Today, a virtual consensus has come into being among scholars that the dominant modern descriptions of Hinduism, Brahmanism, Vedism, Sikhism, Jainism, ... are the result of collaboration between Europeans and Indians. Scholars like Brian Pennington, Phillip Wagoner, Thomas Trautmann and others have characterised this collaboration as a kind of dialogue, a dialogue between people belonging to two different cultures possessing different conceptual frameworks. This dialogue, it is said, has resulted in descriptions that contain elements of both sides and are therefore neither entirely European nor entirely Indian.

In the third Rethinking Religion in India conference we want to take a closer look at this consensus, at its implications and examine whether and how it helps us in the study of religion in India.

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The conference will work towards these ambitions in three formats:

The Platform Sessions: Monologue or Dialogue?
During these three sessions, four experts will discuss three central theses about the conference theme. The invited speakers for this session are: Prof. Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan, USA), Prof. Brian Pennington (Maryville college, USA) and Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara (Ghent University, Belgium).

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The Roundtable Sessions: The Indian Response
In these plenary sessions we will look at the Indian side of the dialogue: how have Indians responded to the European descriptions of their religion and culture?

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The Parallel Sessions:
In the Parallel Paper Sessions scholars will present their research on one of the themes (below). In the "How to...?" Workshops there will be more room for participation from the public.

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Your Personal Conference Webpage

In our effort to be more and more efficient every year, we have provided you with a personal conference webpage where you can register to the conference, post or update your abstract(s) for the Parallel Paper Sessions, post or update your proposals for the workshops and alter your coordinates if necessary. This page will remain available for updates so we advise to keep this email and/or copy the following secure link to your favourites.

Even in case you are not interested in attending this conference, please be so kind to inform us via this link.

A call for papers for the Parallel Paper Sessions is open on the following themes:

>> The colonial construction of Hinduism
>> The caste system and Indian religion
>> Secularism in Europe and India
>> Said and Orientalism: dead or alive?
>> European representations of India
>> What does the modernization of Indian traditions mean?
>> Islamic mysticism in European and Indian perspective

We also invite submissions of proposals for “How to…?” Workshops.

submit via your personal conference page

Looking forward to welcoming you at our conference,

The Organising Committee

This conference is jointly organised by
the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Ghent University)
the Department for the Study of Religions (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic)
the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures (Kuvempu University)
the India Platform UGent (Ghent University)
the Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities (ĀSHA)

Marianne Keppens
tel: +32 (0)9 264 93 71
e-mail: Marianne.Keppens@UGent.be

Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap
Ghent University, Belgium