Postcolonialism refers to the social order or culture of a colonized society after the end of colonialism, when the former colonizers have left or have granted independence and sovereignty to the native society. A postcolonial order bears the legacies of both the colonial and the precolonial structures, and because modernity was often introduced with colonialism, postcolonialism must also deal with survival in a globalized modernity. Whether the precolonial order was a small-scale society with flexible shamanistic traditions or a long-standing monarchical order with powerful religious institutions and organized clergy, such as in India, China, or the Middle East, will have a bearing on the particular ways in which it accommodates or repels the religious or secular impositions of the colonizers. Also shaping the postcolonial religious ...