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New Books in Indian Religions: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Marshall Poe
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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- 2 days ago51 min
Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom with Sthaneshwar Timalsina
In Reframing Dynamism: Indic Philosophies of Being, Time and Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2026), the first book to explore the philosophy of dynamism from classical India, Sthaneshwar Timalsina interrogates central metaphysical questions about the nature of reality.Timalsina argues for change and time as intrinsic to being. Exploring instances from Yaska to Abhinavagupta, and reading philosophical and cultural texts in a comparative light, he reveals the absolute being as inherently dynamic. Alongside Bergson and Husserl, his study directs attention to the importance of the arguments of classical Sanskrit grammarians such as Yaska, Bhartthari, and Kauna Bhatta.By engaging with schools and other Sakta philosophies that have not received serious engagement, Timalsina reinvigorates the conversation on creativity, freedom, dynamism, temporality, and the dynamism of being. His cutting-edge view of time as a fundamental element of reality is necessary reading for scholars of classical Sanskrit traditions, consciousness and the philosophy of life.Vimarsha Foundation website Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 days ago49 min
Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern, and Mediations of Gender with Raka Shome (Duke UP, 2025)
In this episode of discussing Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern, and Mediations of Gender with Raka Shome (Duke UP, 2025), Raka Shome explores the logics of governmentality of contemporary Hindu nationalism in India by advancing the concept of the “Hindu modern.” Analyzing a national cleanliness program and other development projects, Shome shows how the Hindu modern—a form of national governmentality that disciplines and regulates individual subjects to create desirable “clean” citizens—inscribes Hindu nationalism in India. Focused on security, progress, and development while celebrating and protecting the figure of the upper-caste Hindu woman, the Hindu modern works toward a religious and casteist cleansing of the nation that rewrites Indian modernity as a purified and cleansed Hindu modernity. It shores up caste and religious inequalities around who is authentically Indian, reproducing historical violence against and exclusions of caste, gender, and religion, especially toward Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 1 weeks ago40 min
Vākyamālā: A Garland of Words in Honour of John D. Smith with Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez (Cardiff UP, 2026)
A multimedia collection dedicated to John D. Smith on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, edited by Wendy J. Phillips Rodríguez and Simon Brodbeck.Open Access here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 weeks ago1h 8m
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism with Peter G. Jones (Essentia Books, 2025)
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundamental questions about existence, reality, and the meaning of life that challenges the traditional scepticism of Western thought. It presents evidence for a systematic, comprehensive, and fundamental world-theory, and places the reader in a position to judge its merits and plausibility for themselves.Peter G. Jones explains the ongoing failure of Western philosophers to comprehend metaphysics as a consequence of not engaging with the only world-theory that survives analysis, the one endorsed by the writers of the Indian Upanishads, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Meister Eckhart and, many would say, Jesus and Muhammad. The findings of philosophers in the Western analytical ‘rational’ tradition are compared with the teachings of the Perennial tradition and shown to be in complete harmony. In Pursuit of the Inconceivable presents a philosophical explanation of mysticism, an apology for Abrahamic religion, a solution for all metaphysical problems, and an appeal for a significant change of attitude in the academic and scientific communities. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 weeks ago1h 15m
Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660 with Fatima Quraishi (UNC Press, 2026)
Established in the late fourteenth century in what is now Sindh Province, Pakistan, the Maklī necropolis grew over three centuries to a site of more than seventy monumental tombs and mosques, and hundreds, if not thousands, of graves. Maklī’s distinctive architecture sheds light on the intersection of transregional artistic styles through its accretional building practices by generations of craftspeople. Over its long history, Maklī became a site layered with multiple meanings as regional elites and everyday Sufi devotees sought to be buried in the shadow of saints—and as the living visited the necropolis to enact devotions and duty.In Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660 (UNC Press, 2026), Fatima Quraishi uses rarely consulted archives in Pakistan alongside close analysis of Maklī’s built environment to understand the site as an artistic and architectural palimpsest, mutually established by elite patronage and humble devotions. At Maklī, the passage of time merges with changes in religion and society to reveal the vibrant lives and afterlives of tombs integral to the communal life of surrounding areas. By studying what has long been treated as an interstitial space between Central Asia and India, Quraishi speaks to wider explorations of borderlands of the premodern past. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 2 weeks ago36 min
