This book is a colonial history of the Hindu temple. Despite the bewildering diversity of places, materials, and structures described by the term “Hindu temple”, a particular understanding of these edifices emerged during the imperial encounter in India from 1800 onwards.

Deborah Sutton presents the defining preoccupations through which colonial understandings of the temple took shape: wealth, sensuality, depravity, and devotion. Her analysis draws on a wide range of literary, visual, and bureaucratic sources to encompass religious, cultural, archaeological, imperial, and art histories. The book charts the influence of several prominent scholars and writers: James Fergusson, Ram Raz, Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, and Stella Kramrisch. It also charts less renowned voices that were sidelined by imperial history.

Ruling Devotion   highlights the Hindu temple as a place at which the imperial gaze was held and challenged. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates that the colonial state rarely, and even then only temporarily, got its own way at the Hindu temple.

Deborah Sutton is Professor of South Asian History, Department of History, Lancaster University. She has researched and published on the environmental, political, and cultural histories of modern South Asia.