In this episode I travel to Montreal, and sit with Professor Arvind Sharma, a Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University whose work focus on Hinduism, philosophy of religion. We meet in his office in beautiful old building of Mcgill. His office is covered with books, papers everywhere, but there is a beauty in this mess. We talk about the views of menstruations in the Hindu religion, from stories, to rituals, to the concept of sin and cleansing.
Arvind Sharma was born on 13 January 1940 in Varanasi India. He served in civil services in Gujarat until 1968 he went to US to pursue higher studies in economics at the University of Syracuse, obtaining a Masters in economics in 1970. While pursuing the role of non-economic factors in economic development he became interested in religion and joined Harvard Divinity School in 1972. After obtaining a Masters in Theological Studies, he earned his PhD from the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in 1978. While at Harvard he was recruited in 1976 by the newly founded Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. In 1980 he moved to the University of Sydney. In 1994 he was appointed the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, where he teaches.
