Cultural Integration in India

Description

Cultural Integration in India

Author: V. Subramaniam
Order No. 51100
ISBN: 8170241405
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: APH
Pub Year: 1979
Pages: 228
Language: English

In spite of several centuries of foreign rule and persistent predictions about impending disintegration. India has continued as a single cultural whole. Much has been written in a general way about the Indian capacity for cultural synthesis over the centuries but very little has been attempted in terms of rigorous sociohistorical analysis. This book deals with a crucial period after the end of the Hindu imperial period and before the establishment of Muslim rule when the Hindu intellectual elite built up the foundations of Hindu cultural integration through two major factors namely Sankara’s creation and activation of a nationalist cultural elite and the rise of the Bhakti movement in South India. These two are analyzed with sociological imagination. The book also attempts to show how this integration persisted through the Muslim period and was revived and used by the nationalist leaders in the 19th and 20th centuries.