Manu Pillai

On 17 March this year, a riot broke out in Nagpur, central India, over a Bollywood film and a man who died more than three centuries ago. The line between Bollywood and Indian politics has often been thin. But under the rule of the Hindu-majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the silver screen has become a favourite outlet for the playing out of supposed historical grievances. Chhaava, a recent film casting the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) in a particularly villainous light, show more prompted right-wing Hindu outlets to demand the removal of Aurangzeb’s grave – a demand then echoed by leading BJP politicians including the chief minister of Maharashtra. Nagpur, some 500 kilometres from the grave, began burning a few days afterwards.

To understand why history has become such a raw nerve in India, one has to understand the genesis of modern Hindu identity. Who is a Hindu? And, critically, who is not? For centuries Hindu traditions were remarkably flexible and malleable, an open door which accommodated new ideas, gods, traditions, and practices. ‘This closing of the door’ is the focus of Manu Pillai’s impressive book: how openness mutated into defensiveness. It is essential reading for anyone curious about the long roots of India’s current political dispensation.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/gods-guns-and-missionaries-manu-s-pi...

Dinyar Patel is Associate Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. show less

A deep-dive into how the modern ‘Hindu’ identity has evolved from colonisation and foreign faiths, tracing in detail the Portuguese and later British Christian missionary work in India. Not about any religious beliefs, but rather the messy politics and power struggles behind it - in a delicious historical journey. We have to go back to the first Sultans, which was when people who were tied to beliefs connected to the land identified themselves as a separate entity from Arab-influenced show more cultures- i.e, as the Indus, or Hindustan.
Manu Pillai is a brilliant historian. I like how each of the historical events he gives are cited properly, offering credibility.
"Religious identity allows for networking of solidarity and social mobilization" ( from the epilogue). It's seeing the ‘ism’ of Hinduism came into being - I.e. from a series of personal beliefs along ‘common-sense’ to find your higher truth - to being inspired by Catholicism and later Protestantism into a series of rituals and scriptures, a monolith. We also saw how missionaries like Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Roberto De Nobili adapted Christianity to India, wearing saffron and hosting chariot festivals with Mary and Jesus, also writing a purana about Christian events in Tamil.

At the end, I remembered the quote, ‘religion is the opium of the masses”; there’s a reason why every ruler will want their subjects submissive and obedient - in my opinion, subservience adds no value to one’s personal life in any way whatsoever. show less

I do have a quibble with Mr Pillai, and this lies in the fact that he omitted writing about Begum Hazrat Mahal and, possibly, Nur Jahan. They are both absolutely fascinating women.

It's a pity he did not delve into that period before the Mughals, but maybe there will be a follow-up book.

Having said that, this is a fascinating book. It's evidently well-researched. There is a cast of characters, from the well known to the forgotten. There are many that I am "familiar" with, and many that I am show more not. His writing about them presents them as real humans, and the writing is good. It's good to have a book about the many people who have made up our history, and not just the kings and queens (though, most kings and queens have also been forgotten).

It is a book to read if you want to know more about India, and Indians. It is a thoroughly enjoyable book. It ends well, with speculations on an India where Mahatma Gandhi was not assassinated. Would he have become an anachronism? Maybe. We will never know. show less

‘Gods, Guns, and Missionaries’ is a deeply researched and engaging account of how Hinduism developed under colonial rule, or under the influence of colonialism. It is almost impossible for the lay reader to verify the sources he quotes, so we can assume they are accurate.
The book’s central thesis is consistent with that of most modern writers on the subject without providing anything new to the tale. He flirted with the idea that the word ‘Hindu’ came to denote the composite of show more the multiple beliefs that prevailed in India even during Muslim rule. Still, he then contradicted himself when he stated that the word ‘Hinduism’ became current during the British era.
The book spans four centuries, beginning with the early missionaries and their efforts to convert South Asians to Christianity. This movement gained momentum during the two-hundred-and-fifty-year British rule in India. He missed an opportunity to demonstrate how British attitudes changed after the 1857-58 Uprising. Still, he wrote about how Indians of the time began to define Hinduism in the context of colonial attitudes.
I also believe he missed an opportunity to contrast ‘Hinduism’ under Mughal rule with ‘Hinduism’ under colonial influences.
Finally, while he wrote scathingly about Savarkar, he did not explore the complexities of how Hinduism has evolved in modern times, nor how modern Indians often conflate Hinduism with Hindutva.
The book is enjoyable to read, but it does not offer any new insights and leaves many gaps in the narrative and analysis. show less