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About Raj Balkaran

Scholar, Educator, Consultant

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

Raj's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Raj:

Indian Religions May 12, 2022

Holy Science

The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

Banu Subramaniam

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
In Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), Banu Subramaniam examines how science and religion have come together to propel a vision of the modern Indian nation …
Indian Religions May 5, 2022

South Asian Studies in Canada

Julie Vig and Andrea Pinkney

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Raj Balkaran speaks with Julie Vig (York University) and Andrea Pinkney (McGill University) about the Canadian South Asian Studies Association, a new development in association with the Canadian Federation for …
Indian Religions May 4, 2022

The Importance of Pali

The Language of Ancient Buddhism

Aleix Ruiz-Falqués

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Core Buddhist teachings are preserved in the ancient Indian language Pali. Listen in as Aleix Ruiz-Falqués speaks about its structure, its significance, and opportunities to study it with him online …
Indian Religions May 2, 2022

Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives

Moral Vision and Literary Innovation

Gregory M. Clines

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Gregory M. Clines' book Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation (Routledge, 2022) traces how and why Jain authors at different points in history rewrote the story of Rāma and …
Indian Religions April 28, 2022

The Practice of Texts

Education and Healing in South India

Anthony Cerulli

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that …
Indian Religions April 21, 2022

Spiritual Empires in Europe and India

Cosmopolitan Religious Movements from 1875 to the Interwar Era

Perry Myers

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Spiritual Empires in Europe and India: Cosmopolitan Religious Movements from 1875 to the Interwar Era (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021) provides a comparative analysis of cosmopolitan (esoteric) religious movements, such as Theosophy …
Indian Religions April 14, 2022

Grhastha

The Householder in Ancient Indian Religious Culture

Patrick Olivelle

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Today I talked to Patrick Olivelle about his book Grhastha: The Householder in Ancient Indian Religious Culture (Oxford UP, 2019). For scholars of ancient Indian religions, the wandering mendicants who left home …
Indian Religions April 11, 2022

The Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions

Karen O'Brien-Kop, Brian Black, Avni Chag, and Kush Depala

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
What is the Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions all about? Who is it for? What is it’s past, present, and future? Find out as Raj Balkaran speaks with Symposium organizers …
Indian Religions April 7, 2022

The Hindu Nation

A Reconciliation with Modernity

M. K. Raghvendra

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
In The Hindu Nation: A Reconciliation with Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2021), M. K. Raghavendra examines what being a Hindu means and asks whether its practices are reconcilable with global modernity and compatible …
Indian Religions March 31, 2022

Swami Vivekananda's Vedantic Cosmopolitanism

Swami Medhananda

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Vivekananda, Swami Vivekananda's Vedantic Cosmopolitanism (Oxford UP, 2022) argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western …
Indian Religions March 24, 2022

Baba Padmanji

Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India

Deepra Dandekar

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Baba Padmanji: Vernacular Christianity in Colonial India (Routledge, 2020) is a critical biography of Baba Padmanji (1831-1906), a firebrand native Christian missionary, ideologue, and litterateur from 19th-century Bombay Presidency. This …
Indian Religions March 17, 2022

A Time of Novelty

Logic, Emotion, and Intellectual Life in Early Modern India, 1500-1700 C.E.

Samuel Wright

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Samuel Wright's A Time of Novelty: Logic, Emotion, and Intellectual Life in Early Modern India, 1500-1700 C.E. (Oxford UP, 2021) argues that a philosophical community emerges in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century …
Indian Religions March 10, 2022

Nonviolence in the World's Religions

A Concise Introduction

Jeffery D. Long and Michael G. Long

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Jeffery D. Long and Michael G. Long's Nonviolence in the World's Religions: A Concise Introduction (Routledge, 2021) introduces the reader to the complex relationship between religion and nonviolence. The meanings …
Indian Religions March 3, 2022

An Unholy Brew

Alcohol in Indian Religion and History

James McHugh

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
The first book on alcohol in pre-modern India, James McHugh's An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian Religion and History (Oxford UP, 2021) uses a wide range of sources from the …
Indian Religions February 24, 2022

Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions

Diana Dimitrova

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Diana Dimitrova's book Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions (Routledge, 2020) analyses cultural questions related to representations of the body in South Asian traditions, human perceptions and attitudes toward the …
Indian Religions February 17, 2022

Strong Arms and Drinking Strength

Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India

Jarrod Whitaker

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Today I talked to Jarrod Whitaker about his book Strong Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India (Oxford UP, 2011).The Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed …
Indian Religions February 16, 2022

Hinduism and International Humanitarian Law

Walter Dorn and Andrew Bartles-Smith

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Raj Balkaran interviews Walter Dorn (Professor of Defence Studies, Royal Military College) and Andrew Bartles-Smith (Head of Global Affairs Department in Asia, International Committee of the Red Cross) about very …
Indian Religions February 10, 2022

Yoga and Alignment

From the Upanishads to B. K. S. Iyengar

Gitte Bechsgaard and Gillian McCann

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Gitte Bechsgaard and Gillian McCann's book Yoga and Alignment: From the Upanishads to B. K. S. Iyengar (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021) offers an accessible and lively look at yoga philosophy and psychology …
Indian Religions February 3, 2022

Global Tantra

Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity

Julian Strube

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Julian Strube's book Global Tantra (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the global exchanges that shaped a subject often associated with sexuality, social liberation, and bodily wellbeing but that also offers insights into …
Indian Religions January 27, 2022

A Conversation with Hanuman Dass

Founder and Chairman of Go Dharmic

Hanuman Dass

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Raj Balkaran interviews Hanuman Dass, Chairman and Founder of Go Dharmic, about his far-reaching humanitarian work and universal vision if Hindu values. We also touch on his co-authored works with …
Indian Religions January 20, 2022

Swami Vivekananda

His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics

Rita D. Sherma

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Rita D. Sherma's book Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics (Lexington Books, 2021) re-assesses the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda from the vantage point of socially-engaged religion in …
Indian Religions January 13, 2022

A Conversation with Laurie Patton

Professor of Religions and President of Middlebury College

Laurie Patton

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Raj Balkaran speaks with Laurie Patton, Professor of Religions and President at Middlebury College, about her scholarly journey, educational administration, poetry, trends in scholarship, the significance of Indian myth, and …
Indian Religions January 6, 2022

Neha Sahgal on the Pew Study “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation”

Neha Sahgal

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Neha Sahgal, Associate Director, Research, at the Pew Research Center speaks of Pew’s ground-breaking research on Indian public opinion on religion. The data shows that Indians maintain a commitment to …
Indian Religions December 30, 2021

Vaiśeṣikasūtra

A Translation

Ionut Moise and Ganesh U. Thite

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
This book introduces readers to Indian philosophy by presenting the first integral English translation of Vaiśeṣikasūtra with the earliest extant commentary of Candrānanda on the old aphorisms of Vaiśeṣika school …