02382 a2200229 4500 11267 IN-BhIIT 20260102193035.0 250912b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d 9780670093656 (pbk.) IN-BhIIT eng 294.509 MAN/G Pillai, Manu S. Author 26399 Gods, guns and missionaries: the making of the modern hindu identity / Manu S. Pillai Haryana : Penguin Random House, 2024 xlvii, 564 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. When European missionaries arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess- a worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to crocodiles. But it quickly became clear that Hindu 'idolatry' was far more layered and complex than European stereotypes allowed, surprisingly even sharing certain impulses with Christianity. Nonetheless, missionaries became a threatening force as European power grew in India. Western ways of thinking gained further ascendancy during the British Raj- while interest in Hindu thought influenced Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire in Europe, Orientalism and colonial rule pressed Hindus to reimagine their religion. In fact, in resisting foreign authority, they often adopted the missionaries' own tools and strategies. It is this encounter, Manu S. Pillai argues, that has given Hinduism its present shape, also contributing to the birth of an aggressive Hindu nationalism. Gods, Guns and Missionaries surveys these remarkable dynamics with an arresting cast of characters - maharajahs, poets, gun-wielding revolutionaries, politicians, polemicists, philosophers and clergymen. Lucid, ambitious, and provocative, it is at once a political history, an examination of the mutual impact of Hindu culture and Christianity upon each other, and a study of the forces that have prepared the ground for politics in India today. Turning away from simplistic ideas on religious evolution and European imperialism, the past as it appears here is more complicated - and infinitely richer - than previous narratives allow. Religion  Religions of Indic origin 26400  Hinduism  26401 GEN 1 14988 14988 0 0 ddc 0 0 GEN CLIITBBS CLIITBBS 2025-03-07 51 749.25 1 294.509 MAN/G 11267 2026-03-03 17:18:33 2026-01-02 999.00 2025-03-07 GEN