Hinduism Outside the Box: A Conversation with Manu Pillai
Image: Jaipur Literature Festival / YouTube
Manu Pillai, the author of Gods, Guns and Missionaries, speaks to Amritesh Mukherjee about history beyond monochromatic brushstrokes, the highs and lows of social media discourse, Hindu plurality, and some recommended books.
Manu Pillai’s Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity (Penguin Random House India, 2024) delightfully explores the many contradictions that shaped this country and its culture. Beginning with an extensive introduction to how Hinduism evolved through centuries of interaction and adaptation, the book highlights how both external and internal factors were responsible for influencing the modern Hindu identity.
The book reads less like a dull history text and more like a pacy thriller, with flamboyant characters, messy dynamics, and an ever-shifting tug-of-war between many factions. There are exaggerated Jesuit accounts of Europeans branding Hindus as devil worshippers, as well as many in the same populations venerating the religion with the rise of Orientalism. There are some Brahmins who defend polytheism in critique of monotheistic faiths, and some who scoff at polytheism and idol worship to proclaim the monotheistic strains of Hinduism as original. It’s a religion fluttered with paradoxical histories, and Pillai delves into his explorations with a curious, nuanced eye, always seeking to understand its subjects better.
I met Pillai at this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival, where we spoke about history beyond monochromatic brushstrokes, the highs and lows of social media discourse, Hindu plurality, and some recommended books. Edited excerpts:
The Chakkar: You have talked about how your latest book, Gods, Guns and Missionaries has taken you a long time to research. I wanted you to speak about the journey of this book, of allowing your skills to marinate or mature until they reach the ambition. How did that process happen?
Pillai: It’s a bit of a trial-and-error process because, for example, I thought I was ready to do this book in 2019. That's when I signed with Penguin. All the contracts were done, as I guessed that, ‘Now, I’m going to sit and write’. By 2020, I had the first four chapters, and they were good chapters; in fact, I didn’t have to change much from there. But I knew that going forward, I needed more like this wasn’t enough, so I went back to the drawing board and back to research, took some more years, told my publishers: ‘Hold on, I’m not delivering this book anytime soon.’
I had to do some more work, and finally finished it only in the summer of 2024. I remember I was in America at my brother-in-law’s place, and that’s where I literally wrote that final epilogue of the book. And there’s more work to do, more editing changes, but that final bit was done in 2024. Sometimes, to be in a hurry can also get you into the wrong places, you can make silly mistakes and so on. So, it’s better to give a heavy book like this the time it needs and deserves in order to do a decent job.
The Chakkar: We often tend to view history in monochromatic brushstrokes, which is why one thing that I quite admire about your book is how whenever you speak of a certain pattern or ongoing phenomenon, there’s a “but…” towards the end, to highlight how no truth is the only truth. Were you intentional in your research in not allowing yourself to paint with large brushstrokes, and to make sure that you discuss another version of events?
Pillai: Always. If you read the book with its notes, you will always find that for any categorical statement that’s made, that “but” is always there, either in the notes or in the main text. The frank truth is that Indian history is so complicated, it’s so layered, that one has to be very careful when making any kind of categorical statement.
It’s that old cliché no? That for anything you say in India, the opposite is also true. It’s not a cliché. It’s real. Because anything I say of North India may not be true of the South, something I say in Kerala may not be true of Tamil Nadu. So, when you zoom out into a broad picture book like this, you have to be very careful to use your words in a certain way so that in places where you have self-doubt, that is clear. Where things are not clear, that is also clear to your reader. It’s not as clear as we’d like it to be, but this is what it is. So, one has to be a bit cautious. And I think caution helps.
The Chakkar: As someone who comes from a very religious family, I was very surprised while reading the book, because these are some very obvious things that one doesn’t always learn while growing up. I want to know if there was something similar for you in your journey of researching this book, and you thought that, ‘Oh, this is so fundamental to my religion, but I was not aware of that!’
“What worries me more is the tendency to homogenize Hinduism. The frank truth is that Hinduism’s strength has precisely been its diversity. And diversity not because Hindus were somehow wiser than other religions. It’s just that internally, Hinduism is so plural that it cannot but accept diversity.”
Pillai: I mean, there were lots of surprises that way. But what really surprises me again is just the tree of plurality. People, especially on social media, fight about scripture, this and that. People also troll me, and I try to explain to them also. But afterwards, I’m also like, ‘Why am I responding to these trolls who’ve already made up their mind? What's the point of trying to engage with them?’ I do it out of good faith as I think it's worth engaging with people. But one of the problems today is that people don’t listen. They are hearing you, but they’re not listening to what you're saying or the point you're making.
So, sometimes, from a long conversation, if a reel is made by the makers of that podcast, and the reel sounds a certain way, they’re still not listening to exactly what you’re saying. They’re hearing what they want to hear, and then they’re fighting based on that. But again, that’s the peril of doing business as I do it, so…
I think different castes, different communities, they have a sense of, oh, this is Hinduism. But the problem is: This is your Hinduism, this is my Hinduism, that’s her Hinduism. The frank truth is, yes, there are certain common elements: anywhere you go in the country, people know the ethics, people know a lot of Shiva or Vishnu, et cetera. That way, yes, there are common elements. But when you get to the details of it, literally, each segment of Hindu society, their practice of Hinduism, is very different. For some people, it really meant offering alcohol to their gods. In certain temples, it means the prasadam is moong dal mixed with chicken. In other places, the prasadam is flowers and rice. Both are equally valid. Both are equally true. Now, your vegetarian version of Hinduism may not sit well with the Devi who wants chicken in her prasadam, but that’s how it is, right?
