Nehru Centre
8 South Audley Street
London, W1K 1HF
A talk by Dr Jessica Frazier of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
OCHS fellow, Ferdinando Sardella, has published a new book, Modern Hindu Personalism, in which he explores the life and works of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874-1937), a Vaishnava guru of the Chaitanya school of Bengal. Ferdinando Sardella examines Bhaktisiddhanta’s background, motivation and thought, especially as it relates to his creation of a modern traditionalist institution for the successful revival of Chaitanya Vaishnava bhakti. Sardella provides the historical background as well as the contemporary context of the India in which Bhaktisiddhanta lived and functioned, in the process shedding light on such topics as colonial culture and sensibilities, the emergence of an educated middle-class, the rise of the Bengal Renaissance and the challenge posed by Protestant missionaries.
Bhaktisiddhanta’s childhood, education and major influences are examined, as well as his involvement with Chaitanya Vaishnavism and the practice of bhakti. Sardella places Bhaktisiddhanta’s life and work within a taxonomy of modern Hinduism and compares the significance of his work to the contributions of other major figures such as Swami Vivekananda. Finally, Bhaktisiddhanta’s work is linked to the development of a worldwide movement that today involves thousands of American and European practitioners, many of whom have become respected representatives of Chaitanya bhakti in India itself.
OCHS academic director, Gavin Flood says “Modern Hindu Personalism is a significant contribution to scholarship not only of the modern Gaudiya Vaisnava movement but also of the religious history of Bengal within the last half of the colonial period. Adding greatly to our understanding of the development of Hinduism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the context of colonialism and a rising Indian nationalism, this book should be widely read by scholars of the history of colonial India and religion.”
Modern Hindu Personalism is available to buy online at OUP or Amazon
Nehru Centre
8 South Audley Street
London, W1K 1HF
A talk by Dr Nick Sutton of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
The constitution of India is clearly that of a modern secular society that excludes any single religion from exerting significant political influence. Yet India is still far from being a country without religion. In this talk we will consider the limits of secularism and exactly what distinctions exist between secular and religious societies.
The OCHS is proud to announce a new academic book series “Archaeology and Religion”, published in partnership with Routledge India. The new series examines inscriptions, ritual objects, coins, and sculptural and narrative representations on shrines to help investigate the complex relationship between manifestations of religion and the archaeological record.
Through the study of the archaeological record, we can appreciate the diverse uses of sacred sites and how religious communities and practices have changed and evolved over time. This series is broad in scope and is open to multi-disciplinary proposals exploring archaeology and religion.
This series introduces the reader to the major religions of South Asia, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam through the form and function of sacred sites and their interaction with society. It is in the capacity to acknowledge multiple forms of one deity and the cyclic nature of time that the Indic culture is unique and it is here that early textual traditions provide insights for possible de-codification of symbols and icons.
In contrast, the archaeological record focuses on a wide diversity ranging from open-air altars, tree-shrines, pillars, memorial stones to religious architecture, monastic complexes and temple towns. The crucial element in the built landscape was the religious shrine and fresh insights into the role of religion in the past are possible through an understanding of the social context of these shrines.
Another important aspect of the series relates to the continued use and reuse of sacred space. An apt example of this is the site of Nagarjunakonda in the lower Krishna valley in Andhra that emphasises the sharing of a common architectural vocabulary by several religious traditions.
Finally it is the visual record of conservation and transformation of religious architecture over the last two hundred years during colonial rule that becomes significant in comprehending the present relationship between the community and sacred space.
Proposed book titles currently include: Negotiating Sacred Space: Locating Early Medieval South Asia in a Trans-cultural World; Archaeology and Religion in Early Historic Punjab;Archaeology of multi-religious centres such as Varanasi or Mathura; Archaeology of Buddhism in South Asia.
Professor Himanshu Prabhu Ray is the editor of the new Archaeology and Religion series. She is currently the Chair of the National Monuments Authority, New Delhi. and formerly a professor at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was a Shivdasani Visiting Fellow at the OCHS in 2005 and edited the proceedings of the Archaeology and Text conference which was held in Oxford in 2007, published by Oxford University Press under the title Archaeology and Text: The Temple in South Asia.
More information can be found at www.ochs.org.uk/publications/archaeology-and-religion-series.
Academic year 2011–2012 gave us one OCHS fellow and three Shivdasani Fellows. The Shivdasani Fellowship exists to enable outstanding scholars of Indian nationality to come and study, write, and teach at Oxford University.
Professor Bilimoria is a highly engaging and cheerful individual and it was inspiring to see the amount of ground he covered in six short weeks. He tutored eleven students on a wide range of topics and took full advantage of the facilities Oxford offers. While at the OCHS he authored several papers and prepared a syllabus on ‘Gandhi and the Civil Rights Movement in America 1893-1993’ for a course he will be teaching in University of California- Berkeley.
