Category: Academic

27 Nov | Sabarimala Today with Dr Alex Gath

Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by user

Sabarimala Today – Themes from Phenomenology, Politics and Diaspora

Week 7, Thursday 27 November 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Dr Alex Gath

Sabarimala is Kerala’s most high-profile Hindu pilgrimage. During the season, from mid-November to mid-January, millions of pilgrims undertake to travel to the mountain shrine. They proceed with a mixture of walking and bus and train transport. They dress in pilgrims’ garb and carry the traditional bag of offerings, often perched on the head. Widely seen as distinctively South Indian, the pilgrimage honours the hero-deity Sri Ayyappan. It has long been associated with an egalitarian ethos and popular with members of castes formerly subject to discrimination as well as with non-Hindus. It has been seen as a context within which both philosophical Hindu teachings and spontaneous popular piety can reach into the lives of individuals from many sectors of society. But there are intermittent problems. Some of these are common to many pilgrimages – infectious disease, accidents, environmental damage. Some are controversies and disagreements specifically concerning this tradition. Should female pilgrims of potential child-bearing age (set as 10 to 50 years of age) be permitted to participate despite a traditional exclusion? Is the former inter-religious aspect still apparent and important? What about relations with surrounding communities, including marginalised, formerly classified as ‘tribal’, groups? Sabarimala is becoming something of a global brand outside India, especially within the South Indian diaspora. And it has been an all-India talking point, as its concerns have been taken up by the Supreme Court and Central Government. In grappling with the significance of the Sabarimala pilgrimage today, it is well worth considering themes covering each of phenomenology/philosophy, politics and diaspora issues; and more besides. I hope to do this, drawing upon some thirty years of working with these themes, both through fieldwork and engaging with a variety of overlapping literatures.

Alex Gath has carried out anthropological research on contemporary Hindu culture of Kerala for some thirty years. He trained as an anthropologist at Edinburgh University after beginning his career working on topics in clinical, and philosophical, aspects of psychology (at Oxford, Sussex, Sydney Universities). In recent years he has concentrated on investigating South Indian diaspora communities, especially within UK but also USA and Europe, whilst maintaining his commitments within applied psychology. He emphasizes phenomenological approaches as a method for investigating interdisciplinary themes but also takes a strong interest in politics, history and related fields. He has published in anthropological and psychotherapy journals and, most recently, been a member of St Antony’s College, Oxford.

5 Nov | Book launch for Yoga Studies in Five Minutes

Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by user

Week 4, Wednesday 5 November 2.30-3.30, OCHS Library

Dr Theo Wildcroft and Dr Barbora Sojkova

Yoga Studies in Five Minutes provides an accessible guide to the diverse and growing field of research into yoga as a social, historical and cultural phenomenon. Both leading scholars and innovative researchers offer 60 brief responses to questions that offer insights into the study of yoga, such as: Who was the first teacher of yoga? Is yoga Indian? What is parampara? Are there holy texts in yoga? What are the goals of yoga? Why do yogis hold their breath? The collection covers ancient history, modern developments, and contemporary issues, considers the diverse practices and philosophies of yoga in a range of contexts, and uses a range of approaches, from philology to anthropology to art history. The collection is useful for established scholars looking to broaden their understanding of this rapidly developing field, as well as for those new to the subject. The book is an ideal starting point for both independent study and the classroom.

At this book launch event, the two editors, together with a few of the contributors, will introduce the book, talk about the process of producing it, and read a few of the entries. This will be a relaxed event to celebrate the book’s publication, free to attend, and with a few nibbles to tempt you. Anyone is very welcome to join us.

Theo Wildcroft, PhD is a yoga teacher-trainer, writer and scholar who is interested in the democratization of yoga post-lineage, somatic literacy, meaning-making and the counter-culture. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Dharmic Worldviews at the University of Chester, Fellow of the HEA, former Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, editor of the BASR Bulletin, an honorary member of the British Wheel of Yoga, member of the IAYT, a continuing professional development trainer and consultant for Yoga Alliance (E-RYT® 500, YACEP®), and Council Member for the American Yoga Council. She is the author of Post-lineage yoga: from guru to #metoo, co-writer of Leading Safe and Simple Yoga Nidras (coming soon), editor of Religion and the Sense of Self (also coming soon), and co-editor of The Yoga Teachers’ Survival Guide and Yoga Studies in Five Minutes.

