Building on Our Own Traditions “Aap Hindu ho ya Muslim?” (Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?) It was an innocent question asked by Salma,* a pretty ten-year-old girl studying in a village school in the outskirts of Jaipur. She addressed it to Naren, a young college student and aspiring journalist, who accompanied me to […]

Introduction Religion and secularism are both hot topics of discussion in India today. With rare exceptions, commentators on all sides of the debate in India, suffer from a general malady – that of using Western[i] terms, categories and worldviews to understand an Eastern society. We explore how adopting Western worldviews and nomenclature has distorted the […]

This is the original version of the article that caused Microsoft to replace Encarta’s article on Hinduism. This later was anthologized in the book: “Invading the Sacred” published by Rupa Press. Click for a PDF version of the article. The scholarship of certain sections of the academic community studying Hinduism has been controversial in the Indian […]