Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Religion, Conflict and Accommodation in India

Tuesday-Wednesday, November 17-18, 9:30am to 5:00pm
Common Room, Second Floor
Heyman Center for the Humanities

A workshop led by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and Rajeev Bhargava, Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi). Discussion will focus on the role of religion in India throughout its history, particiularly the dynamics of conflict and accommodation between Buddhists and conventional Vedic religion and among Saivas, Vaisnavas and Jains in ancient and medieval society.

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and the Heyman Center for the Humanities. For directions to the Heyman Center, click this link: http://heymancenter.org/visit.php

Tuesday, November 17

9:30-10:00

• Welcome and Inaugural Remarks: Rajeev Bhargava and Sudipta Kaviraj

10:00–11:00

• Chair: Charles Taylor (McGill University)

• Arindam Chakrabarti (University of Hawaii): “Debating to Save the Difference: The Logic and Rhetoric of Nyaya Refutations of Yogacara Buddhist Panmentalism”

11:30-1:30

• Chair: Charles Taylor (McGill University)

• Dan Arnold (University Chicago): “Thoughts on a Philosophical Case for Jayanta Bha??a’s Cosmopolitanism”

• Somdev Vasudeva (Columbia University): “The Crushing of the Kaula Elephant”

3:00–5:00

• Chair: Sheldon Pollock (Columbia University)
  

• Lawrence McCrea (Cornell University): “Desecularization in Indian Intellectual Culture, 900-1300 AD”

• Charles Hallisey (Harvard University): “The Place of Artistic Cultures in the Processes of Accommodation: Examples from the History of Sri Lanka”

Wednesday, November 18

9:30-10:30

• Chair: E. Valentine Daniel (Columbia University)

• Ajay Rao (University of Toronto):  “The Vaisnava Fascination of a Saiva Intellectual”

11:00–1:00

• Chair: E. Valentine Daniel (Columbia University)

• Velcheru Narayana Rao (University of Wisconsin, Madison): “Law, Debate and Violence: Multiple images from precolonial South India”

• D. Samuel Sudanandha (Columbia University): “Religion and Contestation in Spirit Possession”

2:00-4:00

• Chair: Gananath Obeyesekere (Princeton University)

• Valerie Stoker (Wright State University): “Polemics and Patronage: Hindu Sectarian Relations in 16th-Century Vijayanagara”

• Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi (San Francisco State University): “On Religious Violence? A Medieval South Indian Perspective”

4:30–5:30

• Closing remarks