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How have South Asian traditions responded to plurality and difference? The question lies at the centre of this collection, inviting us to challenge established conceptions of pluralism and understand South Asian ways of thinking about difference, diversity, and ''the other''. Drawing from a wide range of literary, intellectual, and religious sources, this is the first in-depth treatment of how South Asian traditions understand themselves in relation to others in a context where there are so many. Marking a significant contribution to re-thinking pluralism in the 21st century, it shows what can we stand to learn from recognising the diversity among the pluralisms seen throughout the history of South Asian thought. Bringing together engaging case studies, a team of leading scholars articulate different theorizations of plurality articulated across South Asian traditions from antiquity to the present. Each example is representative of the rich variety of pluralisms in South Asia, cuttting across historical periods, knowledge systems and religious groups. This inclusive collection covers Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, and Hinduism, identifies strategies we use for engaging with different traditions and uncovers how we conceptualise the status of our own truth claims in relation to others.
About the author
Brian Black is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. He is author of The Character of the Self in Ancient India: Priests, Kings, and Women in the Early Upanisads (2007) and In Dialogue with the Mahabharata (2021).James Madaio is Head of the Department of South Asia at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He is Editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies (Oxford University Press) and Regional Editor (Indic traditions) of Bloomsbury Academic’s Introductions to World Philosophies book series. He was a postdoctoral fellow at New Europe College (Bucharest), an affiliated researcher at the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute (Chennai), and adjunct faculty at the Consciousness Studies programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore). He was previously a lecturer at the University of Maryland (USA), University of Manchester (UK), and Charles University (Czech Republic).