We have to be accepting of the plurality, which is that even though this exists in a common framework, each slot in that framework has a very distinct identity of its own. And that, to me, is a very important point. It’s surprising how many people are amazed by it but also scared of it. A lot of people feel very threatened when they realize that their idea of Hinduism is not necessarily the idea of Hinduism. There’s a distinction there. I don’t think there is any one idea of Hinduism. It is multiple. It has always been multiple.
The Chakkar: When we speak of plurality, there’s also a danger of the right-wing or the Hindutva narrative of Hinduism being this very encompassing or a tolerant religion, the Sanatana Dharma that’s been politicized over the years. Is that something you are wary of when you are talking of the ‘greatness’ of the religion?
Pillai: Obviously, you’ll find enough people in the West romanticizing Christianity; there are people romanticizing Islam, saying this is the best religion, etc. All religions do that. What worries me more is the tendency to homogenize Hinduism. The frank truth is that Hinduism’s strength has precisely been its diversity. And diversity not because Hindus were somehow wiser than other religions. It’s just that internally, Hinduism is so plural that it cannot but accept diversity.
Now what’s happening is there’s a homogenization and a tendency towards regimenting Hinduism, which is very unnatural. If you look at the broad arc of history, if you look at the broad history of Hinduism, it’s very unnatural to put Hinduism into a rigid box and say this is it and anything outside the box is not allowed. That’s a very unnatural dynamic that has really emerged from the West, and we’ve internalized it originally as a defence mechanism of sorts. But some people own it and tend to homogenize Hinduism, which I think is tragic.
The Chakkar: In an earlier conversation at JLF, an author told me that the truth is inconvenient to both conservatives and progressives. What has been the reception to your book from both sides? Has it been somewhat expected, or were you surprised?
Pillai: It surprised me a little bit. I thought that both left and right would come for me, but it seems that left and right are both reading the book, which is a good sign, and they are both engaging with the book. Of course, different parts might offend each. But they’re also liking other parts of the book, which, to me, is a bit of a win because I think in today’s world, I’m frankly, bored of this, ‘left, right, left, right’. I just want to do my job. I want to be led by the evidence. I’m not interested in ideological positions because I think it does an injustice to the discipline and the subject of history.
The historian’s job is not to be an activist. The historian’s job is not to take sides or flaunt and say one side is better than the other side. The historian’s job is to be led by the evidence. If the evidence upsets even that historian’s personal political ideologies, that’s how it is. I have to deal with it. There may be lots of things in the course of my research that I don’t like, that don’t sit well with my personal politics, but I can’t let that interfere and intervene in my research or the conclusions I reach. And I think that even-handedness is what we’re missing in Indian history, which has become—at least the public conversation around it—so polarized that we forget that history is above these ideological camps, and there’s a way of doing it without bothering about which ideological camp it’s supporting or rejecting.
The Chakkar: The book sort-of ends at the formation of Hindutva, or Savarkar’s Hindutva. Is there a difference between the Hindutva of Savarkar and the Hindutva of today?
Pillai: I did once chuckle to a friend that, if Savakar were to come and look at some of the organizations that speak for Hindutva today, he himself would have criticized some of it. Because, again, if you read Savarkar’s writings, he was not very besotted with the idea of cow protection for the sake of it, in the way today it has been politicized. He was not interested in that. Similarly, there are lots of hyper-traditionalists; he would have lampooned them. And he did make fun of people who, for example, saw airplanes and nuclear technology in the Vedic period, etc. I don’t think he would accept present-day Hindutva in its totality, although there are linkages. So, there’s obviously a continuity, but at the same time, there’s also enough to set one apart from the other.
“The historian’s job is not to take sides or flaunt and say one side is better than the other side. The historian’s job is to be led by the evidence. If the evidence upsets even that historian’s personal political ideologies, that’s how it is. I have to deal with it.”
I want to make one more point, which is that in Savarkar’s time, his Hindutva was still theoretical. He was largely framing Hindutva as a concept. Today, people are trying to enact Hindutva on the ground, and that creates its own contradictions. It’s easier to envision something when it’s just on paper. But to actually pull it off on the ground and convince the whole society to become part of that—that’s a different process, and that leads to strange contradictions, which we are seeing today as well.
The Chakkar: What texts would you recommend to those looking for books to read after yours?
Pillai: I am reading a book by Angela Saini, now called The Patriarchs, which I’m finding very interesting. I also recently read her older book called The Inferior, which is about science and how even scientists are not entirely objective beings. Their own cultural conditioning affects the science they do, and the conclusions that we term scientific have a social element to it, and sometimes a problematic social element.
I love and always recommend books by Ira Mukhoty, whose work I really admire. In fiction, recently, I read a book called Shadows Rising by Rohan Monteiro: It’s a very quick, magical kind of thriller, but it’s great fun.
To read more after Guns, Gods and Missionaries—go to the bibliography. Frankly, after doing this book, one thing I thought was that there are parts of this book that I could turn into full-length book studies. For example, a figure like Serfoji of Thanjavur deserves a book of his own. There are so many other elements more, because this is such a broad picture book. I kept thinking, ‘My god, there are so many stories I could tell as independent books’. There are lots of stories to tell in this book itself, and hopefully, someday, I’ll be able to expand on that.
The Chakkar: Are there any future projects that you want to work on after this?
Pillai: I have several book projects in my head, but I have no plans to start anything this year. I need a break. As I’ve been telling people, this book has squeezed the life out of me. I need to chill.
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Amritesh Mukherjee is a writer and editor. He is a content writer at a marketing agency and the long-form lead at Purple Pencil Project, a platform to promote Indian literature (and languages). You can find him on Instagram: @aroomofwords and Twitter: @aroomofwords.
