Shows / New Books in Indian Religions
New Books in Indian Religions
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Indian Religions
Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In this interview we discuss The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi (Columbia UP, 2025). Women’s songs of the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Christopher Jain Miller and Cogen Bohanec, "Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement" (SUNY Press, 2026)
The Jain tradition, with roots in ancient India but now spread across the globe, is anything but static and monolithic. In Engaged Jainism, an…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Kannada language boasts an ongoing literary tradition spanning more than a millennium, with a rich array of social positions and roles, religious…
- New Books in Indian Religions
J. Barton Scott, "Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Russell T. McCutcheon, "Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion" (Routledge, 2023)
Russell T. McCutcheon's essay collection Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Routledge, 2023) argues that the study of religion…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Tracy Pintchman ed., "Engaging Hindu Narratives and Practices in the Contemporary World" (2025)
"Engaging Hindu Narratives and Practices in the Contemporary World" Special Issue of the International Journal of Hindu Studies: Volume 29, Issue 2 (August…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Integral Perspectives: From Kashmiri Shaivism to Tibetan Buddhism with Sean K. MacCracken
In this episode, Sean MacCracken reflects on his experience at the American Academy of Religion, noticing a shift toward more participatory, contemplative, and…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Purana Media: Past, Present, Future - A Discussion with Elizabeth A. Cecil and Peter C. Bisschop
PURANA Media is an annual, peer-reviewed, open access journal focused on modes of cultural production encompassed by the term purāṇa (a Sanskrit word…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Christopher Key Chapple, "Embodied Ecology: Yoga and the Environment" (Mandala Publishing, 2025)
In Embodied Ecology: Yoga and the Environment (Mandala Publishing, 2025), Hindu Studies scholar Christopher Key Chapple explores how Hindu and Yoga traditions…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Shantala Sriramaiah, "Nitya Prārthanā" (Veda Studies, 2025)
"Nitya Prārthanā” and “Nitya Dhyāna” are two profound collections designed to infuse daily life with sacredness. “Nitya Prārthanā” offers popular chants from…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen, "The Serpent’s Tale: Kundalini, Yoga, and the History of an Experience" (Columbia UP, 2025)
The Serpent’s Tale: Kundalini, Yoga, and the History of an Experience (Columbia UP, 2025) traces the intricate global histories of Kuṇḍalinī, from its…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ithamar Theodor, "The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Bhagavad Gita is a world classic often considered to be not just the 'Hindu Bible' but sometimes the 'Indian Bible' as well. Over the last two centuries…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Luke Gibson, "Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2025)
This textbook offers a fresh approach to learning Sanskrit, the ancient language at the heart of South Asia’s vast religious, philosophical, and literary…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Steven W. Ramey, "Hinduism in Five Minutes" (Equinox, 2022)
Hinduism in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2022) is an accessible and lively introduction to common questions about the practices, ideas, and narratives…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Amy L. Allocco and Xenia Zeiler eds., "Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices" (SUNY Press, 2025)
Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices (SUNY Press, 2025) explores how these two currents are shaping the contours of contemporary…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Russell T. McCutcheon, "Our Primary Expertise: A Future for the Study of Religion" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
Our Primary Expertise argues counter to the longstanding trend in the field by seeing religion as mundane and not unique, which means that the field's research…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Gavin Flood, "The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra" (Routledge, 2024)
The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2024) presents an account of the concept of mind in Hindu Tantra through a study of religious and philosophical…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Wendy Doniger, "The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals: Some Moral Tales From The Mahabharata" (Speaking Tiger, 2024)
How did Brahma create alluring women, and for what purpose? Why did the righteous King Bhangashvana choose womanhood? How did the sage Markandeya's pupil…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Hindutva and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and leader of the Centre for South Asian Democracy. M. Sudhir…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Dagmar Wujastyk, "Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Indian Alchemy: Sources and Contexts (Oxford UP, 2025) serves to expand readers' understanding of what it meant to practice alchemy on the Indian subcontinent…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ghazala Wahab, "The Hindi Heartland: A Study" (Aleph Book Company, 2025)
The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India's…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Barbora Sojkova and Theodora Wildcroft, "Yoga Studies in Five Minutes" (Equinox Publishing, 2025)
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2025) provides an accessible guide to the diverse and growing field of research into yoga as a social…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Kathryn Hurlock, "Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World" (Profile, 2025)
This year, as they have for millennia, many people around the world will set out on pilgrimages. But these are not only journeys of personal and spiritual…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ashis Roy, "Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-muslim Relationships" (Yoda Press, 2024)
What happens when an analyst conducts interviews—and I am not speaking here about interviewing other analysts as we do at NBiP, but rather what happens when an…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Karen Pechilis ed., "A Cultural History of Hinduism: Volumes 1-6" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In this episode, Raj Balkaran speaks with Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker, and Valerie Stoker about A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, 2024), a…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jürgen Schaflechner, "Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan" (Oxford UP, 2018)
About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Clara A. B. Joseph, "India's Non-violent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799)" (Routledge, 2023)
