The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind PDF Author: David Kopf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400869897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
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.

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind

The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind PDF Author: David Kopf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400869897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 PDF Author: John Stevens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019093493X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Narasingha Prosad Sil
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9780945636977
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
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.

Marriage and Modernity

Marriage and Modernity PDF Author: Rochona Majumdar
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
An innovative cultural history of the evolution of modern marriage practices in Bengal, Marriage and Modernity challenges the assumption that arranged marriage is an antiquated practice. Rochona Majumdar demonstrates that in the late colonial period Bengali marriage practices underwent changes that led to a valorization of the larger, intergenerational family as a revered, “ancient” social institution, with arranged marriage as the apotheosis of an “Indian” tradition. She meticulously documents the ways that these newly embraced “traditions”—the extended family and arranged marriage—entered into competition and conversation with other emerging forms of kinship such as the modern unit of the couple, with both models participating promiscuously in the new “marketplace” for marriages, where matrimonial advertisements in the print media and the payment of dowry played central roles. Majumdar argues that together the kinship structures newly asserted as distinctively Indian and the emergence of the marriage market constituted what was and still is modern about marriages in India. Majumdar examines three broad developments related to the modernity of arranged marriage: the growth of a marriage market, concomitant debates about consumption and vulgarity in the conduct of weddings, and the legal regulation of family property and marriages. Drawing on matrimonial advertisements, wedding invitations, poems, photographs, legal debates, and a vast periodical literature, she shows that the modernization of families does not necessarily imply a transition from extended kinship to nuclear family structures, or from matrimonial agreements negotiated between families to marriage contracts between individuals. Colonial Bengal tells a very different story.

Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India

Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India PDF Author: Kenneth W. Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521249867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Socio-religious Reform Movements in British India will appeal to students and scholars in a wide variety of social scientific disciplines.

Imaginations of Death and the Beyond in India and Europe

Imaginations of Death and the Beyond in India and Europe PDF Author: Günter Blamberger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811067074
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This volume explores current images of afterlife/afterdeath and the presence of the dead in the imaginations of the living in Indian and European traditions. Specifically, it focuses on the deepest and most fundamental uncertainty of human existence---the awareness of human mortality, on which depends any assignment of meaning to earthly existence as also to notions of worldly and otherworldly salvation. This central idea is addressed in the literature, arts, audiovisual media and other cultural artefacts of the two traditions. The chapters are based on two main assumptions: First, that one cannot report on the direct experience of death; so it is only possible to speak allegorically of it. Second, in contemporary Western societies, marked by structural atheism, people look at literature, the arts and mass media to study their depiction and reading of traditionally religious questions of disease, death and the Beyond. This is in contrast to Asian civilizations whose preoccupation with death and Beyond is persistent and perhaps central to the civilizations’ highest thought. The chapters cover a wide spectrum of disciplinary approaches, from psychoanalysis to religious, anthropological, literary and film studies, from sociology and philosophy to art history, and address issues of unsettling power: comforting illusions of afterlife; the relations between afterlife and fertility; visions of technological immortalization of mankind; the problem of thinking about death after the “death of God”; socialist utopias of bodily immortality; fear of Hell and punishment; different concepts in relating the living and the dead; near-death experiences; and cultural practices of spiritualism, occultism and suicide.

The Indian Way

The Indian Way PDF Author: John M Koller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315507404
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
There is no other book that explains both the philosophies and religions of India in their full historical development. The Indian Way is accessible to beginning students, and does justice to the Indian tradition’s richness of religious and philosophical thought. Clear and powerful explanations of yajna and dharma, and appealing, intimate descriptions of Krishna, Kali, and Shiva allow students to read some of the great Indian texts for themselves.

Religious Traditions in South Asia

Religious Traditions in South Asia PDF Author: Geoffrey A. Oddie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136789243
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
These studies focus on questions of religious interaction and change in India from the sixth century B.C. to the present day. They represent the work of scholars in a range of disciplines and who are resident mostly in Australia

A Cognitive-Historical Approach to Creativity

A Cognitive-Historical Approach to Creativity PDF Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429628005
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
At the heart of creativity is the practice of bringing something new into existence, whether it be a material object or abstract idea, thereby making history and enriching the creative tradition. A Cognitive Historical Approach to Creativity explores the idea that creativity is both a cognitive phenomenon and a historical process. Blending insights and theories of cognitive science with the skills, mentality and investigative tools of the historian, this book considers diverse issues including: the role of the unconscious in creativity, the creative process, creating history with a new object or idea, and the relationship between creators and consumers. Drawing on a plethora of real-life examples from the eighteenth century through to the present day, and from distinct fields including the arts, literature, science and engineering, Subrata Dasgupta emphasizes historicity as a fundamental feature of creativity. Providing a unified, integrative, interdisciplinary treatment of cognitive history and its application to understanding and explaining creativity in its multiple domains, A Cognitive Historical Approach to Creativity is essential reading for all researchers of creativity.

Political Culture and Leadership in India

Political Culture and Leadership in India PDF Author: Bharati Mukherjee
Publisher: Mittal Publications
ISBN: 9788170993209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description