Book Review | Gods, Guns and Missionaries - The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity

Manu S. Pillai’s Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity is an erudite exploration of how Hinduism, far from being a static or monolithic faith, has continuously evolved through a series of negotiations, adaptations, and, at times, confrontations with external entities. Tracing its interactions over four centuries, Pillai discusses the complex interplay between European colonial powers, Christian missionaries, indigenous reformers, and an ever-malleable Hindu consciousness. His central argument is that Hinduism has always been shaped in response to historical contingencies, both domestic and foreign. The book dismantles the notion of a primordial, immutable and importantly, a uniform Hindu identity across castes, regions and eras. Instead, the book demonstrates that it has always been in constant flux, responding to political imperatives, social anxieties, and the theological churn posed by both intra- and inter-religious encounters.

Pillai opens with the peculiar voyage of Madho Singh II of Jaipur to the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. The Mahārājā, bound by the orthodox injunction against crossing the ‘black waters,’ sought priestly counsel to circumvent the taboo. The ingenious solution devised by his Brāhmin advisors—carrying an idol of Śrī Gopalji aboard the ship so that the deity was the one traveling while the Mahārāja only followed—exemplifies the ingenuity with which religious traditions have historically adapted to shifting realities.

This anecdote is emblematic of Pillai’s larger thesis: Hinduism, despite frequent lamentations of decline in its sacred texts, has not only survived through epochs of turmoil but has done so by reinventing itself at every juncture.

A significant portion of the book is devoted to examining the fraught relationship between Hinduism and European missionaries, who arrived in India armed with both the Gospel and a civilizational conceit that cast Hindu traditions as morally degenerate and intellectually backward. Pillai’s research on missionaries and their literature pertaining to India is both thorough and illuminating, and shed light on their remarkable influence on popular discourse — even today, attacks on Hindu practice are often a regurgitation of missionary literature. Accounts of early missionaries’ encounters were marked by an asymmetry of power, wherein colonial administrators and evangelists saw it their God-ordained duty to ‘save heathens’ souls’ through preaching the Gospel and converting them to Christianity. Yet, as Pillai illustrates, it was not a simplistic case of Western imposition and Hindu passivity. Learned Hindu thinkers utilized Hindu philosophy, which already possessed the tools to engage with Christian theology on an equal plane, to mount a defense. Where evangelicals denounced the polytheistic character of Hinduism, Hindus used principles from advaita and vedānta to argue that, at a higher level of consciousness, Hinduism is fundamentally rooted in the monotheistic concept of Brahman.

Pillai also provides an account of the overarching role of the British East India Company in either being wary of missionary intervention in Hindu society, seeing it as an impediment to the entrenchment of their power and wealth, to enabling it later on. The Company gradually evolved from viewing missionaries as obstacles to trade and economy to endorsing their “civilizing” mission, faced with pressure from by devout parliamentarians and Christian mission groups back home. Pillai also highlights the East India Company’s ambivalent role in shaping Hinduism under colonial rule, prioritizing commercial pragmatism. While the Company initially adopted a stance of strategic non-interference, wary of antagonizing Hindu elites, this policy was often compromised by missionary pressure and administrative reforms. Orientalist scholars within the Company, such as William Jones, in undertaking a project to codify Hindu law, inadvertently crystallized fluid traditions into rigid structures that only furthered imperial control and subverted justice for the natives. Simultaneously, evangelical factions lobbied for aggressive Christianization, pushing the government toward a more interventionist approach that disrupted indigenous religious authority. Internal debate amongst Company officials and with the British Parliament resulted in a delicate governance that simultaneously appeased Hindu leaders while conceding ground to missionary zeal, exposing the fragility of British rule. “Internal turmoil, thus pervaded the British encounter with India..” (p. 94). This was made clear especially during moments like the 1857 Revolt, where perceived attacks on religious autonomy fuelled rebellion. Pillai writes that an evangelical, Reverend Andrew Fuller, remarked that concerted anti-British effort was impossible from Indians-

…for ‘Hindoos resemble an immense number of particles of sand, which are incapable of forming a solid mass. There is no bond of union among them, nor any principle capable of effecting it. And yet, less than fifty years later, the British empire received its worst, most threatening paroxysm.

