Imperial Encounters

Peter van der Veer is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Research Center for Religion and Society at the University of Amsterdam. His books include Gods on Earth The Management of Religious Experience and identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre, Religious Nationalism; Hindus and Muslims in India. and Modern Orientalism. He is the editor of Nation and Migration The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diasporo. Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, and with Hartmut Lehmann, Nation and Religion Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton).

• Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE Secularity and Religion 14 The Separation of Church and State 16 Religion 24 Concluding Remarks 28 CHAPTER TWO The Moral State: Religion, Nation, and Empire 30 The Moral State in Britain 34 The Colonial Mission in India 41 Concluding Remarks 53 CHAPTER THREE The Spirits of the Age: Spiritualism and Political Radicalism 55 British Spirits 58 India's Spiritual Heritage 66 Concluding Remarks 77 CHAPTER FOUR Moral Muscle: Masculinity and Its Religious Uses 83 Muscular Christianity 85 Hindustani Honor 94 The Internal Enemy 101 Concluding Remarks 104 CHAPTER FIVE Monumental Texts: Orientalism and the Critical Edition of India's National Heritage 106 Muller's Science 107 India's Adoption of German Wissenschaft 116 Texts and the Nationalist Imaginaire 122 Speaking, Writing, Watching 129 Concluding Remarks 131 CHAPTER SIX Aryan Origins 134 The Aryan Myth 136 From Language to Skulls 144 Race, Class and Criminality 150 Concluding Remarks 155 Conclusion 158 Notes 161 Bibliography 179 Index 191

"Peter van der Veer's bracing, audacious book is sure to stir up much-needed debate. Challenging the canonical narratives that have governed analysis of colonialism, culture, and religion, he advances a bold thesis about their complicity across boundaries and nationalist categories. Deeply learned and elegantly presented, Imperial Encounters is a gripping work of the scholarly imagination."—Edward W. Said, Columbia University