Kind of Hindu

A short, user-friendly introduction to major historical, cultural, spiritual and theological points of interest in the complex of faith traditions known collectively as Hinduism.

Your hands-on guide to one of the world's major religions The dominant religion of India, "Hinduism" refers to a widevariety of religious traditions and philosophies that havedeveloped over thousands of years. Today, the United States is hometo approximately one million Hindus. If you've heard of this ancient religion and are looking for areference that explains the intricacies of the customs, practices,and teachings of this ancient spiritual system, Hinduism ForDummies is for you! Provides a thorough introduction to this earliest and popularworld belief system Information on the rites, rituals, deities, and teachingsassociated with the practice of Hinduism Explores the history and teachings of the Vedas, Brahmans, andUpanishads Offers insight into the modern daily practice of Hinduismaround the world Continuing the Dummies tradition of making the world's religionsengaging and accessible to everyone, Hinduism For Dummies isyour hands-on, friendly guide to this fascinating religion.

An examination of the rise of Hindu nationalism in India.

After a brief introduction on the idea of culture, enculturation and acculturation in social anthropology, a theology of culture, symbol and language is treated in order to lead to the central subject-matter of the Christian theology of inculturation, which is articulated in themes such as revelation and culture, redemptive incarnation as an exemplary model of inculturation, Lay people and inculturation, missionary spirituality and inculturation. The final chapters deal with inculturation in the Indian Church, the meeting of the Gospel with Asian religions, cultures and aspirations for full humanity, and Asian Christian theology.

From the author of the beloved New York Times bestselling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and the creator and star of The Mindy Project comes a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal. In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you. In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”) Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

A Strange Kind of Paradise is an exploration of India’s past and present, from the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in India for many years. Sam Miller investigates how the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans and Americans – everyone really, except for Indians themselves – came to imagine India. His account of the engagement between foreigners and India spans the centuries from Alexander the Great to Slumdog Millionaire. It features, among many others, Thomas the Apostle, the Chinese monk Xuanzang, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco da Gama, Babur, Clive of India, several Victorian pornographers, Mark Twain, E. M. Forster, Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles and Steve Jobs. Interspersed between these tales is the story of Sam Miller’s own 25-year-long love affair with India. The result is a spellbinding, 2,500-year-long journey through Indian history, culture and society, in the company of an author who informs, educates and entertains in equal measure, as he travels in the footsteps of foreign chroniclers, exposes some of their fabulous fantasies and overturns long-held stereotypes about race, identity and migration. At once scholarly and thought-provoking, delightfully eccentric and laugh-out-loud funny, this book is destined to become a much-loved classic.

Covers all aspects of Hinduism, including practices, festivals, beliefs, gods, sacred sites, languages, and religious texts.

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card’s award-winning 1985 novel, has been discovered and rediscovered by generations of science fiction fans and young adult readers, banned and challenged in schools, assigned in high school English classes, and adopted as reading by the US Marine Corps. Ender's Game and its sequels explores rich themes—the violence and cruelty of children, the role of empathy in war, and the balance of individual dignity and the social good—with compelling elements of a coming-of-age story and exciting and immersive battle scenes. Ender’s Game and Philosophy brings together over thirty philosophers to engage in wide-ranging discussion on the troubling, exciting, and fascinating issues raised in and amidst the excitement and fear of Orson Scott Card’s novels and Gavin Hood’s film. Authors address issues such as: the justifiability of pre-emptive strikes, how Ender’s disconnected and dispassionate violence is mirrored in today’s drone warfare, whether the end of saving the species can justify the most brutal means, the justifiability of lies and deception in wartimes, how military schools produce training in virtue, how Ender as the “good student” is held to a different educational standard, which rules can be broken in games and which cannot, Ender’s world as a mirror of our own surveillance society, the moral hazards of child warriors, the value of Ender’s ability to sympathize with his enemies, the meaning of a “hive-mind,” the limits of our ability to relate to one, the relationship between Ender’s story and Card’s Mormonism. The authors of Ender’s Game and Philosophy challenge readers to confront and work through the conceptual and emotional challenges that Ender’s Game presents, bringing a new light on the idea of a just war, the virtues of the soldier, the nature of childhood, the social value and moral corruption of lies and deception, the practices of education and of leadership, and the serious work of playing games.

Through a balanced selection of texts with commentaries, this work combines an approach to the renaissance of Hinduism and the reformation of Indian society.

A collection of recent essays and articles, Demography and Democracy is Himani Bannerji's engagement with the nationalist currents that have become such crucial topics of discussion and debate in recent years. Topics covered include Hindu nationalism, Zionism, subaltern studies, the novels of Rabindranath Tagore, and issues of knowledge, ideology, and representation around the US invasion of Afghanistan. The essays are written from an anti-imperialist Marxist feminist standpoint and offer a bracing critique of contemporary ideologies.

Sri Lanka Language , 25 cm.

