Books like Gods, Guns and Missionaries — picked by fans

This book enriched my understanding of how Hindu nationalism framed India’s imagination, not just through politics but also through publishing. Mukul’s minute excavation of Gita Press’s empire enthralled me—how two Marwari businessmen set up a publication house to strengthen militant Hindu nationalism.

What particularly stunned me was the reach of this vernacular press and its publications and how many nationalists legitimized its project—their bylines sandwiched between caste orthodoxy and cow protection pamphlets.

The book powerfully showed to me how a ‘spiritual’ enterprise quietly standardized the grammar of Hindutva, making devotion quantifiable, nationalism religious, and majoritarianism sacred.

This book left a deep impact on me because it exposed how Hindu nationalism did not just politicize religion; it rewired gender itself. Sarkar’s razor-sharp analysis of Bankimchandra’s novels, women’s memoirs, scandal, rumors, and popular press powerfully showed me how Hindu patriarchal norms were rewritten to shape dominant conceptions of womanhood, domesticity, wifeliness, and mothering.

What I found particularly enriching in the book was the stimulating use of vernacular sources to weave an everyday social history of Hindu cultural revivalism in the late nineteenth century. It is indeed a landmark work from one of the most creative and thinking historians of gender and Hindu histories in colonial times. 

I loved this book because it nuanced my understanding of how modern Hindu identity was manufactured through Hindi literature in the literary salons and polemics of nineteenth-century Banaras. Dalmia’s intricate study of the life and writings of Bharatendu Harischandra, a colorful and creative personality and often called the Father of Modern Hindi, impacted me strongly.

Here was a writer, playwright, publisher, and polemicist who played a critical role in the formation of Hindu modernity in North India. I also find the book interesting for its description of social history, rooted in the ancient city of Banaras. 

I really enjoyed reading this book because it offers a deeply original perspective on Hindu nationalism by shifting the focus away from the usual Hindu Right organizations and instead examining how its idioms infiltrated the Congress party in the United Provinces.

Gould’s analysis is important because it reveals how Hindu nationalist ideas operated beneath the surface of a party officially committed to secularism. This covert influence, as he shows, played a key role in alienating Muslim communities and complicating the communal landscape in the run-up to Partition.

I appreciate how the book draws on a rich variety of historical sources to unpack these dynamics, making it a significant contribution to our understanding of how political language shapes ideological outcomes. 

This book takes an interesting approach to regional goddesses in India by looking at the seeds of their cults and how they grow and flower into powerful traditions in lived and literary traditions. I particularly love this approach because it not only spans the different regions of India, but it also spans the scope of time connecting ancient and medieval traditions with pan-Indian and local understandings of the goddess. 

This book connects the latest environmental research with Hinduism, one of the most ancient religious traditions of India.

It has well-researched chapters by top-notch experts in Asian Studies and Environmental Studies that touch various natural resources such as the mountains, rivers, oceans, and land, as well as their consumption and reverence by Hindus in India and beyond. 

I was fascinated by this book by William Dalrymple, a Scottish historian who has written widely about the Indian subcontinent.

He explains in intriguing detail how India and Indian civilisation contributed so much to the world—from the religions (like Buddhism and Hinduism) that took root in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, China and Indonesia, from the creation of the numerals that we use today and mistakenly refer to as Arabic numerals, from the exotic goods that flowed out of India and drained the gold of the Roman Empire.

He creates a plausible case for the Indian subcontinent being responsible for transforming the technology and culture of the ancient world,

Reading Dalrymple’s book gave me the insight and confidence to publish my own book, which complements and supplements the stories and ideas discussed in his book.

Tidrick explores with much insight the influences on Gandhi that shaped his spiritual and political life, ranging from the vegetarian movement, theosophy, esoteric Christianity, nineteenth-century authors and thinkers such as Ruskin, Thoreau, and Tolstoy, along with his sometimes-eccentric understanding of Hinduism. She shows how he saw his mission as divinely-inspired, and his belief that – so long as he upheld his ‘truth’ with rigour – he would have the power to change the world. Gandhi had at times his doubts as to his purity and thus his abilities in this respect, leading him into some ‘experiments’ that could disturb his close followers, as when he sought to test his chastity. In this book, Tidrick reveals Gandhi’s idiosyncrasies in illuminating ways.   

Something links the other books that I am recommending, and this is that they are all focused on Western societies. This book, however, will take us to India and understanding mob violence against Muslims.

As a psychologist, Kakir draws on his clinical expertise and tells people’s stories compellingly and with insight. In some ways it’s not a book about Islamophobia, it’s about what hatred is, what this does to people, both those hated and those who hate, and the social impact of this.

Above all, it helps us see that violence, as the title says, may have colours.

This is my favorite book on Indian/Hindu goddesses. Even after all these years, I believe it to be the erudite and accessible book that portrays the complexity of goddesses and their relationships with devotees. Each time I re-read the book, I glean additional insights into India, Hinduism, and the ways that the sacred feminine shapes the lives of people in the Northeast region of India.