Ravi Gupta, "Who Owns Religion? A Hindu Perspective on Being a Disciple-Scholar"
Channel: Maxwell Institute
Date: 2017-11-13

Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture—October 3, 2017

Ravi Gupta, "Who Owns Religion? A Hindu Perspective on Being a Disciple-Scholar"

Recent decades have seen tension between Hindus and scholars of Hinduism. Who gets to decide how Hinduism is taught in the academy? Do scholarly methods undermine central Hindu beliefs, or is scholarship compatible with devout Hinduism? Can a practitioner of Hinduism be an effective scholar of Hinduism? How can scholarship and faith not only get along, but strengthen each other?

In this lecture, Dr. Ravi M. Gupta addresses the relationship between faith and scholarship, occupying the dual role of practitioner and scholar of Hinduism.

RAVI M. GUPTA is the Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Religious Studies Program at Utah State University. He is the author or editor of four books, including an abridged translation of the Bhagavata Purana (with Kenneth Valpey), published in 2016 by Columbia University Press. Ravi completed his doctorate in Hindu Studies at Oxford University and subsequently taught at the University of Florida, Centre College, and the College of William and Mary. He has received four teaching awards, a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship, two visiting fellowships at Oxford, and a book award. He is a Permanent Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a past president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. He lectures around the world on topics related to Vaishnava philosophy and Hindu devotional traditions.