This book explores aspects of a relatively understudied side of religio-cultural processes in modern India. It is an investigation of spirituality and mysticism in the evolution of the modern religious subjectivity. Soumen Mukherjee analyzes the development of an Indic religio-cultural discourse (as opposed to abstract ideas) since the early twentieth century, especially from the interwar period when endeavors by prominent sections of the ‘Western’ intelligentsia to grapple with a sense of disenchantment against the backdrop of the Great War arguably resulted in a decisive turn towards the Orient. This book draws upon select case studies and brings to the forefront the heightened interest in Indic spirituality, mysticism and metaphysics, as well the occasionally ‘Eastern’ esoteric traditions. It examines their salience in the spheres of socio-religious and cultural change, indeed in forging new spiritual imaginaries in modern times. These case studies involve a close reading of works— in both the English language and relatively unexplored literature in the vernacular— of a number of key and lesser-known Indians who navigated the cosmopolitan worlds of interwar India, Europe and America, actively participating in both academic and public discourse. As part of an ecumene connected by affective bonds these figures illustrate how strictures of binary frameworks (East/ West; imperial core/ periphery; colonizer/ colonized) were often defied, older Indic concepts recast in the changing historical context, and the very concept of religion came to be critically commented upon and reformulated. The roots of this transcultural process are traceable in part to the fin de siècle years but they subsequently acquired new connotations amidst heightened religio-cultural and civilizational projects. Far from being confined to a distant ‘other-worldly’ realm this was then a ‘this-worldly’ process attuned to the socio-political exigencies of the times.weiterlesen