The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies (Library of Modern Religion)

New York - London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2011. THE First South Asian Edition . Trade Paperback. Fine. 6" x 9. 250 Pages Indexed. The First South Edition 2011. This edition is for sale in the Indian subcontinent only. Not for export elsewhere. Surely no aspect of South Asian religion has generated more confusion, controversy, or misunderstanding than the complex body of texts and traditions known as Tantra. Since their first encounter with Indian religions, Western audiences have been at once fascinated and horrified, by turns shocked and titillated by this seemingly most exotic of all aspects of the exotic Orient. For European colonizers, Orientalist scholars, and Christian missionaries of the Victorian era, Tantra was generally seen as the worst, most degenerate and depraved example of all the worst tendencies in the "Indian mind," a pathological mixture of religion and sensuality that had led to the decline of modern Hinduism. Yet for most contemporary New Age and popular writers, conversely, Tantra is now celebrated as a much-needed affirmation of physical pleasure and sexuality, as a "yoga of sex" or "cult of ecstasy" that might counteract the hypocritical prudery of the Christian West.