Purushottama Bilimoria, is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Studies at Deakin University in Australia and Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne. Visiting Professor and Lecturer at University of California, Berkeley and Dominican University, San Anselmo. His areas of specialist research and publications cover classical Indian philosophy and comparative ethics; Continental thought; cross-cultural philosophy of religion, diaspora studies; bioethics, and personal law in India.
Prof. Bilimoria teaches and publishes on Hindu religious philosophies. He also works on political philosophy, pertaining to ethics of rights, theories of justice, capabilities, education and gender issues in third world, particularly South Asian, contexts.
On his stay at Oxford, Professor Bilimoria reports: ‘It was truly like being in a family, and everyone was always so kind, courteous, caring, and going out of their way to do things for a scholar-academic often somewhat new to the environment, and caught up in his own work, and head. I learnt so much, and was able to share so much. The handful of students I tutored and mentored were simply great; I have kept in touch with most. A wonderful place to sit, read, think, and write into the wee-hours of the night; and come downstairs to streets to take in a few breaths of the world around, and gaze at the towering spires of the colleges.’
For Hilary and Trinity terms we were honoured to host Professor Narasimhachary. This is Professor Narasimhachary’s second stay at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.
Prof. Narasimhachary is a world-class Sanskritist and an excellent teacher. ‘Studying Sanskrit texts under the supervision of Professor Narasimhachary has provided me with the kind of insight into the language that can only be gained from one profoundly rooted in the Sanskrit tradition,’ says student Lucien Wong. ‘The phenomenal breadth of his expertise has allowed me to discover subtle and fertile connections between various texts and ideas that would no doubt have been overlooked without his guidance.’
The spoken Sanskrit clsses given by Prof. Narasimhachary are an excellent complement to the University’s offerings.
‘I find his more traditional, cultural approach to the language to be invaluable and very necessary in order to truly appreciate the language,’ adds another of his students, Bhavishna Modi, ‘The Professor impresses us all with his recitations of verses, no matter what the topic, and despite all his students being at different levels we are all able to benefit from the lessons he teaches. He approaches the Ramayana with such enthusiasm that he leaves us inspired to explore beyond the material discussed in class, and it is exciting to learn the mantras he so memorably teaches! The Centre has provided a wonderful opportunity to the students at the University.’
Professor Narasimhachary is the Founder Professor and Head (Retired), Department of Vaishnavism, University of Madras, India. His specialist subjects include the Pre-Ramanuja Religion and Philosophy, Pancharatra Agama Literature, Telugu and Sanskrit Literature and popularisation of Sanskrit as a spoken tongue. Prof. Narasimhachary received the Certificate of Honour for Proficiency in Sanskrit from the President of India for the year 2004.
While at the OCHS he also lectured on Post-Ramanuja Developments in Shri Vaishnavaism, Readings in Ramanuja’s Sribhashya, and Readings in Kavya.
Parimal G. Patil is Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy at Harvard University, where he is Chair of the Department of South Asian Studies. His primary academic interests are in Sanskrit philosophy and the intellectual history of religion in India. In his first two books, Against a Hindu God and Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India, he focused on interreligious debates between Buddhists and non-Buddhist philosophers in the final phase of Buddhism in India. Currently, he is working on early modern Sanskrit philosophy, especially the work of the New Epistemologists.
For professional reasons his stay in Oxford was shortened, however he managed a busy schedule of lectures, tutorials, and meetings with old colleagues including Dr Jim Benson, an early mentor who started Professor Patil on his journey into Sanskrit.
We hope to be able to host Professor Patil again for a full term.
We were also pleased to host Andrea Acri, a scholar of Shaivism in the Indian Subcontinent and the Indonesian Archipelago.
‘My one-term stay at the OCHS as a visiting fellow was enriching,’ he says. ‘Of the many research centres and academic institutions I have visited worldwide, the OCHS is the most unique, being characterised by an approach to Hindu studies that beautifully espouses the rigorous academic standards and refined intellectual environment of Oxford to the human warmth and pluralistic attitude of India. I was struck by its atmosphere of genuine friendliness and deep respect for the Hindu culture – an aspect that one cannot always take for granted in today’s academic world. Run by devoted staff members and populated on most days by a host of Oxford undergraduate and graduate students, regular or occasional visitors, and other academics, the Centre was for me much more than a vibrant scholarly hub – it provided me with a truly “home away from home” experience.’