Barbora Sojkova holds a DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Sanskrit) from Balliol College, University of Oxford, where her research focused on human-animal relationships in Vedic Sanskrit literature. She is a qualified librarian (PgDip in Library and Information Studies, UCL, 2024) and has previously worked at All Souls College and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the MANTRAMS Project at the University of Oxford, working on the history of mantra in Vedic. She is also a certified yoga teacher and trainer focusing on history and philosophy of yoga.

11 & 13 Nov | A Woman’s Nature (two lectures) with Dr Bihani Sarkar

Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by user

A Woman’s Nature I: Tapasyā, resistance and heroism in the Kumārasambhava

Week 5, Tuesday 11 November 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Dr Bihani Sarkar

The first part of this two part lecture argues that Pārvatī’s vrata in the Kumārasambhava— penance Kālidāsa describes in lavish and sympathetic detail in Chapter 5 of this epic poem– is a form of protest against the failings of masculine, paternalist orders formerly controlling her. These are the kingdom and hierarchies of conspiring male gods and ascetics, which, under threat from the demon Tāraka, had previously plotted to preserve its status, by using her as a pawn to tempt Śiva. Drawing a parallel in Ambā in the Mahābhārata, a female ascetic like Pārvatī, I will show that, in its very nature and the way in which it was aroused, Pārvatī’s penance (tapasyā) is antinomian, a protest against the devas. Though reductivist interpretations may claim that her tapasyā is conventional in its intention of winning Śiva, a male god, the lecture argues that it is in fact both an act of heroism and an act of love, arising from an awakening of individual will.

A Woman’s Nature II: Śṛṅgāra (passion) and Self-Awareness in the Kumārasambhava

Week 5, Thursday 13 November 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Dr Bihani Sarkar

The second part of this lecture, focuses on chapter 8 of the Kumārasambhava, the (in)famous love-making between Śiva and Pārvatī, to argue that Pārvatī’s erotic awakening in this chapter forms part of the larger narrative in the poem of her growing self-awareness. Kālidāsa, the poet of the Kumārasambhava, intends this chapter as a complement to the one portraying her tapasyā, showcasing twin and apparently divided aspects of Pārvatī as the heroic dharmavijayinī, ‘victor of Dharma’, of the poem. In so doing, he portrays a ‘hero’ who accomplishes both ascetic and erotic self-awareness, an integration made possible only in a goddess who quests for love. The lecture draws parallels from the Buddhacarita, a precedent to the Kumārasambhava, whose hero, the Buddha, Pārvatī both resonates with and also moves away from in significant ways, to demonstrate a different, world-embracing idea of Dharma.

Bihani Sarkar is a historian of early Indian politics, religions and literature (poetry and drama) between the 2nd and the 15th centuries CE. She works mainly with classical Sanskrit and some Middle Indic (Prakrit) sources. She also draws from Bengali, her mother tongue. She has taught and has research interests across Indian philosophy and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and South Asian Islam. Her current research and teaching interests include the Goddess in Indian religion; Sanskrit poetry and drama; classical Indian aesthetics; North Indian classical music; comparative literary theory; gender, transgression and power in early Indian literature and religions; sacred narrative and history; madness, knowledge and kingship.

Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8 | Readings in the Tantrāloka IX to XII with Prof. Alexis Sanderson

Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by user

Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8, Thursday 5.00-6.00, OCHS Library

Professor Alexis Sanderson

The Kashmirian Śaiva theologian Abhinavagupta offers in his magisterial Tantrāloka, composed c. 1000 CE, an all-embracing analysis of the Tantric Śaiva paths to liberation from the standpoint of the Śākta Śaiva system known as the Trika. In these four lectures I will complete my exposition of the opening verses of this text.

