Gods, Guns and Missionaries - The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity

But then, European power began to grow in India, and under colonial rule, missionaries assumed a forbidding appearance. During the British Raj, Western frames of thinking gained ascendancy, and Hindus felt pressed to reimagine their religion. This was both to fortify it against Christian attacks and to mark resistance to foreign rule. It is this encounter that has given modern Hinduism its present shape. Indeed, Hindus subverted some of the missionaries'' own tools and strategies in the process, also triggering the birth of Hindu nationalism, now so dominant in the country.

In Gods, Guns and Missionaries, Manu S. Pillai takes us through these remarkable dynamics. With an arresting cast of characters - maharajahs, poets, gun-wielding revolutionaries, politicians, polemicists, philosophers and clergymen - this is a book ambitious in scope and provocative in its position. Lucid and exhaustive, it is, at once, a political history, a review of Hindu culture and a study of the social forces that prepared the ground for Hindu nationalism. Turning away from simplistic ideas on religious evolution and European imperialism, the past as it appears here is more complicated - and infinitely richer - than popular narratives allow.<>

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: Manu Pillai, Manu S Pillai
• Edition: Allen Lane
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Livre Relié
• Sortie: 09.01.2025
• EAN: 9780241456941
• ISBN: 978-0-241-45694-1
• Pages: 624
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 242 mm x 38 mm
• Catégories: Littérature spécialisée > Histoire > Autres; Sciences humaines, art, musique > Histoire > Epoque moderne jusqu'en 1918; History, British Empire, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, RELIGION / Hinduism / History, Colonialism & imperialism, History of Religion, Hinduism, Colonialism and imperialism, Asian History, Indian sub-continent, South Asia (Indian sub-continent), HISTORY / Asia / South / General, Social groups, communities and identities