Non-Renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture

by T.N. Madan

This critical study offers a fresh appraisal of Hindu tradition as a rich and sensible philosophy of life, one based on plenitude, domesticity, transcendence, and control. Distinguished scholar T.N. Madan analyzes the ideas of Hinduism that dominate the literature of India, such as "renunciation," "purity," and "auspiciousness," and explains how modernity has changed conceptions of the good life, causing Hindus to search anew for their sense of self and social orientation.

Hardcover

First published March 3, 1988

About the author

Triloki Nath Madan is an anthropologist, with a Ph.D from the Australian National University (1960). He is currently Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, and Distinguished Senior Fellow (Adjunct), Center for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1989. In 1994, he was made Docteur Honoris Causa by the University of Paris X (Nanterre). In 1995, He occupied the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hyderabad. He has held visiting appointments at a number of universities including Harvard where he was Visiting Professor of Anthropology and of the History of Religion in 1984-85. The Indian Sociological Society gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. His most noted work is Family and Kinship among the Pandits of Rural Kashmir (1966, 1989), which presented an account of the social life of Kashmiri Pandits. His more recent publications include,"Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism and Fundamentalism in India" (1997,2009), "Images of the World: Essays on Religion, Secularism, and Culture" (2005), and "Sociological Traditions: Methods and Perspectives in the Sociology of India" (2011). He was presented with a Festschrift titled Tradition, Pluralism and Identity: In Honour of T.N. Madan, edited by Veena Das, Dipankar Gupta and Patricia Uberoi. Currently he lives in Delhi. [1]



Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triloki_...