Pillai underscores how colonial power depended not only on military dominance but also on a calculated, often uneasy negotiation with Hindu institutions and practices, a dynamic that shaped the very contours of modern Hindu identity.

The Company had conquered and betrayed; it had violated treaties and the spirit of justice; it had toppled ‘native’ founts of authority, while failing to fit the mould and, finally, by allowing missionaries and their cultural project to intrude into India, they had attacked a powerful element of the Indian identity. (p. 210)

Francis Whyte Ellis, a British civil servant in the Madras Presidency was the first to hypothesize that the southern Indian languages formed a distinct group called the Dravidian group, stating that “the Dravidian language group—as it is now called—once straddled the subcontinent, illuminating a historical era prior to the spread of Indo–Aryan culture” (p. 141). Ellis’ hypothesis has, according to Pillai, since been supported by research. However, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti’s work, on which Pillai bases this statement, itself puts forth the grouping as a retrograde analysis, and the contentious claim that these languages “straddled the subcontinent” is conjectural and plays into the hands of modern day separatist entities.

Pillai’s treatment of Serfoji’s temple patronage (p. 130-131) is tinged with condescension, portraying it as an act of desperation of a ruler losing relevance rather than genuine devotion or cultural responsibility. Instead of recognizing his temple patronage as the continuity of a standard practice of Hindu kingship, Pillai reduces it to little more than political maneuvering. His analysis suggests that Serfoji’s patronage was driven by self-interest, in an attempt to craft legitimacy in the face of British dominance. This approach mirrors a broader tendency in the book to view traditional practices through a lens of cynicism, dismissing them as calculated moves rather than meaningful cultural or religious engagements.

Internally, Hindu reformers, from Raja Ram Mohun Roy, who converted to Christianity, to Dayananda Saraswati, engaged with missionary critiques, often absorbing elements of Christian theology even as they articulated reformist agendas to defend their own traditions. Hindu reformers also often engaged in the same vitriolic anti-Brahmin rhetoric that mirrored that of the missionaries. The resulting religious ferment was a mish-mash of seemingly incongruent beliefs and narratives, but gave rise to successful movements such as the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj, which were as much responses to European modernity as they were attempts to reclaim and refashion Hindu identity. In the chapter ‘Native Luthers’, Pillai asserts that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s intellectual decolonization challenged colonial narratives. Through his rejection the need for Western validation, arguing that polytheism was no less ‘pure’ than monotheism. Rather than merely defending tradition, he reconstructed Hindu identity on its own terms, asserting its philosophical depth and autonomy. Moreover, Pillai uncritically lauds Phule as “fearless” for his caustic anti-Brāhmin rhetoric, overlooking the exaggerated nature of his claims. Rather than critically assessing Phule’s sweeping denunciations, which framed Brāhmins as cunning oppressors while absolving colonial rule of its structural violence, Pillai adopts a sympathetic stance that aligns with his own broader narrative. This lack of scrutiny reinforces a one-dimensional portrayal, reducing a complex socio-political dynamic marred by history to a simplistic oppressor-victim binary. Pillai himself states elsewhere that:

Hindus, in the past as today, that is, show no anxiety to gain direct access to the Vedas: Based on family, caste and regional traditions, faith remains available in a variety of formats, leaving scriptural concerns to Brahmins and philosophers. (p. 84)

In narrating an anecdote of Akbar’s interaction with Jesuits, Pillai misleadingly presents him as a ruler with an openness to religious ideas in alignment with his conventional portrayal as a tolerant and enlightened monarch. Such depictions, however, obscure a more violent reality, one in which Akbar— like his predecessors and successors—was responsible for acts of brutal acts of Hindu persecution. Akbar’s military campaigns saw the destruction of Hindu temples, the forced conversion of prisoners of war, and the execution of captured Hindu soldiers who resisted Mughal expansion. The massacre of Rajput defenders after the siege of Chittorgarh in 1568, for instance, is a glaring example. After capturing the fort, Akbar ordered the massacre of 30,000 civilians and warriors who had refused to convert to Islam. The issue with such anecdotal portrayals of Akbar’s tolerance as Pillai presents — while being an intriguing account of Jesuit dialogue with the Islamic emperor — is that they risk reinforcing a sanitized historical narrative that downplays his acts of religious coercion.

