South Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia

<p>This volume maps the conceptual, intellectual, and historical trajectory of secularity in the vast area extending from South Asia to Maritime Southeast Asia. It covers a timeline that runs from ancient India, through the medieval and modern colonial empires, to the contemporary period of the nation-states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal in South Asia, and Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines in Maritime Southeast Asia. This region is marked by deep, cross-cutting diversity in terms of religion, culture, and language, and has a complex history of conquest, colonialism, religious conversion, partition, and nationalism. The texts included in this volume are prefaced with contextualised introductions, in order to make accessible the multilingual archive and diverse regional histories that influenced both distinctive and shared articulations of secularity. The texts range from those reflecting the state’s or sovereign’s position – such as the <em>Arthashastra,</em> the <em>Akbarnama,</em> and the modern constitutions of various nation-states – to canonical and counter-culture texts. Readers will find diverse and rare texts that shed light on Indic, Islamicate, Buddhist, and Christian reflections on secularity.</p>