Something that has always captivated my interest is how the social aspect of religion affects the daily lives of modern people. Hinduism is a religion that has strict social classes set up by ancient doctrines that would seem to cause issues in our modern society. For this reason, I used the Library Catalog to search “Modern Hinduism.” After looking through some of the titles, the book “Modern Trends in Hinduism” caught my eye.

When I first saw the book, I noticed there was no elaborate cover, not even a title was on the front. The only text was on the spine of the book, but it appeared to be somewhat old. In the preface, it explained that this text was the result of a series of lectures given between 1968 and 1969 by the Committee on the History of Religions of the American Council of Learned Societies. This made the book more interesting to me because it was written in a time when social issues were at the forefront of the American public. Given the historical context, I found this book to be more intriguing.

After looking through some of the pages, I found that this book could be helpful to me in the near future. The beginning gives a brief introduction to the Hindu Religion, followed by more specific aspects of the religion. For example, it has a chapter about Hinduism in recent years, how contemporary Indian youths practice Hinduism, as well as how Hinduism affects Indian politics. These are all things that relate to how Hinduism affects the daily lives of people in the modern world. The main issue I could see with this book would be that it may be hard to relate to since it was written so long ago. India is a rapidly developing country so it is likely that many of the “contemporary” things the books explains are very outdated. Despite this fact, I could see this book helping me with my paper.