Chips from a Calcutta Workshop

Neilesh Bose examines the emergence and character of comparative religion in nineteenth-century India, arguing it grew from indigenous reform movements such as the Brāhmo Samaj and Arya Samaj rather than solely from European Christian influence.

The book profiles major figures—Rammohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Keshab Chandra Sen, and Swami Vivekananda—re-evaluating well-known and lesser-known thinkers who engaged in translation, synthesis, and reform.

Bose situates these intellectuals' comparative practices in a broader transregional context, showing how translations, compilations, institutional experiments, and pilgrimages shaped modern religious self-understanding.

He also dialogues with Western contemporaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson to highlight convergent comparative impulses.

The work contributes to intellectual and religious history by demonstrating that comparative religion was an actively produced and strategic category in modern India.