The Experience of Hinduism
The Experience of Hinduism

Author: Maxine Berntsen

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780887066627

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This book presents multi-faceted images of religious experience in the Marathi-speaking region of India. In addition to Irawati Karve's classic, "On the Road," about her pilgrimage to Pandharpur, there are three essays by Karve that appear in English for the first time. Here is possession by gods and ghosts, an actual sermon by an inspired saint in the traditional bhajan style, and an autobiographical account of the religious nationalism of the militant R.S.S. These are engaging, true-to-life accounts of the lives of individual Hindus. Essays and imaginative literature, a poem, and a short story interplay the ideas, concepts, personalities, practices, rituals, and deities of Hinduism in a surprisingly coherent manner.

Unifying Hinduism
Unifying Hinduism

Author: Andrew J. Nicholson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0231149875

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Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.

Essays in Hindu Theology
Essays in Hindu Theology

Author: Anantanand Rambachan

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1506453139

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This work offers a series of theological explorations of themes not usually addressed in standard treatments of the Hindu tradition. RambachanÂs retrieval of these distinctive insights of Hindu theology has implications that extend across the world's religions, and that touches upon key areas of mutual interest and concern. Beginning with a general introduction to the Hindu theological tradition, the book examines several key issues in Hindu theology and its engagement with contemporary religious, social, political, and inter-faith questions, including the theological methods employed in the study of Hinduism, the discernment of vocation, the theological grounds for social justice in the Hindu tradition, religion and nationalism, violence and non-violence, theological resources for interreligious dialogue (especially among Hindus and Christians), hospitality and openness to the stranger, and spirituality and holiness. In exploring these issues, this study draws deeply from Hindu authoritative sources, but does not limit itself to description. Each chapter is also a work in constructive theology, offering an interpretation of the Hindu tradition appropriate for life in our contemporary world. Essays in Hindu Theology will be of great interest not only to theologians and scholars, but to all who are invested in interreligious understanding and theological engagements with modern challenges.

Digital Hinduism
Digital Hinduism

Author: Murali Balaji

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1498559182

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This edited volume seeks to build a scholarly discourse about how Hinduism is being defined, reformed, and rearticulated in the digital era and how these changes are impacting the way Hindus view their own religious identities. It seeks to interrogate how digital Hinduism has been shaped in response to the dominant framing of the religion, which has often relied on postcolonial narratives devoid of context and an overemphasis on the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent post-partition. From this perspective, this volume challenges previous frameworks of how Hinduism has been studied, particularly in the West, where Marxist and Orientalist approaches are often ill-fitting paradigms to understanding Hinduism. This volume engages with and critiques some of these approaches while also enriching existing models of research within media studies, ethnography, cultural studies, and religion.

Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu
Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu

Author: Michael J. Altman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0190654929

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Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu is a groundbreaking analysis of American representations of religion in India before the turn of the twentieth century. Before Americans wrote about "Hinduism," they wrote about "heathenism," "the religion of the Hindoos," and "Brahmanism." Americans used the heathen, Hindoo, and Hindu as an other against which they represented themselves. The questions of American identity, classification, representation and the definition of "religion" that animated descriptions of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus in the past still animate American debates today.