Religion in decline in an age of progress -- Untidy realms -- A Swadeshi Chaitanya -- Recovering Bishnupriya's loss -- Utopia and a birthplace.

From the Wolfson History Prize–winning author of The Man on Devil’s Island, the definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Few thinkers have had so enduring an impact on both Eastern and Western life as Swami Vivekananda, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Westerners to yoga and the universalist school of Hinduism called Vedanta. His teachings fostered a more tolerant form of mainstream spirituality in Europe and North America and forever changed the Western relationship to meditation and spirituality. Guru to the World traces Vivekananda’s transformation from son of a Calcutta-based attorney into saffron-robed ascetic. At the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, he fascinated audiences with teachings from Hinduism, Western esoteric spirituality, physics, and the sciences of the mind, in the process advocating a more inclusive conception of religion and expounding the evils of colonialism. Vivekananda won many disciples, most prominently the Irish activist Margaret Noble, who disseminated his ideas in the face of much disdain for the wisdom of a “subject race.” At home, he challenged the notion that religion was antithetical to nationalist goals, arguing that Hinduism was intimately connected with Indian identity. Ruth Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda’s thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East-West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas.

Few other Hindu gods guide a regional consciousness, pervade walks of everyday life and define a collective psyche the way Lord Jagannath does in Odisha and its contiguous areas. Jagannath is metonymic of Odisha and the Odia way of life, arguably much more than any other god for a particular geography or its peoples. While not derecognising the historical and the spiritual aspects of Jagannath, Bonding with the Lord attempts to look at the deployment of Jagannath in contemporary cultural practices involving the sensorium in the widest sense. The project of a cultural Jagannath not only materialises him in people's everyday practices but also democratises scholarship on him. The expansion of the scope of research on Jagannath to cultural expressions in a more encompassing way rather than confining to 'elitist' religious/literary sources makes him an everyday presence and significantly enhances his sphere of influence. Jagannath's 'tribal' origin, his association with Buddhism and Jainism and his avatari status make him an all-encompassing, multilayered symbol and a treasure trove for multiple interpretations.

How do religious groups reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences? How do they rebrand their messages and recast their rituals in order to make their followers more diverse? In Branding Bhakti, Nicole Karapanagiotis considers the new branding of the Hare Krishna Movement, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Known primarily for their orange robes, shaved heads, ecstatic dancing on the streets, and exuberant Hindu-style temple worship, many contemporary ISKCON groups are radically reinventing their public presentation and their style of worship in order to attract a global audience to their movement. Karapanagiotis explores their innovative and complex approaches in both the United States and India by following three new ISKCON brands aimed at gathering new followers. Each is led by a world-renowned ISKCON guru and his global disciples, and each is promoted through a mix of digital and social media and the construction of an innovative "worship-scape." These new spaces trade ISKCON's traditional temples for corporate work-life balance programs, posh yoga studios, urban spiritual lounges, edgy mantra clubs/lofts, and rural meditative retreat facilities. Branding Bhakti not only investigates the methods the ISKCON movement uses to position itself for growth but also highlights devotees' painful and complicated struggles as they work to transform their shrinking, sectarian movement into one with global religious appeal.

This is a collection of articles by established scholars in the fields of History, Philosophy, Literature and Religious Studies. These are original essays which address the issues and concerns that now dominate the study of religion in its multiple dimensions with a fresh approach. They critique settled opinions and raise new and engaging questions concerning cultural hermeneutics and the academic study of religion. Embellished with a substantive and topical introduction by the editor, this collection of articles will be of abiding interest to scholars and interested lay persons alike.

In The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus: Intersections of Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal, Ankur Barua offers an intellectual history of the motif of religious universalism in the writings of some intellectuals associated with the Brahmo Samaj.

Varuni Bhatia examines late-19th-century transformations of Vaishnavism - a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition emanating from the Krishna devotee Chaitnaya (1486-1533) - in Bengal. Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both Vaishnava modernisers and secular voices among the educated middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to efforts to recover a 'pure' Bengali culture and history at a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment.