New Books in South Asian Studies

The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781793624260] (Lexington Books, 2024) analyzes the contributions of the Mother (née Mirra Alfassa, 1878-1973) to the Integral Yoga that she and Sri Aurobindo (né Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950) co-created for his ashram. Scholars have ignored Mirra for Aurobindo, which prevents a full understanding of their spiritual practice. Scholars have also avoided examining work Aurobindo produced after they began their partnership in 1920 until his death in 1950, and privilege the written output in his journal Arya from 1914 to 1921. In this initial fertile period, he put forth his innovative teaching about what he called the “Supermind,” an emergent human faculty that he said would manifest a new humanity and a new earth through Mirra’s body. Mirra claimed that after his death in 1956 this manifestation happened as he foretold. Mirra’s work in the ashram from his death until hers in 1973 reveals important ways that she both fulfilled and changed Aurobindo’s initial vision. These developments are chiefly based on her experiences of mental dissolution while her body gained a new supramental form and consciousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies]

In this episode, Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with David Gordon White, a distinguished indologist and scholar of Tantra. Our conversation focuses on David’s most recent project tracing the transregional histories of spirits, gods, demons, and their associated rituals across Eurasia. Along the way, we dive into an intellectual conversation about dog-headed men, angry goddesses, alchemical mercury, body-snatching yogis, the origins of Dracula, and much, much more. If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out our members-only benefits on blackberyl.substack.com [https://blackberyl.substack.com/]. Enjoy the show! Resources mentioned * David Gordon White, Daemons are Forever [https://amzn.to/3R2eek5] (2021) * David Gordon White, Myths of the Dog-Man [https://amzn.to/4h4mUkn] (1991) * David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body [https://amzn.to/4imuR5g] (1997) * David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogini [https://amzn.to/43ltIa2] (2006) * David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis [https://amzn.to/43ikUSa] (2011) * Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine [https://amzn.to/3QGNWUg] (2002) * Michel Strickmann, Mantras et Mandarins [https://amzn.to/4ihfJGk] (1996) * David Gordon White, “Three Shades of Tantric Yoga,” in Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies [https://amzn.to/4imUYcE] (2024) * David Gordon White, "Were-Creatures of the Eurasian Ecumene," Journal Asiatique(2020) * David Gordon White, "Dracula’s Family Tree," Gothic Studies (2021) Pierce Salguero [http://www.piercesalguero.com/] is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies]

In Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity: Production, Representation, and Reception [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780198891017] (Oxford UP, 2024), Nadira Khatun explores the contentious Muslim identity in contemporary India as reflected in recent Bollywood films. She argues that the approach towards Muslim identity in Bollywood films are influenced by the changing political landscape from Nehruvian India to the rise of BJP, which views Hindus and Muslims as separate religious communities instead of recognizing the syncretic culture manifesting in Hindu-Muslim unity. By analyzing the representation of Muslims in various films like Roja, Fanna, Mission Kashmir, Black Friday, New York, A Wednesday, Sarfarosh, she shows that the militant portrayal of Muslims is good for commercial success as opposed to a secular image. Overall, the study problematizes Muslim identity formation in Bollywood against the backdrop of nationalism and communalism in India. Author: Dr. Nadira Khatun, Associate Professor of Communications, Xavier University, India Host: Dr. Nilanjana Paul, Associate Professor of History, Department of History, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is the author of Bengal Muslims and Colonial Education, 1854-1947: A Study of Curriculum, Educational Institutions and Communal Politics, Routledge, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies]

An astonishing variety of murals greet visitors to the temples and palaces of southern India. Beautiful in execution and extensive in scope, murals painted on walls and ceilings adorn the most important spaces of early modern religious and political performance. Scene by scene, histories of holy sites, portraits that incorporate historical figures into mythic landscapes, and Tamil and Telugu inscriptions that evoke the imagined topographies of devotional poetry unfold before the mobile spectator. Body, History, Myth reconceives the relationship between art and devotion in South India by describing how the extraordinary sensory experience of a viewing body in motion unfurls a sacred narrative exquisitely designed to teach, impress, and inspire. Anna Lise Seastrand offers new insights into the arts of early modern southern India, bringing to life one of the most culturally vibrant yet least understood periods in Indian art. She shows how temple visitors become active participants in the paintings through their somatic engagement with visual stories and devotional landscapes. Seastrand highlights the significance of textuality in early modern South Asia by examining the status of professional scribes and the prominence given to authorship of religious literature and art. Her insights are presented alongside new translations of the texts that accompany mural paintings. Featuring a wealth of stunning images published here for the first time, Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780691257990] (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a multidimensional reading of temple art that fundamentally reframes the artistic, intellectual, religious, and political histories of early modern India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies]

The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a major front in the Indian struggle against colonial rule, as well as a crucial Allied outpost in the British/American war against Japan, Bengal stood at the crossroads of complex and contentious structural forces - both domestic and international - which, taken together, defined an era of political uncertainty, social turmoil, and collective violence. While for the British the overarching priority was to save the empire from imminent collapse at any cost, for the majority of the Indian population the 1940s were years of acute scarcity, violent dislocation and enduring calamity. In particular there are three major crises that shaped the social, economic and political context of pre-partition Bengal: the Second World War, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Calcutta riots of 1946.  Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781610886598](Oxford UP, 2015) examines these intricately interconnected events, foregrounding the political economy of war and famine in order to analyze the complex nexus of hunger, war and civil violence in colonial Bengal at the twilight of British rule. NBN Host: Sohini Majumdar [https://www.usfca.edu/faculty/sohini-majumdar] teaches history at University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies]