Slandering the Sacred

Slandering the Sacred offers a gripping voyeuristic account of the sinuous ways in which law's religion and religion's law together conspired in the racist and sentimental effort to regulate speech and affect in colonial India, particularly in the strange career of Thomas Macaulay. -- Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Indiana University By rerouting the modern history of blasphemy through late colonial India, this elegant and imaginative book returns empire to the history of secularism as it centers India in the reconception of blasphemy as a secular crime. This richly textured history with many twists and turns is a must-read that cuts through the logjam of contemporary debates about religion and free speech. -- Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan In this discerning study, Scott recasts South Asia as a major crucible of key ideas about blasphemy that crystallized under British colonial rule. By linking blasphemy laws with secularization in the metropole and colony, he astutely shows that religious offense often obscured the residual violence in state and society. As Scott skillfully argues, law's putative management of public feelings provided an alibi for solidifying colonialism's grip on civil society, spilling over into the postcolonial state's mediation of religious differences. -- Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University Scott has written a book as witty as it is scholarly. Slandering the Sacred is an enthralling and colorful history of a law, a page-turner about a penal code: this is an impressive feat. . -- Katherine Lemons, McGill University