Balmurli Natrajan

Articles by this author (13) >>

Balmurli Natrajan (aka Murli) teaches anthropology at William Paterson University of New Jersey where he is also director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice. His areas of specialization are caste, race, group formation, cultural theory, development, and globalization (see http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/faculty/natrajanb/). Murli has had a long engagement with South Asian philosophical, spiritual, and religious traditions, and also Latin American and Black Liberation Theology, exploring all of them for their potentials and limits to promote progressive politics and social relations. He is active in the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (www.stopfundinghate.org), the international campaign for political and economic freedom and justice in India (www.otherindia.org), and the South Asia Solidarity Initiative in New York. Murli’s early training and work was in marine engineering and later in computer science. He listens to a wide range of music and has recently discovered the joys of trekking in the Himalayas. Murli is comfortable with various aspects of his identity -- agnostic, Hindu, social/political/economic progressive, and Marxist. In this blog he will explore the contours of a progressive Hinduism -- a neo-Hinduism (if you wish) that in his opinion does not as yet exist. His blog will be an invitation to like-minded concerned Hindus and non-Hindus to enable the collective creation of the foundations for such a progressive Hindusim.