PUBLIC HINDUISMS

John Zavos is Senior Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. His recent publications include Religious Traditions in Modern South Asia (2011), co-authored with Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, and several articles on Hinduism and Hindu organisations in the UK. He has worked extensively on the Hindu nationalist movement and is the author of The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (2000). Between 2008 and 2010, he was the principal investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded network project: The Public Representation of a Religion Called Hinduism: Postcolonial Patterns in Britain, India and the US.

Pralay Kanungo is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and Visiting Professor at Maison des Sciences De L’Homme, Paris. Kanungo is the author of RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan (2002) and co-editor (with Daniela Berti and Nicolas Jaoul) of The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva (2011). He has written several articles on Hindutva and is currently working on a manuscript on communal violence in Kandhamal.

Deepa S Reddy is a cultural anthropologist with the University of Houston— Clear Lake and Director of India Outreach Programs of the University of Houston System. She has written on the contestations of identitarian politics in India, the globalisation of caste via the discourses of race and human rights, and on how sample collection and donor registration initiatives, such the International HapMap Project and the U.S. National Marrow Donor Program, facilitate reconceptualisations of bioethics, civic identities, and even the role of the market in medicine and genetics. Her book, Religious Identity and Political Destiny, was published in 2006. Her current research interests range from public expressions of Hindu-ness to (bio)ethics, medical tourism and drug development in India.

Maya Warrier is Senior Lecturer at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter. Her research interests centre on popular forms of contemporary Hinduism in a transnational context. She is currently working on a fieldwork-based project examining ‘alternative spiritualities’ in Britain’s holistic health milieu, with a focus on the ancient Indian health tradition, Ayurveda, in its contemporary British manifestations. She is author of Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission (2005), and co-editor of Theology and Religious Studies: An Exploration of Disciplinary Boundaries (2008).

Raymond Brady Williams is LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. His research on Swaminarayan Hinduism and religions of immigrants from India and Pakistan is recorded in several books, including A New Face of Hinduism (1984), Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan (1988), A Sacred Thread, ed. (1992, 1996), Christian Pluralism in the United States (1996), An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism (2001), Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs in the United States (2001, 2007) and Williams on South Asian Religions and Immigration (2004). He was the founding editor of Teaching Theology and Religion (1998–2002).