Dec 14 2025 to Dec 14 2025 11 a.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Dharma is difficult to translate, and even harder to understand. 

In this talk, scholar Frederick Smith draws on nearly five decades of study to illuminate how the concept of dharma moves, shifts, and comes alive across the subcontinent. By tracing regional retellings of the Mahabharata, he reveals how different communities have interpreted its moral tensions. Turning to modern literature such as U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara, he connects these ancient debates to contemporary questions of responsibility, community, and moral action. With clarity and depth, Smith examines how ideas of dharma and adharma operate in the Sanskrit Mahabharata and how these ideas ripple outward into contemporary India. 

A Q&A with the audience will follow, offering space for reflection and dialogue.

In collaboration with:

Speaker

Frederick M Smith
Professor of Sanskrit & Classical Indan Religions, Emeritus, University of Iowa
Frederick Smith is emeritus professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions at the University of Iowa. He served in both the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature, chairing the latter for five years.

He earned his MA in Sanskrit from the Centre for Advanced Study in Sanskrit, Pune University, in 1976. He has since lived for extended periods in Pune, Chennai, Mysore, and Braj, and later in the Himalaya near Uttarkashi. His work includes studies of Vedic ritual texts and performance, deity and spirit possession, and the philosophy, textual traditions, and devotional practices of Vallabhacharya, founder of the Pushti Marg. He is also translating major portions of the Mahabharata and serves as editor of the Primus Books series completing the translation begun by J. A. B. van Buitenen in 1970.

He is the author of three major books, over a hundred scholarly articles, and has spoken at numerous conferences and universities. Now retired from the University of Iowa, he has returned to his native Santa Fe, New Mexico. His closest and longest-standing companion is a parrot named Papageno, who has been with him for forty years.