num_pages: 260
description: Drawing on a large body of previously untapped literature including documents from the Church Missionary Society and Bengali newspapers Brian Pennington offers a fascinating portrait of the process by which Hinduism came into being. He argues against the common idea that the modern construction of religion in colonial India was simply a fabrication of Western Orientalists and missionaries. Rather he says it involved the active agency and engagement of Indian authors as well who interacted argued and responded to British authors over key religious issues such as image-worship sati tolerance and conversion.
language: English
title: Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion
publisher: Oxford University Press