Latest / New Books in Indian Religions
Mou Banerjee, "The Disinherited: The Politics of Christian Conversion in Colonial India" (Harvard UP, 2025)
An illuminating history of religious and political controversy in nineteenth-century Bengal, where Protestant missionary activity spurred a Christian conversion “panic” that indelibly shaped the trajectory of Hindu and Muslim politics.
In 1813, the British Crown adopted a policy officially permitting Protestant missionaries to evangelize among the empire’s Indian subjects. The ramifications proved enormous and long-lasting. While the number of conversions was small—Christian converts never represented more than 1.5 percent of India’s population during the nineteenth century—Bengal’s majority…
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