Andrea Acri is from Parma, Italy. He holds a Laurea degree in Oriental Languages and Cultures (Sanskrit) from the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’, and an MA degree in Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures (Old Javanese) from Leiden University (the Netherlands). Before receiving his PhD from the same University in early 2011, he was awarded a J. Gonda Fellowship in Indology at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS, Leiden). He was then granted an Australia Endeavour Award for Postdoctoral Research and a Visiting Fellowship at the School of Culture, History and Language of the College for Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University (Canberra).
His other research interests are Hinduism and Indian philosophies, Sanskrit and Old Javanese languages and literatures, and various aspects of the intellectual history of the Indic world. He is the author of Dharma Pātañjala; A Śaiva Scripture from Ancient Java; Studied in the Light of Related Old Javanese and Sanskrit Texts, and co-editor of From Laṅkā Eastwards: The Rāmāyaṇa in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia (KITLV Press, 2011).
Our friend Joe, The Sunday Statesman
William Radice remembers Joseph T O’Connell, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, who passed away on 6 May 2012, aged 71
Former OCHS Academic Director, Prof. Joseph (Joe) O’Connell, passed away on Sunday 6 May at the age of 72, following a brain haemorrhage while in New York. He was born in Boston in 1940.
In 1999–2000 Professor O’Connell was the Academic Director at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies since which time he has also been a Senior Associate Fellow of the Centre. He revisited the Centre as a visiting fellow in 2001 and once more in the spring of 2011.
He was an exceptional scholar, who did much for the study of Gaudiya Vaishnavism since his PhD in the 1950s on the social aspects of the Chaitanya movement. He has published widely on the history of Vaishnavism in Bengal, and on the social and ethical issues in the tradition.
Joe was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religion at the University of Toronto after more than three decades as Professor of Hinduism, and in the last decade was a visiting professor at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he was instrumental in the development of a department of World Religions – a discipline that is largely non-existent in South Asia. He is survived by his wife, Kathleen O’Connell (a very fine scholar and OCHS Visitng Fellow herself), a daughter and two sons.
He is remembered by OCHS colleague, Dr Kenneth Valpey, as, “a wonderfully personable and genuinely helpful soul. I was always amazed at how much he would go out of his way to spend time reading things I had drafted and give detailed – ever so detailed – helpful comments and suggestions. In his presence, one always felt that scholarship is one of the most fun, worthwhile, and ‘humanistic’ things to do with life.”
Another colleague, Dr Ravi Gupta, remembers, ‘perhaps the most important thing that I learned from his work was not about the content of his scholarship, but rather the manner in which he pursued that scholarship. Joseph carried a deep respect for the people and traditions he studied. He listened to those whom he studied, gave them the benefit of the doubt, and worked with them to bring about effective change where it was needed. He demonstrated a mode of Religious Studies scholarship where the practitioner is not a patient to be cured, but a collaborator in a shared quest to understand our world.’
Joe was known to all at the OCHS as a true gentleman and a man of integrity and character. He has been a friend to the Centre and mentor to many of its staff, scholars and students and will be missed greatly.
The OCHS will host a memorial lunch for Prof. O’Connell on Wednesday 16 May.
The Importance of Religion argues for the central importance of religion in modern times and how it provides people with meaning to their lives and guides them in their everyday moral choices. Professor Flood argues that modern religions do not just represent passive notions about the nature of reality but are active and inspirational: they show us ways of living, dying, choosing a good life and inhabiting the world.
Professor Flood discusses the nature and meaning of religion and spirituality, and religion’s relationship with politics, science, evolutionary biology, human rights, culture, humanism and more.
The title is an excellent addition to the body of publishing that has sprung from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. It has been well-received by scholars of religion including Gavin D’Costa of the University of Bristol: ‘Flood presents a thesis about “religion” that is provocative, irenic, learned and wide-ranging. His interdisciplinary intervention is an elegant challenge to those who think religion is dead or dying. It is a sensitive exploration of religion as the textual and ritual generator of meaning.’
Professor Flood has been the Academic Director of OCHS since October 2005. In 2008 he was granted the title of Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion from the University of Oxford.
Every year in their January issue, Choice a magazine representing the 35,000 libraries who are part of the American Academic Libraries Association, publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that they reviewed during the previous year.
‘Theodor writes with a fine mind and a great heart, both of which are essential for delving into this ancient work’s profound teachings,’ Choice magazine commented in its review.
Theodor’s book presents the full text of the Bhagavad Gita in a new translation, divided into sections, and accompanied by in-depth commentary. It aims to make the Gita accessible and understandable to a wide variety of modern readers.
We now have a third conference to add to our list of achievements. The Sakta conference which took place on 10–11 September 2011 was highly successful with over fifty participants and twelve specialist scholars.