Alexis Sanderson studied first Classics and then Sanskrit at Oxford as an undergraduate (1967–71). As a postgraduate student he spent six years in Kashmir studying the Śaiva literature of that region under the guidance of Swami Lakshman Joo, the last learned exponent and practitioner of the Kashmirian Śākta Śaiva tradition. He returned to Oxford in 1977 to teach Sanskrit and Indology. He held that post until 1992, when he became a Fellow of All Souls College through election to Oxford’s Spalding Professorship of Eastern Religions and Ethics. He retired from that position in 2015. He moved to Japan in August of 2022 and there continues his work on the history of the religions of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. He is currently writing a history of the pre-Islamic religious traditions of Kashmir and producing a critical edition and English translation of the Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta (fl.c. 975–1025) accompanied by an extensive commentary.

11 June: Talk on As the Monks Have Always Lived: The Mūlācāra and Monastic Conduct in Digambara Jainism by Kshitij Jain

Posted on June 6, 2025June 6, 2025 by user

As the Monks Have Always Lived: The Mūlācāra and Monastic Conduct in Digambara Jainism

by Kshitij Jain

The Mūlācāra of Vaṭṭakera (est.2nd century CE) is the earliest monastic lawbook in Digambara Jainism. Composed at a time when Jain samghas were acquiring distinct sectarian identities, the Mūlācāra laid the foundation for Digambara monastic conduct, providing a source of authority to the later Digambara authors. My presentation will discuss the early history of this text to underline its significance in the Jain tradition. I will look at some facets of monastic conduct that Vaṭṭakera uses as “identity markers” of a Digambara monk to understand theMūlācāra’s role in the formation of Digambara sectarian identity as a historical context.

The second, and the more elaborate part of this presentation will focus on the Mūlācāra in the medieval period: which witnessed the reproduction of monastic conduct in new socio-political backdrops. I will introduce the Ācāravṛtti of Vasunandi, the earliest commentary on the Mūlācāra (11th century CE) and analyse a few case studies where Vasunandi exhibits commentarial reinterpretations which signify that rather than being a fossilised text, the Mūlācāra was being reinterpreted and adapted to the new circumstances of medieval India. I will then look at a fifteenth century monastic lawbook – the Mūlācārapradīpa of Sakalakīrti wherein the author maintains a conscious association with the Mūlācāra to achieve socio-political legitimacy and monastic authority. My presentation will attempt to highlight what did the Mūlācāra mean for medieval Digambara authors and how did they associate with it to further their projects of identity-building in north-western Digambara communities.

Kshitij Jain is a second year MPhil student reading Classical Indian Religion at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. He holds an undergraduate degree in Sanskrit (Hons.) Kshitij’s research primarily focuses on medieval Digambara monastic lawbooks and aims at studying them to understand the socio-cultural history of medieval Digambara Jainism. Kshitij is also interested in the Dharmashastra tradition and Classical Sanskrit Literature.

30 May: 41th Sanskrit Traditions Symposium hosted in partnership with the High Commission of India, London

Posted on May 26, 2025June 3, 2025 by user

The 41st Annual Sanskrit Traditions Symposium was hosted by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies in collaboration with the High Commission of India, London on 30 May 2025 at Trinity College, Oxford.

This years panels
Sanskrit and the Digambara Jaina bhaṭṭāraka traditions
Dr Tillo Detige
Respondent: Prof. James Mallinson

Ritualising Passion: The Tantrification of Rāgānugā Bhakti
Dr Lucian Wong
Respondent: Dr Lubomír Ondračka

‘The Blood-Soaked Grace of the Goddess’: Contestations of Power in and around the Devīmāhātmya
Dr Mikel Burley
Respondent: Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

An Examination of the Soteriological Role of Yoginīs in Śākta Tantric Śaivism
Gonzalo Fernandez
Respondent: Dr Ruth Westoby

OCHS Bursaries now open for applications. Close date: 6 June

Posted on May 23, 2025May 23, 2025 by user

The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies is proud to invite applications for its annual programme of bursaries and scholarships, supporting outstanding students engaged in the academic study of Hindu traditions and related fields.

