AAS Call for Proposals

I have long been concerned with the decline of India and Hindu civilization over the past thousand years.

In the Bronze Age, India stood among the world's foremost civilizations. The great cities of the Indus Valley were, in many respects, larger and more advanced than their contemporaries in Egypt and Sumer. Later, during the classical age, while the West witnessed the rise of the Greek and Roman empires, India flourished under the Mauryan and Gupta empires.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, Western civilization entered a prolonged period of decline. India, however, continued to prosper through the eras of Harsha and other great kingdoms, preserving its cultural and intellectual vitality.

My own study suggests that the turning point came during the last millennium. India appears to have struggled to respond effectively to emerging challenges, particularly the arrival and expansion of Islam, followed later by Christianity. The issue is not the presence of different religions; India has always engaged with diverse cultures and faiths. Rather, the concern is whether India lost momentum in its larger civilizational mission of sharing its spiritual and humanistic vision with the world.

For centuries, Indian ideas spread across vast regions, influencing societies from Southeast Asia to parts of Western Asia. That broad, inclusive, and spiritually grounded outlook now seems to have come under considerable pressure.

I therefore welcome other members to join to make a Session or to jointly author a paper on this topic.