Scripts, Scholars, and the State: The Role of Empire, Scholarship, and the Census in Shaping Religious Identity in Colonial India

This thesis investigates the emergence of modern Hindu identity during the British colonial period in India through the lens of interconnected intellectual, administrative, and ideological networks. Contrary to deterministic accounts that attribute the creation of Hinduism solely to British colonialism, this study argues that Hindu identity was co-constituted by a diverse array of actors and institutions. These included British Orientalist scholars such as William Jones and Max Müller, colonial bureaucrats who designed and implemented the census and legal reforms, and Indian reformists and nationalists who internalized and reframed these colonial categories. Drawing on a network analysis approach, the study traces the interplay between textual translation, legal codification, census enumeration, and nationalist mobilization. Through close examination of primary sources—including the 1871, 1881, and 1891 Indian census reports—and a wide array of secondary scholarship, this thesis demonstrates that modern Hindu identity was neither wholly imposed from above nor spontaneously arising from within. Rather, it was a contingent, negotiated outcome of overlapping discursive and institutional forces. In emphasizing the relational and contested nature of identity formation, the thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how religion, statecraft, and knowledge production interacted in colonial South Asia.