Devdutt Pattanaik
A Milkmaid Called Radha
Devdutt Pattanaik writes on the relevance of mythology in modern times, especially in areas of management, governance and leadership. He is the author of thirty books and 600 columns, with bestsellers such as Jaya, Sita and Shyam. He was a speaker at TEDIndia 2009. His TV shows include Business Sutra on CNBC-TV18 and Devlok on Epic TV. He consults with organizations on culture, diversity and leadership, as well as with various television channels and film-makers on storytelling.
Dharamvir Bharati
Kanupriya
Dharamvir Bharati, journalist, novelist, playwright and poet in Hindi, was honoured with a Padma Shri for literature in 1972 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in playwriting (Hindi) in 1988. He was the chief editor of the popular magazine Dharmayug for several years. His best-known works include Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda and Gunaho Ka Devta, both experiments in narrative form, and Andha Yug, a play based on the Mahabharata.
Durgadas Mukhopadhyay
Durgadas Mukhopadhyay is the editor and translator of In Praise of Krishna: Translation of Gita Govinda of Jayadeva.
Gayatri Bhattacharya
Translation of ‘The Blue-necked God’ by Indira Goswami
Gayatri Bhattacharya is a retired professor of English at the University of Guwahati. She has translated ten books from Assamese to English, including the classic Jivanar Batot by Birinchi Kumar Barua.
H.S. Shivaprakash
Translation of Subrahmanya Bharathiyar
H.S. Shivaprakash is a poet and playwright writing in Kannada. In 2012, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award. He is professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was the Director of the Tagore Centre at Berlin, administered by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Government of India. He has seven anthologies of poems, twelve plays and several other books to his credit.
Harsha V. Dehejia
The Heart-throb of Chaitanya
Harsha V. Dehejia has a double doctorate, one in medicine and the other in ancient Indian culture, both from Mumbai University, India. He teaches Hinduism and has a special interest in Hindu aesthetics. He is a doctor of medicine and a professor of Indian studies at Ottawa, Canada. His special interest is in Krishna shringara. He has twenty-five books, two films and six curated exhibitions to his credit.
Indira Goswami
The Blue-necked God
Indira Goswami was a pre-eminent Assamese writer, known for her fresh and original style with novel themes. When taking on the tough social issues of urban life, the harsh lives of labourers and the plight of widows in Vrindavana and Assam, Goswami displayed great empathy and compassion. Considered an expert on Ramayana literature, Goswami’s voluminous works on the Assamese and Hindi Ramayanas won her many laurels. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for her novel Mamore Dhora Torowal. In July 2001 Goswami was awarded the Jnanpith, India’s highest literary award.
Jawhar Sircar
In Search of the Historical Radha
Jawhar Sircar was culture secretary from 2008–12 and then the chief executive officer of Prasar Bharati, India’s public service broadcaster that runs All India Radio and Doordarshan. He has published several articles and research papers on history, culture and society. His focus is on specific aspects of Hindu myths and beliefs, in an attempt to decipher the underlying societal conflicts and their dynamics.
John S. Hawley
Translation of Surdas
John Stratton Hawley—informally, Jack—is Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has written or edited over twenty books on Hinduism, India’s bhakti traditions and the comparative study of religion. Hawley has directed Columbia University’s South Asia Institute, has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright–Nehru Fellow and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kapila Vatsyayan
Gita Govinda: Illustrated Manuscripts from Rajasthan
Kapila Vatsyayan is an internationally recognized scholar of Indian arts and literature, dance, drama, etc. She has written over twenty publications and nearly 200 articles. She has been awarded the fellowship of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Lalit Kala Akademi and many other institutions. She is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan. She was formerly secretary, Department of Arts, Ministry of HRD; academic director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts; member, UNESCO Executive Board; and member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha–nominated).
Lalit Kumar
Lovelorn Radha, Forlorn God: Tagore’s Bhanusingher Padavali
Lalit Kumar teaches English at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, University of Delhi. He has extensively translated and back-translated from the Hindi and the Maithili into English. He has also contributed to the editorial page of national dailies like the Times of India and the Pioneer. His research interests include translation and translation studies, Indian and European classical literature, 18th-century British literature and reforms in the education sector.
Lee Siegel
Translation of Jayadeva
Lee A. Siegel is a novelist and emeritus professor of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Siegel studied comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and fine arts at Columbia University. His many books include: Love in a Dead Language, Love and Other Games of Chance, Love and the Incredibly Old Man and, most recently, Trance-Migrations: Stories of India, Tales of Hypnosis.
Madhureeta Anand
Radhe Radhe
Madhureeta Anand is an Indian independent film director, writer and producer. She has directed two feature films, written five, directed many documentary films and series, spanning an array of genres. Many of her films have won national and international awards. She writes for various publications and has been featured in several books and magazines. She is also an activist for women’s rights and the rights of other minorities.
