Category: Uncategorized
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Zikr: The Four Minarets of Hyderabad
O my Lord – Tossed up and down on this vast ocean of humanity I hold on to your name as the anchor of our stability O Allah – in my darkness you shine as a mountain of light. Walking past all the magnificent palaces of the Nizam I gently sigh In this frantic living…
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Top Three Books on Chaitanya Vaishnavism
Recommended by R. David Coolidge. David completed his PhD from the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) with a dissertation about Muslim perceptions of the Hindu tradition. He worked as a Muslim chaplain at Dartmouth College and Brown University and taught undergraduate courses on Islamic law and ethics at New York University. He has served on the…
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Zikr: The Mists of East Putney
by Ankur Barua O my Lord –When I see waves of traffic on PiccadillyFearfully my heart pours out all its miseryO Allah – take me across to the minaret at East Putney. I went shopping to Sainsbury’s but they don’t anymore have a 2-for-1 dealI thought I would eat a fish but forgot to order…
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The Clockmaker of Calcutta
As the shadows of time fall thickly across the afternoon of my life, my mind often trails back to a damp winter evening on the banks of the Hooghly river. In the distance a boatman’s plaintive song was slowly rising towards the listless silence that shrouded the air. A goat’s sharp bleating punctuated the peace.…
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The Top Books on Hinduism and Hindu-Muslim Engagements
Recommended by Ankur Barua, Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. A list of resources for the online lecture series on Hindu socio-religious visions to be held in August 2023 as part of a collaboration between Project Noon and The Cambridge Interfaith Programme.
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Top Three Books on Hindu Philosophy
Recommended by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Fellow of the British Academy and Distinguished Professor of comparative philosophy and religion, Lancaster University, UK. Author of Divine Self, Human Self: The Philosophy of Being in Two Gita Commentaries. Interview by the Editor, Saad Ismail. Professor Ram-Prasad, what are the three books on Hindu philosophy which you would recommend and…
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The Muslim self and its Hindu neighbours: amity and antagonism in the homelands of Bengal
Earlier this year, I published a book with the title “The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors: Contested Borderlines on Bengali Landscapes”. When the manuscript was nearing completion, I realized – somewhat to my shock – that I had unwittingly written a book with the title “The Muslim Self and its Hindu Neighbors”. In other…
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Return Hate with Empathy
Empathy is a dying art. It is a virtue on ventilator. Yet we must find whatever means we can to resuscitate it. Our life and the lives of our children depend on it. And need I say, our afterlives are also on the line.
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Why Shashi Tharoor Is A Hindu: The Politics of Inclusivism
The problem is not that we are different. The problem is how do we coexist while respecting our differences? We must also bear in mind that is only under modern religious nationalism that there arises an acute need to summon a unifying identity around which to rally. While this certainly serves political expediency, nonetheless, a…
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Why We Work
“What do you do?” This much-bandied about string of words can be a polite greeting, a conversation-starter, and a way of getting to know a stranger. As such, the phrase lends itself to many interesting and meaningful conversations. In more common usage, however, it remains no more than a perfunctory formality at best, and a…
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