Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Intepretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century

Jessica Patterson’s book Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Interpretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (CUP, 2022) examines studies of the texts and traditions of Hinduism published by servants of the British East India Company in the decades after the Company’s victory at the Battle of Plassey (1757). In this interview Patterson leads us through how she situates these works in the contexts of Enlightenment and empire and reveals the role of heterodox religious thought in framing both late eighteenth-century European notions of Indian religion and British imperial policy.