Shared Sacred Sites in South Asia: Negotiating Coexistence and Belonging with Christophe Jaffrelot (Hurst, 2026)
What can shared sacred sites tell us about religious coexistence in South Asia? Political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot joins Shreya Urvashi to discuss Shared Sacred Sites in South Asia: Negotiating Coexistence and Belonging (Hurst, 2026), co-edited with Laurent Gayer, Aminah Mohammad-Arif, and Grégoire Schlemmer. The book examines shrines, pilgrimage sites, and other sacred spaces across South Asia where people from different religious communities continue to worship, make offerings, and participate in overlapping devotional practices.Christophe and Shreya discuss why “shared” does not necessarily mean harmonious, the book’s idea of coexistence as a “tensile equilibrium,” and what everyday religious practice can reveal about the boundaries between religious communities. The conversation explores religious reform, nationalism, and the everyday work required to sustain coexistence. More broadly, they discuss what shared sacred spaces can tell us about religion, belonging, and political change in South Asia.Find the book at the publisher's site here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 3 weeks ago30 min
The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in India: Goddesses and Magicians in the Holy Groves of Kerala with Maciej Karasinski (Routledge, 2026)
Despite the long tradition of exploring the Tantric temple culture of Nampūtiri Brahmins within Tantric studies, the Śākta stream remains under-researched. The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in India: Goddesses and Magicians in the Holy Groves of Kerala (Routledge, 2026) therefore enriches understanding of these largely neglected sampradāyas (spiritual traditions), bringing them to the attention of the wider academic community and ultimately shedding light on Śākta communities often marginalised in the discourses on mainstream Asian religions.Forming one of the richest surviving religious-philosophical traditions of South Asia, Kerala Śākta Tantra is a complex ritualistic system that evolved under the strong influence of various esoteric traditions, including Kashmirian Śaivism (Krama). Drawing on ethnographic data and anthropological research collected during fieldwork in Kerala, as well as interviews with practitioners of kaḷaripayaṯṯu and members of the Nāyar, Piṭārar, Panikkar, and Kalari Kurupp clans, this book explores the diversity of folk and Sanskritic traditions and highlights the importance of Śāktism, particularly Kālī Krama and Śrīvidyā traditions in Kerala. Chapters discuss sacred spaces in Kerala, introduce various Tantric communities, and examine the social changes in modern Kerala that instigated broader acceptance of those from so-called low castes to worship in Hindu temples. The book also offers a philological study of hitherto unexamined Sanskrit and Malayalam manuscripts (ritual manuals) from Kerala, which provide insights into the modes of worship of fierce and fearsome goddesses of the Tantric pantheon.Arguing that the Kerala Śāktism forms an intricate system preserved by so-called Śākteya clans in Kerala, this important volume will be of use to scholars, postgraduate students, and researchers in the fields of Asian religion, Tantric studies, South Asian religion, and South Asian studies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Oct 15, 202642 min
An Alaṅkāra Reader: Classical Indian Poetics with Yigal Bronner (Columbia UP, 2026)
Classical Indian poetics prized the skillful use of alaṅkāras, or “ornaments”—literary figures of speech. Across more than a millennium, Sanskrit writers developed and elaborated an account of literary embellishment that is perhaps the world’s most complex and long-standing theory of figuration. Yet it remains the least studied of India’s major classical systems of thought.An Alaṅkāra Reader (Columbia University Press, 2026) is a groundbreaking panoramic overview of this tradition, presenting extensive and accessible translations of key works that span its history, from the sixth to eighteenth century CE. These texts vividly show how Indian theorists analyzed simile, metaphor, allegory, and dozens of other figures that are distinctive to their world. Yigal Bronner’s commentary makes Sanskrit concepts of ornamentation approachable while placing them in historical context. He provides a new account of the history of Sanskrit poetics, showing how it underwent successive waves of theoretical revolutions and emerged as a prestigious field that attracted a variety of scholars in the early modern era.Featuring many previously untranslated texts, An Alaṅkāra Reader is an essential resource for the study of classical Indian thought, the intellectual history of South Asia, and comparative literature. It reveals the depth and nuance of Sanskrit’s “science of ornaments” for anyone interested in poetic theory, figuration, and aesthetics across world traditions.Yigal Bronner is a Sanskritist whose areas of interest include literature, literary theory, and South Asian intellectual history more generally. He worked on this volume while teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and now teaches in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. His books include Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration (2010) and A Lasting Vision: Dandin's Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (2023).Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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About New Books in Indian Religions
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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