Makarand R. Paranjape
Enjoying God: The Divine Paramour
Makarand R. Paranjape is currently director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, he has published over forty-five books, 170 academic papers and 500 articles in newspapers and periodicals. His books include Decolonization and Development: Hind Swaraj Revisited, Nativism: Essays in Literary Criticism (ed.), Another Canon: Indian Texts and Traditions in English and Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India. His poetry collections include Playing the Dark God and Confluence. He has also published short stories and a novel.
Mandakranta Bose
Sita and Radha: From Human to Divine
Mandakranta Bose is Professor Emerita and till recently Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her research interests comprise performing arts texts in Sanskrit, the Ramayana, the Hindu tradition and gender studies. Her two most recent books are The Ramayana in Bengali Paṭas (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2017) and The Goddess (an edited volume, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Dr Bose has been a visiting professor at many universities, including Calcutta and Oxford.
Meghnad Desai
Radha and the Completion of Krishna
Lord Meghnad Desai is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He has written or edited nearly thirty-eight books. His latest two books are Politic Shock: Trump, Modi, Brexit and the Prospects for Liberal Democracy and The Raisina Model: Indian Democracy at Seventy. He is a life peer at the British House of Lords.
Pavan K. Varma
Krishna: The Playful Divine
Pavan K. Varma is a writer-diplomat, and is now in the field of politics, where he was till recently an MP in the Rajya Sabha and, earlier, adviser to the Chief Minister of Bihar, with a rank of cabinet minister. The author of over a dozen bestselling books, he has served as the Indian ambassador to several countries; was director of the Nehru Centre in London; was official spokesperson of the
Ministry of External Affairs; and was press secretary to the President of India. He is currently the national general secretary and national spokesman of the Janata Dal (United).
Pradip Khandwalla
Translation of Narsinh Mehta
Pradip Khandwalla is a translator and researcher on creative thinking who has published several books, including Fourth Eye: Excellence through Creativity. Khandwalla is a professor at IIM Ahmedabad, an organization theorist and management scholar.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Translation of Andal
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an award-winning translator, poet and writer acclaimed for her radical aesthetics. Her books include speculative fiction, literary non-fiction, two poetry collections, a novel and translations from classical Tamil of the mystic Andal. Her anthology publications include Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World, The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, South Asian Review, PEN International. Her forthcoming books include the anthology (ed.) Fafnir’s Heart World Poetry (translation, Bombaykala Books, 2018) and speculative fiction, Clone (Zubaan, 2018, University of Chicago Press, 2019). She edits poetry at Sangam.
Ramakanta Rath
Sri Radha
Ramakanta Rath is a renowned modernist poet in Odia literature. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977, the Bishuva Samman in 1990, the Saraswathi Samman in 1992 and the prestigious Padma Bhushan in 2006. He was the president of the Sahitya Akademi of India from 1998–2003, and received the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship a few years later. Along with an illustrious career as a civil servant, Ramakanta Rath published his poetry to great acclaim, Sri Radha in particular being a path-breaker in creative form. A number of his poems have been translated into English and other Indian languages.
Reba Som
Radha in Nazrul Geeti
Reba Som is a doctorate from Calcutta University and the recipient of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 2000–02. She has served as director of ICCR, Kolkata (2008–13). Her publications include Gandhi, Nehru and Bose: The Making of the Modern Indian Mind (Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2004), Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and His Song (Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2009) and Margot: Sister Nivedita of Vivekananda (Penguin Random House, New Delhi, 2017). A trained singer of Rabindra Sangeet and Nazrul Geeti, Reba Som’s compact-disc albums Selected Songs of Rabindranath Tagore (Saregama) and Love Songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam (Times Music, 2016) include her English translations of the Bengali lyrics.
Renuka Narayanan
Radha: The Unfading Mystic Blossom in Our Midst
Renuka Narayanan is a commentator and columnist on religion and culture. She presently writes for the Times of India. Her published books include The Book of Prayer, Faith: Filling the God-sized Hole, The Little Book of Indian Wisdom, A Madrasi Memoir, The Path of Light: Tales from the Upanishads, Jatakas and Indic Lore and Hindu Fables from the Vedas to Vivekananda. She is presently working on a book on Shiva.
Shrivatsa Goswami
Radha: The Play and Perfection of Rasa
Acharya Shrivatsa Goswami is a member of an eminent family of spiritual leaders and scholars at Sri Radha Raman Temple, Vrindavana. His writings have been published by the university presses of Princeton, Berkeley, Oxford and others. Goswami is the director of Vraja Prakalpa, a multidisciplinary research project jointly sponsored by Sri Chaitanya Prema Samsthana and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Several volumes on the various facets of Vraja culture are already published.
