This is a pioneering study about the relationship between fresh water, peace, and security in Asia from the Middle East to Siberia but with a special focus on South and Southeast Asia. Asia is home to many of the world's great rivers and lakes, but its huge population and booming economies make it the most water-scarce continent on a per capita basis. Over extensive irrigation, pollution, and global warming add to the demographic and economic pressures on Asia's fresh water supplies. The location of the sources for much of South and Southeast Asia's fresh water is in the Chinese controlled Tibetan Plateau, and China's increasing exploitation of these water sources have created growing geopolitical tensions that could boil over into conflict. India is reliant on fresh water from Tibet, which gives the Chinese uncomfortable leverage over India and further exacerbates their unsettled border disputes. Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other countries of the region also find themselves in similarly vulnerable positions where water is scarce and the sources are increasingly being exploited and polluted upstream by the continent's most powerful country. Brahma Chellaney proposes strategies to avoid conflict and more equitably share and preserve Asia's water resources.

Examining William Blake's poetry in relation to the mythographic tradition of the eighteenth century and emphasizing the British discovery of Hindu literature, David Weir argues that Blake's mythic system springs from the same rich historical context that produced the Oriental Renaissance. That context includes republican politics and dissenting theology—two interrelated developments that help elucidate many of the obscurities of Blake's poetry and explain much of its intellectual energy. Weir shows how Blake's poetic career underwent a profound development as a result of his exposure to Hindu mythology. By combining mythographic insight with republican politics and Protestant dissent, Blake devised a poetic system that opposed the powers of Church and King.

Written with exceptional grace and empathy, Brahma’s Dream explores the richness of relationships and the mystery of how one life is defined through its connection to others. Set in Bombay amid the turbulence of India’s surge towards independence, Brahma’s Dream tells the story of thirteen-year-old Mohini, an unforgettable character whose medical problems set her apart from the world around her, and give her a wisdom and special place in it. Mohini suffers from a rare form of anemia that gradually diminishes her physically but increases her understanding of life in a way incomprehensible to those who move more easily through it. Under her kind, wry gaze, a family, a city, and a country convulse with idealism and hope. Through Mohini the reader encounters the extraordinary characters who live in her family home, Koleshwar Nivas. Vishnupant, Mohini’s grandfather, is a forward-thinking professor of history who has devoted his life to making sense of India’s past so that the country might fulfil the promise of its future. Keshav, Mohini’s father, who, while embracing the prospect of independence, is eager to hold on to any progress made through British rule. But for both men Mohini is the centre of the universe, as she is for her devoted mother, Kamala, who has sacrificed the intimacy of her marriage to care for her child, and Vasanti, Mohini’s aunt who, having lost the chance at a life beyond the confines of family, looks to her remarkable niece for comfort and understanding. The lives of the Oek family are lived against the backdrop of the confrontation between a far-flung empire and the diminutive Mahatma Gandhi. A joyous and moving novel, astute and reflective, Brahma’s Dream explores the Hindu belief that all life and all events are only a part of a vast continuum, and that momentous political and social change, birth, marriage, and even death, are only a twinkling in the eye of a god.

This title was first published in 2002. Drawing on primary research on the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian New Religious Movement of Indian origin, this book examines the status of tradition in the contemporary world through a critical engagement with the recent social theory of Anthony Giddens on the emergence of a post-traditional society. Wallis examines both the ways in which forms of tradition not only persist but also flourish in the contemporary world and also the manner in which such traditions are drawn on and (re)created by individuals in their ongoing construction of self-identity. Illuminating some of the difficulties encountered when social theory is applied to 'the real world', this book also offers a way of theorising about the status of contemporary religiosity that does not refer directly to the notion of secularisation.