When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: a worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to crocodiles. But quickly it became clear that Hindu ‘idolatry’ was far more complex than white men’s stereotypes allowed, and that Hindus had little desire to convert. In this book, Manu S. Pillai takes us through these remarkable dynamics. With an arresting cast of characters – maharajahs, poets, gun-wielding revolutionaries, politicians, polemicists, philosophers and clergymen – this is a book ambitious in scope and provocative in its position.