Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (U Chicago Press, 2023) invites us to consider how colonial infrastructures shaped our globalized world. Through the origin and afterlives of a 1927 British imperial law (Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code), J. Barton Scott weaves a globe-trotting narrative about secularism, empire, insult, and outrage. Decentering white martyrs to free thought, his story calls for new histories of blasphemy that return these thinkers to their imperial context, dismantle the cultural boundaries of the West, and transgress the borders between the secular and the sacred as well as the public and the private.
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.
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Bernardo Kastrup, "Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A Straightforward Summary of the 21st Century's Only Plausible Metaphysics" (Iff Books, 2024)
Stephen Phillips, "The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad" (Bloombury, 2024)
Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh, "How to Love in Sanskrit" (HarperCollins, 2024)
Karen Pechilis et al. ed., "Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Richard M. Jaffe, "Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
Nancy M. Martin, "Mirabai: The Making of a Saint" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Kenneth R. Valpey, "Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Jason Birch, "The Amaraugha and Amaraughaprabodha of Goraksanatha" (Institut Francais de Pondichery, 2024)
Purushottama Bilimoria et al., "Contemplative Studies and Jainism: Meditation, Prayer, and Veneration" (Routledge, 2023)
Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, "The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: The Complete English Translation" (Princeton UP, 2022)
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Peter Scharf, "Ramopakhyana - the Story of Rama in the Mahabharata" (The Sanskrit Library, 2023)
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Patrick Olivelle, "Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King" (Yale UP, 2024)
William S. Waldron, "Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters" (Wisdom Publications, 2023)
Pravina Rodrigues, "A Sakta Method for Comparative Theology: Upside Down, Inside Out" (Lexington, 2023)
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