Sharma, Arvind

Arvind Sharma was born in Varanasi, India, on the 13th of January 1940. Son of a father who worked in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), he followed the family tradition after earning a BA from Allahabad University in 1958 and worked for the IAS between 1962 and 1968.

In the late 60s, he moved to the United States of America to pursue a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Syracuse in New York, which he earned in 1970. There, he found much appreciation for religious studies and decided to resign from his IAS career in order to focus on his newly found vocation.

Right after this, he signed up for a Master in Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School and was met there with great academic and professional success. He followed his Master (1974) with a PhD in Sanskrit & Indian Studies (1978).

His first full-time teaching appointment came in 1976 when he was appointed as lecturer in Asian Religions at the University of Queensland’s Department of Studies in Religion. He held this position until 1980, when he was offered another appointment as a lecturer, but this time at the University of Sydney’s Department of Religious Studies. Between 1976 and 1987, he was a very prolific author in religious studies, having published while living in Australia more than 375 works, his peak year being 1981 with 55 works.

In 1987, he was appointed as Associate Professor at McGill University’s Faculty of Religious Studies and was a Full Professor by 1989. He was also given the Birks chair of Comparative Religion in 1994, a position he held ever since. As of 2017, he has worked with McGill University for 30 years.