I owe a debt of gratitude to my interlocutors in India. Without their support and goodwill, this project would have never come to fruition.

I am also very grateful to my colleagues and friends. I am particularly thankful to Sander Gilman for encouraging me to complete this study as a book-length project. I also wish to thank Seth Anziska, Nathan Devir, Anna Guttman, Admir Jugo, and Ammara Maqsood for reading drafts of different chapters, and I am grateful to Navras Aafreedi, Rohee Dasgupta, Sreekala Sivasankaran, and the late Alexander Kadakin for stimulating conversations and hospitality and to Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, David Feldman, John Jackson, Brian Klug, James Renton, and Xun Zhou for insight and encouragement. I also wish to thank my students in my Anthropology of Religious Controversy class, with whom I had fascinating conversations about some of the material presented in this book.

I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewers, and Cynthia Read and Hannah Campeanu at Oxford University Press, New York. I also benefitted a lot from opportunities to present parts of this book at the annual meetings of the Association for Jewish Studies and the British Association for Jewish Studies, at a seminar in Jewish history at the Institute for Historical Research, at the Conflict cluster workshop at Durham University, and at the Ethnicity, Race and Racism research seminar at Edge Hill University. I also wish to thank my colleagues at Durham University and, particularly, Susan Frenk, Ilan Baron, and Kate Hampshire. Vital financial support for this project was provided by Durham University's research fund. Last but not least, a very special thank you goes to Brian Black, Harrison Black, Sonya Black, and Nataliya Rakhimova.