Download or read book The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind written by David Kopf and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the forerunners of Indian modernization, the community of Bengali intellectuals known as the Brahmo Samaj played a crucial role in the genesis and development of every major religious, social, and political movement in India from 1820 to 1930. David Kopf launches a comprehensive generation- to-generation study of this group in order to understand the ideological foundations of the modern Indian mind. His book constitutes not only a biographical and a sociological study of the Brahmo Samaj, but also an intellectual history of modern India that ranges from the Unitarian social gospel of Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore's universal humanism and Jessie Bose's scientism. From a variety of biographical sources, many of them in Bengali and never before used in research, the author makes available much valuable information. In his analysis of the interplay between the ideas, the consciousness, and the lives of these early rebels against the Hindu tradition, Professor Kopf reveals the subtle and intricate problems and issues that gradually shaped contemporary Indian consciousness. What emerges from this group portrait is a legacy of innovation and reform that introduced a rationalist tradition of thought, liberal political consciousness, and Indian nationalism, in addition to changing theology and ritual, marriage laws and customs, and the status of women. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Keshab written by John Stevens and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84) was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in nineteenth-century Bengal. A religious leader and social reformer, his universalist interpretation of Hinduism found mass appeal in India, and generated considerable interest in Britain. His ideas on British imperial rule, religion and spirituality, global history, universalism and modernity were all influential, and his visit to England made him a celebrity. Many Britons regarded him as a prophet of world-historical significance. Keshab was the subject of extreme adulation and vehement criticism. Accounts tell of large crowds prostrating themselves before him, believing him to be an avatar. Yet he died with relatively few followers, his reputation in both India and Britain largely ruined. As a representative of India, Keshab became emblematic of broad concerns regarding Hinduism and Christianity, science and faith, India and the British Empire. This innovative study explores the transnational historical forces that shaped Keshab's life and work. It offers an alternative religious history of empire, characterized by intercultural dialogue and religious syncretism. A fascinating and often tragic portrait of Keshab's experience of the imperial world, and the ways in which he carried meaning for his contemporaries.

Download or read book The Brahmo Samaj and its Vai ava Milieus written by Ankur Barua and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus: Intersections of Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal, Ankur Barua offers an intellectual history of the motif of religious universalism in the writings of some intellectuals associated with the Brahmo Samaj.

Download or read book Imaginations of Death and the Beyond in India and Europe written by Günter Blamberger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores current images of afterlife/afterdeath and the presence of the dead in the imaginations of the living in Indian and European traditions. Specifically, it focuses on the deepest and most fundamental uncertainty of human existence---the awareness of human mortality, on which depends any assignment of meaning to earthly existence as also to notions of worldly and otherworldly salvation. This central idea is addressed in the literature, arts, audiovisual media and other cultural artefacts of the two traditions. The chapters are based on two main assumptions: First, that one cannot report on the direct experience of death; so it is only possible to speak allegorically of it. Second, in contemporary Western societies, marked by structural atheism, people look at literature, the arts and mass media to study their depiction and reading of traditionally religious questions of disease, death and the Beyond. This is in contrast to Asian civilizations whose preoccupation with death and Beyond is persistent and perhaps central to the civilizations’ highest thought. The chapters cover a wide spectrum of disciplinary approaches, from psychoanalysis to religious, anthropological, literary and film studies, from sociology and philosophy to art history, and address issues of unsettling power: comforting illusions of afterlife; the relations between afterlife and fertility; visions of technological immortalization of mankind; the problem of thinking about death after the “death of God”; socialist utopias of bodily immortality; fear of Hell and punishment; different concepts in relating the living and the dead; near-death experiences; and cultural practices of spiritualism, occultism and suicide.

Download or read book Swami Vivekananda written by Narasingha Prosad Sil and published by Susquehanna University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book also takes a hard look at his universally acknowledged reputation as a hypercosmological renouncer who championed the causes of the poor and the downtrodden and thus exemplified the doctrines of socialism at their finest. Sil is the first scholar to critically examine Vivekananda's attitude toward women in general and to probe into his experience with Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita) in particular, and he is the first author to provide a detailed analysis of Vivekananda's popularity as a preacher and lecturer.

