ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how, from the late nineteenth century onwards, the myth of Sati assumed sudden political significance. It examines the process by which the goddess rose to prominence during this time as a personification of the subcontinent and an icon of heroic self-sacrifice. During the nineteenth century, self-reflective questions were asked about what it meant to be Hindu. Such questions were influenced and conditioned by colonial definitions of Hinduism, and were often embellished with Orientalist notions of paganism, idolatry and anarchy. The book argues that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the fragmented motherland was re-imagined by many as one unified subcontinent through the empowerment of Shaktism and the rhetoric of the goddess as bio-territory.
