Unforgetting Chaitanya - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Unforgetting Chaitanya write by Varuni Bhatia. This book was released on 2017. Unforgetting Chaitanya available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Religion in decline in an age of progress -- Untidy realms -- A Swadeshi Chaitanya -- Recovering Bishnupriya's loss -- Utopia and a birthplace.
Unforgetting Chaitanya
Unforgetting Chaitanya - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Unforgetting Chaitanya write by Varuni Bhatia. This book was released on 2017-08-09. Unforgetting Chaitanya available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of Bengali Vaishnavism-a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition that traces its origins to the fifteenth century Krishna devotee Chaitanya (1486-1533). Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both religious modernizers and secular voices among the Bengali middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to the recovery of a "pure" Bengali culture and history in a period of nascent, but rising, anti-colonialism in the region. Who is a true Vaishnava? In the late nineteenth century, this question assumed urgency as debates around questions of authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere. These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of established scholars. Underlying these debates was the question of authoritative Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of Bengali culture and society. At stake, argues Bhatia, was the very nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity inscribed through the politics of authenticity, which allowed an influential section of Hindu, upper-caste Bengalis to excavate their own explicitly Hindu pasts in order to find a people's history, a religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic religion.
Chaitanya
Chaitanya - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Chaitanya write by Amiya P. Sen. This book was released on 2019-04-08. Chaitanya available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A saint, a reformer, an avatar of Lord Krishna—Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1533) is perceived as all these and many others. In this book on Chaitanya, Amiya P. Sen focuses on the discourses surrounding the mystic’s life, which ended rather mysteriously at the age of 48. Written in a lucid manner and for a wider audience, this book is a fresh attempt to historically reconstruct Chaitanya’s life and times in Bengal and Odisha, as well as Vrindavan, the key centre of medieval Vaishnavism in north India. This work critically evaluates how Chaitanya has been understood contemporaneously and posthumously, particularly as an icon in colonial Bengal. Addressing an important gap in scholarship, which hitherto concentrated on religious and philosophical discourses, Sen offers a full-length biographical account of Nimai or Gaur by drawing on a wide range of sources in English and Bengali. He also argues against the belief that Chaitanya is the sole proponent of Vaishnava bhakti in Bengal, choosing to situate him in the wider devotional cultures of the region.
Guru to the World
Guru to the World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Guru to the World write by Ruth Harris. This book was released on 2022-10-27. Guru to the World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. From the Wolfson History Prize–winning author of The Man on Devil’s Island, the definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Few thinkers have had so enduring an impact on both Eastern and Western life as Swami Vivekananda, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Westerners to yoga and the universalist school of Hinduism called Vedanta. His teachings fostered a more tolerant form of mainstream spirituality in Europe and North America and forever changed the Western relationship to meditation and spirituality. Guru to the World traces Vivekananda’s transformation from son of a Calcutta-based attorney into saffron-robed ascetic. At the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, he fascinated audiences with teachings from Hinduism, Western esoteric spirituality, physics, and the sciences of the mind, in the process advocating a more inclusive conception of religion and expounding the evils of colonialism. Vivekananda won many disciples, most prominently the Irish activist Margaret Noble, who disseminated his ideas in the face of much disdain for the wisdom of a “subject race.” At home, he challenged the notion that religion was antithetical to nationalist goals, arguing that Hinduism was intimately connected with Indian identity. Ruth Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda’s thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East-West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas.
Branding Bhakti
Branding Bhakti - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Branding Bhakti write by Nicole Karapanagiotis. This book was released on 2021-04-06. Branding Bhakti available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. How do religious groups reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences? How do they rebrand their messages and recast their rituals in order to make their followers more diverse? In Branding Bhakti, Nicole Karapanagiotis considers the new branding of the Hare Krishna Movement, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Known primarily for their orange robes, shaved heads, ecstatic dancing on the streets, and exuberant Hindu-style temple worship, many contemporary ISKCON groups are radically reinventing their public presentation and their style of worship in order to attract a global audience to their movement. Karapanagiotis explores their innovative and complex approaches in both the United States and India by following three new ISKCON brands aimed at gathering new followers. Each is led by a world-renowned ISKCON guru and his global disciples, and each is promoted through a mix of digital and social media and the construction of an innovative "worship-scape." These new spaces trade ISKCON's traditional temples for corporate work-life balance programs, posh yoga studios, urban spiritual lounges, edgy mantra clubs/lofts, and rural meditative retreat facilities. Branding Bhakti not only investigates the methods the ISKCON movement uses to position itself for growth but also highlights devotees' painful and complicated struggles as they work to transform their shrinking, sectarian movement into one with global religious appeal.
