New Books in Hindu Studies

How did Brahma create alluring women, and for what purpose? Why did the righteous King Bhangashvana choose womanhood? How did the sage Markandeya's pupil prevent his guru's wife from committing adultery? What role did Indra play in the births of Vishvamitra and Parashu Rama? How were death, diseases, desire and anger created? Why and how did the institution of kingship come about? What can one learn from the mouse who escaped the cat, the owl, the mongoose and the hunter; or the wise jackal who was betrayed by the lion king? Why did Shiva swallow Shukra, the guru of the Asuras? Embedded within the lengthy discourse on dharma in the Shanti and Anushasana Parvans of the Mahabharata are answers to a whole range of such questions-moral lessons from a dying Bhishma to King Yudhishthira, on life, death and everything in between. The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals: Some Moral Tales From The Mahabharata is a highly entertaining selection of these tales-tangled at times, insightful at others, yet always quirky-about women, both good and bad, fathers and sons, kings, gods and kings of gods, and fables. The perceptive translations by Wendy Doniger, hailed as 'the greatest living mythologist', are a treat for anyone fascinated by the bewildering complexity of Hindu myth and lore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and leader of the Centre for South Asian Democracy. M. Sudhir Selvaraj is Assistant Professor at the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. Kathinka Frøystad is Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Oslo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts (Oxford UP, 2025) serves to expand readers' understanding of what it meant to practice alchemy on the Indian subcontinent. With its broad selection of examined themes, this collection offers a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the Indian alchemical idiom and the beliefs and practices of its practitioners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India's total area and is home to over 40 per cent of India's population. It provides the country with over 40 per cent of its parliamentarians and determines the contours of national politics (out of the fifteen prime ministers India has had since 1947, eight have been from the Hindi belt). Yet, despite its political significance, the Hindi belt is among the most impoverished regions in the country. It consumes the bulk of the country's resources, but lags behind other states on various economic and welfare indices. It is plagued by violence, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, poor life expectancy, and numerous other ills. Centuries of war, conquests, invasions, political movements, and religious unrest have made the heartland a place of immense paradox. Despite its extraordinary and timeless religious heritage-some of the country's most revered spiritual leaders were born here and it is home to innumerable shrines and places of pilgrimage-it has also witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country and has been troubled by long-running, divisive sectarian politics. Many of India's founders, who gave the country its secular identity, hailed from the heartland, but so too did those who have spread religious discord. And the land of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb routinely witnesses lynching and murder in the name of religion. The Hindi Heartland: A Study (Aleph Book Company, 2025) is divided into five sections. Section I explores the geography of the region, which stretches from Rajasthan in the west to Jharkhand in the east with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh in between. The author then looks at caste, religion, the rural-urban divide, and the tribes who belong to the region. In the chapter on the economy, she attempts to show how the economic backwardness of the Hindi belt has come about through faulty and myopic post- Independence policies conceived by various governments-these have come in the way of sustained and inclusive development. The chapter on language chronicles both the emergence of Hindi as the primary lingua franca of this region at the cost of other languages, as well as the politics that linked language with religion. The last chapter in this section explores the influence of the heartland on what is today popularly understood to be Indian culture. Section II looks at the medieval and modern history of the region and covers the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Marathas, and the East India Company. Section III examines British colonialism through the lens of empire building, and shows how the imperialists distorted history to facilitate their divide and rule policy. It also dwells on the deliberate economic impoverishment of the Hindi belt and how this continues to impact the region even after Independence. Section IV analyses the freedom struggle-and covers among other things the emergence of the idea of India and the increasing Hinduization of that idea. It establishes the Hindi belt's criticality to Gandhi's satyagraha, and the success of the British Indian government's experiments with strategies that divided communities, which eventually led to the partition of the country. Section V appraises developments in the region after Independence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Yoga