Talk by Aditya Bhattacharjee (Asian Studies, Cornell University)

The cultural affinities that have long connected South and Southeast Asia are particularly visible in Thailand, one of the first countries to recognize India after independence and a nation that occupies a prominent place both in India’s cultural diplomacy efforts and in the itineraries of internationally bound Indian tourists. My talk turns from these well-known forms of state-level and civilizational interaction to the popular and everyday textures of lived, religious worldmaking in which ordinary Thais encounter and make sense of Indian-ness. Drawing on longstanding ethnographic fieldwork that moves fluidly between temples, social media platforms, and unplanned interactions on city streets, I consider how Thai Buddhists in varied settings engage Indian-ness less as a living South Asian tradition than as an aesthetic vocabulary that can be refracted and reinterpreted through a Buddhist grammar of their own.

In practice, this refractive process produces visual and ritual fields in which Indian themes appear in unexpected combinations and take on meanings shaped by local contexts. In these settings, Indian motifs are woven into wider Asian assemblages that combine Buddhist imagery, Chinese prosperity figures, and local protective spirits. Taken together, the talk’s case studies illuminate a distinct Thai Hindu modality whose allure and ambivalence, as perceived by both participants and observers, invite a reconsideration of how Indian-ness travels, settles, and is remade across Asia. In doing so, the talk reframes notions of a global Hinduism through an intra-Asian lens that decenters India as the singular vehicle of religious innovation within its study.

Aditya Bhattacharjee is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow jointly appointed in the Department of Asian Studies and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. His research examines how Hindu identities and ritual practices take shape across diverse cultural worlds, from urban Thailand to diasporic communities in North America. He is currently developing his first book, Global Ganesh: Mapping a Divine Diaspora, based on his dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. The project traces how Thai Buddhist laypeople and monastics engage Indian deities such as Ganesha, Shiva, Vishnu, and various Hindu goddesses in suburban Bangkok and in the American Northeast, using these cases to reconsider how borrowing and appropriation are defined within interreligious encounters. Bringing together insights from material and visual culture, diaspora studies, and theories of ritual creativity, the book challenges India-centered models of Hindu mobility and offers globally informed perspectives on religious circulation in Asia. Before coming to Cornell, Bhattacharjee taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he developed interdisciplinary courses on Asian philosophy, diaspora, and religious art.