Mahabharata in Global Political and Social Thought

Milinda Banerjee is a lecturer in the history of modern political thought and political theory at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His research interests lie in Intellectual History, Global History, South Asian history, and Political Thought. He is the author of The Mortal God: Imagining the Sovereign in Colonial India (2018). Julian Strube is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Göttingen. He works from a global historical perspective about the relationship between religion and politics, as well as debates about the meaning of religion, science, and philosophy. He is the author of Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022).

• Acknowledgements; A Note on Transliteration; Introduction Milinda Banerjee and Julian Strube; 1. The Mahabharata and the Making of Modern India Milinda Banerjee; 2. 'Epic' Past, 'Modern' Present: The Mahabharata and Modern Nationalism in Colonial Western India Alok Oak; 3. The Bhagavadgita and the Gandhian Hermeneutic of Non-Violence: Globalizing Selfless Action Arkamitra Ghatak; 4. A Nostalgia for Transcendental Closure: The Relationship between the Mahabharata and Notions of Nationalism in the Works of Friedrich Schlegel, Maithilisharan Gupt, and Jawaharlal Nehru Philipp Spernervi; 5. The Production and Deconstruction of the 'Ideal Indian Woman' on the Basis of the Mahabharata in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries Melanie J. Müller; 6. Rethinking Transnational Intellectual History and Epic Nationalisms through Lithographic Labour: Persian and Urdu Mahabharatas in India and Iran Amanda Lanzillo; 7. 'Philosophical Poetry' or a 'Failed Beginning'? A Metaphilosophical Enquiry into Wilhelm von Humboldt's and G. W. F. Hegel's Perspectives on the Bhagavadgita Paulus Kaufmann; 8. East Asian Uses of Indian Epic Literature: Refractions of the Mahabharata in Japan and China, Late Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Century Egas Moniz Bandeira; 9. The Reception of the Mahabharata in Siam: Evolving Conceptions of Kingship David M. Malitz; 10. Understanding Global Intellectual Exchanges through Paratexts: Wadiʿ al-Bustani's Introduction to His Arabic Translation of the Mahabharata Christopher D. Bahl and Abdallah Soufan; About the Contributors; Index.