Studies in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2025) provides an accessible guide to the diverse and growing field of research into yoga as a social, historical and cultural phenomenon. Both leading scholars and innovative researchers offer 60 brief responses to questions that offer insights into the study of yoga, such as: Who was the first teacher of yoga? Is yoga Indian? What is parampara? Are there holy texts in yoga? What are the goals of yoga? Why do yogis hold their breath? The collection covers ancient history, modern developments, and contemporary issues, considers the diverse practices and philosophies of yoga in a range of contexts, and uses a range of approaches, from philology to anthropology to art history. The collection is useful for established scholars looking to broaden their understanding of this rapidly developing field, as well as for those new to the subject. The book is an ideal starting point for both independent study and the classroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual devotion - they are also political acts, affirmations of identity and engagements with deep-rooted historical narratives. In Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World (Profile, 2025) Professor Kathryn Hurlock follows the trail of pilgrimage through nineteen sacred sites - from the temples of Jerusalem to the banks of the Ganges, by way of Iona, Lourdes, Amritsar and Buenos Aires - revealing the many ways in which this ancient practice has shaped our religions and our world. Pilgrimages have transformed the fates of cities, anointed dynasties, provided guidance in hard times and driven progress in good. Filled with fascinating insights, Holy Places unveils the complex histories and contemporary endurance of one of our most fundamental human urges. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

What happens when an analyst conducts interviews—and I am not speaking here about interviewing other analysts as we do at NBiP, but rather what happens when an analyst does field research, and researches one of the eternal subjects of our field which is to say love and also, to borrow from Gregorio Kohon, its' vicissitudes? Locating within himself demeaning feelings towards an other—and the setting is a psych ward in India, and in an India that continues to rework its having been partitioned, having partitioned itself, and the other is a Muslim other in a Hindu majority nation—the author, Ashis Roy, wants to know more about what he calls his “communal mind”, a mind that developed in a country where, “Muslims know the Hindu myths but the reverse is not true,” so a mind that was afforded an instant other to deposit its unwanted contents into. His book, Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Muslim Relationships, explicates intimacy and asymmetry, as it delves into cross-religious desire, and in this case the forbidden desire of Hindus for Muslims, and Muslims for Hindus, which, when acknowledged, threatens social, familial, and cultural mores, and also the prerogatives of the state. Who are these people, Roy asks, who take such a step, which is a step that can lead to a kind of social death, akin, in the American context from which I write, to the experience of gay people who come out and are brutally shorn of their families, communities, and sometimes their lives? The power of desire, a power beyond us, in excess of ourselves always, can propel us to this vertiginous place. Perhaps, and only perhaps, it can also push us to live in ways that reject socially and politically enforced liminality as well. One starts to imagine these couples, engaged ongoingly by Roy, as healing a malignant split that beats at the heart of contemporary Indian life. Roy's thinking draws from the myriad psychoanalytic theories of Kakar, Green, Erikson, Altman, Bollas, and Phillips, (among others), all of them kings of our trade, many of their names never uttered in the same breath—(I am thinking especially of Green and Altman.) Fascinatingly, he also orients himself to his material by engaging the work of two historians (queens of their own domains) and they are the American, Joan Wallach Scott and rather especially (or that is my read) the Italian scholar Luisa Passerini. Like Roy, Passerini delved deeply into her own milieu, and like Roy she performed interviews with her peers who participated in what is commonly called the anni interessante in Italy (known for its red brigades, the murder of Aldo Moro, wildcat strikes in the auto industry alongside acts of student solidarity) all of which happened while she was in Africa. Her book, Autobiography of a Generation (1983), reads as an effort to be in touch with something fundamental about her homeland that she missed. My impression is that Intimacy in Alienation serves a similar purpose for Roy, who realizes that there is a world nearby that remained visually and affectively sidelined. Both wanted to see what had previously been, for various reasons, scotomized. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In this episode, Raj Balkaran speaks with Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker, and Valerie Stoker about A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, 2024), a landmark six-volume series that traces Hindu traditions from the ancient world to the present. Each volume is organized around eight core themes—Sources of Authority; Body and Mind; Social Organization; Identity and Difference; Politics and Power; Arts and Visual Culture; Lineages and Exemplars; and Global Contexts—allowing readers to compare developments across historical periods. Covering the Ancient, Classical, Post-Classical, Empires, Late Colonial, and Independence eras, the series brings together leading voices in Hindu studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the temple's ancient Hindu and Muslim history, an annual festival at Hinglaj has only been established within the last three decades, in part because of the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway, which connects the distant rural shrine with urban Pakistan. Now, an increasingly confident minority Hindu community has claimed Hinglaj as their main religious center, a site for undisturbed religious performance and expression. In Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan (Oxford UP, 2018) Jürgen Schaflechner studies literary sources in Hindi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu alongside extensive ethnographical research at the shrine, examining the political and cultural influences at work at the temple and tracking the remote desert shrine's rapid ascent to its current status as the most influential Hindu pilgrimage site in Pakistan. Schaflechner introduces the unique character of this place of pilgrimage and shows its modern importance not only for Hindus, but also for Muslims and Sindhi nationalists. Ultimately, this is an investigation of the Pakistani Hindu community's beliefs and practices at their largest place of worship in the Islamic Republic today--a topic of increasing importance to Pakistan's contemporary society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

India's Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European colonization during the politically volatile period of 1599-1799. India's Non-violent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799) (Routledge, 2023) has three related objectives and unique characteristics. First, it offers a comprehensive study of primary sources that scholars have referenced but rarely studied in-depth. Second, it argues that the Thomas Christian narratives provide a unique position to challenge prevalent estimations found in canonical and postcolonial critical discourse on the nation. Third, it considers how an account of a nonviolent struggle by Thomas Christians further complicates received ideas of the postcolonial nation. It sheds light on the often-overlooked contributions of the Thomas Christians in India's nonviolent freedom struggle and challenges readers to reimagine the complex and often contentious relationship between colonizers and colonized.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This open access book, Yoga and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on several dimensions of animal-related ethical reflection and action. "Yoga" has become a household word in recent decades and, increasingly, has drawn physical yoga practitioners to explore its philosophy; significantly, classical yoga philosophy and praxis are deeply grounded in realizing the self in relation with all beings as non-material selves. Therefore yoga provides an ideal entry-way into contemporary animal ethics discourse, contributing particularly in its appeal to the experiential dimension of human self-understanding in relation to nonhuman animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Dr. Christopher Chapple, founder of Loyola Marymount University's pioneering M.A. in Yoga Studies, joins us to discuss how the program blends rigorous scholarship with embodied practice. We explore its study of Sanskrit, classical texts, philosophy, and modern applications, as well as its flexible residential and low-residency formats. Hear how this unique graduate program is shaping the next generation of yoga teachers, scholars, and leaders. Website here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Vedic Myths and Rituals, edited by Jan E.M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, is a scholarly volume exploring the deep interplay between mythic narrative and ritual practice in the Vedic tradition. Drawing on diverse case studies—from the myth of Pedu's horse to the consecration rites of the Soma sacrifice—the book examines how ritual structure, symbolic meaning, and cosmic time converge in Vedic religious life. Engaging theoretical models like Roy Rappaport's ritual theory, the contributors reveal how Vedic rituals generate “time out of time,” sustain cosmic order, and transform participants. With essays from leading scholars and an unpublished contribution by Dipak Bhattacharya, the volume offers rich insights into the ritual logic, mythic imagination, and philosophical depth of ancient Indian traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This conversation examines the newly published translation of the Varāha Upaniṣad, a lesser-known but deeply transformative scripture from the Kṛṣṇa‑Yajurveda, composed between the 13th and 16th centuries CE and spanning 249 verses.