Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–84) was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in nineteenth-century Bengal. He was the subject of extreme adulation and vehement criticism. Yet he died with relatively few followers, his reputation in both India and Britain largely ruined. This innovative study explores the transnational historical forces that shaped Keshab’s life and work. Stevens paints a fascinating and often tragic portrait of Keshab’s experience of the imperial world, and the ways in which he carried meaning for his contemporaries.