The author focuses on institutionalized religion and examines issues relating to Bible translation that engaged the attention of missionary translators connected to the Bible Society in the Madras Presidency and Ceylon, in particular the production of a standard Tamil version of the Bible in nineteenth-century India. She places in context the Bible Society’s push for standardization and uniformity of Bibles, arguing that the insistence on standard translations underpinned an effort to create an abstract, standard Christian subject who would transcend differences among cultural communities in India, including differences in religious beliefs.