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In this episode, Dr. Raj Balkaran speaks with art historian and curator Alisa Lozhkina about her groundbreaking Ukrainian translation of the Devī Māhātmya—the first ever in the language. They explore the inspiration behind this bold project, the text's unique reception in the Ukrainian cultural and spiritual landscape, and broader reflections on the relevance of goddess traditions in times of crisis. The conversation also ranges into the challenges and freedoms of independent scholarship and the emerging role of artificial intelligence in research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The anthology presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished Gandhian scholars contribute to this collection, setting it apart from similar compilations by focusing not just on Gandhi's impact or the debate over his relevance, but on maintaining his bold ethical ideals and progressive views in an era of skepticism. The essays delve into Gandhi's comprehensive dissection of political logic, his concept of neighbourly political bonds, his fearlessness and adeptness as a yogi. The work also discusses the worldwide landscape of nonviolence, Gandhi's perspectives on Palestine, his legal work in South Africa, his dialogues with Tagore, the pursuit of his ethical goals, and the portrayal of his persona, as well as the ongoing relevance of his nonviolent resistance methods, as seen in India's anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests. These pieces portray Gandhi as a perpetual participant in limitless endeavours, as described by philosopher James Carse. The book concludes with an interview with Rev. James Lawson, a pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, which offers a fresh perspective. The Gandhi that emerges from these reflections and intellectual explorations has become all but a stranger to India, and especially to his native Gujarat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Sanskritist and seasoned teacher Dr. Antonia Ruppel shares her views on the merits and pitfalls of academic enterprise, the brave new world of self-employed scholarship and the teaching of ancient languages.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. Some of the collective's members remain deeply committed to reinitiating metaphysics into politics, and similarly, the collective's enduring interest in Narayana Guru is reflected in at least three chapters. Although engagement with Gandhi and Ambedkar is a familiar part of the Indian intellectual landscape, other chapters on offer pivot around histories of power, performative traditions, and modes of worship. Unlike the scholarship that is now the norm, organized around a distinct theme, this volume exhibits a more daring approach to India's intellectual traditions, traversing the world of Kannada intellectuals, the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, a Marathi Bhakti poet, and a contemporary Indian philosopher, as much as conceptual ideas drawn from a wide array of Indian texts and experiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is joining me to talk about her new book, Cave of my Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora published by Chicago University Press in 2024, and in 2025 as an Indian edition by HarperCollins India. As a young girl in Bombay, Kirin Narayan was enthralled by her father's stories about how their ancestors had made the ancient rock-cut cave temples at Ellora. Recalling those stories as an adult, she was inspired to learn more about the caves, especially the Buddhist worship hall known as the “Vishwakarma cave.” Immersing herself in family history, oral traditions, and works by archaeologists, art historians, scholars of Buddhism, Indologists, and Sanskritists, in Cave of my Ancestors Narayan set out to answer the question of how this cave came to be venerated as the home of Vishwakarma, the god of making in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Part scholarship, part detective story, and memoir, Narayan's book leads readers through centuries of history, offering a sensitive meditation on devotion, wonder, and all that connects us to place, family, the past, and the divine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir after the Pratyabhijna school, a scenario people could hardly envisage six decades back when it first came to the notice of modern scholarship. The doctrine of Kalikrama, lit. sequential order of consciousness deities called Kalis, constitutes the most pivotal aspect of this school marked by a synchronous resonance between the esoteric/Tantric and cognitive/metaphysical undercurrents of the system. In order to delve deeper into the doctrine of Kalikrama the present monograph does some loud thinking in three important areas: (a) the role of cognitivization in the ultimate realization; (b) the theoretical background of the mystical experience built around the consciousness deity(ies); and (c) the inconclusiveness of the hidden meaning posing an epistemological barrier in the study of an esoteric Tantric tradition. In all these areas one cannot miss the imprints of Abhinavagupta's profound contribution. As such, the present study journeys into three directions: (1) a short genealogy of modern Krama studies; (2) the epistemology of the esoteric internalization embodied in the doctrine of Kalikrama; and (3) the role played by Abhinavagupta as its foremost architect. As such, the present study needs be construed as a small step towards discovering the intrinsic epistemological ethos of an esoteric Tantric tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Invisible Fire by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single