The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind
Author: David Kopf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2015-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400869897

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.

Keshab

Keshab
Author: John Stevens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2018-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 019093493X

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.

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda
Author: Narasingha Prosad Sil
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780945636977

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.

The First Hindu Mission to America

The First Hindu Mission to America
Author: Sunrit Mullick
Publisher: Northern Book Centre
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9788172112813

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.

Hinduism Before Reform

Hinduism Before Reform
Author: Brian A. Hatcher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0674247116

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.

Hindu Nationalism

Hindu Nationalism
Author: Christophe Jaffrelot
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2009-01-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400828031

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.

Makers of Modern Indian Religion in the Late Nineteenth Century

Makers of Modern Indian Religion in the Late Nineteenth Century
Author: Torkel Brekke
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2002-12-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191530867

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.

Encyclopedia of Hinduism

Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Author: Constance Jones
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2006
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0816075646

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.

Hinduism in the Modern World

Hinduism in the Modern World
Author: Brian A. Hatcher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 113504631X

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.

World Philosophies

World Philosophies
Author: Ninian Smart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2013-12-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317796888

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.