India’s Elections and the “Doniger Affair”
Friday’s landslide election of a controversial Hindu nationalist in India culminates—or threatens to escalate—an ongoing battle over…
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Political Hinduism: India’s Disenchanted Religion
What inspired you to write A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of…
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Is Yoga Hindu?
Recent studies of yoga reveal the formative influence of (wait for it) Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, television, military calisthenics, Swedish gymnastics and the YMCA, as well as of radical Hindu nationalism, upon today’s postural yoga practice. There is no doubt that the Vedas, Upanishads, and folk traditions of India have been formative toward yoga: yoga is almost inseparable from them. Nevertheless to assert that yoga is essentially and primarily a Hindu practice means to ignore millennia of generative influence from other quarters. Worse still, it means to step blindly into a political fight for the heart of India that has simmered for over two hundred years.
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Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews
Gandhi’s grandson says that Israel promotes a “culture of violence”: Shalom Goldman tells the little-known backstory.
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Don’t Blame Secularism: Reading Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion
A new book of essays argues that the American media suffers due to secularism and a general ignorance of religion. But is secularism really at the heart of it, or is it a far broader and longer-standing relationship with ignorance of our “enemies” that creates the Blind Spot?
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