We are made aware of how these standardizations and laws percolate to this day, resulting in government control of Hindu temples in a supposedly "secular" state. The vision of independence coined by native elites was limited to the politico-economic sphere but did not include decolonization on the cultural front.

This absolutely brilliant piece of scholarship from Deepak I hope is only a beginning on this front from him and many others like him. We then discover that these principles led them to a "civilizing" and "reformation" mission of the non-Christian world and thus uprooting the collective lived experiences and traditions of indigenous societies the world over. Claudius Buchanan a Scottish clergyman credited with corruption of the word “Jagannath” to “juggernaut”, portrayed Hinduism as a ‘bloody, violent, superstitious and backward religious system’, which required an immediate ‘social reform’. This debauched caricature of Brahminism and Brahmins was even categorised under an esoteric term ‘priestcraft’. This manifests in ways such as – claiming ridiculously that India was never a nation and that it was the occupiers who made it so.

The polarization associated with such a controversial postulation may be gauged by contrasting opinions espoused by other Western authorities and Indologists. According to decolonialism, post-colonialism gives the impression that the colonial mindset ended with the departure of the colonial power, when, in fact, it survives and continues to impact decolonised independent societies.

As I understand it, the difference between coloniality and post-coloniality is this: the former has unconsciously internalised the coloniser’s prescriptions, and the latter is consciously aligned with the coloniser’s mission. This antiquarian fallacy has received amplification from many Western scholars such as the likes of John Strachey who averred that ‘there is not and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity, physical or political’. This is a clear reference to the author’s own experience when he appeared in court to argue against the plea of feminists demanding entry into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. The invaders, nursing a Judeo Christian OET that places man at the pinnacle of animate and inanimate existence, not just dehumanized humanity but also objectified nature.Those commenting that the author is presenting only one side facts, probably havent read much in the book, or have indulged their bias while rating the book.