November 8, 2021
Kalpana Jain, an award-winning journalist and the senior religion and ethics editor at The Conversation US, discusses how politics is being reshaped in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She illustrates how Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party, has used the image of the Hindu God Rama to whip up religious sentiments to its advantage in an attempt to unite Hindus. She focuses on Modi's plans to transform the city of Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, into a major pilgrimage site and the rising religious tensions in a once pluralistic society.
Her talk is one of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.