Status Updates From Gods, Guns and Missionaries...

12 pages into the introduction and I have SO many questions. This is going to alter my life and perception (of my country, past, beliefs etc) and I cannot wait for it to happen

“religion was not ‘a series of propositions to be believed but a series of practices to be undertaken”

“The proposition that Hinduism had higher and lower forms—the first resembling monotheism, the other ‘messily’ polytheistic—was neither new nor a European bifurcation”

“At any rate, if Hindu women were not paying for their murderous propensities by being set alight, they were allowing desire to run amok, letting European observers indulge in all kinds of fantasies.”

soo much to unpack...

“repeated confirmation in travel accounts of India’s barbarity was essential to promoting in Europe its own sense of civilization. Often, it also had more to do with events and anxieties in Western societies than a curiosity about the East”

"As always, in India, even if the destination were the same, the road could never be one. And as much as this could be read as pluralism, ever present was also the prospect of disunion.”