New Books in Hindu Studies

This Roundtable features four first monographs in Hindu studies with the aim of both exposing scholars in the field to new theoretical interventions, and of providing concrete ideas about how to incorporate those interventions into scholars’ own pedagogies. The authors are grouped in pairs and then respond to each other’s’ books. The first pair of books are ethnographic studies of Hindus in North India. The books in the second pair both explore issues of caste discrimination and Hindu nationalism. While all four books this year analyze aspects of modern Hindu traditions, the content and scope of each book is strikingly varied. Spanning diverse locations from Ahmedabad to Udaipur to Lucknow to Houston, languages including Telugu, Gujarati, Hindi, and English, and both textual and ethnographic methodologies, these books provide a snapshot of the breadth of the field of Hindu studies.