ABSTRACT
Readers of Hinduism in the Modern World are presented with an exciting challenge. On the one hand, the book offers an opportunity to think about what it means to be Hindu or, for those with some prior familiarity, to add greater complexity to what they already know about Hinduism. On the other hand, the book aims to promote reflection on the more specific question of what it means to be Hindu in the modern world. In both respects, the goal of the book is to highlight and to complicate the relationship between categories like ‘Hinduism’ and ‘modernity.’ As this Introduction will suggest, the goal of this book is not to categorically define Hinduism but, through its various chapters, to offer a series of occasions for asking where and how we might look for Hinduism in the world around us. As will become clear, there is no one version of ‘modern Hinduism,’ no single place, person, movement, or text to which we can point that would fully and finally reveal what it means to be Hindu today. Recognizing this, the goal here is to explore the ways in which the complex experience of modernity can be put in relation to the equally complex experience of being Hindu. The approach is necessarily selective; the volume is oriented around the exploration of important themes in modern Hinduism. This means that readers will not find here a chronological overview of the tradition. That said, an attempt has been made to balance an awareness of historical change with the attempt to explore selected modern and contemporary expressions of Hinduism.