With a total fund of almost £15,000 available for distribution, these awards are designed to recognise academic excellence and enable focused research within one of the world’s most intellectually rich university environments.

OCHS Bursaries and Scholarships:

We are honoured to support the next generation of scholars in Hindu Studies through this distinguished programme, and extend our heartfelt thanks to all the generous donors for their commitment to learning, scholarship, and the enduring value of education.

For detailed information on eligibility criteria, application procedures, and deadlines, please visit the official OCHS Bursaries and Scholarships page.

5 June: Talk on “The Human and the Divine in Rabindranath Tagore” by Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri FBA

Posted on May 22, 2025May 23, 2025 by user

Lectures of the J.P. and Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow

First Talk: My Lord, My Love

By Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri FBA

Week 1, Thursday 1 May, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

A well-known Tagore song begins ‘Prabhu āmār, priya āmār’ (My lord, my love). Tagore’s default mode of conceiving the divine is highly personal and often intimate, frequently viewing the deity as a lover or beloved.

A prominent source for this last development is Vaishnav poetry, celebrating the love of Krishna and Radha. But across the range of his writings, the love-relationship with the divine branches out in a variety of ways. In one direction, the divine presence embraces all nature and the cosmos. In another, it assumes an intimately human and even everyday dimension. Tagore subdivides his songs of devotion and worship (pujā) into a number of categories, but they overrun one another’s bounds and exceed them all. At the same time, his songs of human love (prem) expand to take on deeply philosophic and spiritual implications.

Tagore’s love-poetry and his spiritual poetry thus meld to provide a uniquely rich compound, enriching the notions of both the divine and the human.

Second Talk: The God Within

By Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri FBA

Week 6, Thursday 5 June, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

One of Tagore’s most celebrated tropes is the jiban-debatā or ‘god of life’, specifically the subject’s life. This divine presence is antaratama (innermost), embedded in the subject’s deepest being yet distinct from the latter’s familiar identity. It embraces human paradigms yet is immeasurably beyond them. The human condition partakes of its divinity within the contours of its own being.

The jiban-debata can be male or female, casting the human subject in the opposite gender. It seeks and desires the human entity it has created, fulfilling itself thereby: the divine needs the human no less than the human the divine. In the totality of its aspects, the jiban-debata thus becomes a universal entity: deeply personalized and interiorized yet manifesting itself in all nature and the cosmos. Humanity too thereby exceeds its accustomed bounds to become a universal force.

Here Upanishadic concepts blend with the Vaishnav in the combination Tagore declared as his core spiritual chemistry. There is also organic use of the poetic register of human love. The divine and the human are in rare conjunction, not to say identification, in the concept of the jiban-debata.

Sukanta Chaudhuri, FBA, is an Indian literary scholar, now Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and the University of Oxford. He taught at Presidency College from January 1973 to December 1991 and at Jadavpur University thereafter till his retirement in June 2010. At Jadavpur, he was founding Director of the School of Cultural Texts and Records, a pioneering centre of digital humanities in India. His chief fields of study are the English and European Renaissance, Rabindranath Tagore, translation, textual studies and digital humanities. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Rabindranath Tagore and the Oxford Tagore Translations, and chief coordinator of Bichitra, the online Tagore variorum. He has held visiting appointments at many academic institutions, including All Souls College, Oxford; St John’s College, Cambridge; the School of Advanced Study, London; University of Alberta, University of Virginia; and Loyola University, Chicago. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata and, in July 2021, was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

27 May: Talk on “Medical Humanities, History, and Hindu Studies: Two Views on Vaccination During the Plague Pandemic in Calcutta” by Utsa Bose