Shubha Vilas
Understanding Radha’s Symbolic Love
Shubha Vilas is a TEDx speaker, lifestyle coach, storyteller and author. He studied patent law after completing his engineering degree. But, finally, he chose the path of a spiritual seeker. He is the author of the bestselling books Open-eyed Meditations and Ramayana: The Game of Life series. The focus of his work is the application of scriptural wisdom in day-to-day living and addressing the needs of corporates and youth through thought-provoking seminars. He has delivered more than 4000 lectures across the globe. He has also been a visiting speaker at the Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other institutions.
Sri Aurobindo
Translation of Chandidas
Sri Aurobindo, born Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, guru, poet and nationalist. He joined the Indian movement for independence from British rule for some years and was an influential leader. After being jailed for his political activities and realizing that his path lay elsewhere, he became a spiritual reformer. From his ashram in Pondicherry he spoke and wrote extensively about his vision of human progress and spiritual evolution.
Tarashankar Bandopadhyay
Raikamal
Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay was a leading Bengali novelist. He was awarded the Rabindra Puraskar, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Jnanpith Award, the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan.
Yudit K. Greenberg
Integrating the Natural, the Divine and the Erotic in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg is the Cornell Endowed Chair of Religion and founding director of the Jewish Studies Program at Rollins College, Florida. She lectures internationally on topics in modern and contemporary Jewish thought, comparative religion and women and religion. Her recent books include The Body in Religion: Crosscultural Perspectives and Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu–Jewish Philosophy and Religion. Dr Greenberg is the recipient of numerous awards including the Fulbright–Nehru Scholar Award at the University of Mumbai in 2019.
In Search of Sita: Revisiting Mythology
Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal
Who was Sita, and what does she mean to contemporary India?
Sita is one of the defining figures of Indian womanhood, yet there is no single version of her story. Different accounts coexist in myth, literature and folktale. Canonical texts deify Sita while regional variations humanize her. Folk songs and ballads connect her timeless predicament to the daily lives of rural women. Modern-day women continue to see themselves reflected in films, serials and soap operas based on Sita’s narrative. Sacrifice, self-denial and unquestioning loyalty are some of the ideals associated with popular perceptions of Sita. But the Janaki who symbolized strength, who could lift Shiva’s mighty bow, who courageously chose to accompany Rama into exile and who refused to follow him back after a second trial, is often forgotten. However she is remembered, revered or written about, Sita continues to exert a powerful influence on the collective Indian psyche. In Search of Sita presents essays, conversations and commentaries that explore different aspects of her life. It revisits mythology, reopening the debate on her birth, her days in exile, her abduction, the test by fire, the birth of her sons and, finally, her return to the earth—offering fresh interpretations of this enigmatic figure and her indelible impact on our everyday lives.
Copyright Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint copyright material:
Amal Shankar Bandopadhyay for permission to use Tarashankar Bandopadhyay’s original story ‘Raikamal’ in a new English translation.
BR Publishing for the use of Canto I and Canto II (extracts from English), originally published in In Praise of Krishna: Translation of Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, edited and translated by Durgadas Mukhopadhyay.
Clay Sanskrit Library for the use of Canto 4, Song 9, originally published in Gita-govinda: Love Songs of Radha and Krishna, by Jayadeva, translated by Lee Siegel.
Devdutt Pattanaik for the use of the essay ‘A Milkmaid Called Radha’, from his website http://devdutt.com/articles/indian-mythology/a-milkmaid-called-radha.html.
Harsha V. Dehejia for the use of the essay ‘The Heart-throb of Chaitanya’, originally published in Radha: From Gopi to Goddess, ed. Harsha V. Dehejia, 2014.
H.S. Shivaprakash for the use of his translation of a poem by Subrahmanya Bharathiyar, beginning, ‘On the island of love
O! Radhe Radhe . . .’
John Stratton Hawley for the use of his translation of the poem by Surdas titled ‘Radha Is Lost.’
Kapila Vatsyayan for the use of the selected section ‘Gita Govinda: Illustrated Manuscripts from Rajasthan’, originally published as an ‘Introduction’ to The Darbhanga Gita-Govinda, 2011.
Lalit Kumar for the translation of a poem by Tagore, ‘Vasant Aaval Re’ (Spring Is Here), from his essay ‘Lovelorn Radha, Forlorn God: Tagore’s Bhanusingher Padavali’.
Makarand R. Paranjape for the use of the essay ‘Enjoying God: The Divine Paramour’, originally published in Radha: From Gopi to Goddess, ed. Harsha V. Dehejia, 2014.
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