This selective remembrance mirrors a broader historiographical trend in which Mughal history is framed through the lens of either romanticized syncretism or unrelenting tyranny, depending on the ideological leanings of the historian.

Pillai’s discussion of Akbar, therefore, fits within the book’s larger argument about how historical narratives are shaped, contested, and repurposed to serve ideological ends. Just as colonial administrators and missionaries sought to reframe Hinduism for their own purposes, so too has Mughal history been recast in various ways to suit contemporary political and academic agendas. A more rigorous engagement with the myriad contradictions of the figures presented in the book would have strengthened Pillai’s examination of the making of modern Hindu identity, for it is precisely these historical ambiguities that continue to fuel the ideological battles of the present.

Pillai also presents the embrace of English education by Indians as a matter of active choice, suggesting that demand for English schools reflected a genuine eagerness for Western learning. However, this interpretation overlooks the fundamental asymmetry of colonial power and the coercive structures that made English proficiency economically indispensable. The British administration deliberately devalued and dismantled the native education system, funneled resources into English-language instruction, and reserved administrative positions for those proficient in the colonizer’s tongue. Beneath the imposition of English was also a poorly concealed Christianizing agenda. The so-called “demand” for English was thus an engineered necessity rather than an organic intellectual pursuit. Pillai cites examples of students chasing after English school admissions, Brāhmins picking up the Bible in their quest to master the language, and the overwhelming success of English sections in Company-sponsored Sanskrit colleges. Yet, he does not sufficiently engage with how this shift was itself a colonial imposition—an act of linguistic hegemony that disrupted native epistemologies and tethered social mobility to an alien tongue. The colonial government’s claim that Indians “chose” English education obscures the structural violence of this transformation, where learning the language of the ruler was not an expression of agency but a survival strategy under conditions of imperial subjugation.

Pillai’s scholarship is formidable, yet never ponderous. He draws from colonial archives, Sanskrit texts, missionary records, and vernacular traditions—while maintaining a prose style that is lucid and engaging. Unlike many works on Hindu identity that succumb to political or ideological reductionisms, it neither romanticizes a precolonial “golden age” nor does it distil Hinduism to a mere construct of imperial power. Instead, it presents a far more compelling argument: Hinduism has always been an evolving, adaptive tradition, its vitality and continuity resting on its capacity for absorption and change.

One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the formation of Hindu nationalism owes as much to the colonial period as to any indigenous impulse. A recurring thread throughout the book is the attempt to situate and the current form, substance and understanding Hinduism — which he believes contemporary identity politics is based on. Hindu identity, Pillai contends, was historically diffuse, with regional, sectarian, and caste distinctions outweighing any singular religious affiliation. It was the pressures of colonial categorization, alongside the existential threat posed by missionary activity, that galvanized Hindu leaders to forge a more unified religious consciousness. Figures like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar emerge in this narrative as architects of a militant Hindu nationalism that sought to consolidate disparate traditions under the aegis of a singular Hindu identity. While Pillai does not indulge in polemics, his analysis underscores the irony that what is often presented today as an eternal Hindu essence was, in many ways, a product of colonial-era anxieties. Read in this manner, the book is, at its core, a distillation of post-colonial theory, repackaged for a wider audience: viewing colonialism not only as a political and economic force but as an epistemic rupture that fundamentally altered Hindu self-perception. Pillai adopts a lens deeply informed by post-colonial scholars such as Bernard Cohn and Nicholas Dirks, and presents the evolution of Hindu identity as a response to colonial pressures, missionary challenges, and the exigencies of empire.

