100 Books Like Hinduism and Ecology

This is one of those books that is so dense with surprising and counterintuitive facts that I have found myself quoting it regularly for years. It upended my thinking about the way the world we live in is distributed and the manner in which we tell ourselves stories of change.

I read this book long back and was blown away by how it compared and connected the philosophies of India and China with the latest discoveries in Quantum Physics. Seemingly, the two distant worlds of Asia and Western Science are overlapping and intertwined, as this book powerfully demonstrates.

It is a well-known analysis of the striking parallels between contemporary physics and Eastern mysticism. The book's main thesis is that the sophisticated Western conceptions of the modern world may be accommodated by the logical theoretical framework found in the ancient and mystical Eastern traditions.

This book connects the latest environmental research with Jainism, one of India's most ancient religious traditions. It has well-researched chapters by top-notch experts in Asian Studies and Environmental Studies that touch various natural resources such as the mountains, rivers, oceans, and land, as well as their consumption and preservation by Jains in India and beyond.

It highlights how nonviolence and non-possession play central roles for Jains as their ascetics continue to live a minimal lifestyle in the 21st century, serving as powerful role models for the rest of society.

This book examines the function and representation of religion in Indian cinema and demonstrates that the interplay between the modern and the traditional in modern India is a natural aspect of daily existence. It discusses India's various cinemas while focusing on Bollywood, the Hindi film industry in Mumbai.

The devotional genre, which peaked during the height of the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, the mythological genre, which carries on India's long tradition of retelling Hindu myths and legends by drawing from sources like the national epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and Bombay-produced films that portray India's Islamicate culture, including historical, courtesan, and "Muslim social" genres, are all covered in Rachel Dwyer's engaging conversation.

Who among us has not looked at our published academic paper and felt that tinge of sadness at so much left unsaid? This book is about all that is left unsaid—an entertaining account of the many stories behind the data collected for research that does not make it into our sanitised published papers. Traversing different parts of North India, two young women carrying out conservation research encounter not just nature but also opinionated men, corrupt officials, and a bureaucracy that worked at a frustrating snail’s pace. The accounts in the book are hilarious and relatable to anyone who has done field research, ecological or otherwise in India, where data collection is interspersed with memorable and amusing everyday conversations with a range of people. This is a book I would have loved to write myself. And I hope I still can someday, in my own way.

There are many books about Thoreau and Walden, even for kids. But Frederic Tudor? Who is he, and what is his relation to Thoreau? Curiosity led me to pick up this book; the scope of this little-known historical event kept me turning pages. The two characters are introduced in parallel prose poems. A pond, the third character, connects those different people.

I was entranced by the story of the naturalist and the businessman, both influenced by Walden Pond. While Thoreau wrote notes in his journal, Tudor chopped frozen blocks of ice to ship to India. The author balanced the contrasts between the men with a light hand, backdropped by the seasons. Detailed watercolor and pencil art carry the scale of the account from Thoreau’s tiny cabin to Tudor’s ship crossing the equator. This is nonfiction that transcends mere information—a masterful performance.

This book takes an interesting approach to regional goddesses in India by looking at the seeds of their cults and how they grow and flower into powerful traditions in lived and literary traditions. I particularly love this approach because it not only spans the different regions of India, but it also spans the scope of time connecting ancient and medieval traditions with pan-Indian and local understandings of the goddess. 

This is the final book that I have included in my list. I read this book only recently and thought of it as an important intervention because it traces the roots of modern Hindu nationalism to the encounter between Hindu society and European missionaries under colonial rule, an angle often overlooked in mainstream scholarship.

Manu S. Pillai persuasively shows how colonial pressures led to a reimagining of Hinduism, not just as resistance but also as adaptation and appropriation. For me, the book showed how Hindu nationalism emerged from this complex process, shaped by both confrontation and mimicry.

Its rich cast of historical actors and lucid narrative style make it an important intervention, one that connects cultural anxieties, colonial power, and identity formation with striking clarity.

I love the open-mindedness of this book and the way in which it can open your mind as a reader.

Can pictures think for themselves? How do pictures communicate with each other and with their audiences? These are the kinds of questions that this pathbreaking work opens up to its audience.

It also changed my sense as to how photography and painting/prints relate to each other, as well as providing a strong defence of the idea that deep cultural critique can be founded upon the study of quite ordinary objects and texts.

Something links the other books that I am recommending, and this is that they are all focused on Western societies. This book, however, will take us to India and understanding mob violence against Muslims.

As a psychologist, Kakir draws on his clinical expertise and tells people’s stories compellingly and with insight. In some ways it’s not a book about Islamophobia, it’s about what hatred is, what this does to people, both those hated and those who hate, and the social impact of this.

Above all, it helps us see that violence, as the title says, may have colours.