Dear Indology-L,

For my Indian colleagues I am happy to announce that an Indian edition of my book, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, is now available From Permanent Black Press. More information on the Indian edition is here: http://bit.ly/gkjMdL

I was also recently interviewed about my book for the Permanent Black website. That interview is here: http://bit.ly/g8IXPM

With best wishes,
Andrew
______________________________________________
Andrew J. Nicholson
Assistant Professor
Department of Asian and Asian American Studies
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5343 USA
Tel: (631) 632-4030 Fax: (631) 632-4098



Nicholson, Andrew J. Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (South Asia Across the Disciplines Series). New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2011.

Book Description:

Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality.

Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts--like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy--have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.

Reviews:

"Unifying Hinduism does much more than deal with the philosophy of Vijnanabhiksu, it questions in an intelligent and constructive manner how Indian philosophy has been studied in modern scholarship—-and ways in which it has been done wrong." -- Johannes Bronkhorst, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

"Andrew J. Nicholson's courageous and challenging thesis is that processes of unification were at work in early modern India, particularly in the attempt by Vedanta philosophers to create hierarchies of philosophical schools, and these processes 'made possible the world religion later known by the name Hinduism.' Unifying Hinduism is a fluent, eminently readable, and absorbing study of a period in Indian intellectual history that fully deserves the attention it is now receiving." -- Jonardon Ganeri, University of Sussex