|
| |
| |
|
About ISP
The Indic universe gave birth to four major world religions, diverse schools of philosophical thought and a variety of cultural traditions. It has witnessed dramatic and sometimes cataclysmic encounters with non-Indic religious traditions. The sub-continent also nurtured several persecuted religious traditions (e.g., Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahaiis) from different parts of the world. India is home to virtually all of the contemporary religions of the world and their interaction and dialogue has produced highly creative cultural forms. Within the Indic world, the diverse communities innovated their own different ways of relating to each other and living together. In contemporary times these traditions of co-living of communities are being reworked into new social-institutional and legal-political forms, especially through state policies and the working of democratic politics. This has radically changed the relations among the ethno-religious communities, making the traditionally established codes of co-living less effective for a more modern, multi-cultural society. Consequently, the old ritualistically and theologically determined boundaries between various religious communities as well as between folk and classical religious traditions are being transmitted into ethno-political identities contending with each other for power and hegemony rather than theological truth claims.
These developments have now begun to compel different religious communities to engage in new modes of religious dialogue and recover common civilisational ground, often even bypassing the long held theological differences among them. This has become necessary not just for the survival of different communities but even more urgently for countering the violence-prone agenda of global homogenization which is distorting or destroying cultural-religious communities on the course of self destruction.
The dialogic process, even if uneven and tardy so far, has brought into existence many new political-cultural symbols, socio-religious practices and codes of behaviour transcending traditional boundaries of communities and bringing them to deal with each other in trans communal spaces.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| For an International Seminar on |
|
Hindu Organizations in
Education, Health and Development
Work |
| 3-4 March 2010 |
We invite papers for a seminar on the varied Hindu organizations involved in education and development work, both in India and the diaspora (primarily in the context of the project’s three major country foci: India, the US and the UK) . This includes guru shishya parampara, akhaadas and sampradyas; organizations set up in the late 19th and early 20th century for social and religious reform in response to colonial attacks on Hinduism and to resist conversions; institutions set up during the freedom movement, as well as after Independence, as part of nation building endeavors by leading freedom fighters; schools and hostels set up by caste groups to promote "modern" education among their respective caste brethren; institutions built by sect leaders for development work and to provide education and health care; organizations working among scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, mainly to combat Christian missionary activity and counter the influence of NGO's supported by western funding agencies; institutions set up to promote Hindu culture through Yoga, Ayurveda and other Indic knowledge systems. |
|
|
|
|
|
