All Episodes
Episodes
Geetanjali Srikantan, "Identifying and Regulating Religion in India: Law, History and the Place of Worship" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Judicial debates on the regulation of religion in post-colonial India have been characterised by the inability of courts to identify religion as a governable phenomenon. Geetanjali Srikantan's book Identifying and...
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Online Sanskrit Study Resources
A conversation with Michael Fiden about University of Texas at Austin’s new open access online resource for second-year Sanskrit students, either for self-study or as a supplement to instruction.
Raj Balkaran is a...
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Political Deification in South Asia
How can we understand the processes through which political leaders, god-men, stars of all kinds, and big or small deities mingle together in the public sphere? And what are the consequences of deifying politicians,...
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Ayurveda and Alchemy: A Conversation with Dagmar Wujastyk
A candid conversation with Dr. Dagmar Wujastyk about her fascinating work at the intersection of yoga, Ayurveda, and alchemy.
Dr. Wujastyk’s online course “Ayurveda, Yoga and Alchemy."
Raj Balkaran is a scholar,...
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On Social Media and Hinduism
Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, yoga, and digital culture in South Asia at the University of Denver which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. Her...
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Martin Fárek, "India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies" (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2021)
Martin Fárek's India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2021) is centred around the claim that although the research in...
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Ruth Harris, "Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda (Harvard UP, 2022) tells the story of Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu ascetic who introduced the West to yoga and to a tolerant, scientifically...
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SOAS’ Yoga Studies Online
Raj Balkaran speaks with Jacqui Hargreaves & Ruth Westoby about SOAS’ exciting new online learning platform: Yoga Studies Online.
Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford...
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Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King, "Representing Religion in Film" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King's Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between religion, film, and ideology. It shows how religion is imagined,...
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Michael Slouber, "Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras" (Oxford UP, 2016)
Michael Slouber's Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras (Oxford UP, 2016) looks at a traditional medical system that flourished over 1,000 years ago in India. The volume brings...
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Karen O'Brien-Kop, "Phiroz Mehta: A Zoroastrian Teacher of Indian Philosophy of Religion in 1970s-80s Britain"
Phiroz Mehta, was a self-taught philosopher of religion who became the revered core figure of a universal religion and philosophy centred on concepts of existential freedom. Less well known than his contemporary and...
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Manuela Ciotti, "Retro-modern India: Forging the Low Caste Self" (Routledge, 2020)
Manuela Ciotti's Retro-modern India: Forging the Low Caste Self (Routledge, 2020) is interesting engagement with Chamar identity and understanding it through the lens of modernity. Through a rich ethnographic...
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