Unifying Hinduism has won the 2011 award for Best First Book in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion ANDREW J. NICHOLSON Unifying Hinduism Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History South Asia Across the Disciplines Series A Short Interview with Andrew J. Nicholson whose new book Unifying Hinduism is a brilliant exploration of some of the central genealogies of Hinduism: Q1: Would it be true to say that your book provides a prehistory of modern Hindu thinkers we’re familiar with, such as Vivekananda, Gandhi and Radhakrishnan? Can we get a better sense of their intellectual genealogy by reading your book? A1: Yes, one of my goals in writing this book was to do just that. As important as I think Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism is for South Asian Studies, we are in a period when the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. Said criticized Orientalists like Bernard Lewis for insisting that the modern hist