cognitive field manifesting through subject-object perception. Drawing from Vedic roots and cognitive linguistics, Jurewicz argues that creation, bondage, and liberation are all epistemic processes. Misrecognition leads to suffering; liberation arises through refined cognition and self-recognition. The “invisible fire” symbolizes transformative awareness latent in ritual, memory, and selfhood. Integrating modern theories of metaphor, play, and responsibility, the book reveals early Smṛti as a sophisticated philosophy of consciousness rooted in tradition and aimed at ontological and ethical integration. Fire and cognition in the RgvedaFire, Death and Philosophy. A History of Ancient Indian ThinkingInvisible Fire. Memory, Tradition and the Self in Early Hindu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that various patterns of amicability and antipathy have been generated towards Muslims over the last six hundred years and these patterns emerge at dynamic intersections between Hindu self-understandings and social shifts on contested landscapes. The core of the book is a set of translations of the Bengali writings of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), and Annada Shankar Ray (1904-2002). Their lives were deeply interwoven with some Hindu-Muslim synthetic ideas and subjectivities, and these involvements are articulated throughout their writings which provide multiple vignettes of contemporary modes of amity and antagonism. Barua argues that the characterization of relations between Hindus and Muslims either in terms of an implacable hostility or of an unfragmented peace is historically inaccurate, for these relations were modulated by a shifting array of socio-economic and socio-political parameters. It is within these contexts that Rabindranath, Nazrul, and Annada Shankar are developing their thoughts on Hindus and Muslims through the prisms of religious humanism and universalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil and water. Clearly, they don't mix. One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors (Fortress Press, 2025) confronts these popular perceptions head-on. With keen insight and gentle understanding, Amir Hussain explores the differences between Christianity and Islam, as well as the many things these two enduring faith traditions hold in common - including, first and foremost, their belief in and desire to be faithful to the one, true God; their shared roots and scripture (from the Jewish faith); and the spiritual values of peace and social justice. In all of this, the book invites the reader to a place of reconciliation, to a place where the truth and value of each of these great faith traditions can be recognized and honored by the other. In the end, the metaphor of oil and water is an interesting one for the reality of conflict and the hope for reconciliation between Islam and Christianity today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This monograph outlines the core principles of equity and trusts in Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) and traces their application in the practical legal administration of religious and charitable endowments throughout Indian history. Dharmaśāstra describes phenomena that, in Anglo-American jurisprudence, are associated with courts of equity: the management of religious and charitable trusts; and the guardianship of those who lack legal capacity. Drawing on Sanskrit jurisprudential and philosophical texts, ancient inscriptions, Persian legal documents, colonial-era law reports, and contemporary case law, Equity and Trusts in Sanskrit Jurisprudence demonstrates that India's rulers have drawn on rich and venerable Sanskrit jurisprudential principles of equity and trusts in their efforts to regulate religious and charitable endowments. This book presents the history of India as a history of trusts, revealing how the contemporary law of Hindu religious endowments is subtended by a rich mélange of Sanskritic, Persianate, British, and constitutional jurisprudential principles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas through migration and trade. In this magisterial history, Audrey Truschke tells the fascinating story of the region historically known as India--which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan--and the people who have lived there. A sweeping account of five millennia, from the dawn of the Indus Valley Civilization to the twenty-first century, this engaging and richly textured narrative chronicles the most important political, social, religious, intellectual, and cultural events. And throughout, it describes how the region has been continuously reshaped by its astonishing diversity, religious and political innovations, and social stratification. Here, readers will learn about Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and Sikhism; the Vedas and Mahabharata; Ashoka and the Mauryan Empire; the Silk Road; the Cholas; Indo-Persian rule; the Mughal Empire; European colonialism; national independence movements; the 1947 Partition of India; the recent rise of Hindu nationalism; the challenges of climate change; and much more. Emphasizing the diversity of human experiences on the subcontinent, the book presents a wide range of voices, including those of women, religious minorities, lower classes, and other marginalized groups. You cannot