Hindu Pluralism
Subtitle: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India
Publisher: University of California Press
Place of publication: Oakland, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9780520293014; 9780520966291
Subjects: Social & cultural history; Religion & beliefs; History; Asian history; History of religion
Description: In Hindu Pluralism, Elaine M. Fisher complicates the traditional scholarly narrative of the unification of Hinduism. By calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term ?sectarianism,? Fisher?s work excavates the pluralistic textures of precolonial Hinduism in the centuries prior to British intervention. Drawing on previously unpublished sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, Fisher argues that the performance of plural religious identities in public space in Indian early modernity paved the way for the emergence of a distinctively non-Western form of religious pluralism. This work provides a critical resource for understanding how Hinduism developed in the early modern period, a crucial era that set the tenor for religion?s role in public life in India through the present day.
Notes: English.