Deepak Sarma

Deepak Sarma is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University. After earning a BA in religion from Reed College, Sarma attended the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he received a PhD in the philosophy of religions. Sarma writes and researches about “Hinduism,” contemporary Hinduism, bioethics, Madhva Vedanta, cultural theory, post-colonial studies, and museology. He is the author of two monographs: An Introduction to Madhva Vedanta (Ashgate, 2003) and Epistemologies and the Limitations of Philosophical Inquiry: Doctrine in Madhva Vedanta (Routeledge, 2005), and is the author/editor of Classical Indian Philosophy: A Reader (Columbia, University Press, 2011) and Hinduism: A Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). 

Posts by Deepak Sarma

Hindu Marriage: Divine, Dharmic, or Daring!

On the one hand, Hindus have placed tremendous importance on arranging the marriages of their children and relatives. On the other hand, there is an important (and impossible to ignore) history of pre-marital sex, love marriages, and even polyamorous relationships among the goddesses and gods in texts held sacred by the same Hindus. Which one is endorsed (and who endorses it)?

Letting your Freak Flag Fly?

Hair dharma in Hinduism is context dependent. While there are hairstyles that are permissible, some even prescribed or required, they must be manifested at the appropriate time and space, and even stage of life, and in accordance with gender.

The Dharma of Dollars

The stereotype that Hinduism is less materialistically oriented than other religious traditions is clearly false. At the same time, to offer a definitive account of the connection between Hinduism and money would be deceitful and definitively incorrect.