ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I do two things: while showing both the strengths and weaknesses of the postcolonial story about the creation of religions in India, I also spell out a clear hypothesis on what religion is. There is much discussion in contemporary religious studies about the status of the concept ‘religion’. Some argue that the word is a creation of the scholar or that it has no reference to anything in the world or that it is not possible to talk about ‘religion’ intelligibly. I argue that we need to have a theory of religion, if we have to take an informed standpoint on any of the above issues. As a first step in the process, I formulate a hypothesis about the nature of the phenomenon. I do this, however, while critically engaging with the arguments of some of the contemporary scholars.
