Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion

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Oxford University Press, 2005 M04 28 - 260 pages
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.

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Contents

1 Introduction
3
2 The Other Without and the Other Within
23
3 Scarcely Less Bloody than Lascivious
59
4 Polymorphic Nature Polytheistic Culture and the Orientalist Imaginaire
101
5 Constructing Colonial Dharma in Calcutta
139
Some Concluding Thoughts
167
Notes
191
Works Cited
225
Index
241
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About the author (2005)

Brian K. Pennington is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Tennessee.

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