Blurb:

In the study of religions, various categories are offered to non-western traditions like Hinduism in order to equalize their place at the multicultural table. While Hughes argues that scholars must refrain from adjudicating good and bad religions, Sivakumar argues that religionists are already embroiled in this process, recognizing the colonial motivations through which differences were fabricated. Furthermore, practitioners also utilize these scholarly categories to further their own image of a palatable religion, still leaving a space for validating supernatural claims and noting marginalized expressions that do not fit into general understandings of Hinduism.