91Èȱ¬

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Hindu goddess Kali, often depicted as dark blue, fierce, defiant, revelling in her power, and holding in her four or more arms a curved sword and a severed head with a cup underneath to catch the blood. She may have her tongue out, to catch more blood spurting from her enemies, be wearing a garland of more severed heads and a skirt of severed hands and yet she is also a nurturing mother figure, known in West Bengal as ‘Maa Kali’ and she can be fiercely protective. Sometimes she is shown as young and conventionally beautiful and at other times as old, emaciated and hungry, so defying any narrow definition.

With

Bihani Sarkar
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Non-Western Thought at Lancaster University

Julius Lipner
Professor Emeritus of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of Cambridge

And

Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a 91Èȱ¬ Studios Audio Production