Temples of India is one of a number of travelogue films made by the company World Window in the late 1930s. The company was the brainchild of the wealthy husband and wife team F.W. Keller and E.S. Keller. Inspired by the results of their own amateur travel films, the Kellers sought out a film crew to make professional travelogues, beginning with a series of films shot in Europe and then later filming in Asia (Cardiff, 1996, 50). The team that the Kellers put together included director and editor Hans Nieter, who would later produce and direct the drama documentary Seven Years in Tibet (1956), and the renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who pioneered the use of Technicolor in these documentaries. Temples of India also employs the talents of the seasoned film composer Ludwig Brav, and the choreography of the Menaka Indian Ballet. World Window was formed specifically to produce these ten-minute documentaries, which were distributed in Britain and America by the American company United Artists.

The temples documented in this film include those at Benares and Varanasi, as well as the reclaimed temple at Belur. Also featured is the Taj Mahal, designed by an unknown architect, and built as a mausoleum for the Muslim ruler Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal.

Hinduism is nevertheless the principal religion covered in the film. This faith differs from religions such as Christianity and Islam. The religion has no founder; it is not prophetic; it is not creedal; there is no system of theology, moral code or concept of god that is central to it; there is no single authoritative scripture; and it is not sustained by an ecclesiastical organisation (Wightman, 1998, 261). Practices among adherents vary widely; religious observance can include both ‘strict puritanical ritualism’ and ‘wild, inebriated cults and blood sacrifices’ (Michaels, 2004, 4). The India of Hindus has consequently been cast as the ‘other’ a land that is identified with ‘despotism, imagination, superstition, and irrationality’ in contrast to the ‘democracy, reason, and science’ of the west (Flood, 2003, 3).

There has been much scholarly debate regarding the British influence on Hinduism, centred on the extent to which the colonisers codified and unified what was a disparate collection of faiths (for a summary of the positions see Viswanathan, 2003, 23-44). The term ‘Hinduism’ is itself of fairly recent origin, being coined by the British in the late eighteenth century to refer to people in India who were not of the Muslim, Sikh, Christian or Jain religions (Flood, 2003, 3). And it was British Orientalists who, in their desire to posit the faith as a precursor to Christianity, sought in Hinduism ideas of monotheism, a salvational scheme and notions of the afterlife, which they located and disseminated via discovered Sanskrit texts (Viswanathan, 2003, 25-26). Consequently, Hinduism was accommodated by British authorities, offering a contrast to what Viswanathan terms as the ‘systematic effacement of indigenous practices of religious worship in certain African societies’ (Viswanathan, 2003, 26). There were, however, British factions who were opposed to the faith. The attitude of some missionaries can be represented by Alexander Duff, who stated that ‘Of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen man, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous’ (Killingley, 2003, 513). Utilitarians also disliked the religion: James Stuart Mill’s, History of British India (1817) features a condemnation of Hindu culture. This varied British influence had unforeseen results: during the nineteenth century many Indians came to adopt the term ‘Hinduism’, using it as a marker of national identity (Flood, 2003, 3). Subsequently, the religion became one of the means by which Indian nationalists could articulate their separatist aims (Viswanathan, 2003, 26-27).