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040			_aIN-BhIIT
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082			_a294.509 _bMAN/G
100			_aPillai, Manu S. _eAuthor _926399
245			_aGods, guns and missionaries: _bthe making of the modern hindu identity / _cManu S. Pillai
260			_aHaryana : _bPenguin Random House, _c2024
300			_axlvii, 564 p. : _bill. ; _c24 cm.
520			_aWhen 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.
650			_aReligion  _xReligions of Indic origin _926400
650			_a Hinduism  _926401
942			_cGEN _01
999			_c14988 _d14988