ABSTRACT
This book has attempted to identify some of the elements of the Indian discussion of the Jews which have persisted over time and appeared in different types of modern Indian discourse. We first looked at the discussion of the Jews as it emerged with the spread of Christian Protestant missions, and with the formation and development of the Hindu reform movement. The sources used here were the works by Christian missionaries which cast light on the Indian response to the Jewish topics in Indian-Christian debates and the writings by the Hindu reformers who compared Jewish religious culture with their own. It appears that the discussion of Jewish topics was used by the Hindu reformers either as a means of establishing a dialogue with their Christian opponents or as an expression of their negation of Judeo-Christian tradition. I would suggest that in both cases the discourse on the Jews was employed in the construction of a Hindu identity.
