01095nam a22001097a 4500008004100000100003100041245002300072260003200095300003600127520079000163773003200953260514b           ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aReviewed by Adit Shankar    aDefied distortions  aBiblio: A Review of Books    a30(7-8), Jul-Sep, 2025: p.17-18  a Gode, Gune  and missionaries: The making of the modern Hindu identity by Manu S. Pillai allen lane/Penguin Random house India, 2024, 664pp. Rs. 554 (HB) ISBNK 9780670093656.


Today we see religion and identity being completely conterminous. But Pillai suggests this wasn’t always the ease; practices that we consider HINDU have excised and evolved in the subcontinent over centuries. When and how does ‘Hindu’ become a market of selfhood. Pillai finds answerer in the subcontinent’s prolonged encounter with colonialism and Christianity, which is the subject of the book. Stable, monotheistic ideas of religion floundered in the bewildering chasos of the subcontinent gods, rituals, and beliefs, prompting Europeans to seeks order and definition within this chaos. Reproduce   aBiblio: A Review of Books