understand India today without appreciating its deeply contested history, which continues to drive current events and controversies. A comprehensive and innovative book, India is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the past, present, or future of the subcontinent. Audrey Truschke is professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, Newark. She is the bestselling author of Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King and other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In the second half of the eighteenth century, several British East India Company servants published accounts of what they deemed to be the original and ancient religion of India. Drawing on what are recognised today as the texts and traditions of Hinduism, these works fed into a booming enlightenment interest in Eastern philosophy. At the same time, the Company's aggressive conquest of Bengal was facing a crisis of legitimacy and many of the prominent political minds of the day were turning their attention to the question of empire. In this original study, Jessica Patterson situates these Company works on the ‘Hindu religion' in the twin contexts of enlightenment and empire. In doing so, she uncovers the central role of heterodox religious approaches to Indian religions for enlightenment thought, East India Company policy and contemporary ideas of empire. Dr Jessica Patterson is an Assistant Professor in History and Politics at the University of Cambridge. The host, Shruti Jain, is a PhD candidate at SUNY Binghamton University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This book engages historically and theologically with the Hindu and Jewish traditions, covering conceptions of the divine, religious heroes, women, devotional literature, theodicy, land, and nationalist claims on it, and social differentiation and oppression. Scholarly considerations are enriched with actual conversations between Hindus and Jews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Examining the interplay of religion, history, and literature through a case study of King Krsnadevaraya's celebrated Telugu poem Āmuktamālyada, Ilanit Loewy Shacham showcases the groundbreaking worldview that this often-overlooked poem embodies. Krsnadevaraya (r.1509-1529) ruled over the Vijayanagara Empire during its heyday, and his monumental poem situates all power and authority not in the imperial center, but in the villages and temples at the empire's outskirts; not in the royal court, but in a religious community - a worldview radically different from how literary and political histories portray the king and his empire. Empire Inside Out: Religion, Conquest, and Community in Kṛṣṇadevarāya's Āmuktamālyada explores the Āmuktamālyada as a reflection of one of South Asia's most culturally complex periods, highlighting its rich religious, political, historical and ethnographic detail. Moreover, Loewy Shacham examines the Āmuktamālyada as the work of a king imparting personal insights on empire, kingship, and individuality - specifically, that it is possible to be unbounded by the institution of kingship that he himself embodies. This book demonstrates that Krsnadevaraya's text connects the imperial domain to the village and temple settings, and to the south Indian community of Srivaisnava devotees-and indeed that it situates the source of authority and power not in the royal court but in the margins, where Srivaisnavism originated, giving the far Tamil south a central role in its imperial vision. Employing close textual analysis of the Āmuktamālyada, supplemented by a rich corpus of texts in different languages and genres, Empire Inside Out illuminates a piece of literature that has been fairly neglected, owing to the particularized linguistic and literary training required. The core of the book is based in the historical context of sixteenth-century Vijayanagara, from which it moves to the various pasts that helped shape the Āmuktamālyada, and to our contemporary times and the use of the text in constructing (at times rewriting) history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Since the earliest encounters between tantric traditions and Western scholars of religion, tantra has posed a challenge. The representation of tantra, whether in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Tibet, or Japan, has tended to emphasize the antinomian, decadent aspects, which, as attention-grabbing as they were for audiences in the West, created a one-dimensional understanding, and hampered the academic study of the field for more than a century. Additionally, the Western perspective on religion has been dominated by doctrinal studies. As a result, sectarian boundaries between different tantric traditions are frequently replicated in the scholarship, and research tends to be sequestered according to different schools of South Asian, Central Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian tantric traditions.The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to overcome these obstacles, facilitating collaboration between scholars working on different forms of tantra. The Introduction provides an overview of major issues confronting the field today, including debates regarding the definition and category of "tantra" historical origins, recent developments in gender studies and tantra, ethnography and "lived tantra" and cognitive approaches to