Will I love Gods, Guns and Missionaries?

This is the final book that I have included in my list. I read this book only recently and thought of it as an important intervention because it traces the roots of modern Hindu nationalism to the encounter between Hindu society and European missionaries under colonial rule, an angle often overlooked in mainstream scholarship.

Manu S. Pillai persuasively shows how colonial pressures led to a reimagining of Hinduism, not just as resistance but also as adaptation and appropriation. For me, the book showed how Hindu nationalism emerged from this complex process, shaped by both confrontation and mimicry.

Its rich cast… show more.