Gods, Guns and Missionaries

A brave and magnificent book, and a vital intervention: as elegant as it is witty, as erudite as it is wise, and as stylish as it is scholarly. Manu Pillai is fast becoming one of India’s most accomplished and impressively wide-ranging historians – William Dalrymple
Exploding the myth of a singular, ‘true’ Hinduism, Manu S Pillai’s deft exploration of four centuries of the faith reveals its underlying complexities * Financial Times *
[An] insightful and incisive inquiry into the making of the modern Hindu identity… Pillai has a singular ability to weave multiple strands into a single coherent narrative without sacrificing a sense of the diverse personalities involved and the raging maelstrom of ideas * Times Literary Supplement *
Truly remarkable ... Gods, Guns and Missionaries unpacks the transformation of Hinduism with sharp insight combined with masterful storytelling … Pillai provides valuable tools to understand the narratives underpinning contemporary Indian politics * Asian Review of Books *
Scrupulously researched and narrated with an authoritative ease…Gods, Guns and Missionaries is a courageous work that privileges fact over political correctness and prejudice. Pillai demonstrates that unusual ability to be at once scholarly and extremely readable * Frontline *
Gods, Guns and Missionaries delicately and deliciously crosses that bridge between academic rigour and accessible storytelling. Offering its readers new trails to the present through the prism of the past, the book deserves the work it demands. It’s a debate, a conversation, and a question for the future. It’s a dialogue waiting to happen, as timeless as its subject * Business Standard *
In under 350 pages of text, Gods, Guns and Missionaries presents a confident survey of encounters between Indians and Europeans from 1500 onward–five centuries of misunderstanding and mutual appreciation–taking in all the major cock-ups and flip-flops in colonial policy * Literary Review *
Essential reading for anyone curious about the long roots of India’s current political dispensation …. Gods, Guns and Missionaries is about something profoundly bigger than the Indian subcontinent. It is part of a global story in which loosely organised, syncretic religious traditions were steamrolled by the Abrahamic model: one God, one book, one truth that negated accommodation with all other beliefs * History Today *
Pillai has dived deep into an ocean of primary and secondary sources to show the trajectory modern Hindu identity formation followed while confronting colonialism…[He] must be congratulated for showing us how the Hindu religion and identity crystallised during [this] long gestation period * Scroll.in *

Manu S. Pillai is the author of the critically acclaimed The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore (2015), Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji (2018), The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History (2019), and False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma (2021).

He is a winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, awarded by India’s National Academy of Letters to writers under thirty-five, and holds a PhD in history from King’s College London. His essays and writings on history have appeared in publications in the UK and India.

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