ABSTRACT
The transformation of religion in colonial South Asia represented the reordering of religion within confluent global imaginaries, as seen from the entangled histories of imperialism, Protestantism, comparative religion, and South Asian religious reform movements. In the colonial era Indian intellectuals and spiritual leaders engaged emergent Western theories of religion, drew upon and reframed Christian, orientalist, and theosophical readings of Indian religion, and recast such knowledge in light of indigenous thought and practice. What emerged were new modes of associational behaviour; distinctive attitudes towards gender, community, and nation; and new proposals regarding the meaning of self and society.
