Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) is a seminal work in the field of postcolonial culture studies. It critiqued Western scholarship about the Eastern world for its patronizing attitude and tendency to view it as exotic, backward and uncivilized. Arvind Sharma, longstanding professor of comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, now takes up the Palestinian academic's groundbreaking ideas - originally put forth predominantly in a Middle Eastern context - and tests them aga...

A highly personal meditation on the nature and meaning of suffering.An adequate explanation of suffering is perhaps the most intractable issue in the study of religion and philosophy, and the answer to the question "Why me?" has eluded not only those who are the victims of suffering, but those who sympathize with them and try to understand and explain their suffering. In this highly personal account, Arvind Sharma shares his story of becoming the victim of a severe...

The changing landscape in the field of technology enables classmates, out of touch with one-another for a long time, to revive their contact. They gather together in an isolated place for a reunion. However, the reunion has also unintended consequences. At the centre of this is Nishank who had been living the life of a hermit for a long time. Does his life change for the better?

'To write on the Manusmriti is to play with fire! This statement is not merely metaphorical; the Manusmriti has a history of being literally torched. But where there is fire, there is also the possibility of light.'Why yet another book on the Manusmriti?In From Fire to Light, acclaimed academic Arvind Sharma argues that the present understanding of the Manusmriti - regarded as a text designed by the higher castes, especially brah...

Presenting diverse responses to important ethical questions, contestations and debates, this book offers a critical appraisal of Hindu ethics by engaging with classical and contemporary perspectives.With the plurality of Hinduism in mind, this book focuses on the human, sociological and situational ethical framework underpinning Hindu ethics. Chapters go beyond the traditional classical sources-such as the Vedas, epics, mythological narratives and Dharmasastra text...

The book covers the strategies and frameworks for designing and developing intelligent systems to solve real-life problems related to digital health, telemedicine, and smart-cities applications.Covers the essence of human-computer interaction in healthcare applications, along with possibilities with generative artificial intelligenceDiscusses quality use of human cognition for the design and development of information processing systems from an industry perspective ...

Healthcare 5.0 represents a paradigm-shifting period in healthcare, defined by the amalgamation of cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big-Data, Brain Computer Interface, Experience Reality (XR), Internet of Things (IoT), and Robotics to fabricate intelligent, adaptable, patient-focused and reliable healthcare systems. This book investigates the ideas of AI-driven workspaces in the context of sustainable telemedicine, that is, healthcare that delivers high quality ...

Technology for modifying the genotypes and phenotypes of insects and other arthropods has steadily progressed with the development of more precise and powerful methods, most prominently transgenic modification. For many insect pests, there is now almost unlimited ability to modify phenotypes to benefit human health and agriculture. Precise DNA modifications and gene drive have the power to make wild-type populations less harmful in ways that could never have been performed with previous tr...

This pioneering work examines the existing understanding of Hinduism in relation to human rights discourse.Written by a leading Hindu scholar, Hindu Narratives on Human Rights is organized around specific rights, such as the right to own property, the rights of children, women's rights, and animal rights. Within these categories and in light of the questions they raise, the book provides a guided tour of Hindu narratives on ethics, ranging from the famous ...

In his Autobiography, Gandhi wrote, "What I want to achieve—what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years—is self-realization, to see God face to face. . . . All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end." While hundreds of biographies and histories have been written about Gandhi (1869–1948), nearly all of them have focused on the political, social, or familial dimensions of his life. Ve...

If we accept the adage «he who knows one, knows none» as an epistemological concept, then the exploration of pluralism becomes an intellectual necessity. And if we take the commonplace description of Hinduism as a plural tradition as an accurate phenomenological description of it, then the need to study Hindu pluralism becomes obvious both as a general principle and as a specific feature.This book is devoted to a further exploration of Hindu pluralism in its philosophical and histo...

Most of the time, people find it difficult to abandon their houses, relatives, fields, and granaries without grave risk of loss. Unseen or unpredictable forces do not give a person much choice. He had always felt a sense of belonging to his village, no matter where he lived. Coming back home from an alien place, he should have felt a sense of elation, but times had changed, and so had the circumstances. An empty home filled with loneliness waited for him. Only events from the past and shat...