Yesterday
Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from ... Show More
46m 37s
Yesterday
The MANTRAMS Project: Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia
Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producing a history and anthropology of mantras. The six-year project investigates mantras across millennia and geographies — from their r ... Show More
39m 8s
Apr 16
Gudrun Bühnemann, "Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions" (Brill, 2025)
Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or Anantanāga, Patañjali is celebrated, in both story ... Show More
39m 58s
Apr 2022
Manu Pillai, "False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma" (Juggernaut, 2021)
It can be easy to think of the recent history of India—especially for those who aren’t from there—as a straight line, from the Mughal Empire, through the British Empire, to independent India.
That, of course, is hugely simplistic, missing the mess of competing polities, interests ... Show More
48m 25s
Mar 2022
ZEYN JOUKHADAR | The Thirty Names of Night | Book Club
<p>Zeyn Joukhadar talked about his book ‘The Thirty Names of Night: A Novel’<strong>.</strong></p><p>Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of the novels The Map of Salt and Stars, 2018, and The Thirty Names of Night, 2020 and a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI). His wor ... Show More
27m 27s
Aug 2022
Karen Bauer and Feras Hamza, "An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries (vol. 2): On Women" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Karen Bauer and Feras Hamza's co-written book An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries (vol. 2): On Women (Oxford UP, 2022) is a collection of historical and contemporary commentaries on the Qur’an. It covers five issues: human creation and the idea of “a single soul”; marital roles ... Show More
1h 16m
Dec 2021
Kama Sutra - Book Summary | Vatsyayana
Show notes | PDF & Infographic | Free audiobook | The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian treatise dedicated to sensual and emotional life, lust, and love. Read on your terms. Get the PDF, infographic, full ad-free audiobook and animated version of this summary of Kamasutra and 1 mil ... Show More
19m 25s
Jul 2021
Supriya Gandhi, "The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India" (Harvard UP, 2020)
In her magnificent and lyrical new book, The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India (Harvard UP, 2020), Supriya Gandhi reorients and adds unprecedented depth to our understanding of the much memorialized but less understood Mughal prince and thinker Dara Shukoh (d. 16 ... Show More
1 h
Oct 2021
Wendy Doniger, "Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History" (U Virginia Press, 2021)
Raj Balkaran speaks with Wendy Doniger about her new book Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History (University of Virginia Press, 2021), along with her translation of the final four books of the Mahābhārata's Critical Edition translation project, the p ... Show More
1h 6m
The Mahabharata is one of the central works of Indian literature—its characters, lessons, and tropes are widely known and referenced in Indian popular culture, literary discussions and political debate.
And like all classic works, it’s ripe for reinterpretations, deconstructions and adaptations.
One such reinterpretation is Song of Draupadi (Aleph Book Compa ... Show More
