Bringing Krishna Back to India examines the place of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), in Mumbai, India's business and entertainment capital, where ISKCON draws Indians from diverse regional and religious backgrounds and devotees adopt a conservative religious identity amidst a neoliberal urban context. By inhabiting a Hindu revivalist role, ISKCON educates Hindus and Jains into a new vision of their own traditions and promotes greater religiosity in Indian public life. This contradicts notions that societies are moving towards secularism and highlights how new religious identities are fashioned amidst industrialized urban spaces, such as college campuses, corporate wellness retreats, and Bollywood celebrity events.

Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. While ISKCON’s history is often presented in terms of an Indian guru ‘transplanting’ Indian spirituality to the West, this book focusses on the efforts to bring ISKCON back to India. Paying particular attention to devotees’ failure to consistently live up to ISKCON’s ideals and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of an ‘ideal Vedic city’, this book argues that the anthropology of ethics must account for how moral systems accommodate the problem of moral failure.

A collection of ethnographic essays on the city of Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay), the volume questions the city's claim of a 'self-projected' cosmopolitanism by exploring its relationship with religion.

The first book of its kind, Forms of Krishna: Collected Essays on Vaishnava Murtis is an exotic journey into the heart of Indian spirituality, explaining the entire esoteric tradition, including yoga and meditation, through a sampling of revered Vaishnava icons, Deities worship in temples throughout the world.

This book traces the historical evolution of Indian cinema through a number of key decades. The book is made up of 14 chapters with each chapter focusing on one key film, the chosen films analysed in their wider social, political and historical context whilst a concerted engagement with various ideological strands that underpin each film is also evident. In addition to exploring the films in their wider contexts, the author analyses selected sequences through the conceptual framework common to both film and media studies. This includes a consideration of narrative, genre, representation, audience and mise-en-scene. The case studies run chronologically from Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951) to The Elements Trilogy: Water (2005) and include films by such key figures as Satyajit Ray (The Lonely Wife), Ritwick Ghatak (Cloud Capped Star), Yash Chopra (The Wall) and Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!).

Nationalist and Revolutionary While a high school student, I actively participated in the Mahatma Gandhis 1942 movement Quit India. I felt disappointed because only a few prominent leaders like Gandhi and Nehru were imprisoned. On Sept. 9, 1945, under the patronage of the Dadu District British Collector, the town dignitaries including my grand father and Mr. Tuljaram Nagrani, the principal of the town High school, along with the matriculate students had assembled at the Hindu temple to celebrate the victory of the Allies at the WW II. Sweets were distributed. I threw the sweets on the floor. The reason I did this was not because I sided with the Axis powers. But because Indian soldiers were fighting for Britain, as India was not a free country. Next morning, the Principal got me in his office and whipped me several times on my palms and ordered me to leave the school and come back with my parent. The principal told my father that Jagat to pay a fine of Rs. 5 and threatened that in case of denial I will be rusticketed (expelled from school as a bad character student) and no school would admit me. I am proud of my father that he said that only Jagat to decide. I said that paying fine means admission of the guilt. In my opinion it was not a guilt. I, with recommendation of my class teacher Mr. Chandnani, got admission in the P. H. High School, Dadu, only about 50 miles away from my home town. In 1947 on the eve of partition, there was an accidently bomb explosion in Karachi, suspected of an RSS activity. Several RSS leaders were arrested. A Khalsa police officer secretly alerted my grand father to hide me to avoid arrest. I, along with a few RSS pracharaks, secretly reached Karachi to take a ship for Okha, Gujarat, then train to Baroda. In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. Because Godse was an RSS member, the whole RSS all over India was banned. I participated in the collective protest against the injustice of punishing the whole RSS organization because of the crime by its only one RSS member. Whole family can not be punished because of the crime of its one member. I was imprisoned in Baroda jail for four months. Thousands of RSS members all over India were imprisoned. Dr. Jagat K. Motwani

This book addresses the human civilizational ethos and explores the concept of the nonkilling paradigm concerning human dignity, human rights, affirmative nonkilling, positive peace and the advancement of human existence. It focuses on the complex question of how to mitigate the prevalent lethal actions and lay out a roadmap for a large-scale transformation of global society into a nonkilling one. It examines the lives of charismatic socio-political leaders who have played a vital role in achieving revolutions in their respective contexts and societies, and studies these revolutions from a nonkilling perspective, investigating the number of human lives lost, both during and after the revolution, due to deliberate actions on the part of leaders. In closing, it assesses the global status quo and current trends and presents a Global Nonkilling Index to record deliberate killings around the world. The book is a significant addition to the literature, specifically in the field of reinterpreting Gandhian concepts in the light of contemporary needs. Given its scope, the book is of immense value to researchers and practitioners in the areas of political science, philosophy, sociology & peace studies. Moreover, it is a must-read for everyone interested in promoting global nonviolence, nonkilling & peace.