Holy Science

"Reading Banu Subramaniam is equal parts pleasure and provocation...Subramaniam’s work is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary impurity between the humanities and sciences."

"A brilliant, persuasive analysis of the multiple, complex, braided narratives of 'scientized religion' and 'religionized science' at the heart of Hindu nationalism in India. Subramaniam is a masterful storyteller—she draws on postcolonial feminist science and technology studies and moves seamlessly between the histories and ecologies of science, religion, and, gender to offer compelling counternarratives that resist and transcend the racist, masculinist, capitalist, caste-based biopolitics of Hindu nationalism. A must-read for anyone committed to understanding and countering the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world."

"Subramaniam’s innovative analyses—presented alongside entertaining accounts of Indian biopolitics that complicate our grasp of science and society’s interconnections—reanimate and deepen considerations of India’s always ambivalent, hybrid engagements with modernity. Inviting reflection on how the modern West has never in fact succeeded in disenchanting its own sciences—and how the West’s assumptions to the contrary prevent it from successfully reimagining the planetary environmental salvation it seeks—this text should become a classic resource in the history and philosophy of science, in science and technology studies, and in social and political theory."

"At a time when nationalism and populism are flourishing, Subramaniam draws on her unique expertise at the intersection of the life sciences and studies of identity politics to help readers understand how it is that science and religion have become bedfellows in Hindu nationalist ideology."

"Analytically nuanced, intellectually rigorous, politically engaged, and imaginatively written. A hopeful blueprint for the future grounded in a passionate recollection of a more inclusive, tolerant, and plural past. An excellent and timely book."