DSR Lecture Series: "Publishing Hindu Devotion in Twentieth-Century India"

Though printing arrived in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-sixteenth century, it was the nineteenth century and beyond that saw the widespread adoption of these technologies by an emergent local publishing industry. This talk explores a specific aspect of this history: the production of sacred texts and images within Hindu sampradāyas (denominations) in twentieth-century India. Drawing on a range of textual and visual printed materials, I provide snapshots of how religious communities made use of a variety of forms of print to support a devotional ethos that was located within a broad continuum of traditions rooted in bhakti and Vedānta.

About the speaker

Arun Brahmbhatt is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. His research investigates how religious traditions and communities in South Asia have navigated the forces of colonial modernity, focusing on both continuities and disjunctures with the premodern past. His book project, Debating Sanskrit: Scholastic Imperatives in Modern Hinduism, employs archival and textual approaches to examine the sustained deployment of classical Sanskrit in Gujarati religious communities from the nineteenth century to the present day.

See DSR Lecture Series 2025-26 Schedule