Judicial debates on the regulation of religion in post-colonial India have been characterised by the inability of courts to identify religion as a governable phenomenon. This book investigates the identification and regulation of religion through an intellectual history of law's creation of religion from the colonial to the post-colonial. Moving beyond conventional explanations on the failure of secularism and the secular state, it argues that the impasse in the legal regulation of religion lies in the methodologies and frameworks used by British colonial administrators in identifying and governing religion. Drawing on insights from post-colonial theory and religious studies, it demonstrates the role of secular legal reasoning in the background of Western intellectual history and Christian theology through an illustration of the place of worship. It is a contribution to South Asian legal history and sociolegal studies analysing court archives, colonial narratives and legislative documents.

‘… Srikantan’s book initiates a line of investigation that anyone studying the history of law and religion in India will find it difficult to ignore. She offers an original contribution to the growing postcolonial literature on the global history of secularism and religious freedom …’

Sean G. Hayden - Journal of Law and Religion

‘Geetanjali Srikantan makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the manner in which the colonial encounter shaped both law and religion in India. Through a dual process of theologisation and secularisation grounded largely in Christian European self-understandings, both Hindu and Muslim law were remade in the image of colonial rationality as these traditions were incorporated by Anglo-Indian courts. Moving from the codification of indigenous legal systems, to the transformation of temple donations in terms of the English law of trusts and property, to the contemporary conundrum over how to define the “essential practices” of religion in the Indian Supreme Court, Srikantan shows how Indian law and society have inherited certain, arguably insoluble contradictions from European secularism. Identifying and Regulating Religion in India will be of interest not only to students of South Asia and colonialism, but also to those concerned with broader debates over secularism and religious freedom.’

Robert A. Yelle - LMU Munich

'Geetanjali Srikantan’s book is an ambitious and timely work on the legal regulation of religion in India at a time when disputes over religious practice and places of worship …'

Ronojoy Sen Source: Journal of Church and State