The experience of colonialism affects and alters those who are colonised, but it also changes the national futures of imperialists and empire-builders. This book chronicles developments in the ideas of 'religion' and 'secularism' during the encounter between Britain and India, showing how these had a crucial impact on the culture and life of both nations. Gender, race, spirituality, language, and science are among the sites of major change investigated. The author takes up a series of oppositions-secular and religious, modern and traditional, reactionary and progressive to show that assumptions of an antithesis between these pairs are mistaken. His investigations suggest that there is profound entanglement and overlap between these terms. India was never a land of eternal religion, just as Britain was never an epitome of secularism, science, and linear historical progress.
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