Thursday Lecture Series: India Unveiled: The Public Face of India’s Religions

India, like the United States, is generally considered a secular democratic nation. And yet, religion in India has been and remains a publicly tangible phenomenon, shaped by vividly sensory performances that enliven public urban space. To understand how religion manifests in cultural life in India today, and to understand how religious conflict can contribute to political controversy, we need to look more closely at how Indian religions are situated in public space and public discourse.

Elaine M. Fisher is Associate Professor of Hinduism in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She holds an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a PhD from Columbia University. Her first book, Hindu Pluralism: Religion in the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India, rethinks the origins of sectarianism in Hindu traditions to shed new light on the place of religion in public space and discourse in early modern India.