One of the book’s strongest sections is its treatment of how British legal interventions rigidified Hindu law, distorting a system that had previously been marked by flexibility, regional variation, and case-by-case arbitration. Pre-colonial Hindu jurisprudence operated through customary norms, with disputes often mediated by local councils, caste panchayats, and temple authorities, allowing for pragmatic resolutions that prioritized case-specific morality and caste-specific and/or regionally diverse norms over legal absolutism and the application of legal precedent. The British, in their attempt to codify Hindu law, sought textual authority in Brahminical scriptures, reducing an intricate and evolving legal tradition to a set of frozen principles drawn from a selective reading of ancient texts. This imposition of a written legal framework—often interpreted through the lens of English common law—disregarded the localized and context-sensitive mechanisms that had governed Hindu society for centuries. As Pillai illustrates, the result was not merely the distortion of Hindu law but the gradual erosion of indigenous dispute resolution structures, replacing them with a colonial judiciary that claimed legitimacy through codification rather than lived practice.

In addition, this textualization of Hindu law as well as of its practice and profession was part of a broader transformation that saw the religion undergo what scholars term “protestantization” — a process wherein Hinduism was falsely reoriented towards scriptural authority in a manner inspired by Biblical ideals. Under the scrutiny of both missionaries and British administrators, Hindu intellectuals began to frame their faith in terms familiar to their colonial interlocutors, elevating Sanskrit texts like the Vedas and Upaniṣads as the theological core of Hinduism in an attempt to garner respect. Protestantization was a strategy of both resistance and reinvention, both offense and defense: a means for Indian intellectuals to assert parity with their colonizers by reframing their faith in ways that met European expectations of what a “true” religion entailed. This shift had profound consequences: some local beliefs and practices to the Western eye were ‘irrational’, which thrived outside textual orthodoxy, were increasingly marginalized and viewed with a reformist lens by more ‘modern’ and outward-looking Hindus. Thus, Hinduism began to be articulated in a way that mirrored the structure of Christianity, with defined doctrines, authoritative scriptures, and reformist impulses. The idea of a “return to traditional Hinduism” was thus not a return at all, but a reinvention—an effort to recast Hinduism as a respectable, rationalized, and systematic faith that could stand on equal footing with Christianity in the colonial world. While this reconfiguration provided Hinduism with a new intellectual assertiveness, it also estranged it from its own diversity, centralizing scriptural interpretation at the expense of the pluralistic and often unstructured ways in which Hinduism had historically functioned.

Interwoven with these grand historical movements are more intimate vignettes of religious contestation within India itself. Hinduism’s history, as Pillai reminds us, is not one of seamless unity but of competition and sectarian rivalries. The absorption of local deities and narratives into the Pauraṇika framework, the caste politics of Brahminical dominance, and the gradual construction of sacred geographies all contribute to a nuanced portrait of a tradition that has thrived on its ability to synthesize and subsume. The introduction to Gods, Guns and Missionaries leans heavily on familiar liberal tropes, framing Hinduism as a construct shaped primarily by external pressures while downplaying its internal continuity. Pillai emphasizes Brahminical adaptability, but his tone often veers into a thinly veiled critique, portraying Brāhmins less as custodians of tradition and more as cunning power brokers who manipulated religion to maintain a hegemony. While his argument about Hinduism’s fluidity is valid, the selective focus on caste hierarchies and Brahminical authority gives the introduction an anti-Brāhmin undertone, aligning with a broader historiographical trend that views Hindu tradition through the lens of oppression rather than complexity.

Pillai’s work is a meaningful contribution to the study of Hinduism’s modern evolution in a way that retains relevance to the average Hindu. The book puts forth a helpful practical understanding of Hinduism with all its seeming contradictions and interwoven strains of thought. Ultimately, Gods, Guns and Missionaries leaves us with a paradox: while colonialism undoubtedly disrupted Hindu self-perception, it also catalyzed an internal response that sought to reframe and reimagine Hindu identity, not as an entirely novel invention but as the latest iteration of a tradition that has always thrived due to its inherent plasticity.