Modern Spirit of Asia

Peter van der Veer is director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gottingen, Germany, and a Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His books include Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton) and Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India.

• Preface ix Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Spirituality in Modern Society 35 Chapter 3 The Making of Oriental Religion 63 Chapter 4 Conversion to Indian and Chinese Modernities 90 Chapter 5 Secularism's Magic 115 Chapter 6 "Smash Temples, Build Schools": Comparing Secularism in India and China 140 Chapter 7 The Spiritual Body 168 Chapter 8 Muslims in India and China 193 Chapter 9 Conclusion 214 Notes 231 Bibliography 253 Index 271

Finalist for the 2014 Award for Excellence in Religion in Analytical-Descriptive Studies, American Academy of Religion One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014 "A fascinating read."--Nick Leech, National "The authority of this study is based on a combination of field research in each of the two nations (China and India), along with an impressive command of the literature and tools of cultural anthropology, comparative sociology, and conceptual analysis. The author is a well-respected, contemporary European social scientist, and this study is likely to stimulate intense scholarly discussion for years ahead."--Choice "[A] particularly outstanding work."--Guo Ting, Oxford Comparative Critical Review "One of the many merits of Peter van der Veer's The Modern Spirit of Asia is that he acknowledges the unprecedented nature of 'the project of modernity with all its revolutionary ideas of nation, equality, citizenship, democracy, and rights,' yet shows how it has taken strikingly different shapes in the Chinese and Indian cultural spheres."--Benjamin Schewel, Hedgehog Review "This is an important book, which will be useful for helping scholars of Chinese religion think more deeply about the question of modernity."--Erik Hammerstrom, Review of Religion and Chinese Society "This book will be a fundamental point of reference for any ethnography of secularism and for anyone interested in the study of religion, secularism, modernity, and politics in Asia and in the global world."--Chiara Letizia, American Anthropologist