India's Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Kenneth R. Valpey, "Yoga and Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
This open access book, Yoga and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on…
- New Books in Indian Religions
M.A. in Yoga Studies with Christopher Chapple
Dr. Christopher Chapple, founder of Loyola Marymount University’s pioneering M.A. in Yoga Studies, joins us to discuss how the program blends rigorous…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jan E. M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, "Vedic Myths and Rituals" (Dev Publishers, 2025)
Vedic Myths and Rituals, edited by Jan E.M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru, is a scholarly volume exploring the deep interplay between mythic narrative and ritual…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ruth Perini, "Varaha Upanishad: The Path to Supreme Knowledge" (2025)
This conversation examines the newly published translation of the Varāha Upaniṣad, a lesser-known but deeply transformative scripture from the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
A Ukrainian Translation of the Devi Mahatmya
In this episode, Dr. Raj Balkaran speaks with art historian and curator Alisa Lozhkina about her groundbreaking Ukrainian translation of the Devī Māhātmya—the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Vinay Lal, "Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The anthology presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished Gandhian…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Learning Ancient Languages: A Conversation with Antonia Ruppel
Sanskritist and seasoned teacher Dr. Antonia Ruppel shares her views on the merits and pitfalls of academic enterprise, the brave new world of self-employed…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Navjivan Rastogi, "Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethics of a Tantric Tradition" (Nalanda, 2022)
The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Joanna Jurewicz, "Invisible Fire: Memory, Tradition and the Self in Early Hindu Philosophy" (2021)
Invisible Fire by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ankur Barua, "The Hindu Self and Its Muslim Neighbors: Contested Borderlines on Bengali Landscapes" (Lexington, 2022)
In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Amir Hussain, "One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors" (Fortress Press, 2025)
Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Christopher T. Fleming, "Equity and Trusts in Sanskrit Jurisprudence" (British Academy, 2025)
This monograph outlines the core principles of equity and trusts in Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) and traces their application in the practical legal…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Audrey Truschke, "India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jessica Patterson, "Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Interpretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century"
In the second half of the eighteenth century, several British East India Company servants published accounts of what they deemed to be the original and…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Rachel Fell McDermott and Daniel F. Polish, "A Hindu-Jewish Conversation: Root Traditions in Dialogue" (Lexington Books, 2024)
This book engages historically and theologically with the Hindu and Jewish traditions, covering conceptions of the divine, religious heroes, women, devotional…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ilanit Loewy Shacham, "Empire Inside Out: Religion, Conquest, and Community in Kṛṣṇadevarāya's Āmuktamālyada" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Examining the interplay of religion, history, and literature through a case study of King Krsnadevaraya's celebrated Telugu poem Āmuktamālyada, Ilanit Loewy…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Richard K. Payne and Glen A. Hayes eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Since the earliest encounters between tantric traditions and Western scholars of religion, tantra has posed a challenge. The representation of tantra, whether…
- New Books in Indian Religions
J. P. Mallory, "The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth’s…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Prema Kurien, "Claiming Citizenship: Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization Among New Americans" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Claiming Citizenship: Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization Among New Americans (Oxford UP, 2025) looks at Indian Americans, currently the second-largest…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Isaac Portilla, "Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter" (Routledge, 2025)
Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Wendy Doniger, "An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963-64" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Wendy Doniger’s An American Girl in India: Letters and Recollections, 1963–64 (SUNY Press, 2023) is a memoir-style collection of letters and reflections from…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Surindar Nath Pandita, "डान् क्विक्षोटः Don Quixote" (Pune, 2024)
The present book contains a facsimile edition of a unique modern Kashmiri translation of five chapters from Cervantes’s famous Don Quijote. In this book the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Patrick McCartney, "Authenticity, Legitimacy and the Transglobal Yoga Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Shanti Mandir" (Routledge, 2025)
This book is a sociological study of knowledge and knowers and explores the production and perceived value of 'yogic knowledge', how distinction is curated…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Stephen P. Huyler, "Transformed by India: A Life" (Pippa Rann, 2025)
With a compelling story, wit, insight, and candor, American author Stephen Huyler leads the reader into the heart of India. It is a country and culture he…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025)
Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Pāṇḍitya: Mapping Sanskrit Texts Online
Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Andrew Ollett, "The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō): A Prakrit Work of Poetics" (UniorPress, 2025)
The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō) defines and exemplifies 42 figures of speech or “ornaments” in 134 verses. It is the only surviving work of poetics…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette, "Metaphysics As Therapy: List-Making and Renunciation in Gnostic Yogas" (Springer, 2025)
Metaphysics As Therapy: List-Making and Renunciation in Gnostic Yogas (Springer, 2025) examines the significance of metaphysical list-making as a determining…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Tithi Bhattacharya, "Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal (Duke UP, 2024), Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Paul Bramadat, "Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)
In Yogalands (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025), Paul Bramadat wrestles with his position as a skeptical scholar who is also a devoted yoga practitioner. Drawing from…