ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that periodization and an authorized version of the past can be of crucial importance and a matter of no small controversy in the here and now for present day Hindu nationalism in India. It provides specific and detailed analyses of historical, ethnographic, textual and theoretical examples of history being written and religion(s) being constructed. The book presents a thought-provoking way of interrogating the history and semantic/ideological content of 'religion' and 'culture' as key-concepts in modern Western consciousness, ideological assumptions and motivations of those writing about and/or 'against' religion, and political implications. It establishes that a meaningful dialogue between frequently contrasted schools of intellectual thought: a structuralist preoccupation with the cultural logic underlying key-categories and their inter-relations, is integrated with a post-structuralist concern with questions of power and ideology.
