The volume aims at a critical assessment of one of the influential institutions of the late colonial era. By focusing on the history of Hindu education at Banaras Hindu University, a major university of British India between 1915 to 1947, the book explores the complex inter-relationships between religion, education, identity formation, resistance patterns, and how the university responded to these issues. The importance of the work lies in offering a new perspective on university education in colonial India and in its documentation of education as one of the important instruments of identity construction during the colonial rule.
It situates the university in the larger context of a movement to foster Hindu identity in response to the colonial situation. The volume also studies the reform movement, and its important leaders like Annie Besant and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, and their role not only in education but also in the revival of Hinduism. It re-examines the general thou ght of modern scholarship on religious nationalism, which is grounded in the assumption that nationalism thrives only in modern, secular cultures.