Download or read book The First Hindu Mission to America written by Sunrit Mullick and published by Northern Book Centre. This book was released on 2010 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book positions Brahmo Samaj leader Protap Chunder Mozoomdar as the originator of the Hindu mission movement to the United States of America in the late 19th century. It is known that Protap Mozoomdar, together with Swami Vivekananda, represented Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. But what has missed the focus of scholars is that Mozoomdar visited the United States ten years earlier in 1883, making him the pioneer of the Hindu mission movement to the United States. The book is the first detailed study of Protap Chunder Mozoomdar in America. It is written through primary research on American newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, diaries and archival material available in American libraries, and material in possession of the author. On the whole, the book presents new information of interest to both the general reader and the scholarly community.

Download or read book Hindu Nationalism written by Christophe Jaffrelot and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hindu nationalism came to world attention in 1998, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won national elections in India. Although the BJP was defeated nationally in 2004, it continues to govern large Indian states, and the movement it represents remains a major force in the world's largest democracy. This book presents the thought of the founding fathers and key intellectual leaders of Hindu nationalism from the time of the British Raj, through the independence period, to the present. Spanning more than 130 years of Indian history and including the writings of both famous and unknown ideologues, this reader reveals how the "Hindutuva" movement approaches key issues of Indian politics. Covering such important topics as secularism, religious conversion, relations with Muslims, education, and Hindu identity in the growing diaspora, this reader will be indispensable for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Indian politics, society, culture, or history.

Download or read book Hinduism Before Reform written by Brian A. Hatcher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold retelling of the origins of contemporary Hinduism, and an argument against the long-established notion of religious reform. By the early eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire was in decline, and the East India Company was making inroads into the subcontinent. A century later Christian missionaries, Hindu teachers, Muslim saints, and Sikh rebels formed the colorful religious fabric of colonial India. Focusing on two early nineteenth-century Hindu communities, the Brahmo Samaj and the Swaminarayan Sampraday, and their charismatic figureheads—the “cosmopolitan” Rammohun Roy and the “parochial” Swami Narayan—Brian Hatcher explores how urban and rural people thought about faith, ritual, and gods. Along the way he sketches a radical new view of the origins of contemporary Hinduism and overturns the idea of religious reform. Hinduism Before Reform challenges the rigid structure of revelation-schism-reform-sect prevalent in much history of religion. Reform, in particular, plays an important role in how we think about influential Hindu movements and religious history at large. Through the lens of reform, one doctrine is inevitably backward-looking while another represents modernity. From this comparison flows a host of simplistic conclusions. Instead of presuming a clear dichotomy between backward and modern, Hatcher is interested in how religious authority is acquired and projected. Hinduism Before Reform asks how religious history would look if we eschewed the obfuscating binary of progress and tradition. There is another way to conceptualize the origins and significance of these two Hindu movements, one that does not trap them within the teleology of a predetermined modernity.

Download or read book Makers of Modern Indian Religion in the Late Nineteenth Century written by Torkel Brekke and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-12-05 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about religious transformation in South Asia in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, a fundamental conceptual transformation in the world of religion among people who were exposed to English language and culture took place. This transformation crystallized religious communities with sharp boundaries and distinct histories. On the other hand, the emerging feeling of religious-communal identity motivated religious and lay leaders to work in the interest of the community. This book is about both of these interrelated developments: the conceptual change and the application of the new ideas to political discourse; the construction and the politics of religious identity.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Hinduism written by Constance Jones and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated A to Z reference containing more than 700 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Hinduism.

Download or read book Hinduism in the Modern World written by Brian A. Hatcher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book World Philosophies written by Ninian Smart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Philosophies presents in one volume a superb introduction to all the world’s major philosophical and religious traditions. Covering all corners of the globe, Ninian Smart’s work offers a comprehensive and global philosophical and religious picture. In this revised and expanded second edition, a team of distinguished scholars, assembled by the editor Oliver Leaman, have brought Ninian Smart’s masterpiece up to date for the twenty-first century. Chapters have been revised by experts in the field to include recent philosophical developments, and the book includes a new bibliographic guide to resources in world philosophies. A brand new introduction which celebrates the career and writings of Ninian Smart, and his contribution to the study of world religions, helps set the work in context.

