion of the subcontinent and the British Raj. The Story of Yoga includes Western colonizers who sought out yoga for scholarly and spiritual reasons, such as the Theosophical Society, but it does not neglect the perhaps more compelling and certainly more enterprising South Asians, including Swami Vivekananda, K. V. Iyer, and B. K. S. Iyengar, who developed yoga philosophies and styles and popularised them outside of India. The first section of the book also includes a long discussion of women and yogic practice, particularly in the 20th century.The second half of the book engages with contemporary issues in yoga, such as the psychology of mind yoga practices, particularly its use in mindfulness therapy, the health benefits and consequences of popular body yoga styles, and the use of yoga by nationalist’s movements in India.The Story of Yoga is a rich, very compelling, and often funny history of yoga from antiquity in South Asia to its global present. It is an ambitious and comprehensive account that includes both mind and body yoga that will appeal to scholars interested in yoga and sport, South Asian history, intellectual history, and globalisation.Keith Rathbone is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. His book, entitled Sport and physical culture in Occupied France: Authoritarianism, agency, and everyday life, (Manchester University Press, 2022) examines physical education and sports in order to better understand civic life under the dual authoritarian systems of the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime. If you have a title to suggest for this podcast, please contact him at keith.rathbone@mq.edu.au and follow him at @keithrathbone on twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhagavata Purana and Contemporary Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Professor Jonathan B. Edelmann develops a constructive and comparative theological dialogue between Hinduism and Western natural sciences. Describing the Bhagavata tradition and Darwinism as worldviews, the author asks the question in the book, whether a dialogue is even possible between the two traditions with entirely different goals of knowledge. The book elaborates upon the various topics in order to construct the dialogue, such as physicalism of Darwin, Ontology of The Bhagavata, theories of knowledge, and objectivity and testimony in natural sciences. Professor Edelmann ends up providing some overlapping aims of science and religion which makes it possible to undertake a science-religion dialogue. Shruti Dixit is a PhD Divinity Candidate at CSRP, University of St Andrews, researching the Hindu-Christian Dialogue in Apocalyptic Prophecies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Neha Sahgal, Associate Director, Research, at the Pew Research Center speaks of Pew’s ground-breaking research on Indian public opinion on religion. The data shows that Indians maintain a commitment to religious tolerance while also living highly religiously segregated lives. The survey report explores these themes in greater detail along with Indians’ attitudes about caste, religious observance, and a variety of other social and political issues. Find out more about the report here and here. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions