Past Imperfect Episode 20: Manu S. Pillai on Missionaries, Reformers, and the Making of Modern Hinduism
Past Imperfect Episode 20 features SPJIMR Prof. Dinyar Patel in conversation with Manu S. Pillai, author of Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity.
In a book beginning with Vasco da Gama and ending with V. D. Savarkar, Pillai looks for evidence of how modern Hindu nationalism developed. Gods, Guns and Missionaries is an account of how the interaction between Hinduism and European Christianity—mediated, on the one hand, through Western missionaries, scholars, and colonial administrators; and, on the other hand, through Hindu reformers—produced a new avatar of one of the world’s oldest faiths. Hindu leaders countered the prejudices and Eurocentrism of their colonial masters, but they also borrowed many of their religious ideas. This resulted in new interpretations of Hindu religious texts, modified practices, and, above all, a new attitude of defensiveness.