Download or read book A Power to Translate the World written by David LaRocca and published by Dartmouth College Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Interventions written by Bishnupriya Ghosh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editors are committed to destroying perceptions and stereotypes of third world women as passive victims who need to be "liberated" by Western feminists. The essays address cases in which women have challenged and resisted the political formations-nationalist struggles, revolutions, religious fundamentalist practices, and authoritarian regimes-that shape their daily lives. Each critic presents a close reading of the circumstances under which the feminist writers and film-makers.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Hinduism written by Denise Cush and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 1130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Hinduism contains over 900 entries reflecting recent advances in scholarship which have raised new theoretical and methodological issues as well as identifying new areas of study which have not been addressed previously. The debate over the term 'Hinduism' in the light of post-Orientalist critiques is just one example of how once standard academic frameworks have been called into question. Entries range from 150-word definitions of terms and concepts to 5,000-word in-depth investigations of major topics. The Encyclopedia covers all aspects of Hinduism but departs from other works in including more ethnographic and contemporary material in contrast to an exclusively textual and historical approach. It includes a broad range of subject matter such as: historical developments (among them nineteenth and twentieth century reform and revival); geographical distribution (especially the diaspora); major and minor movements; philosophies and theologies; scriptures; deities; temples and sacred sites; pilgrimages; festivals; rites of passage; worship; religious arts (sculpture, architecture, music, dance, etc.); religious sciences (e.g. astrology); biographies of leading figures; local and regional traditions; caste and untouchability; feminism and women's religion; nationalism and the Hindu radical right; and new religious movements. The history of study and the role of important scholars past and present are also discussed. Accessibility to all levels of reader has been a priority and no previous knowledge is assumed. However, the in-depth larger entries and the design of the work in line with the latest scholarly advances means that the volume will be of considerable interest to specialists. The whole is cross-referenced and bibliographies attach to the larger entries. There is a full index.

Download or read book Congress and Indian Nationalism written by Richard Sisson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists discuss the phenomenon of Indian Nationalism, one hundred years after the founding of the Congress party. They offer important new interpretations of Nationalism's evolution during more than six decades of crucial change and rapid growth. As India's foremost political institution, the National Congress with its changing fortunes mirrored Indian aspirations, ideals, dreams, and failures during the country's struggle for nationhood. Many difficulties face by the pre-independence Indian National Congress are critically examined for the first time in this volume. Major times of crisis and transition are considered, as well as the tension between mass action and political control and the problem of creating and maintaining unity in the face of divisive social and economic interests and between deeply hostile religious communities. A composite portrait of the Congress Party emerges. We see a coalition of often conflicting communities and interests much like India itself, struggling to stay together, tenuously united by little more at times than a common "enemy," the imperial British Raj. But linked together in precarious, seemingly haphazard fashion, shifting networks of elite political entrepreneurs manage to keep India's National Congress alive long enough to convince the British that it would be easier to "Quit India" than to try to hang on to it by force. With the abrupt transfer of power form the British to the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, Congress provided institutional sinews for the administration of what had been British India and over five hundred Princely States. By contributing to a deeper understanding of India's nationalist experience, this volume may illuminate the experience of other Third World states. Essays by:S. BhattacharyaJudith M. BrownMushirul HansanZoya HasanD.A. LowClaude MarkovitsJohn R. McLaneW.H. Morris-JonesGyanendra PandeyBimal PrasadRajat Kanta RayBarbara N. RamusackPeter D. ReevesHitesranjan SanyalRichard SissonStanley WolpertEleanor Zelliot This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Download or read book Women Education And Family Structure In India written by Carol C Mukhopadhyay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-28 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five decades of independence have produced dramatic increases in womens’ educational achievements in India; but education for girls beyond a certain level is still perceived as socially risky. Based on ethnographic data and historical documents, this book explores the origins of that paradox. Contributors probe the complex relationships between traditional Indian social institutions the joint family, arranged marriage, dowry, and purdah, or sexual segregation and girls schooling. They find that a patrifocal family structure and ideology are often at the root of different family approaches to educating sons and daughters, and that concern for marriageability still plays a central role in womens’ educational choices and outcomes.