In later times, both the puranas and the tantras have been the subject of extensive
commentaries. In addition, this period saw the development of new artistic and archi-
tectural styles. Many of the forces manifested or formed in this period remain integral
parts of contemporary Hindu life.
The period following this was marked by the growth and flowering of the devo-
tional (bhakti) tradition, which for more than a millennium has been one of the most
powerful religious forces in Hindu culture. Bhakti stresses the necessity of a direct and
personal relationship with God, in whatever form that deity is conceived. Its propo-
nents tended to be contemptuous of the neatly constructed social order detailed in
the dharma shastras, which stressed birth rather than devotional capacity as the most
important criterion. Much of medieval Hindu thought was formed out of the tension
between these two competing ideals, dharma and bhakti, and there was often no easy
resolution of the conflict between their differing perspectives.
The growing presence of Europeans in India marked the next period in
Hinduism’s history. Although there had been a European presence in India since the
mid-1500s, when the Portuguese colonized Goa, the introduction of British colonists
presented the greatest challenge to Indian society. In the early 1600s, the British East
India Company gained its first foothold with a trading station at Surat in modern
Gujarat and gradually put down additional roots in Bombay, Madras, and the Bengal
region. With the effective collapse of the Moghul empire in the mid-1700s, the nobil-
ity that ruled peripheral regions such as Bengal began to function independently. This
allowed the British to displace the indigenous rulers as the political authorities and
the recipients of land revenue. The East India Company was a commercial venture,
and its primary goal was to make money for its shareholders. Yet the Indian body
politic was so fragmented that the company encountered little effective resistance
and aggressively expanded its sphere of influence from Bengal up the Ganges River
valley and into central India. In some cases the company would simply absorb small
kingdoms under the pretense of protecting law and order, especially when the leader-
ship had no clear line of succession. In other cases it would make agreements with
local nobility to create small princely states, some of which survived until Indian inde-
pendence in 1947. General discontent with the company’s aggressive expansion
finally exploded in the rebellion of 1857–58, after which India was governed as part of
the British Empire.
The company was primarily driven by economic motives, but it justified its pater-
nal presence by portraying the Indians as unable to govern themselves effectively.
Although the company’s policy was not to interfere with its subjects’ religious lives,
since any such tensions would be bad for business, the company’s board of directors
in England was under strong domestic pressure to open up their dominions to
Christian missionary activity. Contemporary missionary polemics against Hinduism
usually stressed repugnant practices such as sati (the burning of a widow on her hus-
band’s funeral pyre), child marriage, the pitiable plight of many widows, or Hindu
“idolatry.” Such political and religious critiques assumed the implicit superiority of
European Christian culture and provided the moral sanction for colonialism that
Rudyard Kipling described as the “white man’s burden.”
Hindus responded to these critiques in several ways. The most violent response
came in the rebellion of 1857–58, in which popular discontent led various groups to
try to drive the British out of India. Although there was widespread opposition to
British rule, it was never unified, allowing the British to defeat their adversaries one by
one. A far more effective response came in religious terms, as progressive Hindus
attempted to respond to the missionary critiques. One result of this was the formation
of various societies, such as the Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, and Arya Samaj. The
first two of these attempted to reform Hindu religious life by removing certain offen-
sive practices in response to criticism from outsiders. These practices included the
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