30/06/2026 15:30 - 17:30

HALL: Parenzo - A8

Contact: Pintchman T.

Chair: French W.

This session is tailored to fit this year's conference theme on religion and (in)equalities. Our four papers collectively address the two biggest inequality concerns in Hinduism: caste and sex. Historically, Hindu traditions have often been complicit in promoting discrimination against women and low-caste groups. But they have also often been wielded as a weapon of resistance against entrenched social hierarchies. The papers in this session examine the intersection between Hinduism and (in)equalities in four contexts. The first paper examines two of the novels written by a contemporary Hindu author, Koral Dasgupta. Dasgupta rewrites the stories of two mythic women, Tara and Ahalya, who appear in the Hindu epics primarily as virtuous wives. Dasgupta centers their stories in ways that override patriarchal prescriptions, rendering them complex figures with narrative voice, political consciousness, and moral agency. The second paper examines the lyrics of three Hindu poet saints--a Brahmin man, a woman, and a low-caste man-from Gujarat. The paper explores how bhakti, "devotion," not only functions on the individual level as a purely religious path, but also as a movement can be a path of resistance to entrenched social inequalities. The third paper examines the samadhi (gravesite) of the Gaudiya Vaishnava theologian Rupa Gosvamin at a temple in North India. As a counterpoint to the second paper, this paper shows how Hindu devotional traditions may not only challenge inequalities, but may simultaneously reproduce them. The final paper explores the intersections of religion and film in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing on issues of religion and gender inequality in film narrative. This paper critically examines the ideological implications of Hindi films' patriarchal representations of women.