Religious Change and the secular state
- Calcutta Research India Publications. 1978
- 107 p.
I should like to express my sincere gratitude to the Trustees University for the great honour they paid me in appointing me of the Stephanos Nirmalendu Ghosh Lectureship of Calcutta to the Lectureship for 1975. For besides that honour, which I appreciate highly, they gave me the opportunity of another visit to Calcutta, a city dear to my heart, and one which, as y have mentioned in these lectures, I first visited 35 years ago. When Bengali friends ask me how I like Calcutta they sometimes seem surprised when I reply, Amar Kolkata khub bhalo lage. But it is so ; I have a strongly developed sense of well being when I am there, however underdeveloped may be my ability to express it in the rich language of Bengal. In a sense these lectures are an attempt to put into words, in an academic context, the many aspects of South Asia's social and religious life-Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist especially—which are a continual source of fascination to me. They are also in a sense the outcome of the fact that thirty five years ago, as a young man far away from England, I fell in with some good friends in Calcutta and at Serampore, who set me on the road to the South Asian and Bengali studies and teaching which it is now my privilege to pursue as my daily occupation.