Studies in Hinduism consists of articles published posthumously, to which has been added Ren Gunon's separate study, Eastern Metaphysics, the text of a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne. In this work Gunon completes his presentation of Hindu metaphysics, which he considered the most primordial and comprehensive body of spiritual teaching possessed by the human race, one capable of throwing light upon and illuminating the essence of every other Tradition. Of special interest are three chapters on various aspects of tantra-a doctrine profoundly misunderstood in the contemporary West-which Hindu authorities consider the spirituality most appropriate to the Kali Yuga, as well as a chapter on the sanatana dharma, the Hindu concept closest to the ancient and medieval Christian idea of the philosophia perennis, which led St Augustine to declare that Christianity has always existed, but only came to be so called after the coming of Christ. Included are extensive reviews of books on Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, Mircea Eliade, Paul Brunton, and others, as well as 40 pages of reviews of books and articles by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Leading Indian thinkers have called Gunon the most authentic expositor of Hindu metaphysics in any Western language.

In literature and popular imagination, the Bauls of India and Bangladesh are characterized as musical mystics: orange-clad nomads of both Hindu and Muslim backgrounds. They wander the countryside and entertain with their passionate singing and unusual behavior, and they are especially well-known for their evocative songs, which challenge the caste system and sectarianism prevalent in South Asia.
Although Bauls claim to value women over men, little is known about the individual views and experiences of Baul women. Based on ethnographic research in both the predominantly Hindu context of West Bengal (India) and the Muslim country of Bangladesh, this book explores the everyday lives of Baul women. Lisa Knight examines the contradictory expectations regarding Baul women: on the one hand, the ideal of a group unencumbered by societal restraints and concerns and, on the other, the real constraints of feminine respectability that seemingly curtail women's mobility and public performances.
Knight demonstrates that Baul women respond to these conflicting expectations in various ways, sometimes adopting and other times subverting local gendered norms to craft meaningful lives. More so than their male counterparts, Baul women feel encumbered by norms. But rather than seeing Baul women's normative behavior as indicative of their conformity to gendered roles (and, therefore, failures as Bauls), Knight argues that these women creatively draw on societal expectations to transcend their social limits and create new paths.

Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

A comprehensive guide to three global religions that have established strong local communities in South Africa, this work is a valuable resource for scholars, students in religious studies, African studies, anthropology, and history. Beginning with a general introduction to the immigrant origins, minority status, and global connections of each tradition, the book proceeds to organize and generously annotate the literature according to religion. This volume, combined with two other annotated bibliographies, "African Traditional Religion in South Africa" and "Christianity in South Africa" (both Greenwood, 1997), will become the standard reference text for South African religions.

With special attention to historical and social conditions, this work examines the distinctively South African forms of these important minority religions in South Africa. In each section, an introductory essay identifies significant themes. The bibliography annotations that follow are concise yet detailed essays, written in an engaging and accessible style and supported by an exhaustive index. The book, therefore, provides a full and complex profile of three religious traditions that are firmly located in South African history and society.

The Upanishads are among the source books of the Hindu faith, being the concluding portion of the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, also the Vedanta. This selection of translations by Swami Nikhilananda contains the Svetasvatara, Prasna and Mandukya Upanishads together with a special contribution to Western understanding of these important books in the form of a noteworthy essay on Hindu Ethics. Translated from the Sanskrit with an Introduction embodying a study of Hindu Ethics, and with Notes and Explantions based on the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya, the great Eighth-Century Philosopher and Saint of India. Contents Include: Svetasvatara Upanishad - Prasna Upanishad - Mandukya Upanishad

Yoga, karma, meditation, guru--these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion.

Williamson provides an overview of the emergence of these movements through examining exchanges between Indian Hindus and American intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and illuminates how Protestant traditions of inner experience paved the way for Hindu-style movements' acceptance in the West.

Williamson focuses on three movements--Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga--as representative of the larger of phenomenon of Hindu-inspired meditation movements. She provides a window into the beliefs and practices of followers of these movements by offering concrete examples from their words and experiences that shed light on their world view, lifestyle, and relationship with their gurus. Drawing on scholarly research, numerous interviews, and decades of personal experience with Hindu-style practices, Williamson makes a convincing case that Hindu-inspired meditation movements are distinct from both immigrant Hinduism and other forms of Asian-influenced or "New Age" groups.

Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India, and suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman -- and of the role of women in Indian religion and society. This book shows how the temple woman's economic authonomy, independence and initiative allowed her to negotiate medieval temple politics and establish a role for herself with its own peculiar social and religious significance.

In this third installment of his comprehensive history of "India's religion" and reappraisal of Hindu identity, Professor Jyotirmaya Sharma offers an engaging portrait of Swami Vivekananda and his relationship with his guru, the legendary Ramakrishna. Sharma's work focuses on Vivekananda's reinterpretation and formulation of diverse Indian spiritual and mystical traditions and practices as "Hinduism" and how it served to create, distort, and justify a national self-image. The author examines questions of caste and the primacy of the West in Vivekananda's vision, as well as the systematic marginalization of alternate religions and heterodox beliefs. In doing so, Professor Sharma provides readers with an incisive entryway into nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indian history and the rise of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist movement. Sharma's illuminating narrative is an excellent reexamination of one of India's most controversial religious figures and a fascinating study of the symbiosis of Indian history, religion, politics, and national identity. It is an essential story for anyone interested in the evolution of one of the world's great religions and its role in shaping contemporary India.

"Hindutva" in India is a chauvinist and majoritarian political ideology that conjures up the image of a peaceful Hindu Self vis-a-vis the threatening minority Other. It is "porno-nationalism" in its obsessive preoccupation with the predatory sexuality of the putative Muslim figure and the dangers to the integrity of the Hindu bodies. The proponents of "Hindutva" mobilize and generate negative stereotypes of Islam and putative Muslims to legitimize violence against actual Muslims living in India. Adopting a critical ethnographic approach, this book investigates myriad ways in which the discourses of culture, insecurity, gender, identity, and violence intersect in Hindu nationalism's reactionary and right-wing politics of fear and imagination.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most famous works of Hindu scripture. Among faithful Hindus it is ranked in importance alongside the Vedas and the Upanishads as a key sacred text. The work has been widely translated, with the result that its fame extends well beyond India.
Considering the popularity of this historical epic and the reverent feelings toward it, intellectuals in India have been reluctant to examine the text from a critical standpoint, as scholars in the West have done in regard to the sacred texts of Christianity and Judaism. A glaring exception to this kid-gloves attitude is this iconoclastic examination of the Gita, by journalist and humanist advocate V. R. Narla.
Taking a rationalist, skeptical approach, Narla critiques the Gita on many levels. Among other things, he points out the improbability of the historical events recounted, the logical inconsistencies in the work, and, above all, the retrograde moral perspective represented by the characters. He emphasizes that the long dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Lord Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu) ends up by condoning violence, even wholesale slaughter. Furthermore, the work extols the Hindu caste system as noble and reinforces superstitions about reincarnation and karma. All of this was anathema to Narla, who spent much of his career working for human rights and critical thinking.
For students of Indian literature in both the East and West, this critical appraisal of a classic Hindu epic will prove enlightening.

The historical and empirical project presented here is grounded in a desire to theorize 'religion-state' relations in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious, secular city-state of Singapore. The core research problematic of this project has emerged out of the confluence of two domains, 'religion, law and bureaucracy' and 'religion and colonial encounters.' This work has two core objectives: one, to articulate the actual points of engagement between institutions of religion and the state, and two, to identify the various processes, mechanisms and strategies through which relations across these spheres are sustained. The thematic foundations of this book rest on disentangling the complex interactions between religious communities, individuals and the various manifestations of the Singapore state, relationships that are framed within a culture of bureaucracy. This is accomplished through a scrutiny of Hindu domains on the island nation-state, from her identity as part of the Straits Settlements to the present day. The empirical and analytical emphases of this book rest onthe author'sengagement with the realm of Hinduism as it is conceived, structured, framed and practiced within the context of a strong state in Singapore today. Ethnographically, the book focusses on Hindu temple management and the observance of Hindu festivals and processions, enacted within administrative and bureaucratic frames.