(Anti-)Colonialism, religion and science in Bengal from the perspective of global religious history

Autor(en)

Julian Strube

Abstrakt

This article focuses on debates about the relationship between religion, science and national identity that unfolded in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bengal. Combining perspectives from religious studies and global history, it offers a specific approach to theoretical and methodological issues revolving around entanglement, agency and modernity. This will be operationalized, first, through an exploration of personal networks surrounding the Bengali Tantric pandit Shivachandra Bhattacharya Vidyarnava; his Bengali disciple, philosopher and nationalist educator, Pramathanath Mukhopadhyay and Shivachandra's British disciple, the judge John Woodroffe. Second, an investigation of the connections between self-referentially 'orthodox' societies, so-called reformers, and the Theosophical Society will further illustrate the global exchanges that conditioned and shaped contemporary debates about religion, science and politics. This will complicate and shed new light on the contested relationship between modernity and tradition, or reformism and orthodoxy, opening new perspectives for further dialogue between religious studies and global history.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Religionswissenschaft

Journal

Journal of Global History

Band

18

Seiten

88-107

Anzahl der Seiten

20

ISSN

1740-0228

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022822000110

Publikationsdatum

03-2022

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

603909 Religionswissenschaft, 601023 Globalgeschichte

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

History, Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/anticolonialism-religion-and-science-in-bengal-from-the-perspective-of-global-religious-history(419253f0-c9ea-4f02-b794-85d6cc9978ba).html