From court to court: Religious polities and the modern south Asian public

Responding to recent scholarship on premodern religious publics in South Asia, this essay cautions against the retrojection of the modern category onto past political, religious, and cultural patterns. The essay highlights instead the need for examining historical developments taking place between the early colonial and the late colonial era as a useful way to ponder what becomes of court‐ and temple‐based polities in the age of law courts, the printing press, and imperial bureaucracy.