Love and War in India

Love and War in India explores two fundamental cultural tropes that have significantly shaped the religious, literary, social and political life of South Asia. Building on the ancient Tamil conceptions of aham (love/interiority) and puram (war/exteriority), and the Sanskrit ideas of kama (desire), dharma (duty) and ahimsa (non-violnece) we will investigate a variety of texts on religious devotion, ethical behavior and political theory in order to contextualize the concepts of love and war within multiple arenas of Indian social and cultural life.