Posted on May 22, 2025May 23, 2025 by user

A talk by Utsa Bose

Week 5, Tuesday 27 May, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

My lecture is based on a recent submission to the Monash Bioethics Review (Springer), for the volume “Medical Humanities in the 21st Century: their meaning, value and place in academic and societal discussion.’ What is the relationship between history, public health, and Hindu Studies? As an interdisciplinary subject that studies the relationship between medicine, health and the humanities, medical humanities has emerged as a highly fertile, plural field of studies, receiving particular fillip since the advent of COVID-19. However, this plurality, while generative, often lends itself to asking the question: what exactly can each individual/particular subject in the humanities bring to discussions on health and medicine? The aim of this lecture is to show how perspectives from history and Hindu Studies may both contribute to and draw from this field. The focus of this lecture is a collection of essays titled “Plague-Sanhitā ba Aryaswasthyabidhān” (“The Plague-Sanhita or The Aryan Hygiene”) written by a certain Tarini Prasad Jyotishi, a Bengali Hindu astrologer during the height of the plague pandemic in Calcutta. Published in 1899 and running over 150 pages, Tarini Prasad’s text contained prophecies, essays on astral influences, ways of protecting oneself from the disease, health guidelines, and social commentary. It thus straddled the worlds between the medicinal, the divine, the astral, the cultural and the sociopolitical. Within this collection, while one essay was critical of the plague vaccine, another essay, in a later section of the same collection, celebrated the vaccine and its developer Waldemar M. Haffkine. The first part of the lecture situates the context of the text’s production, as well as the background of the author, and analyses the reasons why the plague vaccine was criticised. The second part of this lecture looks at how the author celebrated the plague vaccine in a later section of the collection. In the third section, it attempts to answer why the astrologer changed his view on vaccination. Finally, by extrapolating certain key questions this case study asks, the lecture concludes by suggesting ways in which a historical perspective and Hindu Studies may contribute to and draw from the field of medical humanities.

Utsa Bose is a second year DPhil student in History at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on infectious diseases and pandemics in colonial South Asia between the late-19th/early 20th centuries. His research area(s) include histories of science, medicine and technology, histories of health and religion, environmental and medical humanities, science and technology studies (STS) and bioethics.

Conference: Radical Phenomenology in India | 2nd June, 2025 | Trinity College, Oxford

Posted on May 22, 2025June 16, 2025 by user

Radical Phenomenology in India: Extreme structures of consciousness in Indic philosophies

Conference

Monday 2nd June, 2025 – Trinity College, Oxford – Garden Room

Indic philosophical traditions are full of striking states of consciousness that often bend or break the usual ways in which the mind functions. Partly rooted in distinctive yogic methods of self-reflection, these Indic philosophies and soteriologies aim at some of the most extreme re-structurings of conscious known to history. Some advise destroying our egoic structure, some train us to see the world free of all reification or desire, others advise re-identifying as other selves through possession, while still others flood all experience with intense emotion that is itself the target of a uniquely refined enjoyment. Viewed together, these philosophies offer alternative ways of existing as minds, and creative technologies for manipulating the very nature of the self.

All welcome – queries to: jessica.frazier@theology.ox.ac.uk

Conference Schedule

10-11.30am

Gavin Flood, University of Oxford
Is there an Indian Phenomenology?

Aamir Kaderbhai, University of Oxford
All Things are Sublime: A Phenomenology of jīvanmukti in the Mokṣopāya

11.45am-1.15pm

Jessica Frazier, University of Oxford
‘Otherwise…’; Phenomenological Plasticity in Classical Yoga

Ankur Barua, University of Cambridge
How To Be Out Of Your Mind: The Phenomenology of Perplexity in South Asia

2-3.30pm

Ruth McNeil, King’s College London
Experiences of śūnya in the Vijñānabhairava

Hrvoje Cargonya, University of Zagreb
Expansiveness and Bhakti Aesthetics in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism

3.45-5.15pm

Geoffrey Ashton, University of San Francisco
Revitalizing Samkhya through Phenomenology: Reading the Samkhya Karika through Goethe’s Organics

Daniel Ruin, University of Oxford
“[L]’autre, sans manger, contemple”: Henry Corbin and the Phenomenology of the Witness in the Śvetāśvatara– and Kaṭha–upaniṣad-s

5.15pm CLOSING DISCUSSION