tantra. Using a topical framework, the opening section explores the concept of action, one of the most prominent features of tantra, which includes performing rituals, practicing meditation, chanting, embarking on a pilgrimage, or re-enacting moments from a sacred text. From there, the sections cover broad topics such as transformation, gender and embodiment, "extraordinary" beings (such as deities and saints), art and visual expressions, language and literature, social organizations, and the history and historiography of tantra. With co-editors in chief who specialize in the Hindu and Buddhist perspectives, a global pool of contributors, and over 40 chapters, the Handbook aims to provide the definitive reference work in this dynamic field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Claiming Citizenship: Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization Among New Americans (Oxford UP, 2025) looks at Indian Americans, currently the second-largest group of immigrants in the United States, and a group that has seen significant representation in the three most recent presidential administrations. Prema Kurien asks how Indian Americans have become a rising political force given that they have not followed the traditional, recommended model of political influence. She examines the dialectical process through which immigrants conform to the structures and cultures of the society to which they have immigrated, but also work to transform their adopted homelands to accommodate their unique needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter (Routledge, 2025) is a research inquiry in interfaith studies that uses hermeneutical phenomenology to address vexing issues arising in the study of mysticism and enlightened sages. This book raises the following questions: If all human beings have access to mystical consciousness, and some do access it, how is it that only a few become luminary sages, displaying extraordinary power? What is the ethical responsibility of such sages? And how is the encounter among sages/mystics of different traditions contributing to the harmonious unfolding of religious diversity? The author provides original answers and a renewed vision of Hinduism through the lens of two of the most loved and admired sages of modern India—Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo. This book is a blueprint for transformative research on religion: it envisions an innovative method—integrative hermeneutical phenomenology—contributing to the development of interfaith mysticism. Bringing to the fore key themes such as Self-realization, the Hari-Hara mystery, and Mystic Fire, the author shows the importance of mystical experience in the understanding of the religious “Other” and the future of religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Wendy Doniger's An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963–64 (SUNY Press, 2023) is a memoir-style collection of letters and reflections from her first trip to India as a young scholar. It offers a rare glimpse into the formative experiences that shaped her future career in Indology. The personal letters of her younger self are in conversation with reflections of her older self. Using this work as a launchpad, this interview broaches Doniger's personal and professional life learning through the course of her prominent career, spanning over five decades. This conversation commemorates Raj Balkaran's 400th New Books Network interview.  Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes's famous Don Quijote. In this book the Kashmiri translation and the corresponding parts of Jarvis's English version are presented on facing pages. The Kashmiri text is reproduced as a facsimile of the autograph prepared by Pandit Jagaddhar Zadoo, one of the two Kashmiri translators. The Kashmiri text in the present volume was written on modern paper in easily legible Devanagari characters by using only a few more additional diacritic symbols. This publication contains an introduction written by Surindar Nath Pandita, a grandson of Pandit Nityanand Shastri. The book can be regarded as a conjoined twin of the partial Sanskrit translation of Don Quijote published as volume III of the Pune Indological Series in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This book is a sociological study of knowledge and knowers and explores the production and perceived value of 'yogic knowledge', how distinction is curated, and how access to this knowledge is gained. The book focuses on the organization Shanti Mandir (SM) in India, a new religious movement, which was founded in 1987 by Swami Nityananda Saraswati. By identifying the structuring forces of the guru's discourse, and focusing on the marketing strategies and subsequent exchanges of capital and affective emotions, this monograph documents what the legitimate yogic identity promoted by SM is within the context of the transglobal yoga industry. A highly original and incisive portrait of an Indian devotional community with strong transnational connections, this book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Indian religion and yoga. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

With a compelling story, wit, insight, and candor, American author Stephen Huyler leads the reader into the heart of India. It is a country and culture he knows and loves well. Beginning with his arrival on his twentieth birthday, he spins tales of a young man's fascination that seasons into a rare relationship that has lasted half a century. Few foreigners have traveled as extensively in India as he. Huyler has learned to feel the pulse of the people. His innate adaptability has enabled him to be truly quiet, observing, accepting, and accepted by a remarkable range of individuals from maharajah to musician, Brahman to Dalit, and politician to potter. His memoirs are an evocation of an India rarely seen by outsiders: portraits of people, places, and customs. Transformed by India: A Life (Pippa Rann, 2025) combines humor with pathos, delight with dismay, sacred with secular, and tranquility with suspense. His narrative flows and unfolds seamlessly through a life transformed by India. Stephen P. Huyler is an art historian, cultural anthropologist, photographer and author conducting a lifelong survey of the India's sacred art and crafts and their meanings within rural societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its relationship with secularism in Bangladesh from pre-British to contemporary times. It focuses on the importance of understanding the dynamics between religion and secularism within specific cultural contexts. Arguing that extremist interpretations of Islam, which aim to establish a theocratic state, have not been able to influence the pluralistic religious and cultural life of Bangladesh substantially, the book shows that religious and cultural pluralism will continue to thrive despite the apparent threat posed by increasing religiosity among Bangladeshi Muslims. This book is a timely and significant contribution to the discourse on secularism and Islam, with relevance beyond Bangladesh and the wider Islamic world. It will appeal to scholars and researchers working in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religions, and the Sociology of Religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit Prosopographical Database of Indic Texts. It also facilitates exploration of the Sanskrit E-Text Inventory (SETI) as an overlay on the Pandit network.  Tyler's blog "Sanskrit and Tech with Tyler" is here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō) defines and exemplifies 42 figures of speech or “ornaments” in 134 verses. It is the only surviving work of poetics in Prakrit, a literary language closely related to Sanskrit. It is one of the earliest representatives of the larger Indian discourse on poetics, and is especially closely linked to Bhāmaha's Ornament of Literature (Kāvyālaṅkāra). This book includes an introduction, annotated translation, glossary, and diplomatic and critical editions of the single surviving manuscript of the Mirror of Ornaments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Metaphysics As Therapy: List-Making and Renunciation in Gnostic Yogas (Springer, 2025) examines the significance of metaphysical list-making as a determining feature of 'spiritual exercises' in South Asian gnostic yogas. It examines how these ancient traditions sought spiritual transformation through the dialectical practice of taxonomy. It highlights the gnostic thread that intersects 'spiritual exercises' and 'ways of life' in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina circles.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal (Duke UP, 2024), Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the multifarious habits and personalities of Bengal's traditional ghosts and investigates and mourns their eventual extermination. For Bhattacharya, British colonization marked a transition from the older, multifaith folk world of traditional ghosts to newer and more frightening specters. These "modern" Bengali ghosts, borne out of a new rationality, were homogeneous specters amenable to "scientific" speculation and invoked at séance sessions in elite drawing rooms. Reading literature alongside the colonial archive, Bhattacharya uncovers a new reordering of science and faith from the middle of the nineteenth century. She argues that these shifts cemented the authority of a rising upper-caste colonial elite who expelled the older ghosts in order to recast Hinduism as the conscience of the Indian nation. In so doing, Bhattacharya reveals how capitalism necessarily reshaped Bengal as part of the global colonial project. Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In Yogalands (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025), Paul Bramadat wrestles with his position as a skeptical scholar who is also a devoted yoga practitioner. Drawing from his own experience, and from conversations with hundreds of yoga teachers and students in the United States and Canada, he seeks to understand what yoga means for people in the modern West. In doing so, he addresses issues that often sit beneath the surface in yogaland: why yoga's religious dimensions are rarely mentioned in classes; how the relationship between yoga and trauma might be reconsidered; and how yoga seems to have survived debates around nationalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual misconduct. Yogalands encourages practitioners and critics to be more curious about yoga. For insiders, this can deepen their practice, and for observers, this approach is an inspiring and unsettling model for engaging with other passionate commitments. Paul Bramadat is director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions