Rights, Religion, and Secularity Salon
Acclaimed scholar of history, gender and colonialism Tanika Sarkar joins BCRW for the third event in the annual Salon Series, which offers an opportunity to dive into the implications of texts that make a critical intervention in their field. A diverse group of historians and area scholars respond to Sarkar’s latest work, “A Just Measure of Death? Hindu Ritual and Colonial Law in the Sphere of Widow Immolations,” which explores the relations among law, personhood and Hindu idioms of entangled selves in colonial India. The article discusses how gender and empire become entwined with religion and secularism as religious notions of ‘sacrifice’ and good widowhood interrupted British notions of the legal person.
Tanika Sarkar is a Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has been called “arguably the most prominent feminist historian today writing on Bengal and India.” Her previous works include Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism and Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times.
Image cover design by Anuradha Roy, copyright to Permanent Black. This event is free and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible.