ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on an unfinished piece of writing by the late Joseph T. O’Connell (1940–2012), who played a key role in establishing the field of Bengali Vaiṣṇava Studies in the Western academy, and to whose memory the present volume is dedicated. The chapter indicates potentially fruitful avenues for further research into Vaiṣṇavism in the context of modern Bengal. It spotlights in particular several relatively unknown but not unimportant figures from this period, who contributed meaningfully to the growth of the modern colonial Bengali Vaiṣṇava movement. The chapter has been edited and expanded by Amiya P. Sen, whose work on Hinduism in colonial Bengal is drawn upon repeatedly by O’Connell in the chapter.