This third volume of The Journal Of Claude Fredericks is his journal for the year 1943, a Wanderjahr that begins with a spring in Cambridge, where Volume Two ended, but with Fredericks, having left studies at Harvard, living now in a room at Maud Bemiss house on Nutting Road near the Cowley Fathers, seeing various friends from earlier, Brie Taylor, John Simon, Anthony Clark, Paul Doguereau, the George Sartons, and making new friends as well. The summer is spent in a cabin on the shore near Belfast Maine, writing and studying still and coming to know the family that lives on the hill. In September, after spending ten days with Paul Doguereau and Fanny Mason in Walpole New Hampshire on the beautiful Mason estate overlooking the Connecticut and a month in New York living in an apartment on University Place and seeing his friend May Sarton and coming to know Muriel Rukeyser and Julian Beck, he heads with his friend William Quinn to Iowa to live with several friends of theirs who also have left Harvard, in particular Michael Millen and Paul Rail, all of them proclaiming in different ways, as Quinn and Fredericks do in theirs, their objections to Americas part in the war that had begun in December 1941. After two weeks Fredericks leaves to stay with a friend in Chicago, Martha Johnson, and to settle in and write about the troubling events of the previous days and then go on to Missouri, to pay filial pieties to members of his family there and after that go south with his mother to Mexico City for a week and then with her to Acapulco for ten days at Christmas, a spot at that time still undiscovered and with only two small hotels. Finally at the years end he heads back east to New York, where he has plans to settle down and live forever, in the city he had always loved the most of any he knew.

The fourth edition of World Religions in America continues its lauded tradition of providing students with reliable and nuanced information about America's religious diversity, while also reflecting new developments and ideas. Each chapter was updated to reflect important changes and events, and current statistics and information. New features include a timeline of key events and people for each tradition, sidebars on major movements or controversies, personal stories from members of various faiths, a theme-based organization of subjects, more subheads, three new chapters exploring America's increasing religious diversity, and suggestions for further study.

Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum bring together leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines to address a crucial question: How does the world's most populous democracy survive repeated assaults on its pluralistic values? India's stunning linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity has been supported since Independence by a political structure that emphasizes equal rights for all, and protects liberties of religion and speech. But a decent Constitution does not implement itself, and challenges to these core values repeatedly arise-most recently in the form of the Hindu Right movements of the twenty-first century that threatened to destabilize the nation and upend its core values, in the wake of a notorious pogrom in the state of Gujarat in which approximately 2000 Muslim civilians were killed. Focusing on this time of tension and threat, the essays in this volume consider how a pluralistic democracy managed to survive. They examine the role of political parties and movements, including the women's movement, as well as the role of the arts, the press, the media, and a historical legacy of pluralistic thought and critical argument. Featuring essays from eminent scholars in history, religious studies, political science, economics, women's studies, and media studies, Pluralism and Democracy in India offers an urgently needed case study in democratic survival. As Nehru said of India on the eve of Independence: ''These dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.'' The analysis this volume offers illuminates not only the past and future of one nation, but the prospects of democracy for all.

This popular textbook has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect recent global developments, whilst retaining its unique and compelling narrative-style approach. Using ancient stories from diverse religions, it explores a broad range of important and complex moral issues, resulting in a truly reader-friendly and comparative introduction to religious ethics. A thoroughly revised and expanded new edition of this popular textbook, yet retains the unique narrative-style approach which has proved so successful with students Considers the ways in which ancient stories from diverse religions, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the lives of Jesus and Buddha, have provided ethical orientation in the modern world Updated to reflect recent discussions on globalization and its influence on cross-cultural and comparative ethics, economic dimensions to ethics, Gandhian traditions, and global ethics in an age of terrorism Expands coverage of Asian religions, quest narratives, the religious and philosophical approach to ethics in the West, and considers Chinese influences on Thich Nhat Hanh’s Zen Buddhism, and Augustine’s Confessions Accompanied by an instructor’s manual (coming soon, see www.wiley.com/go/fasching) which shows how to use the book in conjunction with contemporary films

Whether you are completely new to yoga, a more advanced practitioner who feels they can't see the wood for the trees or simply someone who would like to know what all these people who seem to go on about yoga are actually talking about, this is the first book you need to read. The Incomplete Guide to Yoga is a comprehensive introduction and guide to yoga, covering everything from the philosophical background and history to the nuts and bolts of how to practice - and pretty much everything in between. There are hundreds of books about yoga, covering hundreds of topics and viewpoints, many conflicting with each other. If you have ever stood in a bookshop and thought I AM JUST A NORMAL PERSON WHO WANTS TO KNOW WHAT YOGA IS AND WHAT ON EARTH I AM SUPPOSED TO DO WITH IT, then reading this book will do the job nicely. The Incomplete Guide to Yoga is a unique synthesis of the many aspects of yoga, and its relationship with modern thinking. It provides clear, unbiased explanations and will leave you with your own coherent picture of yoga and how it will work for you.

This is the first book to tackle the diverse styles and multiple histories of popular musics in India. It brings together fourteen of the world's leading scholars on Indian popular music to contribute chapters on a range of topics from the classic songs of Bollywood to contemporary remixes, summarized by a reflective afterword by popular music scholar Timothy Taylor. The chapters in this volume address the impact of media and technology on contemporary music, the variety of industrial developments and contexts for Indian popular music, and historical trends in popular music development both before and after the Indian Independence in 1947. The book identifies new ways of engaging popular music in India beyond the Bollywood musical canon, and offers several case studies of local and regional styles of music. The contributors address the subcontinent's historical relationships with colonialism, the transnational market economies, local governmental factors, international conventions, and a host of other circumstances to shed light on the development of popular music throughout India. To illustrate each chapter author's points, and to make available music not easily accessible in North America, the book features an Oxford web music companion website of audio and video tracks.