ABSTRACT
In an age where change, innovation, and technological advances are measured not in decades or years, but in months and, sometimes, in weeks or days, it seems almost incongruous to be discussing processes and practices that took millennia or centuries to emerge full-formed, or have been handed down, largely intact, for thousands of years. e history of India is far more intimately woven into the fabric of Indian society than its counterparts in Western Europe or the New World. Unlike most Western societies which have thrived on secularism, religion, the philosophy of religion, religious practices, religious influences, and social institutions originating in religion are often inseparable in day-to-day life in India. As ‘modern’ as India has become over the last two decades, it has not, cannot, and should not ignore its rich historical roots, nor sequester it in the name of secularism or modernity.
