Hindu Pluralism

"This work provides a detailed, insightful, and original perspective on a significant and understudied period. It engages intelligently with current discussions of early modern Indian intellectual and religious history, while calling into question key elements of the existing picture of the period among specialists in the field."—Lawrence McCrea, Professor of Sanskrit Studies, Cornell University

"Fisher works at both a micro and macro level to read the intricacies of Smarta Saivism against the broader backdrop of evolving definitions of Hinduism. Her counterintuitive thesis is that sectarianism is not so much a breakup of a preexisting unity but rather an aggregation of discrete religions."—Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief 

"Fisher has excellent historical and philological skills that have enabled her to contribute a very important piece of scholarship that bears directly on the formation of the complex set of social, political, and religious beliefs and practices that constitute modern Hinduism. Her work is critical now more than ever in helping us to understand what Hinduism is and how it began to be that way, not in misty antiquity but in early modernity."—Robert P. Goldman, Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Sanskrit and India Studies, University of California at Berkeley