J. Barton Scott is Associate Professor of Historical Studies and the Study of Religion at University of Toronto. He is the author of Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (Chicago/ Permanent Black) and Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (Chicago/Primus), and the co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia (Routledge).